The Italian's One-Night Consequence

FROM THE BACK seat of his chauffeur-driven car, which was parked a discreet distance away, Leo Conti took a few minutes to savour the edifice that dominated this tree-lined Dublin road. Prime location, perfect size, and with all the discernible signs of wear and tear that indicated a department store clinging to life by the skin of its teeth.

Frankly, things couldn’t have been better.

This was the store his grandfather had spent a lifetime trying to acquire. It was the store that had eluded the old man’s grasp for over fifty years, always just out of reach. Despite the vast property portfolio Benito Conti had built up over the decades, and the grand shopping complexes he had opened across the globe, this one department store had continued to hold sway over him.

Leo, raised by his grandparents from the age of eight, had never been able to understand why his grandfather couldn’t just let it go—but then, being outmanoeuvred by someone you’d once considered your closest friend would leave a sour taste in anybody’s mouth.

Which said something about the nature of trust.

Over the years Leo had witnessed his grandfather’s frustrated attempts to purchase the department store from Tommaso Gallo to no avail.

‘He would rather it crumble to the ground,’ Benito had grumbled, ‘than sell it to me. Too damn proud! Well, if it does crumble—and crumble it will, because Tommaso has been drinking and gambling his money away for decades—I will be the first in line to laugh! The man has no honour.’

Honour, Leo thought now, as his sharp eyes continued to take in the outward signs of decay, was an irrational emotion that always led to unnecessary complications.

‘Find yourself something to do, James,’ Leo said to his chauffeur, leaning forward, eyes still on the building. ‘Buy yourself a decent meal somewhere. Take a break from that fast food junk you insist on eating. I’ll call you when it’s time for you to swing by and collect me.’

‘You plan on buying the place today, boss?’

A shadow of a smile crossed Leo’s face. He caught his driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. James Cure—driver, dogsbody and rehabilitated petty thief—was one of the few people Leo would actually trust with his life.

‘I plan,’ Leo drawled, opening the passenger door and letting in a blast of summer heat, ‘on having a little incognito tour to find out just how low I can go when it comes to putting money on the table. From what I see, the old man has died leaving a nice, healthy liability behind, and from what I understand, the new owner—whoever he is—will want to sell before the dreaded words fire sale start circulating in the business community.’

Leo had no idea who the new owner was. In fact he wouldn’t have known that Tommaso Gallo had gone to meet his maker a mere month previously if his grandfather hadn’t summoned him back from Hong Kong to buy the store before it went to someone else.

‘Now,’ Leo said, briskly winding up the conversation, ‘off you go, James—and while you’re finding yourself a nice, healthy salad for lunch, try and locate the nearest pawn shop, so that you can offload that array of jewellery you insist on wearing.’ Leo grinned. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you that medallions, signet rings and thick gold chains are things of the past?’

James smiled and rolled his eyes before driving off.

Still grinning from the familiar exchange, Leo strolled towards the bank of revolving glass doors, joining the very small number of shoppers coming and going—which, on what should have been a busy Saturday morning in the height of summer, pretty much said it all about the state of the department store.

Four storeys of glass and concrete, heading for the knacker’s yard. Mentally he dropped the price he’d had in his head by a couple of hundred thousand.

His grandfather, he thought wryly, would be pleased as Punch. He would have found it galling to have paid top whack for a place he privately thought should have belonged to him fifty years ago, had Tommaso Gallo been prepared to honour the deal he had promised.

Strolling away from the revolving doors towards the store guide by the escalator, Leo gave some thought to the tales about the now legendary feud that had been part and parcel of life as he had grown up.

Two friends—both from Italy, both talented, both seeking to make their fortunes in Ireland. One small, dilapidated shop, up for sale at a knockdown price. But sitting on a slice of street that both Tommaso and Benito had fast recognised would be worth a lot in years to come. The drift of business hadn’t quite reached that part of the city then, but it would.

They could have done the sensible thing and gone into business together, but instead they had tossed a coin after way too many drinks. Winner to take all. A drunken handshake had sealed the bet that would prove the unravelling of their friendship—for Benito had won the toss, fair and square, only for his one-time friend to go behind his back and snap up the property before Benito had been able to get his finances together.

Bitter, Benito had retreated to London where, over time, he had made his own vast fortune—but he had never forgiven Tommaso for his treachery. Nor had he ever stopped wanting that one department store, which he really didn’t need because he had quite enough of his own.

Leo knew that he could have worked a little harder to dampen his grandfather’s desire to have something that no longer mattered, all things considered, but he loved his grandfather and, much as he didn’t believe in emotions overriding common sense, he had to admit that something in him could understand the need for some sort of retribution after such an act of betrayal.

And also, from a practical point of view, it would certainly work in Leo’s interests to have the place. Dublin would be an excellent addition to his own massive portfolio of companies. He had already agreed with his grandfather that once the store was back in Conti hands he, Leo, would do with it as he wished, with the proviso that the name Contireplaced Gallo.

Leo had argued with his grandfather, wanting him to allow him to pay for the purchase himself. Because there was no way he intended to leave it as a cumbersome department store, however iconic it had once been.

That sort of sentimentality wasn’t for him. No, Leo wanted the place because he liked the thought of finally getting his foot into Dublin—something long denied him because he had never found the perfect property to set down roots.

Along with his own start-up companies Leo had acquired a string of software and IT companies, which he had merged under one umbrella and continued to run while simultaneously overseeing Benito’s empire by proxy. He had only a handful of outlets for his highly specialised merchandise, where expert advice was on hand for the elite group of medical, architectural and engineering giants who used what he had to offer.

This site would be perfect for expanding his businesses into a new market.

His thoughts far away, he was already indulging in the pleasurable exercise of planning how he would use the space to its best advantage.

Naturally it would have to be gutted. Wood, carpet and dowdy furnishings might have worked back in the day—although to be fair Leo wasn’t sure when that day might have been—but as soon as he got his hands on the store they’d have to go. God knew, the place was probably riddled with rising damp, dry rot and termites. By the time he was through with it, and the ‘Gallo’sign had been unceremoniously dumped, it would be unrecognisable.

He looked around, wondering which decrepit part of the store he should hit first—and there she was.

Standing behind one of the make-up counters, she looked as out of place as a fish in a bookstore. Despite the fact that she was surrounded by all manner of war paint, in expensive jars and shiny compact holders, she herself appeared to be devoid of any cosmetics. Frowning at an arrangement of dark burgundy pots on the glass counter, and needlessly repositioning them, she was the very picture of natural, stunningly beautiful freshness,and for a few seconds Leo actually held his breath as he stared at her.

His libido, which had been untested for the past three weeks, ever since he had broken up with his latest conquest after she’d started making unfortunate noises about permanence and commitment, sprang into enthusiastic life.

Leo was so surprised at his reaction that he was hardly aware that he was staring like a horny teenager. Not cool. Not him.

Especially when the leggy girl he was staring at was definitely not a Page Three girl and even more definitely not the sort of woman he was attracted to.

She was tall and willowy, from the little he could make out under the cheap store uniform, and she had the sort of wide-eyed innocence that was always accompanied in his head with the strident ringing of alarm bells. Her skin was smooth and satiny and the colour of pale caramel, as though she had been toasted in the sun. Her hair was tied back, but the bits escaping were a shade darker than her skin, toffee-coloured with strands of strawberry blonde running through it.

And her eyes...

She abruptly stopped what she was doing and looked up, gazing directly back at him.

Her eyes were green—as clear as glass washed up on a beach.

The kick of sexual attraction, a lust as raw as anything he’d ever felt before, shot through him like a bolt of adrenaline, and Leo felt himself harden in immediate response. It was fierce enough to take his mind off everything that had hitherto been occupying it.

His stiffened shaft was painful, and he had to adjust his position to release some of the pressure. As their eyes tangled he thought that if she kept looking at him like that, making him imagine what it would be like to have that succulent full mouth circling the throbbing, rigid length of him, he would soon be desperate for release.

He began walking towards her, every hunting instinct inside him honing in on his prey. He’d never wanted any woman with such urgent immediacy before and Leo wasn’t about to ignore the pull. When it came to sex, he was a man who had always got what he wanted—and he wanted this woman with every fibre in his body.

The closer he got to her, the more stupendously pretty she was. Her huge eyes were almond-shaped, fringed with very dark lashes that seemed to contradict the colour of her hair. Her lips, parted, were sensuous and full, even though their startled-in-the-headlights expression was teasingly innocent. And her body...

The unappealing, clinical white dress, belted at the waist, should have been enough to dampen any man’s ardour, but instead it sent his imagination into frantic overdrive and he caught himself wondering what her breasts would look like, what they would taste like...

* * *

‘Can I help you?’ Maddie’s heart was beating like a sledgehammer, but her expression was studiously polite as she met the stranger’s openly appreciative gaze.

Man sees girl. Man is attracted to girl. Man makes beeline for girl because he has one thing on his mind and that’s getting her into bed with him.

Maddie was used to that response from the opposite sex. She hated it.

What was even more galling was the fact that this particular man had, just for a second, aroused something in her other than her usual instinct to slam down the shutters hard the minute she saw a come-onsituation on the horizon.

In fact, for a second, she had felt a stirring between her thighs—a tingling, tickly melting that had horrified her.