The Reluctant Surrender

This news had galvanised the senior partners into swift action. Everyone connected with the plans—no matter in how lowly a capacity—had been instructed to make themselves available after the preliminary early-morning meeting, in case the island’s new owner wished to discuss any aspect of the plans with them. The hope was that he would give the green light to the stalled project, but of course there was no guarantee of that. With the threat of potential redundancies looming over them, naturally the more junior architects, like Giselle, were keeping everything crossed that he would look favourably on the plans.

The lift had stopped at her floor. Giselle exited the lift and headed for the office she shared with several other junior architects—all of them male, apart from her, and all of them in their different ways determined to show both her and the senior partners that they were a better financial investment for the firm than she could ever be.

‘It’s all right,’ said Emma Lewis, their shared PA, as Giselle stepped into the office. ‘The meeting’s been put back an hour. Apparently the new owner has been unavoidably delayed.’

Giselle exhaled with relief and told her, ‘I thought I was going to be late. I had to come in my car, because I’ve got a site meeting this evening, and the traffic was appalling.’

Emma, thirty-four to Giselle’s twenty-six, and married to a surveyor who was working on a contract out in the United Arab Emirates, treated her juniors in much the same way as she did her two children—mothering them with fond affection and doing her best to break up any quarrels between them. Giselle liked her, and was very grateful for the support Emma gave her.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ Giselle asked Emma, only to groan and go on, ‘No, don’t tell me—let me guess. They’re all in the gents, trying to work out how to avoid any blame that might be handed out whilst claiming any plaudits that could be going.’

Emma burst out laughing.

‘Something like that, I expect. I’ll bring you coffee, and then I’ll tell you the latest I’ve heard about our possible new client.’

Giselle nodded her head, and tried not to grimace inwardly. If Emma had one fault it was that she was devoted to gossip magazines charting the lives of the rich and famous, and Giselle suspected that ‘the latest’ was probably going to be some kind of information she’d gleaned from the pages of one of those dubious sources.

Five minutes later, sipping her coffee whilst she listened to Emma, she knew that she was right.

‘I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t had to take Timmy to the dentist, because the magazine was months old, and I couldn’t believe it when I opened it and right in front of me was an article about Saul Parenti. You’d think he was Italian with that surname, wouldn’t you? But he isn’t. Apparently his family actually own their own country, and his cousin is its Grand Duke. It’s somewhere near Croatia, and only small, but apparently he—Saul Parenti, I mean—is fabulously wealthy in his own right, apart from being the cousin of a duke, because his father was involved in loads of business deals with the middle East.’

‘Fascinating.’ Giselle applauded obligingly.

‘I just love knowing all about people’s backgrounds and their families, don’t you?’ Emma enthused. ‘His mother was American, and high up in one of the overseas aid agencies. She and his father were killed in South America whilst she was working there, in the aftermath of an earthquake.’

Giselle nodded her head, to show she was following Emma’s story, but inwardly the last thing she felt like doing was listening to gossip. Her comment about the death of Saul Parenti’s parents had caused an all too familiar panicky swell of nausea and defensive fear to rise insidiously inside her.

The door to the office opened to admit one of the other junior architects, Bill Jeffries. Stockily built and confident, he swaggered into the office looking pleased with himself. Bill considered himself to be something of a ladies’ man. He had made advances to her when she had first joined the practice.

Because she had rebuffed him, she was now on the receiving end of increasing animosity and sexual hostility towards her, and Giselle knew perfectly well what he was getting at when he gave a fake shiver and protested, ‘Brr…it’s cold in here!’ before pretending to notice her and then saying, ‘Oh, sorry—I hadn’t seen you there, Giselle.’

Giselle said nothing. She was well accustomed to Bill’s malice and baiting, which she knew sprang from the fact that she had so resolutely refused all the attempts of both him and the other men she worked with to flirt when she had first joined the practice. Bill had chosen to take her chilly manner personally, and she had no intention of telling him that, far from being personal, her icy reserve was a defensive mechanism she used against every man who attempted to show any kind of sexual interest in her. If Bill and other men like him chose to be offended because she didn’t welcome their attentions, then so be it. The truth was that a long time ago she had sworn that she would never allow herself to date men—because dating could lead to falling in love, falling in love led to making a commitment, and making a commitment led in turn to becoming a pair, and from that pair would come children…

‘Bill, I’ve just been telling Giselle what I’ve read about Saul Parenti.’ Emma broke the hostile silence. ‘Giselle, I still haven’t told you everything. Apparently he’s fabulously wealthy, with a reputation for driving a very hard bargain where his business and his romantic interests are concerned. When it comes to women he likes to play the field—he’s supposed to be a wonderful lover—but he’s said publicly that he never intends to marry.’

‘Hear that, Miss Ice Queen?’ Bill mocked Giselle. ‘Sounds like our new client is just the man to get you warmed up so that you’ll drop your knickers.’ He gave an unpleasant snicker. ‘Mind you, I don’t envy him if he does—all that ice would freeze the balls off any man.’

‘Bill!’ Emma protested.’

‘Well, it’s true,’ he said, unabashed.

‘It’s all right, Emma,’ Giselle assured the PA. ‘My chosen profession is architecture, Bill,’ She pointed out calmly. ‘Not prostitution.’

‘You mean it is if you can keep your job. And, let’s face it, you certainly won’t win any commissions with your female wiles,’ he sneered in response.

‘I don’t need to use any wiles, female or otherwise, to keep my job,’ Giselle couldn’t resist coming back at him pointedly, causing him to colour up angrily.

Bill was one of those employees who liked to play the good team player in front of those he thought it would impress, whilst being very much a person who put himself first. Bill liked to use their shared gender to get the other men in the office on side with him, and to exclude her, but Giselle had never seen any real evidence that he was the team player he liked to claim he was.

In the senior partners’ office the atmosphere was thick with a mixture of tension and determination—the tension coming from Mr Shepherd, one of the senior partners, and the determination from Saul Parenti, the man he needed to satisfy that his firm was up to the challenge being set.

‘Yes, of course I accept that you wish to meet and speak with the team who will be working on the changes to the plans you have requested. Perhaps lunch with the other senior partners involved in the plans?’

‘I wish to meet everyone involved in the project—senior and junior,’ Saul stressed briskly.

He did not have time to waste. He was already running late, thanks to the woman who had stolen his parking space and a telephone call from his cousin. Aldo, five years his junior and recently married, might be Grand Duke of Arezzio, thanks to the fact that his father had been their grandfather’s eldest son, and his own the younger, but he still turned to him when he needed financial advice. Saul shrugged inwardly. He had done his best to help his young cousin build up some reserves for the royal coffers of Arezzio, the small country on what had once been the border between the old Austrian Empire and Croatia, but Aldo was not a businessman—he was more of an academic. He did not like the harsh cut and thrust of modern business, and preferred to spend his time cataloguing the rare books in the library of his castle in Arezzio.

Saul was grateful for the fact that his father had not been the elder brother, and that he had been spared the onerous duty of becoming Arezzio’s Grand Duke, being forced to marry and produce an heir. He might not have approved when Aldo had married Natasha, because he didn’t think Natasha loved his cousin, but he would be very pleased when their marriage produced the child that would mean that he would be not just one but two steps removed from the Dukedom. He was, he believed, like his mother. Like her, he loved the excitement and adventure of new challenges and demands on his energy. Her life had been her aid work. She had loved his father, and no doubt she had loved him too, but parenting a child had not been the focus of his mother’s life.

His own view now was that it would be wrong for him to bring a child into the world when he knew how little time he would have for it. He was driven in his work, in his need to explore the outer boundaries of creating the most exciting and enticing of luxurious holiday destinations which at the same time supported the environment and the local population. It was a purpose to which his emotional time as well as his physical time was given over wholly. He would not have a child and leave it to be raised by others, and he did not need or want an heir. When the time came for him to hand over the business he would find the right hands to hold it safe.

Given all that, financing his cousin—and thus in part the country itself—was a small price to pay for his personal freedom.

A personal freedom he never intended to relinquish, either via a public commitment or a private one—of any kind.

Saul could see the senior partner of the architectural firm who had been commissioned to design the complex its previous owner had planned to create on the island did not approve of Saul’s demand. It always irritated him when people failed to grasp why he made the decisions he did and delayed executing the orders that related to those decisions. Their failure betrayed a lack of vision and foresight, as well as poor financial acumen. Which was no doubt why the firm was on the point of bankruptcy—or would have been if he hadn’t just confirmed that he intended to keep them on and go ahead with the redevelopment of the island.

At the back of his mind was the thought that, should he increase his financial interest in such projects, adding an architectural practice to his portfolio of business holdings would be financially beneficial. For now, though, he intended to make it plain that he would not be paying them the kind of fees they had previously anticipated, and he would be keeping a far tighter control of both budgets and plans for the venture. Taking and keeping control was why he was a billionaire, with his fortune growing every day, whilst other rich men were losing money.

‘I wish to see them all because I want to make it clear to them that from now on it is my instructions they will be following and my approval they must win,’ he informed the senior partner. ‘The previous plans were spouting wasted money like a leaking colander.’

‘Our original brief was that no expense be spared,’ Mr Shepherd protested defensively.

Saul gave him a cool look.

‘Which is no doubt why one of your junior staff elected to have the floor of a summerhouse that is open to the weather tiled in handmade tiles that are not frostproof.’

‘An error which of course would have been picked up,’ the senior partner assured him.

‘Of course. But I prefer those who work for me not to make such errors in the first place.’ Saul looked at his watch, and this time the senior partner stood up.

‘I believe all our staff are in the building. I will arrange for all those who worked on the plans to be summoned,’ he said unwillingly.

‘I have a better idea,’ Saul told him. ‘Why don’t you show me round the office instead, and introduce me to them that way?’

It often paid to see what people were working on. Fortunes could be built—and destroyed—by such means.

The whisper had spread through the office. ‘The project’s going ahead and he’s keeping us on.’ And naturally everyone’s mood was upbeat and buoyant, with all the staff relieved to have the worry of the last couple of months, when they hadn’t known whether or not they would end up being made redundant, finally removed.

Giselle was as relieved as everyone else. She’d worked hard to get where she was, to qualify for and get a job that would enable her to support herself all through her adult life—because she would have to support herself. She knew that. There would never be a man, a partner, a husband who loved her and whom she loved in turn to share the burden of providing a roof over their head with her. How could there be when—?

The door to their office opened, and everyone fell silent as Mr Shepherd, one of the senior partners, came in—an unheard-of event. But it wasn’t the sight of him that had driven the colour from Giselle’s face, leaving it bleached of colour as she stared into the face of the man accompanying him.

It was the man from the car park. The man whose space she had stolen—the man who was now their most important client, Giselle recognised as she heard the senior partner introduce him.

‘Mr Parenti wishes to meet all those who have worked or will be working on the plans for the island project,’ the senior partner announced.

‘Saul,’ their new client corrected the older man. ‘Not Mr Parenti.’ Respect, as far as he was concerned, was something that was earned, not bestowed, and he had no doubt at all about his ability to earn the respect of others.