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But when he shifted like that, he seemed to take up the whole of it.
“I would ordinarily spare a visitor a dreary history lesson, but there is very little personal about this villa. It appears as it always has. It is my job to be its steward, not a resident in any real sense. I must hand the villa on to the next generation intact. As it has been handed down, eldest son to eldest son, since the day it was built. For me, Doctor, there is no distinction between what is corporate and what is personal. My mother was a San Giacomo. Surely you must know what that means.”
“Is this your way of reminding me that you’re famous, Mr. Combe?”
“My family is not famous,” he said gently. “Fame is the stuff of a moment, here and gone. My family—both of my families—are prominent and of significant means. And have been for some centuries.”
“Do you think—”
“Let us cut to the chase, please.” He interrupted her smoothly, but she was sure that was impatience she could see in his face. And his please wasn’t any sort of supplication. “What is it you are looking for from me? Is it a certain set of words, arranged in a specific way, so as to assuage whatever offended dignity my board is currently pretending they feel? Tell me what it is you need, I shall provide it, and then we can all move on with our lives.”
That felt like a slap, and the fact that it did made her wonder why she hadn’t noticed that he was getting to her the way he was. Not just that thing she could still feel like a new pulse, low in her belly. He was nice to look at, yes—magnetic, even—but it was more than that. She was leaning forward in the uncomfortable chair she’d chosen and now felt she had to pretend she found pleasant.
But Sarina wasn’t assessing Matteo Combe the way she should have been. Instead, she was hanging on his every word. She was enjoying sparring with him a little bit too much.
She was...enjoying this. Him.
A wave of self-hatred crashed over her, and on some level she was shocked it didn’t sweep her away. That he couldn’t see it.
I’m sorry, Jeanette. And as she thought of her lost friend, her sister in her soul, another wave hit her—this time, of the grief that never quite left her. And never would, she thought, until she did her part to give a little back to the kind of men who preyed on pretty girls like Jeanette had been. And did nothing when they fell apart, because they’d already moved on to another victim.
Sarina had vowed that she would honor her best friend’s memory right there where she’d found Jeanette’s body, there in the bathroom of the apartment they’d shared while Sarina finished up her graduate work. She would do what she could to bring supposedly untouchable men to justice, if they deserved it. She would identify predators, look hard at arrogance, and where appropriate, help dismantle systems that kept abusive men in power.
That vow hadn’t simply been words. She’d made it the cornerstone of her life.
One beautiful, brooding much-too-rich man with eyes like smoke wasn’t going to change that.
“I’m afraid that’s not how it works.” Her voice was much chillier than it had been before. Overcompensation, maybe. But there was something about Matteo that encouraged her to...lean in too much. Be a little bit too much engaged. Try to match wits with him when she should have been quietly and competently undermining his confidence. “I understand that you’re a man who’s used to being in charge of things, but you’re not in charge of this. I am. I will tell you when and where the next meeting is. You already agreed to show up. In the same fashion, I will let you know when we’re finished.”
“Surely you cannot have convinced my board to allow this to drag on forever. They prefer instant gratification, I must tell you.”
“What I did or did not offer your board isn’t something I can discuss with you. They are my client. The nature of our relationship must remain private.”
“How convenient.”
“Here’s what I want you to think about,” she said, and smiled at him, encouragingly. With too much teeth, perhaps. “Control is obviously very important to you. You control your company, now more than ever. You apparently think that you ought to be able to control the reproductive choices of your own sister. You’re a very powerful man, and powerful men, as a rule, tend to be under the impression that they should be able to control anything and everything. But you don’t control this. You don’t control me.”
“As it happens, I have thought of little else.”
Again, he was far more dry than she’d been prepared for. It unnerved her—but Sarina hid that. Or hoped she did.
“Good. And as you continue to think about it, as I’m sure you will, I’d like you to find your way to viewing this as an opportunity.”
His mouth curved into something sardonic. “An opportunity for what, exactly?”
He was still leaning forward, and despite herself, so was she. And the room suddenly felt breathless. Fraught and tight around them, like a fist.
But Sarina didn’t sit back. She didn’t break that connection—because she refused to show him that she noticed it in the first place.
“Why, for you, Mr. Combe.” She made her voice light. Very nearly airy. “It’s your opportunity to be a better person. Once you learn how to give up control, you might find that you don’t have to struggle with concepts like toxic masculinity.”
His expression suggested that he was not overconcerned with said concepts, or indeed any kind of struggle. But he only gazed back at her, his gray eyes steady in a way that made her breath feel shallow.
“And I will be free of this struggle because my corporation will crumble into dust, as it requires my control and attention at all times? Or perhaps it will be my family that suffers, once I release my grip—as I am the only thing currently holding us together? I think you misunderstand the fundamental nature of my character, Dr. Fellows. I am not trying to control the universe. Between you and me, I do not much care about the universe. But I do like to control what I am, in fact, in control of.”
“Says the man who descended into an all-out brawl at his own father’s funeral.”
She saw it then. That blaze of pure, stark temper in his gaze that made his whole face change. Into something taut and dark. Powerful in an entirely different way.
Thrilling, something in her supplied, as she pulsed anew. But she ignored all of that.
Or she tried.
But Matteo’s eyes were smoke and ruin, and she had the oddest sense he knew it.
“Oh, Doctor.” He sounded almost pitying. Almost. “Do you think that I was goaded into punching that man? On the contrary, I very much meant to do that. And am glad I did.”
CHAPTER THREE (#uf7fbc461-503c-549f-b0c0-994fc6b4e1d5)
MATTEO SHOULD NOT have said that.
It was the truth, but the truth was needlessly provocative and he’d known it even as he’d formed the words.
Sarina had stood, a curious expression on her face. Triumphant, he’d thought in the moment, though he couldn’t think why. She’d smoothed her hands over her skirt as if to free it from wrinkles, though it showed none, and when she’d gazed at him her expression had been nothing short of pitying.
“I think we’ll stop here,” she had said in that way of hers, as if her word was law in Matteo’s house. In his presence. When everyone else who’d ever dared speak to him like that had been related to him by blood—and was now dead. “Before we stray too far from our objectives. And I’d advise you to take a bit of time to reflect on the opportunity you have before you for growth, Mr. Combe. But that growth will be stagnant, I fear, if you remain completely unrepentant for the unprovoked physical attack you made on another man.”
At least that time he’d had the sense to bite his tongue.
And he’d reflected, all right, but not in the way the doctor had ordered. She had refused his offer of accommodation, which was likely wise when he couldn’t seem to keep himself from looking at her in ways he knew he shouldn’t. She’d let herself out of the library and marched off, down from his preferred wing of the villa into the great hall, where she’d stood, prim and disapproving, in the midst of all his San Giacomo ancestors in their fussy portraits.
He’d reflected on the height of her heels, sharp stilettos that made her legs look longer than they were and gave rise to all manner of inappropriate images in his head. One more delicious than the next. He’d reflected on the cool intelligence in her gaze and how much he liked that, even when she clearly wished to use it against him. Maybe especially then, because he couldn’t seem to help but like a challenge. He’d reflected that, really, it was unfortunate that he found his board-appointed therapist—consultant—so mouthwatering. Intellectually as well as physically.
He spared no thought at all to Prince Ares, whose eye he’d happily blackened. And would again, with a song in his heart.
Matteo had waited quietly with Sarina until the boat was brought around to ferry her back to her hotel, and he’d murmured all the appropriate, polite things as she’d gone back out into the rain.
But he knew his first meeting with this woman had not gone as well as it might have.
And if he hadn’t, a board member who was still his ally rang up the following morning to quote Matteo’s words back to him.
“You meant to punch that prince. You said so straight out.” Lord Christopher Radcliffe sounded despairing. “Do you want them to vote you out of power, Matteo? Is that what this is about? Suicide by board meeting?”
“Of course not,” Matteo had replied,
But that wasn’t entirely true. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to light it all on fire and walk away.
Sometimes that part of him made a lot of noise.
It was shouting up a storm as he flew back to London two days later.
By then he’d had every member of his board on the phone to him, demanding he explain the report they’d received from the consultant Matteo had known was in their pocket—but perhaps not so deep. He’d learned a valuable lesson.
His instincts about Sarina Fellows had been correct: she wanted to take him down.
He was pleased to have that clarified, he thought darkly as his plane soared over continental Europe. He should have thought of that while he was letting her provoke him into shooting off his mouth. He should have been prepared for the woman to be a weapon, and he hadn’t been—because he’d been far more intrigued by the gut punch of his attraction to her.
And as entertaining as it was to imagine the fun he might have had with a woman like Sarina if he’d met her under different circumstances, Matteo couldn’t actually let her take him down. He had felt compelled to allow his board to subject him to this consultation, and thought submitting to it as his own father wouldn’t have made him look far more reasonable and biddable than Eddie had been, but he couldn’t let her plant her seeds of doubt and dissension. It would never be a good time for such things, but this was particularly bad timing all around. He needed to prove to a set of disapproving old men that he could take the helm of the company he’d already been running for years. He needed to cater to his family’s legacy and make sure Combe Industries didn’t die on his watch. And while he was at it, he needed to handle all the unpleasant revelations of his parents’ wills.
No matter how much the consultant his board had selected got to him.
He might have the odd daydream of walking away from it all, but he never would. That wasn’t who he was.
Matteo was the eldest son—or he’d spent his life thinking he was, anyway—and he had been raised to clean up any and all messes that arose on both sides of his family. He was the heir to the San Giacomo legacy. He was president and CEO of Combe Industries. And more than that, he was the family janitor.
What Matteo did was clean up the mess, whatever it was.
Whether he wanted to or not.
At least this particular mess was of his own making. He was the one who had taken that swing at Prince Ares—and to the other man’s credit, little as Matteo wanted to give him any when he’d already helped himself to Pia, he’d taken the hit. And had then done the right thing by Pia by instantly proposing marriage. It was the paparazzi who’d carried on as if Matteo had sucker punched him and left him for dead.
Everything else on Matteo’s plate was there courtesy of someone else’s inability to handle their lives the way he did. His sister’s love life and its consequences no matter his or anyone’s feelings on the matter, like the princely proposal she’d had no choice but to accept—as she was carrying the heir to the throne of the island kingdom of Atilia. Or his parents’ indiscretions and old scandals made new now that they’d died, in the form of at least one sibling Matteo hadn’t known he had—and wasn’t sure how to deal with now he did.
It was one hit after the next, and really, what was a slanted psychological evaluation complete with a not-so-hidden agenda next to family members he’d never met?
To say nothing about the company that he still had to run whether his board of directors thought he was fit for it or not.
By the time he landed in London, Matteo had been putting out fires for hours. Those of his own making and all the others that cropped up every day of the week. And he had little to look forward to but another long day—and week, and month—with more of the same. Fires everywhere, and once again, it was his job to extinguish them. And despite what his board pretended to think, or the papers brayed daily, the one thing Matteo had always been very, very good at was his job.
The thing about putting out fires for the whole of a man’s adult life was that, sooner or later, he developed a taste for the flames. An appreciation and something akin to admiration.
His father had set out to crush those flames any way he could. Matteo preferred to exult in them, then use the resulting heat to his advantage.
And that was what he chose to reflect upon, just as the doctor had ordered. It appeared Sarina wanted to play games instead of plod through the expected set of sessions in good faith. Matteo was perfectly happy to play along now that he’d sussed out her intentions—because the truth was, when it came to games of high stakes where winning meant surviving, he always won.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” his personal assistant, Lauren, said one morning a few days after that first session in Venice, standing at his desk in London in her usual no-nonsense manner, which was one of the reasons he paid her so well. “But she’s here, I’m afraid. And insists upon seeing you.”
Matteo was neck deep in contract negotiations with foreign distributors—all of whom had spent the past month reading the tabloids, apparently—and couldn’t think of a single person with a claim to his time. Or anyone who would dare send his assistant in here to demand it.
He scowled. “And who is she, may I ask? The bloody Queen?”
Lauren Clarke had been working for him for far too long to react to that tone of his. Or the ferocious glare he leveled at her.
“Not the Queen, sir. I doubt very much she’d appear without an appointment and the royal guard. It’s that psychiatrist.”
And this was part of what he’d agreed to, purely to placate the board. They’d all been foaming at the mouth, waving tabloid magazines and their fists in the air, and caterwauling as if they’d expected the building to fall down around their ears. He’d have agreed to anything to calm them down, and he had.
So now he had a psychiatrist standing in his office, demanding to be seen. In the middle of a complicated workday—which was to say, any old Tuesday at Combe Industries.
But he was no longer operating in good faith. She wanted to play with matches? Matteo would respond with a bonfire.
Something inside him rolled over, shook itself off, and bared its teeth.
He finished his call and gazed back at his PA, though he didn’t see her. He saw Sarina instead, and that sheen of triumph all over her face in Venice.
“Give me five minutes,” he instructed Lauren. “Then show her in.”
He set his trap, then moved to the windows that looked out over the city. Night had already set in, gloomy and wet though it was supposedly spring out there. He could see the suggestion of light and movement, blurred with moisture.
But however cold and miserable it was outside, it was no match for the blast of heat he felt when he heard his office door open, then shut.
Temper. Fury. Anticipation.
“You have been busy, Doctor,” he said, his voice so mild he almost fooled himself into imagining it was real. “In less than a week you have managed to sow dissent throughout the whole of Combe Industries. Uncertainty and speculation.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Combe,” came the reply in her smooth voice, and maybe he was imagining the undercurrent of satisfaction in it. Though he doubted it. “I told you that you weren’t my client. You should have assumed that anything you said to me was in no way confidential.”
Matteo didn’t turn around to face her. He kept his gaze on the window before him, but he stopped looking at blurry, giddy London, and focused instead on the figure he could see in the reflection.
She was dressed in black again, sleek and sharp. Like a blade, he thought.
And he was certain he could feel every hair on his body stand on end. He told himself it was his temper channeling into the ferocious intent he was known for, nothing more. This woman had no idea what he was capable of—but he had every intention of showing her.
“I did not expect confidentiality,” Matteo replied. “But I did imagine you would pretend, at the very least, to get at the truth. Instead, you have made it clear that your mission is to destroy me.”
He waited for her to deny that, but she didn’t.
She didn’t laugh, either, but he was sure he could hear the hint of it in her voice when she answered him. “I don’t need to destroy you. You appear to being doing that job all by yourself.”
“I was under the impression that you were here to perform an impartial assessment, not an assassination.”
She moved farther into his vast, sprawling office. He watched her reflection move across the room, a liquid, rolling walk, all hips and glory, and he stopped pretending that the way she affected him had only to do with his temper. She was wearing another pair of those impossible heels, and Matteo was forced to face the somewhat confronting notion that this woman was not only doing her best to make a fool out of him in front of his business associates—she was single-handedly turning him into a foot fetishist.
He would make her pay for that, too.
“I’m not following you,” came her cool reply. He watched her walk to the front of his desk, then shift to lean against it. She folded her arms over her chest, she cocked out one hip, and he knew she understood every square inch of the power games she was playing. At another time he might have applauded it. “I assume you feel that your character is being assassinated, is that it?”
“With a hatchet, Dr. Fellows.”
He didn’t have to see that smirk of hers to feel it, like one more knife shoved deep into his back. “Your character is your business, Mr. Combe. You explained to me that you felt justified in all of your choices. How, then, could I take a hatchet to your good name? Surely that would only be possible if you felt some sense of shame.”
“Because you are determined, one way or another, that you will make me feel this shame. No matter what it takes.”
“That you’re even discussing the possibility of feeling shame feels a great deal like a breakthrough. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”
He turned then, holding on to his control by the barest of threads. He could feel temper, yes, but something far darker—and much thicker—pounding in his veins. Making his skin feel too tight. Making his self-possession feel threadbare at best.
But then, this was where he had always operated at his fullest capacity. When he was the most challenged, he shone the brightest.
