‘If you like.’

She laughed up into his face as she said it, and for a moment he was invaded by a delight so intense that it almost drove everything else from his mind. He fought it. This was no time for emotion.

‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘Enemies it is. But how foolish of you to cross me. It’s something I don’t allow. You’ll discover that.’

‘Oh, don’t be so serious. I’ve won this round, you’ll probably win the next one, then I’ll win the one after-’

‘And I’ll win the last one.’

‘Maybe. Shake?’

Reluctantly he took the hand she held out and held it for a moment.

‘So you’re still determined to drive me out of Venice?’ she said lightly.

The sudden tension in his grip told her all she wanted to know. He didn’t want to drive her out.

‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly. ‘Or maybe I’ll let you stay-if it suits me.’

‘It always has to be on your terms, doesn’t it?’

He raised her hand, touching it with gentle, seductive lips that sent scurries of pleasure through her.

‘Always,’ he confirmed. ‘But here-’he glanced around his office ‘-isn’t our real battlefield. It’s the other one that counts, and there-who knows who the victor will be?’

Helena laughed. ‘Shame on you. You think you’re going to win that one too?’

‘Perhaps that depends on what you call victory,’ he parried. ‘We may both enjoy finding out.’

‘That’s true. I’ll leave you now. You’ll need some time to consider your next attack. But remember what I told you. Beware the enemy-no, not enemy, opponent-’

‘That’s better,’ he agreed.

He was still holding her hand, smiling in a way that disturbed her. The warmth was stealing through her again, making her smile back-Like an idiot, she reproved herself.

‘You’re getting out of character,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You’re supposed to be angry with me, don’t you remember?’

‘I am-very angry.’

‘You’re absolutely furious that I put one over on you.’

‘In a terrible rage.’

‘I can see. And you’re planning your revenge.’

‘Not planning it,’ he said quietly. ‘Taking it.’

On the words he drew her close and kissed her, wrapping both his arms right round her, imprisoning her own arms so that she had no choice but to stand still, defenceless against anything he wanted to do.

And what he wanted was to caress her lightly, teasingly, each whispered touch a reminder of their ‘other battlefield’ and the thrilling skirmishes still to come. She relished it as long as she could endure immobility, then broke free and took over the kiss.

‘Call that revenge?’ she demanded. ‘This is revenge.’

She returned his attack in full measure, pressing close to him while her lips made silent promises that challenged his self-control, just as he’d challenged hers. It was a battle of the Titans.

‘I must go,’ she whispered. ‘I have a lot of things to do.’

She moved towards the door, then stopped and looked back.

‘Remember my warning. Beware the opponent who knows something you don’t.’

She was gone.

That evening Salvatore called on Valerio Donati. He was always a welcome guest in the bank manager’s house, and was impatient to plan his next move. But things didn’t go as he’d expected.

‘That’s the last time I listen to you,’ Donati grumbled as they sat down to dinner. ‘Call the loan in, you said. She can’t cope, you said. In fact it was easy for her to cope, given who she is.’

‘Who is she,’ Salvatore demanded, ‘apart from Antonio’s widow?’

‘Are you saying you didn’t realise you were dealing with “Helen of Troy”?’ Donati demanded.

‘Of course he didn’t,’ his wife said. ‘Salvatore doesn’t read the fashion pages, or he’d have known that her face was everywhere before she retired. They say she was among the highest-paid models in the world. She must be worth a fortune.’

Salvatore smiled and made a polite response, but inwardly he was in turmoil, remembering Helena’s words. This was the secret that she had known and he hadn’t. She’d taunted him with it, and she’d won.

He left his hosts early and walked home through the little darkened calles, and as he went it seemed to him that Helena was with him, chuckling at how easily she’d called his bluff.

On reaching home he shut himself in his office and got on to the internet. The name ‘Helen of Troy’ brought up a host of information about her success at an early age, right up to her retirement two years earlier, after which she seemed to have vanished. There was no mention of her marriage.

Then he turned to the pictures, hundreds of them, going back years to the first shots of her as a teenager, on through her magnificent twenties, to her very last photo shoot. It was like being confronted by a dozen different women.

The first Helena was little more than a child, giving the camera a naïve, confiding glance. Then she was laughing, inviting the spectator into a happy conspiracy, modelling a revealing dress, but with a touching innocence.

As he went on he had the strange feeling that the happy spontaneity vanished quickly. Something in that baby face had changed overnight. Even through her bright, professional smiles he could sense that she’d become older, sadder, knowing. And it hadn’t happened over time, which would have been natural, but suddenly, shockingly.

A memory disturbed him: Helena studying the two pictures of his mother, the one young and happy, the other prematurely aged by misery. He’d snubbed her, refusing to discuss a subject that was unbearable to him.

He rose to his feet and paced the room restlessly, trying to drive the memories away. Every day he fought to banish them, and it was part of this woman’s awkwardness that she brought them flooding back.

He went out into the corridor and stood listening to the quiet house. He should go back and continue his research into ‘Helen of Troy’, seeking the weakness through which he could overcome her, but instead he wandered along the corridor until he came to the room that had once been his mother’s. There he stopped.

How many times had he stood here listening to her sobs from inside, longing to comfort that anguished woman, knowing that it wasn’t in his power? Somewhere along the line his pain had turned to a rage that was still with him, years after her death. It was there now, making him crash his fist helplessly against the door.

At last he returned to his office and resumed his study of his foe, starting again with the young girl, innocent, then imbued with a poignant consciousness that shouldn’t have been there for years. For a brief moment he could almost have pitied her, but the impulse died as he went on through the rest of the pictures.

Now he understood the first picture he had ever seen of her, on the beach with Antonio, her glorious shape barely covered in a tiny bikini. Instinctively he’d known that this was a ‘professional’ body, professionally honed, tended, protected, in order to be put on show and make a profit. Up to a point he’d been right.

But she wasn’t the lady of dubious morals he’d assumed. She was a successful businesswoman with a shrewd brain that told one story, while her appearance told another.

What an actress she was, sultry and sexy one moment, reserved and virginal the next! He stared hard at her face on the screen, the lips full and pouting, the half-closed eyes delivering an unmistakeable message.

Come to me-hold me-touch me-let me show what I can do for you.

But the next picture delivered an equally clear message:

Stay back-I belong only to myself-

He brought the two pictures up together and leaned back in his chair, trying to order his thoughts. The contrast in her different aspects affected him more than he wanted it to. It meant that she was a mystery, which placed another high card in her hand, and that he found intolerable.

She’d challenged him on two levels, personal and professional, winning on both counts. The night of their meeting she’d faced him as an equal, teasing and provoking, knowing her power, flaunting it as though he were just another suppliant at her feet. That was a piece of impertinence, not to be borne.

Now she’d also taken him on as a business opponent, meeting his financial strike against her with alarming ease. On that level too she must be brought under his control.

Only then did it occur to him to wonder which of the two was the more essential, and when he realised that he didn’t know, alarm bells began to ring.

At one time there would have been no doubt which one he wanted more. Only business mattered. Women came second. But this woman was unlike any other.

His time would come. When he took her to bed and held her naked in his arms, when he heard her cry out helplessly with the pleasure that only he could give her, then she would be no different from other women.

From now on he would live for that day.

CHAPTER SIX

NOW Helena spent all her time at Larezzo, learning everything, eagerly absorbing information, enjoying herself as never before.

Her employees loved her for her passionate interest, her determination to protect the factory at all costs, but also the fact that she had the good sense not to interfere.

‘Not yet, anyway,’ she promised them. ‘My time will come. For the moment I’m just going to watch you, and concentrate on making some more money to invest. No more bank loans. They’re not safe.’

The cheer that greeted this told her just how well-informed her employees were. There was another cheer when she added, ‘I may have to do some more modelling for the sake of our future.’

One of her workers was heard to murmur that she should have sold out to Salvatore, but was quickly silenced by the indignation of the others.