Eighteen months later...
EMMA SWEPT THE long tendrils of dark hair back from her face and into a discreet neat bun with swift efficiency. Even had she not seen Antonio Arcuri’s occasional frown when a few strands would escape the hold these pins had on her hair, she instinctively knew that this was what her ruthless boss wanted from her. Discretion, speed and efficiency.
As she checked her appearance in the ladies’ bathroom at the New York office of Arcuri Enterprises, the shadowed silver insignia of the letters A and E conjoined in the corner of each large mirror snagged her attention and sent a thrill of satisfaction through her.
She had come so far from her mother’s small but comfortable home on the fringes of Hampstead Heath. She thought back to the quite outrageous way she had been interviewed by Antonio in that limousine, inching its way through London’s Christmas traffic. She had, in her mind, been brazen. But then Emma had honestly thought that she stood no chance of getting the job. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, she had simply spoken the truth.
She had meant every word she’d said, and had stuck to each and every one of them in the last eighteen months. She had fought so hard to be here—to be in New York, to be Antonio Arcuri’s PA. And she wouldn’t let his wholly uncharacteristic, unscheduled and increasingly imminent arrival now put her off her stride.
Ever since the ping had sounded on her phone at one in the morning, alerting her to the fact that Antonio would be back from Italy and in the office in less than six hours, Emma had felt something akin to panic. Only she had assured herself she no longer did panic. Instead, Emma had launched herself out of bed, scanned his appointments and found nothing in his diary to warrant such an unexpected return. So, she had no idea what to expect from her brooding Italian boss.
She had begun to look forward to the times when Antonio was away from the office. Whether it was for his immovable meetings with the other members of the Winners’ Circle syndicate, or his visits to his offices in London, Hong Kong and Italy, she relished the time when she only had to deal with him through the separation of email and the occasional video conference. She welcomed these reprieves from his presence. Because in reality, in the flesh, Antonio was simply...overwhelming.
It was more than his classic good-looks. His bitter-chocolate-coloured eyes, set against defined cheekbones and a determined jaw would be devastating enough on any man. Along with the smooth Italian tan that contrasted with the deep rich wine colour of lips that were almost cruelly sensual. Every inch of him was honed, powerful and predatory. But she knew that even all those attributes combined didn’t matter. It was the vitality—the authority that resonated from his very being—that really called to her.
But she had learned to temper her attraction. Refused to allow it to interfere with her work. She was here to do a job—not to lust after her attractive boss. She refused to fall into the trap so many other women had fallen into. Besides, she had goals—places she wanted to see, things she desperately wanted to do—none of which included Antonio Arcuri.
The door to the large office bathroom slammed open and a string of women rushed in, each armed to the hilt with make-up bags. Emma watched them for a moment, producing the tools of femininity that were used to enhance and seduce, delicately applying a million products as she once had, at the age of seventeen, using them with a heavy hand to mask the ravages of chemotherapy.
But she forced the memory aside. It wasn’t as if Antonio cared at all about her appearance. Just her ability. Emma smiled ruefully at the row of Arcuri’s female staff. Antonio had that effect on women. But not her. She might find her boss devastatingly attractive, but she wasn’t going to be distracted by him.
She wasn’t going to be distracted by any man.
*
Settled behind her computer in the outer room of Antonio’s top-floor office, she let a feeling of control and calm wash over her. This was her domain and she loved it.
The clean chrome lines made the CEO’s office on the twenty-fourth floor of the Manhattan skyscraper more than she could ever have imagined. The glass-fronted building afforded a highly sought-after vista of Central Park, allowing incredible views of the famous skyline to be her daily backdrop. The decor screamed money and wealth. Even if she only borrowed it during the day, before returning to her tiny apartment in Brooklyn each night.
Coming to New York had been the first thing Emma had been truly able to check off her Living List, after five years of remission had finally signalled the end of the terrible illness that had taken so much from her. And even if she had stayed in her role as Antonio’s personal assistant for a little longer than she had originally intended, failing to tick off some of the other things on her Living List since coming here...she chose to ignore it. She was happy. And there was always time in the future—in her future.
‘Do you know why he’s here?’
Emma looked up from her desk to find James, a very nervous low-level exec, almost twitching with panic. He swept his glasses off his face, revealing bleary eyes, and cast her a look as other staff, equally nervous, watched from the corridor.
Word of Antonio’s impending arrival must have spread like wildfire for, while it wasn’t unusual to see some of the Arcuri staff beavering away at this ungodly hour of the morning, it was unusual to see all of them. But that was the effect of Antonio Arcuri. He didn’t ask—he expected. He didn’t demand—he simply didn’t have to.
‘Is he here yet?’ James asked now, not waiting for an answer to his first question.
‘Mr Arcuri has business to attend to, nothing more,’ she said reassuringly, not really knowing if that was true or not.
‘It’s just that... Well, given the current climate...’
‘Arcuri Enterprises is strong enough to survive any climate—current or otherwise,’ Antonio’s Italian-accented voice cut in harshly.
Emma hated the way he did that. Crept into rooms like a silent-footed panther. And she felt pity for poor James, who had turned from nervously pale to humiliated red with just one sentence from their boss, before fleeing the room.
Antonio turned on Emma. ‘Why does everyone look as if they’re about to get fired?’ he demanded angrily.
Emma resisted the urge to sigh. He was clearly in that mood. A mood which made it easier for her to resist eating up the sight of his six-foot-plus powerful and lean frame.
‘It is a little unusual for you to break your trip to Italy.’
‘I need Danyl and Dimitri on a conference call immediately. And I need you to start a research file on Benjamin Bartlett. Everything and anything you can find on him and his company,’ he said, throwing the last over his shoulder as he moved towards his office.
‘I’ll get the research team on it right away.’
‘No,’ Antonio said, pausing mid-stride. ‘No one else is to know. I want you to handle it personally.’
With that, he stalked into his office, slamming the door behind him, and Emma sighed again. She closed the open folder on her desk concerning the Arcuri Foundation’s charity gala—a project she had already invested much of her spare time in—knowing that she would have to take it home that evening. And as she dialled the numbers she knew by heart to get Dimitri and Danyl, she wondered just who Benjamin Bartlett was and why he was so important.
*
Antonio Arcuri willed the adrenaline coursing through his veins to subside. He discarded his suit jacket on the sofa and instead of taking a seat at his desk stalked towards the floor-to-ceiling windows fronting his office and flexed his hands.
He had decided to give the task of researching Benjamin Bartlett to Emma on the flight back here from his mother’s house in Sorrento. He had been impressed with his calm, unflappable PA over the past eighteen months. Eighteen months in which he’d ruthlessly tamped down his initial and very much unwanted sensual interest in her from the moment she had stepped into the limousine on his way to the Asquith club in London.
Of course it helped that she dressed like the founding member of some religious organisation, and showed absolutely no interest in him whatsoever outside of their business interaction. He’d had PAs before who had raised their eyebrows and been uncomfortable handling some of his more indiscreet requests, such as fending off ex-lovers or acquiring suitable parting gifts. Despite what her conservative appearance suggested, Emma had handled each and every one without judgement or comment. The only thing she asked for was financial approval.
In short, Emma Guilham was very good at her job.
Which was exactly why he trusted her implicitly to handle the research on Bartlett. He couldn’t risk news of his interest in the man leaking out before he’d had a chance to arrange a meeting with him. But it wasn’t Bartlett himself that he was after. He could have taken or left his famous heritage brand, having no need to add it to his investment portfolio. No. It was the other potential investor that Antonio had in his sights. The investor that Antonio wanted to crush beneath his heel until no trace of him remained.
As he stood before the windows he didn’t see a millimetre of the lush green sanctuary in the middle of New York’s bustle. Antonio saw victory within his grasp.
Finally Antonio had the chance to bring Michael Steele to his knees. To cripple him completely, once and for all.
For so long he’d been nibbling away at the outskirts of Steele’s business dealings. And each time Antonio took one more bite from the man’s holdings he thought of his mother and sister. Of the shock and devastation Steele had wrought against his family with efficient ruthlessness. The subsequent pain that had nearly destroyed his mother, and the emotional scars that his young sister had turned against her own body until there had been almost nothing of her left.
Antonio had spent years clawing his way up the financial ladder...for this. The chance to destroy Michael Steele once and for all.
The buzz of the intercom cut through his thoughts and Emma’s voice announced that she had Danyl and Dimitri on the line for him.
‘What’s wrong?’ demanded Danyl.
Many would have been forgiven for thinking they heard anger in his voice, but Antonio knew better and identified concern.
‘Nothing’s wrong. In fact it’s the exact opposite.’
‘It must be...what?...six in the morning in New York?’ queried Dimitri. ‘Even you don’t usually start until a bit later.’
‘It’s seven.’
‘I feel sorry for your PA,’ remarked Danyl. ‘She just went into battle with my assistant to get me in on this call instead of calling the Terhren Secretary of State.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for her,’ Antonio responded. ‘Be impressed.’
‘I am,’ Danyl replied. ‘Anyone who can put my assistant off state business is worth their weight in gold.’
‘I have it. The way to take down Steele once and for all.’
Antonio didn’t need to explain who he was talking about, nor why it was so important. Dimitri and Danyl knew what this meant to him—had meant ever since the age of sixteen.
‘How?’ asked Dimitri.
‘I’ve been reliably informed that Benjamin Bartlett is looking for a healthy financial investment in his company. It would be Steele’s last chance for financial security. He has the capital to invest, but not enough to survive without it.’
‘And you plan to ensure that you win the investment,’ stated Dimitri. ‘Whatever you need—it’s yours.’
Antonio smiled. ‘That’s not necessary. I can counter any investment offer he makes to Bartlett.’
‘I’ve met Bartlett. I must say I’m surprised that he’s looking for investment. He’s always been financially stable.’
‘You know him?’ demanded Antonio. ‘How?’ he asked, his quick mind already working out how to use this to his advantage.
‘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 in the female ones.
‘Was that sarcasm?’
‘No,’ Emma assured him, hoping the painful blush staining her cheeks wouldn’t give her away. ‘I simply wondered if you had your sights set on someone specific.’
‘No,’ he replied, frowning.
‘So...’ She battled on through the oddness of the situation. ‘Do you have any parameters for this search? Wealth, previous marital status, level of attractiveness...?’ She was desperately thinking of a polite way to say bra size when she registered with some surprise Antonio’s confusion. He clearly hadn’t thought this through.
‘Reputation. She must be scandal-free.’
Emma fought to contain the rather un-ladylike snort that tickled her nose. It sounded as if he were looking to buy a prize heifer with an up-to-date vaccination history. Which made her wonder, horrified for a moment, whether the poor woman in question might in fact be required to present a full medical history.
‘And I need her within two days.’
‘Antonio, I’m not Amazon Prime. I can’t just produce a...a fiancée,’ she whispered harshly, fearing that she might be overheard, or even accused of some kind of highly salacious ‘procurement’ for her boss. ‘Perhaps if you could explain the...the context, it might be slightly easier for me to...to understand what’s needed.’
She knew she was stumbling over her words but, given his current mood, she clearly had to choose them wisely.
‘I am about to set up a meeting with Benjamin Bartlett, who is touting for investment in his company. A company in which I must be the sole investor. And, being a notoriously moral man, Bartlett might be reluctant to involve himself with Arcuri Enterprises given...’ He trailed off, circling his hands in a typically Italian gesture.
‘Given your recent experience with Inga the Swedish—?’
‘I know what she was, Ms Guilham,’ Antonio cut in.
‘Quite. So you need a beard?’
Antonio’s hand went to the smooth planes of his chiselled jaw. ‘A beard?’
‘Not that kind of beard,’ she said, suppressing the smile that toyed at the edges of her mouth. ‘You need a fake fiancée to mask your previous indiscretions so that Bartlett will find you more palatable and therefore be more likely to welcome your investment.’
‘In a nutshell, yes.’
‘And am I to presume that all of this—’ she said mirrored his Italian gesture ‘—needs to be kept under wraps? No one is to know about this, as well as the research into Bartlett?’
He nodded his dark-haired head once. ‘There is another party interested in investing with Bartlett. My interest cannot get out to that person—or any other for that matter.’
The darkness of the warning in his voice was something that Emma hadn’t yet encountered in her boss. And that in itself was enough to inform her that this wasn’t to be taken lightly.
Her quick mind filed the top-line notes of his request. ‘Okay. I’m going to need to clear your schedule tomorrow evening.’
This was why Emma was good, Antonio thought to himself. Apart from the slight slip-up of her earlier sarcasm, which he would happily put down to surprise, when she took on a task she was efficient, direct and held none of the self-doubt he had seen in staff twice her age.
He knew her announcement of his change of plan for tomorrow would be wholly and one hundred per cent in line with her new-found task. A task that she hadn’t balked at, and had only posed pertinent questions on. Mostly.
‘Done.’
‘I’ll have your blue tuxedo sent to the dry cleaners and prepared for the gala.’
‘What gala?’ Antonio queried.
‘The Arcuri Foundation’s yearly charity gala. You are usually in Italy during these two weeks, which is why you are never sent an invitation.’
‘We have a charity gala?’
For the first time in eighteen months Antonio was surprised to see something like anger in Emma Guilham’s eyes.
‘Yes, we do.’ She paused, once again masking her obvious feelings on the matter with her legendarily cool gaze. ‘And it will be the perfect place for you to find a fiancée.’