Sophie Weston - The Innocent And The Playboy

And failed, was the implication.

Rachel said, ‘I like a challenge.’

Riccardo di Stefano stopped laughing. The look he gave her was pure speculation.

‘So do I,’ he said softly. ‘So do I. Maybe we’re both going to learn something from this.’

CHAPTER TWO

AS THE door closed behind Riccardo di Stefano, Philip sank back in his seat. He looked ill, Rachel thought with compassion. Beads of sweat were etching out a mask on his face. She was not the only one to notice.

‘Better let Rachel run with this one, Phil,’ said Henry Ockenden, the head of lending.

Philip waved a hand vaguely. Rachel took this as agreement. It looked as if he was not going to need much convincing after all. She got up.

‘I’ll be in my office. I’ll get briefing to you by two at the latest,’ she said.

She gathered up her papers and went.

Mandy was at her desk in the outer office. She raised her eyebrows as Rachel steamed past.

‘Fireworks?’

‘As you predicted,’ said Rachel.

‘Di Stefano on the attack?’

‘And then some,’ said Rachel with feeling. ‘Call the group; I want a meeting in twenty minutes. Everyone to have a copy of these.’ She dumped di Stefano’s papers on Mandy’s desk.

Mandy picked them up and took them to the photocopier.

‘Is di Stefano as gorgeous as they say?’ she said, pressing buttons briskly.

The copier warmed into life.

‘Worse,’ said Rachel crisply.

She turned away. Mandy was too observant. Rachel did not want the other woman to detect that this was not the first time she had had the opportunity to observe at close quarters how gorgeous he was. Or that she would give anything not to remember how gorgeous.

Rachel gave an angry little sigh. Riccardo di Stefano had obviously had no trouble forgetting. So why couldn’t she?

Mandy, at the photocopier, was not detecting anything, fortunately. She laughed. ‘He looks a heartbreaker all right.’

Rachel stiffened imperceptibly. Not turning round, she said casually over her shoulder, ‘I thought you hadn’t met him.’

‘No.’ It was not hard to discern Mandy’s regret at this fact. ‘He had his mug shot in the papers yesterday. Taking Sandy Marquis out on the town.’

‘Sandy Marquis?’ The name was vaguely familiar. Then she remembered. ‘The model, you mean? The redhead discovered teaching gym to schoolgirls?’

‘That’s the one.’ Mandy looked at Rachel speculatively. ‘He seems to go for redheads.’

‘He goes for anything female that doesn’t run too fast,’ muttered Rachel unwarily.

Mandy’s eyebrows flew up. This time she was detecting. And accurately.

‘You know him,’ she said on a note of discovery.

That’s what comes of losing your cool, Rachel told herself, annoyed. Aloud she said repressively, ‘We’ve met.’

‘Wow.’ Mandy was impressed. ‘You’ve been clubbing on the quiet?’

‘Of course not. Even if that was how I got my kicks, which it isn’t, what time do I have to go clubbing? When I’m not working I’m trying to persuade two adolescents that school isn’t all bad.’

Mandy chuckled. ‘I don’t see di Stefano at a PTA meeting,’ she allowed. ‘Where on earth did you meet him, for heaven’s sake?’

Rachel grimaced. Take it lightly, she adjured herself. It was never important. Don’t build it up into something it was not.

She shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago. I shouldn’t think he even remembers.’

And I’m going to do everything I can think of to stop him remembering, she resolved fiercely.

‘Have you said anything to him?’

‘No.’ Rachel was unable to disguise her horror.

Mandy looked even more intrigued. Rachel realised she could be getting herself into exactly the kind of trouble she had hoped to avoid—the kind of trouble that slapped an ice-pack on the back of her neck and sent her normally logical mind into meltdown. She could trust Mandy, of course, but if she told her it was a secret Mandy would inevitably start to wonder what it was all about. It was only human nature. It was also horrifying.

I can’t stand that sort of speculation, Rachel thought. How can I avoid thinking about him if every time I put my head out of my office my secretary’s asking herself what Riccardo di Stefano was to me in my dark past?

She felt panic rise. It took all her self-control to quell it, to think of a plausible story. It was half the truth anyway.

‘Look,’ said Rachel, ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it. It was no big deal but I was very young.’ She managed to sound rueful, even faintly embarrassed. She was impressed with herself. ‘It wouldn’t do my credibility much good to remind him. I don’t want him thinking he’s negotiating with a spotty teenager with no control over her temper.’

No hint of the inner panic. Well done, Rachel, she congratulated herself. Mandy was taking it at face value anyway.

‘No control...’ Mandy stared. ‘You?’

‘Youth,’ said Rachel. She gave a very good shrug, quite as if she did not care. She even managed a light laugh.

That was not quite so convincing, evidently. At least, it did not convince Mandy. ‘Did you have a crush on him?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ said Rachel with unmistakable truth. In spite of her determination to stay cool, she could not repress a shudder.

Mandy was not just a colleague, she was a friend. She saw the shudder and drew her own conclusions.

‘Well, if he hasn’t remembered yet, he probably won’t,’ she said comfortingly. ‘Not with Sandy Marquis to keep him happy.’

‘I’m relying on it,’ said Rachel. She went into her office. In the doorway she paused and looked back. ‘Oh, we’ve got a deadline. Two o’clock with Mr Jensen. You’d better find out what the group want in their sandwiches.’

Mandy grimaced. ‘Right you are. Action stations.’ She was already on the telephone when Rachel closed the door.

The room was uncannily quiet without the hum of the photocopier. Rachel sank down behind her desk and stretched out her legs in front of her. They were trembling.

There was an unfamiliar tension between her shoulderblades. She bent her head forward and sideways and the tension eased. It did not go away entirely; though. If she was any judge, it was not going to go away until Riccardo di Stefano was safely back on his own side of the Atlantic.

‘Blast,’ she said.

She rubbed her hand across the back of her neck in an uncharacteristic gesture. The muscles felt like iron. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she remembered another time when she had done the same thing. Her hand fell.

Another time and a whole world away. She got up and went to the window. Outside the rain ran greyly down the window. But the world of her too vivid memory was drenched in sunshine.

Rachel tipped her head forward and rested her brow against the window-pane. How could she ever have thought she had forgotten?

She closed her eyes and let the memories flood back.

She had never wanted to go. She had tried so hard not to. But she had been eighteen and the opposition had all been over twenty-one and had had the big guns.

‘It will be the holiday of a lifetime,’ her father had said heartily. Too heartily. Rachel had not noticed that at the time, of course. ‘You’ve been tying yourself to your books too much. Now the exams are over you deserve a really good time. Judy and I both want you to go.’

And that had been the first objection. Rachel had never warmed to her father’s second wife. Judy felt the same, she’d been sure. Most of the time they’d been polite to each other but that was as far as it had gone. Rachel had frankly been appalled at the idea of going off on a Caribbean holiday with her stepmother for company.