PROLOGUE
No amount of makeup could completely hide the grey smudges beneath her eyes. At least they matched the silvery sheen of her silk blouse, Grace thought with a wry smile as she tucked her compact away and crossed her slender ankles beneath the table.
Her eyes landed on the desk across the room and her heart gave a little lurch.
“Would you want me to do this?” She whispered, so easily picturing Steven behind the large mahogany piece. Steven as he’d been, in his element, wheeling and dealing as though he was born to sell stuff.
He’d been so good at it. So effortlessly charming. If he’d still been here, he wouldn’t have dreamed of selling – even for the exorbitant amount this investment group was offering.
But Steve had died, and this enormous empire he’d built from the ground up had been passed on to Grace. Grace who was dealing with a difficult one year old, and the loss of her most beloved friend. Grace who was a lawyer, not a property mogul. Grace who’d been left feeling like she’d passed through a blender most days.
Her eyes dropped to the contracts and guilt flushed her skin pink.
It was an incredible offer.
More money than she could ever need, and the burden of keeping Steve’s legacy alive would pass to someone else. Someone more suited to the rigours of this world.
And you? Grace’s brain prompted stubbornly. What will you do?
That was easy.
She’d sleep.
Whenever Ben napped, she would too. She’d take him to the park too, instead of looking at the photos Emma sent over. Though the other woman adored Ben, she was still ‘the nanny’, and Grace wanted Ben to have more time with his own mother.
A noise outside the boardroom alerted her to someone’s approach. She stood, wiping a hand over her pencil skirt, checking her blouse remained tucked in at the waist almost on autopilot, before her hand lifted to the delicate pearl choker Steve had given her a week before he’d died.
Wearing it on days like this gave her a degree of strength. As though he was still with her.
She rested a hand on the back of a leather chair, and she waited.
She breathed in, out, in, out, and all the while waited to meet the buyer who’d appeared out of nowhere – an answer to all of her unspoken prayers.
“This way, sir,” she heard Rhiannon’s clipped accent from the clouded glass door and she pasted a smile on her face.
This would be over soon. Just their signatures, a few pleasantries, and it would be done.
She braced to meet the buyer, but when the door flew open, she was face to face with her past.
Marco Dettori stood, as impossibly larger-than-life than ever before.
Grace was incapable of movement or speech. She could only stare at the man she’d known. Two years ago, she’d thought herself in love with the suave tycoon. But so much had happened since then.
Oh, God.
Ben had his eyes.
She’d known this, of course, but seeing Marco again, it was like looking into their toddler’s face.
Guilt was a nauseating tidal wave in her chest. What the hell was Marco Dettori doing in Steve’s office?
“Please, have a seat, sir,” Rhiannon took over effortlessly, tossing her usually unflappable boss a quizzical expression as she escorted the billionaire deeper into the boardroom. “Can I get you a tea? Coffee?”
Grace shook her head, as if just recalling where they were. “No, thanks, Rhiannon.” She returned her smile to her face, waiting for the privacy a closed door would offer.
As soon as they were alone, she sucked in a deep breath. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He hadn’t changed at all. Then again, it had only been two years, not ten. Perhaps she’d just forgotten the sheer impressiveness of his virile strength. Dressed in a navy blue suit with a grey shirt and a light blue tie he looked more stylish than was fair. His dark hair was brushed back from his brow, and it curled a little at the ends, where it hit the collar of his shirt.
“What do you think?”
Oh, his voice. His voice like honey and citrus and sunshine and everything about her time in Italy that burned her with its beautiful impossibility.
“I have no idea, but I have a meeting…” She jerked her head towards the papers on the table, but even as she did so, she knew.
“With me.” The quiet words blew across the room towards her but they might as well have been an anvil on her back. She spun away from him in an attempt to hide her haywire emotions, yet they were rioting through her body and her blood.
“Why?” A single, husked word that spoke of all the pain their brief but spectacular night had caused her. The emotions she’d felt for him over the intervening two years.
“Because it is a good company. And I have heard you do not wish to continue running it.”
Her chest squeezed at his words. Pain lanced through her. “How do you know that?”
“Really, it’s a very small world.”
“So you heard I’m making a mess of things and you’re swooping in to fix it up?” She spun around, shame at their last encounter making her cheeks red. “This isn’t Rome and I don’t need your help.”
Then, he’d been a broad chest to comfort herself against; his arms had been strong as they’d pulled her to him and held her tight. His face had promised forgiveness and help. Friendship.
Now? He was implacable. “Aztec is a company I have watched for some time.”
“Why?”
Why? Did she really need to ask that? His expression gave nothing away. “It is one of the fastest growing elite property development firms in the country. I would like to see it stay that way.”
His implication was clear and Grace suddenly wished the ground would swallow her up whole. Why had Steven left this business to her? Why had he appointed her CEO?
Her eyes drifted betrayingly to his desk. She’d left it exactly as it always had been. His Stamford mug in to top right corner, proudly displaying his college allegiance to all and sundry; the fountain pen she’d given him when he’d signed the contracts on one of Chicago’s premiere housing developments propped beside the keyboard. Even his mouse-pad with a picture of her smiling up at him she’d left. She stared at the desk and so missed the way Marco’s eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching at her distraction.
Did it matter who bought the business? Did it matter that this man had, at one time, been her boss? That they’d slept together? That she’d borne his child?
“Okay,” she exhaled with determination, her eyes meeting his as though she was fearless. “So you want to buy Steve’s business.”
And the other man’s name was like waving a bright red flag at an irate bull. Marco Dettori’s eyes flashed with a dark emotion as he took two steps deeper into the room, close enough to Grace that she caught a distracting hint of his masculine fragrance. “I’m buying more than the business, cara. I’m buying you along with it.”