Cipriani's Innocent Captive

by Cathy Williams

  He had seen the damage caused to rich men by airheads and bimbos. His fun-loving, amiable father had had ten good years of marriage to Lucas’s mother and then, when Annabel Cipriani had died, he had promptly lost himself in a succession of stunningly sexy blondes, intelligence not a prerequisite.

  He had been taken to the cleaners three times and it was a miracle that any family money, of which there had been a considerable sum at the starting block, had been left in the coffers.

  But far worse than the nuisance of having his bank accounts bled by rapacious gold-diggers was the hope his father stupidly had always invested in the women he ended up marrying. Hope that they would be there for him, would somehow give him the emotional support he had had with his first wife. He had been looking for love and that weakness had opened him up to being used over and over again.

  Lucas had absorbed all this from the side lines and had learned the necessary lessons: avoid emotional investment and you’d never end up getting hurt. Indeed, bimbos he could handle, though they repulsed him. At least they were a known quantity. What he really didn’t do were women who demanded anything from him he knew he was incapable of giving, which was why he always went for women as emotionally and financially independent as him. They obeyed the same rules that he did and were as dismissive of emotional, overblown scenes as he was.

  The fact was that, if you didn’t let anyone in, then you were protected from disappointment, and not just the superficial disappointment of discovering that some replaceable woman was more interested in your bank account than she was in you.

  He had learned more valuable lessons about the sort of weaknesses that could permanently scar and so he had locked his heart away and thrown away the key and, in truth, he had never had a moment’s doubt that he had done the right thing.

  ‘Are you still in contact with the man?’ he murmured, watching her like a hawk.

  ‘No! I am not!’ Heated colour made her face burn. She found that she was gripping the arms of the chair for dear life, her whole body rigid with affront that he would even ask her such a personal question. ‘Are you going to sack me, Mr Cipriani? Because, if you are, then perhaps you could just get on with it.’

  Her temples were beginning to throb painfully. Of course she was going to be sacked. This wasn’t going to be a ticking off before being dismissed back to Shoreditch to resume her duties as normal, nor was she simply going to be removed from the task at which inadvertently she had blundered.

  She had been hauled in here like a common criminal so that she could be fired. No one-month’s notice, no final warning, and there was no way that she could even consider a plea of unfair dismissal. She would be left without her main source of income and that was something she would just have to deal with.

  And the guy sitting in front of her having fun being judge, jury and executioner didn’t give a hoot as to whether she was telling the truth or not, or whether her life would be affected by an abrupt sacking or not.

  ‘Regrettably, it’s not quite so straightforward—’

  ‘Why not?’ Katy interrupted feverishly. ‘You obviously don’t believe a word I’ve told you and I know I certainly wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the project again. If you just wanted me off it, you would have probably told Tim, my manager, and let him pass the message on to me. The fact that I’ve been summoned here tells me that you’re going to give me the boot, but not before you make sure I know why. Will you at the very least give me a reference, Mr Cipriani? I’ve worked extremely hard for your company for the past year and a half and I’ve had nothing but glowing reports on the work I’ve done. I think I deserve some credit for that.’

  Lucas marvelled that she could think, for a minute, that he had so much time on his hands that he would personally call her in just to sack her. She was looking at him with an urgent expression, her green eyes defiant.

  Again distracted, he found himself saying, ‘I noticed on your file that you only work two days a week for my company. Why is that?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Katy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  ‘It’s unusual for someone of your age to be a part-time employee. That’s generally the domain of women with children of school age who want to earn a little money but can’t afford the demands of a full-time job.’

  ‘I... I have another job,’ she admitted, wondering where this was heading and whether she needed to be on her guard. ‘I work as an IT teacher at one of the secondary schools near where I live.’

  Lucas was reluctantly fascinated by the ebb and flow of colour that stained her cheeks. Her face was as transparent as glass and that in itself was an unusual enough quality to hold his attention. The tough career women he dated knew how to school their expressions because, the higher up the ladder they climbed, the faster they learned that blushing like virginal maidens did nothing when it came to career advancement.

  ‘Can’t pay well,’ he murmured.

  ‘That’s not the point!’

  Lucas had turned his attention to his computer and was very quickly pulling up the file he had on her, which he had only briefly scanned before he had scheduled his meeting with her. The list of favourable references was impressively long.

  ‘So,’ he mused, sitting back and giving her his undivided attention. ‘You work for me for the pay and you work as a teacher for the enjoyment.’

  ‘That’s right.’ She was disconcerted at how quickly he had reached the right conclusions.

  ‘So the loss of your job at my company would presumably have a serious impact on your finances.’

  ‘I would find another job to take its place.’

  ‘Look around the market, Miss Brennan. Well paid part-time work is thin on the ground. I make it my duty to pay my employees over the odds. I find that tends to engender commitment and loyalty to the company. You’d be hard pressed to find the equivalent anywhere in London.’

  Lucas had planned on a simple solution to this unexpected problem. Now, he was pressed to find out a bit more about her. As a part-time worker, it seemed she contributed beyond the call of duty, and both the people she answered to within the company and external clients couldn’t praise her enough. She’d pleaded her innocence, and he wasn’t gullible enough to wipe the slate clean, but a more detailed hearing might be in order. His initial impressions weren’t of a thief who might be attracted to the lure of insider trading but, on the other hand, someone with a part-time job might find it irresistible to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity, and Duncan Powell represented that unexpected opportunity.

  ‘Money doesn’t mean that much to me, Mr Cipriani.’ Katy was confused as to how a man whose values were so different from hers could make her go hot and cold and draw her attention in a way that left her feeling helpless and exposed. She was finding it hard to string simple sentences together. ‘I have a place to myself but, if I had to share with other people, then it wouldn’t be the end of the world.’

  The thought of sharing space with a bunch of strangers was only slightly less appalling to Lucas than incarceration with the key thrown away.

  Besides, how much did she mean that? he wondered with grim practicality, dark eyes drifting over her full, stubborn mouth and challenging angle of her head. What had been behind that situation with Powell, a married man? It wasn’t often that Lucas found himself questioning his own judgements but in this instance he did wonder whether it was just a simple tale of a woman who had been prepared to overlook the fact that her lover was a married man because of the financial benefits he could bring to the table. Although, he’d seen enough of that to know that it was the oldest story in the world.

  Maybe he would test the waters and see what came out in the wash. If this had been a case of hire and fire, then she would have been clearing out her desk eighteen hours ago, but it wasn’t, because he couldn’t sack her just yet, and it paid to know your quarry. He would not allow any misjudgements to wreck his deal.

  ‘You never thought about packing in the teaching and taking up
the job at my company full time?’

  ‘No.’ The silence stretched between them while Katy frantically tried to work out where this sudden interest was leading. ‘Some people aren’t motivated by money.’ She finally broke the silence because she was beginning to perspire with discomfort. ‘I wasn’t raised to put any value on material things.’

  ‘Interesting. Unique.’

  ‘Maybe in your world, Mr Cipriani.’

  ‘Money, Miss Brennan, is the engine that makes everything go, and not just in my world. In everyone’s world. The best things in life are not, as rumour would have it, free.’

  ‘Maybe not for you,’ Katy said with frank disapproval. She knew that she was treading on thin ice. She sensed that Lucas Cipriani was not a man who enjoyed other people airing too many contradictory opinions. He’d hauled her in to sack her and was now subjecting her to the Spanish Inquisition because he was cold, arrogant and because he could.

  But what was the point of tiptoeing around him when she was on her way out for a crime she hadn’t committed?

  ‘That’s why you don’t believe what I’m saying,’ she expanded. ‘That’s why you don’t trust me. You probably don’t trust anyone, which is sad, when you think about it. I’d hate to go through life never knowing my friends from my enemies. When your whole world is about money, then you lose sight of the things that really matter.’

  Lucas’s lips thinned disapprovingly at her directness. She was right when she said that he didn’t trust anyone but that was exactly the way he liked it.

  ‘Let me be perfectly clear with you, Miss Brennan.’ He leaned forward and looked at her coolly. ‘You haven’t been brought here for a candid exchange of views. I appreciate you are probably tense and nervous, which is doubtless why you’re cavalier about overstepping the mark, but I suggest it’s time to get down from your moral high ground and take a long, hard look at the choices you have made that have landed you in my office.’

  Katy flushed. ‘I made a mistake with Duncan,’ she muttered. ‘We all make mistakes.’

  ‘You slept with a married man,’ Lucas corrected her bluntly, startling her with the revelation that he’d discovered what he clearly thought was the whole, shameful truth. ‘So, while you’re waxing lyrical about my tragic, money-orientated life, you might want to consider that, whatever the extent of my greed and arrogance, I would no more sleep with a married woman than I would jump into the ocean with anchors secured to my feet.’

  ‘I...’

  Lucas held up one hand. ‘No one speaks to me the way you do.’ He felt a twinge of discomfort because that one sentence seemed to prove the arrogance of which he had been accused. Since when had he become so pompous? He scowled. ‘I’ve done the maths, Miss Brennan and, however much you look at me with those big, green eyes, I should tell you that taking the word of an adulterer is something of a tall order.’

  Buffeted by Lucas’s freezing contempt and outrageous accusations, Katy rose on shaky legs to direct the full force of her anger at him.

  ‘How dare you?’ But even in the midst of her anger she was swamped by the oddest sensation of vulnerability as his dark eyes swept coolly over her, electrifying every inch of her heated body.

  ‘With remarkable ease.’ Lucas didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I’m staring the facts in the face and the facts are telling me a very clear story. You want me to believe that you have nothing to do with the man. Unfortunately, your lack of principles in having anything to do with him in the first place tells a tale of its own.’

  The colour had drained away from her face. She hated this man. She didn’t think it would be possible to hate anyone more.

  ‘I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.’ But uneasily she was aware that, without her laying bare her sex life, understandably he would have jumped to the wrong conclusions. Without her confession that she had never slept with Duncan, he would have assumed the obvious. Girls her age had flings and slept with men. Maybe he would be persuaded into believing her if she told him the truth, which was that she had ended their brief relationship as soon as she had found out about his wife and kids. But even if he believed that he certainly wouldn’t believe that she hadn’t slept with the man.

  Which would lead to a whole other conversation and it was one she had no intention of having. How would a man like Lucas Cipriani believe that the hussy who slept with married guys was in fact a virgin?

  Even Katy didn’t like thinking about that. She had never had the urge to rush into sex. Her parents hadn’t stamped their values on her but the drip, drip, drip of their gentle advice, and the example she had seen on the doorstep of the vicarage of broken-hearted, often pregnant young girls abandoned by men they had fallen for, had made her realise that when it came to love it paid to be careful.

  In fairness, had temptation knocked on the door, then perhaps she might have questioned her old-fashioned take on sex but, whilst she had always got along just fine with the opposite sex, no one had ever grabbed her attention until Duncan had come along with his charm, his overblown flattery and his persistence. She had been unsure of where her future lay, and in that brief window of uncertainty and apprehension he had burrowed in and stolen her heart. She had been ripe for the picking and his betrayal had been devastating.

  Her virginity was a millstone now, a reminder of the biggest mistake she had ever made. Whilst she hoped that one day she would find the guy for her, she was resigned to the possibility that she might never do so, because somehow she was just out of sync with men and what they wanted.

  They wanted sex, first and foremost. To get to the prince, you seemed to have to sleep with hundreds of frogs, and there was no way she would do that. The thought that she might have slept with one frog was bad enough.

  So what would Lucas Cipriani make of her story?

  She pictured the sneer on his face and shuddered.

  Disturbed at the direction of her thoughts, she tilted her chin and looked at him with equal cool. ‘I expect, after all this, I’m being given the sack and that Personnel will be in touch—so there can’t be any reason for me to still be here. And you can’t stop me leaving. You’ll just have to trust me that I won’t be saying anything to anyone about your deal.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHE DIDN’T GET FAR.

  ‘You leave this office, Miss Brennan, and regrettably I will have to commence legal proceedings against you on the assumption that you have used insider information to adversely influence the outcome of my company’s business dealings.’

  Katy stopped and slowly turned to look at him.

  His dark eyes were flat, hard and expressionless and he was looking right back at her with just the mildest of interest. His absolute calm was what informed her that he wasn’t cracking some kind of sick joke at her expense.

  Katy knew a lot about the workings of computers. She could create programs that no one else could and was downright gifted when it came to sorting out the nuts and bolts of intricate problems when those programs began to get a little temperamental. It was why she had been carefully headhunted by Lucas’s company and why they’d so willingly accommodated her request for a part-time job only.

  In the field of advanced technology, she was reasonably well-known.

  She didn’t, however, know a thing about law. What was he going on about? She didn’t really understand what he was saying but she understood enough to know that it was a threat.

  Lucas watched the colour flood her face. Her skin was satiny smooth and flawless. She had the burnished copper-coloured hair of a redhead, yet her creamy complexion was free of any corresponding freckles. The net result was an unusual, absurdly striking prettiness that was all the more dramatic because she seemed so unaware of it.

  But then, his cynical brain told him, she was hardly a shrinking violet with no clue of her pulling power, because she had had an affair with a married guy with kids.

  He wondered whether she thought that she could turn those wide, emerald-green eyes on him and get aw
ay scot-free.

  If she did, then she had no idea with whom she was dealing. He’d had a lifetime’s worth of training when it came to spotting women who felt that their looks were a passport to getting whatever they wanted. He’d spent his formative years watching them do their numbers on his father. This woman might not be an airhead like them, but she was still driven by the sort of emotionalism he steered well clear of.

  ‘Of course—’ he shrugged ‘—my deal would be blown sky-high out of the water, but have you any idea how much damage you would do to yourself in the process? Litigation is something that takes its time. Naturally, your services would be no longer required at my company and your pay would cease immediately. And then there would be the small question of your legal costs. Considerable.’

  Her expression was easy to read and Lucas found that he was enjoying the show.

  ‘That’s—that’s ridiculous,’ Katy stuttered. ‘You’d find out that I haven’t been in touch with...with Duncan for years. In fact, since we broke up. Plus, you’d also find out that I haven’t breathed a word about the Chinese deal to...well, to anybody.’

  ‘I only have your word for it. Like I said, discovering whether you’re telling the truth or not would take time, and all the while you would naturally be without a penny to your name, defending your reputation against the juggernaut of my company’s legal department.’

  ‘I have another job.’

  ‘And we’ve already established that teaching won’t pay the rent. And who knows how willing a school would be to employ someone with a potential criminal record?’

  Katy flushed. Bit by bit, he was trapping her in a corner and, with a feeling of surrendering to the inexorable advance of a steamroller, she finally said, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Lucas stood up and strolled towards the wall of glass that separated him from the city below, before turning to look at her thoughtfully.

  ‘I told you that this was not a straightforward situation, Miss Brennan. I meant it. It isn’t a simple case of throwing you out of my company when you can hurt me with privileged information.’ He paced the enormous office, obliging her to follow his progress, and all the time she found herself thinking, he’s almost too beautiful to bear looking at. He was very tall and very lean, and somehow the finely cut, expensive suit did little to conceal something raw and elemental in his physique.