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His Final Bargain
MELANIE MILBURNE


A beautiful love affair and a burning betrayal… Eliza Lincoln is stunned to find Leon Valente at her door. Four years ago his passionate embrace was a brief taste of freedom from her suffocating engagement – until Leon discovered her secret. Yet he hasn’t come to rekindle their affair.He has a proposition he knows Eliza can’t refuse: he needs her help to take care of his motherless daughter. Torn, Eliza can’t ignore a vulnerable child – but the last time she was near Leon her desire nearly consumed her. Is she willing to take that risk again now that the stakes are even higher?‘Tense and dramatic, a thriller from start to finish.’ – Juliette, 56, Winnersh www.melaniemilburne.com.au












Meeting Leon Valente had been so bittersweet.


Eliza had known all along their fling couldn’t go anywhere, but she had lived each day as if it could and would. She had been swept up in the romantic notion of it, pretending to herself that it wasn’t doing anyone any harm if she had a few precious weeks of pretending she was free. She had not intended to fall in love with him, but she had seriously underestimated Leon Valente. He wasn’t just charming, but ruthlessly, stubbornly and irresistibly determined with it.

‘I have another proposal for you,’ he said now.

Eliza swallowed tightly and hoped he hadn’t seen it. ‘Not marriage, I hope?’

He laughed, but it wasn’t a nice sound. ‘Not marriage, no,’ he said. ‘A business proposal—a very lucrative one.’

Eliza tried to read his expression. There was something in his dark brown eyes that was slightly menacing. Her heart beat a little bit faster as fear climbed up her spine with icy-cold fingers. ‘What are you offering?’

‘Five hundred thousand pounds. On the condition that you spend the next month with me in Italy.’




About the Author


From as soon as MELANIE MILBURNE could pick up a pen she knew she wanted to write. It was when she picked up her first Mills and Boon


at seventeen that she realised she wanted to write romance. After being distracted for a few years by meeting and marrying her own handsome hero, surgeon husband Steve, and having two boys, plus completing a Masters of Education and becoming a nationally ranked athlete (masters swimming), she decided to write. Five submissions later she sold her first book and is now a multi-published, bestselling and award-winning USA TODAY author. In 2008 she won the Australian Readers’ Association most popular category/series romance, and in 2011 she won the prestigious Romance Writers of Australia R*BY award.

Melanie loves to hear from her readers via her website,

www.melaniemilburne.com.au or on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/pages/Melanie-Milburne/351594482609.

Recent titles by the same author:



UNCOVERING THE SILVERI SECRET

SURRENDERING ALL BUT HER HEART

ENEMIES AT THE ALTAR


(The Outrageous Sisters)



DESERVING OF HIS DIAMONDS?


(The Outrageous Sisters)

Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk




His Final Bargain


Melanie Milburne






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


With special thanks to

Rose at The Royal Guide Dogs of Tasmania

for her time in helping me research this novel.

Also special thanks to Josie Caporetto and Serena Tatti

for their help with Italian phrases.

Thanks to you all!




CHAPTER ONE


IT WAS THE meeting Eliza had been anticipating with agonising dread for weeks. She took her place with the four other teachers in the staffroom and prepared herself for the announcement from the headmistress.

‘We’re closing.’

The words fell into the room like the drop of a guillotine. The silence that followed echoed with a collective sense of disappointment, despair and panic. Eliza thought of her little primary school pupils with their sad and neglected backgrounds so similar to her own. She had worked so hard to get them to where they were now. What would happen to them if their small community-based school was shut down? They already had so much going against them, coming from such underprivileged backgrounds. They would never survive in the overcrowded mainstream school system. They would slip between the cracks, just like their parents and grandparents had done.

Like she had almost done.

The heartbreaking cycle of poverty and neglect would continue. Their lives—those little lives that had so much potential—would be stymied, ruined, and possibly even destroyed by delinquency and crime.

‘Is there nothing we can do to keep things going for a little while at least?’ Georgie Brant, the Year Three teacher asked. ‘What about another bake sale or a fair?’

The headmistress, Marcia Gordon, shook her head sadly. ‘I’m afraid no amount of cakes and cookies are going to keep us afloat at this stage. We need a large injection of funds and we need it before the end of term.’

‘But that’s only a week away!’ Eliza said.

Marcia sighed. ‘I know. I’m sorry but that’s just the way it is. We’ve always tried to keep our overheads low, but with the economy the way it is just now it’s made it so much harder. We have no other choice but to close before we amass any more debt.’

‘What if some of us take a pay cut or even work without pay?’ Eliza suggested. ‘I could go without pay for a month or two.’ Any longer than that and things would get pretty dire. But she couldn’t bear to stand back and do nothing. Surely there was something they could do? Surely there was someone they could appeal to for help…a charity or a government grant.

Something—anything.

Before Eliza could form the words Georgie had leaned forward in her chair and spoke them for her. ‘What if we appeal for public support? Remember all the attention we got when Lizzie was given that teaching award last year? Maybe we could do another press article showing what we offer here for disadvantaged kids. Maybe some filthy-rich philanthropist will step out of the woodwork and offer to keep us going.’ She rolled her eyes and slumped back in her seat dejectedly. ‘Of course, it would help if one of us actually knew someone filthy-rich.’

Eliza sat very still in her seat. The hairs on the back of her neck each stood up one by one and began tingling at the roots. A fine shiver moved over her skin like the rush of a cool breeze. Every time she thought of Leo Valente her body reacted as if he was in the room with her. Her heart picked up its pace as she brought those darkly handsome features to mind…

‘Do you know anyone, Lizzie?’ Georgie asked, turning towards her.

‘Um…no,’ Eliza said. ‘I don’t mix in those sorts of circles.’ Any more.

Marcia clicked her pen on and off a couple of times, her expression thoughtful. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try. I’ll make a brief statement to the press. Even if we could stay open until Christmas it would be something.’ She stood up and gathered her papers off the table. ‘I’m sending the letter to the parents in tomorrow’s post.’ She sighed again. ‘For those of you who believe in miracles, now is a good time to pray for one.’

Eliza saw the car as soon as she turned the corner into her street. It was prowling slowly like a black panther on the hunt, its halogen headlights beaming like searching eyes. It was too dark inside the car to see the driver in any detail, but she immediately sensed it was a man and that it was her he was looking for. A telltale shiver passed over her like the hand of a ghost as the driver expertly guided the showroom-perfect Mercedes into the only available car space outside her flat.

Her breath stalled in her throat as a tall, dark-haired, well dressed figure got out from behind the wheel. Her heart jolted against her ribcage and her pulse quickened. Seeing Leo Valente face to face for the first time in four years created a shockwave through her body that left her feeling disoriented and dizzy. Even her legs felt shaky as if the ground beneath her had suddenly turned to jelly.

Why was he here? What did he want? How had he found her?

She strove for a steady composure as he came to stand in front of her on the pavement, but inside her stomach was fluttering like a moth trapped in a jam jar. ‘Leo,’ she said, surprised her voice came out at all with her throat so tightly constricted with emotion.

He inclined his darkly handsome head in a formal greeting. ‘Eliza.’

She quickly disguised a swallow. His voice, with its sexy Italian accent, had always made her go weak at the knees. His looks were just as lethally attractive—tall and lean and arrestingly handsome, with eyes so dark a brown they looked almost black. The landscape of his face hinted at a man who was used to getting his own way. It was there in the chiselled line of his jaw and the uncompromising set to his mouth. He looked a little older than when she had last seen him. His jet-black hair had a trace of silver at the temples, and there were fine lines grooved either side of his mouth and around his eyes, which somehow she didn’t think smiling or laughter had caused.

‘Hi…’ she said and then wished she had gone for something a little more formal. It wasn’t as if they had parted as friends—far from it.

‘I would like to speak to you in private.’ He nodded towards her ground-floor flat, the look in his eyes determined, intractable and diamond-hard. ‘Shall we go inside?’

She took an uneven breath that rattled against her throat. ‘Um…I’m kind of busy right now…’

His eyes hardened even further as if he knew it for the lie it was. ‘I won’t take any more than five or ten minutes of your time.’

Eliza endured the silent tug-of-war between his gaze and hers for as long as she could, but in the end she was the first to look away. ‘All right.’ She blew out a little gust of a breath. ‘Five minutes.’

She was aware of him walking behind her up the cracked and uneven pathway to her front door. She tried not to fumble with her keys but the way they rattled and jingled in her fingers betrayed her nervousness lamentably. Finally she got the door open and stepped through, inwardly cringing when she thought of how humble her little flat was compared to his villa in Positano. She could only imagine what he was thinking: How could she have settled for this instead of what I offered her?

Eliza turned to face him as he came in. He had to stoop to enter, his broad shoulders almost spanning the narrow hallway. He glanced around with a critical eye. Was he wondering if the ceiling was going to come tumbling down on him? She watched as his top lip developed a slight curl as he turned back to face her. ‘How long have you lived here?’

Pride brought her chin up half an inch. ‘Four years.’

‘You’re renting?’

Eliza silently ground her teeth. Was he doing it deliberately? Reminding her of all she had thrown away by rejecting his proposal of marriage? He must know she could never afford to buy in this part of London. She couldn’t afford to buy in any part of London. And now with her job hanging in the balance she might not even be able to afford to pay her rent. ‘I’m saving up for a place of my own,’ she said as she placed her bag on the little hall table.

‘I might be able to help you with that.’

She searched his expression but it was hard to know what was going on behind the dark screen of his eyes. She quickly moistened her lips, trying to act nonchalant in spite of that little butterfly in her stomach, which had suddenly developed razor blades for wings. ‘I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,’ she said. ‘But just for the record—thanks but no thanks.’

His eyes tussled with hers again. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk other than out here in the hall?’

Eliza hesitated as she did a quick mental survey of her tiny sitting room. She had been sorting through a stack of magazines one of the local newsagents had given her for craftwork with her primary school class yesterday. Had she closed that gossip magazine she had been reading? Leo had been photographed at some charity function in Rome. The magazine was a couple of weeks old but it was the only time she had seen anything of him in the press. He had always fiercely guarded his private life. Seeing his photo so soon after the staff meeting had unsettled her deeply. She had stared and stared at his image, wondering if it was just a coincidence that he had appeared like that, seemingly from out of nowhere. ‘Um…sure,’ she said. ‘Come this way.’

If Leo had made the hallway seem small, he made the sitting room look like something out of a Lilliputian house. She grimaced as his head bumped the cheap lantern light fitting. ‘You’d better sit down,’ she said, surreptitiously closing the magazine and putting it beneath the others in the stack. ‘You have the sofa.’

‘Where are you going to sit?’ he asked with a crook of one dark brow.

‘Um…I’ll get a chair from the kitchen…’

‘I’ll get it,’ he said. ‘You take the sofa.’

Eliza would have argued over it except for the fact that her legs weren’t feeling too stable right at that moment. She sat on the sofa and placed her hands flat on her thighs to stop them from trembling. He placed the chair in what little space was left in front of the sofa and sat down in a classically dominant pose with his hands resting casually on his widely set apart strongly muscled thighs.

She waited for him to speak. The silence seemed endless as he sat there quietly surveying her with that dark inscrutable gaze.

‘You’re not wearing a wedding ring,’ he said.

‘No…’ She clasped her hands together in her lap, her cheeks feeling as if she had been sitting too close to a fire.

‘But you’re still engaged.’

Eliza sought the awkward bump of the solitaire diamond with her fingers. ‘Yes…yes, I am…’

His eyes burned as they held hers, with resentment, with hatred. ‘Rather a long betrothal, is it not?’ he said. ‘I’m surprised your fiancé is so patient.’

She thought of poor broken Ewan, strapped in that chair with his vacant stare, day after day, year after year, dependent on others for everything. Yes, patient was exactly what Ewan was now. ‘He seems content with the arrangement as it stands,’ she said.

A tiny muscle flickered beneath his skin in the lower quadrant of his jaw. ‘And what about you?’ he asked with a pointed look that seemed to burn right through to her backbone. ‘Are you content?’

Eliza forced herself to hold his penetrating gaze. Would he be able to see how lonely and miserable she was? How trapped she was? ‘I’m perfectly happy,’ she said, keeping her expression under rigidly tight control.

‘Does he live here with you?’

‘No, he has his own place.’

‘Then why don’t you share it with him?’

Eliza shifted her gaze to look down at her clasped hands. She noticed she had blue poster paint under one of her fingernails and a smear of yellow on the back of one knuckle. She absently rubbed at the smear with the pad of her thumb. ‘It’s a bit far for me to travel each day to school,’ she said. ‘We spend the weekends together whenever we can.’

The silence was long and brooding—angry.

She looked up when she heard the rustle of his clothes as he got to his feet. He prowled about the room like a tiger shark in a goldfish bowl. His hands were tightly clenched, but every now and again he would open them and loosen his fingers before fisting them again.

He suddenly stopped pacing and nailed her with his hard, embittered gaze. ‘Why?’

Eliza affected a coolly composed stance. ‘Why…what?’

His eyes blazed with hatred. ‘Why did you choose him over me?’

‘I met him first and he loves me.’ She had often wondered how different her life would have been if she hadn’t met Ewan. Would it have been better or worse? It was hard to say. There had been so many good times before the accident.

His brows slammed together. ‘You think I didn’t?’

Eliza let out a little breath of scorn. ‘You didn’t love me, Leo. You were in love with the idea of settling down because you’d just lost your father. I was the first one who came along who fitted your checklist—young, biddable and beddable.’

‘I could’ve given you anything money can buy,’ he said through tight lips. ‘And yet you choose to live like a pauper while tied to a man who doesn’t even have the desire to live with you full-time. How do you know he’s not cheating on you while you’re here?’

‘I can assure you he’s not cheating on me,’ Eliza said with sad irony. She knew exactly where Ewan was and who he was with twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

‘Do you cheat on him?’ he asked with a cynical look.

She pressed her lips together without answering.

His expression was dark with anger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me right from the start? You should have told me you were engaged the first time we met. Why wait until I proposed to you to tell me you were promised to another man?’

Eliza thought back to those three blissful weeks in Italy four years ago. It had been her first holiday since Ewan’s accident eighteen months before. His mother Samantha had insisted she get away for a break.

Eliza had gone without her engagement ring; one of the claws had needed repairing so she had left it with the jeweller while she was away. For those few short weeks she had tried to be just like any other single girl, knowing that when she got back the prison doors would close on her for good.

Meeting Leo Valente had been so bittersweet. She had known all along their fling couldn’t go anywhere, but she had lived each day as if it could and would. She had been swept up in the romantic excitement of it, pretending to herself that it wasn’t doing anyone any harm if she had those few precious weeks pretending she was free. She had not intended to fall in love with him. But she had seriously underestimated Leo Valente. He wasn’t just charming, but ruthlessly, stubbornly and irresistibly determined with it. She had found herself enraptured by his intellectually stimulating company and by his intensely passionate lovemaking.

As each day passed she had fallen more and more in love with him. The clock had been ticking on their time together but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from seeing him. She had been like a starving person encountering their first feast. She had gobbled up every moment she could with him and to hell with the consequences.

‘In hindsight I agree with you,’ Eliza said. ‘I probably should’ve said something. But I thought it was just a holiday fling. I didn’t expect to ever see you again. I certainly didn’t expect you to propose to me. We’d only known each other less than a month.’

His expression pulsed again with bitterness. ‘Did you have a good laugh about it with your friends when you came home? Is that why you let me make a fool of myself, just so you could dine out on it ever since?’

Eliza got to her feet and wrapped her arms around her body as if she were cold, even though the flat was stuffy from being closed up all day. She went over to the window and looked at the solitary rose bush in the front garden. It had a single bloom on it but the rain and the wind had assaulted its velvet petals until only three were left clinging precariously to the craggy, thorny stem. ‘I didn’t tell anyone about it,’ she said. ‘When I came back home it felt like it had all been a dream.’

‘Did you tell your fiancé about us?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

She grasped her elbows a bit tighter and turned to face him. ‘He wouldn’t have understood.’

‘I bet he wouldn’t.’ He gave a little sound of disdain. ‘His fiancée opens her legs for the first man she meets in a bar while on holiday. Yes, I would imagine he would find that rather hard to understand.’

Eliza gave him a glacial look. ‘I think it might be time for you to leave. Your five minutes is up.’

He closed the distance between them in one stride. He towered over her, making her breath stall again in her chest. She saw his nostrils flare as if he was taking in her scent. She could smell his: a complex mix of wood and citrus and spice that tantalised her senses and stirred up a host of memories she had tried for so long to suppress. She felt her blood start to thunder through the network of her veins. She felt her skin tighten and tingle with awareness. She felt her insides coil and flex with a powerful stirring of lust. Her body recognised the intimate chemistry of his. It was as if she was finely tuned to his radar. No other man made her so aware of her body, so acutely aware of her primal reaction to him.

‘I have another proposal for you,’ he said.

Eliza swallowed tightly and hoped he hadn’t seen it. ‘Not marriage, I hope.’

He laughed but it wasn’t a nice sound. ‘Not marriage, no,’ he said. ‘A business proposal—a very lucrative one.’

Eliza tried to read his expression. There was something in his dark brown eyes that was slightly menacing. Her heart beat a little bit faster as fear climbed up her spine with icy-cold fingers. ‘I don’t want or need your money,’ she said with a flash of stubborn pride.

His top lip gave a sardonic curl. ‘Perhaps not, but your cash-strapped community school does.’

She desperately tried to conceal her shock. How on earth did he know? The press article hadn’t even gone to press. The journalist and photographer had only just left the school a couple of hours ago. How had he found out about it so quickly? Had he done his own research? What else had he uncovered about her? She gave him a wary look. ‘What are you offering?’

‘Five hundred thousand pounds.’

Her eyes widened. ‘On what condition?’

His eyes glinted dangerously. ‘On the condition you spend the next month with me in Italy.’

Eliza felt her heart drop like an anchor. She moistened her lips, struggling to maintain her outwardly calm composure when everything inside her was in a frenzied turmoil. ‘In…in what capacity?’

‘I need a nanny.’

A pain sliced through the middle of her heart like the slash of a scimitar. ‘You’re…married?’

His eyes remained cold and hard, his mouth a grim flat line. ‘Widowed,’ he said. ‘I have a daughter. She’s three.’

Eliza mentally did the sums. He must have met his wife not long after she left Italy. For some reason that hurt much more than if his marriage had been a more recent thing. He had moved on with his life so quickly. No long, lonely months of pining for her, of not eating and not sleeping. No. He had forgotten all about her, while she had never forgotten him, not even for a day. But there had been nothing in the press about him marrying or even about his wife dying. Who was she? What had happened to her? Should she ask?

Eliza glanced at his left hand. ‘You’re not wearing a wedding ring.’

‘No.’

‘What…urn—happened?’

His eyes continued to brutalise hers with their dark brooding intensity. ‘To my wife?’

Eliza nodded. She felt sick with anguish hearing him say those words. My wife. Those words had been meant for her, not someone else. She couldn’t bear to think of him with someone else, making love with someone else, loving someone else. She had taught herself not to think about it. It was too painful to imagine the life she might have had with him if things had been different.

If she had been free…

‘Giulia killed herself.’ He said the words without any trace of emotion. He might have been reading the evening news, so indifferent was his tone. And yet something about his expression—that flicker of pain that came and went in his eyes—hinted that his wife’s death had been a shattering blow to him.

‘I’m very sorry,’ Eliza said. ‘How devastating that must have been…must still be…’

‘It has been very difficult for my daughter,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t understand why her mother is no longer around.’

Eliza understood all too well the utter despair little children felt when a parent died or deserted them. She had been just seven years old when her mother had left her with distant relatives to go on a drugs and drinking binge that had ended in her death. But it had been months and months before her great-aunt had told her that her mother wasn’t coming back to collect her. She hadn’t even been taken to the graveside to say a proper goodbye. ‘Have you explained to your daughter that her mother has passed away?’ she asked.

‘Alessandra is only three years old.’

‘That doesn’t mean she won’t be able to understand what’s happened,’ she said. ‘It’s important to be truthful with her, not harshly or insensitively, but compassionately. Little children understand much more than we give them credit for.’

He moved to the other side of the room, standing with his back to her as he looked at the street outside. It seemed a long time before he spoke. ‘Alessandra is not like other little children.’

Eliza moistened her parchment-dry lips. ‘Look—I’m not sure if I’m the right person to help you. I work full-time as a primary school teacher. I have commitments and responsibilities to see to. I can’t just up and leave the country for four weeks.’

He turned back around and pinned her with his gaze. ‘Without my help you won’t even have a job. Your school is about to be shut down.’

She frowned at him. ‘How do you know that? How can you possibly know that? There’s been nothing in the press so far.’

‘I have my contacts.’

He had definitely done his research, Eliza thought. Who had he been talking to? She knew he was a powerful man, but it made her uneasy to think he had found out so much about her situation. What else had he found out?

‘The summer holidays begin this weekend,’ he said. ‘You have six weeks to do what you like.’

‘I’ve made other plans for the holidays. I don’t want to change them at the last minute.’

He hooked one dark brow upwards. ‘Not even for half a million pounds?’

Eliza pictured the money, great big piles of it. More money than she had ever seen. Money that would give her little primary school children the educational boost they so desperately needed to get out of the cycle of poverty they had been born into. But a month was a long time to spend with a man who was little more than a stranger to her now. What did he want from her? What would he want her to do? Was this some sort of payback or revenge attempt? How could she know what was behind his offer? He said he wanted a nanny, but what if he wanted more?

What if he wanted her?

‘Why me?’

His inscrutable eyes gave nothing away. ‘You have the qualifications I require for the post.’

It was Eliza’s turn to arch an eyebrow. ‘I just bet I do. Young and female with a pulse, correct?’

A glint of something dark and mocking entered his gaze as it held hers. ‘You misunderstand me, Eliza. I am not offering you a rerun at being my mistress. You will be employed as my daughter’s nanny. That is all that will be required of you.’

Why was she feeling as if he had just insulted her? What right did she have to bristle at his words? He needed a nanny. He didn’t want her in any other capacity.

He didn’t want her.

The realisation pained Eliza much more than she wanted it to. What foolish part of her had clung to the idea that even after all this time he would come back for her because he had never found anyone who filled the gaping hole she had left in his life? ‘I can assure you that if you were offering me anything else I wouldn’t accept it,’ she said with a little hitch of her chin.

His gaze held hers in an assessing manner. It was unnerving to be subjected to such an intensely probing look, especially as she wasn’t entirely confident she was keeping her reaction to him concealed. ‘I wonder if that is strictly true,’ he mused. ‘Clearly your fiancé isn’t satisfying you. You still have that hungry look about you.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ she said with prickly defensiveness. ‘You’re seeing what you want to see, not what is.’ You’re seeing what I’m trying so hard to hide!

His dark brown eyes continued to impale hers. ‘Will you accept the post?’

Eliza caught at her lower lip for a brief moment. She had at her fingertips the way to keep the school open. All of her children could continue with their education. The parenting and counselling programme for single mums she had dreamt of offering could very well become a reality if there were more funds available—a programme that might have saved her mother if it had been available at the time.

‘Will another five hundred thousand pounds in cash help you come to a decision a little sooner?’

Eliza gaped at him. Was he really offering her a million pounds in cash? Did people do that? Were there really people out there who could do that?

She had grown up with next to nothing, shunted from place to place while her mother continued on a wretched cycle of drug and alcohol abuse that was her way of self-medicating far deeper emotional issues that had their origin in childhood. Eliza wasn’t used to having enough money for the necessities, let alone the luxuries. As a child she had dreamt of having enough money to get her mother the help she so desperately needed, but there hadn’t been enough for food and rent at times, let alone therapy.

She knew she came from a very different background from Leo, but he had never flaunted his wealth in the past. She had thought him surprisingly modest about it considering he was a self-made man. Thirty years ago his father had lost everything in a business deal gone sour. Leo had worked long and hard to rebuild the family engineering company from scratch. And he had done it and done it well. The Valente Engineering Company was responsible for some of the biggest projects across the globe. She had admired him for turning things around. So many people would have given up or adopted a victim mentality but he had not.

But for all the wealth Leo Valente had, it certainly hadn’t bought him happiness. Eliza could see the lines of strain on his face and the shadows in his eyes that hadn’t been there four years ago. She sent her tongue out over her lips again. ‘Cash?’

He gave a businesslike nod. ‘Cash. But only if you sign up right here and now.’

She frowned. ‘You want me to sign something?’

He took out a folded sheet of paper from the inside of his jacket without once breaking his gaze lock with hers. ‘A confidentiality agreement. No press interviews before, during or once your appointment is over.’

Eliza took the document and glanced over it. It was reasonably straightforward. She was forbidden to speak to the press, otherwise she would have to repay the amount he was giving her with twenty per cent interest. She looked up at him again. ‘You certainly put a very high price on your privacy.’

‘I have seen lives and reputations destroyed by idle speculation in the press,’ he said. ‘I will not tolerate any scurrilous rumour mongering. If you don’t think you can abide by the rules set out in that document, then I will leave now and let you get on with your life. There will be no need for any further contact between us.’

Eliza couldn’t help wondering why he wanted contact with her now. Why her? He could afford to employ the most highly qualified nanny in the world.

They hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Every time she thought of that final scene between them she felt sick to her stomach. He had been livid to find out she was already engaged to another man. His anger had been palpable. She had felt bruised by it even though he had only touched her with his gaze. Oh, those hard, bitter eyes! How they had stabbed and burned her with their hatred and loathing. He hadn’t even given her time to explain. He had stormed out of the restaurant and out of her life. He had cut all contact with her.

She could so easily have defended herself back then and in the weeks and months and years since. At any one point she could have called him and told him. She could have explained it all, but guilt had kept her silent.

It still kept her silent.

Dare she go with him? For a million pounds how could she not? Strictly speaking, the money wasn’t for her. That made it more palatable, or at least slightly. She would be doing it for the children and their poor disadvantaged mothers. It was only for a month. That wasn’t a long time by anyone’s standards. It would be over in a flash. Besides, England’s summer was turning out to be a non-event. A month’s break looking after a little girl in sun-drenched Positano would be a piece of cake.

How hard could it be?

Eliza straightened her spine and looked him in the eye as she held out her hand. ‘Do you have a pen?’




CHAPTER TWO


LEO WATCHED AS Eliza scratched her signature across the paper. She had a neat hand, loopy and very feminine. He had loved those soft little hands on his body. His flesh had sung with delight every time she had touched him…

He jerked his thoughts back like a rider tugging the reins on a bolting horse. He would not allow himself to think of her that way. He needed a nanny. This was strictly a business arrangement. There was nothing else he wanted from her.

Four years on he was still furious with her for what she had done. He was even more furious with himself for falling for her when she had only been using him. How had he been so beguiled by her? She had reeled him in like a dumb fish on a line. She had dangled the bait and he had gobbled it up without thinking of what he was doing. He had acted like a lovesick swain by proposing to her so quickly. He had offered her the world—his world, the one he had worked such backbreaking hours to make up from scratch.

She had captivated him from the moment she had taken the seat beside him in the bar where he had been sitting brooding into his drink on the night of his father’s funeral. There was a restless sort of energy about her that he had recognised and responded to instantly. He had felt his body start to sizzle as soon as her arm brushed against his. She had been upfront and brazen with him, but in an edgy, exhilarating way. Their first night together had been monumentally explosive. He had never felt such a maelstrom of lust. He had been totally consumed by it. He had taken what he could with her, how he could, relishing that she seemed to want to do the same. He had loved that about her, that her need for him was as lusty and racy as his for her.

Their one-night stand had morphed into a passionate three-week affair that had him issuing a romantic proposal because he couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. But all that time she had been harbouring a secret—she was already engaged to a man back home in England.

Leo looked at her left hand. Her engagement ring glinted at him, taunting him like an evil eye.

Anger was like a red mist in front of him. He had been nothing more to her than a holiday fling, a diversion—a shallow little hook-up to laugh about with her friends once she got home.

He hated her for it.

He hated her for how his life had turned out since.

The life he’d planned for himself had been derailed by her betrayal. It had had a domino effect on every part of his life since. If it hadn’t been for her perfidy he would not have met poor, sad, lonely Giulia. The guilt he felt about Giulia’s death was like a clamp around his heart. He had been the wrong person for her. She had been the wrong person for him. But in their mutual despair over being let down by the ones they had loved, they had formed a wretched sort of alliance that was always going to end in tragedy. From the first moment Giulia had set eyes on their dark-haired baby girl she had rejected her. She had seemed repulsed by her own child. The doctors talked about post-natal depression and other failure to bond issues, given that the baby had been premature and had special needs, but deep inside Leo already knew what the problem had been.

Giulia hadn’t wanted his child; she had wanted her ex’s.

He had been a very poor substitute husband for her, but he was determined to be the best possible father he could be to his little daughter.

Bringing Eliza back into his life to help with Alessandra would be a way of putting things in order once and for all. Revenge was an ugly word. He didn’t want to think along those lines. This was more of a way of drawing a line under that part of his life.

This time he would be in the driving seat. Once the month was up she could pack her bags and leave. It was a business arrangement, just like any other.

No feelings were involved.

Eliza handed him back his pen. ‘I can’t start until school finishes at the end of the week.’

Leo pocketed the pen, trying to ignore the warmth it had taken from her fingers. Trying to ignore the hot wave of lust that rumbled beneath his skin like a wild beast waking up after a long hibernation.

He had to ignore it.

He would ignore it.

‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘I will send a car to take you to the airport on Friday. The flight has already been booked.’

Her blue-green eyes widened in surprise or affront, he couldn’t be quite sure which. ‘You’re very certain of yourself, aren’t you?’

‘I’m used to getting what I want. I don’t allow minor obstacles to get in my way.’

Her chin came up a notch and her eyes took on a glittering, challenging sheen. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been described as a “minor obstacle” before. What if I turn out to be a much bigger challenge than you bargained for?’

Leo had already factored in the danger element. It was dangerous to have her back in his life. He knew that. But in a perverse sort of way he wanted that. He was sick of his pallid life. She represented all that he had lost—the colour, the vibrancy and the passion.

The energy.

He could feel it now, zinging along his veins like an electric pulse. She did that to him. She made him feel alive again. She had done that to him four years ago. He was aware of her in a way he had never felt with any other woman. She spoke to him on a visceral level. He felt the communication in his flesh, in every pore of his skin. He could feel it now, how his body stood to attention when she was near: the blood pulsing through his veins, the urgent need already thickening beneath his clothes.

Did she feel the same need too?

She was acting all cool and composed on the surface, but now and again he caught her tugging at her lower lip with her teeth and her gaze would fall away from his. Was she remembering how wanton she had been in his arms? How he had made her scream and thrash about as she came time and time again? His flesh tingled at the memory of her hot little body clutching at him so tightly. He had felt every rippling contraction of her orgasms. Was that how she responded to her fiancé? His gut roiled at the thought of her with that nameless, faceless man she had chosen over him. ‘I think it’s pretty safe to say I can handle whatever you dish up,’ he said. ‘I’m used to women like you. I know the games you like to play.’

The defiant gleam in her eyes made them seem more green than blue. ‘If you find my company so distasteful then why are you employing me to look after your daughter?’

‘You have a good reputation with handling small children,’ Leo said. ‘I was sitting in an airport gate lounge about a year ago when I happened to read an article in one of the papers about the work you do with unprivileged children. You were given an award for teaching excellence. I recognised your name. I thought there couldn’t be two Eliza Lincolns working as primary school teachers in London. I assumed—quite rightly as it turns out—that it was you.’

Her look was more guarded now than defiant. ‘I still don’t understand why you want me to work for you, especially considering how things ended between us.’

‘Alessandra’s usual nanny has a family emergency to attend to,’ he said. ‘It’s left me in a bit of a fix. I only need someone for the summer break. Kathleen will return at the end of August. You’ll be back well in time for the resumption of school.’

‘That still doesn’t answer my question as to why me.’

Leo had only recently come to realise he was never going to be satisfied until he had drawn a line under his relationship with her. She’d had all the power the last time. This time he would take control and he would not relinquish it until he was satisfied that he could live the rest of his life without flinching whenever he thought of her. He didn’t want another disastrous relationship—like the one he’d had with Giulia—because of the baggage he was carrying around. He wanted his life in order and the only way to do that was to deal with the past and put it to rest—permanently. ‘At least I know what I’m getting with you,’ he said. ‘There will be no nasty surprises, sì?’

She arched a neatly groomed eyebrow. ‘The devil you know?’

‘Indeed.’

She hugged her arms around her body once more, her eyes moving out of the range of his. ‘What are the arrangements as to my accommodation?’

‘You will stay with us at my villa in Positano. I have a couple of developments I’m working on which may involve a trip abroad, either back here to London or Paris.’

Her gaze flicked back to his. ‘Where is your daughter now? Is she here in London with you?’

Leo shook his head. ‘No, she’s with a fill-in girl from an agency. I’m keen to get back to make sure she’s all right. She gets anxious around people she doesn’t know.’ He handed her his business card. ‘Here are my contact details. I’ll send a driver to collect you from the airport in Naples. I’ll send half of the cash with an armoured guard in the next twenty-four hours. The rest I will deposit in your bank account if you give me your details.’

A little frown puckered her forehead. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring that amount of money here. I’d rather you gave it straight to the school’s bursar to deposit safely. I’ll give you his contact details.’

‘As you wish.’ He pushed his sleeve back to check his watch. ‘I have to go. I have one last meeting in the city before I fly back tonight. I’ll see you when you get to my villa on Friday.’

She followed him to the door. ‘What’s your daughter’s favourite colour?’

Leo’s hand froze on the doorknob. He slowly turned and looked at her with a frown pulling at his brow. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I thought I’d make her a toy. I knit them for the kids at school. They appreciate it being made for them specially. I make them in their favourite colour. Would she like a puppy or a teddy or a rabbit, do you think?’

Leo thought of his little daughter in her nursery at home, surrounded by hundreds of toys of every shape and size and colour. ‘You choose.’ He blew out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. ‘She’s not fussy.’

Eliza watched as he strode back down the pathway to his car. He didn’t look back at her before he drove off. It was as if he had dismissed her as soon as he walked out of her flat.

She looked at his business card in her hand. He had changed it since she had been with him four years ago. It was smoother, harder, more sophisticated.

Just like the man himself.

Why did he want her back in his life, even for a short time? It seemed a strange sort of request to ask an ex-lover to play nanny to his child by another woman. Was he doing it as an act of revenge? He couldn’t possibly know how deeply painful she would find it.

She hadn’t told him she loved him in the past. She had told him very little about herself. Their passionate time together had left little room for heart to heart outpourings. She had preferred it that way. The physicality of their relationship had been so different from anything else she had experienced before. Not that her experience was all that extensive given that she had been with Ewan since she was sixteen. She hadn’t known any different until Leo had opened up a sensual paradise to her. He had made her body hum and tingle for hours. He had been able to do it just by looking at her.

He could still do it.

She took an unsteady breath as she thought about that dark gaze holding hers so forcefully. Had he seen how much he still affected her? He hadn’t touched her. She had carefully avoided his fingers when he had handed her the paper and the pen and his card. But she had felt the warmth of where his fingers had been and her body had remembered every pulse-racing touch, as if he had flicked a switch to replay each and every erotic encounter in her brain. He had been a demanding lover, right from the word go, but then, so had she.

She had met him the evening of the day he had buried his father. He had been sitting in the bar of her hotel in Rome, taking an extraordinarily long time to drink a couple of fingers of whisky. She had been sitting in one of the leather chairs further back in the room, taking much less time working her way through a frightfully expensive cocktail she had ordered on impulse. She had felt in a reckless mood. It was her first night of freedom in so long. She was in a foreign country where no one knew who she was. That glimpse of freedom had been as heady and intoxicating as the drink she had bought. She had never in her life approached a man in a bar.

But that night was different.

Eliza had felt inexplicably drawn to him, like an iron filing being pulled into a powerful magnet’s range. He fascinated her. Why was he sitting alone? Why was he taking forever to have one drink? He didn’t look the type to be sitting by himself. He was far too good-looking for that. He was too well dressed. She wasn’t one for being able to pick designer-wear off pat, but she was pretty sure his dark suit hadn’t come off any department store rack in a marked down sale.

Eliza had walked over to him and slipped onto the bar stool right next to him. The skin of her bare arm had brushed against the fine cotton of his designer shirt. She could still remember the way her body had jolted as if she had touched a live source of power.

He had turned his head and locked gazes with her. It had sent another jolt through her body as that dark gaze meshed with hers. She had brazenly looked at his mouth, noting the sculptured definition of his top lip and the fuller, sinfully sensual contour of his lower one. He’d had a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw. It had given him an aggressively masculine look that had made her blood simmer in her veins. She had looked down at his hand resting on the bar next to hers. His was so tanned and sprinkled with coarse masculine hair, the span of his fingers broad—man’s hands, capable hands—clever hands. Her hand was so light and creamy, and her fingers so slim and feminine and small in comparison.

To this day she couldn’t remember whose hand had touched whose first…

Thinking about that night in his hotel room still gave her shivers of delight. Her body had responded to his like bone-dry tinder did to a naked flame. She had erupted in his arms time and time again. It had been the most exciting, thrilling night of her life. She hadn’t wanted it to end. She had thought that would be it—her first and only one-night stand. It would be something she would file away and occasionally revisit in her mind once she got back to her ordinary life. She had thought she would never see him again but she hadn’t factored in his charm and determination. One night had turned into a three-week affair that had left her senses spinning and reeling. She knew it had been wrong not to tell him her tragic circumstances, but as each day passed it became harder and harder to say anything. She hadn’t wanted to risk what little time she had left with him. So she had pushed it from her mind. Her life back in England was someone else’s life. Another girl was engaged to poor broken Ewan—it wasn’t her.

The day before she was meant to leave, Leo had taken her to a fabulous restaurant they had eaten in previously. He had booked a private room and had dozens of red roses delivered. Candles lit the room from every corner. Champagne was waiting in a beribboned silver ice bucket. A romantic ballad was playing in the background…

Eliza hastily backtracked out of her time travel. She hated thinking about that night; how she had foolishly deluded herself into thinking he’d been simply giving her a grand send-off to remember him by. Of course he had been doing no such thing. Halfway through the delicious meal he had presented her with a priceless-looking diamond. She had sat there staring at it for a long speechless moment.

And then she had looked into his eyes and said no.

‘Have you heard the exciting news?’ Georgie said as soon as Eliza got to school the following day. ‘We’re not closing. A rich benefactor has been found at the last minute. Can you believe it?’

Eliza put her bag in the drawer of her desk in the staffroom. ‘That’s wonderful.’

‘You don’t sound very surprised.’

‘I am,’ Eliza said, painting on a smile. ‘I’m delighted. It’s a miracle. It truly is.’

Georgie perched on the edge of the desk and swung her legs back and forth as if she was one of the seven-year-olds she taught. ‘Marcia can’t or won’t say who it is. She said the donation was made anonymously. But who on earth hands over a million pounds like loose change?’

‘Someone who has a lot of money, obviously.’

‘Or an agenda.’ Georgie tapped against her lips with a fingertip. ‘I wonder who he is. It’s got to be a he, hasn’t it?’

‘There are female billionaires in the world, you know.’

Georgie stopped swinging her legs and gave Eliza a pointed look. ‘Do you know who it is?’

Eliza had spent most of her childhood masking her feelings. It was a skill she was rather grateful for now. ‘How could I if the donation was made anonymously?’

‘I guess you’re right.’ Georgie slipped off the desk as the bell rang. ‘Are you heading down to Suffolk for the summer break?’

‘Um…not this time. I’ve made other plans.’

Georgie’s brows lifted. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Abroad.’

‘Can you narrow that down a bit?’

‘Italy.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes and no,’ Eliza said. ‘It’s kind of a busman’s holiday. I’m filling in for a nanny who needs to take some leave.’

‘It’ll be good for you,’ Georgie said. ‘And it’s not as if Ewan will mind either way, is it?’

‘No…’ Eliza let out a heavy sigh. ‘He won’t mind at all.’




CHAPTER THREE


WHEN ELIZA LANDED in Naples on Friday it wasn’t a uniformed driver waiting to collect her but Leo himself. He greeted her formally as if she were indeed a newly hired nanny and not the woman he had once planned to spend the rest of his life with.

‘How was your flight?’ he asked as he picked up her suitcase.

‘Fine, thank you.’ She glanced around him. ‘Is your daughter not with you?’

His expression became even more shuttered. ‘She doesn’t enjoy car travel. I thought it best to leave her with the agency girl. She’ll be in bed by the time we get home. You can meet her properly tomorrow.’

Eliza followed him to where his car was parked. The warm air outside was like being enveloped in a thick, hot blanket. It had been dismally cold and rainy in London when she left, which had made her feel a little better about leaving, but not much.

She had phoned Ewan’s mother about her change of plans. Samantha had been bitterly disappointed at first. She always looked forward to Eliza’s visits. Eliza was aware of how Samantha looked upon her as a surrogate child now that Ewan was no longer able to fulfil her dreams as her son. But then, their relationship had always been friendly and companionable. She had found in Samantha Brockman the model of the mother she had always dreamed of having—someone who loved unconditionally, who wanted only the best for her child no matter how much it cost her, emotionally, physically or financially.

That was what had made it so terribly hard when she had decided to end things with Ewan. She knew it would be the end of any further contact with Samantha. She could hardly expect a mother to choose friendship over blood.

But then fate had made the choice for both of them.

Samantha still didn’t know Eliza had broken her engagement to her son the night of his accident. How could she tell her that it was her fault Ewan had left her flat in such a state? The police said it was ‘driver distraction’ that caused the accident. The guilt Eliza felt was an ever-present weight inside her chest. Every time she thought of Ewan’s shattered body and mind she felt her lungs constrict, as if the space for them was slowly but surely being minimised. Every time she saw Samantha she felt like a traitor, a fraud, a Judas.

She was responsible for the devastation of Ewan’s life.

Eliza twirled the ring on her hand. It was too loose for her now. It had been Samantha’s engagement ring, given to her by Ewan’s father, Geoff, who had died when Ewan was only five. Samantha had devoted her life to bringing up their son. She had never remarried; she had never even dated anyone else. She had once told Eliza that her few short happy years with Geoff were worth spending the rest of her life alone for. Eliza admired her loyalty and devotion. Few people experienced a love so strong it carried them throughout their entire life.

The traffic was congested getting out of Naples. It seemed as if no one knew the rules, or if they did they were blatantly ignoring them to get where they wanted to go. Tourist buses, taxis, cyclists and people on whining scooters all jostled for position with the occasional death-defying pedestrian thrown into the mix.

Eliza gasped as a scooter cut in on a taxi right in front of them. ‘That was ridiculously close!’

Leo gave an indifferent shrug and neatly manoeuvred the car into another lane. ‘You get used to it after a while. The tourist season is a little crazy. It’s a lot quieter in the off season.’

A long silence ticked past.

‘Is your mother still alive?’ Eliza asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you ever see her?’

‘Not often.’

‘So you’re not close to her?’

‘No.’

There was a wealth of information in that one clipped word, Eliza thought. But then he wasn’t the sort of man who got close to anyone. Even when she had met him four years ago he hadn’t revealed much about himself. He had told her his parents had divorced when he was a young child and that his mother lived in the US. She hadn’t been able to draw him out on the dynamics of his relationship with either parent. He had seemed to her to be a very self-sufficient man who didn’t need or want anyone’s approval. She had been drawn to that facet of his personality. She had craved acceptance and approval all of her life.

Eliza knew the parent-child relationship was not always rosy. She wasn’t exactly the poster girl for happy familial relations. She had made the mistake of tracking down her father a few years ago. Her search had led her to a maximum-security prison. Ron Grady—thank God her mother had never married him—had not been at all interested in her as a daughter, or even as a person. What he had been interested in was turning her into a drug courier. She had walked out and never gone back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s very painful when you can’t relate to a parent.’

‘I have no interest in relating to her. She left me when I was barely more than a toddler to run off with her new lover. What sort of mother does that to a little child?’

Troubled mothers, wounded mothers, abused mothers, drug-addicted mothers, under-mothered mothers, Eliza thought sadly. Her own mother had been one of them. She had met them all at one time or the other. She taught their children. She loved their children because they weren’t always capable of loving them themselves. ‘I don’t think it’s ever easy being a mother. I think it’s harder for some women than others.’

‘What about you?’ He flicked a quick glance her way. ‘Do you plan to have children with your fiancé?’

Eliza looked down at her hands. The diamond of her engagement ring glinted at her in silent conspiracy. ‘Ewan is unable to have children.’

The silence hummed for a long moment. She felt it pushing against her ears like two hard hands.

‘That must be very hard for someone like you,’ he said. ‘You obviously love children.’

‘I do, but it’s not meant to be.’

‘What about IVF?’

‘It’s not an option.’

‘Why are you still tied to him if he can’t give you what you want?’

‘There’s such a thing as commitment.’ She clenched her hands so hard the diamond of her ring bit into the flesh of her finger. ‘I can’t just walk away because things aren’t going according to plan. Life doesn’t always go according to plan. You have to learn to make the best of things—to cope.’

He glanced at her again. ‘It seems to me you’re not coping as well as you’d like.’

‘What makes you say that? You don’t know me. We’re practically strangers.’

‘I know you’re not in love.’

Eliza threw him a defensive look. ‘Were you in love with your wife?’

A knot of tension pulsed near the corner of his mouth and she couldn’t help noticing his hands had tightened slightly on the steering wheel. ‘No. But then, she wasn’t in love with me, either.’

‘Then why did you get married?’

‘Giulia got pregnant.’

‘That was very noble of you,’ Eliza said. ‘Not many men show up at the altar because of an unplanned pregnancy these days.’

His knuckles whitened and then darkened as if he was forcing himself to relax his grip on the steering wheel. ‘I’ve always used protection but it failed on the one occasion we slept together. I assumed it was an accident but later she told me she’d done it deliberately. I did the right thing by her and gave her and our daughter my name.’

‘It must have made for a tricky relationship.’

He gave her a brief hard glance. ‘I love my daughter. I’m not happy that I was tricked into fatherhood but that doesn’t make me love her any less.’

‘I wasn’t suggesting—’

‘I had decided to marry Giulia even if Alessandra wasn’t mine.’

‘But why?’ she asked. ‘You said you weren’t in love with her.’

‘We were both at a crossroads. The man she had expected to marry had jilted her.’ His lip curled without humour. ‘You could say we had significant common ground.’

Eliza frowned at his little dig at her. ‘So it was a pity pick-up for both of you?’

His eyes met hers in a flinty little lock before he returned to concentrating on the traffic. ‘Marriage can work just as well, if not better, when love isn’t part of the arrangement. And it might have worked for us except Giulia struggled with her mood once Alessandra was born. It was a difficult delivery. She didn’t bond with the baby.’

Eliza had met a number of mothers who had struggled with bonding with their babies. The pressure on young mothers to be automatically brilliant at mothering was particularly distressing for those who didn’t feel that surge of maternal warmth right at the start. ‘I’m very sorry…It must have been very difficult for you, trying to support her through that.’

Lines of bitterness were etched around his mouth. ‘Yes. It was.’

He didn’t speak much after that. Eliza sat back and looked at the spectacular scenery as they drove along the Amalfi coast towards Positano. But her mind kept going back to his loveless marriage, the reasons for it, the difficulties during it and the tragic way it had ended. He was left with a small child to rear on his own. Would he look for another wife to help him raise his little girl? Would it be another loveless arrangement or would he seek a more fulfilling relationship this time? She wondered what sort of woman he would settle for. With the sort of wealth he had he could have anyone he wanted. But somehow she couldn’t see him settling for looks alone. He would want someone on the same wavelength as him, someone who understood him on a much deeper and meaningful level. He was a complex man who had a lot more going on under the surface than he let on. She had caught a glimpse of that brooding complexity in that bar in Rome four years ago. That dark shuttered gaze, the proud and aloof bearing, and the mantle of loneliness that he took great pains to keep hidden.

Was that why she had connected with him so instantly? They were both lonely souls disappointed by experiences in childhood, doing their best to conceal their innermost pain, reluctant to show any sign of vulnerability in case someone exploited them.

Eliza hadn’t realised she had drifted off to sleep until the car came to a stop. She blinked her eyes open and sat up straighter in her seat. The car was in the forecourt of a huge, brightly lit villa that was perched on the edge of a precipitous cliff that overlooked the ocean. ‘This isn’t the same place you had before,’ she said. ‘It’s much bigger. It must be three times the size.’

Leo opened her door for her. ‘I felt like I needed a change.’

She wondered if there had been too many memories of their time together in his old place. They had made love in just about every room and even in the swimming pool. Had he found it impossible to live there once she had left? She had often thought of his quaint little sun-drenched villa tucked into the hillside, how secluded it had been, how they had been mostly left alone, apart from a housekeeper who had come in once a week.

A place this size would need an army of servants to keep it running smoothly. As they walked to the front door Eliza caught a glimpse of a huge swimming pool surrounded by lush gardens out the back. Scarlet bougainvillea clung to the stone wall that created a secluded corner from the sea breeze and the scent of lemon blossom and sun-warmed rosemary was sharp in the air. Tubs of colourful flowers dotted the cobblestone courtyard and a wrought iron trellis of wisteria created a scented canopy that led to a massive marble fountain.

A housekeeper opened the front door even before they got there and greeted them in Italian. ‘Signor Valente, signorina, benvenuto—’

‘English please, Marella,’ Leo said. ‘Miss Lincoln doesn’t speak Italian.’

‘Actually, I know a little,’ Eliza said. ‘I had a little boy in my class a couple of years ago who was Italian. I got to know his mother quite well and we gave each other language lessons.’

‘I would prefer you to speak English with my daughter,’ he said. ‘It will help her become more fluent. Marella will show you to your room. I will see you later at dinner.’

Eliza frowned as he strode across the foyer to the grand staircase that swept up in two arms to the floors above. He had dismissed her again as if she was an encumbrance that had been thrust upon him.

‘He is under a lot of strain,’ Marella said, shaking her head in a despairing manner. ‘Working too hard, worrying about the bambina; he never stops. His wife…’ She threw her hands in the air. ‘Don’t get me started about that one. I should not speak ill of the dead, no?’

‘It must have been a very difficult time,’ Eliza said.

‘That child needs a mother,’ Marella said. ‘But Signor Valente will never marry again, not after the last time.’

‘I’m sure if he finds the right person he would be—’

Marella shook her head again. ‘What is that saying? Once bitten, twice shy? And who would take on his little girl? Too much trouble for most women.’

‘I’m sure Alessandra is a delightful child who just needs some time to adjust to the loss of her mother,’ Eliza said. ‘It’s a huge blow for a young child, but I’m sure with careful handling she’ll come through it.’

‘Poor little bambina.’ Marella’s eyes watered and she lifted a corner of her apron to wipe at them. ‘Come, I will show you to your room. Giuseppe will bring up your bag.’

As Eliza followed the housekeeper upstairs she noticed all the priceless works of art on the walls and in the main gallery on the second level. The amount of wealth it took to have such masters in one’s collection was astonishing. And not just paintings—there were marble statues and other objets d’art placed on each landing of the four-storey villa. Plush Persian rugs lay over the polished marble floors and sunlight streamed in long columns from the windows on every landing. It was a rich man’s paradise and yet it didn’t feel anything like a home.

‘Your suite is this one,’ Marella said. ‘Would you like me to unpack for you?’

‘No, thank you, I’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll leave you to settle in,’ Marella said. ‘Dinner will be at eight-thirty.’

‘Where does Alessandra sleep?’ Eliza asked.

Marella pointed down the corridor. ‘In the nursery; it’s the second door from the bathroom on this level. She will be asleep now, otherwise I would take you to her. The agency girl will be on duty until tomorrow so you can relax until then.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better for me to move into the room closest to the nursery once the agency girl leaves?’ Eliza asked.

‘Signor Valente told me to put you in this room,’ Marella said. ‘But I will go and ask him, sì?’

‘No, don’t worry about it right now. I’ll talk to him later. I suppose I can’t move in while the other girl is there anyway.’

‘Sì, signorina.’

Eliza stepped inside the beautifully appointed room once the housekeeper had left, the thick rug almost swallowing her feet as she moved across the floor. Crystal chandeliers dangled from the impossibly high ceiling and there were matching sconces on the walls. The suite was painted in a delicate shade of duck egg blue with a gold trim. The furniture was antique; some pieces looked as if they were older than the villa itself. The huge bed with its rich velvet bedhead was made up in snowy white linen with a collection of blue and gold cushions against the pillows in the same shade as the walls. Dark blue velvet curtains were draped either side of the large windows, which overlooked the gardens and the lemon and olive groves in the distance.

Once Eliza had showered and changed she still had half an hour to spare before dinner. She made her way along the wide corridor to the nursery Marella had pointed out. She thought it was probably polite to at least meet the girl from the agency so she could become familiar with Alessandra’s routine. But when she got to the door of the nursery it was ajar, although she could hear a shower running in the main bathroom on the other side of the corridor. She considered waiting for the girl to return but curiosity got the better of her. She found herself drawn towards the cot that was against the wall in the nursery.

Eliza looked down at the sleeping child, a dark-haired angel with alabaster skin, her tiny starfish hands splayed either side of her head as she slept. Sooty-black eyelashes fanned her little cheeks, her rosebud mouth slightly open as her breath came in and then out. She looked small for her age, petite, almost fragile. Eliza reached over the side of the cot and gently brushed a dark curl back off the tiny forehead, a tight fist of maternal longing clutching at her insides.




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