‘Come back to bed.’
Amy ignored him. ‘You don’t think that relationships are just a little deeper than fifteen minutes in the sack. That kindness and security count for nothing.’
‘They count for nothing if there is no passion involved.’
She gave a burst of mirthless laughter. ‘And you’re speaking from a point of experience, are you? Having never been married? Probably having never had any sort of committed relationship in your life before? Tell me where all the passion has got you.’
Rocco ripped off the covers and stood up, his face thunderous. He strode past her, out of the room, and for one bewildering second Amy wondered whether he was going and why his departure made her feel so sick inside. Then she realised that his clothes were downstairs. In their haste to get to the bedroom, they had left both sets of clothes right there on the ground, just where they had been pitched earlier on.
She spun round and raced along the small corridor, down the stairs, to confront him as he was in the process of putting on his trousers. He hadn’t reached the shirt yet and she had to keep her treacherous eyes averted.
‘So you’re going to go ahead, are you? Even though we’ve slept together, it’s still not enough to make you think twice about what you’re planning on doing! Security before all else, after all!’
‘What gave you the idea that I was planning on doing anything?’
Rocco stopped and stared at her through narrowed eyes. ‘I heard you…’
‘You heard me…what?’ There was small comfort to be had from the fact that she was pressed against the wall because her legs still felt as though they were made of jelly.
‘When I surprised you at that disgusting restaurant…you were on the verge of telling him…on the verge of accepting his marriage proposal…’
‘I was on the verge of telling him that it was all off. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ she added sarcastically. ‘Even you can get it wrong sometimes.’
Very slowly, Rocco slipped on his shirt and began doing up the buttons. ‘You saw sense.’
‘So there was no need for you to rush in to prove your point!’
‘Explain,’ he grated ominously, taking a couple of steps towards her. With a halfway decent following wind, she should, she thought in panic, be able to push herself right through the wall and disappear into thin air.
‘You heard me! You wanted to show me that Sam wasn’t the man for me so you took me to bed!’
‘I took you to bed? Are you telling me that you were just a passive spectator?’ Two more steps towards her.
‘I…’
He hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t told her that she was way off target, all wrong, that he had been overcome with lust for her. He was quibbling over details instead. Did he think that she wouldn’t notice?
‘Yes…?’ he asked silkily, doing up the buttons of his shirt. His hair was still rumpled from bed, at odds with the grim expression on his face.
‘Okay! So maybe it was a two-way street…’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’
He smiled slowly and panic clutched her throat because she just knew, horribly and despairingly knew, that one wrong move from him would have her leaping back into bed with him again. Just one of those dry flashes of humour that lurked underneath the forbidding exterior, and she would be lost. And to be lost would be her downfall. Just thinking about it, in a space of a few seconds, and she could see the unravelling of her life because she would want to give herself totally to him, to a man who made a habit of walking away from women.
He was only a couple of feet away from her now and he stretched out his arms on either side of her, caging her in.
‘We could spend hours arguing who did what and why, but let’s not beat about the bush, Amy. Let’s be at least truthful with one another. We made love and we enjoyed it. We enjoyed each other’s bodies.’
‘And…what…?’
‘And…why stop something that we both enjoy?’
‘Is this how you operate, Rocco? See a woman, take her to bed and make love just as long as you keep on enjoying it?’
‘I don’t take women to bed. Believe it or not, it’s always worked out as a pretty mutual thing.’
‘It hasn’t occurred to you, has it…?’
‘What?’
‘That if you had dubious motives for what happened tonight, then I might as well…’
He carried on looking at her, but his body had gone completely still and he was no longer smiling. This was her moment, and she knew it, her moment to call a halt to the crazy roller-coaster ride her emotions seemed to be enjoying, to get her life back in control.
‘I just broke up with a man who had asked me to marry him.’ Amy kept her eyes fastened helpfully on the top button of his shirt, suddenly grateful that he was up close and personal and not standing at the opposite side of the room, when she would have been forced to take in his whole, imposing figure. Eliminating the face during this speech was definitely an advantage.
‘Breaking up might not be a big deal to you, but it’s a big deal to me and Sam didn’t take it particularly well.’ She risked a quick look to find him staring down at her, his face unreadable. And he still hadn’t moved a muscle. He was giving her one hundred per cent of his attention and if it was a ploy to make her acutely nervous, then it was succeeding. She drew in a shaky breath and focused. ‘So you see, it hadn’t been a particularly good night for me, so when you came along…let’s just say that I might have thrown myself wholeheartedly into making love with you, the way any girl might given the particular set of circumstances I was going through…’
‘Are you telling me that you went to bed with me on the rebound?’ If the situation hadn’t been so tense, the staggered look on his face might have raised a laugh. As it was, she let her silence give him his answer. His totally incorrect but crucially necessary answer.
‘It must have happened to you at some point, Rocco.’
‘Not so far as I can remember.’ He pushed himself away and this time when he looked at her, it was with withering distaste. It was on the tip of her tongue to yell at him that distaste was certainly nothing he should be feeling, considering his own dubious motives in coming to see her in the first place, but silence was a hundred times more effective than speech, and she didn’t know where a speech might take her anyway.
‘Right.’ He headed out of the sitting room, towards the front door, and, after drawing in a shaky breath, Amy followed slowly, keeping her distance. ‘Now we’ve settled this little misadventure of ours, I’ll expect you and your team in my office tomorrow afternoon and, this time, make sure you put in an appearance because if you don’t, you’re out.’
And therein lies the true nature of the beast, Amy thought once he had gone, leaving without a backward glance. Obey or face the consequences, and she had no doubt that he had meant every word of his threat. The prospect of an unfair dismissal lawsuit wouldn’t have phased him in the least.
The logical rush of anger kept everything at bay until she was finally in bed, in the same bed they had shared only an hour before. It still carried the masculine scent of him, and after five minutes she went into the guest bedroom to sleep, resolving to make sure that all the linen in her bedroom was washed the following day.
Then the anger dissipated. All she was left with were memories of their bodies entwined as one. She had never given herself so completely to anyone in her life before and it had felt right. She had disliked him in the beginning, and when she thought about it she still couldn’t quite figure out when the change had happened, when she had started to see beyond the one-dimensional figure to the man underneath. She just knew that by the time he’d first touched her, he had no longer been the same person she had railed against in her office what seemed like a million years ago.
And it hurt to know that he had walked away thinking the worst of her, thinking that she had used him as a means of getting over a difficult evening with an ex-boyfriend.
He had been right, of course. Security didn’t matter one jot if there was no passion involved and she had been a fool to have ever thought otherwise. She had let her background teach her the wrong lesson. Which, she thought, eyes shut, didn’t mean that Rocco Losi, with his passion and expertise in bed, was right.
But she wished he were and she fell asleep wishing it and then woke up seven hours later with the jaded feeling of not having slept at all.
And running late.
She spent the morning looking at her watch in an attempt to organise her time, and by lunchtime had to phone Marcy from her mobile and tell her to go ahead to Head Office without her.
‘Not a good idea, Amy,’ Marcy said with lavish emphasis. ‘Somehow I don’t think the boss man will appreciate you not turning up a second time. And we won’t either. I mean, have a heart, we still need to find out how your dinner with Sam went…’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there…I should be through here at the council house in under an hour and I’ll just grab a sandwich to have on the way in my car…’
Which didn’t reckon on roadworks heading out, forcing her off the main road and down a honeycomb of streets that ate up twenty minutes of her time, and then yet more traffic as she approached Stratford with a one-way system in operation in the town centre to accommodate an open-air market.
She arrived nearly forty minutes later and swept into the boardroom with barely a knock on the door.
‘Sorry. I got held up in traffic.’ All five members of her team were sitting in a group at the top of the boardroom table, which was long enough to accommodate twenty, and Rocco was lounging against the window sill, ankles crossed, leaving no one in any doubt as to who was in charge.
‘And who would like to fill in Miss Hogan on what she’s missed?’
So they were back to formal modes of address. Well, she shouldn’t be surprised, but there was still a dull ache inside her as she dutifully took a spare seat next to Dee and clasped her hands on the table.
There was an awkward silence, during which Amy began to feel a prickling of unease, and then Rocco was speaking again, his voice cool, controlled and dispassionate.
He was telling her, apparently, what he had told the board of directors that very morning, and what he would be telling the remainder of the staff the following morning. That his father had decided to resign from actively running the company, although he would remain in control of the shares. This was based on advice from a series of specialists and on the advice of his family in Italy, who, it transpired, had actively urged him to remain in Italy when he got there, where the weather would be better for him. In the e-mails they had shared, Antonio had mentioned nothing of any of this, and, although she was numb with shock, she could understand why. Partly, he would have shied away from disappointing her, but professionally he would have known that such news would have to be broken by the man flatly imparting it for her information.
‘This has left me with a few choices. Option one would be to sell the company as a going concern and recommend the directors for voluntary redundancy. Option two would be to entice two of the board members into positions of part ownership, which my father would accede to. Option three would be for me to take over running of the company full time.’
He pushed himself away from the window sill and moved to the head of the table, planting his hands on it and looking directly at her. ‘What would you suggest, Miss Hogan?’
‘It wouldn’t be my place to suggest anything, Mr Losi, especially when I expect you’ve already made up your mind anyway.’
He straightened, pulled out the chair at the top of the table and sat down, where he still managed to dominate the gathering even though he was now on their level.
‘Correct assumption. I’ve already made up my mind. I have decided to take over Losi Construction. I intend to buy out my father’s shares, thereby making him wealthy enough to do precisely what he wants to do for the rest of his life.’
‘And your company in New York?’
‘I will sell to the highest bidder. There has been enough pounding at my door for the past five years. If my management over there want to attempt a buyout, I will give them a favourable hearing. With some of the profits from the sale of my interests, I intend to take Losi Construction into the twenty-first century, which will include setting up a major subsidiary in central London. That about covers what we discussed before Miss Hogan arrived, wouldn’t you agree, everyone?’ There was a low murmur of assent and a lot of fidgeting. Rocco pushed his chair back so that he could cross his legs, ankle resting lightly on his knee. Amy was the first to break the silence, taking the lead with a sinking heart. Crunch time had had to come and here it was now.
‘So what happens next? To…to us?’ She looked anxiously at the worried faces at the table, a far cry from the boisterous camaraderie they had all enjoyed together before Rocco had appeared on the scene with his dire warnings and threats.
While she had been gallivanting with him, she thought guiltily, wallowing in her new-found sensuality, she had forgotten to fight him. Had that been a deliberate ploy he had used? Distract the inconvenient woman and watch the problem go away? She didn’t think so, but then she was realising how opaque he was and how useless she was when it came to reading the male species.
‘What happens to you…’ Rocco looked at each of them one by one, and then proceeded to point out their unique talents. One by one. He must have read all their CVs because he didn’t miss a beat. ‘So here’s what I suggest and you can take time to mull it over…’
Amy didn’t think that he could ever come up with something that would have pleased her team. They had worked for so many years doing something they loved, but he proved her wrong.
The offer to those who wished to relocate to London, where they could be linchpins building up the subsidiary organisation and enjoying all the financial benefits that would entail. They would be given their own departments and Marcy, who had always acted as administrator, would be responsible for donating a percentage of the profits to charitable concerns. In addition, they would be given permission to collude on a certain amount of charitable projects each year, which they could then delegate to a team especially created for the purpose.
Rocco would have his talent where he wanted it, Amy realised, and any labour entailed in charitable projects would be of the brawn and muscle variety. To top it off, he mentioned pay increases that had them whispering excitedly to one another.
For anyone wishing to stay, they could expect pay increases and, although they would have to transfer their work base to the head office in Stratford, they would be highly compensated for any necessary house moves to accommodate the change of working location.
It was a clever plan, particularly considering the fact that the majority of the team were free, single and unengaged and therefore prime candidates for a move to London. Yes, they would continue doing some charitable work, but nothing on the scale they had been doing. The sop for that would be the obligatory donations controlled by Marcy and given with the blessing of the board.
He finished talking, sat back and linked his fingers loosely together on his lap.
‘Go away and discuss it,’ he advised them, ‘and we’ll meet again in say…about one week’s time. I’ll get my secretary to fix it up.’ There was an obedient shuffle as they all trooped quietly towards the door, Amy at the back of the procession. She was closing the door when he called her back.
‘And shut the door behind you.’
She did, but instead of moving to the table she remained with her back to the door and her hands behind her.
‘So you won.’
‘I’ve cut a fair deal.’
‘This wasn’t what your father intended when he first set up the—’
‘But every member of your team will accept my offer. More than that, they’ll appreciate it for the generous one that it is.’
Amy could feel her heart pounding inside her. ‘So you won.’
�
��It’s not about winning,’ he said impatiently. ‘What I have done makes sense. Your team will see that because they are not blinded by emotion.’
‘I’m not.’
‘What you’ve been doing has been more than a job for you. It’s been your salvation, your life raft at a time when you needed one. Grow up, Amy, and face the real world. Climb out of your little hiding places and start realising that there is no such thing as a comfort zone!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ROCCO studied the letter on his desk. Less than a letter, really, but more than a scribble. Just a note laying out the facts that Amy Hogan, having happily worked for several years in the employ of Losi Construction, had now decided to tender her resignation so that she could pursue other career options. She gave the obligatory thanks to everyone who had helped her along the way and made her stay at the company as enjoyable as it had been.
He reached for the telephone, thought again and then settled back in his chair with a frown.
It had been ten days since he had spoken to her and her team, during which, with the exception of her, they had all unanimously accepted his offer of what he liked to think of as an upgrade in their working situations.
She, on the other hand…
Several conversations, all at his bequest, during which she had sat stony-faced opposite him, politely repeating that she wasn’t sure long term what she intended to do. Equally politely, she had gone through bits of paperwork with him, made helpful lists of contacts with whom she had built up relations assiduously over the years and annotated telephone numbers that she seemed to have kept stored intact in her head.
And whenever he had tried to edge the conversation away from business, she had given him a look of such utter blankness that he had swiftly moved back to the matter at hand.
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