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She probably hadn’t meant it literally, but Maya got her phone out to time it anyway, and saw she had a missed call from Beatrice. She felt a pang of guilt.
Beatrice and her mum knew she was in Italy but not where or why. When she’d initially told her sister her destination, Bea had immediately concluded that Maya was there in connection with the embryonic design business that had once been their joint project.
‘Oh, so that supplier you were talking about, they lowered the costs, did they? That’s marvellous! The samples you sent me, the colours of that wool are just perfect. The offer of the start-up money still stands, you know, it’s not charity. Dante and I, we believe in you.’
The opportunity had been there for Maya to put her right, but she’d been afraid that if she started talking about Samuele and Mattio and Violetta, it would all spill out, and then the moment had passed. She had allowed the misunderstanding to go on, and the longer it had lasted the more difficult the idea of coming clean had become, and now it weighed heavily on her conscience. She would tell Bea and Mum soon, but it seemed easiest to wait until she could explain the situation in person.
Then perhaps they could explain it to me, she thought. Because when she lay awake at night wondering how she’d got herself into this situation, the answer was no more clear-cut than her feelings for Samuele were.
She was sitting with her back to him and the doorway, unaware of his presence as she slid her phone back into the big leather bag with a file sticking out that she wore slung over her shoulder.
Samuele couldn’t see her face, but he’d spotted the tension in her narrow back and he found himself wondering about the person on the other end of the line who had put it there.
‘Good morning, Maya.’
She got to her feet as though shot and spun around, her colour-clash statement relatively sedate today. She had on an acid-green shirt tucked into a pair of black pedal pushers, and she wore flat black pumps embellished with embroidery on her narrow feet. Her glorious hair was confined at the nape of her slender neck by a leather lace.
Samuele could almost see the boundaries that he had spent the last two weeks constructing dissolve. In his mind he was immediately unfastening the tie and spreading out her hair down her back—which in this fantasy was naked.
She was naked quite a lot in his mind. Actually, she was in his mind far too much, full stop.
‘H-hello,’ she stammered out. ‘She said to come in but I...wasn’t sure.’
He had not been sure either, but he was now.
You did not need to have second sight to see what was coming down the line. Violetta was already hinting—tauntingmight be more accurate—the fact that she felt she held the winning card. But her inability to resist turning the knife in his back had actually worked in his favour this time.
He had given himself time to stall by paying her latest thinly disguised blackmail demand, but he had no illusions that it would be the last one. And when she got bored with taking money off him, she would move in for the kill.
It was not really about money or maternal feelings for Violetta; it was all about revenge and power plays.
The money didn’t matter to him, but Mattio did, and he was prepared to go to any length to fulfill his promise to his brother—including marriage.
He’d sworn to Cristiano that he would always do what was best for Mattio, and he was ashamed that he’d been willing to deprive the baby of the sort of mother he deserved just because Samuele hadn’t looked beyond his own fears of becoming like his father or brother.
But he wasn’t either of them, and he could see now that it had been ridiculous to compare his situation with theirs. For starters, poor Cristiano had not been able to see a single fault in his toxic bride and his deluded father’s obsession had made him similarly blinkered. Whilehewas perfectly aware of Maya’s flaws—it was hard not to be when she was the most challenging female he had ever met!—he was certain she would make the best mother to Mattio, and the fact that there was already a blood tie between the two could be an important factor in securing her agreement to his plan.
‘Do you want to come through...?’
Maya’s heart flipped at the sound of his voice, but before she could respond he was already moving towards the door, taking her agreement as a given. And who could blame him? She hadn’t been resisting much of late; maybe once a people-pleaser, always a people-pleaser.
Taking a deep breath, and hating the idea she might be a pushover, she clutched her bag containing the folder and followed him through to his inner sanctum.
As with three quarters of the sprawling castle, this was a room she had never entered—it was probably the first and last time.
She hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it was actually pretty modern and utilitarian, dominated by a massive desk with several computer screens. One wall was book-lined, and there was a stack of free weights on a purpose-built stand. She pushed away the mental picture of a sweaty Samuele taking a break from the stress of moving around billions by stretching his muscles to the limit, and focused on the only decorative touch, which was a black and white framed drawing of the castello.
He saw her looking at it. ‘The artist is disputed but it shows the place before the more contemporary additions, as in sixteenth-century contemporary.’
‘It’s very striking.’
He had moved to stand in front of the full-length window, and she tried hard not to sigh wistfully. He was wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit, making him looking formal, exclusive, distant and quite incredibly gorgeous.
‘Th...This is a very nice room...’
He cut across her stuttering opening and nodded to one of the leather chairs set on the opposite side of the desk from him. ‘Have a seat.’ He took his own seat behind the massive desk, which occupied a large section of the pretty large room.
Right...so far, so formal—very formal, Maya thought uncertainly, feeling as though she had been sent to the headmaster’s office, though the analogy had some major flaws.
