Buch lesen: «The Millionaire's Daughter»

CHAPTER ONE

ANNIS CAREW walked into her father’s house and stopped dead. This was not the small, family supper she had been expecting. This was a full scale dinner party with women in jewels, waiters in black tie and, inevitably, tonight’s candidate to help the millionaire’s plain daughter off the shelf.

And what a candidate! Annis picked him out the moment the door closed behind her. He was talking to her father on the other side of the drawing room but they both glanced up to see who had arrived. At once, Annis forgot her father, her kind matchmaking stepmother Lynda, and everyone else in the room.

The candidate was tall and good looking in a sardonic, hard edged sort of way. But it wasn’t his height or his Byronic profile that stopped her breath in her throat. It was what she privately called The Look—the look of a man who did not have to try.

Annis knew The Look from grim experience. She had been meeting—and failing to make any impression on—men with The Look ever since the first smart cocktail party at which Lynda had tried to introduce her to what she called Nice People.

Oh, no, not that one, thought Annis. Lynda, what are you trying to do to me?

Her father had obviously been waiting for her. Lynda’s instructions, no doubt. Now, as he said something to the tall dark man, he looked relieved.

Probably thought I’d realise what was going on and cut loose, thought Annis. As I should have done. How could I be so stupid?

On the telephone this afternoon Lynda had been casual. Too casual, Annis now realised. ‘Come over for supper, darling. It’s so long since we’ve seen you,’ Lynda had said.

And Annis, speeding through her flat on the way to her next meeting, had flung, ‘OK. What time?’ at the telephone speaker without pausing to think.

So now here she was, high and dry, an ugly duckling in her sober business suit among the swans of London’s elite. Rain-draggled hair dripped down her back. Meanwhile The Look shouldered his way purposefully through the crowd to the rescue of the millionaire’s plain daughter who didn’t want rescuing.

Say a big hello to the perfect Friday night, thought Annis. She felt a strong urge to scream. She repressed it. Just.

Annis watched the tall figure bearing down on her. Like most of the men here this evening he was formally dressed. Unlike most of them he was wearing a high collared Nehru jacket in a muted brocade that glimmered richly in the candlelight. It skimmed his slim hips in a fashion that was as flattering as it was startling. Together with his strange, slanted eyes, it gave him an air of slightly exotic danger.

No doubt at all, thought Annis, that the effect was deliberate—and carefully calculated. A peacock, she thought, among all these high priced swans. Who on earth was he?

He reached her and took her hand.

‘Across a crowded room—I knew it would happen one day.’ He had a voice like black treacle, warm and deep and horribly sensuous. You could, thought Annis indignantly, probably drown in that voice. Slowly and pleasurably.

She gave him a wintry smile and removed her hand.

‘Hi, doll,’ said her father, arriving.

Since Annis had become a businesswoman in her own right her father treated her with a breezy camaraderie that imperfectly disguised his gratitude that she no longer admitted to emotions.

‘Hi, Dad,’ she said, cool as the glass of champagne a waiter was pressing into her hand.

‘This is Konstantin Vitale. He specially wants to meet you.’

I’ll just bet he does, thought Annis dourly. She wondered briefly whether it was the opportunity for business offered by her father’s company or her own status as an heiress that had drawn Konstantin Vitale across the room to her side.

Tony Carew answered the question for her. ‘He’s working on the headquarters project.’

‘Ah. Palazzo Carew,’ said Annis, understanding.

Her father’s plans for the new centre he was going to build for his company were enthusiastically extravagant. They had impressed the media and had stunned his rivals. His family had been teasing him about them for months.

‘So, here’s your mystery woman, Vitale.’ He sounded pleased with himself ‘My daughter, Annis.’

‘Mystery woman?’ echoed Annis. She was growing warier by the minute.

The Byronic hero answered before her father had the chance. ‘So late. So damp. So preoccupied.’

To her annoyance, an instinctive hand flew to the soaked strands at the base of her neck. His eyes followed the gesture. She felt embarrassment heat her skin.

She said more sharply than she intended, ‘Nothing mysterious about being late. I let time get away from me, that’s all.’

‘You two should have a lot in common,’ Tony announced.

He gave Annis a conspiratorial grin before he pushed off. She knew that grin. It meant things were going to plan. In this case, she was almost certain the plan in question had been laid down in advance of the party by his wife. She ground her teeth silently.

‘You don’t look as if you agree with him,’ said the black treacle voice, amused. But not only amused. The damned man sounded as if he was caressing her.

Annis felt her spine arch like an angry cat’s. Over his shoulder she could see her reflection in the oval Venetian mirror. It was eighteenth century, one of Lynda’s finds. Curlicued and garlanded, gleaming with gold, it might have been made for Konstantin Vitale, with his brocade coat and dramatic profile.

It had certainly never been intended to reflect someone like Annis. Her short dark hair had been turned black by the rain and was now plastered to her head like a skullcap. The only good thing about it was that the wet hair was also plastered over the ugly scar that ran from her eyebrow to her hairline. Realising it, she scowled horribly, then saw that he was laughing at her again.

Hurriedly Annis readjusted her expression.

‘I always try to keep an open mind,’ she said lightly.

He hardly pretended to believe her.

‘Sure you do.’

Her reflected brows snapped together in a frown of irritation. Annis saw it in despair. Her frowns were notorious. There never seemed to be anything that she could do about them, either.

She struggled to forget that she was over-tired, underdressed and that her minimal make-up had run in the rain. And that the Lord Byron look-alike in front of her had noticed every detail. She even tried to hide how thoroughly jangled she was to find the promised family supper transformed into one of Lynda’s find-Annis-a-man fests. After all, none of that was Konstantin Vitale’s fault, she reminded herself.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Put it down to end-of-the-week neurosis.’ She squared her shoulders, pinned on a polite smile, and tried to retune her mind to social conversation. ‘So what does my father think we have in common?’

The sardonic expression was very evident. ‘To be honest it was Mrs Carew who said you and I ought to get together.’

‘Surprise me,’ muttered Annis.

‘Excuse me?’

She shook her head, annoyed with herself. ‘Nothing.’

His eyes were speculative. ‘She respects you a lot.’

But not enough to accept that I can live without a man. There was a pregnant pause while Annis closed her lips over that one.

‘No, really. She’s a real fan. She was telling me how smart you are. What a great stepdaughter.’ It was almost a question.

Annis knew she was not reacting like a great stepdaughter. ‘That was kind of her,’ she managed in a stifled voice.

‘And unusual.’

Quite suddenly Annis realised she had run out of the ability to pretend. It was something to do with Friday-night tiredness. But more, much more, to do with that seductive voice and the horrible feeling that she was being sucked into something she could not control.

‘No,’ she said on an explosive little sigh. ‘No, it’s not unusual. Lynda does a terrific marketing campaign.’

‘What?’

She fixed the tall dark stranger with a baleful eye. She had been in this situation before. Experience told her there was only one thing she had never tried. Take a firm line straight from the start and hang on to it.

She took a deep breath and did just that. ‘Look, I don’t know what Lynda has told you. But let me set the record straight.’

He looked politely intrigued.

Annis drew a deep breath. ‘I’m twenty-nine years old, I live for my work and I don’t date.’

The man had high cheekbones and strange, slanting green eyes. They did not blink. Not blinking, he said a lot.

Ouch, Annis thought. I don’t think I meant it to sound like that.

She added hastily, ‘Nothing personal.’

It was not, perhaps, brilliantly tactful. The green eyes narrowed almost to slits.

‘That’s a relief,’ he said with a dryness that made her wince.

The deep voice had just a hint of a foreign accent. A very sexy accent. And he was taller than she was. Annis did not usually have to look up to people. It threw her off balance in every way.

‘I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. I mean I just like to make things clear. In general.’ She was floundering. Come on, Annis, you can do better than this. ‘Sometimes Lynda can be a bit misleading…’

He did not say anything, maintaining his air of gentle interest. Annis ran out of excusing generalities.

She tried the truth. ‘I—er—I mean I’m a bit of a workaholic.’

She made a despairing gesture. Too big a gesture, as always in this room of objets d’art. Champagne fountained from the glass she’d forgotten she was holding. At the same time a gold-painted plinth swayed at the impact. Konstantin Vitale steadied it. She saw he was looking deeply amused.

Amused! Great!

Of course, she could have said, My stepmother has set me up once too often. She thinks it would be nice for me to meet you. And when she says meet, she means dine with, dance with, holiday with, sleep with and, in the fullness of time, marry. Because my stepmother cannot get her head round the idea that any woman of my age might have other priorities. She thinks I’m scarred and difficult and on the shelf. She wants to help. You’re just the latest in a long, long line of unattached men she thinks might be good for me.

Oh, yes, she could have said that. It was there, every furious word, seething on the tip of her tongue.

Except, Annis was realising uneasily, he did not look like the latest in a long line of anyone. Nor, on consideration, like the sort of man who was likely to be good for the woman of the moment. Challenging, exciting and unpredictable, yes; cynical, certainly. Not, good.

Annis looked into the handsome, world-weary face and was assailed by doubt. Surely even Lynda, who thought she had a moral obligation to throw unmarried people together, wouldn’t imagine she could matchmake for a sophisticate like this?

She said gropingly, ‘Lynda did say she wanted us to meet?’

He was straightening the abstract sculpture on the plinth she had nearly sent flying. He glanced down at her, green eyes glinting.

‘Those common interests of ours, I guess.’

He looked perfectly solemn but Annis knew he was laughing.

Annis’s doubts disappeared. So her first suspicions had been right after all. She was oddly disappointed. She did not want him to be the sort of man to date a millionaire’s daughter, sight unseen.

‘Oh, yes?’ she said freezingly.

He was bland. ‘Meet another workaholic.’

And he held out his hand again.

To her own annoyance, Annis found herself taking it as if he had mesmerised her. It was not the light, social brush of the fingers of that first handshake either. It was a purposeful grasp, as if he were giving her a message.

Startled, she looked down. His hand was tanned and strong. It looked as if he had been working outdoors somewhere in the sun. Her ringless fingers were as pale as water engulfed in his clasp, and looked about as weak, Annis thought in disgust. Was that his message? Indignant she lifted her head and glared right into those strange eyes.

There was a moment’s silence.

Then, ‘Yeah,’ he drawled. As if she had asked him a question. Or as if she were a strange girl he was sizing up across a fairground or the floor of a nightclub. Sizing her up, what was more, with lazy appreciation.

Appreciation? Ridiculous. He had to be mocking her.

Annis tugged her hand away in pure reflex.

She half turned away and spoke at random. ‘If you’re a genuine workaholic, what are you doing at a party? There’s at least another four hours’ working time left tonight.’

It wasn’t a very good joke and Konstantin Vitale didn’t laugh.

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he said slowly.

Annis was curt. ‘Family.’ She was not going to admit that her stepmother had got her here under false pretences, though. It made her look a fool. So she added lightly, ‘Lynda’s dinner parties are a three-line whip. Besides, I haven’t seen my father since Carew’s half-year results.’

Konstantin Vitale glanced across at his host, currently holding forth by the fireplace. His mouth curled.

‘You work for Carew’s? I thought your stepmother said you were independent.’

Annis bristled. ‘I am. I still take an interest in the family firm.’

The sardonic look deepened. ‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?’

He doesn’t like me, she thought. Well, that was mutual.

‘Families do usually take an interest in each other’s affairs.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said dryly.

Annis narrowed her eyes at him challengingly. ‘No family, Mr Vitale?’

‘None that I’d discuss my financial results with.’

Annis saw the chance for revenge.

‘Could this be why you’re a workaholic?’ she asked sweetly.

He appeared to consider the question. ‘Nothing better to do with my time?’ he interpreted. He shook his head decisively. ‘No, it’s not that. You see, unlike you, I do date.’

The riposte was so unexpected that for a moment Annis could not think of a thing to say. Then she saw the devilish glint of laughter in the green eyes. And was swamped by a blush.

Oh, boy, what a restful Friday evening this was turning out to be!

Annis tried to ignore the heat in her face and the nasty sensation that a master had beaten her at her own game.

‘Each to his own,’ she said crisply, preparing to turn away.

He stopped her by propping himself against the wall and barring her escape route.

‘I so agree. And what is your own, Annis Carew? Are you just playing at business, propped up by family money? Is that what you’re doing here? Checking that the subsidy will keep coming?’

Annis was so indignant she forgot the dying blush.

‘I’m here to network,’ she said furiously and quite untruthfully. ‘In my line of work you seize every opportunity.’

She comforted herself that lots of management consultants did network a great deal. Just because she and her business partner Roy did not choose to, that didn’t undermine the general principle.

‘Plenty of people worth networking with,’ agreed Konstantin Vitale.

How did he manage to sound as if he had found a slug in his salad?

Annis conveniently ignored the fact that when she’d arrived this evening her heart had sunk at the sight of all these dauntingly impressive people. ‘Lucky me,’ she said brightly.

Konstantin Vitale looked bored. ‘And what is this work that you live for?’

‘I’m a management consultant.’

‘Impressive.’ His voice was grave and his face did not change by a muscle.

So why did she think he was mocking her?

Annis set her teeth and decided to fight fire with fire. ‘And what to you do when you’re working on my father’s new building?’

He gave a soft laugh. ‘I keep Carew in line.’

Annis was genuinely startled. ‘What?’

He repeated it obligingly.

Clever, she thought. Her father’s friends called him Tony; his subordinates called him Mr Carew. Konstantin Vitale was making a point. Not an employee, then. And if he was a professional adviser, he was not a very respectful one.

Annis bristled. ‘Forgive me if I say that I find it difficult to imagine.’

‘Too right,’ said Konstantin Vitale blandly. ‘He’s stubborn as hell.’

Most people who worked with Tony Carew were impressed by him. If they weren’t impressed they did not last very long.

‘I take it that your professional relationship with my father is on its last legs?’ said Annis

He was surprised. ‘No. Why? He wants the best. I am the best. He just needs a bit of education to appreciate it, that’s all.’

Annis blinked. She found she had nothing to say in the face of such superb assurance. Out of my depth again.

‘Could be it runs in the family,’ he murmured provocatively.

Annis was instantly suspicious. ‘What does?’

‘A need to be challenged.’

She met his eyes in fulminating silence. He raised one eyebrow. He was amused, confident and—quite temporarily—ready to duel with her. Oh, that Look! Annis could have stamped her foot with frustration.

She stopped pretending that she did not know he was trying to wind her up.

‘No chance,’ she said curtly. ‘Forget it, Mr Vitale. I not only don’t date, I don’t play any other silly games either. Now, I must find my stepmother. Excuse me.’

Annis was still seething when she tracked Lynda down. Her stepmother kissed her on both cheeks, all wide-eyed innocence.

‘So lovely to see you, darling. I saw your father was looking after you. How did you get on with lovely Kosta?’

Annis did not answer that directly. ‘He’s tonight’s people’s choice, is he?’ she said grimly.

Lynda fingered her fabulously simple, fabulously expensive gold collar nervously. She avoided Annis’s eyes.

‘Your father asked him. They’re doing business together, I think.’

‘And no doubt I’m sitting next to him at dinner.’

Her stepmother did not deny it. Another unwelcome thought occurred to Annis, based on previous experience.

‘And my flat just happens to be on his way home, I suppose?’

Lynda did not deny that either. She scanned Annis’s face, clearly concerned.

‘Darling—’

Annis was surprised at the gust of fury that whipped through her. Konstantin Vitale had disturbed her more than any other of Lynda’s offerings, though she could not have said why. She just knew that she hated it.

‘So he offers to drive me home and I’m supposed to say thank you kindly. And go out with him when he calls next week.’ She was shaking with anger. ‘Tell me, Lynda, have you given him my number already?’

In spite of a designer cocktail suit and several thousand pounds’ worth of discreet jewellery, Lynda Carew looked like a guilty four year old caught out in the playground.

‘Not to Kosta. But darling—’

‘Lynda, I love you very much. But will you just stop interfering in my life?’

Lynda looked shaken. Annis had never reacted like this before. All right, she did not usually go out with the men Lynda introduced to her more than once. But at least she greeted them with amused resignation. Lynda had never seen such passion in her level-headed stepdaughter. Or not about men.

She tried to sound airy. ‘But your father had these business types he really wanted to invite. So I thought, Why not?’ Her eyes were huge, blue and limpid. ‘Starting out on her own like that, Annis will probably be glad of a chance to meet some people who could put work her way.’

Annis stared. It was so close to what she had already claimed herself that Lynda might have been eavesdropping. Hoist with my own petard, she thought. In spite of herself, her lips twitched. She flung up her hands in surrender.

‘OK. I’m here to network. Let’s leave it at that.’ But she still looked at Lynda severely. ‘And I get to go home alone, right?’

‘Right,’ said Lynda relieved. She patted Annis’s sober blue shoulder. ‘I suppose you’ve come straight from work?’

Annis sipped the champagne. ‘How did you guess?’

‘You’re always scratchy when you’re tired,’ Lynda said frankly.

That was undoubtedly true. Annis, always fair minded, had to admit it.

Lynda sensed a softening. ‘I wish you wouldn’t make things so difficult for yourself, darling. Why don’t you just try to enjoy yourself for once?’

Annis closed her eyes briefly. ‘You’ve been saying that since I was fourteen.’

‘Then, it’s about time you gave it a try.’

Annis opened her mouth to retort.

‘What you ought to do is go upstairs to my room and freshen up,’ Lynda said coaxingly. ‘That will make you feel better. Borrow an earring or something. And then come downstairs and be nice to people.’

There was a shout of loud laughter from her father’s group at the fireplace. Lynda put a hand on her Annis’s arm. Her expression was suddenly serious.

‘Don’t spoil it, Annis,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It’s so long since he relaxed properly.’

Annis looked down from her five feet eleven into her diminutive stepmother’s exquisite face. Annis had given thanks for Lynda every day since she’d married Tony Carew and had taken his daughter under her wing. They were as different as two women could be but Lynda had given her unstinting affection, making no distinction between Annis and her own daughter Isabella.

What was more, she made Tony Carew laugh again. Under Lynda’s influence he came home from the office at night. He even took some notice of his neglected ugly duckling daughter and found, to his astonishment, that she was interesting. Found that she was not a sullen adolescent, just painfully shy. Found that he liked her.

So now Annis looked at Lynda, who would not remind her that it was she who had given Annis back her father. Annis knew herself beaten. Again.

‘Yes,’ she said capitulating entirely. ‘Yes, all right. I’ll paint my face and sing for my supper. Just no more throwing me together with your spare men.’

Lynda laughed and let go of her arm. ‘Take your drink with you.’

It was only when Annis was sitting in front of her stepmother’s enormous dressing table that she realised that Lynda had made no promises.

‘Outsmarted again,’ she told her reflection with irony, and, as she so often ended up saying after a tussle of wills with her sweetly accommodating stepmother, ‘When will you learn? You’ll walk straight back into the arms of tonight’s Mr Available.’

Only, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Konstantin Vitale did not feel like Mr Available. Reflecting on that exchange downstairs, her eyebrows knit in puzzlement.

Of course, it was probably not his fault. It was even possible that he did not know that Lynda was matchmaking. Annis knew her stepmother very well. The most Lynda would have told him was that she needed a spare man to make up numbers and sit next to her clever stepdaughter. That’s what she had told the sculptor, the writer and the aspiring politician.

Lynda’s candidates were normally men with promising futures and a shortage of current cash. That was what made the idea of dating millionaire Tony Carew’s daughter rather attractive, no matter how scarred and difficult she might turn out to be. Annis wondered exactly what Konstantin Vitale did for a living. And if she had done enough to make him think better of the dating-the-unattractive-heiress scenario.

Annis found her reflection was frowning horribly. She leaned forward and smoothed her heavy eyebrows apart. ‘Borrow an earring,’ Lynda had said. Well, she could do better than that with the run of her stepmother’s resources. With the efficiency of long, long practice, Annis set about livening up her neat navy business suit.

She borrowed a silk scarf so fine that it was transparent, with the evening colours of an impressionist painting shimmering as she moved, and some long turquoise earrings that Lynda had brought back from Morocco. No time for elaborate make-up, thought Annis, who was no good at it, even at the best of times. So she just combed her hair forward to hide the scar, flicked damp fronds into place against her long neck and dusted a touch of rose to her full-lipped mouth.

Then she squared her shoulders and went back to face the battle.

Fortunately the first person she saw was not Konstantin Vitale. Not even another glamorous spare man. It was Lynda’s own daughter, Bella.

Isabella, at twenty-three as golden and charming as her mother, regarded Annis as one of her very best friends.

It was Bella who saved her now.

‘Annie,’ she screamed, rushing over.

A number of people looked up and smiled. Across the room, Annis saw, even Konstantin Vitale of The Look glanced up. For a moment the bored shell cracked. He looked almost intrigued. But then, thought Annis wryly, men usually did look intrigued when they first caught sight of Isabella Carew.

Tonight she was on top form, in a slip of a dress that was all shimmery curves and slipping straps, showing yards of perfect leg. She enveloped Annis in a bear hug.

‘Hi, Brain Box.’

Annis kissed her sister more sedately. ‘Hi yourself, Bella Bug. How’s life?’

‘Great. What—’

Lynda frowned her daughter down. ‘We can have a family chat later. There’s someone I want Annis to meet.’

‘Another one?’ said Annis incredulously.

Bella grinned. She was not hampered by any chivalrous feelings of obligation and she knew as well as Annis did what Lynda was up to. Only Bella was a lot better at heading off her mother’s matchmaking tactics.

‘Leave it out, Mother. The girl works. She’s had a hard day. Let her get her breath before Prince Charming parachutes in.’

Annoyance tightened Lynda’s pretty mouth for a moment.

‘I thought you were going to have a word with the cook.’

Bella was impervious. ‘I did. The guys will tell you when she’s ready to serve dinner.’

Lynda gave up. There were more guests arriving and she knew she would not part the girls until they had caught up on each other’s news. ‘We’ll have a good talk later,’ she told Annis. Leaving, she added, belatedly conscientious, ‘You’re looking wonderful, darling.’

Both Isabella and Annis stared after her, speechless.

‘Why does she always sound surprised when she says that?’ said Annis eventually.

Bella giggled. ‘Because she didn’t stand over you and choose every single thing you’ve got on,’ she said. ‘She does it to me too.’

Annis’s eyebrows flew up. She had her father’s eyebrows, heavy and expressive. Like her height and her aquiline nose they were less than feminine, but Annis had learned to use them to good advantage to make her point. As she did now.

Bella snorted with laughter. ‘When Mother saw me tonight, she said didn’t I think I would get cold in this?’

And she gave an illustrative twirl. Across the room Konstantin was arrested. Not, thought Annis, by a tall brunette still wearing her business suit, no matter how much Alessandra van Herzberg silk scarf she had draped across it. It did not augur well for Lynda’s cosy schemes. Good.

‘And will you?’

‘In here? Darling.’ Bella rolled her eyes naughtily. ‘Quite apart from the central heating and the fire, can’t you feel all that hot breath in the air?’

Konstantin had stopped even pretending to listen to the florid man.

‘Oh I can,’ Annis agreed dryly.

‘Anyway, I’m not sure but I think I may—I just may—be getting my love to keep me warm.’

He was measuring the distance between them. He was, Annis thought, going to come over. She was aware of a little flutter under the breastbone. She knew exactly what it was: the plain girl bracing herself for yet another encounter with a man who was going to look straight through her.