For All the Wrong Reasons (29 page)

He turned into the little room that overlooked the street, where the computer banks were set up under a soothing watercolor of Martha's Vineyard.

“Look at this.” Opie grinned.

He looked. It was from the new interactive classics series.
Henry V,
by Shakespeare. The graphics were fluid and exciting. It might not compete with
Tomb Raider
but he thought parents would have no trouble getting their children to learn with it.

“Pretty good,” he said. “No, better, fantastic. You keep it up—”

“And maybe I'll get a weekend off?”

“Let's not get crazy,” Michael teased. “Where's Diana?”

“She's in the front office. She's been locked in there for an hour with some guy.”

“I see.” Cicero turned away so Opie wouldn't see the dark shadow that crossed his face. He'd tried to get used to Diana. Every single day, the woman turned up wearing something guaranteed to make his blood pressure rise. Either it was a body-hugging, light as thistledown, sky-blue suit, or a halter-neck dress that made a mockery of its modest neckline with the way it draped like liquid over the tight, high curves of her butt, the soft swell of her breasts. Even her shoes he found disturbing; tiny little strappy things, even when they were flats, that made him think of garter belts or the lace of her bra. Her make-up was always subtle, but not so subtle it failed to outline the lush fullness of her mouth, the cutting blades of her cheekbones, or her dark, groomed eyebrows, just shaped a touch instead of plucked to oblivion. Her hair was never the same way twice. He wondered, from time to time, what her next look would be. A sleek chignon, a young, fresh ponytail, complex French braids, or a bouncing curl under the ends that reminded him of a shampoo commercial.

Every single day he thought of telling her not to dress so provocatively.

Every single day he realized he had no case.

Diana was wily, Michael thought. She knew just how to keep to the letter of the dress code for his executives while breaking the spirit. How could he complain about a floor-length white dress with cap sleeves? But how could he ignore the scalloped whisper of lace at the valley of her breasts, the loving grip of the cotton on her butt and her perfectly flat belly, and the way the bias-cut skirt emphasized each tiny, sexy swing of her hips?

She had no meeting today. Cicero prided himself on knowing everything about her calendar. Diana Foxton was a major asset when it came to the formal side of growing his company. Banks and business-affairs lawyers just loved her. He enjoyed watching her work them. And work them she did, those long, strong calves tapering off to her discreet shoes that always seemed to match her skirt, her tumbling cascade of hair, that classy, unreachable, ice-queen English voice of hers giving them the summary of what Imperial was about.

He watched the way the men listened, utterly captivated. Was it his growth or her accent, his products or her eyes? The women executives were spellbound, too. They took time out from flirting with him to stare at her; always fresh, always pulled together.

But he'd known this time would come. Diana was no shrinking violet, Michael thought angrily, far from it. She knew the kind of pull she exerted over men. She smiled, she brushed back that shiny hair, she dressed to emphasize her sensational body. Sooner or later she was gonna bring a boyfriend to the office, and Cicero was prepared to hate him. He was bound to be a two-faced weasel like Ernie Foxton. Diana had the worst taste in men and he, Michael, was not going to stand for them in his office.

He moved through the front room, ignoring the various requests to review this and sign that. The door to the office where they took meetings with investors and analysts was shut.

He rapped on it.

“Diana?”

There was a pause. He could hear her talking in low, urgent tones to some guy or other.

“Yes, Michael. I'm in a meeting.”

The cool accent infuriated him. Almost without thinking, he turned the handle and barged his way in.

Diana was standing there, with her hand in the grasp of an older man. A rich-looking guy, Cicero noted, with a white handkerchief sticking out of his upper pocket. He even wore a vest, despite the early fall heat. Michael disliked him instantly.

“Can I help you with something?” Michael said softly.

The man turned around and looked at him like he was something he'd scraped off the sole of his shoe. “No, I don't think so. I had private business with Mrs. Foxton.”

Michael ignored Diana's reddening face. “Her business is my business. I'm Michael Cicero.”

“Yes, I know who you are, sir.” He made
sir
come off like an insult. “But I'm only interested in talking to Diana Foxton.”

Michael folded his arms, and saw, to his great pleasure, the skinny little guy cast a wary look at his biceps under the plain shirt.

“I think I'm done here,” he said hastily.

“I guess you are. Let me show you out,” Michael said evenly. Diana was pissed off, he saw, but tough. She couldn't flirt with her latest sugar daddy on his time.

“I know the way.…”

The guy gathered up papers and fled, brushing past Michael with a muttered “Good day.”

Michael turned to her. Diana was in a pink smocklike thing, with a half-sleeved, jaggedly cut pink jacket. It picked up the warm summer highlights of corn in her hair, and she had teamed it with a light single-note perfume of roses.

She'd dressed up for that guy? He would never understand women. The way money mattered so much to them. Wasn't she earning enough?

Her former apartment flickered through his mind. Well, compared to a penthouse on Central Park, her current place probably didn't cut it. She'd worn a few of the same clothes—in different combinations—twice or three times. Maybe that wasn't good enough for her. She still carried herself like a society dame, and that was what she probably wanted.

Just like Iris.

Then he told himself that that wasn't his business. Business was his business.

“What was that man doing in here?” Michael snapped. “This is my office. Not a place for you to do your private entertaining.”

“Who do you think you are?” Diana said. She was white-faced and her blue eyes glittered. She marched up to him. “I believe I told you I was in a private meeting. You think you can just barge in on me?”

“I think I can do whatever I like. I'm the boss.”

She laughed. “Like I haven't earned the right for fifteen minutes alone? I work night and day for
your
company,
boss.
”

“You think you've sacrificed things for Imperial? You don't have any idea what that even means,” Cicero said contemptuously.

Diana reached up and slapped him hard on the face. For a moment, Cicero was so shocked he didn't even react. If he had seen it coming, he would have blocked her. He didn't permit girls to hit him. If a guy tried that, he'd be knocked into the middle of next week. From a woman, like Diana, it was nothing but a sting. But the balls of her took his breath away.

He fantasized briefly about tugging her over his knee and lifting that sexy, taunting smock and spanking her. That was what she could really use.

“Would you mind,” he said evenly, “telling me what you think you're doing?”

“I'm doing what
I
feel like,” she snapped. “You don't think I've sacrificed anything for this place? Let me tell you something. That man was a lawyer.”

Cicero blinked. “Explain yourself.”

“Explain myself?” she said, throwing back her hair. She looked wild to him, provocative, a challenge. He thought about shrugging the jacket from her creamy shoulders and ripping her thin dress straight down the middle. Of course it didn't mean anything, I'm just fantasizing about her like I would any other pretty chick. “You want an explanation. How about, you've been so goddamn busy running your damn office you didn't even notice me! I had a life before I came here, Michael. I've been busy trying to get back just a fraction of it. With no support from you. I thought we could be friends; I guess I was wrong.”

Diana picked up the papers and tossed them at him. “These are my settlement papers. My lawyers just took half a million dollars from me for making a few phone calls.”

Michael didn't bother to pick them up. “I'm sorry. But it's your own fault.”

Diana gasped. “Excuse me?”

“Certainly.” God, he could be so infuriating, staring at her with those heavy-lashed eyes, like he knew it all, and she was some bimbo. “I will excuse your temper, this once. But don't blame me for your inadequacies. You were arrogant. You didn't go to a lawyer at the outset. You could have gotten a better deal, but you had to wait till the last minute. Why is that my fault?”

Diana was thrown. Sometimes she hated him. He was so cocky. She felt her temper surge again. She wanted to lash out, and without thinking, she drew back her arm and made to hit him again.

But Michael was far too quick for her. His hand lashed out and caught her at the wrist, holding it secure. She struggled, but she couldn't move. In an instant he tugged her to him, and then his hands were cupping her face, forcing her mouth up to meet his, and his lips were on hers, kissing her savagely.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dawn broke over Rome, golden and warm, with the promise of another blistering day to come. Felicity Metson sighed. It was so dreary here; traipsing around the world after darling Ernie was more taxing than it seemed. She hoped that he would drop his plan to buy one of the multimillion-dollar apartments set into the two-thousand-year-old Theater of Marcellus. She really couldn't care less about the endless monuments of ancient Rome, a playground now for wild poppies and quick little black lizards that darted around like the tongue of Ernie's new maid. As for the Renaissance churches with their da Vinci sculptures and paintings by Raphael and what have you, Felicity felt uncomfortable in them. Such silly moralizing. Why keep such art treasures out for the plebs to gawk at? Something in her revolted against the idea of
Moses
by Michelangelo, say, in Santa Maria Maggiore, being kept there so that fat Italian mammas and working men, with their sunburned hands and cheap suits, could gawk at him after mass. How could they possibly appreciate such refinement? Better it go to a museum, or, preferably, be sold off. Perhaps to her.

Felicity indulged in a small daydream where
Moses
was delivered to her new townhouse, which Ernie would buy her after the wedding, in a hail of media interest and TV cameras. Of course, he didn't have that kind of cash just yet. Hopefully the new deal brewing with Signor Bertaloni of Media Cinque, the Italian conglomerate, would put all that to rest. Why think small? Hadn't Michael Eisner proved that you could get real wealth simply by running a company?

She rang for room service. The Hotel Consul Marcus was Rome's newest and most luxurious haven, a few blocks from the Colosseum and providing all amenities to the more discerning traveler. Felicity had told Ernie that she simply must have a separate suite … partly so that her beauty treatments could be applied without him witnessing any of them, and partly so that Jung-Li, the latest of the Oriental “maids” she had hired for her fiancé, could have unfettered access to him in the mornings. Her success in this relationship was all about keeping Ernie happy, Felicity reflected. And it suited both him and her to pretend that the other had no idea what was going on.

The fact that Jung-Li and all her predecessors had been hired by Felicity from a vastly expensive and seriously discreet madam on the West Coast was something Ernie need never know. Or anybody else for that matter. Felicity paid cash and used a false name. She also used pay phones and the good old US Postal Service, sending her packages from different stations around the city—once, even, from one of the better parts of Brooklyn.

Yes, it was, objectively speaking, a bit humiliating, Felicity thought. But Ernie didn't know she knew and neither did anybody else. The Diana affair had tipped her off as to what it would take to keep Ernie satisfied, and Felicity wasn't into domination. Nor was she into social exile, and Ernie had proved her way out. Felicity could sit on the small part of her heart that still longed for true love, for a soulmate. Love was a fairy tale; at best a matter of luck. You needed to meet the right man in the right place at the right time. The odds had beaten Felicity, and she had never considered giving it a serious shot with her Marine escort. It was hard to live without money. She looked out over Rome, and congratulated herself for her
honesty.
Yes, her therapist had helped her understand that you needed to be true to yourself.

There was no denying she liked her creature comforts. If other girls wanted to be poor and romantic, that was up to them. Felicity was a realist.

Room service materialized; a handsome waiter with a charming accent. Felicity made sure to flash him a lot of thigh, tanned and toned and peeking from her peach satin negligee as she directed him to the sun-drenched balcony. He smiled and bowed, producing Irish crystal glasses, porcelain and silver-plated cutlery. Breakfast was a small grapefruit, some dry Melba toast, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a half-bottle of champagne; Perrier-Jouet rosé. There was nothing like champagne in the mornings, or any time of the day, really. She liked a drop first thing, just to soften the edges.

The waiter brushed against her breasts as she handed him a ten-thousand-lire tip. Felicity arched, very slightly, at the deliberate pressure of his rough fingers. It had been so long since she'd had an orgasm with a man. Ernie would never be able to satisfy her—or any other girl, for that matter. But she pulled back, and contented herself with a frosty smile, dismissing the help.

Felicity knew what they said about Italian men and the bedroom. But no half-hour thrill could possibly be equivalent to her new diamond engagement ring, or her fantastic wardrobe, or the summer cottage in Martha's Vineyard that was Ernie's latest little present to her. Felicity had been highly successful in shepherding her charge through the divorce; a few well-placed charity donations here, a pleasantly coordinated dinner party there, and Mira Chen was forgotten.