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‘What was Amber thinking, taking her on?’
Sophie, unashamedly eavesdropping now, strained to hear as the other girl lowered her voice to a confidential undertone.
‘You know that diamond bracelet that Amber wears…?’
There was a pause when presumably the other girl had nodded. ‘Well, that was a little parting gift from Oscar Balfour.’
‘Amber and Oscar Balfour…wow! Why didn’t I know that?’
‘It was years ago, and it didn’t last long.’
‘Oscar Balfour…he’s quite attractive for an older man, isn’t he? Actually, quite sexy and he looks like he knows…’
Grimacing, Sophie had no desire to hear the women discussing her father in that sort of detail and covered her ears. When she uncovered them again one girl was saying, ‘And let’s face it—a Balfour girl working here…God, you couldn’t pay for that sort of advertising.’
‘That twin…Bella, the skinny one…?’
‘The impossibly gorgeous one?’
‘All right, the gorgeous one. Do you remember that time she was pictured wearing a dress from that charity shop and the shelves emptied overnight.’
Sophie did remember. She remembered when the subject had been raised during a family dinner.
Zoe had joked that she didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Sophie, she said, had been wearing charity-shop clothes for years.
Sophie had joined in the laughter, even inviting further hilarity by comparing the practicality and comfort of the sports bras she favoured with push ups that consisted of a few scraps of lace. But later in her own room she had looked at her wardrobe, filled with the sorts of clothes—or tents in boring colours, as Annie had once described her style—that made her glamorous sisters despair, and she hadn’t smiled.
The tent situation was not accidental, but her taller, slimmer sisters who did not have breasts that made men snigger and stare would not have understand her decision to hide her ample bosom under voluminous tops.
In a family famed for beauty, grace and wit—the very things that Sophie had missed out on—she had, presumably by way of compensation, been given instead the clumsy gene. A nuisance…yes, but to Sophie’s way of thinking not as much of a blight as having heads turn when you walked into a room the way they did automatically for her sisters.
A Balfour girl who disliked the limelight—a Balfour girl…how she hated that phrase—who was not witty or beautiful, made her something of a freak.
So much so that Sophie sometimes wondered if the real Balfour baby had been left at the hospital the day they brought her home—but she had the Balfour blue eyes, the same piercing Balfour blue of her father’s eyes.
For the average Balfour, being the centre of attention was as commonplace as breathing and something that they took as much for granted.
It was Sophie’s idea of hell.
But she had a solution. It had taken her time but at twenty-three she had just about perfected the art of fading into the background. Being short and on the dumpy side gave her a head start, so now the only time strangers noticed her was when she managed to trip over her own feet, or spill something.
She did both in graceful unison when a voice behind her said, ‘Can I help you?’
Sophie yelped, spun around and dropped her bag on the waxed floorboards. A tall blonde woman dressed in a snug-fitting red sheath that showed off her slim figure watched, one brow raised, as Sophie dropped to her knees and began to pick up the coins that had tipped out of her purse.
‘Sorry…I…’ Pushing her hair back from her flushed face Sophie held out her hand.
The woman looked at it with a lack of enthusiasm.
Sophie dropped her arm. ‘I’m Sophie…Sophie Balfour—I’m meant to be here…working…I…My father…’
‘You are Sophie Balfour?’ The blonde woman looked openly sceptical.
Sophie who had encountered this response before nodded and repressed the impulse to say, No, I’m an impostor! I kidnapped the real Sophie Balfour! ‘Yes. I think you were expecting me.’
‘I was expecting…’
The woman didn’t finish the sentence; she didn’t need to. It was no struggle to fill in the blanks—she’d been expecting someone with glamour and style.
And she got me.
The blonde compressed her red-painted lips. If there had been any movement possible in her forehead—Sophie had seen more lines on a newborn baby than on this woman’s smooth face—she would definitely have been frowning, but she made a quick recovery and produced a strained smile.
‘I’m Amber Charles. Your father tells me you’re very talented.’
Sophie gave a self-deprecating shrug, but there was animation in her expression as she admitted, ‘I enjoy colour and texture…’ She stopped, the animation fading when she realised that the svelte designer was regarding the colour and texture of her outfit with a look of growing horror.
She glanced down, genuinely not sure what she was wearing.
‘I’ve got my CV.’ Her school grades would not put an admiring light in the other woman’s eyes.
Sophie had shown no talent for anything academic, or for that matter anything sporting at Westfields, and she had often wished she’d had the guts to run away from the place like Kat. But instead she had kept a low profile and waited for the day she could leave.
Amber held up a hand and shook her head. ‘I’m sure they’re excellent.’
Want to bet? Sophie thought, and smiled.
‘A high level of girls from Westfields go to Oxbridge. My cousin’s daughter graduates next summer—she adores it. Which university did you attend?’
‘Actually, I didn’t go to university.’
The pencilled brows lifted.
‘I did a home-study course,’ she explained, wondering if she ought to say she passed with flying colours.
‘How…nice.’
Sophie watched her boss struggle to smile; clearly her dad had been economic with the details when he wangled her a job with his ex-flame.
‘Well, Sophie, what are we going to do with you?’
From her expression Sophie was thinking it possible that vanish was her first choice.
‘You may be talented…’
Sophie knew she ought to rush into this doubtful pause and confidently announce she was actually not just talented but a bit of a genius, but selling herself was not her thing.
‘…but it’s not enough to have talent…’
‘It isn’t?’
‘Of course not, this is a very competitive market and we have to do everything. Appearances, I’m afraid, are equally important. Our clients expect a certain…You know, I think you’d be happier working behind the scenes.’
‘So you want me to work behind the scenes?’
Sophie, who knew this translated as I can’t risk having a client see you, was not offended; this was the best news she had had all day.
Unbending slightly as it became clear Sophie was not going to be difficult, Amber inclined her head in assent. ‘You know, my dear, you should smile more often. It makes you look almost pretty.’
Chapter Two
MARCO left his car and walked the last mile up the winding driveway that led to the palazzo that had been in his family for centuries.
In his pocket he carried the heavy key to the massive front door that he had locked a year ago.
Locked and walked away from without a backward glance. At the time he had told himself the gesture was symbolic; he had been locking the door on his mistakes, his humiliation, his broken marriage.
He had told himself that it was about moving forward, leaving the past behind and getting on with his life. It was logical to channel his energies, to streamline. Streamlining, he mused with a contemptuous grimace, had a much more palatable ring to it than running away.
His strategy might have been based on self-delusion but his goal had been financial gain and it had worked.
Cutting himself off from the multitude of society social events that he had always believed his duty to attend, as guardian of the ancient name of Speranza, had left him with more time to devote to new business ventures—and they had been successful beyond the most wildly optimistic predictions.
No longer required by a moral code—outdated but genetically imprinted—to respect his marriage vows even while his wife had flaunted her infidelities, Marco had found time to date, though date perhaps implied an intimacy that went beyond the bedroom, and his liaisons with a series of attractive women had not.
If he was aware of a certain post-coital emptiness Marco felt no desire to fill the void with any emotional complications. Emptiness was a lot easier to live with than romantic involvement, and not being the certifiably insane romantic he had been when he had married Allegra, there was no way he was about to hand some woman his heart so that she could stomp on it with her delicate heels.
No, that part of his new life was no mistake, but running away from his responsibilities had been; he could see that now. He owed a duty to his name and the people who served his family, some for generations. He was ashamed of the selfish and cowardly impulse that had made him turn his back on them just because he didn’t want the constant reminders of his failure.
His jaw firmed as his keen gaze swept the scene ahead. Others should not suffer for his failings. The duty that was as much an integral part of Marco’s genetic make-up as the colour of his eyes had brought him back today—duty and a desire to regain something he had…lost?
Could a man know he had lost something and be unable to name it? Marco, not inclined towards such philosophical debate, had no idea but he did know that his pulse rate did not quicken with anticipation as he approached his home as it once had; he recognised the familiar sights and smells but he did not feel them as he once had.
He had always been passionately proud of his inheritance. When had that passion become duty? he wondered as he paused and looked down at his ancestral home.
The home he had brought his bride to, the home he had walked away from the day she ran off with his best friend and he had filed for divorce.
He pushed away the black thoughts from a year ago—in the history of this ancient building it was a blink of an eye; in his life more than enough time to lick his wounds as any longer would smack of self-indulgence. His pride had been injured, but a man did not regain self-respect by running away, and any bad memories these walls held for him now would be easier to live with than Allegra had been!
The marriage had been a disaster from the start, but it wasn’t her drinking and infidelity that had sickened him most; it had been the fact he had fallen for her sweet innocent act.
And there were other memories here.
This was where he had spent his childhood.
He had roamed the estate and enjoyed a degree of freedom that he might not have had his parents been more hands-on.
But his actress mother was often away on location. His father, a distant figure, had been around more frequently, but having left a promising law career to enter politics, where his integrity made him as many enemies as allies, his family came a very poor second to being a public crusading figure.
Perhaps one more enemy, Marco thought, his eyes growing bleak as he recalled the grim day in the nineties when he had learnt from a news broadcast that there had been an assassination.
One bullet—his father had died instantly and the title had come to Marco.
‘Marchese.’
Marco was startled from his dark reflections by the form of address he did not use in his professional life.
‘Alberto!’ A smile of genuine pleasure tugged his mobile mouth into an upward curve that softened the austerity of his classically cut features as he moved forward, his hand outstretched in welcome.
The other man jumped out of the open-topped vehiclewith an agility that many men twenty years his junior would have envied and came to shake his hand.
‘You are looking well, Alberto,’ Marco approved truthfully.
‘As are you.’
He clapped the younger man on the shoulder and felt the hard muscles under his fingers.
The younger man’s expensive suit did not hide a soft belly; it hid a body that was hard and tough from riding and from indulging in the sort of extreme sports that Alberto did not totally approve of.
He was relieved to see that the city life of high finance—a man should not spend his days indoors—had not softened Marco Speranza, but sorry that there was a hardness and cynicism in his green eyes that had not been there in his youth.
But then a man who had been through what he had was allowed a little cynicism.
’You are keeping an eye on the new man?’
The estate manager Marco had taken on had been in the post for three years now but to Alberto, whose family had served Marco’s for generations, the younger man would always be new.
‘He is a hard worker.’
Marco grinned. ‘Praise indeed coming from you, Alberto, and how is Natalia?’ Marco’s voice softened as he said the name.
In her official capacity as cook Alberto’s wife had ruled the kitchen when Marco had been growing up; in her unofficial capacity she had been the person who had comforted him on the occasions when a mother would normally have offered hugs.
Even when his own mother had been around, she did not do hugs except when there was a camera to record the moment of maternal devotion.
‘She is well, Marchese.’ Alberto angled a questioning look up at the tall man. ‘And she would like to see you…?’
Marco heard the question and felt a fresh stab of guilt. He had neglected many things, including old friends, when he had cut himself off in the scandalous aftermath of the divorce.
‘And she will,’ he promised. ‘But not today, I’m afraid.’ He flicked his cuff and glanced at his watch, mentally calculating how long the journey back to Palermo would take him. ‘I have a meeting in Naples.’
‘You have been missed.’
Aware of the reproach in the other man’s voice Marco nodded; he felt he deserved it. For a while the palazzo had been a battleground, and involved in the bitter war of attrition he had forgotten it was also his home.
Marco admitted this with a humility that would have made his business competitors stare. ‘I was wrong to stay away. I have missed being here, so I’m here today to see what needs doing.’
‘You are coming home?’
