CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
M ARI TOOK THE pedestrian underpass under Flinders Street Station and emerged into the sunlit morning on the northern bank of the Yarra River. Across the river the stepped hotel that was the Langham rose twenty-five floors between the taller towers that filled the skies over Southbank. Now only a bridge separated her from meeting the man who had torn her world apart twenty years ago.
Twenty years.
Normally, such an anniversary would be cause for celebration. Twenty years free. Twenty years during which she’d picked up the shattered pieces of herself, dusted herself off and made herself new. Sure, it hadn’t been easy. She’d had her share of ups and downs along the way, but she’d made herself a success into the deal and put the past behind her.
Or so she’d thought.
Because as it turned out, twenty years was nowhere near enough to forget the past. Her memories were like rocks that had been in a rock tumbler all that time. By now, after so many years tumbling, all their rough edges—the elation, the despair, the abandonment—should be smoothed and rounded and gentle to the touch.
And yet there was nothing gentle to the touch about memories of her time with Dominico. Her emotions were like those craggy rocks, not rounded through the tumble of the years, their jagged points and edges merely blunted. It had only taken mention of his name to return them to their barbed glory.
She stood there staring at the hotel across the river, being jostled by pedestrians rushing by, inconvenienced by this woman turned statue in their way. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t inclined to move. She didn’t want to see Dominico Estefan and every cell in her body was in accord. The thought of seeing him—of being in the same room with him, of breathing the same air—made her feel physically ill.
Because she hated the man with a passion.
She’d thought she’d come to terms with her past. She’d thought she’d put this chapter of her life behind her. But just the mention of his name had brought it all back. Brought back the hurt.
And she hated him for what he’d done to her. Hated him for promising her his heart and leaving her with a gaping hole where hers should be. That hole ached now, pulsing with the pain of loss as if it had been only yesterday that he’d torn her world apart.
She wanted to turn and walk away. It would be so easy to do. But the promise she’d made to Eric came back to her. There was no way she could go back on a promise made to him, this day more than ever. She had no choice but to meet with Dominico.
She swallowed down on the roiling in her gut, the only hope that he wouldn’t recognise her. Why should he recognise her?
They hadn’t seen each other for twenty years and she was far from that nineteen-year-old girl with crazy hair and stars in her eyes. She was groomed now. Wild hair tamed into a sleek chignon. Loose cheesecloth shirts and floaty skirts swapped for buttoned down jackets over crisp white shirts and pencil skirts. She was as sensible as her court shoes, she was grounded and cynical, and not about to be blown away by a dark-eyed, dark-haired god with a chiselled jaw and even more chiselled body. Even her name was different.
Whereas, of course, she’d recognise him. There was only one Estefan. She’d seen his picture on the international business pages, seen his photo emblazoned on the society pages, attending a gala ball or a big-ticket charity event, and always with some beauty on his arm. He’d grown from a good-looking twenty-something into a drop-dead handsome man. Fully formed, assets at the ready. To charm. Convince. Seduce. Would he still wield the same power over her? Would he still be as commanding a presence, as magnetic?
No, she assured herself. Because that vulnerable creature had been Marianne. She’d been so young. She’d been so na?ve and unworldly, and ripe for the taking. Maybe this was her opportunity to discover that he had no hold over her now, that it had all been a figment of her fevered teenage imagination.
And that had been before he’d betrayed her. Before she’d hated him.
Someone shoved at her shoulder, sending her feet stumbling forwards, a burly man wielding an oversized backpack who couldn’t be bothered going around. ‘Blasted tourists,’ he muttered, as if she’d been standing there with a camera phone in hand.
She glanced at her watch—five to eleven. That shove was the wake-up call she’d needed. She sucked in a breath and mounted the steps, uttering a mantra to herself.
Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her.
Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her.
And maybe, if he didn’t recognise her and he did indeed offer her a job, she could tell him exactly where he could shove it. God, wouldn’t that be satisfying?
Dom had a suite, the concierge informed her. Well, of course he did, Eric had said as much. What Eric hadn’t informed her was that Dom was booked into the Presidential Suite. Mari wasn’t sure why she was surprised.
The Langham Hotel’s signature ginger flower scent offered none of its usual calming magic as the lift climbed, her earlier bravado evaporating as the floor numbers lit up.
Twenty. Twenty-one, Twenty-two…
And when the lift doors opened to the twenty-third floor, Mari was once again assailed by conflicting emotions. Nerves, anger and, most of all, something she hadn’t banked on—a niggling undercurrent of fear that twenty years had not dulled his magnetism or the power he’d once held over her.
Not a chance, she reinforced to herself as she stepped out. Her anger was both her armour and her superpower. They would make sure she would never fall victim to the siren call of that man’s charms again.
A butler opened the door.
Of course.
He saw her into the room— suite —although even that word didn’t do the space justice. There was a dining table to her immediate right, an adjoining kitchen into which the butler had melted away and a closed door beyond that. The bedroom, she presumed. There was a living room to her left, leading to another closed door. Another bedroom? Lordy, this place made her unit look like a closet.
And there, behind a gigantic timber desk, sat a man facing the window, studying the device in his lap. Dominico…
Her breath hitched, nerve-endings up and down her body sparked and fizzed. If he turned now, he’d see her frozen, a kangaroo trapped in headlights.
But he didn’t turn to face her. He made no move to so much as acknowledge her presence. If he’d heard her come in, he didn’t show it. He didn’t so much as flinch as he sat with his back to her and stared down at whatever he was studying. And even though all she could see of him was his broad shoulders and the back of his dark-haired head, she was spun back in time. The broad shoulders she’d wrapped her arms around, the dark hair she’d splayed her fingers through as he’d gone down on her.
She turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
Don’t go there. Think instead about what he did to you. Think about how he left you high and dry with your pain and your despair, without so much as a backward glance.
Just like he wasn’t giving her so much as a backward glance now.
Charming , she thought, her nerves already stretched tighter than piano wire, why not ratchet up the tension one more notch?
Damn him, she might be a bundle of nerves, but she wasn’t about to stand here cowering all day.
‘You asked to see me.’
Dom had wondered how long it would take for her to speak. He’d sensed her nervousness, he was well used to that, but there was something else about her voice. A note. An inflection. Something he almost thought he recognised. He glanced around from the flight details his PA had just forwarded, and just as quickly looked back down again. A glance was all he needed. He’d been mistaken—there was nothing to recognise. She looked exactly like he’d expected. Like a mouse. Drab. Dull.
Beige.
‘I did, but only as a favour. I don’t have much time.’ In his peripheral vision he registered her bristle. Seriously, what had she been expecting? A welcome party? Eric had insisted on this meeting—he’d all but begged for it, for that matter—but it didn’t mean anything had to come of it. ‘So, you’re the accountant?’ Of course she was, with her scraped back hair, sensible shoes and chain store navy suit. She was wearing the uniform of every low-ranking bean counter he’d ever met.
‘Finance director, yes.’
‘Right, like I said. Eric tells me I should keep you on. Tell me why I should.’
‘Because I’m good at what I do.’
‘That’s it? Only good ?’
‘Very good. What else do you need to know? I can run through the financial statements if you like?’
Fabulous. As if he didn’t know his way around a set of financial statements.
‘All right, then. Astound me.’ It might be entertaining to hear this one explain them.
Except it wasn’t.
She’d made it all the way through the profit and loss statement and had started on the balance sheet when Estefan swung his chair around to face her. ‘Enough!’
The woman jumped.
Dominico looked pointedly at his watch. ‘I don’t have time for this. I was told you were something special. I was told you were worth keeping on. And yet I see before me an everyday accountant, full of dull-speak and numbers.’
‘It’s a set of financial statements,’ she said, jamming her glasses higher up her nose. ‘Of course it’s full of numbers. It’s hardly a comedy routine.’
‘Now, that was funny.’ He raised an eyebrow and looked at her, more closely this time. Her cheeks were slashed with colour and under that navy jacket her chest was heaving. There was a surprise. She had a not bad figure hidden under that boring suit. He lifted his eyes to her face and was struck again with that flicker of recognition. Mad. But then he’d known a lot of women in his time, she was bound to resemble at least one of them.
‘Okay, one last chance. Tell me why I should keep you on. You have thirty seconds.’
His phone pinged. Another email. The plane was ready to leave when he was. If he could tie this meeting up, he could be on his way to the airport in ten minutes.
It occurred to him that she hadn’t spoken. ‘Well?’ he said, turning in his chair to face her. ‘You can’t think of even one good reason why I should keep you on?’
‘Maybe it’s because I can’t think of one good reason I’d want you to. Thanks for your time, I’ll see myself out.’
She turned to go.
‘Wait!’ he ordered, intrigued and not a little piqued. Nobody walked out on Dominico Estefan, least of all a drab little accountant he’d only agreed to see in order to get the old man to sign. People bent over backwards to get a moment of his time in order to push their latest project or seek some kind of favour. He was the one who would decide when he’d had enough. What was her problem?
She stopped, her back to him. She was angry, he could tell by the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders and the rigid way she held herself. His eyes drifted down her body. There were curves from this angle too, her jacket cinching in a slim waist before her skirt flared out over her hips. A decent designer could make the most of that shape.
‘I get the impression, Ms—’ he checked his email ‘—Ms Peterson, that you’re not happy about something.’
Her head went back with a very unladylike snort as she spun around. ‘You think?’
The surprises just kept on coming.
‘Okay, so tell me, what is it that’s made you so…prickly?’
‘You really don’t know?’
‘I’m all ears.’
She sighed. ‘Okay, so you take over a company where staff are more akin to family. Then you immediately sack half the staff without notice—’
‘They’ll all be well compensated.’
‘That won’t help them find new jobs—long-term jobs. And the remaining staff know that they are firmly in your sights, for whenever they reach their use-by dates.’
‘You’re being melodramatic.’
‘Am I? Isn’t that what you have planned?’
He shrugged. ‘Takeovers can seem brutal. Ruthless even.’
‘Apparently so. You took advantage of Eric Cooper. He didn’t want to sell. He had plans to expand the business himself, plans that would have succeeded.’
He frowned. ‘In that case, why did he sell?’ He’d wondered at the sudden change of heart himself. He’d been rebuffed time and again by the old man.
‘He didn’t tell you? But then, why would he? You wouldn’t have cared less anyway. All you need to know is that, on top of the disappointment of having to sell the company he had birthed and nurtured, you broke his heart by sacking half his staff and putting the rest on notice that their days were numbered. So did you seriously expect that would endear you to any of us, and that we’d all somehow become bosom buddies?’
His gaze flicked once more to her chest. She kicked up her chin and crossed her arms protectively under her breasts, as if she’d realised the mistake she’d made. But the gesture only served to accentuate her breasts. This meeting had been far more entertaining than he’d expected.
‘Well,’ he said with a shrug, ‘I guess if you don’t want to work with me, I’ll just have to swallow the disappointment.’
‘You make me sick,’ she said. ‘In all honesty, why the hell would anyone in their right mind want to work with you?’
He saw the flare of fire in her eyes as she turned to leave. Green fire, he realised as he received the full force of their savage glow.
And there it was again, not a spark of recognition but a bolt, that had first come in her voice and now appeared in her eyes, hurtling him back through the shrouds of time, decades ago, to when he’d been a student in Sydney.
And yet it couldn’t be.
It was all wrong.
She was all wrong.
She was halfway to the door when he knew he couldn’t let her go. Because it might just be right.
‘Mari?’ he called behind her. ‘Mari anne ?’