Millionaire Tycoon's English Rose by Lucy Gordon

Author:Lucy Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2007-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

Francesco didn’t contact Celia next day, but Olympia did. She spent the afternoon being escorted around the factory, making verbal notes, and was then swept off to the apartment where Olympia lived with her husband, Primo Rinucci.

As she was working on the evening meal and chatting to Celia in the kitchen, the phone rang.

‘Ciao?’ she sang into the receiver. ‘Yes, everything went well.’ To Celia she said, ‘It’s Francesco. He wants to know how your visit went.’ She turned back to the receiver. ‘We’ve got lots of ideas to talk about.’

‘Tell him to come over here,’ Primo said from the doorway. ‘We’ll mull the ideas over together.’

Then Olympia, talking into the phone, ‘Come and join us for supper—Oh, nonsense! You can’t have that much to do—’

Celia deciphered this without trouble. After last night, Francesco didn’t want to come where he would meet her. And he was right, she told herself firmly. Everything was falling apart again and he was wise to avoid her.

‘Besides,’ Olympia was saying, ‘you introduced us to Celia, so you must come and hear how your protégée is doing. I’ll lay another place. No argument. Get moving.’

She hung up.

‘Does your brother ever stop working?’ she complained to Primo.

‘He took yesterday evening off for the party,’ Celia said lightly. ‘You can’t expect him to rest for two evenings in a row. You know how driven he is about business.’

‘Not really,’ Primo said. ‘He went abroad ten years ago, and stayed there until recently. None of us knows him really well.’

‘Why did he go?’ Celia asked.

‘I’m not sure, but he was never at home much even before that. He travelled all over Italy, working a year here, a year there, always making money. He has the devil’s touch about that. Then he’d get fed up and come back, only to leave again. At last he went to America, stayed there until three years ago, then went to England. I don’t know why he wanders so much—what he’s looking for. But maybe you can tell. You must know him better than anyone.’

‘No,’ Celia said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t really know him at all.’

Half an hour later there was a ring on the bell and Primo went to answer, returning with Francesco and Carlo.

‘We met in the street,’ Francesco announced.

‘I just came to say hallo,’ Carlo said, giving Celia a peck on the cheek.

‘Stay for supper,’ Olympia said.

‘I can’t. Della will be home soon,’ Carlo explained, naming his wife, a television producer, who’d been forced to take a long rest owing to poor health.

‘She’s trying to take up the reins again,’ he said, ‘and she’s gone to look at a place with a history that’s given her an idea for a programme. She’ll be expecting to find me at home.’

‘Call her,’ Primo said. ‘Tell her to come here instead.’

While they argued about it Francesco sat beside Celia and said quietly, ‘I gather things went well today?’

‘Yes, I drummed up lots of business. There was a man there who’d come to sign a contract from another firm.

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