Lucy Gordon - Her Italian Boss’s Agenda

‘Yes,’ Primo murmured inaudibly. ‘It is.’

‘You knew her in England, didn’t you?’ Luke added. ‘What’s the story?’

‘There is no story,’ Primo said repressively.

‘Odd that. She won’t talk about you either.’

‘Then mind your own damned business,’ Primo said with soft venom.

‘Like that, is it? Why don’t you ask her to dance? It’s cool with me.’

This time the look his brother turned on him was murderous. But the music was ending and Primo marched swiftly over to Olympia and reached for her hand, saying, ‘Let’s dance.’

‘I think not,’ she said. ‘I’ve promised this one.’

She slid easily into the arms of an elderly uncle whose name she had forgotten but who beamed at his luck. Primo watched them, planning dire retribution on his innocent relative. It didn’t help when the uncle’s wife stood beside him, sighing happily. ‘Isn’t she a nice girl to be so kind to the old fool? It’s not often he has such fun.’

When the dance was over Primo took no chances.

‘The next one is with me,’ he said, taking firm hold of her hand.

‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,’ she said, trying to break free and failing.

The music was beginning. Primo’s arm was about her waist in an unbreakable hold and Olympia found that she had no choice but to dance with him.

Such forcefulness was new, coming from him, and it increased her anger. Yet that very anger also seemed part of the heady excitement that the drama of the situation was causing to stream through her.

‘Who the hell are you to be high-handed?’ she demanded furiously.

He gave her a wolfish grin.

‘I’m Primo Rinucci, a man I’ve heard you describe as ruthless and power-mad. A man to be hunted down by a determined woman and used for anything she can get out of him.’

‘I never said that.’

‘You said plenty that meant exactly that. So why should you be surprised if I act up to your picture of me?’

‘All right, enjoy yourself while you can. Tomorrow I’m on the first plane home.’

‘I think not. You have a contract with Leonate.’

‘I never signed any contract.’

‘You signed one with Curtis that has a year to run. Leonate own Curtis, which means that I own you for the next year.’

‘The hell you do.’

‘The hell I don’t! What happens to you now is up to me. Leave now and I’ll freeze you out of the entire industry, for good. You’ll be amazed at how far my tentacles stretch. How’s that for ruthless and power-mad?’

‘About what I’d have expected.’

‘Good, then we both know where we stand.’

‘Let me go right now.’

‘Not until you see sense,’ he said harshly. ‘I admit I behaved badly but I didn’t plan it. It was mostly accident-’

‘Oh, please,’ she scoffed.

‘It got out of hand, and when you’ve calmed down I’ll explain-’

‘You will not explain because I don’t want to hear.’

‘Olympia, please-’

‘I said let me go’

Luke was watching Olympia and his brother with mixed feelings. He’d only known her a few hours, but already she affected him strongly. He’d been looking forward to knowing her better, and then better still. Even his mother’s wild hopes hadn’t seemed totally fanciful.

And now this!

For he couldn’t kid himself. Primo’s arrival had changed something drastically. If Olympia’s face hadn’t told him that, Primo’s would have done. He’d seen emotions in his brother’s face that he wouldn’t have believed possible. He fixed brooding eyes on them and watched every detail.

When he saw Olympia wrench herself from Primo’s grasp he went to her quickly.

‘Why don’t we slip away by ourselves?’ he said. ‘Mamma will forgive us.’

Hope’s face confirmed it. When Luke signalled to her that he and Olympia were leaving she beamed and blew him a kiss, evidently convinced that the romance was proceeding perfectly.

‘Olympia!’ It was Primo, dark-faced with anger. ‘You can’t leave like this.’

‘According to whom?’ she demanded in outrage. ‘Are you daring to give me orders? Just because you’ve had me dancing to your tune recently you think that’s going to go on? Think again. It’s over. Your cover’s blown. Go on to the next victim and get out of my way.’

For a moment she thought he would refuse, he seemed so firmly set in her path. But then the tension seemed to go out of him and his eyes were suddenly bleak.

‘Get out, then,’ he said.

Taking Luke’s arm, she hurried past him. She was suddenly afraid of Primo.

In half an hour they were seated in a small fish restaurant near the shore. Luke ordered spaghetti with clams and refused to let her speak until she had taken the first few mouthfuls.

She sighed with pleasure. ‘Thank you. Now I feel so much better.’

‘I had an ulterior motive,’ he admitted. ‘I expect to be rewarded with the whole story. What did the bastardo do?’

It would have been superfluous to ask who the bastardo was.

When she didn’t reply, he said gently, ‘You did know him, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, we met in England.’

‘But he didn’t tell you he was Primo Rinucci?’

‘No, he said he was Jack Cayman.’

Luke gave a soft whistle.

‘The devil he did! Well, it was his father’s name.’

‘Yes, your mother told me. She says he’s Italian on his mother’s side.’

‘We’re never too sure how much of him is English and how much Italian, and I doubt if he knows either. He sometimes uses the name Cayman in business-’

‘This wasn’t business,’ she said in a tense voice.

He didn’t press her any further, but gradually she found it easier to talk. By the time they had finished the spaghetti and had passed on to the oven-baked mullet Luke had a hazy idea of what had happened. Not that she told him many details, but he was good at interpreting the silences.

He was astounded. Primo had done this? His brother, whose name was a byword for good sense, upright behaviour and totally boring probity, had not only lived a double life, but had managed to conduct a clandestine liaison with his own lover. For how else could it be described?

In fact Primo had behaved disgracefully.

Luke was proud of him!

‘All I want to do now is go back to England and never see or hear his name again,’ she said bitterly. ‘But I’ve signed a contract and he says he’ll hold me to it.’

‘But of course you’re not going home,’ Luke said at once. ‘You’re going to stay here and make him sorry.’

She looked at him, suddenly alert.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘That’s a much better way. Of course it is. I just couldn’t bear the thought that he’d been having a big laugh at my expense.’

‘But you had a laugh at his expense tonight. Did you see his face when he realised it was you? He looked as if he’d swallowed a hedgehog.’

‘Yes, he did,’ she mused as the moment came back to her, the details clearer now than they’d been at the time.

‘There are going to be other moments like that, plenty of them, because you’re going to get your revenge and I’m going to help you do it.’

She smiled at him.

‘How?’ she asked.

‘I’ll tell you.’

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!’