A Deal Sealed By Passion. Louise Fuller

Sforza!’ Carmelina, the junior receptionist, gave a squeak of surprise.

      ‘Carmelina!’ he replied, smiling calmly.

      ‘I—I wasn’t expecting you in today, sir—’ she stammered. ‘I must have made a mistake. I thought it was—’

      ‘My birthday?’ Massimo laughed. ‘It is. You didn’t make a mistake, and I’m not planning on hanging around. I just thought I’d pop into the boardroom on my way to lunch at La Pergola. Don’t worry! I’m a big boy now. I can wait until tomorrow for my present from the staff.’

      He watched Carmelina blush. She was sweet, and clearly had the mother of all crushes on him, but he never mixed business with pleasure. Nor would he—unless there was a sudden global shortage in the number of beautiful, sexually imaginative women eager to share his bed.

      He paused briefly in front of the door to the boardroom and then pushed it open. There was a sudden flurry of people pushing back chairs and standing up as he walked purposefully into the room.

      ‘Mr Sforza!’ Salvatore Abruzzi, the company’s chief accountant, stepped forward, a nervous smile upon his face. ‘We weren’t—’

      ‘I know.’ Massimo waved him away with an impatient hand. ‘You weren’t expecting me.’

      Abruzzi smiled weakly. ‘We thought you might be otherwise engaged. But please join us—and happy birthday, Mr Sforza.’

      Around the table, his colleagues murmured their congratulations too.

      Massimo slid into his seat and gazed calmly around the boardroom. ‘Thank you, but if you really want to give me something to celebrate then tell me when we’re going to start work in Sardinia.’

      There was a strained, simmering silence.

      It was Giorgio Caselli, his head of legal affairs, and the closest thing Massimo had to a friend, who cleared his throat and met his boss’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Sforza, but I’m afraid we can’t give you that information at the moment.’

      For a moment, the room seemed to shrink as though the air had been sucked out of it and then Massimo turned and stared unwaveringly at the lawyer. ‘I see.’ He paused. ‘Or rather, I don’t.’ He gazed slowly around the room, his blue gaze colder than an Arctic ice floe. ‘Perhaps somebody would care to explain?’ Frowning, he leaned back in his seat and stretched out his long legs. ‘You see, I was led to believe that all objecting parties had been—’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Removed.’

      There was another strained silence and then Caselli raised his hand. ‘That’s what we believed too, Mr Sforza. Unfortunately the tenant of the Palazzo della Fazia is still refusing to accept all reasonable offers. And as you are well aware, she is legally entitled to stay on at the property under the terms of Bassani’s will.’

      Pausing, Caselli tapped loudly on the top of a document box on the table in front of him; several of the junior board members jumped.

      ‘Miss Golding has made her feelings completely clear. She’s refused to leave the palazzo—and, to be perfectly honest, sir, I can’t see her changing her mind any time soon.’ He sighed. ‘I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think we might have to think about some sort of compromise.’

      Seeing his boss’s set expression, Caselli sighed again and tipped over the box. There was a muffled gasp from around the table as Massimo stared coldly at the sprawling pile of identical white envelopes. Each one was franked with the Sforza logo. All of them were unopened.

      He lifted his head, his expression suddenly fierce, his eyes the darkest ink-blue. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

      Now the accountant cleared his throat. ‘I think on this occasion, sir, that Giorgio is right. Perhaps we might consider some form of conciliation—’

      Massimo shook his head. ‘No!’ Leaning forward, he picked up one of the envelopes, his face blanked of emotion, the intensity of the gaze belying the quiet reasonableness of his tone. ‘I don’t compromise or conciliate. Ever.’

      The eyes around the table stared at him with an unblinking mixture of fear and awe.

      ‘But we’ve tried every option, Mr Sforza.’ It was Silvana Lisi, his head of land acquisitions. ‘She simply won’t acknowledge our communications. Not even in person.’ She exchanged a helpless glance with her colleagues. ‘She’s completely uncooperative and volatile too, apparently. I believe she threatened to shoot Vittorio the last time he visited the palazzo.’

      Massimo surveyed her steadily. ‘How volatile can some little old lady be?’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘Look! I don’t care how old she is, or whether she looks like his nonna, Vittorio is paid to acquire land and properties. If he wants to care for the elderly, I suggest he looks for another job.’

      His face pale with nerves, Abruzzi shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Sforza. I think you must have been misinformed. Miss Golding isn’t a little old lady.’

      Lounging back in his chair, Massimo frowned. ‘I thought she was some elderly Englishwoman?’

      An awkward silence spread across the room and then Caselli said carefully, ‘There was someone living at the palazzo when we first bought the estate—but she was a friend of Bassani, not a tenant, and she left the property over a year ago.’

      ‘So she’s irrelevant.’ His boss’s face darkened. ‘Unlike the volatile Miss Golding, who appears to have single-handedly thwarted this project and run rings around my entire staff. Perhaps she should be working for me.’

      Caselli gave a strained smile. ‘I can only offer my apologies...’ His voice trailed off as he saw the look of impatience on his boss’s face. Sweeping the envelopes off the table, Massimo leaned forward.

      ‘I own that palazzo, Giorgio. I own the estate and the land surrounding it. And we’ve had approval for the first stage of the project for nearly six months and yet nothing is happening. I expect more than an apology, Giorgio—I want an explanation.’

      Hastily, the lawyer shuffled through the papers in front of him. ‘Aside from Miss Golding, everything is on schedule. We have one or two more meetings with the environmental agencies. Just formalities, really. Then the regional council in two months. And then we’re done.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I know we have permission to convert and extend, but we could just modify the plans and build a brand-new palazzo on some other part of the site. We’ll have no problem getting it passed, and it would mean we can bypass Miss Golding entirely—’

      Massimo stared at him, the cold blue of his eyes making the temperature in the boardroom plummet abruptly. ‘You want me to change my plans now? To modify a project we’ve worked on for over two years because of one tricky tenant? No. I think not.’ Shaking his head, he glanced angrily around the room. ‘So who exactly is this mysterious Miss Golding? Can someone at least tell me that?’

      Sighing, Caselli reached into a pile of folders on the table in front of him and pulled out a slim file. ‘Her name is Flora Golding. She’s English. Twenty-seven years old. She’s moved around a lot, so there’s not much detail, but she was living with Bassani until his death. Apparently she was his “muse”.’ The lawyer stared at his boss and smiled tightly. ‘One of them, anyway. It’s all there in the file.’ Caselli licked his lips ‘Oh, and there’s photographs. These were taken at the opening of the Bassani Wing at the Galleria Doria Pamphili. It was his last public appearance.’

      Massimo gave no indication that he had heard a word of this explanation. His eyes were fixed on the photographs in his hand. More particularly they were fixed on Flora Golding. She was clinging to the arm of a man he recognised as the artist Umberto Bassani, and looked far younger than twenty-seven.

      She also appeared to be naked.

      He felt suddenly dizzy. Wrenching his gaze away, he took a shallow breath and then felt his cheeks grow warm as he saw that she was wearing a dress of some sort of unbleached silk, perhaps