‘He’s a keen horseman. A regular feature on the international racing scene.’
Antonio frowned, scanning his usually perfect memory for any moment when he might have met the man amongst the numerous races they had attended as members of the Winners’ Circle syndicate.
‘He usually keeps to himself, though,’ Danyl continued. ‘Tends to stay away from the more lively areas that we enjoy. He’ll probably be in Argentina for the first leg of the Hanley Cup. Do you know why he’s looking for investment?’
‘The why doesn’t matter. I’ll do anything to make sure that I win the investment and not Steele.’
Silence greeted his pronouncement. For a moment Antonio worried that the connection had been lost.
‘Antonio, be careful. Desperation makes a man dangerous. I know this better than anyone,’ Dimitri warned.
‘I can handle the man.’ Antonio practically growled down the phone.
‘I wasn’t talking about him.’
A knock on the door preceded Emma’s appearance with the espresso he very much needed at that moment. Telling Dimitri and Danyl to hang on, he put the call on hold and waited for Emma to put the coffee on his desk and leave.
He was also buying time. Dimitri’s warning hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. But Antonio had spent years waiting for this day. He knew his mother would be saddened by his continued pursuit of revenge. She had pleaded with him over the years to move on. To put the hurt behind him—behind them all. But he couldn’t.
As Emma retreated to her desk behind the door to his own office, he surprised himself by wondering if she would understand. There had been times when his usually conservative, cool-eyed assistant had shown a deeply hidden spark of defiance, something like the fight he felt at that moment. But as the door clicked closed he put that thought aside and resumed his call.
‘That might not be the only problem that you face, Antonio,’ said Danyl.
‘Whatever it is, I can handle it.’
‘I’m not so sure. Bartlett is notoriously moralistic. And your recent and very public exploits with a certain Swedish model might be a rather large putting off for him.’
An image of the blonde who had graced his bed for a number of months rushed into Antonio’s mind. For the most part their encounter had run along the usual lines. Brief but sensually satisfying trysts whenever their diaries brought them together. Until she had started to ask for more. To ask for things he had told her wouldn’t be part of their relationship. And when he had ended things she had quickly transitioned from a cool, poised and sophisticated companion into a raging, deeply resentful and incredibly publicly wounded lover.
‘I can hardly be blamed for the fact she went to the press. I made her no promises—no lies were told. She knew the score and should have handled the end of our...interaction...with more finesse.’
‘Whether or not she should have, she didn’t. And Bartlett won’t like it one bit. He has a strict morality clause for all his board members. And the last to break it two years ago is still looking for work, from what I hear.’
‘What exactly are you saying, Danyl?’
‘Well, you might need to take yourself off the market, so to speak.’
What? Shocked, Antonio didn’t realise that the word had failed to escape his tightly clenched jaw.
‘You’ve either shocked him into silence or you need to explain more clearly what you mean, Danyl,’ Dimitri said, laughing.
‘Marriage,’ replied Danyl.
‘Just because you’re looking for a wife, it doesn’t mean I have to.’
Everything within Antonio roared an absolute no at the idea. All the women he had encounters with knew the deal—even the Swedish model, though she’d seemed to forget it.
Short term, high hits of sensual pleasure were important to him. He was a virile male, after all, and not one to deny himself sexual satisfaction. But nothing more. He neither wanted nor needed the distraction of anything more permanent.
He washed away his distaste at the very idea of marriage with a hot, strong shot of espresso. He scanned his mind for any examples of a healthy, successful partnership and could not find one. Neither Dimitri nor Danyl had any particular fondness for the institution of marriage themselves, though for Danyl—being the future ruler of Terhren—it had become a considerably more pressing matter.
Their bachelor status was something that the press had latched on to more than once when covering the successes of their Winners’ Circle racing syndicate. And it was certainly something that drew a wealth of beautiful women to their door. Was Antonio ready to consider closing that very door on the one thing aside from his business that he took very seriously?
‘How bad is he really?’ he asked his friends.
‘That board member I mentioned...? He hadn’t even had an affair. It was the rumour that Bartlett objected to.’
‘Perhaps you don’t have to...how do the Americans say it?...eat the whole hog—?’
‘Go, Dimitri. It’s go the whole hog,’ interrupted Danyl.
‘Please—we’re talking about a wife, here. Can we leave out references to eating and hogs?’
‘That’s what I’m saying. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be a wife.’
* * *
Emma had finished filing the quarterly reports, reassured countless staff members that, no, she didn’t think Antonio’s sudden appearance meant staffing cuts, and given consolatory smiles to a number of overly disappointed female employees who had failed to catch sight of Antonio before he’d locked himself in his office for most of the day. She had collated all the information she could on Benjamin Bartlett from initial online searches and saved it to Antonio’s private drive, and finally settled down to eat the lunch she had missed three hours ago.
So, of course, as her mouth was full of avocado and bacon bagel, that was the precise moment Antonio Arcuri chose to appear before her desk. With a demand that took every ounce of her control not to choke on.
‘Emma. I need you to find me a fiancée.’
Emma’s usually focused and quick mind halted in its tracks. Of all the things she’d ever been asked by her notoriously difficult boss, this had to hit the top of the list.
‘Do you have a particular person in mind? Or will anyone do?’
She had finally managed to swallow her mouthful around the shock that threatened to lock her throat in a seized position. And she was hopeful that her voice betrayed none of the sarcasm she felt so deeply, and instead projected only the smooth efficiency she knew Antonio prized so highly.
Emma loved being a personal assistant. She knew there were people who looked down on what they considered a lowly position. But, to Emma, the satisfaction of ensuring that her boss’s day—his life—ran without stumbling blocks was important to her. She liked feeling indispensable. She liked knowing that she was part of something much bigger than she could ever achieve on her own.
And she liked fixing things.
If she was honest, it was because she knew how awful it was not to be able to fix something for herself. How scary and frustrating it could be. Whether it had been her breast cancer or the subsequent breakdown of her parents’ marriage, she had been devastated by the sheer helplessness that she had felt at the time. And, whilst Emma might not have been able to fix the damage to her parents’ marriage in the past, she could certainly help find Antonio a fiancée in the present.
Antonio pinned her with a gaze that would have removed a certain amount of testosterone from many of his male employees and likely increased the pheromones