The shops still had all their night-time illuminations on. The streets were empty of pedestrians, although traffic was building up in the main routes. But the taxi driver was relaxed when she asked him to pull into the kerb and wait outside Vitale’s elegant Mayfair premises.
Without a light anywhere, the Adam house was pretty as an illustration from a Jane Austen novel. Annis used her key and incongruous security code to slip into the empty building. She switched on the light and the eighteenth-century illusion vanished. The reception area was untidy as always and remorselessly contemporary.
She hesitated. No, not a good idea to leave the report at the reception desk. It would only get lost in the general debris. She would put it on Konstantin’s desk.
She opened the door to his office.
There was a pool of light from an angled lamp on his desk but his chair was empty. He must have come into work yesterday and forgotten to turn it off when he left, thought Annis. Her high heels pattered rapidly across the parquet flooring.
‘Good morning,’ said a husky voice behind her.
She skidded, spinning round. The top copy of her pile of reports flew into the air. Konstantin fielded it one-handed.
‘Is that for me?’
He was in his shirtsleeves. The dark hair flopped wildly. He’s been running his hands through it all night, thought Annis, taken aback. His eyes were creased up, as if he was too tired to focus properly, and his jaw was shadowed by at least a day’s stubble. He had pushed up his shirtsleeves to reveal sinewy forearms. Above them his biceps were evident under the creased cotton.
So that’s why he’s so strong, thought Annis involuntarily.
She flushed and looked away. She did not want to think about how strong he was. Nor how she had found it out.
‘Three copies,’ she said, making a very respectable recovery. She’d be all right as long as she did not actually look at him. ‘I suggest you let people have a look at it as soon as possible. They’ve spent a lot of time talking to me. You don’t want them getting unnecessarily anxious.’
‘Then why don’t you talk to them about it?’
It was a reasonable enough suggestion but he sounded absent. No, that wasn’t right. He sounded constrained.
Annis forgot that she was not supposed to be looking at him. His attitude was more than tiredness, more than preoccupation. He looked as if somewhere in the night a revelation had hit him. Not, if Annis was any judge, a welcome revelation. He looked as if he was coming back to normal slowly and groggily and her arrival had somehow stirred the pot again.
She met his eyes unguardedly. He went very still. The green eyes grew alert, then intent. Annis started to drown…
He said her name softly.
‘I—’ She did not know what she wanted to say. How could he look at her like that, as if he had never seen her before? ‘Your staff—’
He cast the papers away from him and came towards her.
‘Won’t be in for hours.’
Annis heard herself say, ‘You—you should take them through my report soon.’ But his eyes were boring into hers and it was like speaking a foreign language.
He said softly, ‘When everyone’s arrived, I’ll get them in here and you can do it yourself. In the meantime…’
Annis tore her eyes away. It hurt, like a physical pain.
I want him to touch me. I can’t afford to let him touch me.
She took a step back and looked at her watch. ‘No time. Sorry.’
He stopped abruptly. His eyes narrowed to slits.
‘I see.’
Annis swallowed. She found a defensive note creeping into her voice. ‘I’m due in the City for my next meeting.’
He took the other two reports from her and slammed them down on his desk without so much as glancing at them. Annis jumped.
‘So you thought you’d slip them in here while the place was deserted.’
‘No,’ she said with dignity. ‘I thought I—’
‘Would avoid seeing me.’ No melting softness now. The clipped voice was icy. He looked her up and down unflatteringly. ‘I ask myself why.’
‘You’re talking nonsense.’
He ignored that. ‘And I can only think of two reasons.’ He numbered them on his long fingers. ‘One: the report is so damn poor that you’re ashamed of it.’
Annis forgot she was on the defensive. ‘How dare you?’
He ignored that too. ‘Or two: you’re still running scared of the chemical reaction when we get together.’
‘I am not,’ said Annis between her teeth, ‘scared of anything.’
He gave her a glittering, false smile. ‘I think we both know that’s not true. One taste of real life and you panic as if the barbarians have arrived.’ The cold voice lashed at her.
Annis stared. What on earth had she done to make him this angry? He had not even read what she’d said about his management style yet. It couldn’t be because she had just turned him down. It couldn’t have been a serious approach. No one made passes in the office at the start of the working day. Especially not super sexy sophisticates like Konstantin Vitale. It was a tease, a mockery of flirtation, designed to wind up someone who did not know how to flirt.
Wasn’t it?
All her instincts were buzzing deafeningly. Out of the chaos one explanation shouted at her. Unwisely Annis flung it at him.
‘This is because I said you need a lesson in civilised behaviour, isn’t it?’
For a moment the lines on his face deepened murderously. Then he turned away, stabbing a hand through his unruly hair. ‘Of course not.’
Annis was trembling with reaction. Ridiculous, she told herself.
She told him in as reasonable a voice as she could manage, ‘I stand by that. You were out of order on Saturday night.’
He did not reply.
Goaded by some demon—knowing even as the words came out that she should not be saying this, not now, not to him—she went on, ‘And I didn’t panic. I’m a grown woman. I don’t panic just because some lout lays hands on me. I can—’
He swung round on her. She stopped as if she had walked into a wall.
There was such a blaze of anger in his eyes that Annis quailed. She could not help herself. She took an involuntary step back.
A mirthless smile twisted one corner of his mouth. ‘Still not panicking, Ms Carew? I’m impressed.’
She felt winded. Cold. In uncharted territory without a compass.
‘I never panic,’ she said slowly. Her own feelings bewildered her.
It was true. She had always had steady nerves. She had made mistakes, overreached herself, made bad calls. But she had never panicked. Until now.
She stared at him, her eyes widening. It was slowly dawning on her that not just the situation but her own reaction was new, frighteningly new. She had never felt like this before and she did not know what to do about it.
The heat died out of his eyes. The silence lengthened. He turned away, shaking his head.
Annis gave herself a little shake. ‘I have to go,’ she said in a stunned voice.
With his back to her he said, ‘I’ll call you when I’ve read the report.’
‘What?’
She focused on him. He was leaning on the desk, his head bent. The angled lamp caught his long-fingered hands in a cruel spotlight. They were white with tension.
She said loudly, not really knowing why, ‘Maybe I’m not the only one who is panicking.’
His hands flinched.
‘Maybe you’re not.’ It was so quiet it was almost inaudible. And, while she was wondering if she had heard what she thought she heard, Konstantin straightened and added in his crisp ordinary voice, ‘Go to your meeting.’
She hesitated, bewildered.
He turned and gave her a neutral smile that did not get anywhere near his eyes. ‘Go on. We’ll talk later.’
Shaken, Annis went.
The meeting was an unmitigated disaster. Their key client, the company on who
se business their whole year’s strategy depended, had been notified over the weekend that they were the subject of a hostile takeover bid.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the CEO, made brusque by pressure. ‘You’ve got to understand. For now we’ve got to throw all our energies into fighting off Galloways. If we get away with our tail-feathers, we’ll come back to you.’
Even though he had been half expecting it, Roy was stunned into silence. Maybe because she had already endured all the emotional jolts she could sustain that morning, Annis recovered faster.
‘Of course,’ she said smoothly. ‘We quite see that. Don’t we, Roy?’
‘I suppose so,’ he muttered.
‘But you may want to look at some strategic analysis to help you fight off Galloways,’ she remarked. ‘Nothing detailed. Quick and dirty. Comparative advantages and potential, that sort of thing. To persuade shareholders to stay on board.’
The CEO looked at his watch. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said, clearly preparing to banish them from his thoughts.
Annis stood up and held out her hand.
‘Good luck.’
For a moment the man’s weary eyes lightened. ‘Thanks, Annis.’
Roy opened his mouth.
‘We’ll be seeing you,’ said Annis swiftly. ‘Come on, Roy. The man has corporate raiders to repel.’
They left.
On the way down to the ground floor, Roy said in an injured voice, ‘I was going to suggest that we completed the first part of our brief.’
‘I know you were.’
‘So why did you hustle me out?’
Annis stopped dead and looked at him. ‘Because he’s not going to think about anything like that until after his board meeting,’ she said shrewdly. ‘I’ve planted the seed. It will grow or it won’t, depending on what his board say. But going at him like a bull in a china shop would just make him so annoyed he’d write us off forever.’
They went out into the grey street. Behind the tower of the Stock Exchange the sky was blue but, down below, the autumn sun did not reach the pavements. Annis shivered.
Then she took a hold of herself. Everyone had reverses. The secret was to deal with them without giving in to despair.
‘Come on,’ she said with a reasonable assumption of cheerfulness. ‘I’ll buy you a coffee and we’ll think about keeping this ship afloat.’
They found a small coffee shop. City workers were picking up their first coffee of the day, some of them still on their way to work. Annis and Roy retreated to a table in a panelled corner and opened Roy’s Filofax on the marble-topped table. They pored over the forward planner.
‘I could call S.A.B.,’ Roy said at last. ‘See if we can pull that forward. And Dene’s haven’t got back to us. I could chase. What about that architect’s practice? Any more work to do there?’
Annis felt heat under her skin. She shook her head. ‘I delivered the report this morning.’
‘Follow-up?’
She shuddered. ‘Most unlikely,’ she said firmly.
‘Really? But I thought you said it was a mess.’
‘It is. I e-mailed you the report yesterday.’
Roy nodded. ‘I printed it off but to be honest I haven’t had time to look at it properly. I saw you’d offered him plenty of options, though. Are you sure there’s no follow up for us?’
Annis buried her nose in her cappuccino. ‘I hope not.’
Roy blinked. ‘What?’
Annis pulled herself together and said in her most professional tone. ‘I very much doubt it. Konstantin Vitale treats his business like his personal fiefdom. If he likes something, it gets done. If he doesn’t, nobody even thinks about it again. He isn’t going to change.’
And I’m not going to have to face him over a desk remembering what it was like to be in his arms.
Roy was disappointed but philosophical ‘Oh, well, if he changes his mind, we’ve got plenty of spare capacity.’
‘He won’t,’ said Annis. She crossed her fingers under the table.
But she was out of luck.
Konstantin summoned her back the next day. She put on her smartest suit and gold Arabic earrings her father had brought her from the Gulf once. Earrings always made her feel as if she was on stage. It was a boost her confidence needed, face to face with a cool and impeccably turned out Konstantin.
This time, thought Annis distracted, she believed his head office was in Italy. When he did understated elegance he did it a hundred and fifty per cent.
His cordiality was intimidating. He ushered her into his office as if she were a visiting princess and summoned up coffee.
‘Hold all calls,’ he told Tracy. ‘Ms Carew and I have a lot to discuss.’
Annis cleared her throat. ‘I really think it would be helpful for your colleagues to sit in.’
Konstantin waved the suggestion away. ‘Later.’
He was beautifully shaved and combed this morning. So why did Annis keep thinking of his chin dark with a day’s growth of beard and his hair all over the place? She wrenched her wayward thoughts back into line.
Tracy left, closing the door behind her. Konstantin looked at Annis broodingly.
‘This,’ he said, indicating her bound report, ‘is not what I was expecting.’
Annis almost collapsed with relief.
Relief? Ridiculous!
But she was not ready to talk about what had happened between them and she was deeply suspicious that Konstantin Vitale would see nothing wrong with mixing business and a dissection of personal awareness of chemistry,
‘No?’ she said at last.
He got up. Annis tensed. But he was only moving restlessly round the room.
‘I thought you’d tell me to change the colour scheme and put a potted palm in the ladies’ loo. Not sack half the staff.’
‘And that,’ she said calmly, ‘is exactly what I expected.’
Kosta looked at her. She looked back.
It was extraordinary how she changed, he thought. If he touched her—if he so much as teased her gently—she got flustered and started knocking things over. But challenge her on her work and she did not bat an eyelid. She had come in here taut as a spring, though. Was that because she thought he would touch her, then?
The idea intrigued him.
‘Overreaction,’ said Annis. ‘I did not tell you to sack anyone.’ Annis leaned forward and picked up her report. She waved it at him. ‘If you had read this properly, instead of skimming through it in the back of your limo this morning, you would see exactly what I say.’
I could touch her right now. Ms Carew you’re lovely when you’re angry. Kosta tried to smile at the thought. It still brought him out in a cold sweat.
Annis did not notice. ‘Vitale and Partners is the classic organic company. Works fine while it’s small—everyone chats, knows what’s going on, and comes back to the hive at the end of a task. But—are you listening to me?—but you are not small any more. You don’t chat with everyone. It’s physically impossible.’
She looked wonderful on her crusade, he thought. Full of fire and determination. Now all he had to do was get her to switch her focus to Vitale the man and the world would shift off its axis with the force of it.
He struggled to concentrate on the business in hand.
‘E-mail…’ She stood up. ‘How many e-mails do you get in a day? Or the design team? Or Tracy for that matter?’
Annis felt wonderful. She knew her subject and she was in control of her material. She soared.
‘So, as I see it, you’ve got two choices,’ she said, as if he had never kissed her senseless or made her walk her flat at four in the morning. ‘You can downsize. Or you can get bigger—in which case you need a bit of structure, some clear responsibilities and a lot of delegation.’
‘I delegate.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she contradicted calmly. ‘They don’t even call in someone to patch the roof until you get back to the office.’
He was looking at her s
trangely. She did not care.
‘It’s all there. Read it. Not just the appendix.’
She closed the report with a bang and slapped it back on his desk. She was breathing hard. She was also, she found, shaking with rage. At least she hoped it was rage.
For a moment he said nothing. Then, slowly, ‘Wow.’
‘You,’ said Annis, winding down, ‘asked me.’
She ignored the coffee and picked up some mineral water, swigging it straight from the bottle.
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ Konstantin considered her thoughtfully for a moment. ‘You really tell it like it is, don’t you?’
‘That’s what you pay me for.’
He digested that in silence for a moment. ‘And you always tell the truth? No fudging to keep important clients sweet?’
Annis gave a wry smile. ‘That hasn’t been a problem so far.’
‘Hmm. So I’ve got exactly the same treatment as everyone else.’
She worked hard not to remember that kiss in the limousine. Or yesterday morning when there had been no kiss but the very air between them had been as thick and dangerous as a magic forest.
‘Of course.’
He sent her a shrewd look. Annis was aware of him all through her body. She avoided meeting his eyes. Now that she wasn’t taking his company to pieces she felt all that stored electricity sizzling in the air between them again.
If he mentions the word chemistry, I’ll probably go up in a puff of smoke, she thought with painful self-mockery.
But he didn’t. Instead he smiled.
She went hot.
His smile widened.
‘I didn’t skip straight to the appendix. I read all the stuff that said the partnership was overstretched and non-selective.’
‘Oh.’
‘And I agree.’
Annis blinked.
‘Only I have to keep on working to bring in the paying customers. I haven’t got time for all that.’ He nodded at the report.
Annis smiled tolerantly. ‘So you’re not going to do a thing about it,’ she said, unsurprised.
He gave a soft laugh. ‘So you’d better come in and do it for me.’
‘What?’
‘And the sooner the better.’
Annis felt as if the bottom had fallen out of the world and she was in free fall. She stared at him in undisguised horror.
The Millionaire's Daughter (The Carew Stepsisters Book 1) Page 10