Interview with a Playboy (4 page)

The really awful thing was that her father had seen her—but he hadn’t even acknowledged her with so much as a smile. It was as if she had ceased to exist and was just a stranger.

She’d grown up that day. There had been no more daydreams of a happy-ever-after. And she supposed it had made her into the person she was today—independent and a realist. Certainly not the type to be drawn to a man just because of his looks.

Marco had finished his conversation and was packing some of his papers away.

‘We have about twenty minutes before we land,’ he said to her suddenly. ‘Would you like a drink?’

Even before she answered him he was summoning one of the cabin crew.

‘I’ll have a whisky, please, Michelle,’ he said easily as a member of staff appeared instantly beside him. Then he looked over at Isobel enquiringly.

‘Just an orange juice, please.’

Marco turned his chair around to face her and she felt as if she was in a sophisticated bar somewhere—not on an aircraft heading out to the Mediterranean.

‘We seem to be ahead of schedule,’ Marco said as he looked at his watch. ‘Which means we will be arriving before it gets dark. That’s good. It will give you a chance to catch a little of the spectacular scenery along the coastline.’

‘That would be nice. I can add a description of arriving at your house to my article. Do you live far from Nice Airport?’

‘My residence is nearer to the Italian border—about half an hour’s drive away. But we will be flying into my private airstrip just ten minutes away from the house.’

‘You have your own airstrip?’

‘Yes. Sometimes the roads are very busy getting in and out of Nice, so it frees up a little time—makes life easier.’ He shrugged in that Latin way of his.

‘You are a man in a hurry,’ she reflected wryly, and he laughed.

‘It’s certainly true that there are never enough hours in the day.’

He had a very attractive laugh, and his eyes were warm as they fell on her—so warm, in fact, that for a moment she found herself forgetting what she wanted to say next.

The stewardess brought their drinks. Isobel noticed how she smiled at Marco when he thanked her.

He probably had that affect on every woman he looked at, she thought.

She was about to pour some orange juice into her glass,
but he did it for her. ‘I take it you don’t drink?’ he asked conversationally as he passed her glass over to her.

‘Thanks. I do, but not when I’m working.’ She forced herself to sound businesslike. OK, jetting into the South of France with this man was probably every woman’s dream, but she had to stay focused. Marco Lombardi wasn’t the type of man to relax with. He was too smooth…too practised at getting exactly what he wanted. And what he wanted from her was probably to lull her into a false sense of alliance so that she would write about how wonderful he was. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t that easily fooled.

She just wished he wouldn’t look at her with such close attention. She sat up rigidly in her seat, ramrod-straight, and tried to cultivate a definite no-nonsense look in her eyes. ‘So, do you travel around the world a lot in your private jet?’

‘You sound like you are going to shine a light in my eyes and cross-examine me on my carbon footprint,’ he murmured in amusement.

‘Do I…? Well, that wasn’t my intention.’ She shifted a little uncomfortably in her chair. ‘I’m just trying to gather a few facts about you for my readers, that’s all.’

‘Hmm…’ He lounged back and looked at her for a long moment, and she could feel her heart suddenly starting to speed up.

‘Tell me, do you ever relax?’ he asked.

The suddenly personal question took her aback. ‘Yes, of course I do, Mr Lombardi. But as I said, not—’

‘When you are working.’ He finished the sentence for her, a gleam of amusement in his expression. ‘OK, that’s fine. But I’ve got a suggestion to make. I think, as we are about to spend a few days and nights together at my home, that we should drop the formalities—don’t you?’

The words combined with that sexy Italian accent made alarm bells start to ring inside her. Did he have to make the
situation sound quite so…intimate? she wondered apprehensively.

‘So you can call me Marco,’ he continued without waiting for a reply, ‘and I’ll call you Izzy. ‘

‘Actually, nobody calls me Izzy,’ she interrupted.

‘Good. I like to be different.’

He smiled as he noticed the fire in her eyes, the flare of heightened colour in her cheeks. It was strange, but he found himself enjoying rattling that cool edge of reserve that she seemed determined to hide behind. ‘We’ll be starting our descent into the sunny Côte d’Azur in a few minutes, and it is not the continental way to be so uptight,’ he added.

‘I’m not uptight, Mr Lombardi—’

‘Marco,’ he corrected her softly. ‘Go on you can say it…
Marco…
’ He enunciated the name playfully, his Italian accent rolling attractively over it.

‘OK…Marco.’ She shrugged, and then for good measure added, ‘Now you try
ISOBEL
…’ She rolled her tongue over her name with the same emphasis, and then slanted him a defiant look that made him laugh.

‘You see? You are getting into the continental spirit of things already,’ he teased.

Their eyes held for a moment, then he smiled at her.

It was the oddest thing, but she suddenly felt a most disturbing jolt in the pit of her stomach—as if she had stepped off a cliff and was plummeting fast to the ground.

‘Anyway, I…I think we are getting a bit off track,’ she murmured, trying desperately to gather her senses again.

‘Are we?’

‘Yes, it’s best…you know…to keep things strictly businesslike.’

There was a defensive, almost fierce glitter in her eyes now as she looked at him, but there was also an underlying glimmer of vulnerability. It was almost as if she was scared of lowering her guard around him, he thought suddenly.

The notion intrigued him, and for a moment his gaze moved over the creamy perfection of her skin, the cupid’s bow of her mouth, then lower to the full soft curves of her figure hidden beneath that buttoned up blouse.

Their eyes met again, and she looked even more self-conscious.

Was it an act or not? There was something very alluring about that mix of wide-eyed innocence and hostile attitude. As if she could give as good as she could get—a wary kitten that might purr most agreeably if handled correctly.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind it irritated him! She was a member of the press—and there was nothing vulnerable about a journalist who was hungry for a story, he reminded himself firmly.

‘Don’t worry, Izzy, I won’t allow us to get too far off track,’ he grated mockingly.

The pilot’s voice interrupted them, to say they were starting their final descent and would be touching down in precisely fifteen minutes.

Isobel watched as Marco reached to pick up the rest of the papers he’d been working on earlier.

When his eyes had slipped down over her body she’d felt so hot inside that she could hardly breathe. And she felt foolish now…foolish for imagining for one moment that he was flirting with her.

In reality he was probably laughing at her. The little plain mouse who melted when he smiled at her.

The thought made her burn with embarrassment—because she
had
melted.

Acknowledging that fact even for a moment made her feel very ill at ease, and angrily she tried to dismiss it.

She was here to get a story, and she was totally focused.

As Marco put his work away into his briefcase the plane hit an air pocket, and a few sheets from a report slid across
the polished surface of the table and fell onto the floor at her feet.

She bent to pick them up for him, and couldn’t resist glancing at the pages as she did. Unfortunately they were all in Italian, but she managed to catch the printed heading:
‘Porzione’.

She looked over at Marco as she handed it back to him. ‘What is that?’

‘Nothing that needs to concern you,’ he said, tucking it safely away into his briefcase.

Which almost certainly meant it
would
concern her, she thought sardonically. It was probably some poor unfortunate company that he was about to gobble up and spit out.

‘Don’t forget to fasten your safety belt,’ he said as he settled back into his seat.

‘No, I won’t. Thanks.’ She buckled up, and then glanced away from him out of the window.

Sitting opposite him like this was completely unnerving; there was just something about him that put all of her sensory nerve-endings on high alert.

Porzione—she tried to focus on practicalities, telling herself that she should remember the name and look it up on the internet later. OK, she wasn’t supposed to write about his business dealings, but that didn’t stop her doing a little research and maybe adding a line here and there about his ruthless takeover deals.

She tried to focus on that, and on the bright blue of the sky, on the sound of the engines as the powerful jet geared up for landing—on anything except that moment of attraction she had felt for Marco a little while ago.

It was her imagination, she told herself fiercely. She would never fall under the spell of a man who was a known heartbreaker. And she didn’t buy all that stuff that people spouted about desire overruling common sense. Maybe that happened to other people, but it wasn’t going to happen to her. She was
far too practical for that; she always weighed everything up logically. Probably because she’d seen from her own childhood just what could happen if you fell for the wrong man.

Isobel’s mother had never really recovered from her divorce. She’d suffered from depression for a long time afterwards, with Isobel taking on the role of carer at some points. Once in a weak moment she’d even confessed to Isobel that she was still in love with her ex-husband.

How could you love someone who had treated you so badly? That confession had shocked Isobel beyond words. And she had always vowed that
she
would never allow a man to get her into that state, and that she would always be in control of her emotions.

She had pretty much kept to that vow. As a student at university she’d had a few boyfriends, but she’d always kept them at a distance—never allowing anyone to get too close and never getting into the whole casual sex scene. Instead she had thrown herself into her work. Coming from a single parent family, money had been tight. She’d had just one shot at getting her degree, and she’d been determined not to mess it up by getting sidetracked by a man.

After graduating she’d met Rob, and even though she’d liked him straight away she’d still kept her heart in reserve. Building her career had seemed more important. The thing about Rob was that he had seemed so safe and uncomplicated. He’d stayed around in the background, and little by little he had worked his way into her life. He’d gently told her that he didn’t mind waiting until she was ready to make love, and that he respected her and admired her. He had even said that he held the same moral codes as her. That he knew all about heartbreak as his mother had walked out on him when he was young.

She’d felt sympathy for him when he told her that. And she’d started to trust him. Looking back, she supposed he’d become almost like a best friend. When he’d kissed her there
had been no explosions of passion, but he’d made her laugh and he’d made her feel safe. And when he’d proposed to her it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to say yes.

But Rob hadn’t been the safe, reliable guy she had believed him to be. All those things he’d told her about fidelity being important had been lies. And when she’d caught him in his lies he had turned nasty—had told her that she’d driven him to it, that she was frigid.

Just thinking about it now brought a fresh dart of pain. It only went to show that no matter how careful you were there were no guarantees against heartache.

She closed her eyes for a few moments. At least she had found out her mistake before she had married him.

They were slowly starting to lose altitude, and the plane was juddering as currents of air hit it.

She’d been right all along: the best thing was to concentrate on a career, on being independent.

She opened her eyes and to her consternation found herself looking directly into Marco’s dark, steady gaze. Immediately she felt the tug of some unfamiliar emotion twisting and turning deep inside her.

What was that? she wondered angrily. Because it wasn’t desire.
Even if he did have the sexiest eyes of any man she had ever met.

Hastily she looked away from him. Thoughts like that did not help this situation, she told herself angrily.

They were going through light, swirling clouds now. Then suddenly she could see the vivid sparkle of the Mediterranean beneath her, and ahead the shadowy outlines of the coast.

There were mountains rising sharply, and large swathes of forest.

Lower and lower they came, the engines whining softly, until Isobel thought that they might land in the sea. But just
as she was starting to panic they skimmed in over a white beach and she saw a runway ahead.

A few minutes later they had touched down smoothly. And with a roar of the brakes they taxied to a halt.

‘We are a bit early, but there should be a car outside to pick us up in five minutes,’ Marco said casually as he unfastened his seat belt and stood up.

Isobel also got to her feet, and then wished she hadn’t as she suddenly found herself too close to him in the confined space.

As he reached for his briefcase she sidestepped him so that she could open the overhead compartment and get her bag.

‘Wait—I’ll do that for you,’ he offered, glancing around.

‘No need. I’ve got it.’ Hurriedly she opened the compartment, but the next moment a case slid out smacking into her shoulder.

‘Are you OK?’ Marco caught it before it could do any further damage, and swung it to the floor.

‘Yes…’ She grimaced and put a hand to her shoulder. ‘I think so.’

‘Let me look at you.’ To her consternation, Marco put a hand on her arm and turned her to face him.