Kitabı oku: «At The Italian's Command»
A warm welcome to all our readers; it’s cold outside, but the books Harlequin Presents has got for you in January will leave you positively glowing!
Raise your temperature with two right royal reads! The Sheikh’s Innocent Bride, by top author Lynne Graham, whisks you away to the blazing dunes of the desert in a classic tale of a proud sheikh’s desire for the young woman employed to clean his castle. Meanwhile, Robyn Donald is back with another compelling Bagaton story in The Royal Baby Bargain, the latest installment in her immensely popular New Zealand-based BY ROYAL COMMAND miniseries.
Want the thermostat turned up? Then why not travel with us to the glorious Greek islands, where Bought by the Greek Tycoon, by favorite author Jacqueline Baird, promises searing emotional scenes and nights of blistering passion, and Susan Stephens’s Virgin for Sale—the first title in our steamy new miniseries UNCUT—sees an uptight businesswoman learning what it is to feel pleasure in the hands of a real man!
For Cathy Williams fans, there’s a new winter warmer: in At the Italian’s Command, the heart of a notoriously cool, workaholic tycoon is finally melted by a frumpy but feisty journalist. And try turning the pages of rising star Melanie Milburne’s latest release—Back in her Husband’s Bed, about a marriage rekindled in sunny Sydney, Australia, is almost too hot to handle!
For a full list of titles and book numbers, see inside the front cover (opposite)—and enjoy!
She’s his in the bedroom,
but he can’t buy her love…
Showered with diamonds, draped in exquisite
lingerie, whisked around the world…
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At the Italian’s Command
Cathy Williams
All about the author…
Cathy Williams
Cathy was born in the West Indies and has been writing Harlequin romances for over fifteen years. She is a great believer in the power of perseverance as she had never written anything before and from the starting point of zero has now fulfilled her ambition to pursue this most enjoyable of careers. She would encourage any would-be writer to have faith and go for it!
She loves the beautiful Warwickshire countryside where she lives with her husband and three children, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma. When not writing she is hard-pressed to find a moment’s free time in between the millions of household chores, not to mention being a one-woman taxi service for her daughters’ never-ending social lives.
She derives inspiration from the hot, lazy, tropical island of Trinidad (where she was born), from the peaceful countryside of middle England and, of course, from her many friends, who are a rich source of plots and are particularly garrulous when it comes to describing her heroes. It would seem from their complaints that tall, dark and charismatic men are too few and far between! Her hope is to continue writing romance fiction and providing those eternal tales of love for which, she feels, we all strive.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
EIGHT-THIRTY on a Sunday evening. Rafe heard the phone ring next to where he was sitting, in the room that had once been a library and was now his office away from the office. Global deals had no respect for English working hours, and Sundays were never days of rest for him. They were simply time when he could catch up with whatever needed doing, make calls to Australia, make sure, in essence, that everything was ticking over nicely.
Furthermore, he knew who would be on the other end of the line.
With a little sigh of half pleasure, half frustration, he picked up the receiver and as he’d predicted heard his mother’s voice on the other end of the line.
‘You’re working, Rafael. Aren’t you? You’re in that office of yours working. You shouldn’t be working on a Sunday. How many times have I told you that?’
‘Hullo, Mother.’ He smiled into the telephone, pushed his leather chair away from the desk and swivelled round, bringing the phone with him, so that he could stare out of the window. In the depths of winter, there wasn’t much to see outside, just the vague shapes of his back garden, which was large for a London house but small in comparison to the acres of land on which he had grown up. ‘How are you?’
‘I, Rafael, am fine. You, on the other hand, are heading for high blood pressure and an early grave.’
‘Thank you for that.’ He grinned and ran his fingers through his short, dark hair. ‘Never let it be said that a businessman’s life isn’t fraught with danger.’
He listened abstractedly as Claudia Loro continued more or less in the same vein for a few minutes, lecturing to him about his lifestyle, asking him about his health and punctuating his answers with pointed clucking and elaborate sighs. It was a familiar routine and one that he accepted with good-natured tolerance. He would never have allowed any other woman to preach to him about his life, and some had made the mistake of trying in the past, but his mother was different. He listened, even if he chose to ignore most of her advice.
She had now moved on to the topic of her week, bringing him up to date with what she had been doing, filling him in on what was happening in the little village where she lived and which had been his home until he’d moved down to London fourteen years previously. Already his mind was drifting off to Paul Glebe on the other side of the world, whose phone call had raised one or two problems that needed sorting out if his latest acquisition was to go ahead.
‘Anyway,’ he heard his mother say in a rounding-up tone of voice, ‘I haven’t called to witter on about my social life…’
‘Exciting though it may be.’
‘Certainly a great deal jollier than yours, my darling.’
‘My life, dearest Mama, is deeply exciting.’ He stretched out his long legs, resting them on the broad ledge of the window, and thought fleetingly of the current piece of excitement in his life. Five foot ten, legs up to her armpits and hair down to her waist. Intellectually undemanding but physically stunning. Just the way he liked them. What man needed a high IQ in his woman when all he wanted to do when he wasn’t working was give his fiercely active brain a well-deserved rest? In short, she was just the sort of girl his mother would heartily disapprove of. He wondered whether to stoke the fire by mentioning this particular fun element of his life, and decided against it.
‘But lacking in challenge, Rafael. Which is why I have a little surprise up my sleeve for you…’
The pleasant image of Angela Street and her very long legs evaporated and he grunted discouragingly, frowning at the sudden change in his mother voice. A surprise from his mother usually heralded an invitation to some informal get-together involving as many of her local friends as she could rustle up, along with their assorted offspring, in one huge, unwelcome matchmaking fest.
‘I can’t come,’ he said bluntly. Claudia Loro ignored him.
‘Do you remember Grace Frey? My very dear friend?’
‘Hard not to,’ Rafe said dryly. The pleasing image of his long-haired beauty was replaced by that of a woman in her late forties, small, energetic and very post-hippie.
‘Then you’ll surely remember her daughter. Sophie.’
Rafe all but groaned. Like her mother, Sophie Frey stuck in a person’s head like a burr under the skin. She, too, was small and distinctly unfeminine. Undisciplined hair, freckles, clothes that looked as though they had been yanked out of a junk shop and then just thrown together in a random fashion with the sole objective of making their wearer as unappealing as possible. The last time he had seen her had been at his mother’s summer barbecue. Sandals of the sort worn by the determined rambler, long, flowing skirt clashing horribly with a cardigan that looked as though it had been borrowed from someone’s grandfather. He had studiously managed to avoid her.
‘Where is this leading, Mother?’
‘Straight to your office, as a matter of fact.’
While Rafe was trying to puzzle this one out, Claudia jumped into the breach to explain.
‘She’s just changed jobs, darling. Left that dreadful office place where she’s been working and managed to land herself a job at a publishing house. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she’s been thrown in at the deep end. One of their publications includes a business magazine, which isn’t, I gather, doing terribly well. They’re trying to revamp it into something more user friendly, which basically means incorporating more human interest stories with the usual boring financial news.’
‘You’re losing me here.’ He swivelled back round to face his desk and brought his computer back to life with a click of a mouse. The report he had been reading before the telephone had rung was once more flickering in front of him, waiting to be checked.
‘Am I, darling? And you with that sharp brain of yours?’ She laughed delightedly. ‘Let me explain, in that case. Sophie has to do a feature on someone big in the business world.’
‘Ah.’ A one-hour interview was distinctly better than an evening with the local gang. ‘If she phones my secretary, I’m sure I can squeeze her in for an interview.’
‘Not so much an interview, Rafael, as…’ Her voice trailed off into thoughtful silence and Rafe began scrolling down the report, scanning the important points raised and already calculating what needed to be done.
‘As what?’ he prompted.
‘As, well, something more detailed.’
‘What could be more detailed than an interview? She sits in my office for half an hour, she asks questions, she writes my answers down in her little notepad, she goes away and writes her article or whatever it is she has to do. Of course, I would have to proofread anything she’s written. Facts have a sinister way of becoming distorted when they’re in the hands of a journalist.’
‘When I say more detailed, darling, I mean it. Her brief is to shadow you for a fortnight, really absorb what you do and how you do it, and then write an article about the man behind the empire…’
Rafe’s attention shot away from the report and focused fully on what his mother had just said.
‘That’s out of the question.’
‘Naturally, it would be a huge scoop for their very first special feature to be about you,’ Claudia Loro said calmly. ‘You’re wealthy, you’re powerful and you lead a seemingly colourful life—’
‘I said no, Mother, and you can relay that simple message to her.’
‘She starts tomorrow. I’ve promised Grace that I would help Sophie out and you are not going to let me down, Rafael.’
With anyone else, Rafe Loro would have turned on that side of his personality that could make grown men quake in fear, that contemptuously cold side that brooked no argument and silenced all opposition.
Respect and love for his mother controlled the urge, but he was in no better frame of mind the following morning as he let himself into his office two hours before his secretary was due to arrive. In fact, as he settled behind his desk his mood was filthy. It wasn’t often that Rafael Loro was rendered impotent and it was a sensation he didn’t care for. He had no intention of resigning himself to the inevitable and making the best of it. He didn’t want the girl tagging around behind him like an annoying, yapping dog and he fully intended to tell her that. If she didn’t like his attitude, then she could find herself someone else to follow.
He also didn’t like the idea of someone traipsing along with him to his meetings. Did she expect him to hold her hand and make sure that she was all right? He sincerely hoped not because if she did, then her awakening to reality would be brutal. Unfortunate but inevitable.
He was still seething when the building began to come alive with people arriving at normal working hours.
Sophie, who had spent a long time working out what she should wear, was aware of his mood before she actually made it to his office.
It seemed to her that everyone on the director’s floor was somehow tuned into the big boss’s moods. His secretary, Patricia, who met her in Reception, warned her that she was in for a hard time.
‘Poor you,’ she said sympathetically. ‘He can be pretty scary anyway, but in a bad mood he’s positively terrifying. Especially when you’re not used to it.’
Patricia Clark looked as though she was used to it. She was small, in her fifties, neatly attired, but under the warm expression was a glint of steel. Sophie guessed that you would need that working with someone like Rafael Loro, and she shuddered.
This was a situation she had not wanted, had not courted, but had somehow found herself steered into by their respective parents and their joint good intentions. Yes, she had certainly scored a hit with her company, but the very thought of having to be in the man’s presence over a two-week period made her feel sick inside.
She glanced anxiously down at herself, wondering not for the first time whether she had worn the right clothes. Not a suit, but as close to it as she could manage without having to go out and spend her hard-earned cash on pointless clothing. Her long skirt was at least dark, as was the long-sleeved stretchy top and her coat. She had pinned back her unruly red hair as best she could, using about a thousand clips in the process, and her briefcase was small, neat and very businesslike.
‘Fantastic offices,’ she said politely, trying not to gape as she was led along the plushly carpeted corridor, which was buzzing on both sides with brisk-looking people. The open area was sensibly planned out, with partitions dividing certain sections, and all the furniture was of the same type—rich wood and chrome that looked wildly expensive.
Her fragile nerves took another giddy nosedive. She could picture Rafe Loro striding through this domain, his domain, giving orders and smiling with gratification as everyone scurried around him in a flurry of panic. At eight, she had followed him around whenever she had gone with her mother to visit their massive country house. At fourteen she had adored him from a distance, that compelling young man with his entourage of adoring friends, whom he had seemed to treat with languid amusement and a certain amount of detachment, never quite letting himself go. He had always had that kind of personality. The kind that attracted a following. Returning every holiday from his boarding-school, he had always been received like royalty by all the members of his peer group, the offspring of the rich and privileged, most of whom boarded as well before flying off to universities or finishing schools in exotic European capitals. Five years his junior, she had been in awe of him and very smitten by what she had glimpsed intermittently from a distance, because their mothers were so close to one another.
Only when he had politely told her that she was making a spectacle of herself staring at him in front of his friends, had she wised up to the fact that he really didn’t like her at all. Her background was grammar-school ordinary, her house was vicarage dull, her looks were crashingly nondescript and her infatuation was comically unwelcome.
She had avoided him ever since. When she had seen him, usually at one of his mother’s Christmas parties, which she was obliged to attend, she had made sure to keep out of his way. Not difficult, as Claudia Loro’s parties were not small affairs.
She couldn’t imagine what her mother had been thinking, getting her involved in this exercise, but then Grace had always seen him as a nice young man who had made something of himself and not rested on the laurels of that golden spoon that had been firmly wedged in his mouth the day he had been born.
She watched the busy hum of people working fade behind her as she followed Patricia towards the directors’ muted, tasteful offices. The building was short and squat, interestingly fashioned around a central courtyard. The sheer size of the place made it a goodish distance to where Rafe had his office, because the directors’ quarters were located on the same level but another wing.
‘Brought you the long way,’ Patricia was explaining. ‘I thought you might be interested in seeing other sides of the company. What we left behind is the financial department.’
Sophie nodded, dazed by the opulence and dreading her destination.
Her heart was thumping by the time they finally arrived at a closed door, with a simple gilded plaque on it bearing Rafael’s name.
‘At least you’re a family friend.’ Patricia smiled. ‘You’ll probably lift him out of his black mood.’
Sophie considered that a seriously misguided statement. She had a sinking feeling about what had instigated the black mood in the first place, and she wasn’t surprised, when she was at last ushered into his hallowed office, to be greeted with an atmosphere that could freeze fire.
‘I’ll take it from here, Patricia,’ he said, giving a fast-quailing Sophie the full brunt of his devastating stare.
He had amazing eyes. She had always thought so. A vivid memory of being a young teenager, and fantasising about those eyes being directed at her, filled her cheeks with a bloom of uncomfortable colour. Green eyes, dramatic against his swarthy colouring and black hair. His father’s eyes, because the rest of him was all his mother’s Italian ancestry. The dark hair, the olive complexion, the strong, aggressive, uniquely foreign features.
She gathered herself quickly, although she didn’t move any closer into the room, just remained where she was, hovering as the door was quietly shut behind her. Patricia had taken her coat from her and pegged it in the outside room. Without it, she felt inadequate and suddenly vulnerable under that intense, unflinching gaze.
‘Sit down, Sophie,’ he said finally, nodding to the chair in front of his desk.
As soon as she was sitting, he leaned forward, linking his fingers together, and spoke in a very soft, razor-sharp voice.
‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want you here and the only reason you’re sitting on that chair in front of this desk is because I was railroaded into it by my mother. I am an extremely busy man and I have no time to take care of someone walking in my shadow for a fortnight, but I had no choice.’
Sophie refused to shrink under those cool eyes, even though at this point she could think of nothing more enjoyable than being swallowed up by the ground.
‘I realise that it’s inconvenient for you, Rafe, but this whole thing was arranged without my consent either.’
He gave a short, disbelieving laugh, but let it drop.
‘My schedule is intense.’ He shoved a piece of paper over to her and Sophie’s eyes flicked over it. A timetable that seemed to leave little room to breathe. ‘You can follow me into my meetings, although I really can’t see what the point of the exercise is. I work hard, but that is information I could have provided for you in the space of a five-minute meeting.’ Rafe sat back and proceeded to look at her with an unreadable expression on his darkly handsome face.
Same old Sophie. Gauche, tongue-tied and dressed in the same unfortunate style as her mother. Still. He had made his position clear from the onset. He wasn’t going to babysit her simply because of the connection between their parents.
‘I already knew that you’re a workaholic, Rafe—’
‘I work hard. Quite different from being a workaholic.’
‘I’ll make a note of it.’ Her blue eyes clashed with his own and he was impressed to see that her gaze was as steady as his. Must be desperate for her job, he thought. Anyone with a semblance of pride would have ditched the venture by now.
‘How are you, anyway?’ he asked, changing the subject, and was irritated to see that her cool expression didn’t thaw even fractionally in the face of this attempt at pleasantries.
‘Is that a meaningful question? I mean, are you really interested in my well-being or are you just being polite now that you’ve told me how you feel about my presence here?’
‘I’ll get back to you on that one, shall I?’ He stood up, expecting her to follow suit, which she did. ‘Meetings call. First one is on the other side of London with a couple of directors from a company I’m planning on buying.’ He strode across to a cleverly concealed sliding walnut door, which she had barely noticed when she had entered his office, and extracted his coat, which he proceeded to shrug on. ‘I move fast,’ he said, briefly turning to her, ‘and I don’t intend to slow down so that you can catch up. If you insist on this ridiculous venture, then you either keep up or get left behind. I won’t come looking for you.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’ Well, things had got off to a predictable start. He found her irritating and she disliked him. Put the two together and you were hardly going to get an easy ride, but in a way she decided that that made her job simpler. She would be able to detach herself and write a completely honest report without having to think about treading on eggshells out of consideration for him.
With that in mind, she snatched her coat from the peg in the outside office, making sure to keep on the move while she put it on, and kept pace with him, asking no questions, letting her impressions take the driving seat.
He talked, walked and reacted like a man accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. This came as no surprise. He had been like that even as a young teenager. She watched the reactions of other people as he strode through the offices, the way they involuntarily altered their body language in his passing presence. His towering personality radiated outwards like a forcefield, inspiring respect and possibly fear.
‘Are your days normally so hectic?’ she asked, once they were in the lift down.
‘Where’s your notepad? Shouldn’t you be writing down all my answers?’ The cool, velvety voice sent little prickles racing down her spine.
‘That’s not how I intend to handle it. I’m going to write up a report at the end of every evening and then when it’s all over, I’ll compile the real thing and submit it to my editor.’
‘Which would be after you show it to me. Correct?’
‘Naturally, nothing would go to print that hadn’t been given the go-ahead by you.’ Frankly, she hadn’t really thought about that at all, and now that he had mentioned it she wondered how honest an account she would be able to give. No one liked themselves displayed, warts and all, for the world to examine. The lift juddered to a stop, they emerged and it was only when they were inside the chauffeur-driven Jaguar, that she had the chance to continue the conversation. She resolutely ploughed on in the face of him opening his briefcase and extracting a wad of papers that he clearly intended to peruse for the duration of the trip, never mind her questions.
‘But I intend to write quite a detailed and frank article. Would that frighten you?’
For a second, Rafe wondered whether he had heard correctly. He snapped shut the briefcase and turned very slowly to look at her. ‘Would that frighten me? Do I look like a man who scares easily?’
Sophie stuck her chin up, but her fingers were curled painfully around the handles of her executive briefcase. ‘Everyone has their own fear zones.’
‘According to…? Whom? Sophie Frey, psychologist?’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, Rafe.’
‘There’s every need to be sarcastic when you start trying to analyse me. You can follow me around and report factually on what you see. Wafting off into some airy-fairy land of speculation isn’t going to work.’
Sophie didn’t say anything and he frowned at her, fingers tapping restlessly on his leather briefcase, which was still shut.
‘Nor do I intend to allow your personal feelings for me to colour whatever you write.’
‘My personal feelings for you? I haven’t got personal feelings for you! I happen to know you…no, I take that back…I happen to know who you are because our mothers have been friends for ever, but that’s as far as it goes!’
‘Which doesn’t go a long way towards explaining that remark you made when you walked into my office this morning.’
‘What remark?’ There was wariness in her voice as she dredged her memory bank to try and recall what he could be talking about.
‘That this business was arranged without your consent. Implying that you didn’t want to be here any more than I wanted it. My reason is purely the nuisance factor of having you or anyone else around walking two paces behind me. What’s your excuse?’
Sophie felt patches of tell-tale colour flood her cheeks. Her fingers were now gripping the briefcase so tightly that she feared they might have to be forcibly unhooked by the end of the drive. It took effort to remember that she was a grown adult, a woman of twenty-seven, who had been to art college, had had boyfriends and had worked alongside other people for the better part of three years. Those eyes on her and that powerful, sexy, charismatic face were not going to reduce her to the nervous teenager she had once been in his presence.
‘My excuse is that I don’t believe in pulling strings. Sure, I’ve landed a coup in kicking off this new departure for the magazine by shadowing you, but I would have preferred to have done the groundwork myself, found someone who actually might not have minded having me around for two weeks!’ She glared at him.
So, he thought, the awkward mouse has teeth.
‘If that’s the truth, then fair enough. But whatever you write about me has to be unbiased.’
‘And when you read what I’ve written, you have to read it with a fair eye!’
‘I am a very fair man. Ask any of my employees.’
‘I take it that you’re giving me permission to talk to them about you?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you might not like everything they have to say.’
‘In which case I’ll have the little beggars hung, drawn, quartered and then fed to the tigers I keep at the bottom of my garden specifically for that purpose…’ He smiled slowly at her and Sophie felt her breath catch in her throat. She became acutely aware of exactly how small the back seat of a car was, even the back seat of a big car.
‘I guess it’s the only efficient way of dealing with detractors,’ she said lightly, voice normal even though her heart was beating thunderously inside her. ‘Tell me, does there ever come a time when you just feel you want to crash out? I mean, you seem to be on the go permanently.’ There, much better, get the conversation back to basics.
‘I enjoy what I do. Why would I want to take time out?’
‘Because it’s exhausting?’
‘I don’t tire easily.’
‘Can I ask you how you got involved in your business? I mean, I know you inherited quite a bit when your father died years ago, but you’ve expanded…’
On firmer footing now, she could actually relax and listen to him as he gave her a potted account of his rise to his virtually untouchable status.
By the time the car was pulling up in front of a small but prestigious-looking building south of the river, she had pretty much got the factual backbone of her story mapped out in her head. A tale of a boy born into privilege, with a brain that entitled him to strive for his own goals and the burning ambition to do it. A fair bit of the story she already knew, having grown up in the same village, but it was nevertheless interesting to see his take on his situation. While he admitted to his moneyed background, it was something he obviously simply took for granted. He had never been drawn towards an excessive lifestyle, although he had not spurned the doors his family wealth had initially opened. He had taken the reins of his father’s company when the time had come and from there had begun his process of branching out.
‘And what will you be doing here?’ Sophie asked, clambering out behind him, making sure to keep up with his long strides.
‘Discussing the possibility of buying a small IT company, which I might actually hang onto for longer than usual because I think it has potential.’
‘Meaning…?’
‘Meaning that you are now entering a silent zone. You’re to be seen and not heard. Got it?’
Any thaw in him had been brief. A salutary lesson in realising that information imparted would be solely on his terms. And the occasional smile was not an invitation to familiarity. Never had been. When she was a kid, he had viewed her as a pest. As an adult, she was far removed from his league and trawling around behind him, still a pest.
‘Of course,’ Sophie said neutrally.
She had planned on taking notes, but in the end was held captive by the force of his personality. A little over two hours and she felt drained by the driving energy he imparted. Points were raised and debated, columns of figures were looked at and picked over, until several of the directors were squirming in their seats. Alongside Rafe, two of his lawyers followed proceedings, interrupting when relevant but leaving the bulk of the business to be manoeuvred by him.
She wondered whether he was typical of any man in a position of power or whether this was his unique style.
Lunch turned out to be something grabbed en route to another meeting, and by the end of the day she felt as though she had been thoroughly put through the mill.
How on earth could anyone continue to function day after day on such high levels of adrenaline?
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