Maybe she did. Somewhere.
Desire hit him like the lash of a whip, sudden and stinging.
‘In here is a slightly smaller bedroom, but the view of the sea more than makes up for the less sizable proportions …’ She spoke before she’d opened the door, he noticed, but, walking into the room, Angelo’s eyes narrowed as he ascertained that what she had just said was completely spot on.
He felt a cold pulse of adrenalin rush through him along with the realization that the group she belonged to may have some rich benefactor who was planning to put in a rival bid for the château. It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. There were plenty of stratospherically wealthy Hollywood celebs who would be only too willing to toss a few million in the direction of an environmental charity—especially if it meant acquiring such a gem of a property at the same time as making them feel they were doing their bit to save the planet. With the exception of the charity involved, it wasn’t so very different from what he planned to do with it. And the prospect of having those plans thwarted by a group of tree-huggers was unthinkable.
In the past he had bought properties out of boredom or for a challenge or simply to irritate the people who tried to stop him, but this one was different. Angelo Emiliani wasn’t in the habit of analyzing his feelings—in fact his entire purpose in life was to keep busy enough to avoid having to have them at all—but he was prepared to acknowledge how much this project mattered to him. For old times’ sake.
For Lucia.
‘…south facing, meaning the light is particularly lovely in here.’
There was something wistful in her tone that jerked him back to the present. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he took a steadying breath in before turning his attention back to her.
She was standing by the window, looking out across the treetops to where the sea lay in a glittering arc. And she was right about the light, he thought bitterly. The evening sun fell on to her face, outlining her profile in gold-dust, highlighting the sudden softness of her sulky mouth. Crushing down the anger that smouldered somewhere inside his chest, he managed a smile.
‘You’ve been very helpful, Felicity. Really. I appreciate you showing me round.’
She looked up at him and blinked, clearly taken by surprise by the softness of his tone. Walking slowly towards her, he could see that she was trembling slightly, but bravado flashed in her dark eyes. The combination caused an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach, which he recognized as lust spiked with something more complicated.
‘It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have been here really …’
He stopped a couple of feet away from her. ‘I’m very glad you were. I’ll be sure to tell your boss how impressed I am by your professional dedication.’
That shook her. He tried not to let the tiny leap of triumph in his chest show on his face as he watched the colour flood her cheeks.
‘Please don’t. I probably shouldn’t have—’
The bare room was bathed in softest apricot, turning the pink in her hair to gleaming copper.
‘OK—but let me make it up to you in some other way. You said you were staying in Cannes—please let me take you out for dinner tonight.’
‘I can’t,’ she said hastily. ‘I’m meeting a friend.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘In fact, I’m late. I really should go.’
He nodded. Her refusal didn’t surprise him in the slightest— he hadn’t expected anything else—but, looking at those slanting, wary, kohl-smudged eyes, he felt a sharp kick of disappointment which caught him completely unawares.
She was already walking to the door, casting a last look around the room before going out on to the landing.
He followed her. Her footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs as she ran down them.
‘Where are you staying? I’ll give you a lift.’
Smiling slightly, he wondered how she would get out of that one, but she tossed a nonchalant glance at him over her shoulder.
‘Thanks. Hotel Paradis, if that’s not out of your way?’
Watching her shut the front door of the château, Angelo felt himself frowning.
He was used to having all the answers, to being at least ten steps ahead of the game. But he had to admit it that right now this girl had him floundering in the dark.
Which was an intoxicating image. But a very disturbing feeling.
CHAPTER TWO
‘NICE car.’
Anna made an effort to mask her contempt behind a façade of admiration as she glanced around the white leather interior of the ridiculously flashy sports car. But she couldn’t quite stop herself from adding with a simper, ‘I always think that cars say so much about their owners.’
This one was shouting, I belong to a man with obscene amounts of cash and issues about his masculinity, she thought with some satisfaction. Maybe Angelo Emiliani wasn’t as cool as he came across.
‘Do you?’
Admittedly his voice was infuriatingly cool, as was the way he seemed to lounge in the driver’s seat, controlling the powerful car with one hand and easing it around hairpin bends on the narrow road at speeds which …
Anna swallowed and averted her eyes from the speedometer.
‘So you’ve no doubt come to the conclusion that I’m an insecure misogynist with more money than taste?’ She felt the colour leap to her cheeks at the accuracy of his guess. ‘Well, I hate to spoil the theory, but the car is only hired. I simply asked for the fastest model available—which should tell you that I’m very impatient and I like to get everything done in the shortest possible time.’
‘In that case, wouldn’t it make more sense to have a chauffeur? So you don’t need to lose a second of valuable working time?’
‘Yes. But my impatience is perhaps only outweighed by my desire for control.’ His mouth curved into the merest suggestion of an ironic smile, letting her know he’d picked up the minute sting of sarcasm in her tone, and his blue gaze flickered over her for a second. A blissful, spine-tingling second. ‘I do have a chauffeur, of course. But wherever practical I prefer to drive myself. What about you, signorina? What sort of car do you drive?’
‘I don’t. Cars are—’
She was about to spring automatically into the standard GreenPlanet sermon about the evils wrought on the planet by the internal combustion engine, but managed to stop herself just in time. Not, however, before she noticed the smirk of satisfaction on Angelo Emiliani’s face.
‘A nuisance where I live, in Central London,’ she finished lamely, looking out of the window. ‘I take the tube everywhere.’
He’d very nearly caught her out. And, dammit, he knew it. He didn’t reply, but his silence spoke more articulately than anything he could have said.
The traffic grew heavier as they came into Cannes, and Angelo guided the car effortlessly through the streams of expensive vehicles towards the hotel. He wondered what she would do when they got there. Wait until he had gone and hitch a lift back to the protesters’ camp, he guessed. There was no way she could possibly be telling the truth about staying at the Paradis.
Was there?
‘I don’t think I got your full name,’ he said casually. With this girl it was best not to take any chances.
‘Hanson-Brooks’
‘Felicity Hanson-Brooks,’ he repeated, echoing her clipped upper-class pronunciation