Now, thinking about all the smouldering challenge that was Konstantin Vitale, she sucked her teeth. It occurred to her that she had never really been tempted to be anything other than faithful to Jamie. Now she wondered what would have happened if she had met someone like Konstantin then.
Not Konstantin himself, of course. He was too sharp and too unsettling. She averted her eyes from that picture. Her screen was shimmering which made the image pulse in a thoroughly unsettling manner. She shifted sharply onto the next screen.
Which in its way was equally illuminating.
His business got several pages. An archive of newspaper and magazine articles demonstrated that, as he’d said, the company had begun to attract serious international attention about two years ago. An article on prize winners of the year said it all.
The driving force at Vitale and Partners is thirty-six-year-old Konstantin Vitale. Eclectic influences from the new and old world are seen in their portfolio of work, reflecting Vitale’s own background in Europe, upbringing in Australia and training in Boston, Massachusetts. If you want a building that would look at home on a Singapore waterfront or a New Hampshire hamlet, Vitales are the architects for you.
But don’t think you’ll get to call the shots. Vitale has strong views on buildings—‘monuments waiting to be colonised’ is his current phrase—and he doesn’t take orders. These days he can afford not to.
‘Well no surprises there, then,’ said Annis.
He did not take orders. Would he take advice?
The doorbell rang. It was Bella, still shaking the rain off her boyish crop.
‘That was quick,’ said Annis, slightly surprised. ‘Sorry, I’m still on the computer. Come in and I’ll log off.’
Bella gave her a quick kiss and shrugged out of her coat. She was one of the few people who was welcome in Annis’s flat and she knew her way around. She found herself an energy drink from the fridge while Annis dealt briskly at the keyboard.
‘Surfing the net?’ asked Bella, wandering back.
‘Strictly for work.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘Checking up on a potential client.’
That appealed to Bella. ‘Cuts out the bills from the industrial spy, I suppose,’ she said, amused. ‘What did you find out?’
‘That he’s probably a control freak who won’t take our advice,’ said Annis gloomily.
Her computer told her it was safe to turn it off. She did, and swivelled round to face her stepsister. In spite of the amusement, Bella’s pretty face was pinched. Annis did not think it was with cold.
‘What is it, Bella Bug?’
Bella shook her shoulders. ‘Oh, you know. Nothing and everything. What are you going to do about this guy? Refuse his money just because he won’t do what you tell him?’
‘There are times,’ said Annis, ‘when I wonder which one of us is the high powered businesswoman.’
Bella laughed but she looked pleased.
‘Well, are you?’
‘I’d like to,’ admitted Annis. ‘But then I say to myself, “Get real.” The truth is that about fifty per cent of our clients know what they ought to do but haven’t got the guts to do it. So they want an outsider to validate it. The other fifty per cent—the ones who really need our input—fight every step of the way.’
‘So this new guy is nothing special.’
Annis thought of Konstantin Vitale’s strange green eyes and the muscles on that damned Internet picture. ‘Oh, he’s special all right,’ she said with feeling.
Bella looked curious. ‘He’s got to you, hasn’t he? I thought nobody got to you.’
Echoes of Jamie! Annis managed not to wince.
‘It’s because just at the moment Roy and I have got too much work. But it won’t last, so we can’t afford to turn any of it down. Don’t listen to me. I can handle it.’
‘Don’t you mean, “I can handle him”?’ said Bella mischievously.
Annis gave a superstitious shiver. ‘I can handle him,’ she echoed stoutly. But her fingers were crossed behind her back.
Bella’s smile died. ‘I wish I could,’ she said unexpectedly.
‘What?’
‘Oh, not clients and office work and stuff,’ said Bella with feeling. ‘You know that’s not my bag. But—’
Her stepfather, if asked, said Bella had not yet settled on a career path. Her mother lived in daily expectation of Bella announcing her engagement without any clear idea of the prospective husband. In the meantime Bella earned her living by doing various jobs for friends. She had cooked, modelled, managed champagne tents at polo matches and run a mobile disco. She had a full life, no savings and a lot of fun.
Except that it did not sound, just at the moment, as if the fun was that great.
Annis looked at her narrowly. ‘What’s wrong, Bella?’
Her sister flopped down onto the Persian rug that had been Annis’s present to herself out of her first pay cheque. She buried her nose in the glass. Annis saw she was shivering.
‘Love,’ she blurted at last.
Annis did not know what to say. She felt helpless. Bella always seemed to be in love. She said so.
Bella shook her head. ‘I’m almost sure this is the big one.’ She looked up and her chin was quivering. ‘It’s horrible.’
Annis sank down on the rug beside her and put her arms round her. Bella let out a great puff of air and began to cry.
Eventually she pulled herself together and straightened, sniffing.
‘That’s better. You’re such a comfort, Brain Box. You’re the only person who would just let me cry.’
Annis stretched her cramped legs and turned on the fire she had inherited when she’d bought the flat. The gas-fed flames were phoney but there were times when they were comforting. Bella turned to the fire and spread her hands gratefully.
‘Anyone else would tell me what to do.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Annis getting up. ‘Love is not my bag. I’m surprised you don’t know yourself, though. I’ve always admired the way you run your—er—emotional life.’
Bella blinked and gave a watery laugh. ‘Don’t try to be tactful. You’re telling me I’m a flirt.’
‘Supposedly a great skill,’ Annis reminded her. ‘At Lynda’s dinner party there was great approval of it. Konstantin Vitale said flirting took Mediterranean flair and the English didn’t know how to do it. I was very tempted to point you out as an exception.’
Bella’s expression darkened. There was an oddly constrained silence.
‘You forget how to flirt when you’re in love,’ she muttered at last.
‘Do you? I’ll take your word for it.’ Annis was filled with compunction at the signs of strain. Bella took life lightly as a rule. ‘So how do you know this is the big one?’
Bella scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘He doesn’t notice me.’
Annis blinked. ‘So?’
‘And I—notice him not noticing.’
Annis tried to make sense of this. ‘I suppose people do normally notice you,’ she allowed slowly. ‘Like Konstantin kept watching you at the party…’
Bella bounced to her feet. ‘Oh, Annis, you don’t understand anything.’ She sounded almost frantic for a moment.
‘So explain,’ said Annis, startled.
Bella moved round the room agitatedly.
‘He looks at me all right. If I wear something wild. If I do something crazy. I can make him look at me if I put my mind to it. But he doesn’t stay looking at me. He laughs and then he—looks round for someone who he’s really interested in.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Bella sounded sad. ‘He thinks I’m a party girl with a short attention span and no heart. He’s not going to waste his time on me.’
‘Well, surely you can show him he’s got you wrong?’
‘I thought so. I’ve never had trouble before. But this time…I don’t know…I just can’t—keep his attention. And everythi
ng I try seems to go wrong.’
Annis felt helpless. ‘What have you tried?’
‘Everything.’
Bella prowled along the bookcase, picking up books and putting them back without glancing at them. Putting them back in the wrong place, noticed Annis. She did not say so.
She went on, ‘I’ve phoned him. Not phoned him. Gone out with another man under his nose. Turned up on his doorstep with a bottle of champagne—’
‘What?’
Bella looked round, briefly arrested from her sabotaging of the bookshelves.
‘Don’t sound so shocked. This is a new millennium. Why should it always be men who go courting with the drink and the flowers? If you want something go for it.’
Annis reminded herself that this was the sort of enterprise that she had always admired in her sister. Even though it made her blood run cold, she had to give Bella full marks for confidence. ‘And did he? Go for it, I mean?’
‘No,’ Bella admitted. ‘He made me feel like a naughty child.’ She ran a finger along the edge of the book shelf. ‘Of course he is a fair bit older than I am.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifteen, sixteen years,’ said twenty-three-year-old Bella reluctantly.
‘That’s a big gap.’
‘So what? No bigger than the gap is between men and women anyway. We’ve still managed to get it together over the years.’
Annis laughed. ‘That’s true,’ she admitted. ‘What are you going to do now?’
Bella shook her head. ‘Haven’t the faintest idea. Show him I’m all grown up, I suppose.’
‘I shouldn’t think he’s in much doubt about that,’ said Annis dryly. ‘Not if you turned up with your hair in a braid and courting gifts in your hand.’
Bella gave a choke of startled laughter. ‘You’ve got a point there.’ And, with one of her lightning changes of mood, ‘You’re good for me, Brain Box. I feel better now.’
‘Glad to be of service.’
‘Why is your telephone blinking?’
Annis looked at it without interest. ‘Voice-mail. I haven’t been taking calls this afternoon.’
‘Hadn’t you better listen? It might be urgent.’
‘All the more reason not to take it,’ said Annis with feeling. ‘I thought we might order in a pizza or something.’
‘Great.’ Bella was back on form. ‘I’ll choose. You take your messages.’
There were four. Three from Roy, warning her with increasing desperation that their biggest client to date was having second thoughts about the start date. The fourth was Alex de Witt.
‘Who?’ said Annis blankly.
‘Mother will be pleased,’ said Bella punching the numbers of her favourite take away service into her mobile phone.
‘Why? Who is he?’
‘Oh, pu-lease. I don’t believe this.’ Bella cast her eyes to the ceiling before turning a mock reproachful gaze on Annis. ‘He was the Greek god sitting next to you at the dinner party. He’s in that play that’s just opening. Single word title.’
‘Totality,’ said Annis, his message suddenly making sense.
‘Typical,’ said Bella grinning. ‘You were winding me up.’
‘No, I—’
‘And you remembered the name of his play, even though you never go to the theatre. That’s why you’re the brain box and I’m the dunce.’
Annis was wry. ‘I don’t need a memory. He’s asking me to go to it.’
‘You’re going, of course.’ It was not a question.
‘We-ell…’
‘Don’t lose your nerve now. You have to go. Mother,’ Bella added solemnly, ‘will be ecstatic. A hit at last after all these years.’ And before Annis could answer, she said into her own phone, ‘Flying Pizza? Hi. I want to order an artichoke and garlic pizza please. Extra cheese…’
It flicked a phrase out of Annis’s memory. The English don’t trust flirting any more than they trust garlic…
Damn Konstantin Vitale. He had no right to be walking around in her head like this.
‘I’ll go to Alex de Witt’s play,’ said Annis between her teeth.
It was a nice evening with Bella. It made the next day bearable.
It started off well enough. Alexander de Witt was faintly bemused to be called at ten in the morning but flatteringly pleased that she could go to the play. Konstantin Vitale, on the other hand, responded to her e-mail with the message that she was expected in his office at eight. And when she got there—by eleven, as she had said, having already had two meetings with other clients—he was not flattering at all.
‘You’re late,’ he barked.
‘And you don’t read your e-mail.’
He brushed that aside, urging her through a panelled door. ‘Well, let’s get going. I’ve arranged for you to talk to the boys first.’
‘The boys?’
‘The main design team.’ He indicated the room with a wide gesture.
Three pairs of curious eyes looked up from computer screens and a sharply lit drawing board.
‘Good morning,’ said Annis with composure. She smiled.
She had a nice smile. You could feel the tension in the room relax. Konstantin did not seem to be pleased by their reaction.
‘I’ll introduce you to everyone else first,’ he said, frowning blackly. He was even sexier when he frowned, Annis found to her fury. ‘Then you can come back and grill them.’
He walked her through the long, sunny room at top speed. Then whisked her up elegant staircases and down windowless passageways, opening doors and flinging names at her before moving on.
‘You can use my office,’ he said at the end of a breathless six minutes. ‘Ask them anything you want. I’ve told them nothing’s sacred. The girl at Reception will get any paper files you want. Bill will give you a password and show you how to access the computer records. I’m taking you to dinner.’
He was gone, leaving a whirlwind of flying papers and an alluring tang of herbal cologne. Annis picked up the loose pages, breathing in his elusive scent.
‘Damn,’ said Annis with feeling.
And the day slid inexorably into chaos.
She took up reluctant residence in his office. Exquisite linen-fold panelling sprang back at the press of a button by the all-purpose receptionist and guru to reveal capacious cupboards. Annis looked at them with dislike.
‘Mr Vitale’s idea,’ explained Tracy, the overworked guru.
‘Does that mean he likes things phoney? Or he likes things hidden?’
Tracy blinked.
‘It’s all right,’ said Annis, taking pity on her. ‘You don’t have to answer. I just happen to like my cupboards naked and unashamed.’
Whereas Konstantin Vitale, she was discovering, liked to disconcert—and the room, with its eighteenth-century panelling, rococo mirror and ultra-modern steel furniture, did. She hung up her coat, brought out her big diary and mobile telephone and started work.
By the time darkness fell she had a pretty good idea of what was wrong in the partnership. It would take some time to prove and more to make recommendations. But the problem was as plain as a pikestaff, she thought. Konstantin Vitale.
She looked at a random sample of unanswered post. Some of it was two weeks old and it was exactly what she would have expected. One town council, one ultra-rich rock star, two prestige companies. All telling the same story. They had met Konstantin at a seminar—or, in the rock star’s case, a charity gala—explained their problem and he had kindly made a couple of suggestions. He had said he would put them in writing and give them an idea of his charges but nothing had yet arrived. They would be glad to know if he was still interested in tendering for the business. They all ended with the same dread phrase: before Christmas.
She switched off her computer and the desk lamp, and rubbed the back of her neck. In the reflected sodium light from the street her watch told her it was nearly eight. Tracy had gone home some time ago, leaving her with a list of instructions on how to set th
e alarm.
Well, at least Konstantin had thought better of his arrogant command to have dinner with him, thought Annis. She tried to feel relieved.
She packed her briefcase and put on her coat.
The door opened and in walked the arrogant command incarnate.
‘What are you doing in the dark?’
Annis jumped so violently she dropped her briefcase. He picked it up and restored it to her. There was nothing in the least threatening in his manner but in the semi-dark he seemed as tall as a tree. Her heart started to pound.
He did not notice. ‘Are you ready to eat?’
That was Konstantin enjoying himself by disconcerting her again. So don’t rise to it, Annis told herself.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said crisply.
‘Why not? You’re obviously about to go home. Even you must eat.’
She shook her head. ‘I told you this was an extra task for us. I can squeeze it in as long as I don’t get side-tracked. I’ve got to take all this stuff home and collate it tonight. If I eat, it will be cheese on toast at my desk.’
‘Don’t you need to interview me?’ he said in tones of surprise.
‘Well, at some point, of course.’
‘Tonight’s your only chance. I’m off to New York tomorrow morning. Then I’ll probably have to go to my pet project in Calabria. Don’t know how long I’ll be away.’
‘Now he tells me!’
He strolled forward. His dark hair gleamed. He had changed out of his jeans into something dark, with a wide shimmery coat on top of it like an astronaut’s cape. It was only after a second that Annis realised it had to be a rainproof. It must be raining outside.
He shook his dark head and raindrops sprayed her briefcase. Annis flinched but he laughed. Konstantin Vitale, it seemed, was energised by the cold and wet. Cold? It made her feel hot just to look at him…
Annis said in a strangled voice, ‘It’s not fair.’
She was not talking about his diary but fortunately that was how he chose to interpret it.
‘By my standards, I’m being exceptionally co-operative,’ he said frankly. ‘Normally I just call in when I get to my destination.’
The Millionaire's Daughter (The Carew Stepsisters Book 1) Page 6