EIGHT-THIRTY on a Sunday evening. Rafe heard the phone
ring next to where he was sitting, in the room that had
once been a library and was now his office away from the
office. Global deals had no respect for English working
hours, and Sundays were never days of rest for him. They
were simply time when he could catch up with whatever
needed doing, make calls to Australia, make sure, in
essence, that everything was ticking over nicely.
Furthermore, he knew who would be on the other end of the
line.
With a little sigh of half pleasure, half frustration, he
picked up the receiver and as he'd predicted heard his
mother's voice on the other end of the line.
"You're working, Rafael. Aren't you? You're in that office
of yours working. You shouldn't be working on a Sunday.
How many times have I told you that?"
"Hullo, Mother." He smiled into the telephone, pushed his
leather chair away from the desk and swivelled round,
bringing the phone with him, so that he could stare out of
the window. In the depths of winter, there wasn't much to
see outside, just the vague shapes of his back garden,
which was large for a London house but small in comparison
to the acres of land on which he had grown up. "How are
you?"
"I, Rafael, am fine. You, on the other hand, are heading
for high blood pressure and an early grave."
"Thank you for that." He grinned and ran his fingers
through his short, dark hair. "Never let it be said that a
businessman's life isn't fraught with danger."
He listened abstractedly as Claudia Loro continued more or
less in the same vein for a few minutes, lecturing to him
about his lifestyle, asking him about his health and
punctuating his answers with pointed clucking and
elaborate sighs. It was a familiar routine and one that he
accepted with good-natured tolerance. He would never have
allowed any other woman to preach to him about his life,
and some had made the mistake of trying in the past, but
his mother was different. He listened, even if he chose to
ignore most of her advice.
She had now moved on to the topic of her week, bringing
him up to date with what she had been doing, filling him
in on what was happening in the little village where she
lived and which had been his home until he'd moved down to
London fourteen years previously. Already his mind was
drifting off to Paul Glebe on the other side of the world,
whose phone call had raised one or two problems that
needed sorting out if his latest acquisition was to go
ahead.
"Anyway," he heard his mother say in a rounding-up tone of
voice, "I haven't called to witter on about my social
lifeโฆ"
"Exciting though it may be." 'Certainly a great deal
jollier than yours, my darling." 'My life, dearest Mama,
is deeply exciting." He stretched out his long legs,
resting them on the broad ledge of the window, and thought
fleetingly of the current piece of excitement in his life.
Five foot ten, legs up to her armpits and hair down to her
waist. Intellectually undemanding but physically stunning.
Just the way he liked them. What man needed a high IQ in
his woman when all he wanted to do when he wasn't working
was give his fiercely active brain a well-deserved rest?
In short, she was just the sort of girl his mother would
heartily disapprove of. He wondered whether to stoke the
fire by mentioning this particular fun element of his
life, and decided against it.
"But lacking in challenge, Rafael. Which is why I have a
little surprise up my sleeve for youโฆ"
The pleasant image of Angela Street and her very long legs
evaporated and he grunted discouragingly, frowning at the
sudden change in his mother voice. A surprise from his
mother usually heralded an invitation to some informal get-
together involving as many of her local friends as she
could rustle up, along with their assorted offspring, in
one huge, unwelcome matchmaking fest.
"I can't come," he said bluntly. Claudia Loro ignored him.
"Do you remember Grace Frey? My very dear friend?" 'Hard
not to," Rafe said dryly. The pleasing image of his long-
haired beauty was replaced by that of a woman in her late
forties, small, energetic and very post-hippie.
"Then you'll surely remember her daughter. Sophie." Rafe
all but groaned. Like her mother, Sophie Frey stuck in a
person's head like a burr under the skin. She, too, was
small and distinctly unfeminine. Undisciplined hair,
freckles, clothes that looked as though they had been
yanked out of a junk shop and then just thrown together in
a random fashion with the sole objective of making their
wearer as unappealing as possible. The last time he had
seen her had been at his mother's summer barbecue. Sandals
of the sort worn by the determined rambler, long, flowing
skirt clashing horribly with a cardigan that looked as
though it had been borrowed from someone's grandfather. He
had studiously managed to avoid her.
"Where is this leading, Mother?" 'Straight to your office,
as a matter of fact."
While Rafe was trying to puzzle this one out, Claudia
jumped into the breach to explain.
"She's just changed jobs, darling. Left that dreadful
office place where she's been working and managed to land
herself a job at a publishing house. Anyway, to cut a long
story short, she's been thrown in at the deep end. One of
their publications includes a business magazine, which
isn't, I gather, doing terribly well. They're trying to
revamp it into something more user friendly, which
basically means incorporating more human interest stories
with the usual boring financial news."
"You're losing me here." He swivelled back round to face
his desk and brought his computer back to life with a
click of a mouse. The report he had been reading before
the telephone had rung was once more flickering in front
of him, waiting to be checked.
"Am I, darling? And you with that sharp brain of yours?"
She laughed delightedly. "Let me explain, in that case.
Sophie has to do a feature on someone big in the business
world."
"Ah." A one-hour interview was distinctly better than an
evening with the local gang. "If she phones my secretary,
I'm sure I can squeeze her in for an interview."
"Not so much an interview, Rafael, asโฆ" Her voice trailed
off into thoughtful silence and Rafe began scrolling down
the report, scanning the important points raised and
already calculating what needed to be done.
"As what?" he prompted. "As, well, something more
detailed." 'What could be more detailed than an interview?
She sits in my office for half an hour, she asks
questions, she writes my answers down in her little
notepad, she goes away and writes her article or whatever
it is she has to do. Of course, I would have to proofread
anything she's written. Facts have a sinister way of
becoming distorted when they're in the hands of a
journalist."
"When I say more detailed, darling, I mean it. Her brief
is to shadow you for a fortnight, really absorb what you
do and how you do it, and then write an article about the
man behind the empireโฆ"
Rafe's attention shot away from the report and focused
fully on what his mother had just said.
"That's out of the question." 'Naturally, it would be a
huge scoop for their very first special feature to be
about you," Claudia Loro said calmly. "You're wealthy,
you're powerful and you lead a seemingly colourful life โ"
"I said no, Mother, and you can relay that simple message
to her."
"She starts tomorrow. I've promised Grace that I would
help Sophie out and you are not going to let me down,
Rafael."
With anyone else, Rafe Loro would have turned on that side
of his personality that could make grown men quake in
fear, that contemptuously cold side that brooked no
argument and silenced all opposition.
Respect and love for his mother controlled the urge, but
he was in no better frame of mind the following morning as
he let himself into his office two hours before his
secretary was due to arrive. In fact, as he settled behind
his desk his mood was filthy. It wasn't often that Rafael
Loro was rendered impotent and it was a sensation he
didn't care for. He had no intention of resigning himself
to the inevitable and making the best of it. He didn't
want the girl tagging around behind him like an annoying,
yapping dog and he fully intended to tell her that. If she
didn't like his attitude, then she could find herself
someone else to follow.
He also didn't like the idea of someone traipsing along
with him to his meetings. Did she expect him to hold her
hand and make sure that she was all right? He sincerely
hoped not because if she did, then her awakening to
reality would be brutal. Unfortunate but inevitable.
He was still seething when the building began to come
alive with people arriving at normal working hours.
Sophie, who had spent a long time working out what she
should wear, was aware of his mood before she actually
made it to his office.
It seemed to her that everyone on the director's floor was
somehow tuned into the big boss's moods. His secretary,
Patricia, who met her in Reception, warned her that she
was in for a hard time.
"Poor you," she said sympathetically. "He can be pretty
scary anyway, but in a bad mood he's positively
terrifying. Especially when you're not used to it."
Patricia Clark looked as though she was used to it. She
was small, in her fifties, neatly attired, but under the
warm expression was a glint of steel. Sophie guessed that
you would need that working with someone like Rafael Loro,
and she shuddered.
This was a situation she had not wanted, had not courted,
but had somehow found herself steered into by their
respective parents and their joint good intentions. Yes,
she had certainly scored a hit with her company, but the
very thought of having to be in the man's presence over a
two-week period made her feel sick inside.
She glanced anxiously down at herself, wondering not for
the first time whether she had worn the right clothes. Not
a suit, but as close to it as she could manage without
having to go out and spend her hard-earned cash on
pointless clothing. Her long skirt was at least dark, as
was the long-sleeved stretchy top and her coat. She had
pinned back her unruly red hair as best she could, using
about a thousand clips in the process, and her briefcase
was small, neat and very businesslike.
"Fantastic offices," she said politely, trying not to gape
as she was led along the plushly carpeted corridor, which
was buzzing on both sides with brisk-looking people. The
open area was sensibly planned out, with partitions
dividing certain sections, and all the furniture was of
the same type โ rich wood and chrome that looked wildly
expensive.
Her fragile nerves took another giddy nosedive. She could
picture Rafe Loro striding through this domain, his
domain, giving orders and smiling with gratification as
everyone scurried around him in a flurry of panic. At
eight, she had followed him around whenever she had gone
with her mother to visit their massive country house. At
fourteen she had adored him from a distance, that
compelling young man with his entourage of adoring
friends, whom he had seemed to treat with languid
amusement and a certain amount of detachment, never quite
letting himself go. He had always had that kind of
personality. The kind that attracted a following.
Returning every holiday from his boarding-school, he had
always been received like royalty by all the members of
his peer group, the offspring of the rich and privileged,
most of whom boarded as well before flying off to
universities or finishing schools in exotic European
capitals. Five years his junior, she had been in awe of
him and very smitten by what she had glimpsed
intermittently from a distance, because their mothers were
so close to one another.
Only when he had politely told her that she was making a
spectacle of herself staring at him in front of his
friends, had she wised up to the fact that he really
didn't like her at all. Her background was grammar-school
ordinary, her house was vicarage dull, her looks were
crashingly nondescript and her infatuation was comically
unwelcome.
She had avoided him ever since. When she had seen him,
usually at one of his mother's Christmas parties, which
she was obliged to attend, she had made sure to keep out
of his way. Not difficult, as Claudia Loro's parties were
not small affairs.
She couldn't imagine what her mother had been thinking,
getting her involved in this exercise, but then Grace had
always seen him as a nice young man who had made something
of himself and not rested on the laurels of that golden
spoon that had been firmly wedged in his mouth the day he
had been born.
She watched the busy hum of people working fade behind her
as she followed Patricia towards the directors' muted,
tasteful offices. The building was short and squat,
interestingly fashioned around a central courtyard. The
sheer size of the place made it a goodish distance to
where Rafe had his office, because the directors' quarters
were located on the same level but another wing.
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