At The Italian's Command. Cathy Williams
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around her face and down her back. The overall effect wasn’t too much of a catastrophe, and she was on time. In fact, early.
Rafe got to the top of the stairs and paused, a little startled by the transformation.
‘Early,’ he said, descending the staircase and knotting his bow-tie at the same time. ‘Not a trait I’ve often found in a woman.’
Sophie swung round at the sound of his voice and watched him as he walked slowly down towards her. She opened her mouth to say something and nothing came out. Her throat felt dry and her stomach was doing funny things too. Weird little somersaults.
The logical voice in her head was telling her that, yes, he did look stunningly handsome. White shirt, black trousers, black bow-tie, black jacket, which he was casually slinging on as he descended the staircase. Her body, on the other hand, was reacting as though she were seeing him for the first time.
‘I’ll go and get George,’ Rafe said. ‘Don’t move. I’ll be back in two minutes.’
Move? Sophie wondered whether her legs were capable of managing that perfectly normal function.
It was only as he disappeared from the hallway that her common sense finally kicked in, and with a vengeance. If she couldn’t control some pathetic response to his masculinity, then she would have no choice but to admit defeat and hand the job over to someone else. The thought was tempting, but running away from the challenge of her first assignment would be signing her own death warrant as far as Noma Publishing was concerned, and she wanted the job. Badly.
It wasn’t, she thought feverishly, as though she even liked the man. The visible package was good, but the contents left her cold.
With that lodged firmly at the forefront of her mind, she was functioning a bit more normally when he appeared with George in tow.
Her voice sounded steady as she slipped into the passenger seat and asked him normal, polite questions about what he was going to see and whether, for him, the outing would be rated as business or pleasure. All the time, she had to stop herself from staring. In the dark back seat of the car, his lean face was all shadows and angles. She managed to contort herself so that she was physically as far away from him as possible, but she was still aware of the tiny distance that separated their knees from touching. If it weren’t so pathetic, she knew it would have been laughable.
‘Sometimes the lines between business and pleasure overlap,’ he was saying, his deep, velvety voice perfectly cool and controlled. ‘The play will be good, I’m sure, and the networking will be invaluable.’
‘And, of course, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’ Sophie remarked more acidly than she had meant. He was quick to pick up on the intonation in her voice.
‘It’s how big business works, Sophie. Does that surprise you? Maybe you disapprove of the fact that client dinners and trips to the theatre are all methods of oiling the wheels. When I’m being entertained by people, I’m almost always aware that there’s a subtext, that the expensive restaurants are ways of making sure that I keep them in mind should I ever find myself in a position where I can do them a favour.’
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
‘Why should it? On a smaller scale, it happens every day to all of us.’
‘I don’t make it a habit of buttering people up just in case I might find them useful at a later date.’
‘How heroic of you.’
‘There’s nothing heroic about it. I just don’t like the thought of using people.’
‘You mean,’ Rafe said thoughtfully, ‘you’re yourself whatever the situation…’ He looked at her earnest face and the cloud of wildly spiralling hair framing it and felt a surprising kick of interest. Her soft lips were drawn together in a tight line and disapproval radiated from her in waves. Not many women disapproved of him, he realised suddenly. In fact, most tripped over themselves to make sure that he noticed them in all the right ways. It made a change to be confronted with someone who didn’t slot easily into the box. Especially, he thought, since it was a temporary situation.
‘I like to think so.’
‘And if I told you that I don’t like women arguing with me, unless it’s in the boardroom, you wouldn’t edit your reactions at all? Not even if your assignment hung in the balance…?’
‘Are you saying that I have to agree with everything you say or else you refuse to let me shadow you?’ Anger bubbled in her and spilled over. ‘Is that some kind of threat? I think it’s very sad if you feel that you have to surround yourself with yes-people! Or maybe you’re just talking about the opposite sex! Is that it? You like women to be seen and not heard and if they’re heard, it’s only on the condition that they saying something to flatter you!’ She found that she was leaning towards him, trembling.
Looking at her, Rafe was torn between bursting out laughing and carrying on with his infuriating line of chauvinistic arrogance just to see how far he could go. There was something infinitely invigorating about her reaction. Whether she realised it or not, it was, in fact, proof that she refused to toe the line.
She also looked quite pretty, all worked up like that. Her cheeks were flushed and that riotous hair gave her the look of an angry child.
‘It was a hypothetical question,’ Rafe said, raising his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Of course I don’t surround myself with yes-people.’
‘But I bet you don’t have too many women disagree with what you say,’ Sophie shrewdly flung back at him. ‘Forgetting the ones you meet in the boardroom.’ She sat back, a delayed reaction to the fact that she was much too close to him for comfort. He had been winding her up, she could see that now. It was infuriating. How could she do her job properly if he didn’t even take her seriously? What Claudia and her mother had seen as an advantage, the fact that he wasn’t a stranger to her, was conversely actually working against her.
‘I’m not generally disagreeable when I’m in the company of a woman,’ Rafe drawled. His eyes followed the movements of her hands as they gathered her hair behind her, twisting it into a makeshift pony-tail. No good. As soon as she released the tousled mass, it tumbled back around her. For someone who had not a streak of vanity in her, or so it seemed, he wondered why she hadn’t long ago had the lot chopped off. But maybe—he toyed with the tantalising idea—his one-dimensional idea of her wasn’t quite as accurate as he had imagined.
‘But then again,’ he mused, his eyes still lingering on her face, ‘they don’t usually set out to have arguments.’
‘I wasn’t arguing with you,’ Sophie said stubbornly. ‘I was voicing my opinions.’
‘Ah, yes. Fine distinction.’ With regret, he saw the theatre lit up ahead of them. ‘An argumentative woman is only one step away from being a shrew and not many men like a shrew.’
Sophie’s mouth fell open. She decided that she wasn’t going to be caught again by him having a laugh at her expense. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said tartly. ‘Now, about tomorrow. What time would you like me to be there? Patricia’s printed off a list of your meetings over the next few days and I see that you have your first meeting in High Wycombe at nine-thirty. Shall I meet you there or would you like me to come to the office first?’
‘That’s a sensitive meeting.’ Rafe frowned. It occurred to him that he hadn’t given old Mr Beardsman a thought for some time.
‘What do you mean by sensitive?’
‘It means that I don’t want you around.’ The car pulled up gently to the kerb, which was teeming with people. The rain had subsided, but even so most of them carried umbrellas just in case, or else were wearing coats with hoods.
He began opening the door and she reached out and laid her hand on his arm. ‘Why not?’
‘Because…’ Rafe shook his head in exasperation. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sophie. Why don’t