Izzy had been terrified when she’d made that call to tell him that there was a chance she would be staying on in California because of a muddle with Evelyn’s accommodation.
She had worried that he would be fuming. Silently, aggressively,scarilyfuming. She’d expected him to order her backand had been geared for an argument. But he’d been great. He’d told her he’d been touring the islands, much to her amazement, because she couldn’t remember her brothereverdoinganythingthat didn’t involve an office, a computer and an army of yes-men lining up to do as told. And he’d assured her that everything was covered. Had told her that when she did return they would talk about what she wanted to do instead of what he wanted her to do.
Rather than askWho? What? Why?andWhen?, and risk a change of heart, she had rung off and counted her blessings.
She reached for the note again and gazed at it before looking at Evelyn.
‘You won’t be going to have tea with that guy,’ she said quietly but firmly. She reached across the table and held the older woman’s hands between hers. Evelyn was as thin as a bird and Izzy could feel the bulge of her veins under her transparently pale skin. She was strong enough, and got a lot of exercise tending to her garden, but it still felt as though a puff of wind might blow her away.
‘I’ve got to get it out of the way.’ Evelyn sighed.
‘No,’ Izzy said. ‘Youdon’t.Ido.’
Gabriel Ricci looked at his watch and frowned because the woman was running late.
He had issued the invitation for five-thirty. He’d figured that that would be roughly when someone in her late seventies would probably be sitting down for a cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate and a slice of cake, having had an afternoon nap of some sort. It was an assumption made on absolutely no concrete evidence because he hadn’t actually had a cup of tea with anyone elderly at five-thirty in the afternoon in his life before.
Five-thirty was the very peak of his working day. Cups of tea and slices of cake were the last things on his mind. However, needs must. But it was still irritating to find himself waiting, because he had reached a position of such power and influence in his life that he usually never had to wait for anyone any more. He beckoned, and they duly appeared exactly when they were meant to.
How life had changed, he reflected idly. He looked around the stunning sitting room with its pale colours, lavish artwork and its view of acres upon acres of vineyards outside, rows upon rows in perfect symmetry, marching in exquisite formation towards the horizon.
He could still remember the cramped house he had grown up in—the dingy paintwork, the meagre patch of grass outside that had had to multi-function as back garden, vegetable plot and place to hang the washing on those hot summer days in Brooklyn. He and his parents had lived cheek to jowl with their neighbours, and life had been crowded and chaotic. It was a place where the toughest rose to the surface and the weakest were either to be protected or allowed to sink to the bottom.
Against this backdrop, his devoted parents had managed to nurture the importance of education and the need to get out or go under.There were many times when Gabriel had resented the repeated mantra to‘study hard and make something of yourself’.Because slacking off and having fun had been an irresistible temptation, especially when he’d known that he could have been the leader of the pack with the snap of a finger. He was big, he was street-sharp and he was fearless. But the mantra had sunk in and he had had too much love and respect for his hard-working Italian parents to walk away from their teachings.
He’d studied. He’d worked hard. He’d ended up at MIT studying engineering, and after that at Harvard, doing a PhD in business. He hadn’t set his sights on climbing the ladder. Climbing wasn’t going to do. He’d set his eyes on soaring to the very top of the ladder. Soaring was something he was in favour of. He wasn’t going to replicate his father’s life, taking orders from people dumber than him but with money, lineage and connections. He’d raced to the top of the food chain and savoured the freedom and respect that came with great wealth and even greater power.
He had politely turned away all the lucrative offers from the giants and instead, unannounced, had headed straight through the front door of a small, family-run investment company that was slowly being ground into the dust by the big boys in the business.
Sitting here now, Gabriel could still smile at the memory of that small company, with whom he still kept in close contact, because that had been his springboard and he had chosen wisely. He had catapulted them out of gridlock, got them back on the race track and had seen them steer a course through the minefield of threatening competition all around them. When they’d sold the company two years after he’d joined, they’d made millions and Gabriel had made even more.
The rest... Well, he was feared now. He had long ago said goodbye to that street-fighting Brooklyn boy who had never quite belonged because he’d been too ambitious, too smart, too focused on finding a way out. Life hadn’t been easy in the years since but it had been good, at least financially—better than good.
Good enough not to sit here, at nearly six in the evening, waiting for the Scott woman to show up.
He was standing up, impatiently moving to pace the room, when the door to the sitting room was pushed open and he looked round, seeing first Marie, his housekeeper, and then immediately behind her...
Gabriel stopped dead in his tracks.
He’d been expecting a woman in her late seventies. He’d known what she looked like. He’d had a photo of her emailed to him prior to this meeting.
Instead, he was looking at a young woman, as slender as a reed with silvery white-blonde hair that tumbled in curls past her shoulders and down her back. Her skin was satin-smooth and her eyes cornflower blue—as clear as crystal.
She was dressed in dungarees and one of the straps had slipped off her shoulder, revealing a cream vest underneath and the shadowy curve of a small breast.
He was annoyed at the sudden lapse of self-control but, even as he stifled it, he could still feel the stirring of his libido and the uninvited, utterly misplaced notion that this sort of immediate, knee-jerk physical reaction was just not him—andthatannoyed him even more.
He abruptly broke the silence while moving forward.
‘And you are?’
His voice was cool and soft, and feathered down Izzy’s spine like the promise of danger.
What had she been expecting? Not this.
The house she had approached only distantly resembled the much smaller place her grandparents had owned, the one captured in that handful of faded photographs Izzy had lovingly stashed. It had clearly been extended over the years and was now the fitting palace of a billionaire, although she wasn’t quite certain how long the guy had owned it. According to Evelyn, it had been bought and sold twice and, she had confided the evening before, he was the last buyer and recently on the scene. He’d done all the renovations, though, and Evelyn knew that because she had seen those very renovations in progress over the better part of a year, during which time the vineyards continued to be maintained to the very highest standard.
Yet she had still been impressed by the scale of the place. It was vast. A vast white mansion fronted by a courtyard that could have housed a hundred cars with room to spare.
