‘It’s yours,’ blurted Tracy.
‘Oh.’ He stared for a moment, nonplussed. ‘Oh yes, that’s right.’
Annis repossessed it and handed it back to him. ‘Somewhere safe. Or bin it,’ she said again firmly.
He lost his smile. ‘But I don’t want it cluttering up my office.’
‘Then bin,’ commanded Annis, looking round.
Tracy gave a small giggle, hastily smothered.
‘Oh, all right.’ Konstantin snatched it from her and ushered her into his office. ‘Great contribution,’ he said ironically. ‘Thanks a million.’
Today there was no sign of the peacock. He was wearing weathered jeans that looked as if he had climbed over a building site in them, which he probably had. His shirt was navy, a heavy-duty cotton and open at the neck. No concessions to the October weather, no concessions to the fact that he had a business meeting, Annis thought. Or maybe seeing her didn’t count as a business meeting.
Annis worked hard at feeling affronted. It was better than noticing that his outdoor tan went as far down his chest as she could see. Or that the work clothes revealed muscles that she had only guessed at in the soft lights of her stepmother’s drawing room.
Konstantin shut the door behind them. The noises of the outer office were muted but not extinguished.
Annis dragged her mind back to the issue in hand and sat down without waiting to be invited.
‘I don’t do time and motion,’ she said calmly. ‘That’s just common sense. This place is appalling.’
‘What?’
It was nice to disconcert him.
‘Appalling,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s no room, no method, no sound insulation. The filing is all over the floor and nobody seems to realise that for telephones to work you have to answer them.’
He stared. Too shocked to reply, she thought.
‘I cannot believe that you run a serious business here.’
His mouth twitched suddenly. ‘Haven’t you heard of creative chaos?’
‘No,’ said Annis baldly. She looked at her watch. ‘I’m wasting my time here. You don’t need me. You need someone with a clipboard and a floor plan. And a lot of dustbin bags, probably.’ She got up. ‘Good day.’
He threw the umbrella away.
‘Don’t go. I do need you. Really.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Why?’
He gave her a charming smile. It crinkled up the green eyes, making him look guileless. Annis did not trust him an inch.
‘The business has grown without me really planning it. It needs some—refocusing.’
She looked at him in deep suspicion. ‘Oh?’
He propped himself on the edge of a table littered with plans and drawings. He had not fastened his cuffs and they fell back to reveal muscular forearms. Her mouth dried. Annis whipped her gaze away fast.
Kosta caught the momentary flicker in her eyes. It surprised him. He had been beginning to think he was wrong, that there was nothing to this woman but her needle-sharp brain and a temper like an ice pick. That tell-tale shiver encouraged him.
But he was much too experienced to let it show.
‘I never meant to be international,’ he said ruefully. ‘Even with e-mail and scanners, I sometimes think it’s more nuisance than it’s worth.’
He could see she was intrigued.
‘Where is the main office?’
‘Milan. That’s where I started.’
‘You’re Italian?’
He liked her surprise. It meant that she had been thinking about him, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.
‘I’m a mongrel.’ Something prompted him to add, ‘I set my own rules.’
Her eyes gave that little flicker again. He liked it. No, she was not as cool as she wanted him to think, businesslike Annis Carew.
‘What sort of mongrel?’
‘A wandering one.’ To his surprise, he found himself giving her the full story. ‘My mother came from a village on the coast in what is now Croatia. My father was on holiday from Italy when they met. She went to Australia when I was three.’
Annis looked puzzled. ‘Australia? You don’t sound Australian.’
‘I took off round the world when I was fourteen,’ he said, watching her. ‘I’ve lived all over. I trained in Boston. But my first big job was in northern Italy. Milan is a great city and the Italians really care about their buildings. So I thought, why not stay?’
‘It sounds like a real impulsive love affair,’ said Annis dryly.
He gave a soft laugh. ‘Oh, it is. Just like all my love affairs.’
She went very still. He thought, There she goes again. The slightest hint of flirtation and she draws that breath as if she has run a splinter under her skin.
He wanted her to stop doing that. He wanted her to flirt right back with him. He wanted to know why.
Instead she gave him a bright, false smile and did not meet his eyes.
‘Surely every love affair is impulsive? I mean, it’s not the sort of thing you draw up strategic plans and interview for, is it?’
It annoyed him into drawling, ‘Oh, I don’t know. You need an overall strategy, I think.’
She didn’t like that, he could see.
‘Really?’
She managed to look bored but something in the way she held herself made Kosta think suddenly, She’s embarrassed! It intrigued him.
‘Well, for instance, you need to know what you want.’ He paused.
She said nothing.
‘And what you can offer,’ he went on, exploring.
Her jaw tightened. But she still said nothing.
Some demon prompted him to add, ‘For example, with someone like me commitment is strictly provisional.’
Her reaction surprised him. He expected fireworks. He would have expected fireworks from any self-respecting independent woman and Annis was more independent that most. Instead she looked totally taken aback. Then—carefully—blank.
Well, there was no doubt about her independence. So what was missing? Self-respect?
As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Kosta knew he had made a discovery.
‘You look like a woman who’s just been told the truth by a man for the first time,’ he said at random, trying to sort out this new idea.
Annis thought, He’s giving me a message. What is it? Surely he can’t mean…Is he telling me not to fall in love with him?
She pulled herself together. ‘Not quite the first time,’ she said with private irony. ‘And I encourage you to go on telling me the truth if you want me.’
It was his turn to be taken aback. Annis saw it with pleasure.
She paused. It was her turn to give him a message. She added sweetly, ‘I mean, if you want me to take this job, of course.’
One finely marked eyebrow rose. ‘In spite of the advance publicity, are you flirting with me, Ms Carew?’
Annis refused to let him throw her. ‘I thought you were the world expert on flirting. You should know,’ she said with composure.
She opened her briefcase and pulled out a notebook.
‘Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ she said briskly. ‘You talk me through the business. What it does, where the frustrations are.’
He did not make a sound. But she knew he was laughing. She looked up briefly, glaring.
‘The business frustrations. Turnaround time on projects, staff, that sort of thing. Then I’ll go away and write you a proposal. If you think we can help, you sign up and…’ she pulled one of their new glossy brochures out of her briefcase and tossed it across to him ‘…we work on our usual terms. If not—no charge.’
‘I can decide now,’ said Konstantin softly.
The green eyes were bright with amusement. Annis refused to acknowledge that glinting awareness.
‘Congratulations. I can’t.’ She settled back in the swirl of steel that Vitale and Partners favoured as an easy chair and prepared to take notes. ‘Now, tell me—what drives your busine
ss? Individual projects or ongoing client relationships? How much do you pick and choose your contracts? And when do you decide…?’
Kosta answered her on autopilot. He felt stunned. So bright, so quick-witted, so clever—and so totally unaware! She did not even pick up the electricity that hummed between them. Or maybe she picked it up; she was just not going to let herself do anything about it.
He did not think she was a coward either. Which brought him back to that crippling lack of self-respect. It was amazing.
What she needed was an affair with a man who wouldn’t let her take life too seriously. I can handle that, he thought.
She could get hurt, said an unfamiliar voice in his head. This one’s not your usual party girl.
It gave him pause. But only for a moment. After all, he had set out his terms. Commitment was for the time being. Impulsive love affairs were for other people. He knew the road he wanted to be on and he did not get bounced off it.
Only—he already had, hadn’t he? He never told people about his origins. He did not know what had made him tell Annis. Thankfully, she could not know how rare that was. But he knew. What if she probed more secrets?
He stopped right there. Probed more secrets? His secrets? His, cool-headed Kosta Vitale’s, with his considered game plan and the achievements to prove it? Would Annis Carew be capable of upsetting that well-ordered strategy?
He thought about it while she went painstakingly through his business structure.
He reached a conclusion.
Nah!
It was not an easy decision.
Oh, she and Roy could help him all right; she was fairly sure of that. And he could afford them. She had been disconcerted to discover just how high an international reputation Konstantin Vitale enjoyed in his chosen profession. She emerged from the articles in those glossy magazines with only one thought—how on earth were Carews affording him? She hoped her father was not letting his prestige, head-office project run away with him.
If it had been anyone but Konstantin Vitale she would not have hesitated to take the commission. But it was Konstantin Vitale. And she did not want to work with him for a minute, let alone several days of close consultation.
Why on earth had Lynda tried to throw them together? Annis could not imagine. He had nothing in common with her, that she could detect. Worst of all, he seemed hell bent on ruffling her feathers at every opportunity.
In the end she put her dilemma to Roy.
‘What do you think?’
He was older than she was and he had been in the business all his working life. He considered.
‘I think we could be making a niche for ourselves in small, high tech and clever. If de la Court signs up and then we get Vitale on board we’ll have two of the biggest names in the sector.’
Annis fingered her scar absently. ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’
‘Don’t you think you can do it?’
‘It’s not that…’
‘Then let’s go for it. We’re too new to pass up something this good.’
She sighed.
‘All right.’
Later she sat down at her workmanlike desk at home and wrote the proposal letter. Then she e-mailed it to Konstantin Vitale, feeling as if she had burned her boats.
The phone rang. It was Bella.
‘Any chance of getting together? I really didn’t manage to talk the other night.’
‘Sure.’ Annis was momentarily surprised. Then she remembered Bella’s confidence in passing. She grinned. ‘You’re bringing the new man, right?’
‘No.’ Bella did not sound like herself. ‘No, I’m not. I—I think I could do with some advice, actually Annis.’
‘Advice? From me?’
They both knew why she was surprised. Bella had slid easily through adolescence without spots, scars or rebellion. As a result her relationships with the opposite sex had always been relaxed in the extreme. By contrast, Annis, who’d endured all three, found the whole business of sex and partners hopelessly complicated.
‘I’ve got myself a real tricky one this time.’ Bella was rueful. But there was something else there as well: something that sounded like real pain.
Annis winced in sympathy. But all she said was, ‘Oh, well, tricky men are my speciality. But I can’t tell you how to handle him.’
‘You can tell me what not to do.’
‘Ouch,’ said Annis. ‘Yes, I suppose I can do that. You want to learn by my mistakes?’
‘You’ve made enough,’ said Bella soberly. She was not gloating. Bella had held her hand through the last one, when James Gould had decided that Annis was too concentrated on something other than himself, and Annis knew how completely Bella was on her side.
‘True enough. OK, I’ll give you the benefit of my disaster counselling. Want to come over for a pasta?’
‘You’re a star.’ It sounded as if Bella had a cold. Or she might have been suppressing tears. ‘You sure you don’t mind picking it over again? Doesn’t it still hurt?’
‘Only my pride,’ said Annis, not entirely truthfully. ‘No, I don’t mind. It’s good to remind myself why I’m not going to get caught in that trap again.’
And she was not.
It was more than pride, and she knew it. Jamie had stripped her to the bone. Oh, in her head she knew that he was shallow and self centred. Annis was very clear about that. But her heart said otherwise. Her heart told her that she was just not one of those women a man could love.
For six months she had poured affection into James Gould. She had even let him into her private sanctuary, her home. And he had left her without a second thought. Still what else had she expected? He had never said he loved her, never encouraged her to think that he might ever love her. Because, thought Annis, he had known at an instinctive level that he was an animal that attracted love and she wasn’t.
So she would live without love. Well, that sort of love. There were lots of compensations—her work, her independence, emotional security once she was off that roller-coaster ride of sex and anxiety.
Bella would not buy that solution, of course, but Annis thanked God that now she was free from that cruellest of fairground thrills. Only for some reason, as she put the phone down, the image of Konstantin Vitale danced in front of her eyes. It was mocking.
CHAPTER THREE
‘THIS,’ Annis told herself aloud, ‘has got to stop.’
She got up and moved restlessly round the room, fingering her scar. Even Jamie, at his worst, had not danced in front of her inner eye laughing at her. Konstantin Vitale needed putting in his place.
A thought occurred to her. She went back to the computer and tapped into the Internet. She would find out what the worldwide web had to say about her new adversary.
It was an interesting journey. Twice her telephone, on muted tone while she was working, beeped. She was too absorbed to answer. There was a lot of stuff on the net about Konstantin, including a photograph of him shirtless, climbing some scaffolding with a hard hat on his springy hair and a hod of bricks over a muscular shoulder.
Annis watched the picture load with disbelief. As the definition increased she realised three things: it was a very fine photograph; his style of dress hid a physique that any Iron Age hunter-gatherer would have been proud of; and he brought her out in a cold sweat of lust.
‘No!’
She scooted her chair away from the screen as if it had suddenly reached out ectoplasmic hands and grabbed her by the throat.
What was she thinking of? Lust? Her, Annis Carew, Brain Box and Icicle Woman? Lust?
Even Jamie, whom she had broken her heart over, had not managed to rouse her to lust. He’d known it too. When he’d left he had thrown it at her in their last cringe-making clash.
‘And as for sex—you don’t know what it’s about.’
Annis had flinched but she did not say anything. She never said anything when he was in one of his tempers. That was one of the things that drove him mad.
‘I
can’t fight with you. You just curl up and go silent and wait for me to shut up. Fight back, Annis.’
But she did not know how. She shook her head.
‘You never wanted me,’ said Jamie, lashing himself to fury. ‘You just fitted me round your career.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Annis in the cold, precise voice that always took over when she thought she might cry.
‘Yes, it is. When did you ever run into my arms in the street? When did you even kiss me, for God’s sake?’
Annis was shocked. ‘I did—’
‘No,’ said Jamie, throwing his CDs into his gym bag. ‘I kissed you. Always.’
‘I—’
‘Face it. I made love to you. Anything going in the other direction was just you being polite.’
Annis felt almost more betrayed than she had by his weekend with the office receptionist. She could not find anything to say. Swallowing, she watched her world fracture and fall to dust.
Then, true to form, she opened the door for him and wished him a courteous goodbye.
‘If you shake hands with me, I won’t be responsible,’ Jamie said dangerously.
Annis shook her head. ‘Good luck,’ she managed through the thick wedge of misery in her throat. Briefly her pride reasserted itself. ‘And I’d like my key back, please.’
For a moment he looked startled. Then he dropped his bag, tore the key off his ring, and stampeded down the stairs without waiting for the elevator.
Annis folded her lips together, went back into her apartment and worked all through the night. She felt hurt and humiliated. Betrayed. But slowly she worked herself up into the anger that she knew was justified.
She and Jamie were a couple. Everyone knew they were a couple. What was he doing going away for the weekend with a girl from his office? And how dared he excuse himself by saying it was her fault? If she loved him, he had shouted at her, she would have known he was feeling trapped and frustrated. If she loved him, he would not have needed to turn to anyone else.
Two years later, Annis allowed herself to think about it and found to her surprise that she could do so without flinching. The trouble was, at the time, Annis had thought she’d loved him. Even now, she was not sure that what she had felt had been love. She had certainly trusted him. She had been faithful to what she’d thought they had promised each other.
The Millionaire's Daughter (The Carew Stepsisters Book 1) Page 5