LITMIR.BIZ

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Intellectually as well as physically.

      He spared no thought at all to Prince Ares, whose eye he’d happily blackened. And would again, with a song in his heart.

      Matteo had waited quietly with Sarina until the boat was brought around to ferry her back to her hotel, and he’d murmured all the appropriate, polite things as she’d gone back out into the rain.

      But he knew his first meeting with this woman had not gone as well as it might have.

      And if he hadn’t, a board member who was still his ally rang up the following morning to quote Matteo’s words back to him.

      “You meant to punch that prince. You said so straight out.” Lord Christopher Radcliffe sounded despairing. “Do you want them to vote you out of power, Matteo? Is that what this is about? Suicide by board meeting?”

      “Of course not,” Matteo had replied,

      But that wasn’t entirely true. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to light it all on fire and walk away.

      Sometimes that part of him made a lot of noise.

      It was shouting up a storm as he flew back to London two days later.

      By then he’d had every member of his board on the phone to him, demanding he explain the report they’d received from the consultant Matteo had known was in their pocket—but perhaps not so deep. He’d learned a valuable lesson.

      His instincts about Sarina Fellows had been correct: she wanted to take him down.

      He was pleased to have that clarified, he thought darkly as his plane soared over continental Europe. He should have thought of that while he was letting her provoke him into shooting off his mouth. He should have been prepared for the woman to be a weapon, and he hadn’t been—because he’d been far more intrigued by the gut punch of his attraction to her.

      And as entertaining as it was to imagine the fun he might have had with a woman like Sarina if he’d met her under different circumstances, Matteo couldn’t actually let her take him down. He had felt compelled to allow his board to subject him to this consultation, and thought submitting to it as his own father wouldn’t have made him look far more reasonable and biddable than Eddie had been, but he couldn’t let her plant her seeds of doubt and dissension. It would never be a good time for such things, but this was particularly bad timing all around. He needed to prove to a set of disapproving old men that he could take the helm of the company he’d already been running for years. He needed to cater to his family’s legacy and make sure Combe Industries didn’t die on his watch. And while he was at it, he needed to handle all the unpleasant revelations of his parents’ wills.

      No matter how much the consultant his board had selected got to him.

      He might have the odd daydream of walking away from it all, but he never would. That wasn’t who he was.

      Matteo was the eldest son—or he’d spent his life thinking he was, anyway—and he had been raised to clean up any and all messes that arose on both sides of his family. He was the heir to the San Giacomo legacy. He was president and CEO of Combe Industries. And more than that, he was the family janitor.

      What Matteo did was clean up the mess, whatever it was.

      Whether he wanted to or not.

      At least this particular mess was of his own making. He was the one who had taken that swing at Prince Ares—and to the other man’s credit, little as Matteo wanted to give him any when he’d already helped himself to Pia, he’d taken the hit. And had then done the right thing by Pia by instantly proposing marriage. It was the paparazzi who’d carried on as if Matteo had sucker punched him and left him for dead.

      Everything else on Matteo’s plate was there courtesy of someone else’s inability to handle their lives the way he did. His sister’s love life and its consequences no matter his or anyone’s feelings on the matter, like the princely proposal she’d had no choice but to accept—as she was carrying the heir to the throne of the island kingdom of Atilia. Or his parents’ indiscretions and old scandals made new now that they’d died, in the form of at least one sibling Matteo hadn’t known he had—and wasn’t sure how to deal with now he did.

      It was one hit after the next, and really, what was a slanted psychological evaluation complete with a not-so-hidden agenda next to family members he’d never met?

      To say nothing about the company that he still had to run whether his board of directors thought he was fit for it or not.

      By the time he landed in London, Matteo had been putting out fires for hours. Those of his own making and all the others that cropped up every day of the week. And he had little to look forward to but another long day—and week, and month—with more of the same. Fires everywhere, and once again, it was his job to extinguish them. And despite what his board pretended to think, or the papers brayed daily, the one thing Matteo had always been very, very good at was his job.

      The thing about putting out fires for the whole of a man’s adult life was that, sooner or later, he developed a taste for the flames. An appreciation and something akin to admiration.

      His father had set out to crush those flames any way he could. Matteo preferred to exult in them, then use the resulting heat to his advantage.

      And that was what he chose to reflect upon, just as the doctor had ordered. It appeared Sarina wanted to play games instead of plod through the expected set of sessions in good faith. Matteo was perfectly happy to play along now that he’d sussed out her intentions—because the truth was, when it came to games of high stakes where winning meant surviving, he always won.

      “I’m sorry to interrupt,” his personal assistant, Lauren, said one morning a few days after that first session in Venice, standing at his desk in London in her usual no-nonsense manner, which was one of the reasons he paid her so well. “But she’s here, I’m afraid. And insists upon seeing you.”

      Matteo was neck deep in contract negotiations with foreign distributors—all of whom had spent the past month reading the tabloids, apparently—and couldn’t think of a single person with a claim to his time. Or anyone who would dare send his assistant in here to demand it.

      He scowled. “And who is she, may I ask? The bloody Queen?”

      Lauren Clarke had been working for him for far too long to react to that tone of his. Or the ferocious glare he leveled at her.

      “Not the Queen, sir. I doubt very much she’d appear without an appointment and the royal guard. It’s that psychiatrist.”

      And this was part of what he’d agreed to, purely to placate the board. They’d all been foaming at the mouth, waving tabloid magazines and their fists in the air, and caterwauling as if they’d expected the building to fall down around their ears. He’d have agreed to anything to calm them down, and he had.

      So now he had a psychiatrist standing in his office, demanding to be seen. In the middle of a complicated workday—which was to say, any old Tuesday at Combe Industries.

      But he was no longer operating in good faith. She wanted to play with matches? Matteo would respond with a bonfire.

      Something inside him rolled over, shook itself off, and bared its teeth.

      He finished his call and gazed back at his PA, though he didn’t see her. He saw Sarina instead, and that sheen of triumph all over her face in Venice.

      “Give me five minutes,” he instructed Lauren. “Then show her in.”

      He set his trap, then moved to the windows that looked out over the city. Night had already set in, gloomy and wet though it was supposedly spring out there. He could see the suggestion of light and movement, blurred with moisture.

      But however cold and miserable it was outside, it was no match for the blast of heat he felt when he heard his office door open, then shut.

       Temper. Fury. Anticipation.

      “You

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