by Nina Milne
For a stupid moment he wanted to probe, wanted to question the reason for that sudden flitting of sadness across her face.
Focus on the goal here, Petrelli.
He leant forward. ‘If you accept my offer of a deal you could eat out every day. You need never touch a saucepan again.’
‘Nice try, but no thanks. I’ll soldier on. Truly, Stefan, nothing you offer me can top the idea of presenting Il Boschetto di Sole to my father.’
‘That’s the plan?’
‘Yup.’
‘You’ll sign it over lock, stock and barrel?’
‘Yup.’
‘But that’s nuts. Why hand over control?’ The very idea gave him a sense of queasiness.
‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’
‘If Roberto Bianchi had wanted your father to have the grove he’d have left it to him.’
Something that looked remarkably like guilt crossed her face as she shook her head. ‘My father has given his life to Il Boschetto di Sole—I could never ask him to work for me. I respect him too much. If the Romanos are to own the grove then it will be done properly. Traditionally.’
‘Pah!’ The noise he’d emitted hopefully conveyed his feelings. ‘Tradition? You will hand over control because of tradition?’
‘What is so wrong with that? Just because you have decided to turn your back on tradition it doesn’t mean that’s the right thing to do.’
His turn to hide the physical impact he felt at her words—at the knowledge that Holly, like the rest of Lycander, had judged him and found him wanting.
No doubt she believed the propaganda and lies Alphonse had spread and Stefan hadn’t refuted. Because in truth he’d welcomed it all. To him it had put him in the same camp as his mother, had made the guilt at his failure a little less.
‘So you believe that just because something is traditional it is right?’
‘I didn’t say that. But I believe history and tradition are important.’
‘History is a great thing to learn from, but it doesn’t have to be repeated. It is progress that is important—and if you don’t change you can’t progress. What if the inventor of the wheel had decided not to bother because traditionally people travelled by foot or on horseback? What about appalling traditions like slavery?’
‘So do you believe monarchy is an appalling or outdated tradition? Do you believe Lycander should be a democracy?’
‘I believe that is a debatable point. I do not believe that just because there has been a monarch for centuries there needs to be one for the next century. My point is that if the crown headed my way I would refuse it. Not on democratic principles but for personal reasons. I don’t want to rule and I wouldn’t change my whole life for the sake of tradition. Or duty.’
‘So if Frederick had decided not to take the throne you would have refused it?’
‘Yup.’
Stefan had no doubt of that. In truth he’d been surprised that Frederick had agreed. Their older half-brother Axel, Lycander’s ‘Golden Prince’, had been destined to rule, and from all accounts would have made a great ruler.
As a child Stefan hadn’t known Axel well—he had been at boarding school, a distant figure, though he had always shown Stefan kindness when he’d seen him. Enough so that when Axel had died in a tragic car accident Stefan had felt grief and would have attended the funeral if his father had let him. But Alphonse had refused to allow Stefan to set foot on Lycandrian soil.
Axel’s death had left Frederick next in line and his brother had stepped up. More fool him.
‘My younger brothers would be welcome to it.’
‘You’d have handed over the Lycandrian crown to one of the “Truly Terrible Twins”?’
An image of his half-brothers splashed on the front page of the tabloids crossed his mind. Emerson and Barrett rarely set foot in Lycander, but their exploits sold any number of scurrilous rags.
‘Yes,’ he stated—though even he could hear that his voice lacked total conviction.
Holly surveyed him through narrowed eyes. ‘Forget tradition. What about duty? Wouldn’t you have felt a duty to rule? A duty to your country?’
‘Nope. I think Frederick’s a first-class nutcase to take it on. I have one life, Holly, and I intend to live it for myself.’ Exactly as he so wished his mother had done. ‘I don’t see anything wrong with that as long as I don’t hurt anyone.’
She leaned across the table and her blue eyes sparkled, her face animated by the discourse. ‘You could argue that by not taking the throne Frederick would have been hurting a whole country.’
Stefan surveyed her across the table and she nodded for emphasis, her lips parted in a small ‘hah’ of triumph at the point she’d made, and his gaze snagged on her mouth. Hard to remember the last time a date had sparked this level of discussion, had been happy to flat-out contradict him. Not that Holly was a date...
As the silence stretched a fraction too long her lips tipped in a small smirk. ‘No answer to that?’
‘Actually, I do. I just got distracted.’
For a moment confusion replaced the smirk. ‘By wh—?’ And then she realised, and a small flush climbed her cheekbones.
Now the silence shimmered. Her eyes dropped, skimmed over his chest, and then she rallied.
‘Good excuse, Mr Petrelli, but I’m not buying it. You have no answer.’
For a moment he couldn’t even remember the question. Think. They had been talking about Frederick. What might have happened if he had refused the throne...
‘I have an answer. It could be that Emerson or Barrett would turn into a great ruler. Or Lycander would become a successful democracy.’
‘And you would be fine with that?’
‘Sure. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about Lycander—I’m just not willing to give up my whole life for it, for the sake of tradition or because I “should”. One life. One chance.’
His mother’s life had been so short, so tragic, because of the decisions she’d made—decisions triggered by duty and love.
‘Don’t you agree?’
‘No. Sometimes you have to do what you “should” do because it is the right thing to do. And that is more important than what you want to do.’
Stefan frowned, suspecting that she was speaking in specific terms rather than general. ‘So what are your dreams? Your plans for life. Let’s say you win Il Boschetto di Sole and give it to your father—what then?’
‘Then I will help him—work the land, have kids...’ Her voice was even; the animation had vanished.
‘And if you don’t win?’
‘I will win.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Humour me. It’s a hypothetical question.’
‘I don’t know... I would have to see what my father wished to do—whether he wanted to stay on at Il Boschetto di Sole, what your plans for the grove would be.’
‘OK. So let’s say your father decides to retire, live out the rest of his life peacefully in his home or elsewhere in Lycander.’ A memory of her utter focus on her work earlier came to him. ‘What about marketing? Would you like to give that a go? Build a career?’
There was a flash in her blue eyes; he blinked and it was gone.
‘My career is on Il Boschetto di Sole.’
‘What is your job there?’
‘I’ve helped out with most things, but I was working in admin before...before I came to London.’
‘Tell me about what you were working on earlier today. In the suite.’
A hesitation and then a shrug. A pause as the waiter arrived with their starters. She thanked him, speared a king prawn and then started to speak.
‘Lamberts have a pretty major client in the publishing field and they’re looking to rebrand their crime line. I’ve been working on that.’
Her voice started out matt
er-of-fact, but as she talked her features lit up and her gestures were expressive of the sheer enthusiasm the project had ignited in her.
‘I’ve helped put a survey together—you know, a sort of list of twenty questions about what makes a reader choose a new book or author, what sort of cover would inspire them to give something a try... Blood and gore versus a good-looking protagonist. Also, do people prefer series or stand-alones? We’ll need to analyse all the data and come up with some options and then get reader opinion across a broad spectrum. Because we also want to attract readers who don’t usually read that genre. Then we need some social media, some—’
She broke off.
‘Oh, God. How long have I been talking for? You should have stopped me before you went comatose with boredom.’
‘Impossible.’
‘To stop me?’
Her stricken look made him smile. ‘No! I meant it would have been impossible for me to have been bored. When you speak of this project you light up with sheer passion.’
The word caused him to pause, conjuring up other types of passion, and he wondered if her thoughts had gone the same way.
Unable to stop himself, he reached out, gently stroked her cheek. ‘You are flushed with enthusiasm...your eyes are alight, your whole body is engaged.’
Stop right there. Move your hand away.
Yet that was nigh on impossible. The softness of her skin, her small gasp, the way her teeth had caught her under lip as her eyes widened... All he wanted to do was kiss her.
Cool it, Petrelli.
Failing finding a handy waiter with an ice bucket, he was going to have to find some inner ice.
Leaning back, he forced his voice into objective mode. ‘Sounds to me as though what you want to do is pursue a career in marketing. Not take up a job on Il Boschetto di Sole.’
She blinked, as if his words had broken a spell, and her lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed as she shook her head. Shook it hard enough that tendrils of hair fell loose from her strategically messy bun.
‘That is not for me. I couldn’t do what you did. Walk away from my duty to pursue a career.’
Her words served as effectively as an ice bucket could have and he couldn’t hold back an instinctive sound of denial. ‘That’s not exactly how it went down.’
‘So how did it go down? As I remember it, you decided to renounce Lycander and your royal duties to live your own life—away from a country you felt you had no allegiance to. But you were happy to accept a severance hand-out from Alphonse to help set you up in the property business.’
Gall twisted his insides that she should believe that.
‘Alphonse gave me nothing.’
And Stefan wouldn’t have taken it if he had tried.
‘I ended up in property because it was the only job I could find.’
He could still taste the bitter tang of grief, fear and desperation. He’d arrived in London buoyed up by a sense of freedom and relief that he’d finally escaped his father, determined to find out what had happened to his mother. His discoveries had caused a cold anger to burn inside him alongside a raging inferno of guilt.
His mother had suffered a serious mental breakdown. The staff at the hostel that had taken her in had had no idea of her identity, but to Stefan’s eternal gratitude they had looked after her. Though Eloise had never really recovered, relapsing and lurching from periods of depression to episodes of relative calm until illness had overtaken her.
In his anger and grief he had started his search for a job under an assumed name, changed his surname by deed poll and got himself new documentation, determined to prove himself without any reference to his royal status.
It hadn’t been easy. And he would be grateful for ever to the small independent estate agent who’d taken pity on him. His need for commission had honed his hitherto non-existent sales skills and negotiating had come naturally to him.
‘Luckily I was a natural and it piqued my interest.’
Holly tipped her head to one side. ‘But how did you go from that job to a multibillion-pound business?’
Was that suspicion in her voice? The idea that she still believed Alphonse had funded him shouldn’t matter but it did.
‘I worked hard and I saved hard. I worked multiple jobs, I persuaded a bank to take a chance on me, I studied the market and invested in properties until I had a diverse portfolio. Some properties I bought, did up and sold, others I rented out. Once my portfolio became big enough I set up a company. It all spiralled from there.’
And when it had he had resumed his own identity, wanting the world to know what he had made of himself.
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘It wasn’t. Point is, though, I did it on my own.’
Holly was silent for a moment, almost absentmindedly forking up some Udon noodles. ‘So what about today? That site we visited? It looked like it was in a pretty poor area.’
‘It is. We’re building social housing. Projects like that are taken on by a separate arm of my business. The problem with the housing market is the huge differential in regional properties, and overall houses are becoming unaffordable—which is wrong. Equally, there is insufficient social housing and the system can backfire, or people are expected to live in unsafe, horrible conditions and not have a lot of redress. I work to try and prevent that. I plough a proportion of the company’s profits back into building more houses, better houses. More affordable houses. Both for young people to buy and people who can’t afford to buy to rent at reasonable prices. And for those who haven’t the money to afford the most basic of rent. The amount of homelessness in rich countries is criminal and—’
He broke off.
‘Sorry. It’s a bit of a pet peeve I have. No need to bore you with it.’ But it was a subject that he felt strongly about. His mother had spent periods of time homeless, too ill after her breakdown to figure out the benefits system.
‘I’m not bored either,’ Holly said softly. ‘I think your commitment to put money into the system, to help people, is fantastic. Your enthusiasm lights up your face.’
She lifted her hand in a mirror gesture of his earlier one and touched his cheek, and his heart pounded his ribcage.
‘I admire that. As well as your phenomenal success. I feel bad that I believed Alphonse funded it.’
‘It’s OK.’ He knew the whole of Lycander believed the same; his father’s propaganda machine had churned out fictional anti-Stefan stories with scurrilous precision.
‘But why don’t you set the record straight?’
Her hand dropped to cover his; she stroked her thumb across the back and his body stilled as desire pooled in his gut.
‘There is no point. For a start, who would believe me? Plus, at the end of the day I did walk away from Lycander.’
‘Then why do you want Il Boschetto di Sole? You own properties throughout Europe. Why do you want one Lycandrian lemon grove if you have no love for Lycander at all?’
An image of his birthplace suddenly hit him—the roll of verdant fields, the swoop and soar and dip of the hills, the spires and turrets of the architecture of the city, the scent of lemon and blossom and spices borne on a breeze...
Whoa. It was a beautiful place but he owed it nothing. Rather it was the other way round. His father had taken away what was rightfully his and this was a way to redress the balance. A way to take his mother’s ashes to their final resting place. That was what was important. This visceral reaction to Holly needed to be doused, and this emotional conversation with its undertones of attraction needed to cease.
‘I’m a businessman, Holly. Why would I pass up the chance to add this to my portfolio?’
Her hand flew from his as if burnt, and he realised the words had come out with a harshness he hadn’t intended. But it didn’t matter. He and Holly Romano were adversaries, not potential bed-mates
.
Her eyes hardened, as if she had caught the same thought. ‘Good question. And now, seeing as the point of this dinner is to pitch to each other, do you mind if I go first?’
Stefan nodded. ‘Go ahead.’
CHAPTER FOUR
HOLLY WAITED AS their main courses arrived, smiling up at the waiter, relieved at the time-out as her mind and body struggled to come to terms with the conversation. Her cheek still tingled from his touch and her fingers still held the roughness of his five o’clock shadow, the strength and breadth of his hand under hers.
This whole dinner had been a mistake, but somehow she had to try and salvage it. Though she suspected it was a doomed pitch, because she had nothing to offer. The only thing she could sell was the moral high ground, launching an appeal to his better, altruistic self. And whilst he clearly had one she didn’t think it would come to the table on this issue.
So here went nothing.
‘I understand you don’t believe in tradition, but I hope you believe in fairness. I believe the Romano claim is stronger than yours. We have a true connection with Il Boschetto di Sole and we already fulfil one of Roberto Bianchi’s wishes. For the grove to be a family affair, handed on from generation to generation.’
A pause showed her that he looked unmoved, his expression neutral as he listened.
‘Also, you have no real financial incentive to pursue this—if you truly wish for land in Lycander you can afford to buy it. I know your father passed a law that made that difficult but surely your brother would rescind that decree?’
His dark eyebrows jerked upwards. ‘And what do you base that opinion on? I didn’t realise you had an inside track to the Crown Prince.’
A flush touched her cheek as she realised he was right; she had no idea of the relationship between the brothers but it obviously wasn’t a close one.
‘Are you saying he won’t?’
‘No. I am saying I don’t wish to ask him.’ His face was shuttered now, his lips set in a grim line, his eyes shadowed. ‘This is my opportunity to own land in Lycander. Lucrative, strategic land—the equivalent to what I lost. You can’t change my mind on this, I accept you have a case, but I’ll fight you all the way.’
