Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride. Lee Wilkinson
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off her beautiful face with a long, hard kiss. ‘Does anything about it strike you as different?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really,’ he echoed, biting back his irritation. He leaned back further in his chair. ‘It’s the same advert you’ve been using for years.’
‘So what? It’s a good advert!’
‘I will tell you so what, cara,’ he said softly. ‘If companies do not change—then they die—that is a rule of life which applies to everything and everyone. And it shows a certain arrogance towards the general public if you treat them with contempt, not even wanting to bother to try and change.’
She stiffened. ‘You have the nerve to talk about arrogance?’
Cesare drew in a deep breath. He would have liked nothing better than to talk about arrogance, since it was the kind of subject which soon had women railing and then pouting and then sending out messages which would result in a silent little tussle, and then…then…But he couldn’t risk making love to her. Not yet.
‘We are going to be changing the campaign.’
‘Shouldn’t that be a question rather than a statement? Or have you been given carte blanche to do exactly what you want without running it past me first?’ she demanded.
He didn’t bother answering that, and the fact that she didn’t pick up on it meant that she was perceptive enough to realise that maybe she wouldn’t like the answer. ‘Granny cooking up home recipes on the kitchen table no longer strikes a chord,’ he said slowly.
‘But people relate to that! They think it really is greatgranny! The whole family business thing is what defines us! It’s what makes us different to all the other brands!’
‘I know that.’ He paused. ‘And that is why we’re planning to upgrade the company with a brand-new image—spearheaded by one of its very own family members. A new generation to front the Whittaker campaign. Imagine the publicity.’
‘And just which member of the family did you have in mind to front this new advertising campaign?’ The question sounded mechanical, because even as she was asking it she knew that there was just her, her mother and Rupert. Unless Cesare meant Emma, and she was away on her honeymoon.
He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Oh, come on, Sorcha,’ he said softly. ‘You may not have impressed me with your business acumen so far, but there is only one person who can do it. You know that and I know that.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘And that person is you, bella donna.’
CHAPTER FIVE
SORCHA froze as she looked into Cesare’s dark, mocking face. ‘No.’
‘No?’ he echoed.
She clenched her fists. ‘If you want someone to front your new advertising campaign, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’
‘But we’ve already decided that it has to be a family member—your mother is the wrong age, your sister is the wrong marital status, and your brother is the wrong sex.’ His lips curved into a smile. ‘We want to reach out and capture the single person who is living on their own—to introduce a whole new market to a very traditional product.’
‘No, Cesare.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not a model!’
‘Ah, but that is the whole point—we don’t want a professional model,’ he murmured silkily, and he bent down to pick up a large black cardboard envelope from which he pulled a thick sheet of cartridge paper in the manner of a magician withdrawing a rabbit from a hat. He handed it to her.
Inside was a mock-up of an advertisement featuring a girl with bright strawberry blonde hair—drawn to look just like her, she realised with a sinking feeling. On the table in front of her were all the delicious ingredients of a sandwich in the making, with a bottle of Whittakers Hot n’ Spicy in the foreground.
The girl was sucking her finger, her eyes gazing wide and coquettish at the camera, and just one word was splashed across the top of the page. SAUCY!
‘Simple, but effective,’ said Cesare, and he felt weak with desire just imagining Sorcha sucking on his finger, and on…
‘Just imagine the publicity,’ he said huskily. ‘This could be big, Sorcha. Really big.’
‘And if demand increases—just how are you planning to meet it? Are you just going to magic up X amount of sauce from nowhere, Cesare?’
He gave her a narrow-eyed look of admiration. ‘Leave that to me.’
He spoke in a tone of voice which told her that nothing was going to be a problem—and, infuriatingly, she believed him. But he hadn’t taken into account the unpredictability of human nature had he? Or of women in particular? ‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ she breathed.
His smile was satisfied as he waited for the plaudits to come his way. ‘I’ve tried,’ he murmured.
‘Well, you should have consulted me, shouldn’t you?’ she questioned crisply. ‘Because I can’t do this.’
His smile vanished. ‘Why not?’
‘The rest of the family would never agree to me taking centre-stage.’
‘They already have.’
They already have.
‘Emma thinks it would be good for you.’
Emma thinks it would be good for you.
‘And your mother—’
‘Stop it!’ she screeched. ‘I don’t want to hear!’
It had taken a moment or two for her to register what had been niggling at her all along, but his words helped it to snap into crystal-clear focus.
Not only had he been brought in behind her back and then demanded that she be kept in the dark until it was too late to do anything to change it. But now—just as if they were engaged in some old-fashioned spy story—he had been briefing against her. It appeared that he had been masterminding a whole great scheme involving her—only she was the last person to know!
Sorcha glanced at the beautifully executed mock-up. This wasn’t something which he had just had an artist scribble up in a few minutes—this had all been carefully planned. She had been excluded, and the rest of the family had colluded with him. It felt like a betrayal in the most complete sense of the word.
‘You must have been working behind my back for weeks,’ she said in a stunned voice.
‘I thought it preferable if we presented it to you as a fait accompli.’
She looked at him, stunned. ‘You bastard,’ she said softly.
Cesare’s blood heated with an inevitable sense of triumph—because, in a way, wasn’t this exactly what he had wanted all along? For the precarious veneer of civility which had existed between them to be smashed by a simple word of contempt—leaving him free to give in to what he had wanted to do from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her again. And everyone knew that conflict made the best aphrodisiac in the world.
‘Is that what I am?’ he questioned as he walked towards her. Her eyes were filled with fury—and something else, too—or were they just mirroring what was in his? An unbearable hunger he had only just realised had been building away inside him all these years.
‘Then maybe I’d better start behaving like one.’ And with one unequivocal gesture he pulled her to her feet and into his arms.
She saw it coming—of course she did—but the pressure of his arms and the heat of his body drove everything from her mind—other than how much she had dreamed about this