don’t go together!’
‘Oh, but they do,’ he drawled. ‘Lending money is always a risk, but if you don’t gamble you don’t accumulate, as you know very well. You’ve been working for Charles for too long. Charles has the excuse of being middle-aged, but you’re not.’
‘Charles isn’t middle-aged!’ she threw back, flushed and angry now. ‘He’s only in his forties.’
Bruno laughed coldly. ‘That is middle-aged!’
‘Yes, well, Charles is still very...’ She broke off the sentence, not sure how she had been meaning to finish it, and Bruno finished it for her in a hard, sardonic voice.
‘Attractive? Was that what you were going to say? I know you worship the ground he walks on, and I’d be curious to know why you’re so fixated on a man who was at university before you were even born! Does he remind you of your father? Or didn’t you have a father? If I had a crude mind, I’d suspect it might be Charles’s money you were really interested in, and that thought did occur to me before I got to know you, but I’ve realised you aren’t that materialistic. No, it’s Charles himself, isn’t it?’ His dark eyes watched her tense profile closely. ‘You have a real problem, Martine. The gap’s too wide. You’d regret it bitterly sooner or later if Charles was crazy enough to take what you’re dying to give him.’
Her face was burning and a choking rage filled her throat. She turned on him furiously, her green eyes stormy with resentment.
‘How dare you...?’ She stopped as the waiter approached. Quivering, dark red, Martine had to swallow the words boiling to get out.
Bruno was as cool as the ice-cubes in their drinks. He smiled blandly at the waiter. ‘Ah, ready to take our order? Right.’ He ordered for them both, without consulting Martine again, which at any other time would have infuriated her, but which she accepted without comment then because she knew she couldn’t have said a word without her voice shaking.
By the time the waiter had gone Martine had had time to work out what she really wanted to say to Bruno, but, before she could start, someone else came up to their table.
Before she actually spoke, Martine picked up the heady, musky fragrance of her perfume. It enveloped them like a cloud.
‘Bruno, caro!’ a warm voice said, and Bruno got up, smiling. Martine watched coldly as he was engulfed in what looked like a very passionate embrace. The woman was in her thirties, her black hair wreathed at the back of her head in coils and pinned there with a huge black lace bow, her skin olive, but glowing with a golden tan she had not got in Italy at that time of year. She had a figure like a fairground switchback, curving in and out exaggeratedly: full, warm breasts, a tightly belted waist, with rounded hips giving a curved line to the black satin evening suit she wore. It glittered with diamanté on the neck and cuffs and hem. Diamonds shone in her ears, at her throat, at her wrists; her hands sparkled with rings, too.
She was certainly not a wallpaper person, thought Martine drily. In fact, she obviously dressed to be noticed, in every sense of the word.
The way she was kissing Bruno, they must surely have been lovers at one time. Good friends didn’t kiss on the mouth like that. So, that was the sort of woman he liked?
Martine’s green eyes chilled. Every little detail about him was important, told her new facts about him, might help her defeat whatever he had planned against Charles. But she wouldn’t have expected him to like a woman who looked like that.
A second later, Bruno turned her way to introduce her. ‘Angelina, this is a colleague from London, Martine Archer. Martine, this is the wife of an old friend of mine, Angelina Fabri.’
Martine smiled politely and coldly, offered her hand. The other woman took it, her own smile equally cool, studying her with shrewd, sophisticated eyes.
‘You are in banking?’ She spoke English with a strong Italian accent, her phrasing slightly off most of the time. ‘Yes, I can tell you are. A career woman, obviously. And if it gives you all you need, why not? For some women it is the answer; we don’t need to get married these days, after all!’
Martine kept her face cool, her teeth together, but she knew she had just been patronised and insulted.
Bruno smoothly intervened, openly amused by the instant hostility between the two women.
‘I think your friends are about to leave, Angelina.’
She turned to look across the room at a group near the door, and waved, nodding.
‘Yes, I must go, caro! Will we see you while you’re here? Now, promise we will!’
‘I’ll do my best. Give Carlo my best wishes, tell him I’ll ring, as soon as I can. Unfortunately, I have too many engagements during the conference, but my last day here is free, maybe we could meet then?’
‘You must come to dinner, caro
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