the chair facing her.
‘You were going to try and win this contract,’ he drawled, settling into the chair and loosely linking his fingers on his washboard-hard stomach. ‘By showing me what you can do when sex on the beach meets sunsets in paradise.’ He grinned. ‘So, lose the landscaped garden appeal, and the locally sourced fruit-and-veg slideshow, and show me how you can get on board with love at first sight and adventures between the sheets.’
In that very instant, Ellie knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that there was almost no chance Niccolo was going to use her agency to promote his venture.
Her time should have been up but he found her entertaining. She could hear the thread of amusement in his voice and she could see it reflected in the lazy speculation behind his dark eyes.
He owned the company and he could do exactly what he wanted and, if he wanted to toy with her, then there was no one to stop him.
She wasn’t the sort of woman he was accustomed to meeting and that was the long and short of it. He might genuinely be interested in her input, because it would be so contrary to the rest of the pitches he had heard, but in the end the job would go to the agency that fell in line with his fun-in-the-sun, hit-and-run version of love.
‘I don’t think I’m the right person for the job, Mr Rossi,’ Ellie said politely. ‘I’ve had a very high success rate with all the other contracts I’ve been given. I did truly believe that the best approach when it came to advertising your hotel would be to promote it as something classy and unique, with much more on offer than any more downmarket resorts that specifically appeal to singles, but I can see that you’re not really on board with that concept.’
‘How old are you?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m curious because—and correct me if I’m wrong here—you’re in the service industry and yet you’re allowing your own personal prejudices to get in the way. I’m finding it hard to believe that a woman in her twenties, which is what I’m assuming you are, can be so morally upright that she digs her heels in at the thought of promoting a hotel where single people can have a bit of fun in agreeable surroundings.’
Ellie met his eyes without flinching. ‘I do think that romance can blossom in the sort of setting your hotel will provide, and I really do feel that that’s an important aspect that should be promoted, but I just don’t think I would be very good at producing an advertising campaign that focuses on people bed-hopping for two weeks.’
‘You make it sound as though sex is something distasteful.’ Niccolo was intrigued. She was so different from any other woman he had ever met that she could have come from another planet.
She was leaning towards him, hands gripping the sides of the chair. She had removed the frightful coat, although the jacket underneath was still firmly in place. Even so, he could still make out the white blouse and under it the shadowy silhouette of her jutting breasts.
His breathing slowed. His long lashes veiled his expression but there was a sudden stillness about him that betrayed a momentary lapse of control. The throb in his loins heralded a desire that was rock-hard and shocking because it was the last thing he’d expected. He shifted, sitting upright to try and release some of the painful pressure.
Any other woman might have tuned in to the shift in atmosphere, the crackle of electricity in the air, the tension that had settled between them, as taut as a piece of elastic pulled to breaking point.
Ms Eleanor Wilson didn’t. She was staring at him with wide-eyed earnestness. She leaned forward a little further and he glimpsed the tantalising valley of her cleavage.
Niccolo abruptly reared up, his whole body on fire as be began to pace his office in an attempt to get his runaway libido back under control.
‘I never said that sex was distasteful.’ Ellie breathed, disconcerted by the way the conversation had veered off course and all at sea as to how she could return it to safe moorings. ‘I do, however, think that a fortnight of sex isn’t a recipe for sad single people finding love.’
‘Why are my single guests sad?’ Niccolo wondered what her body looked like under the granny get-up. He had always been a big fan of the woman with obvious sex appeal. He liked to see what was on offer and, more than that, he liked knowing that the women he dated were savvy enough to know what was on the table and what wasn’t. Sex was on the table and commitment wasn’t.
Niccolo had made one wrong turn in his love life and, from that day on, he’d determined never to make another. Fresh out of university, and with a terminally ill family business that needed to be cobbled back together, he had looked to the girl he’d been dating for support. She’d only been on the scene for a handful of months, but she had been everything he had wanted in a woman, at that point in time.
Once the firm hand of his father had been lost, the family business had declined gracefully, like an elegant, well-bred woman ageing until she sadly became bedridden, waiting for the Grim Reaper to escort her away. It had been a gradual process that had seen the decline of their fortunes but Niccolo, even through the gradual decline, had still been privately educated and had still enjoyed the privileges of the upper-middle-class background which had given him the usual holidays abroad and, of course, the cultivated accent that Susie had claimed to adore. Darkly, sexily Italian but with the low, husky drawl of someone straight out of the upper drawer. The combination had fascinated her—had been so different from her own working-class background, which was something Niccolo had paid scant attention to.
But things had changed the minute he had divulged that the family inheritance was about to gasp its last breath. With money off the table, Susie had begun to change. It turned out that she was a lot less impressed by him than he had thought. It turned out that she had wanted the rich, young boy with a country pile and a flash apartment in Belgravia. As it turned out she very quickly found someone else who fitted the bill, someone who’d just so happened to be one of his closest friends.
Niccolo had forgiven his friend because he’d been spared a wolf in lamb’s clothing.
Susie had been sexy as hell and she had known exactly what to do with her plentiful assets.
But he had never forgiven her. Indeed, she had come crawling to him years later, when his face was all over the press as the young lion beginning to lead the pack, and he had derived a great deal of pleasure in dispatching her—although, in truth, he could have just as easily thanked her for the lesson she had taught him. She’d focused him. She’d reminded him that love was a distraction from the obligations he had sworn to fulfil. Sex wasn’t a distraction, sex was a physical release, and if he had a voracious appetite for it then he had no qualms about sating it with those willing women who weren’t ashamed to pursue him. They knew the score. He always made sure of that after that youthful hiccup. His personal life was controlled as efficiently as his public one.
When it came to women, Niccolo always knew what he was getting into.
‘I never said that your guests were sad,’ Ellie said, fervent and sincere. ‘But I do think that love isn’t something that can be manufactured by throwing people together for a couple of weeks. Love is something that takes time. You’re selling no-strings-attached sex and I... I...’
‘Don’t approve?’ Niccolo interjected helpfully. ‘Some might say that I’m doing a service for a certain sector of society who find it difficult to join the dating pool. No, wait, that’s not quite right—they find it very easy to join the dating pool. The only problem is that the pool is often full of sharks and piranha. My clients are in search of more tranquil waters.’
‘I’m not following you.’
‘The other agencies I interviewed—and you were lucky to be considered because I only interviewed a total of three—offered me precisely what they imagined was written on the can. A singles resort for people to meet one another. Sex on the beach, but in a more glamorous than average setting, and with the protagonists wearing expensive swim wear and designer sunglasses. I got the impression that they were advertising the sort of place they would