Her Italian Boss’s Agenda

CHAPTER NINE

PRIMO stayed at the party as long as he could endure it, partly for his mother’s sake and partly because he was afraid of what he might do if he followed Luke and Olympia. In the early hours he departed and drove around the city disconsolately until at last he turned the car to the place he had always intended to go.

As he drew up outside the Vallini he saw that the lights of her suite were still on. So she hadn’t carried out her threat to leave. He let out a long breath of relief, discovering that his whole body was aching with tension.

The young man on the desk smiled, recognising him from a few days earlier. ‘I’ll just let her know.’

But Primo stopped him reaching for the phone. ‘I want to surprise her.’

‘I’m really supposed to call ahead, signore.’

A note changed hands.

‘I guess you forgot,’ Primo said with a conspiratorial smile.

‘Si, signore.’

She took so long to answer the door that he wondered if she’d left after all. But at last she opened it. Her face set when she saw him but he was ready for this and put his foot in the door before she could slam it. With a swift movement he was inside, facing her fury.

‘Get out of here!’ she flashed.

‘Not until we’ve had a talk.’

‘We’ve had it. It’s over.’

‘You didn’t let me say anything.’

‘I let you say all that I was interested in hearing. Which was zilch. Just what do you imagine there is to say? I trusted you and all the time you were setting me up. I don’t know what pleasure you got out of it, but whatever it was you should be ashamed.’

‘I am. I never meant it to go so far. Please, Olympia, it was just a joke that got out of hand.’

‘You kept it going a lot longer than that.’

‘Things happened unexpectedly. It all ran out of control.’

‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. It ran out of your control? Primo Rinucci, the big boss, the man in charge, who snaps his fingers and people jump-’

‘Cut that out,’ he raged. ‘You created a tailor’s dummy and told yourself a load of stories about him, but he’s not me. He never was.’

‘Why didn’t you stop me?’

‘Because I was enjoying myself,’ he said rashly.

‘Ah, now we have it. You loved making a fool of me-’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant-’

Somewhere there were the words that would tell her of the delight he’d known during those few days when he’d teased and incited her while falling under her spell. There must be words for the sweetness that had engulfed him, the sense of a miracle, so long awaited, that must be treated with care, lest it vanish. And more words for the fear that overcame him whenever he thought of telling the truth and risking everything.

Yes, there were words. If only he could find them.

‘Well?’ she demanded remorselessly.

‘I didn’t mean it to turn out the way it did,’ was the best he could manage.

‘No, you didn’t mean to get caught out.’

‘That wasn’t what I-’

‘Just how did you plan to tell me? Or didn’t you?’

‘Of course I was going to tell you, but it was hard. I knew you’d misunderstand.’

‘Surely not?’ she said caustically. ‘How could anyone misunderstand a man who gives a false name and lures a woman into making a fool of herself just so that he can have a cheap laugh? Men do it every day, and women put up with it.’

‘And what about what women do every day?’ he demanded, stung to anger. ‘You were planning a good laugh yourself, weren’t you? When Rinucci turned up you were going to take him for a ride. You had it all worked out, down to the last detail, fluttering your eyelashes, plus the old hair trick culled from a hundred corny films.

‘You even enlisted me to give you “inside information”-your own words-to weaken his defences, and never mind what a fool you’d be making of him when he turned up and I watched you bringing him down. I may have behaved badly, but that’s nothing to the derision you piled on him-I mean me. Oh, hell!’

‘You can’t even sort out which of you is which,’ she snapped.

‘That’s true,’ he said wryly.

‘What do you think it was like for me to find out the truth the way I did?’

‘How could I have anticipated that? I didn’t know you were going to be at my mother’s.’

‘I wouldn’t have been if I’d known you were coming back. You kept very quiet about it.’

‘I wanted to surprise you.’

‘You sure as hell did that.’

‘Olympia, please, I know I did wrong, but it wasn’t for a laugh.’

‘You’ll never get me to believe that in a million years, so don’t try.’

She turned and stormed away from him. She’d changed out of her glamorous red dress into serviceable trousers and sweater. Her face was free of make-up and her hair was dishevelled. It looked as if she’d torn down the elaborate arrangement then scragged it back any old how. A few wisps hung down over her face, softening the austere lines.

Despite her rage it was her misery that reached him most poignantly. Without the glitz she was pale and slightly wan, and even more beautiful in his eyes. He longed to reach out to her but he knew it wasn’t the right time. She wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say.

She was walking up and down the room now, brooding bitterly. ‘All those things I said. I trusted you.’

The injustice of this made his temper rise again.

‘Yes, you trusted me with a blow-by-blow account of the unscrupulous methods a woman adopts to bring a man to heel. A real eye-opener! I should write a book about it. Men beware! This is what they get up to. You turned me into a fellow conspirator with myself as the intended victim. I don’t know who to feel sorrier for-me or me!’

‘I warned you I wasn’t a nice person,’ she told him. ‘Remember that day I said that I was up front about what I wanted and what I’d do to get it? You should have believed me.’

‘I did believe you,’ he shouted. ‘How could I not when I was getting a demonstration every moment? You did a great job. Up front with me, not with him, although of course you couldn’t have afforded to be. That’s what you’re really angry about, isn’t it? You showed your weapons to the wrong man and now they’re dead in your hands.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not planning to use them on you.’

‘But you did use them on me, and to hell with me and my feelings! Did you ever think of your victim? Suppose I’d fallen in love with you?’

‘Be honest! You were in no danger of that.’

‘Luckily for me I wasn’t. I’m safe against your kind-’

‘And just what is my “kind”?’

‘Heartless, scheming, manipulative, calculating-take your pick. Yes, I’m safe, but you didn’t know that. If I’d fallen in love with you that wouldn’t have mattered, would it? Just a casualty of the war, only it wasn’t my war, you heartless woman!’

In despair she stared at him. All the things that had seemed so simple before, when she had prided herself on being immune to feelings, now presented themselves in stark, livid colours, shocking in the light he turned on them.

When she spoke her voice shook. ‘Then it’s fortunate for both of us that you’re so armoured-almost as armoured as I am.’

‘Yes, I noticed that,’ he said softly. ‘When I held you, trembling in my arms, I thought how cold and indifferent you were.’

Her eyes glittered in a way he knew. ‘I do it very well, don’t I?’ she said softly. ‘I know all the right buttons to press, and I can press them in the right order.’

He paled. ‘Are you telling me it was all an act?’

‘Are you so sure it wasn’t?’

Her words brought them to the edge of the precipice, showing him the disaster waiting below.

‘Olympia, don’t,’ he said urgently. ‘Don’t do this, please don’t, for both our sakes.’

‘But what do you think I’m doing? Just being honest, that’s all.’

‘This isn’t honesty. It’s pride and revenge, and maybe you have the right, but don’t do it. Don’t ruin what we still might have.’

She gave a cruel laugh. ‘You actually imagine that there might be something between us, after this?’

‘I know it sounds crazy, but that’s because we’ve been performing in masks, inventing other selves and thinking that’s who we were. But if we could get clear of that and be ourselves-’

He left the implication hanging in the air and for a moment he thought he’d won. Her face softened and a weary look passed across it. But then she said, ‘If we could do that we’d probably find we liked each other-and ourselves-even less. It’s too late, Ja-’ She broke off and a spasm of pain went over her face. ‘Signor Rinucci.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ he shouted.

‘It’s a useful reminder, in case I forget,’ she cried back at him. ‘Or in case you do.’

He closed his eyes. His world was disintegrating about him and whatever he did made it worse. He could only say her name in anguish.

‘Olympia-Olympia-’

‘Don’t.’

They stood in silence, neither knowing what to say.

He looked around him and suddenly noticed things that he’d failed to notice before, and which now seemed ominous.

A half-packed suitcase stood open on the sofa and several clothes were draped over the back.

‘Packing?’ he breathed. ‘Now?’

‘Yes, now. I’m moving out of here tonight.’

‘I told you, you can’t go back to England.’

‘I’m not. I’ve decided to stay and take up the job with Leonate. But I’m moving out of here tonight and going where you can’t follow me.’

‘There’s nowhere I can’t follow you, and I will.’

‘You don’t need to. I’m coming to work tomorrow. Or is that another of your fictions?’

‘No, the job is there.’

‘Then it’s about time I met my colleagues, Signore Leonate and Signor Rinucci who, I understand, is the real power behind the throne. I’m longing to meet him-that is, if you can sort out which one he is.’

‘Stop it,’ he said violently. ‘Are you going to beat me over the head with that for ever?’

‘I can try.’

‘So you reckon you’re the injured innocent? I don’t think so. I may have laid a small trap, but you made it bigger and jumped in with both feet. I’m sorry you feel foolish, but it’s nothing to the kind of foolish that I’d have felt if things had worked out the way you meant.’

He came closer to her, seizing her arm so that she couldn’t turn away from him.

‘That was quite a plan you had, Olympia. Rinucci was going to turn up and you were going to use your wiles on him, and I was going to do what, exactly? Cheer you on from the sidelines? Suppose I’d warned him and brought your house of cards tumbling down? Did you think of that? Of course you didn’t, because you never thought that far ahead.’

‘How far ahead did you think?’ she flung at him.

‘Not far enough, which is why I don’t blame you too much-’

‘Big of you, considering that you started it.’

‘That’s arguable. You said a lot of things before you made the most cursory check who I was. The astute operator you want me to believe in wouldn’t have done that. Perhaps I should question your skills a little more. Not your seductive skills, because we know about those-’

There was a crack as her hand connected with his face. Then something seemed to hold them both petrified. Her eyes were filled with anger, bitterness and insult. But there was also anguish and a kind of fear.

He saw it and his own anger died. Even at this moment he discovered that he couldn’t bear to see her hurt. It made quarrelling very difficult.

‘Let’s say that makes us even,’ he told her quietly. ‘Now can we draw a line under it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said in a choking voice.

‘But I do.’ He turned her towards him and gently drew her close. ‘That’s it,’ he said as he lowered his mouth to hers. ‘No more fighting. It’s finished.’

‘You can’t just-’

‘Yes, I can,’ he said, silencing her.

The last thought of which she was capable was, How dare he?

How dared he think that one kiss could make up for everything, and that she would simply do as he asked because his lips thrilled her? She would show him that he was wrong-she must show him that-just as soon as her strength came back.

But instead of returning it was draining away with every movement of his mouth against hers, as her body grew warmer, more eager to be his, and with less will of its own.

‘The past is over,’ he murmured against her mouth. ‘It’s the future that matters.’

‘But how can we-?’ she whispered back.

‘I don’t know. Who knows the future? We make it ourselves. Hold me.’

She did so, sliding her arms about his neck, part embracing him, part clinging to him for safety. There were no thoughts now, only the blind instinct to seek him, join with him, belong to him.

The past no longer mattered. She’d known she was falling in love with him. She’d faced it, accepted it, even welcomed it. Now she felt the warmth of his body communicating itself to hers and she knew that she needed that warmth, not only in her flesh but in her heart.

For too many years she’d been cold, hiding from love in her bleak cave. She knew now that only he could tempt her out. It was a risk, but every skilled movement of his mouth, his hands, urged her to take that risk and say, with him, that the past was over and they would make the future together.

In a haze of delight she was barely aware of him moving, drawing her after him in the direction of her bedroom. Not until she heard the door click did she get a sense of danger.

‘Wait-’ she said urgently.

He picked her up in his arms. ‘Haven’t we waited long enough?’

‘But there’s something I must-you don’t understand-’

‘I understand this,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘What else is there to understand?’

As he spoke he kicked the door open and walked into the grandiose bedroom, heading for the huge luxurious bed, so absorbed in his passion that he was close up to it before he realised that something was there that shouldn’t have been.

A man was stretched out on the coverlet, his hands behind his head, grinning derisively.

‘Hallo,’ said Luke.

For a moment Primo could do no more than stare at his brother. Just as Olympia, earlier that evening, had told herself that what she saw was impossible, so now Primo closed, opened and closed his eyes, certain that the next time Luke would have disappeared.

But he stayed there, solid and, to his brother, thoroughly objectionable.

‘You really should have warned me,’ Primo said, speaking to Olympia but not looking at her. ‘But if I’d been sharper I’d have expected it.’

‘Will you please put me down?’ she said edgily.

He meant to lower her with dignity but shock was causing the strength to drain away from his arms. They gave way abruptly and she ended up sprawling on the bed where Luke quickly took hold of her to stop her sliding off.

‘No need to throw the lady about,’ Luke observed. ‘Not that I mind, you understand.’

Primo treated this remark with disdain. It was that or murder.

‘What a picture!’ he said softly. ‘I should have known, shouldn’t I?’

‘How dare you?’ Olympia flashed. ‘Luke came here to help me to get out of this place.’

She scrambled to the floor, flushed and panting. Torn by conflicting feelings, bitterness and passion, she felt she would explode any minute. For a blinding moment she hated both of them.

‘If you’re thinking what I think you are-’ she threw at Primo.

‘He was waiting for you in your bedroom all the time,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘What do you expect me to think?’

‘He’s fully dressed, or haven’t you noticed that? I told you, Luke came here to help me.’

‘Hidden in your bedroom?’ Primo demanded, almost savagely. The thought that Luke had been here all the time, listening, made him wild.

‘That’s where people usually do their packing,’ Luke pointed out, indicating another open suitcase. ‘I’ve just been fetching and carrying, acting like a maid.’

‘Helping your mistress undress?’ Primo asked coldly. ‘Isn’t that what a maid does?’

‘Among other things.’

‘Shut up both of you,’ Olympia said fiercely. ‘You-’ she turned on Primo ‘-you do not own me, you do not give me orders, I am not answerable to you, except at work.’

‘Where I expect you to be tomorrow morning,’ he snapped. ‘Be on time.’

‘He’s right, we’d better be going,’ Luke said, scrambling off the bed. ‘Olympia, I’ll wait for you in the next room.’

‘There’s no need, I’m coming,’ she said. ‘Everything’s packed.’

She began to close the suitcase, not looking at Primo. He watched her in silence for a moment.

At last he spoke in a harsh voice. ‘Will you tell me where you’re going to stay? Or needn’t I ask?’

Now she looked at him and was startled by his face. She had seen him charming, and sometimes annoyed, but never coldly venomous, as now. Beneath the surface control he was in a bitter rage that threatened to engulf him, and for the second time that night she was actually afraid of him.

‘You needn’t ask,’ she said. ‘I’m staying in Luke’s apartment.’

‘Then get out of my sight and don’t talk to me again,’ he raged. ‘Go on! Get out!’

Since her car was still at the hotel, Luke took her to work the next morning and introduced her to Enrico Leonate. He was a plump elderly man with a genial manner and he welcomed her with open arms.

‘Primo has told me so much about you,’ he enthused.

‘I hope he’s explained that my Italian is very basic,’ Olympia said.

‘It will improve, and in the meantime we all speak English very well.’

‘And besides, Miss Lincoln is a quick learner,’ said a voice behind her.

‘Ah, Primo,’ Enrico cried. ‘Come in. Miss Lincoln and I were just introducing ourselves.’

‘Please call me Olympia,’ she said to the old man.

‘Then you must call me Enrico. Primo, here she is, and just as lovely as you said.’

‘I don’t think I said that exactly,’ Primo replied coolly.

‘But you-’

‘Described her as businesslike, focused, intelligent, diligent and-as I said before, a very quick learner. She’s particularly good at winning people over.’

‘That’s what we need,’ Enrico roared happily.

‘Don’t accept everything Signor Rinucci says about me,’ Olympia said lightly. ‘He’s prejudiced.’

‘Of course he’s prejudiced in your favour. He saw you at work in England.’

‘That’s very true,’ Primo murmured.

‘And you were impressed?’

‘Oh, yes, it was an impressive sight. I believe I’ve said as much to you since, signorina.’

‘You have indeed,’ she riposted. ‘But I was learning much from you, a true master in the art of manipulation.’

‘That’s his Italian side,’ Enrico said triumphantly. ‘It is our gift to see things from many angles at once. When you have been with us for a while, you too will have learned it. Primo will teach you.’

‘You do the signorina an injustice,’ Primo said. ‘She has nothing to learn from me.’

Luke had been watching this exchange from where he’d been standing quietly by the window, his eyes alight with malicious pleasure. Now, as though feeling that he’d enjoyed the entertainment long enough, he roused himself to say, ‘I’d better be going. Call me later, Olympia, and I’ll collect you.’

‘I don’t want to be a nuisance,’ she said. ‘I could get my car from the Vallini and drive home.’

‘You don’t know the way yet. It was dark when we did the journey last night.’ He gave her a warm smile. ‘And how could you ever be a nuisance?’

‘That’s a very nice thing to say, but actually it’s just a slur on my driving.’

‘I was maintaining a diplomatic silence about your driving,’ he said with a grin.

‘Goodbye!’ she told him firmly.

‘Yes, goodbye,’ Primo said without looking up.

Luke winked at Olympia and departed.

‘Primo has told me how you took him around the Curtis factories,’ Enrico said. ‘Now I think he should return the favour and show you around the Leonate empire.’

‘Actually, Enrico, that’s a bit difficult,’ Primo said. ‘I’ve got a backlog of work to get through. I suggest that Signora Pattino undertakes this task.’

‘As you say. Well, why don’t you show Olympia to her office?’

‘No, you do that. I have to get going. Signorina, I should like to welcome you to Leonate and hope that you will be happy with us.’

He said the last words like a robot and was gone instantly.

‘Well, he really does have a lot to do,’ Enrico said, sounding awkward. ‘Let’s go.’

That day was like the culmination of every ambitious dream she’d ever had. The office he showed her was modern, attractive and better than her old one. They discussed the firm and he was impressed with her knowledge.

‘You’ve been learning about Leonate,’ he said. ‘Well done! You’re everything Primo said you’d be.’

He swept her off to lunch, taking also Signora Pattino, his Personal Assistant, a comfortable, middle-aged woman who said she would enjoy being her guide in the coming days. Wherever she went she was welcomed as an asset by people who knew nothing about her except what Primo had told them.

But whatever he’d said was in the past. This morning he’d shown a cruel irony that reflected his true feelings now. Their conversation, superficially friendly, had been charged with hidden meaning that Enrico hadn’t understood.

But Luke had understood every word.