The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS nearly two weeks now since Giselle had begun her new duties in the impressive modern office building that was the headquarters of Saul Parenti’s business empire, and of course she wasn’t in the least bit disappointed that not once during those two very busy weeks had she seen Saul himself and that the glass-fronted office his PA had pointed out to her as his had remained empty. Far from it. She was delighted that he wasn’t in evidence, and that she had been able to take up her new role without having to contend with his presence.

Or at least she had been until something had come to light this morning, whilst she had been checking over the latest batch of reworked plans couriered over to her.

Was what she had picked up a simple mistake? Was it a trick to try and catch her out, instituted by Saul himself? Or was it—and her stomach tensed at the thought of this—a deliberate attempt to defraud the Parenti Organisation, put in place by one of her own colleagues?

Whichever of the three options she chose to believe, the initial outcome was the same, and that was that she would have to report what she had seen to Saul Parenti. Giselle looked towards the office of Saul’s PA, Moira Wilson, wondering if she should discuss her concern with her.

She liked the older woman, who had gone out of her way to make her feel at home in her new environment. On her first morning here, Moira had gone through everything with her, informing her with a smile, ‘I’ll just run through a few things with you. First, we are all on first-name terms here—Saul insists on it. But don’t mistake that for a lack of discipline or respect. He demands and gets both. I’ve got some forms here from HR for you to fill in—personal details, that kind of thing. Whilst you’re here your salary will be increased in accordance with the levels Saul pays those who work for him, and you will be eligible for an annual bonus, medical insurance, and a car allowance. Any expenses you incur in the course of your work should be submitted to the accounts department on a monthly basis, and I should warn you that here we do not have a culture of fudging such expenses—if you take my meaning.’

This last piece of information had been accompanied by a grim look which had ensured that Giselle knew exactly what she meant.

‘I never fudge my expenses. It would go against my principles to do so,’ Giselle had responded truthfully.

‘Excellent. I am sure you will fit in very well here,’ had been Moira’s response, before she had added, ‘Oh, and when you complete your personal details form I shall need your passport details.’

‘My passport?’

‘Yes. You do have one, don’t you? If not we must sort one out for you, just in case you are required to travel abroad on behalf of the company with Saul—to site meetings and that kind of thing. Saul takes a very personal and keen interest in all his projects, and is very hands-on about checking their progress.’

‘Yes,’ she had a passport, Giselle had confirmed. She was also used to travelling abroad to conferences and site meetings with clients—so why on earth had that tingle of something she refused to name zipped down her spine? It was doing so now, at the memory—as though someone had feathered a touch against her bare skin. What was happening to her? Nothing, Giselle assured herself fiercely. Nothing was happening to her and nothing was going to happen to her. Normally she enjoyed visiting the various sites she worked on, especially when they were abroad. It made up for the fact that she had missed out on the kind of foreign trips enjoyed by most of her peers when they had been growing up.

Her great-aunt simply hadn’t had the money for that kind of luxury. Additionally, the circumstances of her life—the dreadful tragedy that still haunted her and filled her with guilt—meant that she had always been wary of allowing others to get close to her even as friends, so she hadn’t joined in the group holidays abroad enjoyed by her peers during her early twenties, even when she could have financed them herself. Instead she had concentrated on getting the very best qualifications she could. Then, when she had started to think about taking solo holidays to explore the architecture of other countries, her great-aunt had needed to move into residential care, and once again there simply hadn’t been the money for such unnecessary expenses.

Giselle judged Moira to be somewhere in her early fifties, which had surprised her. From Emma’s comments about Saul’s lifestyle she had imagined that his PA would be glamorous and nubile, not a woman of Moira’s age, even if she was a very smart and elegant fifty-something. Her appearance was much like that of the other women Giselle had seen in the offices, making her acutely conscious of the shabbiness of her own clothes. There was nothing she could do about that, though. Only two days ago she had received a letter informing her that regrettably the fees for her great-aunt’s care and accommodation were to be increased by twenty per cent—not far short of the unexpected increase in her salary. There were cheaper care homes, but Giselle was determined that her great-aunt would go on enjoying the level of comfort she had where she was—even if that did mean she herself would have to go without the new clothes she had been tempted to buy, having seen how smart the other women working here were.

Now, as she looked round her spacious office, Giselle admitted that in many ways she preferred her new working environment—even if she would rather have worked for the devil himself than Saul Parenti. She doubted that she would be missed by her old colleagues. The men she worked with had shown quite plainly prior to her departure that they resented the fact that she had been selected over them for what they considered to be a prestigious and career-boosting opportunity, and of course her own pride had not allowed her to tell them that she would have preferred not to be chosen. However, it was the well-meaning Emma’s words that were still sending scalding waves of humiliation burning painfully through Giselle’s emotions.

She had spoken to her in private. ‘It’s just as well that it’s you who’s been seconded to go and work for Saul Parenti. If it was anyone else then all the other girls would be seething with jealousy at the thought of someone getting the opportunity to work closely with such a fabulously sexy man. But of course they won’t be jealous of you, because they all know that there’s no danger of you attracting him—not with your attitude to men and the way you give them the cold shoulder. Especially not with a man like Saul, who can have any woman he wants.’

Giselle knew it was ridiculous of her to feel humiliated by Emma’s remarks—somehow less of a woman. After all, Giselle herself had always made it plain that she wasn’t interested in flirting with or attracting men, cold-shouldering their advances and retreating into herself whenever they showed any interest in her. The last thing she wanted was a man pursuing her—any man—and especially a man like Saul Parenti. Why especially him? Because she was afraid that she might be vulnerable to him? Because she was afraid that she might actually want him?

Giselle stood up, panicked by her own thoughts, and then subsided back into her chair. Of course not. It was nothing to do with anything like that. She knew that she was perfectly safe from desiring Saul Parenti, and even if by some foolish misjudgement she did, she also knew that it was impossible for anything to come of that desire. Because, as Emma had made clear, Saul Parenti would never find her desirable? No! Because she did not want him to desire her—just as she did not want any man to desire her.

She had taken refuge in angry disdain, demanding of Emma, ‘Does everything have to come down to sex?’

Emma had laughed and told her, ‘For most of us—yes.’ Before adding, ‘Men can’t help being men, and they are predatory by instinct. It’s in their genes. But in your case…Well, what I’m trying to say, Giselle, is that…’

‘That a man like Saul Parenti wouldn’t find me desirable enough to want to go to the trouble of trying to seduce me?’ Giselle had supplied for her colleague.

‘Well, you do send a keep-your-distance vibe to men, you must admit, and men like Saul Parenti have plenty of women all too ready to give them what they want to be bothered with a woman who freezes them off. I haven’t hurt your feelings, have I?’ Emma had asked anxiously.

Giselle had shaken her head.

‘No, of course not.’ Giselle had assured her. And that was the truth. Of course she wasn’t hurt because Emma had spoken the truth and said that Saul wouldn’t be interested in her. She didn’t want him to be. She didn’t want any man to be interested in her. She couldn’t afford to allow any man to become interested in her because she knew that she could not and must not become interested in them. She could never have in her life the relationships that others took for granted. She could not fall in love. She could not commit to anyone, and most of all she could not within that commitment help to create a child. She must never have a child. Never.

Anyway, how she looked and whether Saul Parenti did or did not see her as attractive were not subjects she should be paying any mind to. Instead she must focus on the reason she was here and on what she was being paid to do.

The office provided for her was well planned out and perfect for her duties, with its large windows flooding the room with natural light. It contained all the equipment she might need, including a good-sized table in the middle of the floor on which she was able to spread out paper copies of architectural drawings and plans—just as she had done earlier, with the new drawings and costings that had been sent over.

Uncertainly Giselle looked back at them. She had been worrying about them for so long, going back to check and then recheck them just in case she had made a mistake, that she hadn’t realised how late it was. Scanning the office, she saw nearly everyone else had gone home. Moira had gone too, no doubt, without Giselle having taken the opportunity to speak with her and seek her advice.

The anomaly was definitely there. The non-frostproof terracotta tiles for the summerhouse and the area surrounding it, leading to the first of the staggered-level swimming pools, had been changed as Saul had instructed. But the tiles used in substitution were considerably more expensive, and from a supplier whose name Giselle could not remember having seen on their approved lists. As a precaution she had e-mailed a couple of approved suppliers, and they had both come back with costings far lower than the one quoted—which meant that either by accident or design the person responsible for the changed plans and materials was recommending a purchase that would cost far far more than it needed to. To make matters worse, the tiles recommended had a non-standard raised pattern, which meant that in future, should any one of them need replacing, they would have to be specially produced at a very high cost. And, worst of all by far, the person responsible for the recommendation and costing was her male colleague and adversary Bill Jeffries.

She’d e-mailed him to check discreetly with him that there hadn’t been an error but it appeared that he was on leave for a week, and with Saul due back from his overseas trip in the morning there was no way Giselle could hold the plans and costings back from him until Bill Jeffries returned to the office.

She needed someone else’s input and advice, she decided, making up her mind. Through the plate glass that fronted all the mezzanine offices she was delighted to spot Moira, putting on her suit jacket and preparing to leave. It had been a warm day for mid-April, with the sun streaming in through the windows, and Giselle had removed her own jacket to work more easily. She looked hesitantly at it, and then, seeing Moira heading for the door, scooped up the papers from the desk instead and hurried to intercept her.

‘From what you’ve told me, I rather think this is something you need to discuss with Saul,’ Moira judged firmly, once Giselle had reached the end of her story.

‘I know he isn’t due back until tomorrow, and I expect he’ll have a full diary. Perhaps you…?’ Giselle began, only to have Moira shake her head.

‘He’s actually just arrived and he’s in his office,’ she told her. ‘Why don’t you go and have a word with him now?’

Giselle’s heart sank. This wasn’t what she had expected or wanted to hear.

Witnessing her hesitation and reluctance, Saul’s PA insisted, ‘I really do think you should, Giselle. This sounds like a potentially serious matter to me, and Saul won’t thank you for delaying informing him about it.’ Moira looked at her watch. ‘I’m sorry—I must run. I’ve promised to take the notes for a committee meeting of our Gardening Club this evening, and I mustn’t be late. But I know Saul’s planning to work late, and I can assure you that he will want to know what you’ve just told me. That’s why you’re here after all.’

It was too late now to wish that she’d kept quiet and not sought Moira’s advice. Taking a deep breath, Giselle headed towards Saul’s office.

Like the other offices on the mezzanine floor, Saul’s was fronted by plate glass ‘walls’. It might be larger than the other offices, and it might have a private inner sanctum, but that apart it was no more prestigiously furnished than her own office, Giselle noted, and it was equipped as a practical working office. Apparently for business meetings Saul used the hospitality suite on the top floor of the building.

Since Saul operated an ‘open door’ working policy, Giselle only knocked briefly on the glass door, which was in any event half open, before stepping into Saul’s office. The brilliance of the late-afternoon sun shone into the room, momentarily blinding her, so that she didn’t realise until her vision cleared that Saul wasn’t there—despite the fact that his laptop was open on his desk and his suit jacket was hanging from the back of his chair. Why was it that only a certain type of very male European man seemed able to wear that particular shade of light tan successfully, whilst looking as though they could have stepped out of an Armani ad? Giselle found herself wondering distractedly. She tried very hard not to picture Saul in just that role—only to be betrayed by her traitorous imagination which suddenly, out of nowhere, managed to create an all too realistic image of Saul standing in for one of the designer’s male underwear models.

Battling with her own imagination, Giselle almost dropped the papers she was hugging to her when the door connecting Saul’s inner office with the outer one suddenly opened, and Saul himself stepped through it.

His easy words—‘Moira, if you could manage to rustle up some coffee and a sandwich whilst I have a shower I’ll be eternally grateful to you…’—changed to an abrupt and far less welcoming, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ when he realised that it was Giselle who was standing in his office and not his PA.

It wasn’t his abrupt manner that was driving hot, self-conscious colour up under her skin, though. Giselle knew that as she struggled to retain her equilibrium under the increased pounding of her heart when she realised that when he had initially come into the room Saul had been starting to unfasten his shirt. The cuffs were already loose, revealing the sinewy dark-hair-covered flesh of one arm as he reached up to push his hand into his hair in a gesture of irritation. His tie was missing and the top buttons of his shirt were unfastened, so that she could see the fine criss-crossing of the beginnings of his body hair. The rush of female awareness that flooded through her almost knocked her off balance with an alien, almost frightening power. She wasn’t used to feeling like this, and the fact that she was doing so affronted and angered her, causing her to clutch the papers even more tightly to her body.

The crackle they made focused Saul’s attention on her. She was breathing too fast, her lips parted, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped some papers in front of her. Her pose was almost that of an ancient civilisation virgin slave, facing the master who had bought her for his pleasure—and with it her own.

The direction his thoughts were taking didn’t please Saul one little bit. He’d spent the last ten days engaged in hard negotiation to secure the prime Chinese sites he wanted for his expanding hotel chain—hard negotiation and also what had seemed at the time easy refusal of sexual favours from the socialites his hosts had introduced him to. Perhaps his body hadn’t been as on-message with that refusal as he had believed, he decided grimly as he attempted to banish the images his mind was now busy conjuring up—images of a green-eyed, blonde-haired beauty wearing next to nothing, offering him the welcome and the pleasure battle-scarred warriors like his own ancestors had expected to receive as a matter of course. He, on the other hand, whilst returning triumphant from his own battle, couldn’t get so much as a drink and a sandwich, and was being confronted by the abrasive secondee he had no wish to have in his life.

Giselle’s voice cut across his thoughts. ‘I can come back tomorrow if you’re too busy to see me now.’

‘I’m leaving for New York tomorrow. If it’s urgent enough for you to come and see me now, then you’d better tell me whatever it is that’s brought you here. Sit down,’ he commanded, before speaking into the intercom. ‘Charlie, would you mind getting me a double espresso and a sandwich from across the road? Put it on my tab. I’ll be in my office.’

Charlie was the doorman, as Giselle knew.

‘Right,’ he said to Giselle when he had finished. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I’m a bit concerned about a costing on one of the new plans,’ Giselle answered. ‘I’ve got the paperwork here.’

Saul made an exasperated sound.

‘I can’t see it whilst you’re clutching it like that, can I? Bring it here and put it on the desk.’

A shaft of sunlight penetrating the shadows around his desk gave the cheap white tee shirt she was wearing an opacity that drew Saul’s gaze automatically to her breasts as she dropped the papers on his desk. Her actions dragged the thin fabric against her body, so that her nipples were outlined in erotically sharp relief. His gaze lingered where the shaft of light was probing the cheap fabric, as though it possessed a male need to strip back the covering from her flesh and explore the sensuality beneath.

She must focus on why she was here and forget about the way her proximity to Saul Parenti was making her feel, Giselle told herself. But how could she when she could almost feel Saul’s critical gaze, underlining Emma’s comments about her?

The arrival of the doorman with Saul’s coffee and sandwich was a welcome relief, allowing her to straighten the papers and then step back from the desk whilst Saul thanked Charlie, rewarding him with a warm smile and a few words of male banter about the doorman’s favourite football team. So there was a human side to Saul Parenti—even if she was never likely to see much of it. Giselle had no idea why that should bring her such a sense of loss and exclusion. She didn’t want him to be nice to her. Not one little bit.

‘So what exactly is the problem?’ Saul demanded, sitting back in his chair and drinking his coffee.

‘It’s this reworked plan, here,’ Giselle told him. She had to lean across the desk to point out the part of the plan in question, too intent on getting the ordeal of what she had to say over and done with to be aware of the way in which her pose had brought her breasts in line with Saul’s gaze.

Saul was, though. And so was his body. And it was reacting very specifically indeed to those soft teardrop-shaped curves with their tip-tilted nipples. He eased his chair closer to the desk, to conceal the giveaway tightening of his trousers as his erection swelled demandingly against the fabric. His hunger for the sandwich the doorman had brought him had suddenly been replaced by a very different and even more insistent kind of hunger.

‘And your conclusion?’ Saul interrupted Giselle curtly. He needed to get her out of his office and get his body back under control—and the sooner the better.

Giselle’s face burned. It was obvious that Saul didn’t want to listen to her and thought that she was wasting his time.

‘There are three possibilities,’ she answered crisply, straightening up and stepping back from the desk. ‘One: the person who drew up the plan and its costing made an error. Two: they knew what they were doing and this is a deliberate attempt to defraud your company…’

‘And three?’ Saul queried, recognising now that she had moved back from him that she had spotted something that could be very serious indeed. He was in no mood to thank her, though. Not whilst his body’s reaction to her was so intense and unwanted.

‘Three: you are deliberately testing me by setting up an error to see what I will do.’

Saul stared at her, anger driving out his desire to get rid of her.

‘Let me get this straight. Are you actually suggesting that I would stoop to that kind of game-playing?’

Giselle lifted her head

‘Why not? You had my car moved.’

Saul came out from behind his desk and walked towards her. Immediately Giselle took a step back from him. She could smell the hot male scent of him and it was making her dizzy, weak, igniting a low, dull, pulsing ache that was taking over her whole body.

‘That was nothing more than an indication of my irritation on the day,’ Saul told her flatly,

Giselle defended her suspicions. ‘You don’t want me here.’

‘No,’ Saul agreed, ‘I don’t.’

And then he did what he had sworn he would not do, cursing himself beneath his breath as he reached for her, pulling her fiercely into his arms and kissing her with all the pent-up fury she had aroused in him from the moment he had first seen her.

Giselle tried to resist him. She certainly wanted to resist him. But the hand she raised to push him away had developed a will of its own and was sliding along his bare arm beneath the sleeve of his shirt, and the body that should have been arching away from him was instead melting into him.

She was all fire, nectar and ambrosia, heated by her desire to run intoxicatingly through his senses, until he was filled by his need for the scent, the feel, the taste and the sound of her as he coupled her desire to his own. His hand reached for her breast, pushing away the fabric that came between her flesh and his touch with all the urgency and impatience of a young untried youth. The dying sunlight embraced her pale flesh, firing it with its caress, and the ruby darkness of her nipple was a hard thrust of flesh that mirrored in its own way his own taut arousal.

Beneath the pressure of his kiss he could feel and taste her gasp of undeniable response to him. He wanted to devour her, consume her, take her and drive them both until they were equally satiated—even whilst the anger within him that she should make him feel that way roared and burned its resentment of his need.