She got through to Riccardo on the second ring and didn’t bother with pleasantries.
‘I need to see you right now.’
Riccardo had programmed her into his mobile phone. He knew, as soon as his phone buzzed, that she would be on the other end of the line. He also knew what she wanted to see him about.
‘Right now. Interesting that you think you can just pop in whenever it suits you.’ He swivelled his chair so that he was facing the window. Moving out had been an error of judgement. His apartment seemed too big and too empty for just one. Having spent a lifetime without the slightest flicker of paternal yearnings to disturb the calm, ordered and preordained course of his formidably disciplined life, he had discovered that he missed his daughter, missed watching her as she sat frowning in front of her homework, missed the silly questions apropos of nothing in particular, missed the board games which had become a long-distant memory from his own childhood.
He also missed her—Charlotte. After a stressful day at work, when before he had looked to his blonde, leggy bimbos to distract him with the game of flirtation and sex, he had found himself looking forward to the peace and relaxation of her company, to her quick sense of humour, and that reluctant smile that lit up her face when he’d said something she couldn’t help but find amusing.
Never one to sit around brooding over emotional dilemmas, Riccardo had decided that he would not accept what he had increasingly found to be the unacceptable. He would not accept the visiting rights to his daughter, with the so-called benefits of being able to return to his former life of pointless women and meals out. Half a life was not better than no life at all. Half a life was, for him, just a challenge, and he had risen to the challenge with the same brutal precision that had seen him climb over the years to the top of the jungle.
‘This is all your fault, Riccardo,’ Charlotte said, not bothering to wrap up the accusation in any phoney packaging.
‘So what’s new?’
‘I’m not going to get into an argument with you on the telephone,’ Charlotte snapped. ‘I’m on my way to the underground.’
‘When are you ever going to listen to me and take taxis when you want to get around?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Riccardo!’ Momentarily distracted, Charlotte clicked her tongue in annoyance and stifled the little spurt of pleasure his words generated. Belatedly, she remembered that this was what Italian men were all about. Give Riccardo an available blonde, and he was all passion and fire. Give him the mother of his child, and he became solicitous and weirdly old-fashioned. Hence that pious, moral stance that had resulted in her having all the negative press chucked at her front door. Which fired her up all over again.
‘I’ll be at your office in forty minutes or so. Now, are you going to see me or aren’t you? Because I want to talk to you, and if you don’t see me I shall just sit in front of your office until you do.’
Now that, Riccardo thought, would really cause a stir—the mother of his child camping out at his office door! The wagging tongues, which feared him too much to wag in front of him, would be in full force.
‘I’ll meet you in the boardroom suite on the top floor in precisely forty-five minutes. Take the executive lift up. I’ll make sure the people on Reception know that you’re expected.’
Charlotte had very little doubt that they would have denied her entry, when her face had been splashed all over the gossip columns like a criminal in a ‘wanted’ ad.
She made it to Riccardo’s office in record time and headed for the lift to the boardroom suite with her head down, not wanting to catch anyone’s eye, and resenting that she was forced into hiding because of a situation over which she had had no control.