Interview with a Playboy

The thought brought her back to reality. OK, she didn’t have a lot of money, but that was no reason to feel embarrassed or ashamed. She’d had no helping hand in life—she’d come from a poverty-stricken background and worked hard to get to where she was now. What was more, she had always treated people fairly along the way—which was more than Marco could say.

He’d practically bankrupted her grandfather’s business, until the old man had been forced to sell out to him because he just couldn’t afford to compete with him. And then as soon as Marco had taken over the firm he’d lost no time in restructuring—which had basically meant firing most of the staff. Isobel’s father had been amongst the people in the first wave of redundancies.

She could still remember the shock in her father’s eyes when he’d come home to tell them. She remembered how he’d sat at the kitchen table and buried his head in his hands. He’d kept saying that there had been no need to make people redundant—that the company was very profitable. And her grandfather had said the same.

‘It’s greed, Isobel,’ he had said. ‘Some people aren’t content with making a healthy profit. They’re only happy when they are making an obscene profit.’

Isobel remembered those words as she looked over at Marco. He’d been a couple of years older than she was now—about twenty-four—when he’d bought her grandfather’s firm and sacked half the workforce. And then he’d gone on to sell the business twelve months later for a very obscene profit, as far as Isobel was concerned.

And it seemed Marco had repeated this move in other businesses time and time again, making him a multi-millionaire before the age of thirty.

She wondered if he ever had pangs of conscience about the way he made his money.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind she dismissed it as absurd. Marco wasn’t the type to think deeply about other people’s feelings. As demonstrated by the way he’d walked out on his wife after just eighteen months of marriage, and the way he changed the women in his life faster than some people changed the sheets on the bed.

Something he had in common with her father, as it turned out.

She turned away from him. ‘I’ll just throw a few things in a bag, I won’t be long.’

‘See that you’re not,’ he said laconically. ‘I meant it when I said you’d got five minutes.’

Hurriedly she moved through to her bedroom and opened the wardrobe. What on earth should she pack for a night in the South of France? she wondered. She didn’t have a lot of summer gear, but then it probably wouldn’t be that hot as it was only May.

She glanced around as there was a knock on the door and it opened behind her. ‘Four minutes and counting,’ Marco told her as he leaned against the doorframe.

‘For heaven’s sake, I’m going as fast as I can.’ She flung a pair of jeans and a T-shirt into an overnight case, and then moved to rifle through her nightwear and her underwear drawer. ‘Do you think you could give me a moment’s privacy?’ she asked through gritted teeth as she looked around at him.

‘Don’t mind me.’ He smiled, but instead of moving out of her room he came further in, and walked over towards the window to look out.

At least he had his back to her, but the guy had an unmitigated gall, she thought furiously. She selected a nightshirt and some underwear and threw it in the case.

‘Don’t forget your passport,’ he reminded her nonchalantly. ‘That’s all that really matters.’

‘Of course I won’t.’

‘Good.’ He adjusted the blinds a little, so that he could look down to the road. And she realised that he had only come in here because it was the one room with a clear view out over the front of the property.

‘Are the paparazzi still there?’ she asked curiously.

‘Unfortunately, yes.’ He snapped the blinds closed and turned to look at her again. ‘So you’d better get a move on—because otherwise you could be splashed all over the front page tomorrow and dubbed my new lover,’ he added lazily.

He watched with amusement as her cheeks flushed bright red.

‘I very much doubt that, Mr Lombardi,’ she told him stiffly, wondering if this was his feeble attempt at trying to dissociate himself from the many women he’d been pictured with since his divorce.

‘Do you? Why is that?’

‘Because…’ What kind of question was that to ask her? she wondered in annoyance. ‘Well…because I am very obviously not your type.’

‘Aren’t you?’ He looked across at her teasingly.

‘No, I’m not!’ She was starting to think he enjoyed winding her up. ‘Everyone knows that you go for very glamorous blondes,’ she added snappily, and tried to return her attention to her suitcase. But she was finding it really hard to concentrate on packing now; she was far too distracted by the way he was watching her. ‘And just for the record you’re not my type either,’ she added for good measure as she glanced up at him.

He didn’t look in the least bit bothered. In fact one dark eyebrow was raised mockingly, as if he didn’t believe that for one moment. The guy was far too sure of himself, she thought heatedly. Probably because no woman had ever said no to him.

‘And do you think that it matters for one moment that you are not my usual type?’ he asked.

‘Matters—in what way?’ She was confused for a moment.

‘Well, the press sensationalise everything. You could be my maiden aunt and they would still think there was something going on between us.’

‘That is not true!’

His dark eyes gleamed. ‘Spoken like a loyal member of the press.’

‘Well, maybe I am.’ She shrugged. ‘But I know we are not that easily bamboozled.’

‘Bamboozled enough to think I only go for blondes,’ he said with a smile. ‘When in actual fact I have a penchant for the odd brunette.’

She felt her body burn as his dark gaze swept slowly over her. She knew he was only joking, but she found the intensity of his gaze wholly unnerving,

He was a total wind-up merchant, she thought uncomfortably as she turned away. There was no way on God’s earth that he would ever be interested in her—nor her in him, she reminded herself fiercely. She knew it—he knew it—and pretending anything else even for a bit of fun was just hideously embarrassing. They were at different ends of a very wide spectrum.

She closed her case with a thud. ‘I’ll just go and get my toiletries, and then I’m ready.’

Marco watched as she hurried away from him. He didn’t think he had ever met a woman so determined not to flirt with him, he thought with a smile. The strange thing was that the more she backed away from him the more intrigued he became.

He glanced idly around at her possessions. From what he could judge she seemed to live here alone. The place was almost minimalist in design, plainly furnished and yet striking. A bit like its owner, he thought with amusement. His gaze moved over to her workstation in the corner. The desk was tidy, but a huge stack of paper and notebooks led him to believe she probably did a lot of work from home. There were a few reference books—huge, serious tomes on economics. Was that her bedtime reading? he wondered with a grin.

There were also a couple of photographs in frames, and he glanced at them. One was of a woman in her fifties and the other was of an older guy of about seventy. Were they her parents? Her father looked much older than her mother. Marco looked more closely. Actually, the guy looked familiar.

Isobel came back into the room, and Marco turned his attention to more important things. He had a lot of paperwork to do, and a flight to catch. ‘Time is marching on,’ he reminded her, glancing at his watch.

‘Yes, I do realise that—and I’m ready when you are.’ She put the cosmetics bag into her case and zipped it up.

‘Really? Well, I’m impressed,’ he said with a smile. ‘You have half a minute to spare and…’ his gaze moved to the case in her hand ‘…probably the smallest amount of luggage of any woman I’ve ever taken away for the weekend.’

Did he have to make everything sound so damn intimate? she wondered uncomfortably. ‘Well, that’s because you’re not taking me away for the weekend.’

‘I think you’ll find that I am,’ he countered with a smile.

‘We are going away on a business trip for one night,’ she maintained firmly. ‘And as today is only Thursday, that hardly qualifies even marginally as going away for the weekend.’

She really was an enigma, Marco thought with amusement. Most women fell over themselves to spend time with him, and yet she seemed almost horrorstruck by the thought.

‘You can make your own way home tomorrow, if you wish,’ he said easily. ‘But I doubt your in-depth interview will be complete.’

As she looked over at him her eyes seemed to be impossibly wide and too large for her face. ‘Well, we shall just have to try and move things along faster,’ she said with determination.