Fortune in the Stars (6 page)

'Do you
mean to tell me that poor girl was on holiday?' gasped Penny, halfway
through a late lunch after having taken his secretary to the airport.
'She only had about five days here, and you had her at your beck and
call for most of them!'

'Don't exaggerate,' Dominic rebuked lightly, no trace of
guilt marring his handsome features. 'Monique knows how I value her
opinion.'

Penny gazed across at him in bemused fascination as he
resumed eating. She considered she had got to know him quite well
during the past few days, but only to the extent of accepting that he
was one of the most baffling people she was ever likely to meet.

'I'm surprised you'd feel the need of Monique's opinion,
with all those experts you seem to have at your beck and call.' The
plumbing specialist from Germany and the glazier from Italy to name but
two, she thought, shuddering to think what the final cost of the
renovations would be.

'You know what they say about a woman's touch,' he
murmured, grinning. 'And flattered though I am that you seem to
consider me capable of doing it all single-handed, I have to admit
there are times when even a genius of my calibre has to consult the odd
expert or three.'

'You make it sound ominously as though you plan razing the
place to the ground and starting all over,' she groaned, laughing.

'God forbid!' he exclaimed, his expression pained. 'My
intention is to restore it to what it once was…and not
simply for old times' sake, either. And for that I need all the experts
money can buy.'

'Why do you say "not simply for old times' sake"?' Dominic
was a highly intelligent man, and self-possessed often to the point of
arrogance. Yet Penny found herself wondering if there weren't a part of
him capable of clinging to the aestheticism of a half-forgotten past.

'Take the original entrance to the hotel, for example,' he
suggested. 'There were marbled ramps running up both sides of the steps
leading up to it.'

'Which you plan to restore?'

He nodded. 'Yes, but by restoring the facade of the
building to its original elegance we also just happen to provide two
ramps capable of accommodating wheelchairs—a most pertinent
consideration in any day and age, wouldn't you agree?'

'Of course I would—that's fantastic!' she
exclaimed. 'But not something many would have thought of.'

'To be
honest, I hadn't immediately seen it from that angle,' he grinned,
giving her foot a playful kick beneath the table as she feigned
astonishment at his admission. 'It was Miguel, the hotel manager, who
first spotted it.'

'Yet Lexy's proved right again,' murmured Penny teasingly.
'The Libran penchant for looking at things from every conceivable angle
really does pay off.'

'If you say so, though Miguel could be a Martian for all I
know,' he stated, deliberately misunderstanding her, while at the same
time deftly hooking her feet forward with his own and, with no hint on
his face as to what he was up to, trapping her legs lightly between his.

'Dominic!' she hissed, colour leaping to her cheeks.

'I must be a masochist—I can't wait for you to
start breaking my heart,' he murmured. 'Besides, I like seeing you
blush.' He then gave his attention to an approaching waiter and ordered
coffee, while at the same time exerting the slightest of pressure
against her calves with his. 'Would you like anything with your coffee?'

She shook her head, glowering at him. The infuriating
thing was that, ever since the night of his birthday, her blushes were
a sight he had taken to conjuring up at will by sporadically flying off
at a tangent from serious conversation into teasing flirtation. On the
one occasion his light flirtation had been on the verge of progressing
towards open sexual propositioning, he had made the transition with
such delicacy and charm that it had been some time before she had
become aware of its having been made.

'For a grown man you can be amazingly childish at times,'
she snapped, silently cursing this complete inability of hers to judge
when he was about to unleash this side of him on her—one
which invariably caught her with her guard down.

'You know, Penny, I sometimes wonder about the men in your
life,' he said softly. 'Something tells me they must be an incredibly
boring bunch.'

'Why—because they're not childish like you?' she
retaliated.

'I can assure you, there's nothing remotely childish in my
intentions towards you,' he advised her, completely unruffled. 'I'm
beginning to think it was a stroke of fate that brought you here to
me… I can think of nothing more delightful than rectifying
your intriguing ignorances regarding men.'

'You—I can't believe I'm hearing this!' she
floundered. 'If you must know, I had to come here to…to
think over a proposal from the man I happen to love.' She wasn't sure
which appalled her more—her ruinously quick temper having
launched her into this, her second lie; or that she had only just
managed to stop herself childishly adding 'so there!' to her mendacious
claim.

'Aha—the truth at last!' he laughed. 'And the
mere fact you had to think it over, let alone leave the country to do
so, should have told you your answer is no,' he pointed out, with the
air of one stating the completely obvious. 'What exactly was he
proposing, anyway?'

'Marriage,' she exclaimed indignantly.

'Oh, dear, you really do have problems don't you?' he
murmured with patently false sympathy.

'And what exactly is that supposed to mean?'

'You have to admit that you responded to my kisses the
other night with a lot more enthusiasm than would be expected in a
woman in love—with another man, that is.'

'I was drunk, for heaven's sake!' she almost shrieked.

'Of course you weren't drunk,' he responded dismissively.
'You had a couple of glasses of wine on an empty stomach—'

'Could we just drop this?' she cut in angrily, an
unpleasant sense of foreboding warning her that she was going to regret
this second lie a great deal more than the first.

'But of course,' he replied, the epitome of cooperation.
'What would you like us to talk about instead?'

She glowered across the table at him. 'Can't we just go?'

'I've just ordered coffee and, being a creature of habit,
I'd like my customary couple of cups of it after lunch.'

Creature of habit he most certainly was not, she fumed
silently. In fact, he was so completely unpredictable that she was
beginning to wonder if he had ever done the same thing twice in his
entire life.

'Juana tells me we're in for rain,' he continued sociably.

Penny felt herself tense automatically. The weather was
hardly a contentious subject, but she had few doubts that he could turn
it into a full-scale debate if he so chose.

'I'm surprised you decided to come here at a time when the
weather isn't reliable,' she muttered.

'Why not? I rather like rain,' he replied. 'And anyway, as
this is a working holiday, I had no option to come other than when the
hotel was closed for the season.'

'Well, Lexy will be here any day now,' she continued, her
unspoken 'thank heavens' taken care of by her tone.

'Do I bring out the worst in you, Penny?' Dominic queried
softly, his eyes capturing hers in that a way she found impossible to
draw free from.

'Yes… I'm afraid you do,' she admitted
deflatedly, suddenly inordinately conscious of the still-unchanged
position of their legs, and desperately willing her cheeks not to burn
yet again. 'Dominic, are you really going to run your grandfather's
business?' she asked, clumsily changing the subject. 'What about your
own business?'

He paused as the waiter brought and served the coffee.

'I've had to run down my workload in Paris, but my
partners are prepared to fill in for me as long as is necessary,' he
told her. 'You see, my grandfather didn't exactly saddle me with a
corner shop…it's a worldwide conglomeration.' He paused, the
grim remoteness so evident whenever he spoke of his grandfather
returning to his face. 'It's far too big a concern for one man to have
the powers of veto over decision-making as he had. I'm not denying he
had an astute business brain—but he could also be vindictive
and divisive when experts, who had every right, questioned the
advisability of some of his interferences.'

'And the business suffered?'

'Yes—though with profits so vast it's not
something immediately apparent.' He drained his coffee and signalled to
a waiter for more. 'In the past six months, since my grandfather's
death, I've been working towards placing autonomy where it belongs in
the company—that is, in the hands of those paid to do the job
and who, in my opinion, do it admirably. Besides,' he added, suddenly
freeing her legs, 'all of this extra work interferes with my play.'

'Why do you say it's conditioning that makes you refer to
yourself as a playboy?' Penny asked.

'Do I say that?' he demanded, shrugging when she nodded.
'Lexy and I inherited our paternal grandparents' estate on their
death—mainly vineyards in France and Italy, but also the
gallery in London and the hotel and villa here… My remaining
grandfather's trusteeship ran out when I became eighteen, which he
didn't like in the least.' Dominic paused, his eyes flickering
mockingly towards hers. 'Though his referring to me as a playboy might
also have had something to do with the succession of his secretaries I
seduced— until he learned his lesson and chose them less
nubile.'

'And I suppose your seduction of them had nothing to do
with upsetting your grandfather,' she observed tartly.

'Nothing,' he murmured blandly. 'His wrath was merely an
added bonus.'

'Why on earth did he leave you everything if he considered
you so dissolute?'

'Because the terms of his own inheritance dictated it be
left to the nearest blood male—yours truly.'

'But the hotel and the villa—if they were
already yours in the first place, why have you waited until now to
alter them?' she asked, puzzled.

'I told you—he was my trustee. He couldn't
meddle in the vineyards, because of the terms of Grandpa Raphael's
will, so to compensate—he was a compulsive
meddler—he gave his appalling taste free rein in the hotel
and villa… God, the only thing that appealed to him about
the villa was its size!'

Penny felt herself shiver inwardly as she saw the depths
of the loathing simmering beneath that urbane surface.

'You see, I could remember both before he had left his
ugly stamp on them… Sometimes, as a child, I used to feel
physically sick to see how he had desecrated them. But the good
memories always brought me back here—yes, at eighteen I
could
have rectified it, but I had the threat of being barred from seeing
Lexy hanging over me.'

'How on earth could he have done that?' gasped Penny.

'He was always threatening it—on the grounds of
my lax moral behaviour, even at that age—but I knew him well
enough to know what I could get away with. He actually saw himself as a
connoisseur, his vanity in that area was such that I would have been
out on my ear even to question his taste. I could have done as I
pleased later, when Lexy was older, but I'd already made a pact with
myself to touch nothing until he was out of our lives for good.'

'Dominic, I'm so sorry. I—'

'Penny, why do you always feel obliged to apologise
whenever you get me talking about the past?' he exclaimed impatiently.
'After all, you're the one asking the questions.'

'I know, but…well, it all seems so sad.'

'Does it?' he enquired coldly, glancing around him and
signalling a waiter for the bill. 'It would have seemed a lot sadder
had Lexy and I been left penniless orphans… Shall we go?' he
added as the waiter arrived.

Penny found herself mulling over his words as he paid the
bill, stunned by their dismissive bitterness.

'You can't say money made your childhood any happier,' she
stated, as he opened the car door for her outside the restaurant.

'No, but it gave us a comfortable cushion on which to be
miserable,' he answered, getting in and starting up the car. 'I'd have
thought that fairly self-evident, even to someone cushioned so
substantially by money that she doesn't have to work at anything more
than the occasional charity.'

And that was just the first lie from which she was reaping
her rewards, thought Penny, stunned. She hurriedly cast all thought
from her mind of any potential result from the second.

'The next time we're down in Palma I must show you the
cathedral. It was begun in the thirteenth century but not completed
until well into the sixteenth…though perhaps you're not
interested in that sort of thing.'

'Why—because you've decided to cast me in the
role of the spoiled, rich ignoramus, incapable of appreciating life's
finer things?' she lashed out, uncertain against which of them she was
directing the bulk of her anger.

'If I've misjudged you, perhaps you'd be interested in
seeing my etchings tonight?' he drawled.

'Yes—I'd be most interested,' she hissed rashly.

He gave a soft, infuriating chuckle. 'Are you sure that's
wise—you being a woman contemplating the proposal of another,
I mean?'

'I was under the impression I was being offered a cultural
experience,' she retaliated, even more rashly.

'I suppose I could throw in a bit of that too, if you
insist—but no, culture wasn't at all what I had in mind.'

Hating to admit defeat, but realising her rash outbursts
would only result in her being left open to yet more of the same, Penny
maintained an uncompromising silence for the rest of the journey.

It wasn't until they had negotiated the worst of the
hairpin bends of the steeply rising then sharply falling road that led
eventually to the Formentor Peninsula, that the first drops of rain
began falling.