The Tycoon’s Ultimate Conquest Read online

What sort of lawyer was this?

  Confused, Rose cleared her throat to give notice of her presence and the man turned around slowly.

  ‘My secretary didn’t tell me your name, Mr...’

  ‘Frank.’ The stranger took his time as he walked towards her, which annoyed Rose because this was her house and her kitchen and yet the man seemed to dominate the space and own it in a way she didn’t care for.

  ‘Well, Mr Frank. You’re here about the land, I gather. If your company thinks that this ploy is going to work, then I hate to disappoint you but it won’t.’

  Alarmed because he had somehow managed to close the distance between them and was standing just a little too close for comfort, Rose sidestepped him to the kettle, only offering him something to drink seemingly as an afterthought.

  ‘You can sit,’ she said crisply. ‘Just shove some of the papers out of the way.’

  ‘What ploy?’

  Rose watched as he looked at the placards in the making on the kitchen table, head politely inclined. After some consideration, he held up one and examined it in reflective silence before returning it to its original position on the table.

  ‘What ploy?’ he repeated.

  ‘The lawyer-in-jeans ploy,’ Rose said succinctly. She shot him a look of pure disdain, but only just managed to pull it off because the man was just so...so...crazily good-looking that her nervous system felt as though it had been put through a spin cycle and was all over the place.

  He’d sat down but not in a lawyer-like manner, which was also annoying. He’d angled the pine chair, one of ten around the long rectangular table, and was sprawled in it, his long legs stretched right out in front of him, one ankle over the other. He looked effortlessly elegant and incredibly cool in his weathered jeans and faded polo shirt. Everything clung in a way that made her think that the entire outfit had been especially designed with him in mind.

  She pushed the coffee over to him. He looked just the kind of guy to take his coffee black, no sugar.

  ‘Does your company think that they can send someone who’s dressed down for the day in the hope that we might just soften our stance? Maybe be deluded into thinking that he’s not the stuffed shirt lawyer that he actually is?’ She narrowed her eyes and tried and failed to imagine him as a stuffed shirt lawyer.

  ‘Ah...’ Mr Frank murmured. ‘That ploy.’

  ‘Yes. That ploy. Well, it won’t work. My team and I are committed to the cause and you can tell your employers that we intend to fight this abhorrent and unnecessary development with every ounce of breath in us.’

  ‘You overestimate my qualifications,’ Mr Frank said smoothly, sipping the coffee. ‘Excellent coffee, by the way. I’m no lawyer. But were I to be one, then I would try very hard not to be a stuffed shirt one.’

  ‘Not a lawyer? Then who the heck are you? Angie said that you were here about the land.’

  ‘Angie being the girl with the spiky hair and the nose ring?’

  ‘That’s correct. She also happens to be an extremely efficient secretary and a whizz at IT.’

  ‘Well, she was certainly right in one respect. I am here about the land. Here to join the noble cause.’

  * * *

  Art’s plan had been simple. It had come to him in a blinding flash shortly after Harold had informed him that money wasn’t going to make the problem of squatters on his land go away.

  If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.

  Naturally he’d known what to expect but somehow, in the flesh, the woman staring at him through narrowed eyes wasn’t quite the hippy he had originally imagined.

  He couldn’t put his finger on what was different and then, in the space of a handful of seconds, decided that it was a case of imagination playing tricks because she was certainly dressed in just the sort of attire he’d expected. Some sort of loose trousers in an assortment of clashing colours. Practical, given the hot weather, but, in all other respects, frankly appalling. A shapeless green vest-like top and a pair of sandals that, like the trousers, were practical but ticked absolutely no other boxes as far as he was concerned.

  Her hair seemed to be staging a full-scale revolt against its half-hearted restraints. It was very curly and strands of it waved around her cheeks.

  But the woman emanated presence and that was something he couldn’t deny.

  She wasn’t beautiful, not in the conventional sense of the word, but she was incredibly arresting and for a few seconds Art found himself in the novel situation of temporarily forgetting why he was sitting here in a kitchen that looked as though a bomb had recently been detonated in it.

  And then it all came back. He would join the band of merry protestors. He would get to know the woman. He would convince her from the position of insider that she was fighting a losing battle.

  He would bring her round to his way of thinking, which was simply a matter of bringing her round to common sense, because she was never going to win this war.

  But strong-arm tactics weren’t going to work because, as Harold had made perfectly clear, storming in and bludgeoning the opposition would be catastrophic in a community as tightly knit as this one clearly was.

  He was simply going to persuade her into seeing his point of view and the best and only way he could do that would be from the inside, from the position of one of them. From the advantageous position of trust.

  Art didn’t need opposition. He needed to butter up the unruly mob because he had long-term plans for the land—plans that included sheltered accommodation for his autistic stepbrother, to whom he was deeply attached.

  He hadn’t gone straight to the site though, choosing instead to make himself known to the woman standing firmly between him and his plans. He was good with women. Women liked him. Quite a few positively adored him. And there weren’t many who didn’t fall for his charm. Art wasn’t vain but he was realistic, so why not use that charm to work its magic on this recalcitrant woman?

  If that failed to do the trick then of course he would have to go back to the drawing board, but it was worth a shot.

  To this end, he had taken his unprecedented leave of absence. A few days to sort out urgent business that wouldn’t happily sit on the back burner and now here he was.

  He was sporting the beginnings of a beard, was letting his hair grow, and the sharp handmade suits had ceded to the faded jeans and a black polo shirt.

  ‘Really?’ Rose said with a certain amount of cynicism.

  ‘Indeed. Why the suspicion?’

  ‘Because you don’t exactly fit the role of the protestors we have here.’

  ‘Don’t I? How so?’

  ‘Basically, I have no idea who you are. I don’t recognise you.’

  ‘And you know everyone who’s protesting?’

  ‘Everyone and, in most cases, their extended families, as well. You’re not from around here, are you?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Art murmured vaguely, unprepared for such a direct line of attack before he’d even started writing incendiary messages on a placard.

  ‘Well, where are you from? Exactly?’

  Art shrugged and shifted in his chair. He was beginning to understand why the deputies sent to do this job had failed. Right now, Rose was staring at him as though he was something suspect and possibly contagious that had somehow managed to infiltrate her space.

  ‘Can anyone say exactly where they’re from?’ he threw the question back at her, which only made her look at him with even more suspicion.

  ‘Yes. Everyone on the site, for a start. As for me, I’m from here and always have been, aside from a brief spell at university.’

  ‘I largely live in London.’ Which was technically accurate. He did largely live in London. In his penthouse in Belgravia. He was also to be found in five-star hotels around the world, several of which he owned, or in one of the many houses he owned, although those occasions were slightly rarer. Who had time to wind down in a villa by the sea?

  Strangely, that non-answer seemed to satisfy her because she
stopped looking as though she had her finger on the buzzer to call for instant backup. ‘So what are you doing here?’ she asked with curiosity. ‘I mean, why this cause? If you’re not from around here, then what does it matter to you whether the land is destroyed or not?’

  ‘Destroy is a big word.’ Art was outraged but he held onto his temper and looked at her with an expression of bland innocence.

  Definitely arresting, he thought. Exotic eyes. Feline. And a sensuous mouth. Wide and expressive. And an air of sharp intelligence which, it had to be said, wasn’t one of the foremost qualities he ever sought in a woman, but it certainly worked in this instance because he was finding it hard to keep his eyes off her.

  * * *

  Rose fidgeted. To her horror, she felt the slow crawl of colour stain her cheeks. The man was gazing at her with hooded eyes and that look was doing all sorts of unexpected things to her body.

  ‘It’s exactly the right word,’ she snapped, more sharply than she had intended, a reaction to those dark, sexy eyes.

  Never had she felt more self-conscious, more aware of her shortcomings. The comfortable and practical culottes, which were the mainstay of her wardrobe on hot summer days, were suddenly as flattering as a pair of curtains and the loose-fitting vest as attractive as a bin liner.

  She reminded herself that she wasn’t the star attraction in a fashion parade. Clothes did not the man, or woman, make!

  But for the first time in living memory she had the crazy urge to be something other than the determined career lawyer who worked hard on behalf of the underdog. She had the crazy urge to be sexy and compelling and wanted for her body instead of her brain.

  ‘Too many developers over the years have whittled away at the open land around here.’ She refocused and brought her runaway mind back on track. ‘They’ve come along and turned the fields, which have been enjoyed for centuries by ramblers and nature lovers, into first a stupid shopping mall and then into office blocks.’

  Rose half expected him to jump in here and heatedly side with her but he remained silent and she wondered what was going through that impossibly good-looking head of his.

  ‘And this lot?’

  ‘DC Logistics?’ She loosed a sarcastic laugh under her breath. ‘The worst of the lot. Certainly the biggest! They want to construct a housing development. But then I don’t suppose I’m telling you anything you don’t already know. Which brings me back to my question—why the interest in joining our protest?’

  * * *

  ‘Sometimes—’ Art played with the truth like a piece of moulding clay ‘—big, powerful developers need to understand the importance of working in harmony with nature or else leaving things as they stand and, as you say, DC Logistics is the mother of all big companies.’ He succeeded in not sounding proud of this fact. When he thought of the work that had gone into turning the dregs of what had been left of his father’s companies, after five ex-wives had picked them over in outrageous alimony settlements, into the success story of today he was pretty proud of his achievements.

  Art had lived through the nightmare of his father’s mistakes, the marriages that had fallen apart within seconds of the ink on the marriage certificates being dry. He’d gritted his teeth, helpless, as each ex-wife had drained the coffers and then, after his father had died several years previously, he’d returned to try to save what little remained of the thriving empire Emilio da Costa had carefully built up over time.

  Art had been a young man at the time, barely out of university but already determined to take what was left and build it again into the thriving concern it had once been when his mother—Emilio da Costa’s first wife and only love—had been alive.

  Art might have learned from the chaos of his father’s life and the greed of the women he had foolishly married that love was for the birds, but he had also learned the value of compassion in his unexpected affection for his stepbrother, José—not flesh and blood, no, but his brother in every sense of the word, who had been robustly ignored by his avaricious mother. The land was integral to his plan to make a home for José—the reason for Art needing to shut this protest down as quickly and as quietly as possible.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Rose concurred. ‘So you’re idealistic,’ she carried on in an approving tone.

  The last time Art had been idealistic had been when he’d believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Witnessing the self-serving venom camouflaged as true love that had littered his father’s life right up until his death had taken whatever ideals he might have had and entombed them in a place more secure than a bank vault.

  ‘Well, you’re in the right place.’ Rose gestured to the paraphernalia in the kitchen. ‘Obviously I don’t devote all of my time to this cause. I couldn’t possibly, but I do try to touch base with the people out there on a daily basis.’

  ‘What’s your main line of work?’

  ‘Employment law.’ Rose smiled and, just like that, Art felt the breath knocked out of his body.

  The woman was more than arresting. When she smiled she was...bloody stunning. He felt the familiar kick of his libido, but stronger and more urgent than ever. Two months without a woman, he thought, would do that to a red-blooded man with a healthy sex drive. Because this outspoken feminist was certainly, on no level, what he looked for in a woman. He didn’t do argumentative and he definitely didn’t do the let’s-hold-hands-and-save-the-world type. He did blondes. Big blonde hair, big blue eyes and personalities that soothed rather than challenged.

  Rose Tremain was about as soothing as a pit bull.

  And yet... His eyes lingered and his inconvenient erection refused to go away. The blood surging in his veins was hot with a type of dark excitement he hadn’t felt in a very long time. If ever.

  ‘Come again?’ He realised that she had said something.

  ‘Your line of work? What is it?’

  ‘I dabble.’

  ‘Dabble in what?’

  ‘How much time have you got to spare? Could take a while.’

  ‘Could take a while covering your many talents? Well, you’re far from modest, aren’t you?’ She raised her eyebrows, amused and mocking, and Art smiled back slowly—deliberately slowly.

  ‘I’ve never been a believer in false modesty. Sign of a hypocritical mind. I prefer to recognise my talents as well as my...er...shortcomings.’

  ‘Well, whatever you do is your business—’ she shrugged and stood up ‘—but if you’re good at everything, which seems to be what you’re implying, then you’re going to be very useful to us.’

  ‘How so?’ Art followed suit and stood up, towering over her even though she was tall. ‘Useful in what respect?’

  ‘Odd jobs. Nothing major so no need to sound alarmed.’ She looked around the kitchen. ‘Everyone lends a helping hand when they’re here. It’s not just a case of people painting slogans on bits of cardboard with felt tip pens. Yes, we’re all protesting for the same reason, but this is a small, close community. The guys who come here do all sorts of jobs around the house. They know I’m representing them for free and they’re all keen to repay the favour by doing practical things in return. There are a couple of plumbers behind us and an electrician, and without them I have no idea how much money I would have had to spend to get some vital jobs on the house done.’

  ‘So this is your house?’ Art thought that it was a bit hypocritical, clamouring about rich businessmen who wanted to destroy the precious space around her so that they could line their evil pockets when she, judging from the size of the house, was no pauper.

  Accustomed to storing up information that might prove useful down the line, he sensed that that was a conversation he would have in due course.

  ‘It is, not that that’s relevant,’ Rose said coolly. ‘What is relevant is that most of the town is behind us, aside from the local council, who have seen fit to grant planning permission. I’ve managed to really rally a great deal of people to support our cause and they’ve all been brilliant. So if you’re a jack-of-al
l-trades then I’m sure I’ll be able to find loads of practical ways you can help, aside from joining the sit-in, of course. Now, shall I take you to the scene of the crime...?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘YOU HAVE A nice house,’ Art commented neutrally as they exited the cluttered kitchen, out into the main body of the house which was equally cluttered. ‘Big. You rent out rooms, I take it?’ He detoured to push open the door to one of the huge ground-floor rooms and was confronted with an elderly man holding court with an image of a bunch of flowers behind him on the wall. The image was faded and unsteady because the projector was probably a relic from the last century. Everyone turned to stare at Art and he saluted briskly before gently shutting the door.

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, Mr Frank, I’ll ask the questions. And please refrain from exploring the house because, yes, other organisations do avail themselves of some of the rooms and I very much doubt they want you poking your head in to say hello. Unless, of course, you have something to impart on the subject of orchid-growing or maybe some pearls of wisdom you could share with one of our Citizens Advice Bureau volunteers?’

  ‘I’ve never been into gardening,’ Art contributed truthfully. He slanted his eyes across to Rose, who was walking tall next to him, her strides easily matching his as they headed to the front door. The walls of the house were awash with rousing, morale-boosting posters. Voices could be heard behind closed doors.

  ‘You’re missing out. It’s a very restful pastime.’

  Art chuckled quietly. He didn’t do restful.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ She looked at him directly, hands on her hips, her brown eyes narrowed and shrewdly assessing. ‘There’s one little thing I forgot to mention and I’d better be upfront before we go any further.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know who you are. You’re not from around here and I’m going to make it clear to you from the start that we don’t welcome rabble-rousers.’

  Stunned, Art stared at her in complete silence.

  He was Arturo da Costa. A man feared and respected in the international business community. A man who could have anything he wanted at the snap of an imperious finger. Grown men thought twice before they said anything they felt might be misconstrued as offensive. When he spoke, people inclined their heads and listened. When he entered a room, silence fell.