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‘I own Ashton House,’ he said, injecting his voice with more than a hint of menace. ‘I can do with it whatever I damn well please.’
He watched her chest swell on a breath as she sat up ramrod straight, her hands clasped tightly together on the table. ‘Like you’ve done with those others you’ve acquired?’
‘Those properties are hardly your concern.’
‘But what you’ve done with them is! Three perfectly good businesses destroyed, three hotels gutted and turned into apartment blocks. And all for what?’
Revenge, he thought, rolling the word around like he was savouring it. How sweet it is. But he didn’t expect anyone else to understand. Nobody else could. Nobody else had been to that black hole he’d been thrust into and had had to clamber his way out of, one bleeding hand over the other. ‘That’s progress,’ he tossed off casually. ‘The world moves on.’
‘And is that the kind of progress you have in mind for Ashton House? Are you planning for the world to “move on” here too—so you can fill up the world with more of your precious apartment blocks?’
Dante put his knife and fork down deliberately before taking another sip of his coffee, contemplating her over the rim of his cup. Her colour was up again, the chest below her shirt rising and falling rapidly, and once again he had the feeling there was something he was missing.
Or was it just that she was the first person he’d met along this journey who hadn’t moved out of his way and bowed to the inevitable? He would never have expected such impassioned argument from someone who’d looked so meek and nervous when she’d first appeared.
‘Not an option,’ he said, shrugging off that line of thought, and getting back to her question in the next breath. ‘The local council here would never approve it.’
‘Which means you’ve considered it, then!’
It was an accusation rather than a question, but he ignored the jibe. He hadn’t come here to make friends with anyone, and he didn’t care what anyone thought. It was far too late for that. ‘As it happens, I have an entirely different fate in mind for Ashton House.’
‘What does that mean exactly?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Do you plan to keep Ashton House going after all?’
Despite her cautious words, he could see the hope lining her features, hope that he knew would be tragically short- lived. He leaned back low in his chair, his hands finding his pockets as a smile of satisfaction tugged at the corners of his mouth. He’d achieved almost everything he’d set out to do just seventeen short years ago, and the proximity to his goal was like a drug fuelling his bloodstream. Now there was just one final act.
He couldn’t think about it without smiling. ‘I’m going to destroy it,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to pull out every window and every door and then leave it to the elements to moulder, until it’s nothing more than a crumbling ruin.’
Shock exploded inside her, wrenching away her voice, so that when it came it was more breath than voice, a whisper that felt like she’d swallowed sandpaper. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because I can.’
His voice was cold as ice, his eyes devoid of life. No, Mackenzi realized, shaking her head with disbelief at his callous announcement—not lifeless. They were frozen and hard, but there was anger lurking in those dark depths, anger that swirled between them now like the dank fog rolling past the windows.
Terrifying eyes on a terrifying man. No wonder the former owners had been devastated when they’d finally lost control of Ashton House to this man. Poor Sara and Jonas. They’d tried valiantly to fend off the corporate raider, losing property after property to his insatiable greed.
Shock now turned to anger on their behalf. ‘That’s no reason for wanting to pull down such a beautiful building and destroy a thriving business in the process. What are the employees supposed to do?’
He shrugged, a careless hitch of his shoulders that ratcheted up her anger tenfold, before he sat up, turning his attention back to his breakfast. ‘Find other jobs, I expect.’
‘Just like that?’
‘If they’re any good, as they should be in a place that, as you say, claims to be the best, then it shouldn’t be a problem.’
Every answer as callous as the one that went before. Every answer building on the burgeoning rage she already felt inside. But she’d be damned if he thought she was going to sit by and watch him destroy such a beautiful building—the very building in which her own parents had celebrated their marriage forty years ago—and jobs and careers into the deal. There had to be a way of saving the hotel from this madman. But she would need time.
‘So when’s all this supposed to happen?’ she asked, doing all she could to keep the snarl out of her voice. ‘Given we have forward bookings more than twelve months out, are you saying the hotel’s got a year? Eighteen months? How much time will the staff have in order to find new positions elsewhere?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘What do you mean, “no”?’
‘I mean that there is hardly any point advising people that their positions will no longer be required in twelve months’ time when they may well be gone in six. Then there would be positions to fill. Better that there is a clean break all around.’
‘So…how long do we have?’
‘The hotel will close in three months.’
‘What? That’s impossible. There’s no way—’
‘Ms Keogh, one thing I have learned in business is that nothing is impossible. The hotel will close. End of story.’
‘But I…I can’t let you do that.’
He laughed, and the sound fed into her anger.
‘And how do you propose to stop me?’
‘By convincing you that this property is worth much more to you as a going concern. I’ve prepared reports for you, projections—’
‘You had a hearing,’ he argued. ‘You told me people come here for the view.’ He lifted one hand towards the fog- laden exterior. ‘So it’s not like they’ll be missing out on one hell of a lot if I close this place down, is it?’
Her knuckles turned white in her lap. ‘It’s winter in the Adelaide Hills, Mr Carrazzo. And, in winter, we sometimes get fog. Not every day. Not every other day. Just on occasion. This happens to be one such occasion.’
He didn’t rush to respond, just bided his time that way he did, like he was bored and wanted to be done with it.
‘Three months. That’s all you have.’
Her anger turned incendiary. ‘You’re insane! You must be. What about all the forward bookings? We have weddings booked—and conferences. People have paid deposits. You can’t just cancel them.’
‘They will be cancelled. Compensated as well, if need be. As manager that will, of course, be your job.’
She scoffed. ‘So you expect me to be the apologist for your act of bastardy? I don’t think so.’
‘You’re refusing to do your job, Ms Keogh? I’m sure we could arrange an earlier termination for you if that’s so. Say, today?’
Mackenzi gasped, the cold, hard reality that she might walk out of here jobless, not in three months but as soon as today, starting to bite. She was luckier than most—her home, a tiny stone cottage deeper in the hills, was almost paid off courtesy of a single life and a reasonable income. Still, a termination payment would keep her going only for how long?
On the other hand, there was definitely something to be said for getting out of here as soon as possible—very definitely before he discovered the truth. If she wasn’t going to have a job in three months, that was one very attractive option.
‘Put it like that,’ she said, her voice crisp as frost as she made up her mind, ‘and you leave me no choice. I’ll go. Today.’
She had him there, she could see by the brief flicker of surprise across his features that her acceptance was the last thing he’d been expecting. He’d thought she was going to beg for her job—no way!
He raised one cynical eyebrow. ‘Making the grand gesture? Don’t expect me to ask you to stay on.’
It was liberating, she realized, losing your job. Empowering. For now there was no reason for her to curb her tongue; she no longer had a job to lose. And suddenly all the things she’d been itching to say since she’d first sat down could have their moment in the sun.
‘You know, Mr Carrazzo,’ she said with a smile, returning his own formality, ‘despite what we’d heard, I actually believed there might be some point talking to you, some point in pleading our case to your better self. But there is no better self, is there? You really are a heartless bastard.’
‘That’s half my problem,’ he acknowledged with his own wry smile, finding this intercourse much more entertaining than he’d been anticipating when the mouse had first appeared. ‘I do have a reputation to uphold.’
‘I don’t understand how you can sleep at night!’
‘Is that why you provided the woman? Because you assumed I’d need entertaining while my guilty conscience kept sleep at bay?’
Twin slashes of red stained her cheeks. Her eyes shakily held his before she hastily turned her face away, pretending an interest in the sea of fog beyond the glass, while in her lap her hands twisted her napkin into a rope. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Dante smiled at her. At least, he projected a smile, one that would no doubt have made a crocodile proud. ‘The woman in my bed last night. You’re the manager here. Don’t tell me you didn’t arrange for her?’
Her eyes snapped back, her mouth set grimly, the knotted napkin forgotten as she rose shakily to her feet. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
He stood up and barred her exit from the table. ‘Did you honestly believe that having some whore waiting for me in my bed last night was going to make me feel more kindly towards keeping the hotel operating as a going concern?’
He watched her chin kick back on a swallow, saw her hands fisting at her sides. ‘So, tell me, where is this “whore” now, Mr Carrazzo? Waiting for you to return for a repeat performance of your no doubt magnificent services? I’m surprised you could drag yourself out of bed.’
Her words grated, rubbing him raw. She knew more than she was letting on, that was for sure, and she was guilty as hell. They’d set him up with some whore in the vain attempt that she might soften his intentions. Not likely, especially when she’d barely managed to soothe anything before she’d so rapidly disappeared. ‘You know she’s gone. What were you doing—paying by the hour?’
‘While I can quite understand why it would be necessary to pay anyone to sleep with you, Mr Carrazzo, I can assure you nobody was paid to be in your room. Maybe this so-called woman was never even there. Most likely she was just a figment of your imagination. So perhaps now you might let me pass? I have an office to clean out.’
His teeth ground together. Now she was laughing at him, her green eyes flashing like emeralds behind her modest glasses, the only splash of colour in her otherwise pale face.
Green eyes?
And suddenly he was back in his bed, her hair streaming across his pillow, the eyes he’d so wrongly imagined must be brown open wide in surprise.
Green eyes!
The same vivid green as those of the woman standing before him right now.
Mentally he unravelled the hair, now coiled tightly behind her head, peeled away the glasses and dispensed with her starched uniform—and every imaginary step only confirmed what his eyes had already told him to be true.
His hands found his hips while inside him anger rose like magma, his body tensing, a volcano about to erupt. Whatever game she was playing, it was game over. ‘So tell me,’ he invited, his teeth barely parting as he aimed the words like bullets, ‘who is the better lover—me…’ he paused for effect ‘…or Richard?’
CHAPTER FOUR
SHOCK MOMENTARILY punched the air from her lungs. She hadn’t thought of Richard in days—no, more like weeks. At least, not until that dream last night, and then it had been only to wonder why he’d never made her feel as good as her dream lover.
But, just like her dream had never really been a dream at all, his question similarly had nothing to do with Richard.
He was telling her that she was the woman in his bed, the woman he’d called a whore.
He was telling her that he knew!
Fear pressed down on her, wrapping about her psyche like a cold, dank shroud.
‘I…I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,’ she lied, her mind furiously backtracking over her words, wondering what she’d done to give herself away, and wondering what she could do to make up for the gaffe.
‘You mean Richard’s never told you that you talk in your sleep?’
The waitress hovered nearby uncertainly, looking to make a move for his empty plate, and Mackenzi knew it was way past time to take this discussion out of a public restaurant and to somewhere much more private.
‘If you’ve finished your breakfast, Mr Carrazzo, I think it’s time we concluded this discussion in my office.’
‘Alternatively, there’s always my suite,’ he suggested, cold civility in his tone and damnation in his eyes. ‘You seemed to feel quite at home there last night.’
‘That’s enough!’ she snapped, doing her best to ignore the shocked expression on the waitress’s face, and the turning heads of curious patrons. She headed off purposefully through the tables on her way to the exit, leaving him to follow in her wake, half-hoping he wouldn’t.
She’d taken his offer of redundancy thinking it would protect her identity. But now he knew she’d been the woman in his bed, the woman he’d decided to have sex with before she’d even been awake, the woman who had failed to turn him down even when she had finally opened her eyes.
Where did that leave her now?
‘You didn’t have to say those things,’ Mackenzi asserted, rounding on him the moment he’d entered her office and closed the door behind him.
‘And you didn’t have to be in my bed.’
‘I never said I was.’
‘You didn’t have to. Your reaction to the Richard word was confirmation enough.’
She looked away. ‘That proves nothing. I was merely shocked at what you said.’
‘Then why did you practically flee from the restaurant?’
‘With you making accusations like that? Why do you think?’
‘I think you’re avoiding the truth.’
Dante paused, regarding her curiously for a few moments, before his hand went to the door once again, turning the key in the lock.
‘What are you doing?’ she protested, feeling a sudden surge of panic.
‘You wanted privacy. I’m ensuring we get it.’ Then he stepped closer, and all of a sudden she was regretting the move to her office. She’d wanted to get things less public, but suddenly the air in the room seemed to have been sucked out, the space shrinking to miniscule proportions now they were both locked inside it.
Shrinking until there was nothing in her office but Mackenzi Keogh and Dante Carrazzo, and the heavy weight of what had transpired between them in the early hours of the morning.
And the heavier weight of whatever was to come.
‘So what did you really think you were going to achieve by pulling that little stunt last night?’
She backed away, trying to put the desk between them, but he only followed her, trapping her once again, her back to a filing cabinet in the space between desk and window. She crossed her arms defensively while he stood broad- shouldered in front of her. One arm was stretched across to the windowsill, the other hand planted on the desk, a human barricade. She had to hand it to him—this man made intimidation an art form. Even so, she was aware of the ever-present heat she felt in this man’s presence steadily building up steam once again.
‘I really don’t see the point of continuing this line of conversation. Not when you’ve already decided on your course of action for the hotel and terminated my services. I’d rather you turned your mind to how you’re going to inform the staff, and I’ll get on with cleaning out my office.’
‘Why not talk about it—because your little ploy didn’t work?’ His hand left the windowsill to reach out to her, stroking the line of her shirt’s shoulder-seam. She flinched at his touch, his fingers scorching her flesh through her shirt, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. How was that possible? Sure, he’d made her feel good last night— amazing, in fact—but how could he still affect her when she hated the man? Because there was no way she couldn’t hate him now with what he had planned for Ashton House.
Mackenzi stiffened her spine, determined not to let him see how his touch affected her, determined to deny everything. His assumption that everyone, including her, would be falling all over themselves to please him was enough to get her back up. ‘What ploy?’
‘To soften up my attitude. To make me feel more generous about the fate of the hotel. I must say, you do an impressive job of going above and beyond the call of duty.’
