Liz Fielding: Harlequin Romance Bundle: Brides and Babies

He wasn’t fooling himself that it would be easy. Louise might have been a useless maître d’, more interested in flirting with the customers than doing her job, but since then she’d carved out a brilliant career for herself in marketing and PR. Her client list included one of the most successful restaurant chains in the country. She knew everyone in the business. Everyone in the media. And her mother’s high society family gave her an in with the social elite. She was ‘A’ list.

She was also bright enough to know that Bella Lucia needed her a lot more than she needed Bella Lucia.

That he needed her a lot more than she needed him.

If the situation were reversed, if he were in her shoes, he knew he wouldn’t listen to one word she had to say until she was on her knees, begging.

He hoped, for his knees’ sake, that she wasn’t inclined to carry a grudge that far.

Fat chance, he thought, checking the time.

If he shifted himself, he should catch her leaving the office. It wouldn’t be so easy for her to ignore him face to face.

‘You are a wonder, Louise.’ Oliver Nash had waited while she locked up, walked her down to the street and now continued to hold her hand long after it had ceased to be the kind of handshake that concluded a successful meeting. ‘Are you going to let me take you to dinner somewhere special? So that I can thank you properly?’

‘You’ll get my account at the end of the month, Oliver. Prompt payment is all the thanks I need.’

‘One of these days you’ll make my day and say yes.’

She laughed. ‘One of these days I’ll say yes, you old fraud, and scare you half to death. Go home to your lovely wife.’

‘You know me too well,’ he said, then as he bent to kiss her cheek she saw Max leaning against his muscular sports car, watching them.

‘Dumped your toy boy for a sugar-daddy, Lou?’ he asked.

Louise was thankful that the shadows were deep enough to disguise the flush that had darkened her cheeks. Even now he only had to look at her, speak to her, be in the same room, to send a shiver of something dark, something dangerous, rippling through her body. To disturb the even tenor of her life.

Not that there had been much that was even about it in the last few months.

Oliver, his hand still firmly holding hers, raised a brow a fraction of an inch and, since there was no way to avoid making introductions, she said, ‘Oliver, I don’t believe you know my…’ She caught herself. She was still readjusting to her new identity. Still forgot…‘I don’t believe you know Max Valentine. Max, Oliver Nash is a valued client; the chairman of the Nash Group.’

‘Fast food?’ Max replied.

‘Fast profit,’ Oliver replied, more amused than annoyed at being the butt of a younger man’s jealousy. ‘How’s business in the slow food sector?’

The exchange, unpleasant though it was, had given her time to recover, put up the barriers with a distant smile, and she stepped in before it deteriorated further.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Oliver,’ she said.

‘You’ll be all right?’ He looked up as a thin, icy rain began to fall, then at Max. ‘I’d be happy to give you a lift.’

‘Louise and I have business to discuss, Nash,’ Max intervened, his hand at her elbow, before she could be tempted to let Oliver chauffeur her as far as the nearest underground station in his Rolls. ‘Family business.’

His hand was barely touching her. Max never touched her if he could help it, not since that summer before she’d gone away to Italy; after that everything had changed.

They had changed. Become unsettlingly aware of each other in a way that, for cousins, wasn’t quite…decent.

Except that now she knew they weren’t cousins. That she’d been adopted…

Carefully lifting her arm away, she said, ‘Office hours are from ten until six, Max-’

‘It’s nearly eight.’

He didn’t look at his watch and she wondered exactly how long he’d been waiting for her to emerge from her office. Her PA had left a little after six-she had a life-and it must have been before then, or how would he have known she was still on the premises?

She refused to feel guilty about that. Or rise to his bait. She didn’t have to explain herself to him. To anybody.

‘For valued clients,’ she said, ‘office hours are infinitely expandable.’

‘Infinitely?’

She ignored the innuendo. What she did, whom she did it with, was nothing to do with him.

‘If you want to discuss business,’ she advised, ‘I suggest you call my secretary tomorrow and make an appointment. I may have an hour to spare some time next week.’

She turned to Oliver, said, ‘Thanks for the offer, but I won’t take you out of your way.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at the photo-shoot.’

Neither she nor Max spoke until the Rolls had pulled away from the kerb. Then she turned to him, said, ‘Aren’t you missing something, Max?’

‘A PR consultant?’ he offered.

She shook her head. ‘I was referring to your usual accessory blonde. I imagine they have names, but it’s so hard to keep up.’

She gained a certain amount of pleasure in seeing him clamp down hard, forced for once to hold his tongue, keep his temper in check. Taking unfair advantage of his predicament, she looked up and down the nearly empty street as if his latest airhead might have wandered off to do some window-shopping.

‘Maybe it’s a little cold for such delicate creatures to be out,’ she added, even as she mentally slapped her wrist for goading him when he couldn’t retaliate. But she owed him for that toy boy/sugar-daddy remark. ‘No, I’ve just remembered. At the Christmas party you were flirting with Maddie, but she left with Jack, didn’t she? The brother who inherited your father’s good manners.’

‘According to Jack,’ he said, ‘the only blonde I need at the moment is you.’

‘Really?’ She tutted. ‘Then you’re really going to have to try harder, aren’t you?’

And, having done with Max, she raised her hand to summon a cruising taxi. He beat her to the door, opened it, climbed in after her.

‘Excuse me but this is my taxi. You have a car,’ she reminded him.

‘We have to talk.’

‘You have to talk. I don’t have to listen.’

He didn’t wait for an answer but gave the driver her address.

‘Hijacking my taxi isn’t going to get you what you want,’ she said.

‘What will?’ he asked, sitting back in the far corner of the cab, as far from her as he could get.

That didn’t please her either.

‘Nothing. I have a thriving business, more clients than I can handle. Why would I be interested in leaving that to work for Bella Lucia? More to the point, why would I spare one minute of my time to listen to you?’

‘You’re family, Lou. That should be enough.’

‘Family? Haven’t you been paying attention, Max? That was all just a pretty fiction invented by the Valentines. Your parents, the people who pretended to be my parents. If you’re looking for a family connection you’ve come to the wrong person.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’re family-’

She arched a brow. ‘If you’ve come to demand my loyalty, you’re going to have to try a little harder.’

‘Not demand-’

She cut him off before he could perjure himself.

‘As I recall, being “family”…’ she made those irritating little quote marks with her fingers; irritating Max when she had the upper hand was so satisfying ‘…wasn’t enough the last time I was on the payroll. It certainly didn’t save me from the humiliation of being sacked in front of an entire restaurant full of diners. I’m sorry, Max, but I don’t see the attraction of working for you. I may be blonde, but I’m not dumb.’