She had also pinned her chaotic hair back into a neat chignon that had taken for ever to do and had almost made her late.
‘We’re within the hallowed walls of one of the most influential companies in the country,’ Anthony adjusted his tie a little nervously. ‘Mostly building and construction, but recently diversifying into electronics and smart installations in new-builds.’
‘Impressive.’
‘Our buyer obviously has a lot of connections if he can snap his fingers and arrange for the meeting to be held here. I’ve done my background research and he’s made of money.’
‘Well, money isn’t everything. Maybe he’s trying to intimidate us.’
Maddie told herself that scare tactics weren’t going to work, but she was as nervous as a kitten as they were escorted along a cool marble walkway that circled an impressive courtyard, which was visible through banks of glass. When she looked down she could see a few figures dotted around a central fountain, enjoying the sunshine even though it wasn’t yet lunchtime.
Then, looking ahead, she saw opaque glass, and as their escort stood aside she entered a long, brightly lit room. Quite a few men, was Maddie’s first thought. All kitted out in regulation charcoal-grey business suits.
Except one.
One man dominated the space around him and was head and shoulders taller than every other man there. He was not wearing a suit. Black jeans and a black polo shirt, short-sleeved. The epitome of I don’t give a damn what I wear cool.
Leo.
* * *
Leo had been expecting her, but he still felt a sizzle of something as she walked into the room, towering over the short man next to her, so strikingly pretty that every single male in the room fell silent.
His white teeth snapped together in a surge of something primitive and proprietorial.
He’d had her. She was his.
His woman.
Except, he thought as logic reasserted itself, she wasn’t, was she? She was his opponent. And, as such, no time must be wasted on thinking about all her delectable, distracting assets.
His midnight-deep eyes roved broodingly over her. She was wearing the most boring outfit in the world, but even that couldn’t stand in the way of his imagination which had already taken flight.
He mentally stripped her. Got rid of the dreadful suit and the prissy top. Unhooked whatever bra she was wearing and pulled down her panties. Why had she tied her hair back? The urge to see it spilling in colourful splendour over her slender shoulders was so powerful that he had to steady himself.
It had been over a fortnight.
He hadn’t been braced to walk away from her but walk away he had—because, with him, business always came first. Always had, always would.
There wasn’t a woman in the world who could damage that sacred pecking order.
But he knew that he was getting excited just looking at her and thinking about what she’d felt like under him and over him and touching him and inviting him to touch her everywhere.
That sign of weakness enraged him, and he broke the mental connection by stepping forward and walking straight towards her.
* * *
It took willpower she had never known she’d possessed to hold her ground and not fall back as the one man she had never expected to see again sauntered towards her.
What on earth was going on?
Maddie knew that whatever impression she was making it wasn’t that of a confident businesswoman in charge of the situation. More a gaping goldfish, stranded and gasping for air.
‘I don’t understand...’ She stared at Leo, her breathing rapid and shallow, as though she’d been running a marathon, her nostrils flaring as she inhaled the clean, woody scent of him.
She’d thought about him so much that she could scarcely believe that he was standing in front of her—especially as none of it seemed to make any sense.
Leo didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and when he did speak it was to tell the assembled crowd that they could leave.
‘I’ll deal with this privately,’ he said dismissively. ‘When the transaction is agreed you can prepare the required paperwork.’
‘Maddie... Ms Gallo...’ Anthony approached her with an expression of concern—only to meet Leo’s cool navy eyes.
‘Maddie will be as safe as houses with me,’ he said, addressing the much shorter man in a kindly voice that made Maddie’s teeth snap together in anger because it was just so...patronising.
‘Now, wait just a minute...er...’
‘Leo. You know my name. You just don’t know my surname. Conti.’
‘You’re...you’re...’ Her brain was moving at a snail’s pace.
Yes, Conti was the name of the man who was planning on pulling the rug from under her feet. Maddie vaguely recalled that much sinking in when Anthony had explained the situation to her. She’d been far too wrapped up in feeling angry that someone could just swan along and try and snatch the store away from her before she’d even had a chance to do something with it.
The men in suits were quietly leaving the room. Maddie was conscious of their departure, but only just—because she was gradually putting two and two together, and by the time the door closed on the lawyers who had come to draw up a deal she had no intention of agreeing to she was fit to explode.
‘You lied to me!’ she burst out, galvanised into action and storming over to the window, then storming back towards him, hands on her hips, eyes spitting fury.
Leo stood his ground and met her tempestuous gaze head-on, without so much as flinching.
‘Did I?’ he drawled, moving towards the table at the back of the room to pour himself a glass of water, taking his time.
‘You let me think that you were...you were... What were you doing in my store in the first place? Oh, don’t bother answering that! You’d come along to have a look at what you wanted to get your hands on!’
‘I like to see what I’m sinking my money into, yes.’
‘I’m leaving!’ She spun round, shaking, and began heading towards the door.
She didn’t get there, because two strides in she was stopped by his hand on her arm.
Her whole body reacted as though a shot of high-voltage electricity had been injected straight into her bloodstream. The heat from his hand would have been enough to stop her dead in her tracks even if no pressure had been applied.
Her body remembered his and that terrified her.
‘How could you have lied to me!’
Leo met her vivid eyes. ‘Stop playing the crucified martyr, Maddie. Have you conveniently forgotten that you weren’t exactly forthcoming about who you were when we were climbing into the sack together?’
‘That was different!’
‘How? Enlighten me?’
‘I thought you might have been scared off because I happened to own the store! Ha!’
‘Is that right? And if I’d told you who I was...would we have ended up in bed?’
‘I’m getting the picture, Leo. You’re rich and powerful and you were scared that a poor little salesgirl might have decided you were a promising candidate to get involved with...’
‘Is that so far-fetched?’
Maddie stared stubbornly at him, too angry to give an inch on this, even though she could see that he might, conceivably, have a point.
Not that it mattered! What mattered was that he was not going to get his rich, powerful paws on the store her grandfather had left her.
‘Well?’ Leo pressed, his tone making it clear he felt she was equally guilty of deception to suit her own purposes.
‘If you knew me at all,’ Maddie snapped, ‘then you would know that the fact you’re rich doesn’t work in your favour. If you’d told me from the start who you were and what you were worth I would have run a mile! I’ve had enough experience of rich creeps to last m
e a lifetime!’
Leo’s eyes narrowed.
He’d loosened his grip on her arm but he was still holding her, and the look in his eyes was saying he wanted to do so much more than just hold her.
Their eyes locked and she felt a shift in the atmosphere from blazing anger to the slow sizzle of sexual awareness.
She found that she was holding her breath.
‘Don’t,’ Maddie whispered.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Look at me like that.’
‘You mean the way you’re looking at me? As though the only thing on your mind now is the thought of my mouth on yours?’
She wrenched herself free from his grasp and took a few shaky steps back.
‘Don’t kid yourself!’
She wrapped her arms around her body to stop herself from shaking like a leaf. He was so big, so powerful, and she was so drawn to him that she had to make a conscious effort not to stumble back into his hypnotic radius like a zombie under the spell of a master magician.
‘Like I said, I don’t go for guys like you!’
Guys like him?
Leo was enraged to be categorised and written off. He was even more enraged that his body was reacting to her like a sex-starved, randy adolescent when his brain was telling him to drop any pointless back-and-forth conversation and get down to business.
‘That’s not what you were saying a fortnight ago, when you fell into my arms like a starving person suddenly presented with a five-course spread.’
The erection pushing against the zipper of his jeans was as hard as steel and he abruptly turned away, giving himself time to get his runaway libido under control.
‘I made a mistake with a rich man,’ Maddie flung at him in a trembling voice. ‘I got involved with someone I thought had a conscience and a moral compass and I discovered that, actually, rich people don’t operate like that. Rich people are above the law, and they don’t give a damn who they step on because they know they’re never going to have to pay the price for what they do!’
Leo stared at her through narrowed eyes. ‘You’re judging me by someone you happen to have been involved with who...what? Did a runner? Hit on your best friend?’
‘If only,’ Maddie said bitterly. ‘Oh, Adam White was a lot more destructive than that!’
She seemed to catch herself and fell silent, breathing evenly as if to stifle the emotions which had definitely got the better of her.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told him coolly. ‘What matters is that I’m not going to be selling you the store and I don’t care how much money you throw down on the table.’
‘Sit.’
‘I’m perfectly fine standing.’
‘Let’s put our brief liaison behind us, Maddie. What’s at stake here has nothing to do with the fact that we slept together. We’re both adults. It happened. Neither of us knew the full story when we climbed into bed. Or should I say when we occupied the sofa in your sitting room.’
The evocative image his words conjured did nothing to lessen the surge of his unwanted attraction. Leo carried on without skipping a beat, but he had to divert his eyes from her face. Even the fact that she was glaring at him couldn’t diminish her pulling power.
‘There’s no point playing the blame game. Okay, so you might have run a mile if you’d known how rich I was.’ He shrugged indifferently. ‘And maybe I didn’t advertise my wealth because I’ve had experience of what it’s like to be targeted by women who only have one thing on their mind.’
‘Oh, please,’ Maddie muttered sarcastically.
Leo raised his eyebrows to look at her. ‘You think I’m lying?’
‘Don’t pretend that you don’t know how attractive you are—with or without your stupid oversized bank balance!’
Leo shot her a slow, curling smile and the atmosphere was suddenly charged. She flicked her tongue over her upper lip and the gesture was so sexy that Leo found himself stepping towards her.
She didn’t pull back. She couldn’t, because her legs had turned to lead. She almost whimpered when he was only inches away from her, but fortunately pride kicked in and instead she drew a steadying breath and tried to clear her mind from the fog enveloping it.
‘Tough, isn’t it?’ Leo drawled huskily, and the low, velvety timbre of his voice sent shivers racing up and down her spine.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
But she was mesmerised by his eyes and the sheer beauty of his face. He had the most amazing lashes, she thought distractedly—so long, so thick. It was just another detail to take in and store.
She balled her hands into defensive fists and made a concerted effort to drag her wayward mind back from the brink—which was a very, very dangerous place for it to stray.
‘Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about, Maddie. The thing our bodies are doing right now. Don’t try and pretend that you don’t want me to touch you right here, right now, and damn the consequences.’ Then he drew back abruptly and said, his voice brisk, ‘But that’s not going to do. Business before pleasure, I’m afraid.’
He grinned and her humiliation was complete.
How could she have allowed herself to forget that this was her enemy? Another rich man who had lied to her? A man who wanted to take what was hers and was willing to do so by whatever means he deemed fit? A bully, in other words.
She blinked and glared and wanted nothing more badly than to wipe the grin from his face—not least because it just ratcheted up his outrageous sex appeal.
‘I suppose,’ Leo drawled, stepping away and sauntering towards the window, where he proceeded to glance out before returning his full attention to her face, ‘your lawyer, or your accountant, or whoever that little man was who came in with you, has explained the deal that’s been put on the table?’
‘I didn’t pay much attention to that because I’m not interested in selling.’
‘Big mistake. You should have. Sentiment is all well and good, but money is what does the talking—and I’m prepared to put however much money down on the table I have to if it gets me what I want. And believe me when I tell you that my supply of cash is bottomless.’
He’d gone into that store fully prepared to pay the least amount of money for the place he could, but he was fast revising his original plan because she was stubborn and—for reasons that frankly confounded him—she wasn’t going to roll over and play dead because he wanted her to.
He felt a sense of grudging admiration, because people, as a rule, were prone to caving in to him in the face of any show of determination, such was the range of his power and influence and the force of his personality.
She, on the other hand, looked as close to caving in as his art teacher had looked when, at the age of ten, Leo had asked to be let off detention because the dog had eaten his project.
‘Maddie, you could have your dream life with the money I’m prepared to offer. Frankly, as it stands, I would be handing over far more than the place is worth. Because in case you haven’t noticed it’s falling apart at the seams and it’s lost its customer base. One more poor season and the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.’
‘I’ve sorted out the finances and I have a business plan to get it back up and running.’
‘Impressive. I had no idea you had experience in bringing ailing companies back from the brink.’
‘This is more than just a game for me, Leo. I never met my grandfather and yet he placed his faith in me to transform the store.’
‘The store that he ran into the ground because of his fondness for the bottle and the nearest gambling den.’
Maddie stiffened. If he thought that he was going to get to her by insulting her grandfather then he was mistaken. Yes, Tommaso Gallo had drunk too much and gambled away his fortune, but she was convinced that that was because he had lost his only daught
er. That was what misery could do to a person.
‘Why are you so keen to have it, Leo?’ She shot him a look of helpless frustration. ‘Why can’t you just buy something else? Somewhere else? I mean, it’s a store. If you’re sarcastic about my lack of business experience, then how much experience in retail do you have?’
She realised that she actually had no idea what he did for a living or where his money came from.
Leo was staring at her thoughtfully. Her sentiments seemed to be skewed. Did she somehow see herself as the beneficiary of a kindly old Father Christmas figure? She’d never met the old man, and clearly had no idea of the sort of person he was.
Should he break the glad tidings that Tommaso Gallo and Father Christmas had about as much in common as a rattlesnake and a mouse?
He decided that revelations could wait until another day. He pushed himself away from the window and flexed his muscles as he prowled through the vast conference room, finally sinking into one of the leather chairs and swivelling it so that it was facing her.
‘I wouldn’t keep it as the same type of traditional retail store.’
Strangely, despite her high heels and the fact that, standing up, she was towering over him, he had shed nothing of his dominance. If anything, she felt awkward standing, so she in turn sat at the very end of the long, walnut table.
At least she now felt more businesslike. ‘What would you do to it?’
‘I want a foothold in Dublin,’ Leo said flatly. ‘This store is exactly where I want to be and it’s exactly the right size. I have a portfolio of companies and it would continue being a store, but exclusively dealing with my targeted software, adapted high-tech computers and specialised training stations.’
‘An electronics shop?’
Leo frowned. ‘The retail market is saturated, Maddie. Too many people are buying too many products online. You’ll never find a better offer than the one I’m prepared to give you. Take it and don’t fight me.’
‘Surely you can source another big store to gobble up!’
‘You have your personal reasons for wanting to hang on to your white elephant. I have my own personal reasons for wanting to take it from you.’
The Italian's One-Night Consequence Page 6