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“One night with the last of the all-time playboys?” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN Copyright
“One night with the last of the all-time playboys?”
Rachel continued wryly, “It had to be a disaster.”
Riccardo drew in a little breath as if she had punched him unexpectedly.
“I see your point,” he admitted levelly. “What I don’t see is why.”
He put a hand on her waist. It felt hot, burning. Suddenly Rachel was having trouble getting her thoughts together.
“Why?” she echoed.
“Why it had to be just one night,” he explained.
Rachel stared at him. Desperately she reminded herself that, however practiced he was, she had the measure of him. She might be shaking, but she had built some defenses in the past nine years. Now she activated them. She pushed at him, head down, outraged.
“Get out of my house.”
He gave ground, but he did not look defeated.
“There’s unfinished business between you and me, Rachel. You know it and so do I. Nothing either of us can say will change that.”
Born in London, Sophie Weston is a traveler by nature who started writing when she was five. She wrote her first romance recovering from illness, thinking her traveling was over. She was wrong, but she enjoyed it so much that she has carried on. These days she lives in the heart of London with two demanding cats and a cherry tree—and travels the world looking for settings for her stories.
www.millsandboon.co.uk
CHAPTER ONE
‘I WON’T,’ yelled Alexandra from the staircase.
Rachel cast a harried look at the kitchen clock. The taxi was due any minute and she had not even checked her briefcase. At the table her stepson, Hugh, was munching his way through an enormous plate of toast and blackcurrant jam, ignoring his sister. No help there, then. Rachel sighed and went out into the hall. She looked up the stairs at her grim-faced stepdaughter.
‘Look, I’ve said no and...’
Alexandra’s expression darkened even further. ‘You’ve got no right to say no. You’re not even my mother.’
This was a complaint that was appearing in their arguments more and more. Rachel would have found it easier to deal with, she was sure, if she had not had a stepmother herself. As it was, half of her sympathised totally with Alexandra. The other, responsible half knew that an adventurous fifteen-year-old needed rules of conduct more than she needed sympathy. As a result their arguments tended to be protracted.
Heaven help me, today of all days, thought Rachel. She resisted the temptation to look at her watch but it was tough.
‘I know I’m not your mother, Alexandra. It makes no difference. Any adult would tell you the same.’
‘Theo’s an adult and he thinks I should go.’
‘Any responsible female adult,’ Rachel corrected herself grimly. She hesitated, then, choosing her words with care, said, ‘Of course Theo wants you to go. You’re a very pretty girl.’
She did not add, as she might well have done, And you’re going to inherit half your father’s business in less than three years. She did not need to. It was there between them already. Her stepdaughter had not forgotten a word of the disastrous altercation after her last evening out with Theo Judd. Rachel could see it in Alexandra’s hot eyes.
Her next words confirmed it. ‘You think Theo’s after my money.’
Rachel pushed her hair back wearily. It was too long. It needed cutting. She had kept it short for nine years but during these last hectic weeks she had not had time to get it cut.
‘I don’t know what he’s after, Alexandra, and that’s the truth.’
‘He’s too old for me. Go on, say it.’
‘Do I have to?’
Alexandra almost stamped her foot. ‘You just don’t know what it’s like.’
And that was a problem too. Rachel knew exactly what it was like to be in love when you were too young and the man you loved was too worldly and sophisticated to recognise how vulnerable you were. In fact, she had worked hard at forgetting for nine years. What was more, she would have said she had succeeded, until Alexandra had decided to make a present of her generous heart to a twenty-four-year-old bartender with a line in flash cars and flashier repartee. Trying to induce a little wariness in her stepdaughter had brought back some memories which could still make Rachel wince.
Sidestepping Alexandra’s comment, she said, ‘I do know that I would not be much of a guardian if I let you stay out till all hours, God knows where, with a man who is nine years older than you are.’
Alexandra could sidestep difficult issues too.
‘Dad was twenty years older than you,’ she snarled.
It was true. In spite of her anger and worry, just for a moment Rachel was startled into amusement. ‘You’ve got me there,’ she admitted. She leaned her arm on the carved wooden banisters and looked up at her stepdaughter straightly. ‘Look, Lexy, I know you won’t believe me now, but that really was different. Your father and I had both been around a bit. Fifteen and twenty-four is another kettle of fish entirely.’
‘You mean I’m a child.’
‘No, maybe not a child exactly. But there is a whole world of experiences you have not had yet.’
‘And Theo has?’
By the truck-load, if Rachel was any judge. Wisely she did not say that either.
Instead she said, ‘Well, he must be well aware of the difference between you and girlfriends of his own age. Even if you aren’t.’
Alexandra tossed her head. ‘Theo thinks I’m very mature.’
Hell, thought Rachel.
There was a swish of tyres on the wet gravel outside the house. Her taxi had arrived.
Knowing that she was giving in and she should not do it, she said, ‘Look, we’ll talk about it this evening...’
‘Because you’ve got to rush off to work, right?’
‘Because I’m late for work,’ Rachel said between her teeth. ‘Because I’m making a strategy presentation. Because the full board will be there and some of the shareholders aren’t happy. Because I have other responsibilities as well as you.’
‘You’re not responsible for me,’ flashed Alexandra.
‘I can make my own decisions.’
Rachel sighed. ‘Not legally. Look, I’ve got to go.’ ‘If my father were alive you wouldn’t treat me like this.’
Rachel winced. Even though these were exactly the circumstances which Brian had envisaged when he’d first begged her to marry him, and they’d both thought she had prepared for them, Rachel had been missing him badly in recent days.
The taxi hooted. Rachel stopped glaring at Alexandra and shot into the kitchen. Late as she was, she still checked the briefcase methodically. It was something her own father had taught her to do and she sometimes thought ruefully that she could do it in her sleep. Everything was there.
She pinned up her hair on top of her head without looking in the mirror. Then she stuffed her handbag under her arm and prepared to go.
Hugh looked up from his breakfast. The pile of toast had diminished noticeably, as it always did. So why did he always look as if he were starving? Rachel thought. He saw her worried look and grinned.
‘Sock it to them, Super Shark.’
Rachel knew this was meant to be both encouraging and complimentary. She responded accordingly.
‘Thank you very much for your support. Hugh...’
He jerked his head at the door. ‘Don’t worry about her. She’ll sort herself out sooner or later.’
‘Just as long as it isn’t too late,’ muttered Rachel, not much comforted.
‘Don’t worry about it. Lexy can look after herself,’ said her sympathetic brother.
‘I hope you’re right.’
The taxi hooted again, longer.
‘Damn. I must go. I’m sorry. I’ll see you both tonight,’ said Rachel, running.
Too fast, of course. It was blowing a gale outside. The leaves flew up, making her blink against the flying dust. The wind caught at her hastily arranged hair and whipped great hanks of red-gold fronding out of its confining hairpins. She cursed but she did not go back to repair the damage. She had told the children she was late for a board meeting. What she had not told them was that it could just turn out to be the most important meeting of her life.
Now, racing into the waiting taxi, she slipped and fell to one knee on the gravel. She felt the run in her tights at once. But it was too late to go back and change. The unfamiliar taxi driver was already impatient and Rachel was hardly less so. She got into the back seat and slammed the door.
‘Bentley’s Investment Bank,’ she said. ‘Old Ship Street.’
All the way to the huge new office block, she could feel the run snaking down her leg. On the sheer dark tights she favoured, it was going to be horribly conspicuous. She would have to keep her legs out of sight under the board table until she could dash out and get another pair. Maybe just before lunch, thought Rachel, running over the timetable in her mind. Then, jumping out of the taxi, she did not duck low enough. Rachel felt her already descending coiffure lurch sideways at the impact. It was the final straw.
As the taxi drove off, she swore before turning to steam in through the silent automatic doors.
‘Morning, Mrs Gray,’ said the security officer, from behind his smart, brass-trimmed desk. He had seen her mishap and could not suppress his grin. ‘Bit windy out there.’
Rachel hefted her briefcase under her arm and thrust her free hand distractedly through her hair. Several pins fell out.
‘Morning, Geoff. Are they here yet?’
The security guards had the best information network in the bank. Geoff did not pretend to misunderstand.
‘The party from the States arrived about ten minutes ago.’
‘Oh, hell.’
‘Mr Jensen is giving them the tour.’
Rachel stopped fluffing up her hair and scattering pins. ‘You mean he knew I hadn’t got here?’
Geoff looked wise. ‘He was looking for you earlier. Mandy told him you were on your way.’
Mandy was her secretary. Philip Jensen was Rachel’s boss—at least on the organisation chart—and he was a panicker.
Rachel sighed. She should have been here an hour ago at least. She had intended to be when she’d put her papers for the meeting into her briefcase last night. But with Alexandra’s bombshell at the breakfast table she had temporarily lost sight of her timetable. The fact that it was her own fault did not help. If anything it made it slightly worse.
‘Hell,’ said Rachel again with feeling.
Geoff grinned and opened the small door at the side of the security guards’ cubby-hole. They had their own lift to all floors which no one else was supposed to use. The theory was that it should be available at all times in case of a security alert. As a result, it was known to be the fastest route between floors. In addition, it had the advantage that she was unlikely to meet the board and their honoured guests in the unadorned steel box which served the security force. It was against bank policy but, on today of all days, the offer was irresistible.
‘Thank you,’ said Rachel with real gratitude, and dived into the prohibited lift.
She made it into her secretary’s office without encountering anyone else. Mandy looked up and took in her situation in a glance. She swung round on her rotating chair and extracted a new packet of tights from the pile in the stationery cupboard behind her.
‘Traffic?’ she said.
Rachel dropped the briefcase thankfully. ‘Only domestic.’
Mandy pushed the tights across the desk and surveyed her thoughtfully. ‘You’ve got mud on your jacket.’
Rachel looked down. It was true. There was a great splash of it like a wizard’s hand across the front.
‘I didn’t realise. It must have happened when I tripped. Damn.’
Mandy held out a hand. ‘Give it to me. I’ll have a go with the clothes-brush. You deal with the extremities.’
Rachel shrugged herself out of the jacket. ‘My one designer suit,’ she said gloomily. ‘Only just back from the cleaners.’
Mandy was surveying the dried mud. ‘The check jacket is in your office. If all else fails you could wear that.’
The check jacket was an old friend. So old that its black velvet collar showed its age. They both knew it. Rachel sighed again.
‘Philip will be furious.’
‘Philip is too terrified to be furious,’ Mandy said frankly. ‘He’ll be so relieved to see you, he won’t care if you turn up in dungarees. Go on.’
Rachel went swiftly into the ladies’ cloakroom, pulling the remaining pins out of her hair as she went. Mandy soon joined her, bearing the check jacket apologetically.
‘Designer clothes need designer cleaning. I brushed the mud off but you could still see the shadow.’
Rachel lobbed the ruined tights into the waste-paper basket and smoothed her skirt.
‘Thank you for trying.’ She straightened up to face her image in the big mirror behind the hand basins and grimaced. ‘It’s not going to make much difference anyway. My hair needs surgery. I’ve lost too many pins to put it up properly.’
‘Then leave it loose.’
Rachel fluffed out the red-gold fronds doubtfully. ‘Not very professional.’
‘Better than everyone in the meeting sitting there wondering when it’s going to fall down,’ Mandy said, ever practical.
Rachel laughed suddenly. ‘You’re probably right. I don’t want to distract them from my beautiful corporate plan.’
She brushed her hair rapidly. Mandy gathered up the scatter of hairpins and silently laid out Rachel’s underused cosmetics. Most of the time Rachel wore no make-up at all unless she was going to some big business reception.
It was Mandy’s private opinion that this was a horrible waste. However, Rachel, although in general as friendly and informal a boss as you could wish for, did not encourage this sort of comment. Mandy could never quite work out whether this was because Rachel genuinely did not know how spectacular she could look when she tried. It seemed unlikely. Sometimes Mandy even suspected that Rachel knew quite well and was, for some obscure reason of her own, terrified by it.
Now Rachel made a face in the mirror, reaching out for the little make-up case. ‘Why is painting your face supposed to improve your confidence?’
Mandy perched on the edge of the vanity counter. ‘Because it makes you look more like a performer?’
‘You mean like a clown?’
‘Like a star,’ Mandy said reprovingly.
Rachel snorted and wrinkled her nose at her reflection. ‘Some hopes.’
So maybe her unawareness of her looks was real. But she had to know how high her professional reputation stood. So why did she not have more self-confidence? Someone somewhere must have done a real number on Rachel, Mandy thought.
She was too tactful to say so, however. Instead, she said, ‘Your confidence doesn’t need any boosting. Everyone in the bank knows how good you are at your job.’
Rachel laughed. ‘That isn’t the point. I’m the one who has to believe I’m good. That’s what confidence means. And after this morning—’ She broke off.
‘What went wrong this morning? Homework?’
Rachel ran a small make-up sponge under the tap before replying. A faint frown appeared as she brushed the sponge across the compressed block of pale tan colour.
‘No.’ She hesitated, then started to sponge on the light make-up with quick, angry strokes. ‘It’s Alexandra.’
Mandy nodded, unsurprised. She had worked with Rachel all through the last three traumatic years and she did not have to have the family tensions explained to her.
‘Being difficult, is she?’
Rachel put the sponge down. ‘She thinks she’d like to live with her mother,’ she said neutrally. ‘Her real mother, that is.’
Mandy was shocked. ‘And can she?’
‘I don’t know. Not unless her mother wants her, that’s for sure.’
‘She doesn’t?’
Rachel picked up a palette of eye-shadows and a small brush. She surveyed herself, hesitating.
‘Not up to now. That’s why Brian—’ She broke off abruptly and leant forward to paint discreet colour onto her eyelids. Mandy bit her lip. When Rachel mentioned her late husband it was usually a sign that she was deeply disturbed.
‘How old is Alexandra now?’ she asked, tactfully changing the subject.
Rachel gave her a pale grin in the mirror. ‘Fifteen going on forty. To judge by this morning’s performance, anyway.’
Mandy was surprised. ‘How quickly they grow up. I hadn’t realised.’
‘Nor, according to Alexandra, had I,’ Rachel said drily.
‘Ah,’ said Mandy, enlightened. She had younger sisters. ‘She wants to go to a rock concert and you won’t let her.’
Rachel’s face tightened. ‘Something like that.’ ‘They all do,’ Mandy said comfortingly. ‘It’s just a phase. I had some terrible fights with my father. You grow out of it.’
Rachel flicked the little brush over her other eyelid. ‘Do you? I never had any fights like that. Too much of a goody-goody. Never did anything my father wouldn’t like,’ she confessed.
Except once, said a small voice inside her. Except that last, fatal time when you brought the whole world down on everyone, just because you were determined to show Riccardo di Stefano and his kind that they could not hurt people with impunity.
It was a voice that had been whispering away for three or four days now. It reminded her that even the best-conducted adolescents could make some horrible mistakes. It was a voice she had silenced for nine years and it was disconcerting to find it coming out of the ether now. Especially as it had a disturbing tendency to take her difficult stepdaughter’s side in the present argument.
Mandy said comfortably, ‘I bet you did. You’ve just forgotten.’ She relieved Rachel of the eye-shadow and handed her a lipstick and lip-brush. ‘Alexandra just needs a good fight with authority at the moment. You happen to be the only major authority figure around. Hard on you, but it’s not the end of the world. What she needs is a man in her life.’
Rachel shuddered. ‘Don’t say that. She’s jolly nearly got one.’
Mandy was unperturbed. ‘We all had boyfriends.’
Rachel paused, the lip-brush arrested halfway to her mouth. Not me, she thought involuntarily. Is that why I’m so bad at dealing with Alexandra? Is it because I never went through the normal stages? Was I just too busy being a good little girl, working hard and winning prizes? Until... The voice again! Why on earth should it start up now when she needed all the confidence she could summon up?
She suppressed the voice, applied the lipstick, stepped back and looked at herself critically.
‘Well, that will have to do.’
Mandy nodded approval. In spite of the fact that Rachel paid very little attention to her appearance, when you had shining, naturally auburn hair and wide brown eyes, it did not make too much difference, Mandy thought without jealousy. A dash of modest eye-shadow and Rachel’s eyes turned the colour of Madeira wine.
‘You look gorgeous.’
Rachel sent her a harassed look. ‘I wish I looked tidy.’ She flicked irritatedly at the loose hair about her shoulders. ‘Tidy is efficient. Untidy—well...’
‘Philip knows you’re efficient,’ Mandy soothed.
‘It isn’t Philip I have to convince.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Being half an hour late isn’t going to help either.’
Mandy laughed and uncurled herself from her perch.
‘Don’t worry about it. The new boss man has changed all the meetings round, so no one knows who is due to speak when or on what. With a bit of luck no one except Philip will even know.’
Rachel was looking in the mirror, giving a last downward brush to her neat skirt, but this made her look round. ‘New boss man?’
‘Genghis Khan in person,’ Mandy said cheerfully.
Rachel was aware of a quick lurch in her stomach, as if she were still in Geoff’s lift and it had hurtled down to the lowest level of the underground car park. You’re paranoid, she told herself. And obsessed. This is ancient history. You’d never have remembered it at all if it weren’t for the fight with Alexandra.
She took a firm grip on herself and said casually, ‘Which Genghis Khan is that?’
‘The main man. Leader of the barbarians in person.’
Her stomach sank below car-park level to somewhere around the seabed.
‘You don’t mean di Stefano?’
Please tell me you don’t mean Riccardo Enrico di Stefano, heir to one fortune and personal creator of another five times the size, patron of the arts, darling of the gossip columns and the man who took confidence into a whole new dimension.
But Mandy was grinning. ‘Himself.’
Rachel’s stomach penetrated the earth’s crust without difficulty and began to swirl around in the molten core. She could feel the heat in her face. She even put up a hand. Her cheekbone was warm under the make-up.
She swallowed. ‘What—?’ Her voice squeaked. Mandy was looking at her curiously. She swallowed and got a grip on her vocal cords. ‘What is Riccardo di Stefano doing here? The bank is only a minority investment from his point of view.’
Mandy chuckled. ‘Well, from what I saw when I helped Angela with the photocopying, that’s all going to change. I’d say he’s going to buy us.’
Rachel stared at her, appalled. Mandy misinterpreted the horror.
‘Don’t worry about it. He’ll probably buy your corprorate plan as well. More likely to than the old board, if you ask me.’
This could not be happening. Something inside her was turning over like a hibernating beast roused out of ice. Old, deep ice. Rachel could feel the faint internal tremors starting again. They were not exactly unfamiliar, but she had not been aware of them for years. Meanwhile, Mandy, unaware, was giving her an encouraging smile.
‘You could be right,’ Rachel said faintly.
Mandy patted her on the shoulder. ‘Of course I’m right. Now go and broke the agreement.’
There was nothing to be done. If he was here already, all her escape routes were blocked.
‘Yes,’ said Rachel automatically.
She shrugged herself into the check jacket like a sleepwalker and went to the door. She looked as if someone had hit her with a sandbag, Mandy thought. More encouragement was clearly called for.
‘Cheer up, Rachel. Your tights are whole and your jacket is clean. From here on in, today can only get better.’
Rachel stared at her. For an odd moment it seemed as if she were looking over the precipice of a particularly cold and deadly mountain. Then she gave a harsh laugh. ‘I wouldn’t put money on it.’
It was bitter. It even startled Mandy out of her cheerfulness. Then she said bracingly, ‘You’ll do fine. Bigwigs have never worried you. The bigger the wig, the cooler you get.’
But Rachel was still looking sick. Mandy had never seen her look like that before. She began to be alarmed.
‘You can handle yourself,’ Mandy reminded her urgently, putting a hand on her arm. ‘You know you can.’
Rachel gave a little jump as if she had been brought back to the present by main force. ‘I hope,’ she muttered.
The sick look went out of her face. But although she was regaining command of herself there was still that shaken look at the back of her eyes. It was almost as if she had received a bad shock, Mandy thought. Which, of course, was ridiculous. It took more than a visiting troupe of American money-men to shock Rachel. Or, at least, it ought to.
Rachel was thinking the same thing. She pulled her jacket straight and squared her shoulders in the mirror.