flicked to a profile piece on her personal life. Or lack thereof. She either didn’t have one or she was the most ultraprivate person he’d ever encountered. Twenty-seven years old, resided in Chicago, divorced from Boston blue blood lawyer, Julian Edwards, after one year of marriage. One year? He lifted a brow. What in God’s name had happened there? And a graduate-level Krav Maga? The instructors he knew had attained that level but none of his buddies had gotten past an orange belt despite years of practice.
Interesting was not the word. Fascinating was more like it. His mouth quirked. No wonder her marriage had fallen apart. Quinn Davis had probably emasculated her husband within the first three months of marriage.
He scoured the file from top to bottom, then threw it on the concrete beside him. Resting his beer on his thigh he looked up at the lone star in the Manhattan sky that never seemed to get truly black. An image of all three De Campo brothers—Riccardo, Gabriele, Matteo—walking into the boardroom of the second largest airline in Europe flashed through his head. That day in Paris had been their chance to make their mark on a company ruled for forty years by their despotic father, Antonio. It was Riccardo’s first high-profile deal as CEO. They had been pumped, sky-high with adrenaline, the seven-million-dollar deal to supply the airline with its house wines firmly within their grasp.
They’d nailed the presentation. Had gone out to celebrate that night at a local bar. But after the adrenaline had worn off, Matteo’s recent all-encompassing grief over the loss of his best friend, Giancarlo, had stormed back. Nothing had been enough to contain it—to make the guilt and pain go away. The effort to keep up a happy face with his brothers had been excruciating, ending with him seeking solace in the arms of a beautiful woman. Except that woman had been the daughter of Georges Fontaine, the CEO of the airline. She worked for Fontaine, had been on the executive team they’d pitched to. She’d also been throwing herself at Matteo the entire time they’d been in that boardroom.
He had reasoned Angelique Fontaine was a grown woman capable of making her own decisions. But when he’d made it clear the next morning he wasn’t interested in anything long-term, Angelique had gone straight to her father. And De Campo’s chance to put its wine on over half a million flights a year had gone with her.
Angelique had branded him a callous son of a bitch. Georges Fontaine had been furious. It had been the worst mistake in judgment in Matteo’s thirty-two-year-old life.
He shifted on the chair, the memory of his brothers’ faces when Georges Fontaine had called the deal off physically painful to remember. Burned so indelibly into his mind it was like a mental scar that never healed. Shock. Disbelief. Disappointment.
The disappointment had been the worst.
He set his beer down on the concrete with a jerky movement. He had been in pain. But Riccardo was right. It shouldn’t have mattered.
Resting his head against the back of the chair, that lone star blinking at him like a beacon—like his path to redemption—he knew this was his chance to finally put his demons to rest. To move on. He would win this deal if it was with the last breath he had. Despite the odds that were stacked against him.
Unfortunately, the stakes had never been higher.
CHAPTER TWO
WARREN DAVIS’S REDBRICK Georgian Revival home in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago shone with a century-old elegance in the early evening light. It had been an unusually steamy summer day, climbing into the hundreds, the haze that had blanketed the city just starting to lift. Cooler night air whispered across the tops of the tall pine trees that stood like sentinels on either side of the mansion, wafting through the window of Quinn Davis’s room as she watched the heads of some of the world’s biggest spirit companies arrive for the cocktail meet and greet.
The air might be cooler now, but the focused, intent look on each megapowerful man’s face as he arrived promised a heated competition. Winning was all that mattered to men of this caliber. She’d lived with one her whole life—the most alpha of them all in Warren. And she couldn’t deny, she was their female equivalent. Except she had to be even tougher, stronger and more focused than all of them to survive. A female warrior in a male-dominated world.
She was fascinated to see how the men would play. How the testosterone party would unfold.
Every single one of them, as they arrived in everything from custom-made suits to cowboy hats, looked up at the American flag billowing from the porch, and undoubtedly, reminded himself again of its significance. Warren Davis was a national symbol of what made America great—a billionaire philanthropist who gave away more of his money than he kept. A patriot and financial genius who advised presidents on monetary policy and led social commentary. He was the man everyone wanted to know. The man people paid three and a half million to have lunch with at his charity auction date for the homeless, in the hopes they might pick up a miniscule amount of his brilliance.
He was also, as a stroke of fate would have it, the man who had chosen, along with his Irish wife, Sile, to adopt Quinn as a baby when her young Southern parents had been unable to care for her. Warren and Sile had barely brought their new baby home when Sile had miraculously fallen pregnant after years of unsuccessful fertility treatments and given Quinn her sister and best friend, Thea.
Thea, even now still primping herself in front of the mirror, fussing over yet another choice of hairstyle. Quinn grimaced and levered herself away from the window. “Please pick one and be done.”
Her sister squinted at herself and gave a dramatic sigh. “How am I supposed to choose with four of the world’s most powerful men coming for cocktails? This has to be daddy’s best idea ever. I mean, he has two single daughters right?”
Since her marriage to Julian had been a certified disaster, yes, that did put her squarely in that category. Not that she had any plans to ever repeat her mistake.
“Tonight is about getting to know potential partners,” she told her veterinarian sister, who knew as much about business as she knew about changing a tire. “Not speed dating.”
“Ha.” Thea shot her a rebellious look. “With a cattle and wine baron in the house, not to mention delicious Matteo De Campo.... You think I’m missing out on that opportunity?”
Quinn smiled. She wished, sometimes, she had just a little bit more of her younger sister’s boundless enthusiasm for life. For love. But she wasn’t sure she’d ever even had it to start with.
“Daniel Williams is beautiful,” Quinn drawled. “I’ll give you that.”
Thea tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder. “I fancy living on his ranch. I can take care of the animals while he tends to his vineyard. Although—” she put a finger to her mouth in a thoughtful gesture “—I’d gladly forget all about the animals if Matteo De Campo deemed me fit to give a second look. He is one real-life animal I wouldn’t mind taming.”
Quinn gave her a look from beneath perfectly manicured brows. “Matteo De Campo is a notorious playboy who couldn’t take a woman seriously if she were the only one left on the planet. And even then,” she declared, her lip curling, “he’d find it difficult to get past his love affair with himself.”
Thea threw out her hands. “Who cares? I hear a woman can’t be in the same room as him without throwing her panties at him. He’s that hot.”
“He’s not that good-looking.” Unless you went for the smoldering male à la perfume commercials who looked like he’d keep you up all night.
