Visconti's Forgotten Heir. Elizabeth Power
of a humble restaurateur could have gone from a virtual dogsbody in his father’s restaurant to CEO of a chain of exclusive hotels.
‘You know I never leave anything to chance.’
Fat chance. His declaration brought those two words to the forefront of her mind. It seemed to be something she had said once in connection with his telling her what he intended to do with his life.
‘I think you should have a brandy,’ he advised, already on his way over to a cabinet on the far side of the room.
‘I never drink.’ If there were still facts missing from her life then that was one fact she had never allowed herself to forget. ‘I’ve seen what it can do to people.’
He nodded, knowing what had prompted her to say it. Her mother.
Magenta recalled how hard she had battled as a teenager against her mother’s addiction, which had been constantly fuelled by a string of broken relationships.
‘In that case I’ll send for some coffee.’ Andreas picked up the phone and ordered some to be brought up in that deep, authoritative voice of his. ‘Sit down,’ he invited.
Magenta stood there, thinking of the young man whose hands she had been so drawn to when he’d set that first cup of coffee he had made down in front of her. She couldn’t get over how this new present-day Andreas didn’t even have to perform that simple task himself.
‘So what happened, Andreas?’ she asked, still standing her ground. ‘I know you’re dying to tell me, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me up here.’ Unless, of course, he had it in his mind to take up where they had left off in the lift, she thought, her mind rejecting the idea as strongly as her body was responding to it, just to mock her.
‘You’re perfectly safe—if you’re thinking what I think you are,’ that masculine voice intoned, startling her into obeying his silent command to sink down onto one of the huge and plushly inviting settees. ‘I don’t intend to make overtures to a woman who showed such repugnance at my kisses. You put on a good show of displaying that out there—even if we both know that that’s really all it was. A show,’ he emphasised.
He was entirely miscalculating the reason for her shattering reaction in the lift—something she was certain he didn’t do very often.
‘I had a lucky break when an uncle I never knew died and left me three restaurants between Naples and Milan.’
‘So you do believe in luck?’ she uttered, reminding him of what he’d said a few moments ago about never leaving anything to chance.
‘If one can expand on that luck and make things happen.’
‘Which you did, of course.’
‘It was a gruelling, round-the-clock enterprise, building up those restaurants and then opening more in the States, where I was living until less than a year ago, then investing in and turning around the fortunes of a series of small hotels. That led on to bigger things that finally brought me here. Nothing is impossible if you’re prepared to work hard enough.’
That judgmental note was back in his voice again, and unthinkingly she uttered, ‘Instead of trading on one’s physical attributes like you seem to want to accuse me of doing?’
He gave her a withering look but didn’t actually comment as he crossed the room and came and stood in front of her. ‘Tell me about your son,’ he said without any preamble. ‘It can’t be any picnic, bringing up a child on your own.’
His words triggered something that was too elusive to grasp, yet what lingered in the forefront of her mind was a real and crushing fear. An intangible yet instinctive knowledge that if this man realised she’d had his child he wouldn’t hesitate to try and take Theo away from her....
‘What...what do you want to know?’ she faltered, casting her eyes down briefly, her lashes dark wings of ebony against the wells of her eyes. Had he detected the tension in her? she wondered when she saw the deepening groove between his thick black brows. Guessed at the reasons for her reluctance to discuss her little boy?
‘Did Rushford really dump you before you’d even reached the full term of your pregnancy?’
So he was still insisting that Marcus Rushford had been her lover. The thought of sleeping with her former exploitative agent made her stomach queasy, even though he was an attractive and very worldly man. That was preferable, though, to the possible consequences of explaining to Andreas that he was the father of her child, and crazily she uttered, ‘If it makes you feel smug, believe it.’
His response to that was merely a slight twitching of his mouth. ‘So...does Rushford even see his son?’
Magenta’s mouth felt dry. She wished the coffee would come as she struggled for composure under this very disturbing line of questioning.
‘His name is Marcus. And, no, he doesn’t ever see Theo.’
‘What?’ Hard lines of disbelief lined Andreas’s face. ‘Never?’ He looked and sounded appalled.
‘Never,’ she uttered dismissively, deciding to end the conversation there and then. ‘There never was another vacancy, was there?’ she accused again, deciding he really had only brought her up here to satisfy some warped agenda of his own. ‘So now you’ve shown me just how well you’re doing...’ quickly she got to her feet ‘...and clarified that all those rumours you heard about me were probably true, I’ll be on my way.’
Trying to save face before she walked away from him, wondering how in the world she was ever going to pay her mounting bills, she forced back her concerns and told him, ‘This wasn’t the only job I was being interviewed for today.’
She hadn’t even reached the door when she heard him say confidently, ‘Liar.’
She swung round, speechless at his mocking arrogance.
‘I haven’t got where I am today without gaining some insight into human nature,’ he disclosed, moving towards her with the self-possessed demeanour of a man who knew he was right. ‘A woman doesn’t normally go to pieces over losing the prospect of a job, as you nearly did down there, if she has another package tucked neatly up her sleeve and hasn’t pinned her hopes on just one that she thinks might be a little way out of her league.’
Was that what he thought? That she wasn’t suitable for the post? ‘I didn’t think any such thing! And I wasn’t going to pieces, as you’d like to imagine I was.’
‘Weren’t you?’ The trace of a smile played around his mouth. ‘You seem to forget—I know you. Although you’ve done your level best since we met again last Friday to try and make me believe you’re suffering from some sort of selective memory loss, I do know you, Magenta. Very well. I know how your eyes always glitter when you’re inviting me to challenge you. How the excitement of some delightful reprisal serves to put colour in your cheeks.’
He was moving purposefully towards her, making her instincts scream in rejection. Her body, though, trembled with the excitement he had spoken of—even as she feared that he might just remind her of what other responses he could evoke in her, as he had done on the way up here.
‘Apart from which,’ he added, coming to a stop just centimetres in front of her, ‘you were almost visibly shaking. Just like you’re doing now.’
She wanted to protest and say that she wasn’t shaking, and that the other responses he had mentioned were just a figment of his self-deluded ego. But if she did that then they’d both know that she was guilty of doing what he had accused her of doing a few moments ago. Telling lies.
He was playing with her just for his own warped sense of satisfaction, she guessed, feeling the burn of humiliating tears sting the backs of her eyes again, and she knew she had to get out of there before she showed herself up completely.
‘Goodbye, Andreas.’
He was at the door, blocking her exit, even before she had time to reach