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After all, now that her academic studies were complete, she had already accepted a high-earning position as a trader with a top city firm and would be starting work at the end of the month. She hadn’t yet mentioned that news to her family because she wasn’t exactly looking forward to the prospect. It was ironic that she didn’t revere money and the ability to earn lots of it when, right now, her family was in desperate need of cash. Was there the smallest chance that she could pledge most of that future salary towards her parents’ debt and gain her family a little breathing space to stay on in the house? It was a far-fetched idea and she knew it, but it was the only offer of repayment she had within her power to make. Maybe someone at Manzini Finance would prove to have a heart but she wasn’t her mother: she was a pessimist.
It was a simple fact of life that people who handled money took good care of it to make a profit, and people who didn’t or couldn’t pay up, like her parents, were a losing investment.
Maya donned her black interview suit and braided her long hair into a more restrained, adult style, her anxious strained green eyes meeting her in the mirror.Oh, please, God, she thought fearfully, thinking of her brother’s needs, let me be meeting with a man or a woman with a heart...
It was a very fancy office in the centre of the City of London at a prestigious address. Maya was trying not to be impressed but shewasimpressed, by the elegant receptionist clad in designer clothes, the contemporary architectural design of the building and the buzz of a busy city office space that screamed cutting edge and modern. She sat in the waiting area rigid as a stick of rock, reckoning that there was little chance of meeting with compassion in such a place as Manzini Finance.
All smiles, the receptionist approached her to usher her in for her meeting, her attitude almost fawning, which disconcerted Maya, who was good at reading body language. As the door opened she mustered her courage, her eloquence, her top-flight brain and then all of it fell away in a split second when she stared across the vast office at the very tall, well-built and denim-clad man standing there. And it was unnervingly impossible to hang onto her self-discipline when she saw the same guy she had first seen the night of the hen do at the club with her friends.
‘What...what are you doing here?’ she muttered in disbelief.
Raffaele was never petty, but he enjoyed the sight of Maya being knocked off her cool, self-contained perch, the widening of the witchy green eyes, the faint pink feathering across her cheeks and the surprised pout of her luscious pink lips. He shifted position, his big powerful frame tensing as the cut of his jeans tightened across the groin. He didn’t know what it was about her, certainly not the atrociously ugly suit she sported, but she aroused him. And that was fortunate in the circumstances, wasn’t it? he reasoned, but he knew he didn’t like that instinctive physical reaction to her. He didn’t like anything outside his control, didn’t want to be troubled by the suspicion that anything with her could mean anything beyond a business deal.
‘I am Raffaele Manzini. It was my father who gave your parents the original loan.’
‘Tommaso? My mother said he was a very nice man.’
‘He is. Unfortunately for you, however, he is no longer involved in Manzini business. He cut ties with his family around the same time as your mother ran away from hers.’
Maya was trying hard not to stare at him but, really, it was very difficult. In a dark nightclub he had been strikingly good-looking, in broad daylight, he was almost impossibly beautiful, sunlight glinting off his blue-black hair, lingering on cheekbones sharp as blades, a strong straight nose, a full wide mouth. And then those eyes, deeply densely dark, enhanced by lush black lashes yet disturbingly expressionless.
‘Why unfortunately for me?’ Maya queried.
‘My father was probably the onlynice—’ he stressed the word with a sardonic twist of his mouth ‘—person in his family. I’m not nice and I have no ambition to be. You do, however, have something that I want, which I consider very providential for you in this scenario.’
‘P-Providential?’ she stammered, knocked off-balance by that unexpected statement because how could she possibly have anything thathecould want?
‘I have the power to make all the bad stuff in your life vanish,’ Raffaele spelt out with blazing assurance. ‘I know aboutallthe debts your family have, so don’t waste your time trying to bluff me. Now take a seat and we’ll talk.’
His attitude set her teeth on edge, but she fought the sensation because, whether she liked it or not, he was the guy with the power. She settled down in an armchair in the seating area in the corner while he rang for coffee. It arrived at supersonic speed, on a tray carried by the receptionist, who didn’t seem able to take her eyes off Raffaele. Like a mesmerised groupie she giggled when he spoke, and backed out again in a smiling daze as if she had touched liquid sunlight. Maya resisted the urge to roll her eyes, wondering if that was how women usually reacted to him, recalling how her own friends had behaved, and suppressed a sigh, wondering if she should ask what he had been doing in that club that night, wondering if it was wiser simply to leave the topic alone. But she didn’t believe in a coincidence that far-fetched.
‘So...tell me, why haven’t you ditched your family yet?’ Raffaele enquired as she took her first sip of coffee.
Maya almost choked and cleared her throat in haste, scanning him for a clue as to whether or not he was joking. He didn’t look as if he was joking. ‘Why would you ask me that?’
‘It’s an obvious question. Your family are like an albatross round your neck dragging you down,’ Raffaele informed her. ‘With your brain and your prospects, I would have ditched them long ago and moved on to make my own life.’
He was deadly serious. ‘Your attitude tells me that you’re not particularly close to your own family, because if you were you wouldn’t need to be asking me that question,’ Maya countered. ‘I love them a great deal, even though they’re flawed. But then nobody’s perfect. I’m not either.’
‘Your fatal flaw is that you’re sentimental. I don’t get attached to people,’ Raffaele revealed, disconcerting her again.
‘Why are we having this weird conversation?’ she asked. ‘I mean, we’re strangers and this is supposed to be a business meeting.’
‘How can we have a business meeting when I already know that you and your family are broke and completely unable to settle their debts? In that field, there is nothing to discuss. I don’t waste time playing games for the sake of it.’
Maya sipped at her coffee, striving not to look at him, but somehow he commanded the room, drawing her attention continually back to his corner where he sat in a fluid sprawl of long limbs, a black tee stretched across his broad torso, faded, ripped and frayed designer denim clinging to long muscular thighs. Aware of where her gaze had strayed, she flushed, choosing in preference to focus on his lean bronzed face. ‘You were in that club I was in, you approached me...why?’ she asked starkly, wishing that steady but uninformative dark regard of his weren’t quite so unsettling.
‘I wanted to see you in the flesh. I was curious. How up to date are you on our respective families’ histories?’
‘I know nothing about your family and only that my mother’s family once wanted her to marry your father,’ she admitted.
‘Allow me to bring you up to speed,’ Raffaele murmured, his concentration shot when she crossed her legs, revealing for a split second a tiny slice of pale inner thigh that was inexplicably outrageously erotic.
Raffaele clenched his strong jaw, questioning his libido’s overreaction to such a tame glimpse of the female body. He didn’t like how she turned him on hard and fast. He didn’t like that he wanted to unbraid her hair to see it loose again and rip off that ugly suit and put her in clothing that would flatter her tall, slender figure. Such reactions didn’t come naturally to him—at least they never had before with any other woman.
‘You were saying,’ she prompted, irritating him more.
He gave her a potted history of their families’ marital misses and the news about her ancestor’s will and the company. Her eyes widened. ‘But that was really stupid of him... I mean, what if—?’
