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He lifted his head, his expression suddenly fierce, his eyes the darkest ink-blue. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
Now the accountant cleared his throat. ‘I think on this occasion, sir, that Giorgio is right. Perhaps we might consider some form of conciliation—’
Massimo shook his head. ‘No!’ Leaning forward, he picked up one of the envelopes, his face blanked of emotion, the intensity of the gaze belying the quiet reasonableness of his tone. ‘I don’t compromise or conciliate. Ever.’
The eyes around the table stared at him with an unblinking mixture of fear and awe.
‘But we’ve tried every option, Mr Sforza.’ It was Silvana Lisi, his head of land acquisitions. ‘She simply won’t acknowledge our communications. Not even in person.’ She exchanged a helpless glance with her colleagues. ‘She’s completely uncooperative and volatile too, apparently. I believe she threatened to shoot Vittorio the last time he visited the palazzo.’
Massimo surveyed her steadily. ‘How volatile can some little old lady be?’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘Look! I don’t care how old she is, or whether she looks like his nonna, Vittorio is paid to acquire land and properties. If he wants to care for the elderly, I suggest he looks for another job.’
His face pale with nerves, Abruzzi shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Sforza. I think you must have been misinformed. Miss Golding isn’t a little old lady.’
Lounging back in his chair, Massimo frowned. ‘I thought she was some elderly Englishwoman?’
An awkward silence spread across the room and then Caselli said carefully, ‘There was someone living at the palazzo when we first bought the estate—but she was a friend of Bassani, not a tenant, and she left the property over a year ago.’
‘So she’s irrelevant.’ His boss’s face darkened. ‘Unlike the volatile Miss Golding, who appears to have single-handedly thwarted this project and run rings around my entire staff. Perhaps she should be working for me.’
Caselli gave a strained smile. ‘I can only offer my apologies...’ His voice trailed off as he saw the look of impatience on his boss’s face. Sweeping the envelopes off the table, Massimo leaned forward.
‘I own that palazzo, Giorgio. I own the estate and the land surrounding it. And we’ve had approval for the first stage of the project for nearly six months and yet nothing is happening. I expect more than an apology, Giorgio—I want an explanation.’
Hastily, the lawyer shuffled through the papers in front of him. ‘Aside from Miss Golding, everything is on schedule. We have one or two more meetings with the environmental agencies. Just formalities, really. Then the regional council in two months. And then we’re done.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I know we have permission to convert and extend, but we could just modify the plans and build a brand-new palazzo on some other part of the site. We’ll have no problem getting it passed, and it would mean we can bypass Miss Golding entirely—’
Massimo stared at him, the cold blue of his eyes making the temperature in the boardroom plummet abruptly. ‘You want me to change my plans now? To modify a project we’ve worked on for over two years because of one tricky tenant? No. I think not.’ Shaking his head, he glanced angrily around the room. ‘So who exactly is this mysterious Miss Golding? Can someone at least tell me that?’
Sighing, Caselli reached into a pile of folders on the table in front of him and pulled out a slim file. ‘Her name is Flora Golding. She’s English. Twenty-seven years old. She’s moved around a lot, so there’s not much detail, but she was living with Bassani until his death. Apparently she was his “muse”.’ The lawyer stared at his boss and smiled tightly. ‘One of them, anyway. It’s all there in the file.’ Caselli licked his lips ‘Oh, and there’s photographs. These were taken at the opening of the Bassani Wing at the Galleria Doria Pamphili. It was his last public appearance.’
Massimo gave no indication that he had heard a word of this explanation. His eyes were fixed on the photographs in his hand. More particularly they were fixed on Flora Golding. She was clinging to the arm of a man he recognised as the artist Umberto Bassani, and looked far younger than twenty-seven.
She also appeared to be naked.
He felt suddenly dizzy. Wrenching his gaze away, he took a shallow breath and then felt his cheeks grow warm as he saw that she was wearing a dress of some sort of unbleached silk, perhaps a shade lighter than her skin. Noting the soft curves of her breasts and buttocks beneath the clinging dress and the triangle of pale gold skin at her throat, he drew a breath, feeling lust uncurling in the pit of his stomach.
She most definitely was not a little old lady!
He studied her face in silence. With that disdainful tortoiseshell cat’s gaze and crooked crop of fine brown hair, she was an arresting, unorthodox beauty. But she was beautiful—there was no denying that.
A muscle flickered in his jaw as he studied the photograph intently. Beautiful and greedy. Why else would a woman like that surrender her body to a man more than twice her age? Suddenly he tasted bitterness in his mouth. She might look the part, clinging on to her lover’s arm, her eyes lit with an oh-so-convincing adoration, but he knew from personal experience that appearances could be deceptive. More than deceptive! They could be damaging and destructive.
Staring down into those incredible tawny brown eyes, he felt a spark of anger. No doubt a steely will lay beneath the misty softness of their expression. That and a gaping hole where her heart should be. His anger shifted into pity. But what man was truly going to care what lay beneath that satiny skin and curving flesh? And, although he might have been one of the greatest artists of his generation, Umberto Bassani had still been just a man. A sick, elderly, lovestruck fool.
His face hardened. This girl must be quite something if she’d been willing to hook up with a dying man. A lot more than something if she’d lured him into letting her stay on in his home. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach. But was her behaviour so surprising, really? After all, who knew better than he how low a woman like that was prepared to sink in exchange for a share of the spoils?
Or a footnote in a will.
He snapped the folder shut. At least Bassani had had no children. Whatever Miss Golding’s malign influence had been over the old man, it had now run its course. Slowly, he ran a finger over the clean lines of his neatly trimmed stubble. Soon her little protest at the palazzo would be over too, and then denuded of her former powers, she would be homeless and destitute.
Looking up, he studied the faces of the men and women seated around the table. Finally he said, almost mildly, ‘Perhaps you’re right. Maybe we do need a new approach with Miss Golding.’
Clearly surprised by this volte face, Lisi nodded nervously. ‘We could use an intermediary.’ She glanced at her colleagues for support. The lawyer nodded. ‘I think distancing ourselves might be the solution. There are several companies here in Rome that specialise in these sort of negotiations. Or we can go farther afield—London, maybe—’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Massimo said softly. ‘We already have someone working for the company who’s more than capable of convincing Miss Golding that our way is the only way.’
Giorgio frowned. ‘We do? Who?’
Massimo stared at him calmly. ‘Me!’
