Lucy Gordon - The Italian Millionaire’s Marriage

‘Do you have anything else lined up?’ Mr. Pendry asked.

‘No, I guess I don’t,’ she said, picking up the pen. ‘So what happens now?’

‘You just keep on running the shop. I dare say they’ll send someone to see you sooner or later.’

She lay awake all night, knowing that she’d signed because she was a coward. She couldn’t face another break so soon after the last one. She would see out her contract and separate herself from her beloved shop inch by inch.

Yet again, as she’d done so many times since returning to London, she asked herself why she’d taken such a stubborn stand against the man she couldn’t stop loving? Truth to tell, she’d always considered herself a touch on the wimpish side. So how had she found the weapons in her hands?

Because Marco had shown them to her.

He’d told her that she was strong and brave and independent, and it was true. The neglect and loneliness that had marked her life had taught her how to be alone, but she hadn’t known it until Marco revealed her strengths to her. He’d proved that she could do without the father she’d yearned for, and the next step was the knowledge that she could do without anyone.

Now she could do without Marco, because he’d taught her how.

Next day she overslept. It was Mrs Gilchrist’s day off so she couldn’t have picked a worse moment to be late. As she hastened to the shop, she crossed her fingers and prayed to whichever deity protected disorganised antique dealers not to let A &J send their representative today.

She knew her prayers weren’t being answered when she arrived to find the front door standing open. She’d been beaten to it. She was late. Just like that other time. She could just imagine what Marco would say to this.

And that was exactly what he said as he emerged from her cubicle at the back of the shop to stand regarding her sardonically.

‘Dammit Harriet, not again! Are you never on time?’

‘I DON’Tbelieve this,’ Harriet said, setting down her things to confront him. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Haven’t you worked it out yet?’

‘Allum & Jonsey-?’

‘A tiny firm who were glad to let me take them over.’

‘And if they hadn’t been glad, you’d have taken over anyway.’

‘No, I’d have found another firm. I needed a front. You wouldn’t have sold if you’d known it was me.’

‘In other words, this is another of your exercises in control. Sorry Marco, it’s not going to work. I’m through.’

He held up the contract she’d signed only the previous day, committing her to run the shop for six months. ‘What about this?’

‘Sue me!’

‘I will if you make me, but you won’t. You’re a woman of your word. This place needs you. Nobody else can run it. Between us we’ll make it as profitable as it ought to be.’

Harriet gave an incredulous laugh. ‘You want me? A woman who can’t tell a fake from an original? Surely not.’

She had the satisfaction of seeing him redden. ‘What do you want me to say? That I was wrong about that? All right, I’ll say it. That necklace was a fake. My father sold the original years ago. My mother says you’re the only person ever to notice.’

Harriet’s face lightened. ‘How is she?’

‘I have strict instructions to send her news of you. I’ll do that later. For the moment we have to do some serious talking.’

‘Well, I won’t try to defend my accounts to you-’

‘No, they’re beyond defence.’

‘Because you already knew the worst in advance. You’re crazy, you know that?’

His eyes gleamed. ‘I never do anything without a good reason.’

‘You can’t have a good reason for being here.’

‘That’s for me to say,’ he said briskly. ‘We had a deal. The loan was to be repaid in easy stages, instead you choose to deprive yourself of everything you love, to do it in one go. That gives me a certain responsibility.’

‘You haven’t-’

‘Will you just be quiet while I’m speaking? When I want to hear what you have to say, I’ll ask. I have a responsibility to you and I’m going to deal with it. I’ll teach you to be a shrewd businesswoman if it turns us both grey-haired. In time you’ll make enough to buy this place back from me, and then I won’t have to reproach myself with having harmed you.’

‘Can I speak now?’ she snapped.

‘If it’s important.’

‘All that is very conscientious of you-’

‘Conscientiousness is the corner of good business. Now, I suggest you make some tea and we’ll discuss your stock buying. Some of the web sites you visit look interesting.’

‘You accessed my account? How?’

‘I hacked in, of course.’

‘Of course,’ she murmured.

‘If you’d been here on time, it would have been easier,’ he said crisply, and something in his tone made her realise that this man was now her employer.

From then on she had no chance to forget it. Marco settled in as though he’d come for a long stay, taking a room at the Ritz Hotel, hiring a car, arriving at the shop early, leaving late. If Harriet suspected that he had come for her he made it hard for her to believe it. He gave her a crash course in financial management, with no concessions to whatever might have been between them. When he’d finished tearing her business practices to shreds he demolished the reputation of her accountant.

‘He’s been so much in awe of your academic knowledge that he’s let you get away with accounting murder.’

‘He’s a dear old boy-’

‘So I would have guessed. You don’t need a dear old boy, you need someone who can keep you on a tight rein. What’s this?’ He was pointing at some squiggles in one of the ledgers.

‘That’s my code.’

‘Translate,’ he snapped.

Seething, she did so.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That’s lucid enough, but I’m not clairvoyant. How do I know what it means unless you explain?’

‘I always write up the details later.’

‘Do it now.’

‘Why do you have to be a slave-driver over every detail?’

‘Because, while you may be all kinds of an antiquarian genius, when it comes to the simplest commercial transaction you are a bird-brained idiot .’

‘I know that!’

Silence. He was breathing hard.

‘Fine!’ he snapped. ‘Then at last we’re agreed on something. It makes a good starting point.’

‘Why do we have to agree on anything? We never did before. Why don’t you just install the new accountant to keep an eye on me when you’ve gone home?’

‘I’m not going home until I’ve taught you how not to bankrupt yourself.’

‘You mean, bankrupt you?’

For once he was shaken. ‘Yes-yes, that’s what I meant.’

‘But you can’t stay here. You should be in Rome this minute, fighting for that partnership.’

He shrugged. ‘I clinched that before I left.’

‘So you’ve got it?’

‘Yes, I’ve got it.’ He was writing something.

‘The youngest partner, just as you wanted. Congratulations!’

‘Thank you!’ he said shortly.

Of course he’d got exactly what he wanted. Everything neat and orderly. He’d sorted out his career, now he would deal with the little matter of his conscience, then he would go home and put her behind him.

But that was what she wanted him to do.

So she had no complaints. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that.

‘How do you buy stock?’ he asked her one day. ‘You can’t always use the internet.’

‘I use it rarely. Travelling the country is better.’

‘When do we go?’

Next day they set off for a country house south of London. The owner had fallen on hard times, had sold the house to the local council, and was raising what he could from the contents.