A Scandal Made At Midnight

At two minutes to two o’clock they were standing in front of an imposing skyscraper that looked to be made almost entirely of opaque black glass that soared up to the summery blue sky, a beacon of dark modernity in the middle of the city.

‘Wow.’ Ella lowered her sunglasses to survey the building with appreciation. ‘He owns the whole building?’

Liane nodded at the discreet gold plaque to the side of the door on which was written ‘Rossi Enterprises’. ‘It appears so, or at least his family does.’ She’d done an Internet search on Alessandro Rossi that morning, forcing herself away from all the articles of spurious speculation in the online tabloids and on gossip sites, heading for a simple encyclopaedia entry that told her Alessandro was the only son of Leonardo Rossi; his father had handed the business to him last year and retired to Ibiza; there was no mention of his mother. He was notoriously reclusive, with very little known about his private life, and Rossi Enterprises was worth billions.

‘Well, then, maybe this is worth satisfying your curiosity,’ Ella proclaimed and with a glinting smile for Liane she sashayed inside the office building and promptly charmed the grim-faced, black-suited man at the door, who told her Mr Rossi was expecting her.

Liane’s stomach tightened with nerves as they soared upwards towards Alessandro Rossi’s penthouse office. She wasn’t nervous about seeing him again, not precisely, more about him seeing how she reacted to him. This silly schoolgirl infatuation she had stupidly developed over a stranger needed to stop—especially if it showed on her face. She couldn’t bear to be revealed in such a way, and she had a sense that Alessandro would be able to guess exactly what she was thinking—and feeling—which was a rather horrifying thought.

Why did she have to react to the man this way? If anything, his high-handed manner should annoy her and nothing more. Yet even now her body was tingling with anticipation, excitement fizzing through her veins, simply at the prospect of seeing him again.

A solemn-looking assistant in a sleek dark suit met them at the elevator and escorted them to an imposing pair of wood-panelled doors. Liane could feel her heart thumping as Ella went in first, head held high, looking as fabulous as she always did in a tastefully clinging yellow sheath and matching open-toed heels, her hair in glossy golden waves about her shoulders. Liane slipped in behind, staying near the wall as Ella strode towards Alessandro’s desk.

‘I heard you had a proposition for me,’ she said, almost making it sound dirty.

Alessandro rose from behind his desk in one fluid movement, his face expressionless, his powerful body encased in an expertly tailored charcoal-grey suit that brought out the silver in his eyes. He looked powerful and remote and completely in control and, stupidly, Liane’s heart fluttered. She really needed to get to grips with these absurd feelings of hers. Fortunately—or not—and just as she’d expected, he wasn’t even looking at her.

‘Miss Ash. So glad you could meet me. Please, sit.’ He gestured to one of the leather club chairs in front of his massive desk, the floor-to-ceiling windows giving a panoramic view of the city, glinting skyscrapers all around, Central Park a haze of green in the distance. His gaze flicked once, very briefly, to Liane, revealing nothing, yet even so Liane felt as if she’d been jolted with electricity, a second’s blazing connection—at least for her. ‘And you, Miss Blanchard, as well, of course,’ he added smoothly. Was there a hint of humour in his voice? Liane wasn’t sure, but she blushed anyway.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured as she came forward. She perched on the edge of her chair as he stood behind his desk, surveying them both, before he reached down to retrieve something.

‘I believe this belongs to you,’ he told Ella, bringing out the silly glass shoe with a mocking flourish.

Ella, always rising to the occasion, laughed and raised one slender leg. ‘You should see if it fits first,’ she told him with a deliberate flutter of her eyelashes.

‘Very well,’ he said, his face expressionless. His gaze flicked, ever so briefly, to Liane, before he removed her sister’s sandal and, without any innuendo or enthusiasm, slid the glass shoe on her foot.

‘A perfect fit,’ he remarked dryly as he stood back.

Ella’s eyes danced. ‘So this is when you ask me to marry you, right? And we live happily ever after.’ She tossed her head back, giving a throaty laugh. ‘Somehow I don’t think that was the business proposition you intended to put to me.’ She flipped off the glass shoe and replaced her sandal as she gave him a forthright look, the glass slipper dangling from one manicured finger. ‘So, Mr Rossi, what exactly is this business proposition?’

Ella Ash was a firecracker, that much was obvious. Alessandro kept his gaze even and expressionless as he fought both amusement and annoyance at her blatant theatrics. His suspicions from last night were clearly confirmed today; she was the type of person who was constantly performing, needing an invisible audience everywhere she went. A lot like his mother had been, and exactly the kind of exhibitionism he hated, and yet in this case she might be just what he needed, at least for a brief time. For the sake of Rossi Hotels.

His gaze flickered once more to Liane. He found he couldn’t stop looking at her, trying to gauge what emotion seethed behind those opaque violet eyes, her mouth pursed, her hands in her lap. She wore a plain blue shirtdress, a rather matronly outfit, and yet he was still conscious of her lithe curves, the way the belt at her waist emphasised its slenderness. She was perfectly petite, delicate in every way, and he found her far more fascinating than the obvious Ella. Gold compared to gilt, he reflected, before banishing the thought.

He turned back to Ella. ‘My business proposition is simple. Rossi Hotels is in need of a younger ambassador. Our brand of unparalleled luxury, comfort and privacy has not been translating as well to the social media generation.’ He quirked his mouth wryly, inviting Ella into the joke, if there even was one. He hated the whole concept of courting publicity, but he hated failure even more.

He’d spent the last ten years building Rossi Enterprises back up from the ashes after his father had so carelessly let it burn near to the ground, and he’d be damned if he let any part of it smoulder away now, simply because the millennial generation needed to see something on Instagram before they paid money. At least with this he could control the attention, the narrative.

‘Is that right?’ Ella cocked her head. ‘I will say, the hotel did seem a little stuffy to me.’

He forced a small, tight smile of acknowledgement. ‘So, as I’m sure you’ve been able to guess, this is where you come in.’

‘Do you want me to feature the hotel on my vlog?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Because the video of you finding the glass shoe has got...’ she paused to reach for her phone, scrolling with lightning speed ‘...two hundred thousand views! Can you believe it?’

‘What?’ His voice sharpened as he stared at her hard. ‘What video?’

‘You mean you asked me here without even seeing it?’ she exclaimed with a peal of delighted laughter. ‘Look.’

She handed him her phone and, frowning, Alessandro gazed down at a somewhat blurry video of, he saw, himself, walking down the steps of his hotel. The camera zoomed in on the glass slipper, lying so artfully on the ground, and then on his face as he picked it up, turned it over in his hands. She’d put text over the last image—OMG, the Prince found my slipper!! What next??—which made Alessandro suppress a wince. Seriously, this stuff was both excruciating and infantile, and yet it seemed to work, because in the few seconds it had taken for him to view the damned thing the video had garnered a thousand more views. Insane. And not in a good way. He had a whole churning mess of feelings about being secretly filmed and viewed, being trotted out and used, and none of them were good.

Right then and there he fought the deep-seated instinct to fling the phone on the floor, ground it to crushed glass beneath his heel and show Ella Ash the door. How dared she use him? He, who would never let himself be used.

And yet, pushing down those heated emotions, he forced himself not to react. He’d suspected she’d been using him last night; now his suspicions had been confirmed. It didn’t change his own purpose.

No, he would choose for it not to. Choose control and restraint over anger and emotion, as he always did. Choose to be unlike either of his parents, led by emotion and desire, careering into desperation and misery and using him in the process. Silently he handed the phone back and Ella pocketed it. Liane, he saw out of the corner of his eye, hadn’t said a word, although she was definitely looking apprehensive, her violet gaze darting between him and her sister, golden lashes sweeping down when she caught him looking at her.

‘So,’ he surmised in a clipped voice, ‘you took that video of me from some hiding place, I presume?’

‘An Uber in the street.’ Ella was flippantly unrepentant. Was this sort of behaviour normal among this generation? Alessandro wondered. At thirty-four he was only twelve years older than Ella, but right now he felt utterly ancient.

‘And posted it without my knowledge or consent?’ he pressed, his voice hardening.

Ella’s eyes widened. ‘Is that even a thing?’

It was debatable, Alessandro supposed, considering he’d been in a public place, but he was not going to argue the legalities of taking and posting footage of another person right now. ‘Just what was the purpose of your little glass slipper stunt, may I ask?’

‘My friend Alonso Alovar made the shoes. It was meant to be some publicity for him and, trust me, it’s working, because his website has already crashed from all the orders.’

‘How did they know they were his shoes?’

‘From the hashtags.’ She shook her head slowly, her eyes dancing with amusement. ‘Do you even know how social media works?’

No, and he didn’t really have any desire to know, had never needed to know. Oh, he understood that things went viral, and people got pathetically famous for fifteen minutes through some absurd post or other, yes, fine, but it didn’t affect real life. His life. The world of business and banking, investments and enterprise, stocks and bonds and cold, hard cash. Except perhaps now it might. Unfortunately.

‘I’ve never had a need or interest in using social media,’ he told her levelly, ‘but, as I stated before, I am interested in engaging with the medium for the purposes of publicity for the hotels.’

‘Don’t put that in a tweet,’ Ella quipped, and he shook his head in exasperation.

‘This is what I propose—for you to join me on a brief tour of the Rossi hotels that I have been planning. It’s our centenary this year, and there will be parties hosted at each hotel to celebrate the anniversary throughout the next week. In fact, there is one in Los Angeles tomorrow night.’ He’d only been intending to make a brief appearance at a few of the events, but that would have to change now. He’d have to go to every one and stay for at least an hour, chatting and mingling, with Ella at his side. How interminable.