pause. ‘I see.’ Sorcha let her eyelids close so that he would not detect the wavering hurt which was making her eyes shimmer with tears. ‘And now you have.’
But that was the trouble. Cesare narrowed his eyes.
He hadn’t.
‘We’d better get dressed,’ he said abrasively. ‘I have a flight to catch.’
‘A flight?’ she echoed blankly.
‘I’m meeting Rupert—we’re flying up to the North. The new factory is about to go into production. Remember?’
‘Yes, of course.’ What an idiot he must think her—they had talked of nothing else for weeks. Yet business couldn’t have been further from her mind—all her thoughts were full of him, and it was time she pulled herself together. One day soon Cesare would be gone, and she did not need her career to be left in tatters as a consequence of his going.
She stared up at the ceiling. ‘It’s such a gamble,’ she moaned. ‘Starting production before you know whether the new campaign will be a success. What if we manufacture loads of extra bottles of sauce and nobody buys them?’
‘Life is a gamble, Sorcha—and sometimes you just have to go out on a limb and take a risk.’ He stroked his finger over her face. ‘I’ll only be gone a few days. Will you miss me?’
Sorcha began to get dressed without answering—because what did he expect? Adoring compliments or declarations of affection? How egotistical was that? Especially as he had been so brutally honest about what she meant to him.
She bit her lip.
It wasn’t the most glowing testament in the world, was it?
She was the best sex he’d never had.
CHAPTER NINE
‘THERE’S a journalist outside,’ said Rupert. ‘And he says he wants to speak to Sorcha.’
All eyes around the table looked at her. The boardroom was packed with accountants, operations managers and sales reps, but all Sorcha was aware of was the piercing black gaze which seemed to be stripping her bare—or was that simply wishful thinking on her part? Oh, but she had missed him.
Cesare had been away for weeks. He’d flown straight from the new factory over to the States, and then back to Italy for the centenary celebrations of one of the di Arcangelo department stores. He’d been in regular contact—but you never really knew what was going on behind the scenes when you dealt in phone calls and e-mails.
He had arrived back to discover that a lot of the press interest seemed to be focussed more on the fiery-haired model than on the product—which was every marketing man’s idea of a nightmare. He had only calmed down when he had seen the sales figures, which had gone through the roof.
Across the boardroom he met Sorcha’s green eyes with soft fire—because even the supremely confident Cesare had been unprepared for the ripple effect of his original idea.
Nobody could have predicted the outrageous success of his revamped advertising campaign. As Rupert had said, products hadn’t just been flying off the shelves—they had been leaving them in whole squadrons!
‘So, are you going to talk to this journalist, Sorcha?’ Cesare questioned, his voice underpinned with silken sarcasm. ‘Or perhaps we should think about hiring a PR person especially for you, who could cope with all the interview requests!’
‘There’s no need to make it sound like something I’ve done, when this whole campaign idea was your suggestion,’ she retorted. ‘If you start rubbishing it now, then it doesn’t really reflect well on your judgement, does it, Cesare?’
They glared at each other across the room. Had he thought that his absence might bring him immunity from desire? He wanted her, he realised. He still wanted her. He had missed her like crazy. Crazy. His scowl deepened. ‘So, are you going to talk to him?’
She looked around the table. ‘I’m happy to take advice on it.’
Rupert shrugged. ‘Well, you know what they say—there’s no such thing as bad publicity.’
‘It’s certainly been good for Maceo!’ piped up one of the secretaries, who had been completely smitten by the Italian photographer.
The campaign had given Maceo’s retrospective exhibition an extra boost of publicity. The photos he had taken of Sorcha were absolutely brilliant, causing one of the broadsheet newspapers to wonder why he had given up taking photos professionally.
‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ said Sorcha, wishing that some of it might die down.
‘Are you being disingenuous?’ Cesare’s voice was withering as his gaze flickered over the giant poster of Sorcha sucking on a digit. ‘It looks like soft porn!’
‘Thanks!’ she snapped. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. You approved the original concept—remember?’
‘I was not expecting it to look like…like…!’ But that was not strictly true. He had known exactly what it would look like. He had underestimated the interest it would provoke, true—and he had also failed to take into account the fact that he would still be feeling this frustrating and pointless jealousy. Because none of this was working out as he had wanted.
He had planned to have cast her aside by now—instead of which, he had flown back hungry for more of her. And—damn it—he didn’t want to want her—not any more! Looking for something to focus his rage on, he looked again at the poster. ‘What was Maceo thinking of?’
‘Sales, presumably,’ she said sarcastically.
Now they faced one another.
‘The journalist is waiting, Sorcha,’ Rupert reminded her quietly.
Part of her wanted to go out and do an interview just to rile Cesare. But she knew that wouldn’t be the act of a mature person, and so she shook her head. ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to anyone. Rupes, would you mind referring them to our PR people? Say that my contribution to the campaign was a one-off and that I shan’t be doing any more photo-shoots?’
Rupert pulled a face. ‘Crikey—are you sure, sis? Don’t you want to capitalise on this?’
‘There’s nothing to capitalise on.’ Sorcha met the mockery in Cesare’s eyes and hesitated. She wanted to say how much she had given up to go to college—but wouldn’t that be a revelation too far, especially now, here, in front of all these people? And especially in front of him. But there were other ways of saying that her education had been both important and necessary to her.
‘I didn’t work hard at university to see my entire career culminating in being the face on the front of a sauce bottle.’
Black eyes burned into her.
‘Yeah,’ said Rupert, nodding. ‘And we kept that other photo for over fifty years—so there’s probably no need!’
‘Rupert!’ said Sorcha indignantly. ‘That wasn’t why I said it! It’s a bit much
