Visconti's Forgotten Heir. Elizabeth Power

authority to question it. ‘I’ve already spoken to...’

      Numbly, Magenta only half heard him saying that he had spoken to his marketing manager and she was happy to take the other candidate on.

      ‘I see.’ The woman who was obviously the spokesperson for the three sounded surprised.

      And all at once, through her shock and mounting dismay over losing a job that had not only been within her grasp but which she had been counting on to get her out of financial deep water, Magenta began to see things as they really were.

      He had known she was in here. Probably from some list he had vetted before coming in. Which was why he hadn’t shown any sign of surprise or shock when he had seen her. Because he had already decided—even before he had opened that door—to snatch the chance of that job right out of her hands!

      ‘Miss James...’

      The woman Magenta knew she had won over from the start made a futile little gesture with her hands.

      ‘What can I say? Except that I think we owe you an apology.’

      For what? Magenta thought, hurting, angry. For building up her hopes? For making her think she could be out of the woods with her finances and her barely affordable flat? For throwing her back into the never-ending queue for far too few realistically paid jobs? Perhaps they didn’t have bills to pay and debts to settle, but she did! And now, just because she’d walked into a company controlled by this man with an obvious score to settle, none of those bills were ever likely to be paid!

      Not caring any more about what impression she created, she leaped up from her chair and, in response to the woman’s suggestion about owing her an apology, uttered, ‘Yes, I believe you do! I’ve had to take a whole morning off work—without pay—to enable me to come to this interview today, and I think that the least you could have done in return would have been to get your facts straight! It might not be any skin off your noses to drag people here under false pretences, but if this is the way your company operates then I hope your paying customers don’t arrive at their hotels only to find the previous guests still occupying their beds!’

      She felt sorry for her interviewers—particularly the woman who had shown such enthusiasm for her capabilities before their cold and calculating boss had walked in. Her venom was directed solely at Andreas. She hadn’t wanted to show him up in front of his staff, but if she had, she thought fiercely, then after what he had just done it was no more than he deserved!

      ‘That’s all I have to say,’ she concluded. And she had done so without embarrassing herself, or even tripping over her words, she realised, pivoting away from them—from him—as the ordeal and the thought of what it would mean for her and Theo brought shaming tears to her eyes.

      ‘Miss James.’

      The deep, masculine voice addressed her formally from across the room but she ignored it, tearing over the high-polished floor to the door through which she had come with such high hopes only half an hour earlier.

      ‘Magenta!’

      He didn’t seem bothered by what the others might make of him calling her by her first name, and images of a young man swam before her eyes. A young man who was determined, high-spirited and unrestrained—a young Andreas who refused to be dominated by his father’s will....

      His softer command—and it had been a command, though infused with a persuasive familiarity—stopped her in her tracks.

      Standing there, with her heart banging against her ribcage, she brought her head up, breathing deeply to control her humiliating emotion, squaring her back beneath the silver-grey jacket before she steeled herself to turn around.

      ‘There is another vacancy,’ Andreas said.

      The distance she had put between them had given him a greater vantage point from which to study her, and he was doing just that, allowing his cool gaze to travel over the slender lines of her body in a way that made Magenta almost forget that there were other people in the room.

      She looked at him questioningly but he was addressing the other three, who appeared to be silently querying his declaration.

      ‘It’s all right. I’ll handle this,’ Andreas told them, and one by one they filed out—the younger woman seeming to shoot daggers in Magenta’s direction, the elder sending her a surprisingly knowing smile.

      ‘So what is the vacancy?’ Magenta’s mouth felt dry as the door closed behind them. The air seemed charged with something sensual, stiflingly intimate even in the spacious modern office. ‘Or is this all a clever ploy to try and keep me here?’

      Andreas moved around the desk and leaned back against it, his hands clutching his elbows, one foot crossed over the other.

      ‘I think we should talk first,’ he said.

      ‘What about? Why you just ruined my chances of getting a job I was counting on?’ Tremblingly, because she was almost afraid of knowing the answer, she tagged on, ‘What did I ever do to you that you should dislike me so much?’

      He laughed very softly, but there was no humour in his eyes. ‘Come and sit down,’ he ordered with a jerk of his chin towards her vacated chair.

      ‘I prefer to stand, if you don’t mind.’

      She did, however, move closer to him—close enough to bring her hands down on the back of the chair for some much-needed support.

      ‘As you wish.’ This was accompanied by a gesture of one long, lean hand.

      ‘Tell me what I did. I told you—I’m having difficulty remembering.’

      ‘That’s convenient.’

      ‘It’s the truth.’

      ‘And from experience we both know that you can be remarkably sparing with that.’

      His tone flayed, bringing Magenta’s lashes down like lustrous ebony against the pale translucency of her skin.

      ‘We dated...’ She came around the chair and like an automaton, despite what she had said, sat down upon it, starkly aware of the cynical sound her comment produced.

      ‘Well, that’s one up on what you claimed to know last Friday,’ he remarked. ‘But if my memory serves me correctly we did a whole lot more than that.’

      Images invaded of ripping clothes and devouring kisses. Of tangled limbs and naked bodies. Of herself spread-eagled on a bed in glorious abandon to this man’s driving passion.

      She shook her head and realised that he had relinquished his position on the desk.

      ‘You’re crying,’ he observed, coming towards her and noting the emotion still moistening her eyes after losing the job she’d struggled so long and hard for. ‘It always heightened my pleasure to kiss you after you had been crying. It made your mouth so inviting. So unbelievably soft...’

      His voice had grown quieter, Magenta realised, tormented again by sensual images of the two of them together, by the arousing sensations that were invading every erogenous zone in her body.

      ‘I’m not crying,’ she bluffed, in rejection of everything he was saying—and then caught a sudden, startling glimpse of herself from somewhere in her past, crying bitterly. She was sobbing because she had to leave him. She’d known she had to get away from him. But why? ‘I’m annoyed—angry—humiliated. But I’m certainly not crying. If you want to hurt me then that’s your problem—not mine. But, just for the record, was that rather uncalled-for remark a roundabout way of saying that you were always upsetting me?’

      Within the hard framework of his features his devastating mouth turned uncompromisingly grim. ‘I wasn’t the one responsible for causing you pain in the past, and I certainly did nothing to make you weep. Except in bed.’

      His continual references to the passion they had shared were unsettling her beyond belief. As he probably intended them to, she realised, catching a different sound now from