The Innocent And The Playboy

‘Boardroom?’

Mandy said, ‘Well, Mr Jensen said he’d like to see you in his office first.’

I’ll just bet he did, thought Rachel. If the biggest shark of them all has turned up in person, Philip will be turning to jelly.

‘But they arrived and he went straight to the boardroom. Would you join him—er—soonest?’

Panic stations, interpreted Rachel. She did not say so. She was too close to panic herself.

‘Right,’ she said.

She went, buried in thought. Confidence, she said to herself. That’s the thing to remember. You’re good at your job. You know that. Everyone else does. Believe it, why can’t you? Play to your strengths.

He must never know you even remember. Almost certainly he won’t. It is nine years ago. He must have had dozens of girls before and since. It’s ten to one that he forgot the whole thing in days.

She almost convinced herself.

She was still frowning in preoccupation as she went along the executive corridor. It was ankle-deep in an expensive carpet and hung with valuable seascapes. Usually Philip’s idea of executive interior decoration made Rachel laugh. Today, however, she barely noticed it.

In fact she was so deep in thought that she did not notice the man coming towards her. That was hardly her fault. Although he was tall and loose-limbed, he moved like a cat. On the sumptuous carpeting his tread was noiseless.

So when a voice said, ‘Hi there,’ she jumped about a foot in the air and came down with her head spinning.

It was the voice from her very worst dreams. Rachel felt as if someone had thrown ice-water over her. She found herself staring straight into those laughing, green-flecked eyes for the first time in nine years. It felt like yesterday. She stared at him, transfixed.

The man looked amused. ‘Rick di Stefano.’

There was not the slightest hint in his voice that he knew they had met before. Rachel registered his open smile: not a glimmer of recognition there. She moistened suddenly dry lips and tried to believe it.

In all those worst dreams of hers Riccardo di Stefano knew her at once. What he did about it varied with the awfulness of the dream but he had never looked at her with the smile of a pleasant stranger.

Rachel gulped. For the first time in years she was unable to think of a single thing to say. Instead, she just went on staring at him, horrified. Not yet, something in her brain was wailing. I’m not ready. Not yet.

Her reaction surprised him, she saw. One dark eyebrow rose.

‘I startled you. You must have been a long way away.’

Oh, she was, she was. Nine years and a whole ocean away. Impossible to say that, of course. Engage brain, Rachel, she told herself furiously. Engage brain. Or this will go out of control before you’ve even said hello.

Years of professional negotiations came to her aid at last. The unforgotten past receded, at least for the moment.

She swallowed and said, ‘Hello, Mr di Stefano.’ It came out a lot huskier than she’d expected but at least it did not sound as if all she wanted to do was run away from him and hide.

He laughed aloud then. ‘That sounds very formal.’

She gave him a quick, meaningless smile. ‘That’s the English for you.’

He smiled back. It was slow and sexy and made his eyes crinkle at the corners as if he was used to staring into the sun. He was not as tanned as she remembered, but the muscles were still as lithe under the city suit—and the laughter as wicked.

‘Now, I’ve always found English formality to be a bit of a myth,’ he said easily.

Oh, have you? she thought. Now that she had brought herself back under control she had time to observe him more dispassionately. She disliked what she saw amazingly. Confident, good-looking, intelligent. The things that her stepmother had gloated over all those years ago were still true. Even more so, if you could judge from one quick, resentful look. The charm was still there too—and he knew it. He was even waiting for her to respond to it. Rachel realised it in gathering wrath.

She said smartly, ‘I’m afraid I’m rather a formal person.’

Riccardo di Stefano’s eyes narrowed. It looked as if he had just registered that there was a real person confronting him in the corridor, Rachel thought, pleased. Her satisfaction was short-lived.

‘Have we met before?’

She could have kicked herself. Never start a fight unless you’re prepared to finish it, she reminded herself grimly.

She said in her most colourless voice, ‘I was away when you were here in September.’

He detected the evasion. Of course he would. He had built up a worldwide empire on management skills, which meant that he would have no problem at all in reading a minor employee’s disaffection.

He did not look worried by her attitude. Why should he? His reputation said he had a flair for rooting out opposition at the heart. He would have detected that this minor employee would not present him with any problems he could not deal with. Just let him not detect as well how carefully she had orchestrated her leave in order to avoid his thrice-postponed visit, Rachel thought.

Before he could challenge her further she said, ‘Were you looking for the boardroom? You should have turned right out of the lift, not left.’

He was looking at her intently. Before he could question her she said, ‘Let me show you.’

For a moment he did not say anything. She could feel him weighing up her reaction, assessing its implications, even its possible effect. Oh, yes, you could see why he was head of a multinational, multi-business empire.

She could have kicked herself. She held her breath, not quite looking at him. But he decided it was not worth probing, in the end.

‘Thank you,’ he said easily. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

She breathed again.

He fell into step beside her. He did not say anything further, but Rachel could feel his thoughtful gaze on her profile. She hoped she kept her expression neutral. By the time they reached the boardroom she felt as if the whole of that side of her face had been irradiated. Doing her best to ignore the feeling, she opened the door.

‘Mr di Stefano,’ she announced to the room.

It was not necessary. All the men there already knew who he was as well as she did, Rachel could see. And most of them were scared of him. She saw that too.

Well, at least she wasn’t scared of him, she thought. Not now. Maybe once. Not any more. It was ironic. He had done his worst to a vulnerable adolescent and she had survived. There was nothing left to be afraid of.

Reminding herself. that she was totally unafraid of Riccardo di Stefano was one thing. Meeting his eyes and retaining conviction was something else entirely. Prudently, Rachel kept her head turned away from that piercing gaze. Luckily it was not difficult.

It became obvious that Riccardo di Stefano had come to Bentley’s that morning with one object and one only. He was pleasant enough about it but underneath the good manners he was not making much attempt to hide that steely purpose. Philip Jensen was chairing the meeting and managed to deflect four pointed questions. Eventually Riccardo di Stefano changed tack. He stopped asking questions and interrupted Philip in mid-waffle.

‘Frankly, it seems to us at Di Stefano that you’ve lost your way,’ he said.

Philip Jensen was unused to direct confrontation.

‘If we can just keep with the agenda...’ he began fussily.

Riccardo di Stefano pushed the papers away from him.

‘Forget the agenda. What’s the point of talking about whether to go into Eastern Europe next year when the bank could collapse at any time?’

Rachel gasped. She was not alone. Riccardo di Stefano’s eyes swept round the table.

‘That sounds like surprise,’ he mocked.

Philip recovered. ‘Collapse? What are you talking about?’

‘Your little adventures into the futures market. You’ve got enough risk on board to wipe out the bank.’

Philip forgot he was in awe of Riccardo di Stefano. He sat bolt upright and glared. ‘That’s a preposterous suggestion.’

‘Is it?’

Riccardo nodded to a quiet man whom Rachel knew to be his company’s London director and who was on the bank’s board. The man produced a pile of printed sheets and began to pass them round. The result of Angela’s photocopying, presumably. Could Mandy possibly be right about his intending to put in a bid for the whole bank, then?

Rachel looked at the sheets blankly. They were figures of some sort. She was too shaken to focus on precisely what they represented.

The quiet man said, ‘I’ve been saying I wasn’t happy with bank strategy for six months. After the last board meeting I was so worried that I talked to Riccardo. He had our research department do a full analysis. These are the results.’

Philip picked up the stapled sheets and flicked through them. Sitting next to him, Rachel saw that his hands were shaking. He was clearly having as much difficulty in focusing on the figures as she had.

He managed, though, and looked up sharply. His eyes went very small and sharp and the tremor in his hands intensified.

‘Where did you get these figures?’

Riccardo shrugged. ‘Market information and some in-depth deduction. Then the research department in New York did some modelling. This is the result.’

Philip was shaking with anger now. With more than anger—fury.

‘You’ve been spying. This is market sensitive.’

Riccardo looked amused. ‘No need to spy. It’s all out there in the market if you go looking for it. With Sam on the board, I knew what to look for, of course.’

Philip stood up. ‘This is intolerable.’

Riccardo stood up as well. He looked utterly relaxed. How well Rachel remembered that cool, relaxed manner. How well she remembered how effectively he could use it—and with what devastating results. She braced herself.

Riccardo drawled, ‘I rather agree.’

Philip blinked. All Rachel’s protective instincts urged her to take his shaking hand. She curbed them. It would do no good and Philip would not thank her for humiliating him in public. She looked down at her own copy of Riccardo’s figures again.

Riccardo said, ‘Face it, Philip. You’ve driven this bank into the ground. Mismanagement followed by panic. Speaking as a major shareholder, I’ve had enough.’

Rachel was probably the only person at the table who was not surprised. Even Riccardo’s quiet colleague looked taken aback. A general spluttering of indignation and recriminations broke out. Riccardo sat down again, leaning back in his chair. He watched them all lazily.

Rachel lifted her eyes from the papers in front of her. Across the table Riccardo was the only one not trying to make himself heard in the hubbub. The only one apart from her, that was.

Suddenly something seemed to draw his attention to her. Seeing her silent, he raised his brows. Then he looked directly at her, straight in the eyes. Rachel felt as if she had touched a naked wire. She jolted back in her seat, breaking the eye contact feverishly. But she knew he was still looking at her.

Beside her Philip was roaring, ‘Breach of confidence ... Complain to the authorities... The bank will sue...’

Riccardo was unimpressed. His lip curled faintly. He said nothing. Suddenly Rachel could not bear it any more. She stood up. The move was so unexpected that it attracted everyone’s attention.

If she had ever imagined a scenario like this she would have been alarmed at the thought of taking public initiative away from Philip. But she had never imagined it. And anyway there were older and far more serious things she had feared in her life than Philip Jensen’s potentially wounded ego.

So she said levelly, ‘Gentlemen, the main item on the agenda was future business strategy. My report is in your folder as item four. I suggest we break to consider Mr di Stefano’s analysis. Then we can come back and discuss it. We can look at the strategy options once we’ve agreed where the bank is falling down now.’

She sat down. There was a murmur of assent.

Riccardo had gone very still. The long-fingered hand on the table was clenched tight. His eyes looked black with an odd blind look in them as if a ravine had suddenly opened in front of him.

His director sent him a quick, enquiring look. Riccardo ignored him.

‘How long?’ he said at last. He spoke directly to Rachel. His tone was sharper than any he had used so far.

Rachel looked unseeingly down at the papers. She had not the slightest idea. She took a blind stab at a time.

‘Three hours.’

He looked incredulous. ‘You’ll have proposals in three hours?’

Rachel thought, I have proposals now. You’re not the only one who knows something has got to be done about this place. But I need time to convince Philip.

She said calmly, ‘I believe so.’

It seemed as if everyone in the room was holding his breath. At last Riccardo di Stefano nodded.

‘OK. Same place.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Two-thirty.’

He stood up. Everyone else did the same. As if he were an emperor, thought Rachel. She was not even trying to curb her hostility now. But still she somehow found herself on her feet too. That infuriated her.

Across the room, Riccardo di Stefano looked at her. His dark eyes measured her as if he had only just become aware of her. She thought she saw faint contempt and put a hand to her loose hair self-consciously. His eyes narrowed. Something in that basilisk regard brought Rachel to attention as if she were facing a court martial.

‘I look forward to your ideas,’ he said softly.

Something light as a feather, deadly as a cobra, slid up the back of Rachel’s neck. She managed not to shudder, but only just. Instead she gave him a bland smile.

‘I hope to surprise you.’

He laughed aloud at that. ‘I’m sure you do. But I have to warn you a lot of guys have tried.’

And failed, was the implication.

Rachel said, ‘I like a challenge.’

Riccardo di Stefano stopped laughing. The look he gave her was pure speculation.

‘So do I,’ he said softly. ‘So do I. Maybe we’re both going to learn something from this.’

CHAPTER TWO

AS THE door closed behind Riccardo di Stefano, Philip sank back in his seat. He looked ill, Rachel thought with compassion. Beads of sweat were etching out a mask on his face. She was not the only one to notice.

‘Better let Rachel run with this one, Phil,’ said Henry Ockenden, the head of lending.

Philip waved a hand vaguely. Rachel took this as agreement. It looked as if he was not going to need much convincing after all. She got up.

‘I’ll be in my office. I’ll get briefing to you by two at the latest,’ she said.

She gathered up her papers and went.

Mandy was at her desk in the outer office. She raised her eyebrows as Rachel steamed past.

‘Fireworks?’

‘As you predicted,’ said Rachel.

‘Di Stefano on the attack?’

‘And then some,’ said Rachel with feeling. ‘Call the group; I want a meeting in twenty minutes. Everyone to have a copy of these.’ She dumped di Stefano’s papers on Mandy’s desk.

Mandy picked them up and took them to the photocopier.

‘Is di Stefano as gorgeous as they say?’ she said, pressing buttons briskly.

The copier warmed into life.

‘Worse,’ said Rachel crisply.

She turned away. Mandy was too observant. Rachel did not want the other woman to detect that this was not the first time she had had the opportunity to observe at close quarters how gorgeous he was. Or that she would give anything not to remember how gorgeous.

Rachel gave an angry little sigh. Riccardo di Stefano had obviously had no trouble forgetting. So why couldn’t she?

Mandy, at the photocopier, was not detecting anything, fortunately. She laughed. ‘He looks a heartbreaker all right.’

Rachel stiffened imperceptibly. Not turning round, she said casually over her shoulder, ‘I thought you hadn’t met him.’

‘No.’ It was not hard to discern Mandy’s regret at this fact. ‘He had his mug shot in the papers yesterday. Taking Sandy Marquis out on the town.’

‘Sandy Marquis?’ The name was vaguely familiar. Then she remembered. ‘The model, you mean? The redhead discovered teaching gym to schoolgirls?’

‘That’s the one.’ Mandy looked at Rachel speculatively. ‘He seems to go for redheads.’

‘He goes for anything female that doesn’t run too fast,’ muttered Rachel unwarily.

Mandy’s eyebrows flew up. This time she was detecting. And accurately.

‘You know him,’ she said on a note of discovery.

That’s what comes of losing your cool, Rachel told herself, annoyed. Aloud she said repressively, ‘We’ve met.’

‘Wow.’ Mandy was impressed. ‘You’ve been clubbing on the quiet?’

‘Of course not. Even if that was how I got my kicks, which it isn’t, what time do I have to go clubbing? When I’m not working I’m trying to persuade two adolescents that school isn’t all bad.’

Mandy chuckled. ‘I don’t see di Stefano at a PTA meeting,’ she allowed. ‘Where on earth did you meet him, for heaven’s sake?’

Rachel grimaced. Take it lightly, she adjured herself. It was never important. Don’t build it up into something it was not.

She shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago. I shouldn’t think he even remembers.’

And I’m going to do everything I can think of to stop him remembering, she resolved fiercely.

‘Have you said anything to him?’

‘No.’ Rachel was unable to disguise her horror.

Mandy looked even more intrigued. Rachel realised she could be getting herself into exactly the kind of trouble she had hoped to avoid—the kind of trouble that slapped an ice-pack on the back of her neck and sent her normally logical mind into meltdown. She could trust Mandy, of course, but if she told her it was a secret Mandy would inevitably start to wonder what it was all about. It was only human nature. It was also horrifying.

I can’t stand that sort of speculation, Rachel thought. How can I avoid thinking about him if every time I put my head out of my office my secretary’s asking herself what Riccardo di Stefano was to me in my dark past?

She felt panic rise. It took all her self-control to quell it, to think of a plausible story. It was half the truth anyway.

‘Look,’ said Rachel, ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it. It was no big deal but I was very young.’ She managed to sound rueful, even faintly embarrassed. She was impressed with herself. ‘It wouldn’t do my credibility much good to remind him. I don’t want him thinking he’s negotiating with a spotty teenager with no control over her temper.’

No hint of the inner panic. Well done, Rachel, she congratulated herself. Mandy was taking it at face value anyway.

‘No control...’ Mandy stared. ‘You?’

‘Youth,’ said Rachel. She gave a very good shrug, quite as if she did not care. She even managed a light laugh.

That was not quite so convincing, evidently. At least, it did not convince Mandy. ‘Did you have a crush on him?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ said Rachel with unmistakable truth. In spite of her determination to stay cool, she could not repress a shudder.

Mandy was not just a colleague, she was a friend. She saw the shudder and drew her own conclusions.

‘Well, if he hasn’t remembered yet, he probably won’t,’ she said comfortingly. ‘Not with Sandy Marquis to keep him happy.’

‘I’m relying on it,’ said Rachel. She went into her office. In the doorway she paused and looked back. ‘Oh, we’ve got a deadline. Two o’clock with Mr Jensen. You’d better find out what the group want in their sandwiches.’

Mandy grimaced. ‘Right you are. Action stations.’ She was already on the telephone when Rachel closed the door.

The room was uncannily quiet without the hum of the photocopier. Rachel sank down behind her desk and stretched out her legs in front of her. They were trembling.

There was an unfamiliar tension between her shoulderblades. She bent her head forward and sideways and the tension eased. It did not go away entirely; though. If she was any judge, it was not going to go away until Riccardo di Stefano was safely back on his own side of the Atlantic.

‘Blast,’ she said.

She rubbed her hand across the back of her neck in an uncharacteristic gesture. The muscles felt like iron. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she remembered another time when she had done the same thing. Her hand fell.

Another time and a whole world away. She got up and went to the window. Outside the rain ran greyly down the window. But the world of her too vivid memory was drenched in sunshine.

Rachel tipped her head forward and rested her brow against the window-pane. How could she ever have thought she had forgotten?

She closed her eyes and let the memories flood back.

She had never wanted to go. She had tried so hard not to. But she had been eighteen and the opposition had all been over twenty-one and had had the big guns.

‘It will be the holiday of a lifetime,’ her father had said heartily. Too heartily. Rachel had not noticed that at the time, of course. ‘You’ve been tying yourself to your books too much. Now the exams are over you deserve a really good time. Judy and I both want you to go.’

And that had been the first objection. Rachel had never warmed to her father’s second wife. Judy felt the same, she’d been sure. Most of the time they’d been polite to each other but that was as far as it had gone. Rachel had frankly been appalled at the idea of going off on a Caribbean holiday with her stepmother for company.

She had not said that to her father, of course. And what she had said had only caused him to persuade harder.

‘Judy needs a holiday as much as you do. It’s been a tough year, with the takeover and everything. She needs to get away from it all. Sun, sea and a bit of exotic night-life.’ He laughed. ‘Do you both good.’

Rachel said, ‘Exotic night-life doesn’t sound like me, Dad.’

But he was not to be deflected. ‘Nonsense. All girls of your age want to spread their wings a bit.’

Presumably Judy had told him that. Presumably she had also convinced him that she and Rachel were virtual contemporaries and could not be better friends. None of Rachel’s protests had any effect.

‘It’s very good of Judy to suggest it,’ her father said in the end.

His tone had stopped being hearty. Rachel recognised an order when she heard it. He might just as well have said she did not have a choice.

‘She’s been invited to stay with some very old friends. They have taken a house in the Caribbean. Film-star luxury, I’m told. Judy needn’t take you along, you know. Since she’s offered, you owe it to all of us to accept gracefully.’

So she went. Later it occurred to her to wonder whether her father was already suspecting his young wife’s restlessness. Maybe he’d sent Rachel along to act as some sort of chaperon. Or even as a substitute for conscience. If he had, he had been singularly out of luck, she thought now.

She had not suspected any such thing at the time, of course. To be honest, Rachel had not seen much of her father or Judy, particularly over the last year when her father’s company had got into difficulties. Rachel herself had been working furiously hard to get into university. She and her father had met occasionally over the coffeepot in the small hours. They’d exchanged tired quips. But they had not really talked since he’d married Judy.

So, if there were strains in the marriage, at that time Rachel had not known it. She’d just known she did not like Judy, and she had not been able to imagine why her stepmother would want to take her on holiday.

It had been some time before she’d found out why, but she had. By that time she’d no longer cared. She’d had her own hurt and her own guilt by then. By that time she’d no longer cared about anything except getting away and never seeing any of the inhabitants of the Villa Azul ever again.