скачать книгу бесплатно
Antonio sat back again, trying to shake off the sense of impending trouble. This wasn’t what the evening should be about. They’d just pulled off the wildest challenge yet, but what Sebastien was suggesting was far more than their usual challenge, more than the normal show of bravado. This was the ultimate dare.
‘You’re really going to wager half your fortune on a cakewalk of a challenge?’ Alejandro put in, the game of poker now the last thing on anyone’s mind.
‘If you’ll put up your island, your favourite toys?’ Sebastien began, his deep voice as calm as ever. ‘I’ll say where and when.’
‘Easy,’ Stavros spoke first. ‘Count me in.’
Antonio exchanged glances with Stavros and Alejandro and saw the same suspicion mirrored in their eyes. What the hell was Sebastien planning and how was it connected with going two weeks without their credit cards, family names and wealth?
CHAPTER ONE (#u798b43c1-c315-5ed3-9154-3b7042668d8c)
FOUR MONTHS AGO Antonio had accepted Sebastien’s challenge and today it began. Two weeks without his wealth and all that went with it. The only contact he’d have with life as he knew it for the next fourteen days would be through Stavros and Alejandro, who were still waiting to find out just what it was that Sebastien had planned to challenge them with and where.
Antonio closed the apartment door behind him. The sounds of Milan’s streets filtered in, seeming to bounce around the compact but sparsely furnished room, which was the main living area of the apartment Sebastien had sent him to.
He glanced round the room. This had to be some kind of a joke. What the hell was Sebastien playing at? He saw a note on top of a pile of clothes and a pair of boots which had been left neatly on the black seats running along one wall to serve as a sofa. He damn well hoped it wasn’t the bed too.
His designer shoes tapped hard on the white tiled floor as he crossed the small room in a few strides and picked up the envelope addressed to him. No mistake, then; this was the right place. He glanced down at the clothes and boots and frowned, cursing in Italian.
Apart from the fact that Milan was too close to his estranged parents, and it was where he’d lived with his ex-wife for the few short months their so-called marriage had lasted, it was also where he’d met the one woman who’d tested his family duty and honour to the limit. She’d almost driven him mad with desire, but duty had won. His passion and desire had been overridden, but that brief weekend affair with Sadie Parker had made him wish things were different—that he was different, that he hadn’t already had his future mapped out by a family who thought more of their family name than anything else.
Irritation coursed through him as he opened the note.
Welcome to your home. For the next two weeks Antonio Di Marcello does not exist. You will be known as Toni Adessi and you will report to Centro Auto Barzetti, across the road, as soon as you have changed, your undercover job for the next two weeks.
You may only contact me, Stavros or Alejandro on the phone provided. You will not make contact with anyone else via any method for the next two weeks. You have two hundred euros on which to live. Under no circumstances are you to blow your cover. If you succeed, I will make the promised donation of five billion dollars to set up a global search and rescue.
Use your time wisely. This challenge is not about fixing cars, Antonio. It is about fixing your past.
Sebastien
Antonio refused to focus on that last sentence and instead picked up the worryingly old-fashioned phone and checked the contacts. There were just three: Stavros and Alejandro, who’d taken up the bizarre challenge also, and Sebastien himself.
A furious expletive tore from Antonio’s lips. How the hell was he supposed to conduct his business without a decent phone and from such a primitive room? Hell, there wasn’t even a laptop, just the smallest television he’d ever seen. Sebastien was serious. There was to be no contact with his real life.
His instinct was to walk out and return to normality, but doing that would mean much more than a failure of his personal challenge. It would be even more than Sebastien not creating the global search and rescue charity as he had promised he would if they all successfully completed their challenges. Such a charity was meaningful to all of them, after the avalanche which could all too easily have snatched Sebastien from them. Yet still this challenge was far greater than that. It was about a code of honour so strong that not one of them would ever question it—or break it.
He looked at the overalls, vest T-shirt and jeans which were complete with authentic grease stains and bit back further words of fury as the need to succeed surged. Failure was never an option he tolerated. He’d show Sebastien he could do this ridiculous undercover job and whatever it was his challenge entailed. He might have been born into wealth, but he’d amassed a far greater fortune since taking over the family business, turning it into a global success within the world of construction. He’d fought every bit as hard as Sebastien had in his business. Family wealth and an ancestry which went back generations were not as beneficial as the club’s founder member thought.
Again a harsh expletive tore from him. Whatever it was that Sebastien had engineered for him to face, he needed to warn Stavros and Alejandro just how serious Sebastien was about the challenge. He had to let them know it was far more than proving they could survive without their wealth and everything that went with it. All those superficial things Sebastien had scorned just months ago.
A quick inspection of the phone revealed it did at least have a camera and he took a photo of the pile of clothes and money and sent it to Stavros and Alejandro.
This is me for the next two weeks, Toni Adessi, a mechanic, complete with grease-stained clothes, in Milan of all places. Be warned. Sebastien means business!
He took off his top-quality, made-to-measure suit that he hadn’t quite been able to relinquish that morning, despite Sebastien’s earlier warning of needing to be undercover and disguised for this challenge before arriving. He hung it over the back of a chair, then pulled on the jeans and T-shirt and, over the top, the overalls. He slipped on the provided sunglasses—he always wore a pair, but never this cheap or tacky—and pulled the cap on. The work boots completed the outfit and when he looked in the small mirror hanging by the door he hardly recognised himself.
He had at least heeded Sebastien’s warning enough not to have shaved for the last two weeks, something which had alarmed his PA, and now he had much more than the stubble he was used to. The dark growth of a beard was as uncomfortable to look at as it was to wear. His thick, unruly black curls were hidden beneath the cap and even to his own eyes he was unrecognisable as Antonio Di Marcello, heir to the Di Marcello fortune as well as a businessman in his own right.
He strode across the room, the boots heavy and strange on his feet and not even new, something he tried hard not to dwell on. He looked out of the narrow window onto the street below and saw the garage where he was to work. A small laugh escaped him. Sebastien really had done his homework for this challenge. Not only had he sent him to a garage to work, and therefore indulge his passion for motor engines, but it was in Milan, the home of his parents. He hadn’t been back since his divorce.
That had been over three years ago. Was this the real challenge? The past he had to fix? The marriage was not fixable. Sebastien was the only one who knew the truth of that and the weight of the promise he’d made his ex-wife. So why Milan? If not to repair his damaged relationship with his parents?
Briefly the image of his ex-wife floated into his mind, but as always it was pushed aside by Sadie, the one woman who’d threatened to capture his heart for good. He and Sadie had had a wild and hot weekend over three years ago, here in Milan, only weeks before he’d succumbed to the pressure of his tyrannical father and married Eloisa. From the moment he’d first kissed Sadie and made her his, she had become the woman he really wanted, if only family honour and tradition hadn’t been bearing down on him like a wild bear. If he’d known what he knew now about his ex-wife, he’d never have let Sadie go—at least not until he was ready to do so.
He pulled off the cap and resisted the urge to fling it at the wall and walk away from this ridiculous situation and the memories it stirred. Such thoughts were of no use to him now and he savagely discarded them.
He had two weeks of living as a different person to get through and he’d show Sebastien he could rise to this and any challenge he threw his way. Determination fizzed inside him as he left Antonio Di Marcello in the small apartment and became Toni Adessi. He crossed the street, shaded from the morning sun by the height of the buildings, and headed to the garage where he was to work. At least it was a job he could convincingly do. His love of cars and engines had been with him since he was a young boy, thanks to an unlikely friendship with the estate’s gardener, who’d had a passion for motor racing.
* * *
He hadn’t been working more than two hours when he saw exactly why Sebastien had sent him not just to Milan but to this garage. He glanced up to the upper level, to what was obviously the office window, and at first he thought he was seeing things, that just being in this area again had brought Sadie Parker to the front of his mind. Like a ghost of what could have been, tormenting him for the ill-fated decision he’d made to put family honour and duty above his wants and desires.
Sadie Parker was the only woman who’d made him want things he couldn’t have. The only woman he’d walked away from before he was ready to do so. Unsure how to deal with this unexpected twist to his challenge, he turned his attention back to the customer, hiding his shock behind his usual charm.
He glanced up again to see Sadie had turned and was talking to someone else in the office. He took advantage of her distraction to study her, to remember the softness of her hair and the eagerness of her lips.
The customer spoke to him, dragging his mind back to the present and the fact that he was undercover. If Sadie recognised him, he was done for. His challenge would be over before it had even begun and there was no way he was going to let a pretty face from the past do that. He refused to contemplate losing. There was no way he would be the one to fail at something which didn’t involve hurtling off the side of a snow-covered mountain or surfing the Pipeline in Hawaii.
* * *
Sadie watched the new mechanic from the small office window which looked down on the workshop. She’d never seen him before, but there was an air of familiarity about him. As he set about his first job of a tyre change on a woman’s car her curiosity deepened and the way he moved untangled memories she’d rather not have disturbed.
Even from this distance he had an uncanny resemblance to Antonio Di Marcello, the man who four years ago had stolen her heart in just two days, making loving any other man impossible. She’d never forgotten him, no matter how hard she’d tried. Not when each day she looked into the dark eyes of her young son, the child Antonio had turned his back on.
‘That is Toni Adessi,’ her colleague Daniela said as she joined her at the window. ‘Very attractive—and hot.’
‘Possibly.’ Sadie couldn’t stop watching, even though he stoked the memories of a wonderfully romantic weekend, bringing them to life. She slammed the door shut on them. She couldn’t allow herself to be dragged back into the past by a bearded stranger who bore a passing resemblance to Leo’s father. ‘But dangerous.’
Daniela laughed. ‘What do you mean, dangerous?’
‘Look at him. Charm is oozing from him, as if he thinks he is so much better than he is, as if every woman will rush to be on his arm.’ She knew she was guilty of projecting Antonio Di Marcello’s flaws onto the new mechanic, but it was hard not to when he had the same mannerisms as the man who had not only abandoned her to marry another woman, one far more suitable for his position in life, but had ignored the fact that their weekend affair had made him a father.
No, it couldn’t be Antonio, she reassured herself as she watched the mechanic work. He would never lower himself to the standard of an ordinary working man, just as he would never marry an ordinary girl. A fact his mother had made painfully clear.
‘Whatever it was that Leo’s father did to you, you have to forget it and move on. Otherwise you will never find love and romance.’ Daniela’s warning echoed her mother’s and she knew they were both right. She’d even thought she might be able to do that, thought she was beginning to move on from the one weekend which had forced her life down an unexpected path. She’d thought she was finally ready to give up hoping Antonio Di Marcello would want to know his son—until the new mechanic had shown up, reminding her, tearing open old wounds once more.
‘Leo and I are fine as we are.’ Sadie couldn’t keep the impatient snap from her voice. She didn’t appreciate being made to remember what it had been like to carry Antonio’s child knowing he’d left her and married another woman. She’d tried to let him know he was to be a father, had sent messages to the big imposing house she’d discovered belonged to his family. She’d taken the dressing-down from his mother, who had looked at her with nothing but stony silence, but had heard nothing from Antonio.
‘Well, it won’t hurt to have a bit of fun,’ Daniela goaded her. ‘Flirt a little, enjoy yourself. You’re only twenty-three and far too young to give up on fun—or men.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’
‘You will and here’s your perfect chance. He’s coming up.’ Daniela giggled mischievously.
To Sadie’s horror, Daniela turned and left just as the door to the workshop floor opened. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at the new mechanic, trying to remember what Daniela had said his name was.
The way he’d tied the top half of his overalls at his waist with the sleeves, leaving him in only a white vest T-shirt, showcasing amazingly toned and tanned arms, was so distracting she blushed. Or was it the memories of two hot sultry nights this man had dragged from her past—a past which belonged to a very different Sadie?
‘What can I do for you?’ she said officiously, forgetting her beginner’s Italian and reverting to her native English. Since when had a man muddled her so much she couldn’t think straight? The reply which resounded round her head was instant. Not since Antonio Di Marcello.
‘You are English?’ The heavily accented voice was so gruff and completely unlike Antonio’s she relaxed—just a little. This man might look similar to the father of her child and had certainly stirred the past, bringing it back to the surface, but, with an unshaven face and unkempt hair breaking out beneath his cap, he could never be Antonio.
Antonio had always been immaculate. Even in that short weekend, she’d witnessed his attention to detail crossing from business into his personal life and she knew without a doubt that Antonio would never consider a beard, especially one so scruffy.
‘Do you have a problem with that?’ Irritation at the way his gaze roved blatantly over her made each word sharp. He didn’t have the manners and grace Antonio had possessed. Something which made him stand out from any other man she’d met before or since those two nights of bliss.
As she stood behind her desk she took the opportunity to study this strong male specimen who was as rough round the edges as Antonio had been refined. This man’s hair was unruly and his beard wild and untamed. His white T-shirt was far from clean and his arms were smeared with grime. He might resemble the man who’d stolen her heart, the father of her three-year-old son, but that was as far as the similarities went. He was most definitely not the kind of man she wanted a bit of fun with, no matter what Daniela thought.
‘No, cara,’ he said and casually dropped the worksheet onto her desk and then stepped away. When he got to the door, he turned again and smiled, or at least she thought he did, but his unruly beard was making that difficult to decipher. ‘I enjoy the challenge of any woman, no matter her nationality.’
Sadie dragged in a sharp breath, hardly able to believe the audacity of the man. If he thought she would be his next challenge, then he’d got it all wrong. She went to the window and looked down at him as he returned to the workshop floor and, to her horror, he turned and blew her a kiss, as if she was a done deal.
Angrily, she turned on Daniela. ‘If you think I’m having a bit of fun with that, then you are so far off the mark it’s not true.’
‘I’m not suggesting marriage.’ Daniela grinned at her. ‘Just a bit of fun.’
‘No, absolutely no. I have Leo to think about.’
Sadie returned to her desk and tried hard to focus on the figures before her. Whoever that man was, in one short morning he’d undone all she’d achieved over the last three years since Leo’s birth. He’d brought Antonio Di Marcello right back into the centre of her mind and for that reason alone she wanted nothing at all to do with Toni Adessi.
* * *
Antonio poured all his annoyance into the next job, unable to believe he’d got away with that little encounter. As he’d entered the office he was sure Sadie had recognised him. Her sexy green eyes, rimmed with the darkest of greens, had held suspicion and he’d sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he’d taken Sebastien’s advice and adopted some sort of disguise.
She might be the one woman he still wanted, but his challenge had to come first. There was no way he was going to jeopardise the success of his, Stavros’s and Alejandro’s challenge just for a woman. She would, after all, still be here in two weeks. He could have his fun before resuming his identity as Antonio Di Marcello.
Several hours later, after helping with an engine replacement and resisting the urge to take control and tell the older mechanic how to do it, Antonio looked up to see Sadie, jacket over her arm and bag on her shoulder, walking towards the large main door of the garage.
She looked amazing, the sundress accentuating her figure. She was more beautiful than the image in his memory, the one which haunted him like an unsettled spirit of what could have been. She’d been nineteen the weekend they’d shared those passionate hours, but now, four years later, she looked more desirable, sexier—and it was killing him that he couldn’t assume his identity and continue where they’d left off. After all, he no longer had family duty and honour hanging over him. He would never bend to the manipulations of his parents again.
He’d been Sadie’s first lover—a fact he’d told himself was the reason why he hadn’t been able to shake off the memory of those two nights—and now he was here, undercover and completely unable to do anything to let Sadie know who he was. If she discovered the truth before his two weeks were up, he would lose his challenge. He’d let them all down and prove Sebastien right, prove they couldn’t last two weeks without their fortunes and everything that went with it. Even in the face of such a personal challenge, that scenario was unthinkable.
No. Sadie Parker would have to wait until Antonio was back in play. But for now Toni Adessi could indulge in a little flirtatious mischief. Test the water.
‘Going somewhere nice?’ he goaded and smiled smugly as she turned to look at him, a grimace of distaste on her face. His rough and ready manner certainly helped to keep in character, maintaining the disguise.
‘Yes, I am. To collect my son from the nursery.’
She had a child?
The news crashed into him. His Sadie and another man? The idea didn’t sit comfortably at all. But what right did he have to feel aggrieved when he’d ended the affair before it had even begun? He’d known all along he had no option but to make the marriage that was expected of him, the duty his family had always pressed on him. He hadn’t foreseen any problems, not when he and Eloisa had known each other since childhood, although for some reason he’d never thought of her as more than a friend. His mother and Eloisa, however, had been so close, already like mother and daughter, and he too had wanted the best for the business as well as the family name. What could go wrong, he’d thought, when he knew he didn’t want to indulge in the elusive emotion of love?
His childhood had been barren and loveless, so a marriage based on friendship for duty hadn’t seemed wrong. It had been the perfect way to avoid the dire consequences he’d seen when marriages were made out of love and then fell apart, often played out on the stage of the media, so he’d eventually agreed. He’d wanted none of that.
That agreement to make the marriage had meant that after just one weekend he’d had to set Sadie free and it appeared she’d done exactly what he’d hoped she would do—move on and find someone new. So why did it spike at him so cruelly?
He glanced down at her left hand. No ring. ‘And what is your son’s name?’
‘Leo,’ she said flatly, but still she didn’t walk away and again he wondered if she recognised him. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’
‘His father must be very proud,’ he said, needing to know more about the man who’d taken his place in Sadie’s life, the man she’d settled down with, the one who’d been more than the passionate weekend affair they had shared.
‘I’m a single mother.’
Her words charged at him like a high-speed car. She hadn’t found the long-term happiness they’d glimpsed that weekend—just as he hadn’t when he’d married Eloisa.
Her gaze met his and he briefly forgot all about the challenge, the need to be a different man. All he could think about was how another man had left her in such a situation. He never had anything to do with a woman who had a commitment such as a child, but the need to protect Sadie, to look after her and her child was so strong it made any other thought temporarily impossible, as did the desire to give the other man a stern talking-to.
‘I’m finished here,’ he said as he wiped his grease-smeared hands on a cloth, forgetting to deepen his accent and become the brash man he’d invented that morning to complete his disguise. ‘Can I walk you somewhere?’
She looked at him and he knew he’d let the façade of brusqueness and bravado slip too low. He’d spoken as he would normally and he could almost see the questions racing across her face.
‘There’s no need,’ she said, but still she didn’t turn away. Was she tormenting him?
‘I am new to the city,’ he said, laying on the charm thickly and resuming his cover. ‘A pretty woman by my side would be a good end to the day, no?’
‘I don’t have far to go,’ she said, this time turning from him, but he wasn’t about to allow her to slip away so easily and he looked over at his manager for the go-ahead to leave, something he was completely unused to doing. Nobody ruled Antonio Di Marcello. Not any more.
‘Then I will walk with you as far as you go.’
Sadie walked out of the garage without accepting his offer and onto the bustle of the street. He tossed the cloth away and quickly followed her, eventually falling into step beside her, recalling a night when they’d walked hand in hand around the centre of Milan before returning to his hotel room for the most memorable night of his life.
‘You remind me of someone.’
Inside he froze. He was playing a dangerous game getting close to Sadie when she could discover who he was at any moment. If she did, she’d spoil everything, not only for him but for Stavros and Alejandro, who were yet to go undercover for their challenges. The temptation she presented now was even more tantalising than it had been just weeks before his marriage, but Antonio Di Marcello would have to be patient.
Sadie Parker was unfinished business. Unfinished business he fully intended to resume.
‘Someone good, no?’ He laughed as she walked briskly, hardly looking at him at all. Just when he thought he’d blown it, she stopped outside a tall, narrow townhouse, shuttered against the afternoon sun of early summer.
‘This is as far as I go. I will see you at work.’ If that didn’t tell him she didn’t want his company, nothing would.
He looked down at her lips and could taste them against his as a powerful memory of their first kiss, the one which had sealed their fate, rushed back at him. He wanted to kiss her again, to claim her as his once more, but he wasn’t Antonio Di Marcello, the man who had made love to her so wildly; he was Toni Adessi, the rough and ready mechanic she’d only just met.
Would Sadie really be interested in the kind of man he was now?
Did he really want an affair with a woman who had a child? It had been one of his main rules. Single women without any ties or commitment. He didn’t ever seek out complications with women.
‘I will look forward to it.’ He smiled at her, using the famous Antonio Di Marcello charm, and he saw her brows furrow into a frown of suspicion. Thank goodness he’d grown the beard and could hide behind his sunglasses. He was walking a line perilously close to discovery.
‘I am not looking for a man in my life, Mr Adessi,’ she said, startling him with her forthright honesty.
‘I’m not asking to marry you.’ Hell, that was the last thing he’d want, after his previous experience of the state of matrimony. ‘A bit of fun, that’s all.’
‘Single mothers don’t do fun. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my son is waiting.’
With those sharp words she turned and went inside the building, leaving him standing on the street unable to comprehend what had just happened. Antonio Di Marcello had just been turned down by exactly the type of woman he’d vowed not to become entangled with. What was the matter with him? Just because he had to live two weeks as Toni Adessi, it didn’t mean he had to abandon his real identity completely.
