Interview with a Playboy (8 page)

‘Italy will always be my first love, but I have to admit that I’m torn. France is like a very beautiful mistress—compelling and provocative, hard to get out of the system.’

There was a honeyed edge to his voice that made little darts of adrenalin shoot through her.

‘Well, you’d know all about mistresses, I suppose,’ she murmured, trying to ignore the sensations.

‘I know about passion,’ he corrected softly. ‘How it can fire the senses, take you over.’

Something about the way he was looking at her made her feel hot inside…made her wonder what it would be like to be kissed by him, to be held in those strong arms. As soon as the thought crossed her mind she was shaken. She had more sense than to ever be attracted to him, she reminded herself furiously.

‘So, is that what happened with your marriage?’ Desperately she tried to bring herself back to reality by asking the question. ‘Did you go out one night and meet someone, and allow passion to take you over to the point where you allowed yourself to forget that you were married?’

‘Same old tired questions…’ He shook his head. ‘And I thought you said you could do better.’

The mocking words made her skin flush with colour. ‘It’s the question people are interested in.’

‘It’s two years since my divorce, Izzy. You’d think people would have moved on.’

There was an undercurrent to the words that she couldn’t work out. Was it anger? Sadness? Or just plain irritation?

Their eyes held. ‘Are you going to give me an answer?’ she asked hesitantly, and he shook his head.

‘Not right now…no.’

The reply took her by surprise. ‘But you invited me here specifically to interview you about your life—’

‘My life is more than my divorce, surely?’ He fixed her with that mocking look that completely unnerved her. ‘I think you should work up to that question.’

‘Do you?’ She looked at him archly. ‘Is this let’s-make-the-journalist-jump-through-hoops time?’

He laughed. ‘You know, I like the sound of that!’

Stella interrupted them again as she came to clear the table and serve the desert—a
crème brulée
with a thick, creamy
crust that Isobel would have enjoyed if she hadn’t completely lost her appetite now.

‘So, what questions am I allowed to ask you, Marco?’ she murmured as they were left alone again. ‘I suppose it’s OK to dwell on your life in the fast lane, with your planes and your yachts?’

‘I thought you said you didn’t exaggerate? It’s one plane and one yacht,’ he corrected her with a smile, and then sat back in his chair to regard her steadily. ‘And am I to gather from that note in your voice that you disapprove of my—as you call it—life in the fast lane?’

‘It’s not my place to disapprove or approve. I’m just making an observation.’ She shrugged.

‘Oh, is that all it is?’ He laughed. ‘And your
observation
is that I have no idea what real life is like? Is that it? That I don’t know how poverty can bite to the bone?’

She shrugged. ‘Well, now you come to mention it—’

‘Izzy, I spent the first eight years of my life living in the back streets of Naples. We had nothing.’

She frowned. ‘But I thought you came from a wealthy family.’

‘My mother was from a wealthy family, but she was cut off without a penny when she married my father because he had committed the ultimate sin of being born poor. It was only when my father died that we were received back into the fold.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Isobel said in surprise. ‘The blurb on your background always says that you are from a wealthy dynasty.’

‘Well, there you are, you see—you don’t know everything.’ Marco’s mobile phone started to ring, and he lifted it up to look at the screen. ‘Excuse me, I’ll have to take this. It’s a business call.’

Isobel watched as he leaned back in his chair, noticing how his Italian tones blended attractively into the warmth of
the night. His revelations about his family background had surprised her—how was it that no one had found out this information before? she wondered. And what else didn’t she know about him?

Stella came over to the table to see if they were finished and to ask if they wanted coffee. Isobel tried to communicate with her in her stumbling French, thanking her for the meal and declining coffee as she was still enjoying the delicious wine.

‘Ah, the wine is from Marco’s vineyard in Provence,’ Stella said in broken English. ‘It is good, yes?’

‘Très bon,’
Isobel replied and then tried to say that she hadn’t realised that Marco owned a vineyard.

Unfortunately Stella replied in such rapid French that Isobel couldn’t understand a word, so she just nodded as she watched her clearing the table, and then said a quick thank-you in French before she disappeared.

She caught Marco glancing over at her with that amused look in the darkness of his eyes. Probably laughing at her lamentable attempt to communicate. But not everyone was bilingual. Really, the guy was perfectly impossible!

There was also more to him than she had first realised. He’d obviously been through some tough times in his youth, and he was a bit more…
human
than she’d thought he would be. He had quite a good sense of humour, and—

Suddenly Isobel caught herself. What on earth was she thinking? Even if he’d had a harsh upbringing in Italy, he was still the same ruthless man who had practically stolen her grandfather’s firm. Not to mention the fact that he was a womaniser—all good reasons for not being drawn in by that playful gleam in the darkness of his eyes.

On impulse she got up from the table and walked to the edge of the terrace. She could see the pool from here, and the shimmering turquoise water looked cool and inviting in the tropical heat.

She listened to Marco’s smooth flow of Italian and wondered what he was saying. She needed to find out more about his ruthless side, she reminded herself—needed to keep her senses firmly grounded.

‘You were right about one thing, Izzy,’ he observed suddenly, and she turned around to see that he had finished his call and was getting up from the table.

‘And what is that?’

‘Your conversational French needs work.’ He smiled at her.

‘Thanks for that. I knew you were amused!’

‘No, actually I was impressed that you made an attempt. And amused by the fact that you sounded quite cute as you did so.’

‘Thanks,’ she murmured with embarrassment. ‘What you really mean is that I sounded silly.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant at all. Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ He strolled back towards her, and something about the way he was watching her with such intensity made her emotions spin.

‘Anyway, we should get back to where we were before we got interrupted by your phone call,’ she continued swiftly, her mind racing to try and get back into the safety of work mode. ‘You were telling me about your childhood.’

‘Was I?’ He shrugged. ‘I think we should move on from that. Maybe you should tell me a little more about yourself.’

‘Is this another of your let’s-make-the-journalist-jump through-hoops moments?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s more of a let’s relax moment.’ He came to a halt beside her. ‘It is ten o’clock, Izzy—don’t you ever switch off from work?’

‘Says the guy who has just taken a business phone call,’ she retorted swiftly.

He laughed. ‘You’re right. Maybe we are both guilty of burying ourselves in work.’ His gaze suddenly turned serious.
‘My excuse is that I have a lot of people depending on me to get things done, a lot of jobs riding on my decisions. What’s your excuse?’

‘I don’t need an excuse. And I don’t know why you keep asking me these questions.’

‘Because I’m interested. In fact I’d say I’m as curious about you as you are about me.’

For a few dangerous seconds she could feel his eyes moving over her face and down to the graze along her collarbone.

She remembered how he’d made her feel when he’d reached to unfasten that one little button at the top of her blouse earlier, and as their eyes connected again she could feel the same heat swirling almost violently inside her. Hastily she took a step away from him.

‘Izzy, why are you so frightened of letting your guard down?’

The husky way he asked that question made her heart start to thud nervously. ‘I’m not frightened of anything!’ He was too damn alert; like a heat-seeking missile he seemed to be able to zone in on her vulnerability…on the fact that she found him far too attractive. Desperately she tried to remind herself that she shouldn’t be thinking like this… ‘And as for your being worried about people’s jobs! Frankly, I find that hard to believe.’

He smiled. ‘You could win an award for that defence system of yours, do you know that?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about!’ She would have backed further away from him, but there was nowhere to go. She was penned in now against the wooden rail.

‘I’m talking about the fact that you seem to need to hide behind a businesslike attitude at all times. And it seems to be a pretty negative one as well where I’m concerned. Tell me, are you like this with all men, or is it just me?’

The lazily amused question made her temperature soar. ‘I just know the truth about you, that’s all.’ As soon as the words
slipped out she desperately wanted to recall them. She didn’t want to make this personal.

‘Do you care to explain what you mean by “the truth”?’

There was a tense stillness about him, and as Isobel stared up at him she felt her nerves twisting.

‘Not really.’ Her voice was a mere whisper. ‘Marco, I think we should leave things as they are—I think we should call it a night.’

She tried to move past him but he just reached out a hand and caught hold of her arm.

‘On the contrary—you are not going anywhere until you enlighten me.’

The touch of his hand against her arm made her heart thud heavily against her chest.

Their eyes clashed, and she knew he wasn’t going to let her go until she said something. ‘OK, I just…think you are arrogant and…and ruthless in business.’ He was looking at her with that impassive look that fired her blood—as if he was not taking anything on board and as if she were just an irksome little reporter talking rubbish. ‘You buy companies and strip them of their assets,’ she continued, a little more forcefully. ‘You play God as you fire people and tear their lives apart.’

‘You certainly hold very biased views about me, don’t you?’ He shook his head lazily.

The observation made her blush. ‘The truth is important to me, Marco—I wouldn’t say those things without first-hand knowledge to back up the accusations. And I know that when it comes to business you are in for the kill.’

‘I’m a businessman. I have to make tough decisions sometimes when I take over a company.’ He shrugged. ‘But as for your accusations that I fire people without thought and tear companies apart—I don’t know where you are getting that from.’ His eyes were hard for a moment. ‘Where possible I try to move people around within my organisation. I’m in the
business of building up strong companies, and I employ a hell of a lot of people.’

‘You make it sound so reasonable.’ She tipped her head up angrily. ‘But I know how you use your power, Marco. I know how you can force small companies into selling to you.’ The charge fell from her lips with raw emphasis.

He stared into the blaze of her green eyes. ‘Izzy, I have never forced anyone into selling to me.’

‘Well, now I
know
you are lying.’ With determination she held his gaze. ‘And I know that because you forced my grandfather into selling his company to you.’

There—she’d said it! She’d confronted him. But even as the words tumbled out she was regretting them.

Her job was on the line here—she needed to get him on side, get her stupid gossipy interview and just leave. And here she was, raking up stuff that no one except her cared a damn about!

‘Your grandfather?’ Marco frowned. ‘What company would that be?’

She shook her head. ‘Look, Marco, I’ve said too much already. We should leave this subject—because you and I will never agree on your business practices.’

But Marco wasn’t even listening to her; instead he was looking at her with that intensity that she found so unnerving. ‘Keyes…’ He murmured her name as he ran it through his memory banks and then shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about…’ Suddenly his voice trailed away as he remembered the photo on the shelf in her bedroom. He’d recognised the guy. Like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle the name suddenly flashed into his mind. ‘Hayes…David Hayes—that was the man in your photograph. Was he your grandfather?’

He watched the telltale flush of colour on her cheekbones.

‘Well, well…’ He shook his head. ‘I bought that company over ten years ago.’

‘There are some things you never forget,’ she said stiffly. ‘He was a decent honest man and you broke him.’

‘Is that what you think?’ Marco frowned.

‘It’s what I
know
,’ she told him firmly. ‘You squeezed him out…the big guy bullying the small trader…until you got the business for next to nothing.’

‘That’s not how it happened, Izzy,’ he said calmly. ‘Yes, once I’d ironed out the problems I did get a good deal with that business. It was a very profitable venture. But it was bad management that was your grandfather’s undoing, not me.’

She shook her head. ‘He told me—’

‘I don’t care what he told you. I’m telling you the truth.’ Marco cut across her briskly. ‘For some reason your grandfather trusted a man he’d put in control of the factory, and he ran the place into the ground. My first job when I took over was to sack him.’

Isobel stared at Marco, and for a moment the earth seemed to tilt to a very strange angle.

‘He’d been running up debts, not paying bills. The guy was—’ Marco stopped as he saw the colour starting to fade from her cheeks. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes.’ She tried to hold her head high.

But she wasn’t OK, because suddenly she’d realised that for all these years she had blamed Marco for what he had done to her grandfather…and the real culprit had been her father.

Her father had been in charge of that factory!

Why hadn’t her grandfather told her the truth? Why had he backed up all the lies her father had told about the ruthless Marco Lombardi? Even as she asked herself the question she knew the answer. Because in those days she had adored her father, had hero-worshipped him, and her grandfather probably hadn’t been able to face disillusioning her. He’d been old school: gentle, courteous. And he had loved her very much. In fact he was probably the only person who had ever truly wanted to protect her.