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The Valentine Bride
Liz Fielding
Louise Valentine's just been offered a job.Max Valentine wants to use her famous PR skills to help save the family business. But since discovering she was adopted, Louise is feeling less than charitable toward the Valentines…. Family loyalty wins, and sparks fly a s she and Max work together.Even though Max has always been strictly off-limits, now they're both falling hard and fast. Will the past stand in the way of this special Valentine wedding?
THE BRIDES OF BELLA LUCIA
A family torn apart by secrets,
reunited by marriage
When William Valentine returned from the war, as a testament to his love for his beautiful Italian wife, Lucia, he opened the first Bella Lucia restaurant in London. The future looked bright, and William had, he thought, the perfect family.
Now William is nearly ninety, and not long for this world, but he has three top London restaurants with prime spots throughout Knightsbridge and the West End. He has two sons, John and Robert, and grownup grandchildren on both sides of the Atlantic who are poised to take this small gastronomic success story into the twenty-first century.
But when William dies, and the family fights to control the destiny of the Bella Lucia business, they discover a multitude of long-buried secrets, scandals, the threat of financial ruin and, ultimately two great loves they hadn’t even dreamed of: the love of a lifelong partner, and the love of a family reunited.
It’s the wedding everyone’s been waiting for…
Max and Louise finally say, “I do!”
The Valentine Bride
by Liz Fielding
The Valentine Bride
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is for my daughter, Amy;
the joy of my life, my dearest friend, she
fills my head with stories and never fails to
make me laugh.
CONTENTS
THE BRIDES OF BELLA LUCIA
FAMILY TREE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COMING NEXT MONTH
CHAPTER ONE
‘I’VE printed out the PR schedule for this week’s lead-up to the relaunch. The City Lights tie-in—’ Louise Valentine broke off as her cell phone began to burble. ‘I’ll have to take this,’ she said, excusing herself from the Nash Group executives gathered around the conference table for her briefing. ‘I’m expecting a call from the editor…’
But as she flipped open the phone the caller ID warned her that it wasn’t editor of the country’s major ‘scene’ magazine.
It was Max.
For a moment she couldn’t think, couldn’t move, but then he’d always had that effect on her. Reducing her to a quivering wreck with a look that suggested it was a toss up whether he kissed her or strangled her. Since kissing her wasn’t an option, she’d made a point of keeping her distance other than at family gatherings. Even then, by mutual consent, they’d chosen opposite ends of the room.
Unfortunately that was no longer a choice for either of them, but clearly Max was as unhappy about that as she was. He had certainly taken his time about making a moment in his busy schedule to talk to her about taking on marketing and publicity for the Bella Lucia restaurant group now that he was in charge.
Well, too bad. Her schedule was busy, too. She wasn’t sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. On the contrary, the phone never stopped ringing. She was in demand, a success in her own right.
She hadn’t looked back since the day he’d fired her from the family business, leaving her in no doubt that, far from being an asset to Bella Lucia, as far as he was concerned she was nothing but a liability.
Okay, she’d be kidding herself if she didn’t admit that there had been moments in the last couple of weeks when she’d found herself doodling ideas on her jotter, daydreaming about what she’d do if she did take on PR and marketing of the Bella Lucia restaurants; the fact that it would mean working with Max never failed to tip the dream over the edge into nightmare territory.
Even now he was only calling her because he’d had his arm twisted; she knew he’d have refused point blank to consider it if the suggestion had come from anyone but Jack. Max’s half-brother might not have wanted to stick around and run the company himself, but as he was a major investor his suggestions carried the kind of weight that not even Max could ignore.
So far Max hadn’t been able to find the time to pick up the phone and ask her if she was interested in the job, forget actually getting to the point of sitting down and talking the future through with her. Hadn’t done one thing to make her feel she was needed, that her ideas would be welcome, let alone valued. Well, why would he? She wasn’t a genuine Valentine—
‘Louise?’
She glanced up, realised that everyone was waiting. She snapped the phone shut, turned it off, tried to recall where she’d been in her briefing. City Lights…
‘As you know, City Lights ran the offer for a limited number of complimentary tickets to the opening of your London flagship restaurant in today’s issue. Free food, live music and the opportunity to mingle with celebrities; a chance to live the aspirational lifestyle for a night.’ She looked up. ‘You’ll be gratified to learn that the response was so great that it crashed the City Lights systems, a story that was reported in the later editions of the London evening papers and will run in the diary columns of tomorrow’s dailies.’
‘Well done, Louise,’ Oliver Nash said. ‘With luck the tickets will be changing hands on eBay for hard cash by this time tomorrow.’
‘If they are,’ she replied, matter-of-factly, ‘luck will have had nothing to do with it.’
Max heard the voicemail prompt click in, then Louise’s cool, businesslike voice suggesting he leave a message, assuring him that she would return his call as soon as possible.
That would be about as likely as a cold day in hell, he thought, ignoring the invitation and tossing the phone onto his desk. Why would Louise bother to call him back? Why would she waste one moment of her time doing what he wanted? It had been years but she’d never forgotten, or forgiven him for firing her.
As if he’d had any choice.
One of them had had to go and Bella Lucia was his future, the one fixed point in his life. Even when his father had been changing wives faster than most men changed cars. When his mother had been more interested in her career, her lovers.
Everyone knew that Louise was just filling in time at the Chelsea restaurant until she fulfilled her mother’s ambition for her by marrying a title so that she could spend the rest of her life swanning around a country estate, decorating the pages of Country Life, while a nanny raised her kids…
Not that the problem had been all her fault.
The truth was that he’d never been able to think straight around Louise and it had been ten times worse since she’d returned from a summer spent in Italy with a full set of curves, blonde curls that looked as if they had been tousled by some dark-eyed Latin and eyes that seemed to mock him.
If she hadn’t been his cousin…
But she was. Family. Which meant that after college she’d joined the company, working in his restaurant, a situation about as restful as ploughing a minefield; you just never knew when the next explosion was going to happen.
The effect on the staff had been bad enough, but when a particularly disruptive outburst had involved a group of diners he’d had no choice but to fire her on the spot. No choice…
He could cheerfully throttle Jack for putting him in this position.
All the time he’d been in Qu’Arim, setting up the new restaurant, he’d been doing his best to convince himself that his half-brother didn’t know what he was talking about.
Obviously he was right about the need to bring in some heavyweight PR muscle. It was a different world from the dreary postwar era; when his grandfather had opened his first restaurant, people had flocked to eat good Italian food served in warm and welcoming surroundings. Under the control of his father and uncle, they’d grown complacent. They’d been living off reputation, history, for too long. The business had stagnated. The restaurant in Qu’Arim was just the beginning of a new era of global expansion, but to make it work they needed someone who could update the image, get them reviewed, talked about; re-define them not just as a London, but a worldwide ‘A-list’ restaurant group.
Except that it wasn’t ‘they’ any more.
The future of the company was in his hands and his alone. He needed someone. And his brother had made it clear that he didn’t just need someone with Louise’s talent to take up the challenge.
He needed Louise.
Of course, Jack, having dropped that little bombshell, had waltzed off back to New York leaving him to convince Louise to drop everything and come and work for him.
Yes, well. Having driven her away in the first place, he had to be the one to convince her to return. Whatever it took. Because it seemed to him that just at this moment Louise needed him, just a little, too, whether she’d admit it or not.
He wasn’t fooling himself that it would be easy. Louise might have been a useless maître d’, more interested in flirting with the customers than doing her job, but since then she’d carved out a brilliant career for herself in marketing and PR. Her client list included one of the most successful restaurant chains in the country. She knew everyone in the business. Everyone in the media. And her mother’s high society family gave her an in with the social elite. She was ‘A’ list.
She was also bright enough to know that Bella Lucia needed her a lot more than she needed Bella Lucia.
That he needed her a lot more than she needed him.
If the situation were reversed, if he were in her shoes, he knew he wouldn’t listen to one word she had to say until she was on her knees, begging.
He hoped, for his knees’ sake, that she wasn’t inclined to carry a grudge that far.
Fat chance, he thought, checking the time.
If he shifted himself, he should catch her leaving the office. It wouldn’t be so easy for her to ignore him face to face.
‘You are a wonder, Louise.’ Oliver Nash had waited while she locked up, walked her down to the street and now continued to hold her hand long after it had ceased to be the kind of handshake that concluded a successful meeting. ‘Are you going to let me take you to dinner somewhere special? So that I can thank you properly?’
‘You’ll get my account at the end of the month, Oliver. Prompt payment is all the thanks I need.’
‘One of these days you’ll make my day and say yes.’
She laughed. ‘One of these days I’ll say yes, you old fraud, and scare you half to death. Go home to your lovely wife.’
‘You know me too well,’ he said, then as he bent to kiss her cheek she saw Max leaning against his muscular sports car, watching them.
‘Dumped your toy boy for a sugar-daddy, Lou?’ he asked.
Louise was thankful that the shadows were deep enough to disguise the flush that had darkened her cheeks. Even now he only had to look at her, speak to her, be in the same room, to send a shiver of something dark, something dangerous, rippling through her body. To disturb the even tenor of her life.
Not that there had been much that was even about it in the last few months.
Oliver, his hand still firmly holding hers, raised a brow a fraction of an inch and, since there was no way to avoid making introductions, she said, ‘Oliver, I don’t believe you know my…’ She caught herself. She was still readjusting to her new identity. Still forgot…‘I don’t believe you know Max Valentine. Max, Oliver Nash is a valued client; the chairman of the Nash Group.’
‘Fast food?’ Max replied.
‘Fast profit,’ Oliver replied, more amused than annoyed at being the butt of a younger man’s jealousy. ‘How’s business in the slow food sector?’
The exchange, unpleasant though it was, had given her time to recover, put up the barriers with a distant smile, and she stepped in before it deteriorated further.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Oliver,’ she said.
‘You’ll be all right?’ He looked up as a thin, icy rain began to fall, then at Max. ‘I’d be happy to give you a lift.’
‘Louise and I have business to discuss, Nash,’ Max intervened, his hand at her elbow, before she could be tempted to let Oliver chauffeur her as far as the nearest underground station in his Rolls. ‘Family business.’
His hand was barely touching her. Max never touched her if he could help it, not since that summer before she’d gone away to Italy; after that everything had changed.
They had changed. Become unsettlingly aware of each other in a way that, for cousins, wasn’t quite…decent.
Except that now she knew they weren’t cousins. That she’d been adopted…
Carefully lifting her arm away, she said, ‘Office hours are from ten until six, Max—’
‘It’s nearly eight.’
He didn’t look at his watch and she wondered exactly how long he’d been waiting for her to emerge from her office. Her PA had left a little after six—she had a life—and it must have been before then, or how would he have known she was still on the premises?
She refused to feel guilty about that. Or rise to his bait. She didn’t have to explain herself to him. To anybody.
‘For valued clients,’ she said, ‘office hours are infinitely expandable.’
‘Infinitely?’
She ignored the innuendo. What she did, whom she did it with, was nothing to do with him.
