A Deal For Her Innocence

Her gaze skittered surreptitiously to him and she shivered because, suit or no suit, there was still something darkly, dangerously and thrillingly intimidating about him. She stiffened at the fanciful turn of her thoughts. She wasn’t a Victorian maiden and he wasn’t a swash-buckling male. She was an efficient and ambitious partner in an up-and-coming advertising agency and he was a potential client who had the capacity to put their business on the map. She’d worked hard for this opportunity and she wasn’t going to squander it.

Ellie barely noticed the plush surroundings as they disembarked on the top floor. There was a hush in the huge open space, where smoked-glass partitions and cleverly positioned plants formed barriers between some of the walnut-and-chrome desks. It was the hush of people working hard to make the billions that kept Niccolo’s sprawling company at the top of the pecking order.

His offices were at the end of a thickly carpeted corridor and he only paused when he entered an outer room where a middle-aged woman was busily doing something on her computer.

‘No interruptions for the next hour,’ Niccolo said, sweeping past to push open his office door, then standing aside for Ellie to brush past him. ‘I’ll be busy.’ He turned to his secretary and Ellie could detect the wicked grin in his voice. ‘Ms Wilson, who’s going to try and convince me that sex doesn’t sell.’

Ellie knew when she was being goaded and, much as she didn’t like it, discretion was the better part of valour. And who knew? Maybe she would be able to make him see that sex wasn’t the be all and end all when it came to selling an image of fun.

‘So.’ Niccolo waved to one of chairs clustered around a low wooden table. His office wasn’t so much one room as several rooms laid out in the manner of a very expensive, very open-plan studio apartment. There was a sitting area, a dining area and a bar area. All that was missing was a bedroom, although the deep three-seater sofa against the grey wall...

Ellie sat. The chairs were low and deep. They were designed to encourage relaxation but, since the last thing she felt was relaxed, she perched uncomfortably on the edge of one and placed her tablet on the table in front of her.

Niccolo sprawled in the chair facing her.

‘You were going to try and win this contract,’ he drawled, settling into the chair and loosely linking his fingers on his washboard-hard stomach. ‘By showing me what you can do when sex on the beach meets sunsets in paradise.’ He grinned. ‘So, lose the landscaped garden appeal, and the locally sourced fruit-and-veg slideshow, and show me how you can get on board with love at first sight and adventures between the sheets.’

In that very instant, Ellie knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that there was almost no chance Niccolo was going to use her agency to promote his venture.

Her time should have been up but he found her entertaining. She could hear the thread of amusement in his voice and she could see it reflected in the lazy speculation behind his dark eyes.

He owned the company and he could do exactly what he wanted and, if he wanted to toy with her, then there was no one to stop him.

She wasn’t the sort of woman he was accustomed to meeting and that was the long and short of it. He might genuinely be interested in her input, because it would be so contrary to the rest of the pitches he had heard, but in the end the job would go to the agency that fell in line with his fun-in-the-sun, hit-and-run version of love.

‘I don’t think I’m the right person for the job, Mr Rossi,’ Ellie said politely. ‘I’ve had a very high success rate with all the other contracts I’ve been given. I did truly believe that the best approach when it came to advertising your hotel would be to promote it as something classy and unique, with much more on offer than any more downmarket resorts that specifically appeal to singles, but I can see that you’re not really on board with that concept.’

‘How old are you?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m curious because—and correct me if I’m wrong here—you’re in the service industry and yet you’re allowing your own personal prejudices to get in the way. I’m finding it hard to believe that a woman in her twenties, which is what I’m assuming you are, can be so morally upright that she digs her heels in at the thought of promoting a hotel where single people can have a bit of fun in agreeable surroundings.’

Ellie met his eyes without flinching. ‘I do think that romance can blossom in the sort of setting your hotel will provide, and I really do feel that that’s an important aspect that should be promoted, but I just don’t think I would be very good at producing an advertising campaign that focuses on people bed-hopping for two weeks.’

‘You make it sound as though sex is something distasteful.’ Niccolo was intrigued. She was so different from any other woman he had ever met that she could have come from another planet.

She was leaning towards him, hands gripping the sides of the chair. She had removed the frightful coat, although the jacket underneath was still firmly in place. Even so, he could still make out the white blouse and under it the shadowy silhouette of her jutting breasts.

His breathing slowed. His long lashes veiled his expression but there was a sudden stillness about him that betrayed a momentary lapse of control. The throb in his loins heralded a desire that was rock-hard and shocking because it was the last thing he’d expected. He shifted, sitting upright to try and release some of the painful pressure.

Any other woman might have tuned in to the shift in atmosphere, the crackle of electricity in the air, the tension that had settled between them, as taut as a piece of elastic pulled to breaking point.

Ms Eleanor Wilson didn’t. She was staring at him with wide-eyed earnestness. She leaned forward a little further and he glimpsed the tantalising valley of her cleavage.

Niccolo abruptly reared up, his whole body on fire as be began to pace his office in an attempt to get his runaway libido back under control.

‘I never said that sex was distasteful.’ Ellie breathed, disconcerted by the way the conversation had veered off course and all at sea as to how she could return it to safe moorings. ‘I do, however, think that a fortnight of sex isn’t a recipe for sad single people finding love.’

‘Why are my single guests sad?’ Niccolo wondered what her body looked like under the granny get-up. He had always been a big fan of the woman with obvious sex appeal. He liked to see what was on offer and, more than that, he liked knowing that the women he dated were savvy enough to know what was on the table and what wasn’t. Sex was on the table and commitment wasn’t.

Niccolo had made one wrong turn in his love life and, from that day on, he’d determined never to make another. Fresh out of university, and with a terminally ill family business that needed to be cobbled back together, he had looked to the girl he’d been dating for support. She’d only been on the scene for a handful of months, but she had been everything he had wanted in a woman, at that point in time.

Once the firm hand of his father had been lost, the family business had declined gracefully, like an elegant, well-bred woman ageing until she sadly became bedridden, waiting for the Grim Reaper to escort her away. It had been a gradual process that had seen the decline of their fortunes but Niccolo, even through the gradual decline, had still been privately educated and had still enjoyed the privileges of the upper-middle-class background which had given him the usual holidays abroad and, of course, the cultivated accent that Susie had claimed to adore. Darkly, sexily Italian but with the low, husky drawl of someone straight out of the upper drawer. The combination had fascinated her—had been so different from her own working-class background, which was something Niccolo had paid scant attention to.

But things had changed the minute he had divulged that the family inheritance was about to gasp its last breath. With money off the table, Susie had begun to change. It turned out that she was a lot less impressed by him than he had thought. It turned out that she had wanted the rich, young boy with a country pile and a flash apartment in Belgravia. As it turned out she very quickly found someone else who fitted the bill, someone who’d just so happened to be one of his closest friends.

Niccolo had forgiven his friend because he’d been spared a wolf in lamb’s clothing.

Susie had been sexy as hell and she had known exactly what to do with her plentiful assets.

But he had never forgiven her. Indeed, she had come crawling to him years later, when his face was all over the press as the young lion beginning to lead the pack, and he had derived a great deal of pleasure in dispatching her—although, in truth, he could have just as easily thanked her for the lesson she had taught him. She’d focused him. She’d reminded him that love was a distraction from the obligations he had sworn to fulfil. Sex wasn’t a distraction, sex was a physical release, and if he had a voracious appetite for it then he had no qualms about sating it with those willing women who weren’t ashamed to pursue him. They knew the score. He always made sure of that after that youthful hiccup. His personal life was controlled as efficiently as his public one.

When it came to women, Niccolo always knew what he was getting into.

‘I never said that your guests were sad,’ Ellie said, fervent and sincere. ‘But I do think that love isn’t something that can be manufactured by throwing people together for a couple of weeks. Love is something that takes time. You’re selling no-strings-attached sex and I... I...’

‘Don’t approve?’ Niccolo interjected helpfully. ‘Some might say that I’m doing a service for a certain sector of society who find it difficult to join the dating pool. No, wait, that’s not quite right—they find it very easy to join the dating pool. The only problem is that the pool is often full of sharks and piranha. My clients are in search of more tranquil waters.’

‘I’m not following you.’

‘The other agencies I interviewed—and you were lucky to be considered because I only interviewed a total of three—offered me precisely what they imagined was written on the can. A singles resort for people to meet one another. Sex on the beach, but in a more glamorous than average setting, and with the protagonists wearing expensive swim wear and designer sunglasses. I got the impression that they were advertising the sort of place they would personally find appealing themselves.’

‘I thought you wanted the obvious approach.’

‘I said I didn’t want a selection of tasteful shots of the seasonal menus on offer.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Tell me what landing this job would mean to you,’ he murmured. ‘You clearly have talent, likewise ambition, and you’re good at what you do. I’ve done my homework. It’s a small job, but it’s for me, and that in itself makes it a small but extremely worthwhile job. Am I right?’

Ellie looked down at her linked fingers. What he had just said was boldly, offensively arrogant but it had been said with such nonchalant self-assurance that she could only find herself meekly agreeing with his summary of the situation.

It was a small job in terms of exposure but huge in terms of possibilities. Which was why it had been so fabulous that their agency had been invited to pitch for it.

‘I see you get where I’m going with his. So tell me what it would mean to you, personally, if this job were to go to your agency. And I don’t want to hear any company spiel about your small but upwardly mobile business and how well you connect with the youth of today.’

‘Why does it matter what it would mean to me?’

Niccolo took his time in answering. She was in an office, he was in his suit. He could tell that thankfully the natural order of things had been restored. This was her comfort zone and she was in charge of the brief she was sworn to deliver.

‘Let’s just say that I’m curious and, since I’m the one with the chequebook, why don’t you humour me?’

‘For obvious reasons,’ Ellie said stiffly, ‘This would be a wonderful feather in my cap, and certainly cement my place as on a par with my partners who have both had more experience than myself. As you rightly said, it may not be the biggest of commissions, but you’re a big cheese, so there’s always the hope that other significant commissions might follow. It would be a brilliant CV builder for the agency and an even greater one for me.’

Niccolo’s eyebrows winged up. ‘The way you said big cheese doesn’t make it sound like a compliment. So, you get this job and you further prove yourself...’

‘Yes,’ Ellie told him flatly.

‘And your career means a great deal to you.’

‘It means everything to me.’ She met his dark gaze and held it. ‘Financial independence means everything to me. This job offers me a door through which the agency can enter and I want to see what’s on the other side of that door. So, that’s how much it means to me.’