Interview With A Playboy

No—he hadn’t hit the jackpot, he berated himself. Like every other journalist she was a breed apart—a sub-species for whom no subject was too personal to have a good dig around in.

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ms Keyes,’ he said coolly.

Was it her imagination, or was his expression suddenly shuttered? Certainly the gleam of amusement in his voice had disappeared. Strange… She had expected that reaction when she talked about his business dealings, not his relationships.

Maybe he just didn’t like the fact that the press knew he was a womaniser? Maybe that was another reason he had agreed to this interview—to try and reinvent himself?

Well, if he thought she was going to fall for that he had a shock coming, she thought fiercely.

The limousine was slowing down. And as she looked out she realised they were pulling up outside her flat.

‘OK, I won’t be long,’ she murmured as the chauffeur got out and opened the passenger door for her.

One of her neighbours was walking past, and the woman almost fell over in surprise when she saw Isobel getting out of a limousine, closely followed by Marco Lombardi.

‘Don’t you think it might be better if you waited in the limousine?’ Isobel said nervously as he walked with her towards the front door.

‘No, I don’t. What’s the matter? Are you frightened there might be gossip about us?’

‘Of course not!’ She slanted a look up at him and noticed that the amusement was back in the darkness of his gaze. Yes, he probably thought that was oh-so-funny. As if anyone would seriously think that he would be interested in her when he had his pick of the world’s most glamorous women.

The paparazzi had roared into the road now, and the usually quiet cul-de-sac was suddenly chaotic as once again they started to take photographs, shouting for Marco to look over.

Isobel was so flustered that she could hardly get her key in the lock fast enough, and calmly Marco reached to take it from her. The touch of his hand against hers was a shock to the system, and she jerked away from him abruptly.

‘There you go.’ He pushed the door open for her and looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. ‘Are the press rattling you?’

‘No, of course not.’ The truth of the matter was that the paparazzi weren’t bothering her half as much as he was.

‘After you, then.’

‘Thanks.’ What on earth was wrong with her? Isobel wondered angrily as she stepped past him into the hallway. It was as if her senses were all on heightened alert around him.

And she had never felt more nervous in all her life as he followed her up the stairs to her first-floor flat.

She supposed it was just the strangeness of the situation. She’d disliked this man for so long from a distance, and now here he was stepping into her sitting room, acting as if he had every right to be here. In fact, his presence seemed to dominate the small flat.

Isobel watched as his gaze moved slowly over his surroundings, and for some reason she found herself looking at the place through his eyes.

The rooms weren’t what you would call spacious, and her second-hand furniture looked shabby in the cold grey light of the afternoon. She was willing to bet that Marco’s designer Italian suit had cost more money than all her possessions lumped together.

The thought brought her back to reality. OK, she didn’t have a lot of money, but that was no reason to feel embarrassed or ashamed. She’d had no helping hand in life—she’d come from a poverty-stricken background and worked hard to get to where she was now. What was more, she had always treated people fairly along the way—which was more than Marco could say.

He’d practically bankrupted her grandfather’s business, until the old man had been forced to sell out to him because he just couldn’t afford to compete with him. And then as soon as Marco had taken over the firm he’d lost no time in restructuring—which had basically meant firing most of the staff. Isobel’s father had been amongst the people in the first wave of redundancies.

She could still remember the shock in her father’s eyes when he’d come home to tell them. She remembered how he’d sat at the kitchen table and buried his head in his hands. He’d kept saying that there had been no need to make people redundant—that the company was very profitable. And her grandfather had said the same.

‘It’s greed, Isobel,’ he had said. ‘Some people aren’t content with making a healthy profit. They’re only happy when they are making an obscene profit.’

Isobel remembered those words as she looked over at Marco. He’d been a couple of years older than she was now—about twenty-four—when he’d bought her grandfather’s firm and sacked half the workforce. And then he’d gone on to sell the business twelve months later for a very obscene profit, as far as Isobel was concerned.

And it seemed Marco had repeated this move in other businesses time and time again, making him a multi-millionaire before the age of thirty.

She wondered if he ever had pangs of conscience about the way he made his money.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind she dismissed it as absurd. Marco wasn’t the type to think deeply about other people’s feelings. As demonstrated by the way he’d walked out on his wife after just eighteen months of marriage, and the way he changed the women in his life faster than some people changed the sheets on the bed.

Something he had in common with her father, as it turned out.

She turned away from him. ‘I’ll just throw a few things in a bag, I won’t be long.’

‘See that you’re not,’ he said laconically. ‘I meant it when I said you’d got five minutes.’

Hurriedly she moved through to her bedroom and opened the wardrobe. What on earth should she pack for a night in the South of France? she wondered. She didn’t have a lot of summer gear, but then it probably wouldn’t be that hot as it was only May.

She glanced around as there was a knock on the door and it opened behind her. ‘Four minutes and counting,’ Marco told her as he leaned against the doorframe.

‘For heaven’s sake, I’m going as fast as I can.’ She flung a pair of jeans and a T-shirt into an overnight case, and then moved to rifle through her nightwear and her underwear drawer. ‘Do you think you could give me a moment’s privacy?’ she asked through gritted teeth as she looked around at him.

‘Don’t mind me.’ He smiled, but instead of moving out of her room he came further in, and walked over towards the window to look out.

At least he had his back to her, but the guy had an unmitigated gall, she thought furiously. She selected a nightshirt and some underwear and threw it in the case.

‘Don’t forget your passport,’ he reminded her nonchalantly. ‘That’s all that really matters.’

‘Of course I won’t.’

‘Good.’ He adjusted the blinds a little, so that he could look down to the road. And she realised that he had only come in here because it was the one room with a clear view out over the front of the property.

‘Are the paparazzi still there?’ she asked curiously.

‘Unfortunately, yes.’ He snapped the blinds closed and turned to look at her again. ‘So you’d better get a move on—because otherwise you could be splashed all over the front page tomorrow and dubbed my new lover,’ he added lazily.

He watched with amusement as her cheeks flushed bright red.

‘I very much doubt that, Mr Lombardi,’ she told him stiffly, wondering if this was his feeble attempt at trying to dissociate himself from the many women he’d been pictured with since his divorce.

‘Do you? Why is that?’

‘Because…’ What kind of question was that to ask her? she wondered in annoyance. ‘Well…because I am very obviously not your type.’

‘Aren’t you?’ He looked across at her teasingly.

‘No, I’m not!’ She was starting to think he enjoyed winding her up. ‘Everyone knows that you go for very glamorous blondes,’ she added snappily, and tried to return her attention to her suitcase. But she was finding it really hard to concentrate on packing now; she was far too distracted by the way he was watching her. ‘And just for the record you’re not my type either,’ she added for good measure as she glanced up at him.

He didn’t look in the least bit bothered. In fact one dark eyebrow was raised mockingly, as if he didn’t believe that for one moment. The guy was far too sure of himself, she thought heatedly. Probably because no woman had ever said no to him.

‘And do you think that it matters for one moment that you are not my usual type?’ he asked.

‘Matters—in what way?’ She was confused for a moment.

‘Well, the press sensationalise everything. You could be my maiden aunt and they would still think there was something going on between us.’

‘That is not true!’

His dark eyes gleamed. ‘Spoken like a loyal member of the press.’

‘Well, maybe I am.’ She shrugged. ‘But I know we are not that easily bamboozled.’

‘Bamboozled enough to think I only go for blondes,’ he said with a smile. ‘When in actual fact I have a penchant for the odd brunette.’

She felt her body burn as his dark gaze swept slowly over her. She knew he was only joking, but she found the intensity of his gaze wholly unnerving,

He was a total wind-up merchant, she thought uncomfortably as she turned away. There was no way on God’s earth that he would ever be interested in her—nor her in him, she reminded herself fiercely. She knew it—he knew it—and pretending anything else even for a bit of fun was just hideously embarrassing. They were at different ends of a very wide spectrum.

She closed her case with a thud. ‘I’ll just go and get my toiletries, and then I’m ready.’

Marco watched as she hurried away from him. He didn’t think he had ever met a woman so determined not to flirt with him, he thought with a smile. The strange thing was that the more she backed away from him the more intrigued he became.

He glanced idly around at her possessions. From what he could judge she seemed to live here alone. The place was almost minimalist in design, plainly furnished and yet striking. A bit like its owner, he thought with amusement. His gaze moved over to her workstation in the corner. The desk was tidy, but a huge stack of paper and notebooks led him to believe she probably did a lot of work from home. There were a few reference books—huge, serious tomes on economics. Was that her bedtime reading? he wondered with a grin.

There were also a couple of photographs in frames, and he glanced at them. One was of a woman in her fifties and the other was of an older guy of about seventy. Were they her parents? Her father looked much older than her mother. Marco looked more closely. Actually, the guy looked familiar.

Isobel came back into the room, and Marco turned his attention to more important things. He had a lot of paperwork to do, and a flight to catch. ‘Time is marching on,’ he reminded her, glancing at his watch.

‘Yes, I do realise that—and I’m ready when you are.’ She put the cosmetics bag into her case and zipped it up.

‘Really? Well, I’m impressed,’ he said with a smile. ‘You have half a minute to spare and…’ his gaze moved to the case in her hand ‘…probably the smallest amount of luggage of any woman I’ve ever taken away for the weekend.’

Did he have to make everything sound so damn intimate? she wondered uncomfortably. ‘Well, that’s because you’re not taking me away for the weekend.’

‘I think you’ll find that I am,’ he countered with a smile.

‘We are going away on a business trip for one night,’ she maintained firmly. ‘And as today is only Thursday, that hardly qualifies even marginally as going away for the weekend.’

She really was an enigma, Marco thought with amusement. Most women fell over themselves to spend time with him, and yet she seemed almost horrorstruck by the thought.

‘You can make your own way home tomorrow, if you wish,’ he said easily. ‘But I doubt your in-depth interview will be complete.’

As she looked over at him her eyes seemed to be impossibly wide and too large for her face. ‘Well, we shall just have to try and move things along faster,’ she said with determination.

‘You can try.’ He grinned. ‘But I have a lot of business to attend to over the next forty-eight hours, so you will have to fit in around me. I think it would probably be more realistic to say that you will be in France until at least Monday.’

‘You’ve got to be joking!’

‘Not at all.’

Their eyes seemed to clash across the small dividing space between them.

She didn’t want to spend a few days with him. The very thought of it made her blood pressure go into hyper-drive.

‘I really don’t think I will be able to stay that long,’ she murmured uncomfortably.

‘Well, as I said, it’s up to you.’ He shrugged.

But it wasn’t up to her, was it? she thought nervously. And he knew that—knew that she would be forced to hang around until she got the story that her paper expected. A story that would be superficial at best.

And meanwhile he would finalise his deal for Sienna and start to take the company apart at the seams. Because that was what he did.

Isobel glanced away from him.

She hated that he could get away with it. Hated the fact that he was cocooned by his wealth—the type who seemed to glide though life unaffected by other people’s problems.

But she didn’t have to let him get away with it, she thought suddenly. Just because she could no longer write about his business dealings in depth, it didn’t mean she couldn’t expose him in her article for the uncaring, arrogant womaniser that he was.

Feeling a little bit better at the thought, she reached for her suitcase.

Marco thought that he was being oh-so-clever, but she would have the last laugh, she told herself firmly.

CHAPTER THREE

USUALLY when Isobel travelled through airports she had to wait in queues to check in, and then there would be more queues to get through Security and onto the plane. Travelling with Marco, however, was a whole new experience. There was to be no mundane waiting around for Marco. He breezed through everything at VIP level, and people couldn’t do enough for him. It was Yes, Mr Lombardi—No, Mr Lombardi—Nothing is too much trouble, Mr Lombardi.

Isobel was absolutely amazed by the speed of the whole process—from check-in to getting aboard the aircraft. And then when they did step on board she was even more astounded to find it was his company jet and that they were the only passengers.

Just another little glimpse into the excesses of Marco Lombardi’s world, she thought as she looked around.

They were soon travelling at thirty thousand feet, seated opposite each other in comfortable black leather seats that were larger than her sofa at home. Marco had swivelled his chair slightly, so that he could take advantage of the conference facilities aboard, and since take-off he’d been in a meeting with his corporate strategist in Rome, to discuss a project they were working on in Italy.

Isobel would have loved to know more details, but unfortunately that was all Marco had told her, and she couldn’t understand anything he was saying because he was speaking in Italian. For a while she’d tried to pass the time by reading one of the newspapers the cabin crew had handed out to them earlier, but she’d found it hard to concentrate because she had been drawn to listening to Marco as he talked, mesmerised by the attractive, deep tones.

There was something deeply passionate about the Italian language. Marco sounded fiercely intent one moment and almost lyrically provocative the next. So much so that she found herself not only listening, but also covertly watching him. The accent combined with his good looks was a powerfully compelling combination…hard to pull away from.

No man had a right to be so sexually attractive, she thought distractedly. Especially a man who was so completely ruthless. But…hell, he really was gorgeous.

He glanced over at that moment and caught her watching him, and as their eyes met she felt a surge of heat so intense it made her feel dizzy.

How pathetic was that? she thought angrily, looking swiftly away. She should be focusing her mind on structuring the article she wanted to write about him, on revealing the true Marco Lombardi—not on idly admiring his looks!

Being handsome didn’t mean a thing. Her father had been a good-looking man, suave, sophisticated, a definite hit with women. Even as a young child Isobel had noticed the way women smiled at him. She had been fiercely proud of her handsome dad—had hero-worshiped him.

And she had been naively unaware that the only reason he’d stayed around was the lure of her grandfather’s money.

When his father-in-law had sold the business and he had been made redundant Martin Keyes had been self-pitying at first. But two months down the line, when her grandfather had died and it had been revealed that all his fortune had gone on death duties and taxes, he had been furious. Isobel had heard the arguments raging into the night. Had heard his parting shots to her mother—that the lure of the family business had been all that had kept him in the marriage, and that he felt as if he had wasted twelve years of his life. Then she had heard the slam of the door.

When she’d gone downstairs her mother had been sitting on the floor, sobbing. ‘He said he never loved us, Isobel,’ she had cried.

She could still remember that moment vividly—her mother’s heart-rending sobs, the shock and the feeling of fear and helplessness, and also the knowledge that she had to be strong for her mum’s sake.

Life had been tough after that. Her mother had struggled to cope, both financially and emotionally, and for the first year Isobel had found it hard to believe that her dad had truly abandoned them completely. She’d dreamed he would come back, that he hadn’t meant those cruel words. Her birthday and Christmas had come and gone without any contact. Then one day quite suddenly, without warning, she’d seen him again outside her school gates. She’d thought he was waiting for her and her heart had leapt. But he hadn’t been waiting for her. He’d been with another woman, and as Isobel had watched from a distance she’d seen a child from one of the junior classes running towards them. As Isobel had slowly approached they’d all got into a Mercedes parked at the kerb and driven away.

The really awful thing was that her father had seen her—but he hadn’t even acknowledged her with so much as a smile. It was as if she had ceased to exist and was just a stranger.

She’d grown up that day. There had been no more daydreams of a happy-ever-after. And she supposed it had made her into the person she was today—independent and a realist. Certainly not the type to be drawn to a man just because of his looks.

Marco had finished his conversation and was packing some of his papers away.

‘We have about twenty minutes before we land,’ he said to her suddenly. ‘Would you like a drink?’

Even before she answered him he was summoning one of the cabin crew.

‘I’ll have a whisky, please, Michelle,’ he said easily as a member of staff appeared instantly beside him. Then he looked over at Isobel enquiringly.

‘Just an orange juice, please.’

Marco turned his chair around to face her and she felt as if she was in a sophisticated bar somewhere—not on an aircraft heading out to the Mediterranean.

‘We seem to be ahead of schedule,’ Marco said as he looked at his watch. ‘Which means we will be arriving before it gets dark. That’s good. It will give you a chance to catch a little of the spectacular scenery along the coastline.’

‘That would be nice. I can add a description of arriving at your house to my article. Do you live far from Nice Airport?’

‘My residence is nearer to the Italian border—about half an hour’s drive away. But we will be flying into my private airstrip just ten minutes away from the house.’

‘You have your own airstrip?’

‘Yes. Sometimes the roads are very busy getting in and out of Nice, so it frees up a little time—makes life easier.’ He shrugged in that Latin way of his.

‘You are a man in a hurry,’ she reflected wryly, and he laughed.

‘It’s certainly true that there are never enough hours in the day.’

He had a very attractive laugh, and his eyes were warm as they fell on her—so warm, in fact, that for a moment she found herself forgetting what she wanted to say next.

The stewardess brought their drinks. Isobel noticed how she smiled at Marco when he thanked her.

He probably had that affect on every woman he looked at, she thought.

She was about to pour some orange juice into her glass, but he did it for her. ‘I take it you don’t drink?’ he asked conversationally as he passed her glass over to her.

‘Thanks. I do, but not when I’m working.’ She forced herself to sound businesslike. OK, jetting into the South of France with this man was probably every woman’s dream, but she had to stay focused. Marco Lombardi wasn’t the type of man to relax with. He was too smooth…too practised at getting exactly what he wanted. And what he wanted from her was probably to lull her into a false sense of alliance so that she would write about how wonderful he was. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t that easily fooled.

She just wished he wouldn’t look at her with such close attention. She sat up rigidly in her seat, ramrod-straight, and tried to cultivate a definite no-nonsense look in her eyes. ‘So, do you travel around the world a lot in your private jet?’

‘You sound like you are going to shine a light in my eyes and cross-examine me on my carbon footprint,’ he murmured in amusement.

‘Do I…? Well, that wasn’t my intention.’ She shifted a little uncomfortably in her chair. ‘I’m just trying to gather a few facts about you for my readers, that’s all.’

‘Hmm…’ He lounged back and looked at her for a long moment, and she could feel her heart suddenly starting to speed up.

‘Tell me, do you ever relax?’ he asked.

The suddenly personal question took her aback. ‘Yes, of course I do, Mr Lombardi. But as I said, not—’

‘When you are working.’ He finished the sentence for her, a gleam of amusement in his expression. ‘OK, that’s fine. But I’ve got a suggestion to make. I think, as we are about to spend a few days and nights together at my home, that we should drop the formalities—don’t you?’

The words combined with that sexy Italian accent made alarm bells start to ring inside her. Did he have to make the situation sound quite so…intimate? she wondered apprehensively.

‘So you can call me Marco,’ he continued without waiting for a reply, ‘and I’ll call you Izzy. ‘

‘Actually, nobody calls me Izzy,’ she interrupted.

‘Good. I like to be different.’

He smiled as he noticed the fire in her eyes, the flare of heightened colour in her cheeks. It was strange, but he found himself enjoying rattling that cool edge of reserve that she seemed determined to hide behind. ‘We’ll be starting our descent into the sunny Côte d’Azur in a few minutes, and it is not the continental way to be so uptight,’ he added.

‘I’m not uptight, Mr Lombardi—’

‘Marco,’ he corrected her softly. ‘Go on you can say it… Marco…’ He enunciated the name playfully, his Italian accent rolling attractively over it.

‘OK…Marco.’ She shrugged, and then for good measure added, ‘Now you try ISOBEL…’ She rolled her tongue over her name with the same emphasis, and then slanted him a defiant look that made him laugh.

‘You see? You are getting into the continental spirit of things already,’ he teased.

Their eyes held for a moment, then he smiled at her.

It was the oddest thing, but she suddenly felt a most disturbing jolt in the pit of her stomach—as if she had stepped off a cliff and was plummeting fast to the ground.

‘Anyway, I…I think we are getting a bit off track,’ she murmured, trying desperately to gather her senses again.