LITMIR.BIZ

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that most people are only interested in your lovelife.’

      ‘Is that so?’ His dark eyes held with hers.

      ‘Yes… Bizarre, but there it is.’

      Marco smiled. He was starting to like Ms Isobel Keyes. Had he hit the jackpot and engaged the one journalist who wasn’t interested in digging the dirt on his marriage?

      ‘So what exactly is the story with your divorce?’ she asked suddenly, her green eyes narrowing. ‘Because everyone thought that you and Lucinda did seem like the perfect couple.’

      No—he hadn’t hit the jackpot, he berated himself. Like every other journalist she was a breed apart—a sub-species for whom no subject was too personal to have a good dig around in.

      ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ms Keyes,’ he said coolly.

      Was it her imagination, or was his expression suddenly shuttered? Certainly the gleam of amusement in his voice had disappeared. Strange… She had expected that reaction when she talked about his business dealings, not his relationships.

      Maybe he just didn’t like the fact that the press knew he was a womaniser? Maybe that was another reason he had agreed to this interview—to try and reinvent himself?

      Well, if he thought she was going to fall for that he had a shock coming, she thought fiercely.

      The limousine was slowing down. And as she looked out she realised they were pulling up outside her flat.

      ‘OK, I won’t be long,’ she murmured as the chauffeur got out and opened the passenger door for her.

      One of her neighbours was walking past, and the woman almost fell over in surprise when she saw Isobel getting out of a limousine, closely followed by Marco Lombardi.

      ‘Don’t you think it might be better if you waited in the limousine?’ Isobel said nervously as he walked with her towards the front door.

      ‘No, I don’t. What’s the matter? Are you frightened there might be gossip about us?’

      ‘Of course not!’ She slanted a look up at him and noticed that the amusement was back in the darkness of his gaze. Yes, he probably thought that was oh-so-funny. As if anyone would seriously think that he would be interested in her when he had his pick of the world’s most glamorous women.

      The paparazzi had roared into the road now, and the usually quiet cul-de-sac was suddenly chaotic as once again they started to take photographs, shouting for Marco to look over.

      Isobel was so flustered that she could hardly get her key in the lock fast enough, and calmly Marco reached to take it from her. The touch of his hand against hers was a shock to the system, and she jerked away from him abruptly.

      ‘There you go.’ He pushed the door open for her and looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. ‘Are the press rattling you?’

      ‘No, of course not.’ The truth of the matter was that the paparazzi weren’t bothering her half as much as he was.

      ‘After you, then.’

      ‘Thanks.’ What on earth was wrong with her? Isobel wondered angrily as she stepped past him into the hallway. It was as if her senses were all on heightened alert around him.

      And she had never felt more nervous in all her life as he followed her up the stairs to her first-floor flat.

      She supposed it was just the strangeness of the situation. She’d disliked this man for so long from a distance, and now here he was stepping into her sitting room, acting as if he had every right to be here. In fact, his presence seemed to dominate the small flat.

      Isobel watched as his gaze moved slowly over his surroundings, and for some reason she found herself looking at the place through his eyes.

      The rooms weren’t what you would call spacious, and her second-hand furniture looked shabby in the cold grey light of the afternoon. She was willing to bet that Marco’s designer Italian suit had cost more money than all her possessions lumped together.

      The thought brought her back to reality. OK, she didn’t have a lot of money, but that was no reason to feel embarrassed or ashamed. She’d had no helping hand in life—she’d come from a poverty-stricken background and worked hard to get to where she was now. What was more, she had always treated people fairly along the way—which was more than Marco could say.

      He’d practically bankrupted her grandfather’s business, until the old man had been forced to sell out to him because he just couldn’t afford to compete with him. And then as soon as Marco had taken over the firm he’d lost no time in restructuring—which had basically meant firing most of the staff. Isobel’s father had been amongst the people in the first wave of redundancies.

      She could still remember the shock in her father’s eyes when he’d come home to tell them. She remembered how he’d sat at the kitchen table and buried his head in his hands. He’d kept saying that there had been no need to make people redundant—that the company was very profitable. And her grandfather had said the same.

      ‘It’s greed, Isobel,’ he had said. ‘Some people aren’t content with making a healthy profit. They’re only happy when they are making an obscene profit.’

      Isobel remembered those words as she looked over at Marco. He’d been a couple of years older than she was now—about twenty-four—when he’d bought her grandfather’s firm and sacked half the workforce. And then he’d gone on to sell the business twelve months later for a very obscene profit, as far as Isobel was concerned.

      And it seemed Marco had repeated this move in other businesses time and time again, making him a multi-millionaire before the age of thirty.

      She wondered if he ever had pangs of conscience about the way he made his money.

      As soon as the thought crossed her mind she dismissed it as absurd. Marco wasn’t the type to think deeply about other people’s feelings. As demonstrated by the way he’d walked out on his wife after just eighteen months of marriage, and the way he changed the women in his life faster than some people changed the sheets on the bed.

      Something he had in common with her father, as it turned out.

      She turned away from him. ‘I’ll just throw a few things in a bag, I won’t be long.’

      ‘See that you’re not,’ he said laconically. ‘I meant it when I said you’d got five minutes.’

      Hurriedly she moved through to her bedroom and opened the wardrobe. What on earth should she pack for a night in the South of France? she wondered. She didn’t have a lot of summer gear, but then it probably wouldn’t be that hot as it was only May.

      She glanced around as there was a knock on the door and it opened behind her. ‘Four minutes and counting,’ Marco told her as he leaned against the doorframe.

      ‘For heaven’s sake, I’m going as fast as I can.’ She flung a pair of jeans and a T-shirt into an overnight case, and then moved to rifle through her nightwear and her underwear drawer. ‘Do you think you could give me a moment’s privacy?’ she asked through gritted teeth as she looked around at him.

      ‘Don’t mind me.’ He smiled, but instead of moving out of her room he came further in, and walked over towards the window to look out.

      At least he had his back to her, but the guy had an unmitigated gall, she thought furiously. She selected a nightshirt and some underwear and threw it in the case.

      ‘Don’t forget your passport,’ he reminded her nonchalantly. ‘That’s all that really matters.’

      ‘Of course I won’t.’

      ‘Good.’ He adjusted the blinds a little, so that he could look down to the road. And she realised that he had only come in here because it was the one room with a clear view out over the front of the property.

      ‘Are the paparazzi still there?’

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