Lee Wilkinson – Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride (страница 9)

To kill two birds with one stone…

He sighed. Si.

His raised his eyes, enjoying the frustration which she was failing to hide. ‘Rupert has been trying to drum up more trade—but you’ve got a brain in your head, Sorcha. Didn’t it occur to you to put it to use to try and work out why the products aren’t selling?’

‘You think it’s that easy?’

He shook his dark head. ‘Not easy, no. Simple, yes. Sit down.’

She hesitated, and then perched on the edge of the boardroom table instead of pulling out one of the chairs which stood around it. His eyes mocked her.

‘Demonstrating your equality?’ he murmured.

‘You wouldn’t know equality if it reached out and bit you!’

Laughing softly, he sat down in one of the soft leather chairs and leaned back to look at her, wondering if she would have chosen such a highly visible vantage point if she had realised the view it gave him of her derrière. Or that the material of her skirt was stretched so tightly over her bottom that he could see the faint outline of a thong.

His resulting erection made him wince. Serves you right, he thought, as he reached down into his briefcase. ‘I’ve been going back through the Whittakers advertising budget over the past year—’

‘It would be madness to cut the budget,’ she interjected quickly.

‘I’m not suggesting we do—please don’t put words in my mouth,’ he snapped. Put your breast in my mouth instead. His erection grew even harder as he pulled out a copy of a popular women’s magazine. ‘Take a look at this.’

She did as he asked, glad to have the opportunity to look away from that hard and fascinating face and concentrate on something other than the soft, warm coil of desire which was slowly unfurling in the pit of her stomach.

Why couldn’t she just be impartial to him—good looks or no good looks? She’d met men who were almost as hunky as Cesare—though it was true that they didn’t seem to have his inbuilt arrogance, or the ability to be in charge of a situation wherever he happened to be at the time.

She didn’t want to feel anything other than maybe a vaguely grown-up sensation of There’s the man I thought I was in love with—the man who asked me to marry him. She wanted to feel that thing you were supposed to feel when you looked at someone from a past which seemed very dim and distant—that she was looking at a complete stranger. So why didn’t she?

Trying to quell the tremble in her fingers, she flicked through the magazine he had given her. There was a big spread on a former weathergirl’s latest attempt to conquer her weight problem, with a few tantalising insights as to why she was attracted to violent men, there were gossip items and recipes, a problem page and a fashion shoot, and—amongst the other advertisements—an ad for Whittakers.

Sorcha had grown up seeing bottles of the family sauce plastered over various publications since the year dot, so it was no big deal—but she always felt a little glow of satisfaction when she saw one of their fullcolour promotions.

‘You mean this?’ She looked up at him. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘It’s good for what it is,’ he answered carefully.

‘Why are you talking in riddles, Cesare—am I supposed to be looking for anything in particular?’

He studied her lips and thought how he would like to wipe that nonchalant expression off her beautiful face with a long, hard kiss. ‘Does anything about it strike you as different?’

‘Not really.’

‘Not really,’ he echoed, biting back his irritation. He leaned back further in his chair. ‘It’s the same advert you’ve been using for years.’

‘So what? It’s a good advert!’

‘I will tell you so what, cara,’ he said softly. ‘If companies do not change—then they die—that is a rule of life which applies to everything and everyone. And it shows a certain arrogance towards the general public if you treat them with contempt, not even wanting to bother to try and change.’

She stiffened. ‘You have the nerve to talk about arrogance?’

Cesare drew in a deep breath. He would have liked nothing better than to talk about arrogance, since it was the kind of subject which soon had women railing and then pouting and then sending out messages which would result in a silent little tussle, and then…then…But he couldn’t risk making love to her. Not yet.

‘We are going to be changing the campaign.’

‘Shouldn’t that be a question rather than a statement? Or have you been given carte blanche to do exactly what you want without running it past me first?’ she demanded.

He didn’t bother answering that, and the fact that she didn’t pick up on it meant that she was perceptive enough to realise that maybe she wouldn’t like the answer. ‘Granny cooking up home recipes on the kitchen table no longer strikes a chord,’ he said slowly.

‘But people relate to that! They think it really is greatgranny! The whole family business thing is what defines us! It’s what makes us different to all the other brands!’

‘I know that.’ He paused. ‘And that is why we’re planning to upgrade the company with a brand-new image—spearheaded by one of its very own family members. A new generation to front the Whittaker campaign. Imagine the publicity.’

‘And just which member of the family did you have in mind to front this new advertising campaign?’ The question sounded mechanical, because even as she was asking it she knew that there was just her, her mother and Rupert. Unless Cesare meant Emma, and she was away on her honeymoon.

He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Oh, come on, Sorcha,’ he said softly. ‘You may not have impressed me with your business acumen so far, but there is only one person who can do it. You know that and I know that.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘And that person is you, bella donna.’

CHAPTER FIVE

SORCHA froze as she looked into Cesare’s dark, mocking face. ‘No.’

‘No?’ he echoed.

She clenched her fists. ‘If you want someone to front your new advertising campaign, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’

‘But we’ve already decided that it has to be a family member—your mother is the wrong age, your sister is the wrong marital status, and your brother is the wrong sex.’ His lips curved into a smile. ‘We want to reach out and capture the single person who is living on their own—to introduce a whole new market to a very traditional product.’

‘No, Cesare.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not a model!’

‘Ah, but that is the whole point—we don’t want a professional model,’ he murmured silkily, and he bent down to pick up a large black cardboard envelope from which he pulled a thick sheet of cartridge paper in the manner of a magician withdrawing a rabbit from a hat. He handed it to her.

Inside was a mock-up of an advertisement featuring a girl with bright strawberry blonde hair—drawn to look just like her, she realised with a sinking feeling. On the table in front of her were all the delicious ingredients of a sandwich in the making, with a bottle of Whittakers Hot n’ Spicy in the foreground.

The girl was sucking her finger, her eyes gazing wide and coquettish at the camera, and just one word was splashed across the top of the page. SAUCY!

‘Simple, but effective,’ said Cesare, and he felt weak with desire just imagining Sorcha sucking on his finger, and on…

‘Just imagine the publicity,’ he said huskily. ‘This could be big, Sorcha. Really big.’

‘And if demand increases—just how are you planning to meet it? Are you just going to magic up X amount of sauce from nowhere, Cesare?’

He gave her a narrow-eyed look of admiration. ‘Leave that to me.’

He spoke in a tone of voice which told her that nothing was going to be a problem—and, infuriatingly, she believed him. But he hadn’t taken into account the unpredictability of human nature had he? Or of women in particular? ‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ she breathed.

His smile was satisfied as he waited for the plaudits to come his way. ‘I’ve tried,’ he murmured.

‘Well, you should have consulted me, shouldn’t you?’ she questioned crisply. ‘Because I can’t do this.’

His smile vanished. ‘Why not?’

‘The rest of the family would never agree to me taking centre-stage.’

‘They already have.’

They already have.

‘Emma thinks it would be good for you.’

Emma thinks it would be good for you.

‘And your mother—’

‘Stop it!’ she screeched. ‘I don’t want to hear!’

It had taken a moment or two for her to register what had been niggling at her all along, but his words helped it to snap into crystal-clear focus.

Not only had he been brought in behind her back and then demanded that she be kept in the dark until it was too late to do anything to change it. But now—just as if they were engaged in some old-fashioned spy story—he had been briefing against her. It appeared that he had been masterminding a whole great scheme involving her—only she was the last person to know!

Sorcha glanced at the beautifully executed mock-up. This wasn’t something which he had just had an artist scribble up in a few minutes—this had all been carefully planned. She had been excluded, and the rest of the family had colluded with him. It felt like a betrayal in the most complete sense of the word.

‘You must have been working behind my back for weeks,’ she said in a stunned voice.