Natalia was beginning to fade a little, but Giancarlo wasn’t. Like a human dynamo, the more he found to delve into, the more invigorated he became.
So another hour went by, and she was kneeling on the carpet by the coffee-table, carefully feeding paper back into the files he had scrutinised and finished with, when yet another phone call took him striding back to the desk.
The moment he began speaking Natalia was aware of the difference in this call from all of the other calls, no matter what language he was speaking. This one was being carried out in Italian—a warm, soft, intimate Italian loaded down with so much sensual promise that she didn’t doubt for a moment just whom it was he was speaking to.
A lover. It had to be. And as she sank back onto her ankles feeling very odd suddenly, as if someone had just punched her in the stomach, she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t so much as considered the prospect of his having a lover in his life.
Well, that’s fine. It’s okay, she tried telling herself. In fact it suited her very well that he had someone else to concentrate his sexual interest upon! But inside she burned and squirmed with that nasty hot thing called jealous resentment, which only got worse the more ‘cara mia’s and ‘mia bella amore’s she caught interspersing his husky-toned conversation.
It seemed a good point for her to make her exit, she decided, slamming the last file back down on the stack with more violence than was necessary.
The sound it made had him glancing up, but his dark gaze was hazed by distraction, the kind of distraction that set her heart thudding on a burst of good old-fashioned anger. The kind of anger that had her coming to her feet and walking towards the door without bothering to announce her departure.
‘Going somewhere?’ his silken voice came sliding after her.
She glanced back, saw him leaning there against Edward’s desk, with a hand clamped over the telephone mouthpiece—and a glint in his eyes that she just didn’t like.
It came too close to sexual arousal for her fastidious sensitivities. Couldn’t the man wait until he had his privacy before indulging in that kind of conversation? He was even daring to peruse her figure as if it belonged to the woman who was arousing him, she noticed in affront.
‘It’s late,’ she bit out. ‘In case you haven’t noticed. We seem to have finished here, so I’ll leave you to it.’
With that she walked out, firmly closing the door behind her with absolutely no suspicion that the man she had left on the other side of it was now slowly replacing the phone on its rest, with a smile on his face that could only be described as—triumphant…
He was getting to her—really getting to her! It felt pretty good. He even gave the phone a light tap as if in thanks for its help. Then the smile cracked into a full-blooded grin when he thought of Serena, his best friend’s wife, who had just laughingly threatened to tell Fredo if Giancarlo didn’t stop speaking to her in that seductive tone of voice!
The phone rang again. He picked it up, knowing exactly who was going to be on the other end of it. ‘Fredo—all is fair in love and war,’ he announced before the other man could get a word in. ‘And before you ask, no, my war is not being waged against your beautiful wife…’
CHAPTER THREE
‘BUON GIORNO, Miss Deyton,’ Giancarlo greeted briskly as he strode in the next morning. ‘You had a pleasant evening, I hope, and are feeling rested enough to begin a whole new day?’
No, she hadn’t, and no, she wasn’t, but it was all too obvious that he’d had more than enough of both, she noted, viewing his irritatingly upbeat manner through heavily jaundiced eyes.
Everything about him appeared thoroughly revitalised from the brightness in his tone to the healthy sheen of his olive-toned skin. Clearly burning the candle at both ends had only an invigorating effect on him. Even his clothes looked sharp enough to draw blood if you touched them, she thought as she ran those same eyes over his steel-grey suit with its matching colour shirt and silk tie.
Whereas she felt wrecked because she had done nothing but wage war with herself right through the evening and into the night. Troubled by her lies, troubled by her attraction to him and more than troubled by the uncontrollable way her imagination had insisted on drawing lurid pictures of him locked in the arms of some gorgeous Italian who possessed all the sensual expertise a man like Giancarlo Cardinale would expect from the woman he allowed into his bed!
‘A Ms Delucca just called,’ she informed him frostily. ‘To complain about you leaving this morning, without saying thank you.’
‘Ah, Serena,’ he murmured smilingly—a smile that became a disgustingly rakish full-blooded grin, which showed no sign whatever of any embarrassment at having his private life put on show like this. ‘I will apologise later. But first we have some things to do that will—’
He stopped. Went still, seemed to stiffen slightly, then suddenly lost all of that rakish humour. ‘How long have you been in?’ he demanded suddenly.
‘About five minutes,’ she replied, suddenly very aware of how finely she’d timed getting Edward’s papers out of the safe before Giancarlo had arrived. The day did not officially start for another half an hour and she’d really thought she’d had plenty of time. As it was, the darned man had virtually caught her with her hand in the safe!
But as far as he was concerned, she might not have got around to removing her coat yet, but she had collected the post and checked for emails—plus taken a call from his current mistress!
‘Do you have a problem with that, Mr Cardinale?’ she demanded, having already come to the decision at some point in the early hours of the morning that she was not going to let him turn her inside out for two days on the run!
He didn’t answer, but he was frowning darkly. And if she could glean any consolation from that frown then it was in the knowledge that his irritatingly upbeat mood had so obviously collapsed.
‘Take your coat off and come into my office,’ he instructed, jumping into autocratic mode with a snap to his tone that sent her hackles up.
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, using frost to his bite.
He muttered something she didn’t catch, then strode through the connecting door before slamming it shut behind him.
She allowed herself an exaggerated wince, then began removing her camel-coloured full-length cashmere coat and soft lilac scarf at a speed that confirmed her determination not to be bullied. So she took her time settling it on its hanger, then took another few moments to smooth down the fabric of her calf-length black pinstriped suit. She had chosen to wear this particular suit because it showed less leg and the tailored jacket fastened right up to its mandarin collar. Her hair was up as usual, neatly secured by a black shell clasp, and her make-up was so underplayed it might not even be there.