see you in his office.’ It was one of Gianni’s personal assistants. Meg’s heart bounced like a ball at the request.
‘OK—when?’
There was a shocked silence. Meg realised this must be the first time anyone had ever tried to keep Gianni Bellini waiting. The reply was terse, and to the point.
‘Immediatamente, if not sooner!’
Meg didn’t need any more of a warning. She ran to obey. Covering the distance between the old kitchen garden and the villa at top speed, she was still brushing chipped bark from the knees of her jeans as she dashed into the estate office. Its noisy hubbub fell silent in an instant. The eyes of every secretary and PA followed the journey of each small brown fleck of bark raining down from Meg’s clothes and boots. One woman, as beautiful as a bird of paradise, moved swiftly to sweep up all the bits with a dustpan and brush. A second secretary stepped forward holding a roll of perforated plastic. Chivvying Meg toward an impressive mahogany door labelled ‘Strictly No Admittance’, she knocked on it loudly.
‘Come in!’
Meg had thought she was nervous. Hearing the rich, smooth sound of Gianni’s voice added an extra frisson to her fear. She froze.
How the secretary threw open the door and bowled the roll of perforated plastic inside so casually, Meg had no idea. It uncoiled as an eighteen-inch-wide strip, protecting the highly polished wood floor of Gianni’s office.
Meg was desperate to break the tension of her ordeal. ‘No red carpet for me, then?’ She giggled nervously to the secretary.
‘No, only a carpet protector,’ the woman snapped, shooing her along.
Meg walked forward. Gianni was sitting behind a vast workstation at the far side of the room. With his back to the windows, head down and engrossed in his work, he presented an imposing figure. Meg wasn’t sure what to do. She looked back the way she had come. As she did so the door slammed shut. That cut off any hope of escape. Edging forward, she stopped a respectful distance before the end of the silver plastic road. There she knotted her hands together in an agony of guilt, and waited. It felt as though one end of her nerves were nailed to the tip of Gianni’s fountain pen. The further across the page his hand moved, the further they stretched.
He was writing an extremely long sentence.
Outside, swifts screamed across the sky. Dust motes spiralled up the shafts of sunlight thrown across the glassy floor of his office. The heat increased. Meg’s temperature rose. Outside, a dog barked down in the village. A clock ticked. The dog barked a second time. Beneath his desk, Gianni shuffled his feet.
He was testing Meg’s nerves beyond endurance. Suddenly, she couldn’t stand it any more.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been spying on you out of my window at night but it’s just that your car always wakes me up when you drive past and I can never get back to sleep after that and it’s become a sort of habit that I have to get up and look out to make sure everything’s all right and you always happen to look up at the wrong time and—’
Her first word stopped his pen. The rest of them lifted both it, and his head. By the time her voice trickled into silence he was staring at her with naked curiosity.
‘That’s interesting, Megan. That’s extremely interesting,’ he murmured at last, with a drawl that made her squirm. Throwing his pen down on the blotter, he sat back in his chair. Then he put the tips of his fingers together and looked at her keenly over the top of them.
‘Do you know, I had absolutely no idea you were doing that, Megan?’
She squirmed some more.
‘I actually called you in to my office for a completely different reason. I wanted to find out how you’re settling in—nothing more exciting than that. Perhaps you would like to go out, come back in and we’ll start this interview all over again?’
She threw another hunted look over her shoulder at the door. It was the only thing standing between her and the complete destruction of her self-esteem.
‘Do I have to?’
He gave a low, throaty chuckle. It was calculated to snatch her attention straight back to him, and worked like a charm.
‘I wasn’t being entirely serious.’ His expression had all the delicious amusement she had enjoyed at the Chelsea Flower Show. It had the same effect, too, soothing her nerves just enough to let a little smile escape.
‘You might be on to something, Gianni. Running the gauntlet of your beautiful office staff without having had time to take a shower, change my clothes and put on a bit of make-up was a real challenge!’
‘There’s nothing wrong with the way you look.’ His eyes roamed over her body, giving weight to his words.
‘They seemed to think so,’ she said nervously. ‘That’s why they rolled this out for me.’ She pointed at the carpet protector. Once again he chuckled.
‘Don’t take it personally. It’s done for every visit from a member of my outdoor staff. As well as my own vineyard, I’ve inherited olive and citrus plantations and any number of farms. A lot of it would end up in here, scattered all over my office floor if they didn’t take precautions like that.’
‘Your indoor staff aren’t like the people who work in the grounds,’ Meg said, still stinging from the scornful looks she had been given.
‘My domestic staff are all fine, but it’s a jungle out there.’ He nodded towards the outer room before adding quickly, ‘But don’t worry—you’re of absolutely no interest to my office staff. They don’t see you as any sort of threat at all.’
Meg wasn’t remotely reassured.
‘Is that supposed to cheer me up?’ she asked faintly.
‘Of course. Now—to business. How are you getting on here, Megan? I’ve been meaning to check up on you for the past few days, but no sooner do I spot you in the garden than you vanish. That’s why I’ve called you in here. I want to talk to you properly.’
‘And I wanted to do the same, Gianni,’ Meg said before she could stop herself. He was interested straight away.
‘That sounds promising. Take a seat.’ He indicated a deeply buttoned visitor’s chair drawn up before his workstation.
To reach it she would have to step off the carpet protector. He saw her glance from one to the other and back again, and laughed.
‘Don’t bother about the floor. I never normally give my cleaning staff anything to do. Your little footprints won’t kill them.’
She walked over and sat down in the chair. Elbows on his desk, Gianni leaned forward, his grin growing predatory. After all her fantasies, all the hours spent wondering what to say and how to act the next time they met, Meg froze again. Her wild confession might turn out to have been a fatal mistake. If he tried anything now, she could put up no resistance. Trembling, she waited for his next move. Forcing herself to sit back in her chair, she looked down at her hands. They were twisting nervously in her lap.
‘While I’ve got the opportunity, Gianni, I’d like to ask if you could possibly—that is, if you don’t
