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She was hooked. He had her…
‘So,’ he continued, ‘while my people come in here and turn this place around, you and I will move out so they can do their job without feeling me breathing down their necks. What I need from you is your secretarial skills and your input on any decision-making I may be required to do regarding Knight’s.’
‘What about my re-education?’ Natalia questioned dryly, trying to make light of what had turned out to be yet another heavy interview. But the moment she saw that gleam enter his eyes she knew she’d said the wrong thing.
‘You think I am not up to the task?’ he probed silkily.
And it was back, just like that. From clever negotiator to lazy seducer in one smooth movement. His eyes feathered over her and her skin began to flutter. He paused at certain relevant locations and caused absolute mayhem.
Stop it! she wanted to snap. But ‘stop it!’ would only encourage him into being more provocative. So she clamped her lips shut, gritted her teeth tightly together behind them and said absolutely nothing.
Though what really made her teeth grit together was the warm, soft laugh he emitted as he walked around the desk. ‘Coming?’ he queried innocently and strode towards the door with that smile still working.
She followed because she really had no option. But she couldn’t say that she was pleased with what had transpired in here today. As she entered her own office the telephone began to ring. Diverting towards her desk, she picked up the receiver. Ten seconds later she was gritting her teeth yet again, and holding the receiver out to him.
‘The lady who rang you earlier, sir,’ she announced with frosty formality.
The mocking smile on his face warmed into pure pleasure. He took the phone and Natalia only just escaped their fingers brushing by a fine hair’s breadth. ‘Ah, buon giorno, mia bella amore…’
The rest she shut her ears to and instead walked out of the room and into the executive washroom, where she spent a few seething moments bringing her composure back into line. By the time she entered her office again, he was busy scrawling something on her note-pad, and the telephone was back on its rest.
Arrangements for their next date? she wondered acidly, watching him tear off the piece of paper, fold it and slide it into his jacket pocket.
‘Right, that tour,’ he said, and began walking straight towards her.
She held her ground out of sheer cussedness. It was a stupid stand to make because he simply slid a hand around her waist and turned her to walk with him. Her breathing failed, her body started singing, and her mind went blank in response.
That hand—that hand…was the only chant playing over and over in an empty chasm of dark self-awareness.
‘Where do we begin?’ he enquired so innocently she could have screamed because he knew exactly what the feel of his hand on her waist was doing to her!
‘The accounts department seems a good place.’ She was rather pleased by how smoothly her voice came out.
‘Before we go in—’ he said, swinging her deftly up against the wall, then coming to stand directly over her. She was suddenly faced full on with his wide chest, and it took all her control not to start breathing faster.
‘This is a delicate situation,’ he murmured, seeming to have no idea how appropriate she was finding the comment. ‘It is essential that you and I present a united front when we begin breaking the news to the staff here about what is about to happen. We must be relaxed, congenial and seem as one in our confidence that what we are proposing will be for their good as well as the company. This way there is a chance that they will be a help to my staff when they arrive and not a hindrance, you understand me?’
Natalia nodded, and wished he would move back a bit.
‘We will not give the impression that I am here to scrutinise or criticise,’ he continued. ‘But all the same we will be doing both. You can do this, do you think?’
‘Play the cheerful spy?’ she said, making the fatal mistake of lifting her chin to send him a rueful smile. A smile that died on her lips when she caught his expression. She looked away again quickly, but not quickly enough to save herself from the disturbing glow she had seen burning in his eyes. ‘I can’t say it’s my favourite role,’ she added distractedly.
‘But for their sakes, you will do it anyway?’
Their sakes. ‘Yes,’ she said, accepting that she was going to have to trust him to do what he had said he was going to do here, while taking into consideration the feelings of the people he would be dealing with.
‘Good.’ He moved back. Her relief to have no part of him touching her was so profound that she almost wilted into the carpet.
For the next couple of hours they paced from department to department. She introduced him to everyone individually, and, in typical Italian style, he charmed them all from the junior receptionist upwards. And in the charming gleaned so much information out of each and every one of them that Natalia was rather shell-shocked, by the end of it, as to how many people working there had been willing if not desperate for the changes Giancarlo was proposing.
‘Right, let’s get out of here,’ he said eventually, and began striding across the reception area towards the doors, without waiting to see if she was following.
He was angry, she acknowledged, and couldn’t really blame him for feeling that way. The long list of personal grievances, which had been aired here this morning, was enough to incense anyone with a reasonable grasp of good business practice. And whatever else she doubted about Giancarlo Cardinale, she did not doubt his business integrity.
Poor Edward, she thought sadly as she stepped outside to find Giancarlo ha
d already hailed a cab and was opening the door ready for her to precede him into it.
