The Italian Tycoon's Mistress. Cathy Williams

‘Freddy’s a chartered surveyor, Tim and Andy handle all the dealings with the people who need organising to work on turning our projects into reality, Dee’s the architect and Marcy’s our administrator.’

      ‘And where do you fit in?’

      ‘I oversee everything,’ Amy said coldly, sensing implied criticism. ‘Make sure deadlines are kept, liaise with various councillors, meet with the residents to make sure that their suggestions are being taken on board.’ She edged back, watching as he silently tapped his fingers on the desk.

      ‘And this is the only thing you’re working on at the moment? Where are the costings?’ Amy stepped forward to rifle through the papers, glanced at her watch and caught her breath.

      ‘In there.’ She pointed vaguely at the bundle of papers. ‘They’re mostly estimates, but I’m quite familiar with all the suppliers we now use and we get pretty good deals from them.’

      ‘Run it by me.’

      ‘I can’t.’ Amy flushed and looked away, before circling round the desk to fetch her bag from the chair. Where had the time gone? She couldn’t have been talking for over two hours? It was now after five-thirty and of all the days to lose track of time, this had to be right up there as one of the worst.

      ‘You have already shown your lack of professionalism in failing to come and see me on the pretext that you were too busy and now it appears that you are happy to cut short what could be a very pivotal meeting for you and your staff because…what?’

      ‘I just have to go. I’m sorry.’ Amy slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t realise how long I’d been here.’

      ‘Go where?’

      ‘I’m prepared to discuss whatever you want to discuss as far as work goes, Mr Losi, but I’m certainly not prepared to discuss my personal life with you. That’s none of your business.’ Those cool blue eyes were unnerving though, and Amy knew how things must look from his point of view. Here she was, ready to defend her position with all the ammunition at her disposal just so long as it didn’t clash with her personal life. She sighed and dropped her bag onto the chair.

      ‘I…I have a date, actually, and I can’t possibly cancel it because I’ve already cancelled the last three. Sam’s got tickets for us to go to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the theatre and I just don’t want to let him down. Again.’

      Rocco looked at the flushed, embarrassed face and felt a spurt of intense, unfamiliar interest kick-start inside him.

      ‘Also,’ she mumbled uncomfortably into the engulfing silence, which she read as yet more mounting, unspoken criticism, ‘my car’s in for service and Edward can’t take me to the theatre. I’m going to have to get a cab and it’s always difficult getting one to come this far out of the town centre in summer. Too many tourists around competing for too few taxi drivers.’ She contemplated the convoluted journey, which would not really leave her sufficient time to go back to her house and change, and gloomily tried to imagine Sam’s expression as he paced the foyer waiting for her. He wouldn’t be overjoyed. He had already told her that her workaholic tendencies were beginning to try his patience.

      ‘Okay.’ Rocco shrugged and stood up. ‘We’ll continue this on Monday.’

      Amy breathed a sigh of relief and stole a surreptitious look at him. For a big man, he moved with surprising grace and she wondered whether he played a lot of sport. Didn’t they all do that in New York? Join gyms so that they could frantically work out? If he played any sport, she imagined that it would be of the confrontational kind, something like squash that was fast and vigorous and would allow him to thrash his opponent to a pulp.

      As far as Amy was concerned, the gym was something that she had spent the past five years meaning to get around to but never quite managing.

      She hardly noticed that he was standing beside her, opening the door for her to leave, and she said, in some surprise, ‘You’re not leaving work already, are you? Don’t you burn the midnight oil?’

      ‘What makes you think that I’m not leaving here so that I can carry on burning it somewhere else?’ he asked with a crooked smile. The first smile she had seen and her heartbeat quickened treacherously. Bastard the man might be, but a very sexy one.

      ‘In which case, have fun.’ She shrugged, heading for the stairs, and was taken aback to find that he was keeping step with her, tailoring his long strides to match her smaller ones.

      There were still a number of people in the old building, but most of the secretarial staff had already left. Unofficially, they were allowed to head home earlier than usual on a Friday, and most of the junior members of staff took advantage of the fact. Busy doing the things she had never really seemed to do, she supposed. Partying, flitting from boyfriend to boyfriend, drinking until the early hours of the morning and then waking up with hangovers.

      Her father’s deteriorating and agonising illness had taken a huge dent out of her youth and she had emerged with all the carefree joys of being young seemingly lost to her for ever. Not that she had once regretted the reasons she had grown into adulthood before her time. She didn’t. But she knew that things might have been different if she had not had to cope with the strains of looking after her father when she had barely been able to look after herself. She had thrown herself into her work, knowing that she had had a lot to prove with her age being against her.

      ‘Where are you going?’ she asked casually as they walked down the staircase, for the sake of saying something. ‘Anywhere interesting?’

      ‘To the theatre,’ he said, as casually. ‘To drop you off for your hot date.’

      Amy stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him with nervous dismay. ‘Thank you. Very much, but I’d really rather you didn’t.’

      ‘Why not?’

      A thousand and one reasons fluttered inside her head but she was hard pressed to name one and, in the ensuing silence, he said reasonably, ‘We spent longer than we thought going over the files. That was my fault. Hence I intend to help you make up for lost time by driving you to wherever you are going. Unless you have time to go back to your place and dress first, in which case I’ll take the necessary detour, but I should think you probably wouldn’t.’

      ‘There’s no need to put yourself out…’

      ‘Why don’t you accept the offer of a lift in the spirit in which it was intended?’

      Amy accepted faintly, faced with zero choice, but the thought of being in a small, enclosed space with this man, her enemy, she reminded herself, made her feel unaccountably uneasy.

      ‘I rarely pay attention to the time,’ Rocco said, zapping open the doors of his rented Jaguar with his remote. He opened the passenger door for her and she shot inside like a bolt.

      He picked up the easy conversation once he was inside, turning to her with an unreadable expression. ‘I usually expect everyone else to abide by the same rules.’

      ‘I don’t normally clock-watch, Mr Losi…’ Amy’s voice trailed off and she was held reluctant captive to his dark, averted profile as he manoeuvred the car out of the courtyard and through the stone columns that fronted the building.

      ‘Hence the three cancelled dates…? And by the way, I think we can do away with the formality of surnames. I always try and encourage a certain amount of informality in my staff. That way, they can feel more relaxed about approaching me.’

      Amy tried to equate relaxation with Rocco Losi. The two didn’t go together at all. He was just too forbidding. Even now, when he had taken off his intimidating hat, she still couldn’t begin to relax in his company. Did he really expect her to? she wondered. After he had told her in no uncertain terms what he intended to do with her precious subsidiary? Trample it into the ground like a cockroach under his foot?

      ‘What changes do you have in mind for the company? Will there be redundancies?’

      ‘What