Читать книгу Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride - Lee Wilkinson - Страница 9

‘WHAT do you mean you had no alternative?’ demanded Sorcha, raking her fingers distractedly through her hair, which was already rumpled.

She turned to face Rupert, the morning sun bright on his face as it flooded into the boardroom which was lined with framed posters advertising the famous Whittaker Sauce. Each one featured an apple-cheeked old lady stirring a steaming pot, a look of satisfaction on her face, and the splash line was: JUST LIKE GRANDMA USED TO MAKE!

Sorcha’s green eyes sparked accusatory fire at her brother, but inside she was hurting. ‘You mean that someone was holding a gun to your head and telling you that you had no alternative but to hire Cesare di Arcangelo to save the company?’

‘No, of course not—’

‘Well, why, then?’

‘You’ve seen for yourself how bad things are, Sorcha. And Cesare has a reputation for turning things around—look what he did for the Robinsons. Their profits went through the stratosphere! I gave him a call, not really thinking that he’d have the time available, and when he offered to come over straight away I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Couldn’t you?’ Sorcha shook her head. How naïve Rupert sounded—but then he just saw Cesare for what he thought he was, without understanding the complexity of the man’s nature or the deviousness of his mind. ‘But I’m here, now, Rupes. I came back here specially, to be Marketing Director. Shouldn’t you at least have discussed it with me first?’

There was a silence.

‘But, Sorcha, you’ve only just started with the company,’ said Rupert gently. ‘What with the wedding and all—I simply haven’t had the chance to tell you before now, that’s all. And there’s nothing really to discuss, is there? You know that Cesare’s reputation is legendary. So who in their right mind would throw up an opportunity to have him work for them?’

Who indeed? Women who’d had their hearts broken didn’t count—or rather, their feelings weren’t up for consideration in the big, brash world of finance.

She had been caught on the back foot—feeling not only cheated but shocked by her near-lover’s reappearance. But even if she’d known that Cesare was about to dramatically reappear in her life would it have actually changed anything, other than allowing her time to prepare her response to him?

And would that response have been any different? Could it have been? Even if she had been the greatest actress in the world and pinned the brightest smile to her lips that wouldn’t have changed the uncomfortable cocktail of emotions he had stirred up, would it?

Rupert sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Sorcha—but, whatever your private opinion of Cesare, nobody can deny the man’s reputation as a sharpshooter.’

‘Don’t you mean an egotistical control freak who can’t keep it in his trousers?’ she questioned bitterly.

‘Rule one of business,’ drawled a velvety voice from behind her, and Sorcha whirled round to see Cesare walking into the room, a briefcase under his arm and a glint in his black eyes. ‘Never badmouth your colleagues within earshot. Didn’t they teach you that at business school, Sorcha?’ He put the briefcase down on the vast desk. ‘What else is it that you English say? Walls have ears? Ciao, Rupert.’

Sorcha wanted to scream—feeling as if she’d just been given a walk-on part in someone else’s life. That this couldn’t really be happening. There was nowhere to look but at Cesare, but even if there had been she wondered if she’d be able to keep her eyes off him.

He was dressed to look as if he meant business, which meant a suit—but something in the way he wore it transformed it from the mere everyday garment which other men wore to work.

It looked cool enough to be linen and fine enough to be silk, exquisitely cut in the Italian style—loose-fitting and utterly modern, yet hinting at the pure, hard muscle beneath. She found herself searching his face for dark shadows, wondering if he had gone home with the brunette last night, and it bothered her that she should even think about it—that it could make her heart contract with jealousy.

‘You underhand swine!’ she accused.

‘Sorcha!’ choked her brother.

There wasn’t a flicker of reaction on Cesare’s face. ‘Rupert—would you mind going on ahead to the factory?’ he said evenly. ‘I’ll join you just as soon as I can.’

‘Sure thing,’ said Rupert, who seemed glad of the escape route.

‘Oh, and Rupert?’

‘Mmm?’

‘I may be a little time,’ Cesare murmured, his black eyes fixed unwavering on Sorcha.

‘Yeah.’

There was a pin-drop silence while Rupert left the room and closed the door behind him, and Cesare put his hands on his narrow hips and looked at her.

Way back he had vetoed mixing business with pleasure, and he wouldn’t usually have been turned on by a woman wearing severely cut office clothes, but in Sorcha’s case it was different. He felt a nerve flicker in his cheek.

Two top buttons of her plain silk shirt were unbuttoned, showing a sliver of a gold chain with a pearl attached which dipped invitingly towards the shadow of her cleavage. A classic pencil skirt clung to the pert line of her bottom and skated down over her thighs. Cesare wondered how he could have forgotten the slender curve of her hips, or how long and rangy her legs were—especially in those high heels.

She was like a very classy racehorse—all athletic power and stamina sheathed by sheer elegance. A woman in peak and very beautiful condition. Why the hell hadn’t he just had her when he’d had the opportunity, guaranteeing her nothing but a postscript in the catalogue of his sexual experience?

‘I think that you and I need to have a little talk, don’t you, cara?’ he questioned silkily.

Sorcha’s heart was pounding. Yesterday at the wedding, when he had told her that he had been brought in, it had been nothing more than a theoretical nightmare. Today, however, it was harsh reality, with him standing beside the shiny table her father had used to sit at as if he were born to stand there—arrogantly wielding all the power. But she was not going to let him intimidate her.

‘You’ve come up with a magic solution to all our problems, have you, Cesare?’

‘Soluzione magica?’ he mocked. ‘Aren’t you a little old to believe in fairytales? No. But I have a few ideas.’

I’ll bet you do. Sorcha stared at him stonily as he pulled out a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and flicked through them until he found the ones he was looking for. Then he leaned forward and spread them out on the table like a card-dealer, looking up at her with a question in his glittering ebony eyes. ‘You have studied all these figures which highlight the company’s decline with heartbreaking accuracy?’

‘Of course I have.’

‘Really?’ His eyes burned into her, his lips curving around his cold, judgemental words. ‘And what course of action do you propose we take to halt the downturn?’

He was enjoying this, Sorcha realised furiously. In the same way that a policeman might enjoy interrogating a guilty suspect or a sadist might enjoy pulling the wings off a butterfly. And he would enjoy it even more if she allowed him to see that he was getting to her. So she wouldn’t.

It was easier said than done. She moved her shoulders edgily. ‘I’m looking into sales movements, distribution patterns, rises and falls in trading—you know. The usual thing.’

‘Yes. Precisely. Hashing over the past. The usual thing,’ he agreed, leaping on her phrase and repeating it with icy sarcasm. ‘But innovation is everything in business—you must know that, Sorcha. Working for the family firm doesn’t mean you have to undergo a common sense bypass.’

‘You think you’re very clever, don’t you, Cesare?’

‘I think that’s a given,’ he retorted softly. ‘But this has nothing to do with ego or brains, and everything to do with achievement!’

His eyes were blazing now, and even though he was revelling in the mutinous expression on her lovely face it was by no means what motivated him. Because—no matter what unfinished business there was between him and Sorcha Whittaker—this was all about pride, and a very different kind of pride from the one she had wounded by her refusal to marry him.

He had taken on this task and it was a challenge—and Cesare was a man who always rose to a challenge and conquered it.

The Whittaker scheme interested him only in the way in which an overfed cat might be mildly interested in a small mouse which had foolishly strayed into its path. But the venture afforded him the delicious opportunity to seduce the only woman he’d ever asked to marry. Turning around the ailing company was a purely secondary consideration, and he knew that he could easily afford to fail. In fact, lesser men might have got some perverse kind of pleasure from seeing her made broke.

But even if he hadn’t been loyal to Rupert, Cesare’s nature and his need to succeed were such that he would not tolerate failure—of any kind—and didn’t his relationship with Sorcha represent just that? Surely the ultimate satisfaction would be to bed her, win the praise of her family by reviving their fortunes, and make a packet for himself into the bargain? Put her for ever in his debt before walking away—this time for good, giving her the rest of her life to reflect on what she could have had. Yes. A perfect plan.

Prendere due piccioni con una fava.

To kill two birds with one stone…

He sighed. Si.

His raised his eyes, enjoying the frustration which she was failing to hide. ‘Rupert has been trying to drum up more trade—but you’ve got a brain in your head, Sorcha. Didn’t it occur to you to put it to use to try and work out why the products aren’t selling?’

‘You think it’s that easy?’

He shook his dark head. ‘Not easy, no. Simple, yes. Sit down.’

She hesitated, and then perched on the edge of the boardroom table instead of pulling out one of the chairs which stood around it. His eyes mocked her.

‘Demonstrating your equality?’ he murmured.

‘You wouldn’t know equality if it reached out and bit you!’

Laughing softly, he sat down in one of the soft leather chairs and leaned back to look at her, wondering if she would have chosen such a highly visible vantage point if she had realised the view it gave him of her derrière. Or that the material of her skirt was stretched so tightly over her bottom that he could see the faint outline of a thong.

His resulting erection made him wince. Serves you right, he thought, as he reached down into his briefcase. ‘I’ve been going back through the Whittakers advertising budget over the past year—’

‘It would be madness to cut the budget,’ she interjected quickly.

‘I’m not suggesting we do—please don’t put words in my mouth,’ he snapped. Put your breast in my mouth instead. His erection grew even harder as he pulled out a copy of a popular women’s magazine. ‘Take a look at this.’

She did as he asked, glad to have the opportunity to look away from that hard and fascinating face and concentrate on something other than the soft, warm coil of desire which was slowly unfurling in the pit of her stomach.

Why couldn’t she just be impartial to him—good looks or no good looks? She’d met men who were almost as hunky as Cesare—though it was true that they didn’t seem to have his inbuilt arrogance, or the ability to be in charge of a situation wherever he happened to be at the time.

She didn’t want to feel anything other than maybe a vaguely grown-up sensation of There’s the man I thought I was in love with—the man who asked me to marry him. She wanted to feel that thing you were supposed to feel when you looked at someone from a past which seemed very dim and distant—that she was looking at a complete stranger. So why didn’t she?

Trying to quell the tremble in her fingers, she flicked through the magazine he had given her. There was a big spread on a former weathergirl’s latest attempt to conquer her weight problem, with a few tantalising insights as to why she was attracted to violent men, there were gossip items and recipes, a problem page and a fashion shoot, and—amongst the other advertisements—an ad for Whittakers.

Sorcha had grown up seeing bottles of the family sauce plastered over various publications since the year dot, so it was no big deal—but she always felt a little glow of satisfaction when she saw one of their fullcolour promotions.

‘You mean this?’ She looked up at him. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘It’s good for what it is,’ he answered carefully.

‘Why are you talking in riddles, Cesare—am I supposed to be looking for anything in particular?’

He studied her lips and thought how he would like to wipe that nonchalant expression off her beautiful face with a long, hard kiss. ‘Does anything about it strike you as different?’

‘Not really.’

‘Not really,’ he echoed, biting back his irritation. He leaned back further in his chair. ‘It’s the same advert you’ve been using for years.’

‘So what? It’s a good advert!’

‘I will tell you so what, cara,’ he said softly. ‘If companies do not change—then they die—that is a rule of life which applies to everything and everyone. And it shows a certain arrogance towards the general public if you treat them with contempt, not even wanting to bother to try and change.’

She stiffened. ‘You have the nerve to talk about arrogance?’

Cesare drew in a deep breath. He would have liked nothing better than to talk about arrogance, since it was the kind of subject which soon had women railing and then pouting and then sending out messages which would result in a silent little tussle, and then…then…But he couldn’t risk making love to her. Not yet.

‘We are going to be changing the campaign.’

‘Shouldn’t that be a question rather than a statement? Or have you been given carte blanche to do exactly what you want without running it past me first?’ she demanded.

He didn’t bother answering that, and the fact that she didn’t pick up on it meant that she was perceptive enough to realise that maybe she wouldn’t like the answer. ‘Granny cooking up home recipes on the kitchen table no longer strikes a chord,’ he said slowly.

‘But people relate to that! They think it really is greatgranny! The whole family business thing is what defines us! It’s what makes us different to all the other brands!’

‘I know that.’ He paused. ‘And that is why we’re planning to upgrade the company with a brand-new image—spearheaded by one of its very own family members. A new generation to front the Whittaker campaign. Imagine the publicity.’

‘And just which member of the family did you have in mind to front this new advertising campaign?’ The question sounded mechanical, because even as she was asking it she knew that there was just her, her mother and Rupert. Unless Cesare meant Emma, and she was away on her honeymoon.

He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Oh, come on, Sorcha,’ he said softly. ‘You may not have impressed me with your business acumen so far, but there is only one person who can do it. You know that and I know that.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘And that person is you, bella donna.’