The man shook his head resolutely. ‘Mr Galletti said you might say something like that. He insisted they stay.’
Ashley nodded resignedly and signed the receipt. She wasn’t going to take her ire out on a hapless and innocent deliveryman, but neither was she going to wear these designer gowns. ‘Thank you,’ she told him and, after closing the door on all three men, she turned to face the dozen dresses hanging from the rack.
She stared at them hard for a second as a visceral shudder went through her. The days of designer dresses and glittering balls were long behind her, but just the sight of a single plastic-swathed hanger had a reaction rising up that she could not suppress. She had to curl her hands into fists to keep herself from yanking those hangers off the rail and hurling them to the floor, which she’d never done when her father had made his demands.
You’ll look beautiful tonight, princess, because that’s all you’re good for.
Doing her best to banish that hard voice, Ashley turned her back on the clothes and headed for the bathroom. She wanted a long, hot shower, then a mug of hot chocolate and an hour of brainless TV. Maybe then she’d figure out if she had the brass neck to ignore Nico Galletti’s gowns and wear what she’d intended to all along—a perfectly serviceable business suit.
An hour later, swathed in a thick terry cloth bathrobe, her damp hair falling in ringlets about her face, Ashley was gratefully sipping from a very large mug of hot chocolate. She’d already fielded over a dozen emails from employees, asking about the rumours now swirling around that they might be able to keep their jobs. She’d tried to call Ruth, but her phone kept switching to voicemail. She’d get answers eventually, Ashley supposed, but it would have been nice to find out what Ruth knew—and to understand just what she was up against.
She’d also had six voicemails from various media outlets, asking her to comment on the video that had gone viral. It hadn’t taken long for her to figure out what they were talking about: a couple of clicks, and Ashley was watching Denise tearfully explain how much she needed her job.
A sigh escaped her, along with a weary and cynical chuckle. Sothatwas why Nico had changed his mind about dismantling Infinite Innovations. Nothing to do with a change of heart or an interest in the inventions, but merely a way to control the damage to himself and his company. She should have guessed.
Ashley put her phone on mute and tossed it aside. She was not going to talk to any media, she resolved, and she was going to do her best not to think about Nico Galletti until at least tomorrow morning. For a few hours, she would enjoy numbing her brain with back-to-back episodes ofIs It Cake?and forget the wretched man even existed.
Surprise rippled through Nico as his limo pulled up in front of the decidedly dilapidated building on Fort Washington Avenue, up in the most northerly reaches of Manhattan. This was not where he’d expected Ashley Woodward to live. Yes, he’d suspected she’d fallen on harder times; but, considering the last time he’d seen her before today had been in the ballroom of her Park Avenue mansion, a box-like apartment in a less than salubrious neighbourhood on the very tip of Manhattan seemed like a fall too far. Was this really where she lived—and why? Her father might have lost the Woodward fortune, but there had to have beensomethingleft; something he’d squirrelled away in an offshore account for his family.
‘Marco, there’s no need to wait,’ he told his driver. ‘I’ll take an Uber back.’ If he could get one all the way up here.
Stepping out into the balmy spring evening, Nico raked his gaze up and down the street. Cherry trees with blossoms like puffballs framed a trash-strewn pavement. No, this was not the neighbourhood he’d expected Ashley Woodward to live in. Once again, she’d surprised and unsettled him, and he was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery—tonight.
Frowning in thought, he mounted the crumbling stoop to her building and pressed the button for apartment 6B.
‘Yes?’ Her voice on the crackling intercom sounded cautious, as well as exhausted.
‘It’s Nico,’ he told her briefly, expecting her to buzz him up. Instead, there was only silence.
Then, finally, ‘What areyoudoing here?’
That, Nico knew, was a very good question. There was no real reason for him to visit Ashley in her home. He’d sent the dresses; that had been message enough that he wanted her to wear something appropriate. And yet something about her reaction to the whole question of what to wear had bothered him. Surely, as a competent businesswoman, she saw the sense in wearing a dress to a black-tie event? Yet, that afternoon, Ashley had seemed determined to do things her way. Nico was here to show her they would be doing things his way…every time. Hemightbe willing to salvage her company for expedient reasons, but he wasn’t going to humour her little fits of pique. Far from it.
‘Well?’ Ashley demanded through the intercom.
‘Let me up,’ Nico commanded coolly. He was not about to explain himself while standing on a stoop. After another taut few seconds, he was buzzed through.
The floor of the foyer was littered with flyers and, although the place had six floors, there was no lift. Nico started climbing the grimy stairs, shaking his head in disbelief that Ashley lived in a place like this. Was she trying to make a point? Surely she had money for something better? She was CEO of her own company after all, no matter how modest.
As he arrived on the top floor, he found Ashley standing in the doorway of her apartment, swathed beguilingly in a white terry cloth bathrobe. Her face was flushed pink, her hair in damp waves the colour of rain-darkened wheat about her face and shoulders.
For a second, Nico was blindsided by the most inconvenient desire. He wanted to slip that soft robe from her shoulders and glimpse the pearly, still-damp flesh beneath. Cup her breasts in his hands, slide his palms along the silk of her skin, draw her towards him…
He stopped those thoughts with a screeching halt as he glared at her. ‘What are you wearing?’
She glanced down at herself. ‘A bathrobe. Because, after a very long day, I just had a shower, and I wasn’t expecting visitors.’ She shook her head slowly, annoyance sparking in her eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’
Nico moved past her into the apartment. ‘Making sure you do as you’re told.’
‘Oh,charming,’ she snapped, closing the door behind him.
Nico surveyed the apartment curiously. It was tiny—just one room, with a kitchen tucked into the corner, a double bed in the other, and a bathroom leading off. It was cosy, though, with plenty of personal touches—house plants on every windowsill and shelf, battered cookbooks on the one shelf in the kitchen, a loveseat tucked against one wall with a laptop open on the coffee table, with a close-up picture of a lurid green iguana on the screen.
‘What are you watching?’ he asked, more curious than anything else, and in response Ashley hobbled over to her laptop and slammed the lid down on it.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Now he was really curious. ‘No, seriously, what?’
