She had booked herself into a small hotel in Florence and onto a returning commercial flight to London in a couple of days’ time. Now that phase one of her plan had been completed she needed to move on to phase two, which was to confront Alessandro Leopardi in his office and persuade him to give her a job. It shouldn’t be difficult now. She had the qualifications, and now she had proved that she had the skill as well. Plus, there was such a thing as legal equal opportunities, as she was perfectly willing to remind him should she need to do so.
They had only just reached the barrier to the private car park when Alessandro realised that he had left his mobile on the plane. Leaning forward, he instructed the driver to turn round and drive back.
Lost in her excited dreams, Leonora hadn’t seen the car come back, or the door open, or Alessandro Leopardi get out as she left the plane, pulling off her cap as she did so to let her hair cascade down her back.
She saw him when she had reached the bottom of the gangway, though. Because he was standing there waiting for her, blocking her exit from it.
For a moment they looked at one another in silence. She was tall, but even standing on the steps she was still not quite at eye level with him and had to tilt her head back slightly to look up at him properly.
His question— ‘What is the meaning of this? Where is the pilot?’—was so icily cold that for once Leonora struggled to manage her normal flip tone.
‘You’re looking at her,’ she told him.
He knew who she was immediately. After all he had looked at her many job applications often enough, and the photographs accompanying them. She looked far more sensually attractive in the flesh, with her hair worn loose. To his own disbelief, given the situation and his own normally unbreakable control over every aspect of himself and most especially his sexuality, he could feel his body responding to her proximity and that sensuality. Had he somehow known that she would affect him like this? Was that why he was so resolutely opposed to employing her? Of course not. He did not employ female pilots on principle— equal opportunities rules or not. Besides, he was Sicilian—and generally speaking everyone knew that Sicilian men had their own code of contact.
His eyes were so dark it was impossible to see their colour, and they were unreadable. But the slight flaring of his nostrils had already given away his rage. Leonora tried to clamp down on her sudden feeling that just maybe she had flown higher than she had planned. Her lungs certainly felt that the air was short of oxygen—or was that just her own apprehension?
‘If that’s true then you are in one hell of a lot of trouble—and so is Leo Thaxton.’
Alessandro Leopardi’s harsh words confirmed that he wasn’t about to treat her behaviour lightly.
‘You can’t blame Leo.’ She immediately defended her brother. ‘I made him do it. I wanted to prove to you that I can fly just as well as any man, and that I deserve a job.’
‘What you and your brother both deserve is a prison sentence,’ he told her mercilessly. ‘And what you certainly will be doing is looking for a job together.’
Leonora’s eyes rounded. This wasn’t going the way she had planned at all.
‘You can’t sack Leo. It wasn’t his fault.’
‘Then whose fault was it?’
‘Yours—for not giving me a chance to try out for a job,’ she told him promptly.
Alessandro had never met anyone so infuriating or so reckless in ignoring the realities of the situation. By rights she ought to be treating him with kid gloves, not challenging him and arguing with him. He moved irritably from one foot to the other, reminded of the presence of the invitation in his pocket as its sharpness dug into his flesh.
The invitation. He looked at Leonora, and a plan began to form inside his head. She was attractive, if you liked her type—which he didn’t. He liked groomed women, not girls with a mass of hair, too much attitude and too little sensuality.
‘I most certainly can sack him, and I fully intend to do so,’ he assured Leonora grimly.
He meant it, Leonora recognised. She could see that, and for the first time she realised that this wasn’t a game she was playing. The consequences of what she had done were going to be very damaging—not just for her, but for Leo as well. Even worse was the mortifying recognition that, far from showing him that she could be the best, all she had done was prove that she was a failure.
Humiliation burned bright flags of red into her high sculpted cheekbones, highlighting the purity of her bone structure. She couldn’t let him sack Leo. Apart from the fact that her brother loved his job, she could just imagine the comments that he and Piers—especially Piers—would make for the rest of her life, lording it over her as they so liked to do, because she was a girl and she had been born second.
Which would be worse? Swallowing her pride now and begging this man she would never see again to spare Leo, or facing her brothers as a failure?
She took a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. Please don’t sack Leo.’
She sounded as though she was choking on every word, Alessandro recognised. Her brother obviously meant a great deal to her. Good.
‘I will think about it. Provided you—’
Leonora’s head jerked up immediately, her eyes shadowing with apprehension. Whatever it took to make sure Leo did not lose his job she would have to do—even if Alessandro Leopardi told her that she was never to apply for a job with him again. Even that, Leonora recognised bleakly.
‘I’ll do anything just so long as you don’t sack Leo,’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘Anything! Whatever it is you want me to do, I’ll do it.’
The moment her impetuous words were out, Leonora’s mouth formed a self-conscious O whilst her face burned even more hotly as she realised just how her offer might be interpreted. However, before she had time to correct any possible misinterpretation, Alessandro Leopardi was speaking coolly.
‘I won’t sack your brother—little as he deserves to be kept on, in view of his stupidity and weakness in agreeing or allowing you to force him to agree to your illegal charade—provided you accompany me to a family function I am obliged to attend.’
Leonora stared at him, disbelief and distaste clearly visible in her expression. ‘There are escort agencies who provide women for that kind of thing. Why don’t you use one of them? After all, it isn’t as though you can’t afford to.’
She knew immediately that her blunt speaking had been a bad mistake. She could see the tinge of angry heat burning his face, moving into the high cheekbones and then flashing like a warning beacon in the darkness of his eyes.
‘I would remind you that whilst I could afford to pay a woman to accompany me, you cannot afford to refuse me. Unless, of course, you are prepared to see your brother lose his job?’
To her chagrin his attitude caused Leonora to do something she hadn’t done since she’d left her early teenage years behind her. She glowered at him and stuck out her bottom lip, with all the angry defiance of a rebellious teenager facing a resolute and immovable human obstacle to what they wanted to do. And then she compounded her regression to impotent resentment by saying crossly, ‘Well, I can’t think why you’d want to pick me to accompany you. After all, I’m not a model, or…or…a C-list starlet.’
Her face was burning again, but it wasn’t her fault if his penchant for glamorous airheads was regularly recorded in celebrity gossip magazines—not that she ever bothered reading such things. It was Leo who was constantly pointing out yet another paparazzi photograph of his boss with some leggy, pouting beauty on his arm.
‘The reason I’ve picked