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Seduced Into Her Boss's Service
CATHY WILLIAMS
This tycoon plays to win!When widower Stefano Gunn meets trainee lawyer Sunny Porter he’s instantly sure of two things – she’s the perfect person to take care of his daughter and is by far the most sinfully seductive woman he’s ever seen!Once Stefano has ruthlessly coaxed Sunny to trade her lawyer’s robes for a nanny’s apron, he turns his attention to their undeniable attraction. Sunny might be reluctant to breach the barrier between professional and personal, but this billionaire didn’t get where he is by running from a challenge. And in this game of seduction he will win…Discover more at www.millsandboon.co.uk/cathywilliams


‘I’m not sure whether it would be entirely ethical for me to work with a client.’
‘In which case I’ll take my considerably high-paying work away from your law firm. How does that sound?’ Stefano charged.
‘You wouldn’t.’ Sunny was aghast at that threat, because if he did that then the worst-case scenario would be a great deal worse than the ones she had conjured up in her head.
‘Yes. I would. You would be surprised at the lengths I would go to in order to get what I want.’
He thought of that small but perceptible change in his daughter on the drive back to his house.
For that reason alone it was worth the hassle of being here. He could hardly believe that she was kicking up a fuss at being paid handsomely to do a babysitting job of limited duration.
‘The job. Yes or no? You’ll start first thing on Monday. I’ll have my driver collect you from work and return you to your flat. Meals will be provided and you’re free to do as you wish with Flora, although she’s accustomed to going to bed by eight. I’ll open an account for you if you want to take her anywhere. Feel free to use it.’
It was a fantastic opportunity. She knew that. So why was she hesitating?
‘Okay,’ she agreed, a touch of trepidation in her voice. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll take the job.’
CATHY WILLIAMS can remember reading Mills & Boon books as a teenager, and now that she is writing them she remains an avid fan. For her, there is nothing like creating romantic stories and engaging plots, and each and every book is a new adventure. Cathy lives in London, and her three daughters—Charlotte, Olivia and Emma—have always been, and continue to be, the greatest inspirations in her life.
Seduced into
Her Boss’s
Service
Cathy Williams


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#uc86f8526-bd07-57d9-be56-e013d6f5e715)
Introduction (#u2a4ab789-ff0a-579d-ae76-403611cee7bf)
About the Author (#u686d0479-30cf-5fcd-8459-08c2e3538e2e)
Title Page (#udf7be954-04b2-5eaa-8c9f-5cada227bb34)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e1ade3c9-6c86-59e2-a9da-c1602f98c03b)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_117562c6-09e9-5fc6-affb-7882ac4fe641)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2860668c-3674-579a-b927-6e1cce23a245)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_d46bf1bf-3f52-5464-9544-b940f1b8e1d5)
‘HE’S HERE!’
Sunny looked up from where she was buried in a mound of paperwork and reference books. The paperwork was to be filed, the reference books to be consulted for precedents on a complex tax issue which her boss was working on.
With a workload that barely gave her time to escape to the bathroom, she had still not been able to ignore the fever-pitch excitement that had gripped Marshall, Jones and Jones ever since they had learned that Stefano Gunn was going to be throwing some business their way.
Literally, Sunny had thought, throwing business, in much the same way as someone might throw a bone for a dog. Marshall, Jones and Jones was a recent addition to the legal scene in London. Yes, some really bright lights had been poached from a couple of the bigger firms but essentially it was still just a fledgling medium-sized firm without the decades of experience a man like Stefano Gunn would be looking for.
But he had thrown some business in their direction and speculation was rife.
Even lodged in the smallest honeycomb of rooms at the furthest end of the building, with her head firmly in her work and her body language projecting all sorts of not interested in rumours signs, rumours had still trickled down to her.
He had chosen their firm to handle some patent work for him because of Katherine, one of the partners. He fancied her and so he had chosen to sweeten her up by flinging a bit of work at them.
Sunny thought that that was a stupid piece of pointless speculation. Why on earth would the man do that? When he could make a simple call and ask for a simple date? Like any other normal person? Not, she knew, that Stefano Gunn was like any other normal person. Most normal people weren’t capable of holding the city of London in the palm of their hand at the tender age of thirty-something.
Not that she was giving any of the fuss much thought. At the end of the day, all work was good work for a new company and the work he would be giving them might be peanuts for him but, for them, it would result in a hefty pay packet for the company.
Now, she propped her chin in her hand and looked at Alice, who shared the office with her.
Alice was small, plump, talkative and found it almost impossible to sit still for any period of time. Hence, out of all of the juniors who worked at this end of the building, she had been the one who had made it her duty to find out as much as she could about the billionaire.
For the past two weeks, she had carried every file and report from their offices to those of the bigwigs who occupied the other two floors of the building. Every time she had returned, she had brought with her more titbits of information Sunny had largely ignored.
‘And did you manage to get a glimpse of The Big Man?’ Sunny asked, eyebrows raised.
‘Well...’
‘Just a simple yes or no...’
‘Don’t be such a spoilsport, Sunny.’ Undeterred, Alice dragged a chair over and positioned it directly in front of Sunny’s desk. ‘You can’t be that uninterested!’
‘I bet you I can be,’ but she grinned back. Alice was everything Sunny had always imagined would get her back up. She spoke in just the sort of cut-glass accent Sunny had always found irritating and offensive, bounced around with the irrepressible self-confidence of someone for whom life had always been kind and, to top it off, had only got the job at the law firm because, as she freely admitted on day one, her father had connections.
But, mysteriously, Sunny had taken to her and so now, although she just wanted to get on with her work, she was willing to take a bit of time out to indulge her colleague.
‘No,’ Alice sighed and pouted. ‘And I couldn’t even quiz Ellie for details about him because everyone out there is on good behaviour. Anyone would think that she’d suddenly had a personality transplant. She’s always happy to chit-chat...’
‘Perhaps she just had a heavy workload,’ Sunny said gently, ‘and didn’t think that ten-fifteen in the morning was the right time to settle down for a good gossip about a new client.’
‘Not just any old client...’
‘I know. We’ve all heard about the wondrous Stefano Gunn...’
‘And you’re really not impressed, are you?’ Alice said curiously. ‘How come?’
‘I’m hard to impress.’ Sunny was smiling but she had tensed up inside. She wondered when she would be cured of that, when she would be able to deal with personal questions without freezing up. Would she ever really be able to relax or was that something that would always be denied her? Alice hadn’t been prying, hadn’t actually asked her anything that could be called personal and yet Sunny had not been able to prevent that instinct to withdraw.
She knew she was buttoned up. She knew the group she worked with, who were all her age, found her pleasant enough but distant and unapproachable. She guessed they probably gossiped and speculated about her behind her back. She was the way she was and she knew why she was the way she was but she still couldn’t change it and sometimes, like now, she wished she could.
She wished she could lean into Alice, who was gazing at her like a good-natured, eager little brown-eyed puppy, waiting for her to say something.
‘Someone like that just isn’t the type of guy...er...that I could ever find...well... I’m not impressed by someone because they’re rich or good-looking...’ she finished lamely, before gesturing to the pile of paperwork on her desk. ‘It’s good that he’s going to be letting the company handle some of his business. I’m sure all the partners will be thrilled...but anyway...’
‘Who gives a hoot about all the partners? If he’s after Katherine, I think she’ll be thrilled by more than just the business he’s bringing to the company.’ Alice grinned. ‘I’ll bet he’ll be thrilling her over more than just a desk and a cappuccino...with Sammy sitting in the corner taking notes... I’ll bet he’ll be thrilling her in all sorts of different ways tonight when they celebrate the business he’s given us without a bunch of prying office eyes on them... Although...’ she ran a canny eye over Sunny and grinned ‘...if it’s looks he’s after, you’re a hottie—if only you’d dress the part. And whoa! I’m going before you shoot me down in flames for saying that!’
She stood up briskly, still grinning as she brushed her short, short skirt and asked whether there was some paperwork she could take to the third floor. No? Well...she’d better be off and do a couple of minutes’ work...
Sunny watched her saunter back to her desk but her mind was off her work now. As if a man like Stefano Gunn would ever find her in the least bit attractive. Ridiculous.
Everyone had heard of Stefano Gunn. The whole world had heard of Stefano Gunn. Or at least anybody who was anybody and didn’t live with their head buried in the sand. The man was ridiculously rich and stupidly good-looking. Not a day passed without his name popping up in the financial pages of a newspaper, reporting some deal or other he had secured which would boost his already inflated bank balance.
Sunny never read the tabloids but she was pretty sure that if she had she would have found him popping up there as well because ridiculously rich and stupidly good-looking men never led monk-like lives of self-restraint and solitude.
They led playboy lives with Barbie-doll women tripping along behind them and hanging on to their arms like limpets.
None of this was any of her concern, but Alice had opened up a train of thought which was normally kept safely locked away and, like opening a Pandora’s box, Sunny could feel all those toxic thoughts uncurling from their dark corners and slithering through her head.
She stared at the computer winking at her and at the dense report she had been instructed to read. What she saw was her own life staring back at her—the pathos of her childhood, the foster home and all that horror, the boarding school to which she had been given a scholarship and all those girls who had made it their duty to sideline her because she wasn’t one of them.
Self-pity threatened to engulf her and she had to breathe deeply to clear her head, to focus on all the positives in her life now, all the chances she had grasped and the opportunities she had taken that had led her to this up-and-coming law firm where she could gain experience whilst completing her LPC.
Deep, deep, deep inside, she might carry those scars that could still cause her pain but she was twenty-four now and grown-up enough to know how to deal with that pain when it threatened to surface.
Like now.
The report swam back into focus and she lost herself in her work, only surfacing when her phone buzzed on the desk. Internal line. When she looked at her watch, she was startled to find that it was already twelve-thirty.
‘Sunny!’
‘Hi, Katherine.’ In her head, Sunny pictured Katherine, one of the youngest full partners in any law firm in the city. She was tall, slim, with a sharp brown bob and open, intelligent brown eyes. Her impeccable background had primed her for a life of solid achievement and she had fulfilled all her potential. Every so often, she joined some of the other girls lower down the pecking order for drinks after work because, as she had once said, it didn’t do to wedge yourself into an ivory tower and pretend that anyone who didn’t live there with you didn’t exist. So she would come out for a drink and, on one of those rare occasions when Sunny had actually been coerced into joining her colleagues, had confided that the only thing missing in her life was the husband and the kids, which she never tired telling her parents would never come. They just didn’t believe her.
Katherine was a one hundred per cent career woman and Sunny’s role model because, as far as Sunny was concerned, the only reliable thing in life was your career and, if you worked hard enough, it would never let you down. The letting down always came from people.
‘I realise it’s your lunch hour and I really do hate to impose but I’m going to have to ask you to do me a small favour... Perhaps you could meet me in the conference room?’
‘Is it to do with the files Phil Dixon asked me to go through? Because I’m afraid I’m not finished with them just yet...’ And she’d been working flat-out but, unlike most of her other colleagues, she had debts to pay and the after-work job she held down left her precious little time to devote to work once she finally made it back to the flat she shared with Amy.
She heard anxiety creep into her voice. The files weren’t due back for another week but she still tensed up in preparation for disappointment or a reprimand.
‘Oh, no, nothing like that. Meet me in the conference room and of course bring whatever you’re working on with you. And don’t worry about lunch. I’ll have whatever you want sent up to you.’
Inside, the building was cold, thanks to air conditioning. Outside, the sun was shining, the skies were blue and, as she walked up the two flights of stairs to the conference room, she noted that a lot of the offices were half empty.
St James’s Park was only minutes away from the building and, on a fine summer day, who would want to stay indoors and eat at their desk? Or even bring a sandwich back to their desk? Not many people.
She hit the third floor and immediately went into the plush cloakroom to neaten up.
The image that stared back at her was as tidy as it always was. Her long silvery-blonde hair, flyaway fine and, when loose, a riot of tumbling curls, was tightly pinned back into a chignon at the nape of her neck. Her white blouse was pristine, as was the grey knee-length skirt. There was no need to inspect her pumps because they would be shiny and unscuffed.
She was a businesswoman and she always left the flat every single morning having made sure that she looked the part.
The striking looks, which had never done her any good at all, were always ruthlessly played down. Occasionally she wished she had poor eyesight so that she could play them down even more with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
Alice had called her a hottie and she had flinched from the description because it was the last thing in the world she wanted to be seen as and she made strenuous efforts to make sure she wasn’t.
Katherine was waiting for her in the conference room, a large space impeccably decorated in muted colours. Long walnut table which could seat twenty people around it, a matching sideboard to house coffee- and tea-making facilities, pale tan carpet and vertical blinds at the floor-to-ceiling windows. No bright colours, no demanding paintings, no eye-catching plants.
And next to Katherine was...
A small child mutinously sitting with her arms folded and a variety of gadgets next to her—iPad, iPhone, sleek, slim computer.
‘Sunny, this is Flora...’
Flora didn’t bother looking up but Sunny’s mouth dropped open.
‘I know you’re probably surprised but I need to ask you to sit with Flora until my business with her father is over.’ She mouthed something over the child’s head that Sunny didn’t understand and then eventually said, moving to stand next to Sunny and out of earshot, ‘Her grandmother was supposed to be looking after her but she’s been called away and dropped her off half an hour ago.’
‘I’m babysitting?’ Sunny was appalled. She had never been one of those girls with a driving maternal instinct. She’d had no experience to speak of with kids and the little she did have had not left her with glorious rosy memories. The kids she had met at the school she had attended off and on until the age of ten had been horrible. Even then she had been a victim of bullying by most in her peer group because of the way she looked—blonde-haired, green-eyed with, she had overheard one parent telling another with just a hint of malice, the face of an angel. At an age where the most important thing was to blend in, she had stuck out like an elephant in a china shop and had paid the price.
Life lessons had taught her that the safest route to follow was the most invisible one and being highly visible had not drawn a vast circle of friends around her.
She’d never babysat for anyone. She had grown up fast. There had been no room in her life for playing games and especially not playing games with young children.
What on earth was she supposed to do with this one?
‘She’s hardly a baby, Sunny,’ Katherine corrected with a smile. ‘And you really won’t have to do anything, which is why I told you to bring whatever you’re working on with you. It’s comfortable here and I’ve booked you in for the afternoon. I should be wrapped up with Mr Gunn by around five-thirty.’
‘This is his child?’ Sunny’s jaw hit the ground with a thud and Katherine grinned.
‘Unless he’s having us on and, trust me, he’s not the sort to have anyone on. We’re not exactly rolling in the aisles from his sense of humour in there.’
‘So...!’ She stepped briskly back towards the child, who eventually looked up when there was no choice because Katherine had made introductions and was heading at speed towards the door.
Sunny got the feeling that the other woman was probably as awkward around young kids as she was.
The door shut and Sunny walked towards Flora and looked at her for a few seconds without saying anything.
She was a beautiful child. Long dark hair flowed down her back; her eyelashes were so long they brushed her cheeks, the eyes staring right back at her were huge, almond-shaped and as dark as night.
‘I don’t want to be here either.’ Flora scowled and folded her arms. ‘It’s not my fault Nana had to drop me off.’
A surly, rebellious child was more what Sunny felt she could deal with and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. ‘You’ve brought all your toys to play with?’ She eyed the collection of high-end gadgets and wondered how many other children of eight or nine walked around with thousands of pounds’ worth of electronics to amuse them.
Faced with this unexpected job, she had had no time to ponder over the weird fact that the billionaire Stefano Gunn had a child. He might feature in the Financial Times with the regularity of a subscription holder but she had to concede that he was very private when it came to his personal life because, as far as she knew, no one was aware of the fact that he had a daughter.
For that she owed him more credit than she had otherwise thought.
‘I’m bored with them.’ Flora yawned extravagantly without putting her hands over her mouth.
‘How old are you?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘You may think you’re tough but you can never outdo me when it comes to being tough,’ Sunny said honestly, which provoked a fleeting spark of interest. ‘How old are you?’
‘Nearly nine.’
‘Good.’ She beamed and walked towards the files she had lugged into the room with her. ‘In that case, if you’re bored with your toys you can help me with my work...’
* * *
Long legs stretched out at an angle, Stefano did his utmost to stifle a yawn.
This entire situation could have been handled by one of his employees. In fact, had it not been for his mother, this entire situation would not have been happening in the first place.
He had a perfectly competent team of in-house lawyers and had they not been up to the job of dealing with this particular slice of intricate patent law then he would have immediately gone to the biggest and the best.
Instead, here he was, at his mother’s instigation, sitting in the offices of a company that was so new that it had barely left the embryo stage.
‘Jane’s daughter works there. You remember my friend Jane, don’t you?’
No, he didn’t. With those opening words three weeks ago, Stefano had been able to second-guess where his mother was going and Jane’s daughter, whoever she was, was going to feature in the scenario.
It wasn’t the first time Angela Gunn had tried to set him up. Ever since his ex-wife had died, driving too fast, having had too much to drink in a car that was way too sporty for winding New Zealand back roads, his mother had been keen to find him a suitable woman who could provide, as she was fond of telling him, a stable, nurturing maternal influence in his daughter’s life.
‘A girl needs her mother,’ she had repeatedly said in a wistful voice. ‘Flora barely knows you and she misses Alicia...that’s why she’s finding it so hard to adjust...’
Stefano had had to agree with his mother on at least one count and that was that he barely knew his daughter, although he always made sure to refrain from telling his mother just why that was the case.
His marriage to Alicia had been brief and disastrous. Having met young, what should have been no more than a passing fling had turned into a marriage of necessity when she had fallen pregnant. On purpose? That was a question he had never directly asked, but was there really any need? Alicia had come from New Zealand to study and had decided to stay on to work in one of the larger London hospitals as a nurse. He had met her there when he had suffered three broken ribs while playing rugby and the rest, he had always thought, was history. He had lusted after her, she had played coy and hard to get and then, when he had eventually got her into bed, safe in the knowledge that she was taking the Pill and, as a nurse, would be only too aware of the importance of making sure she stuck to the rigid regime, she had had an accident.
‘I remember having a tummy upset,’ she had told him, winding her arms around his neck and snuggling against him while he felt the bottom of his world drop away, ‘and I don’t know if you know but sometimes, if you have a stomach bug, the Pill doesn’t work...’
He had married her. He had walked up the aisle with all the enthusiasm of a man walking to meet his executioner. They hadn’t been married for five minutes before he realised the enormity of his mistake. Alicia had changed overnight. With free rein to more money than she could ever know in a lifetime, she had taken to spending with an exuberance that bordered frenetic. She had begun demanding that he spend more time with her. She had complained incessantly about the hours he worked and thrown hissy fits if he was late back by more than two minutes.
He had gritted his teeth and told himself that pregnancy hormones were to blame, even though he knew that they weren’t.
When Flora was born, her demands had become more insistent. She needed constant, round the clock attention. Their London mansion became a battleground and the less he wanted to return to it, the more spiteful she became in her verbal attacks.
And then she began, as she took great pleasure in telling him, to find stuff to do because she was bored and he was never around.
He found out what that stuff was when he returned to the house early one afternoon and caught her in bed with another man. The fact that he had not felt a shred of jealousy had been the clearest indication that he needed a divorce.
What should have been a straightforward separation of ways, for he had been more than willing to give in to her strident, excessive demands for the sake of his daughter, had turned into a six-year nightmare. She had grabbed the money on the table and fled back to New Zealand, from where she had imperiously controlled his visiting rights, which, from the other side of the world, had been difficult, to say the least.
He had done his utmost to fight her for more reasonable custody but it had been impossible. She had thwarted him in every way conceivable and only her premature death had granted him the child he had fought so hard to know, but in reality had only seen a handful of times.
Now he had Flora but the years had returned him a daughter he didn’t know, a daughter who resented him, who was sullen and uncooperative.
A daughter who, having now lived with him for nearly a year, needed, as his mother kept insisting, a mother figure.
He looked at Katherine Kerr, who was frowning at the various company accounts he had brought with him.
‘You mustn’t worry about your daughter.’ She caught his eye and smiled warmly. ‘I’ve left her in the capable hands of one of our brightest stars.’
Katherine Kerr was intelligent, attractive and empathetic. His mother would be hoping that they would click, that his next step would be to ask her out to dinner. It wasn’t going to happen.
‘I’m not worried about Flora,’ he drawled. ‘I’m worried that if we don’t put this one to bed soon I’m going to miss my five-thirty meeting at the Savoy Grill.’
‘It all looks fairly straightforward.’ Katherine closed the file and sat back. ‘If you’re happy to leave it with us, then I can assure you we’ll do an excellent job for you, Mr Gunn.’
Stefano looked at his watch and stood up. If the woman was looking for things to go further, then she was going to be disappointed. ‘If you tell me where I can find my daughter, Miss Kerr, then I won’t keep you any longer. I take it you now have all the relevant information you need to proceed with this patent case?’
Yes, she did. Yes, it was a pleasure doing business with him. She hoped that should he need any further legal work, he would consider their firm.
Leaving the office, Stefano decided that he would have to gently tell his mother that she would have to curb her desire to find him a wife. It wasn’t going to happen. She would have to accept that when it came to women, he liked things just the way they were. Pretty, undemanding and admittedly not over-bright little things who came and went and allowed him windows of fun and sex for as long as he required them. It worked.
He made his way to the conference room, already bracing himself for the expected confrontation with his daughter and feeling mightily sorry for whoever had had the dubious pleasure of looking after her. Flora had a special talent for making her antagonism known and she was invariably antagonistic towards anyone babysitting her.
The offices smelt of recently applied paint and newly acquired carpet and had been decorated in just the sort of style he liked, which was understated and unpretentious.
This wouldn’t have been a natural choice for him when it came to law firms but he’d liked what he’d seen and he was toying with the idea of throwing some more work their way as he knocked perfunctorily on the door before pushing it open and striding into the room.
Sunny looked up.
For a few seconds she felt winded, as though the breath had been knocked out of her.
She knew what Stefano Gunn looked like. Or at least she’d thought she’d known. She’d seen blurry pictures of him in the financial pages of the broadsheets, shaking hands, looking satisfied at some incredible deal he’d just pulled off. A tall, good-looking man whose roots lay in Scotland but whose looks were far from Scottish.
Seeing him in the flesh was a completely different matter. He wasn’t just good-looking. He was staggeringly, sinfully sexy.
He was very tall, his body lithe and muscular under the hand-tailored suit. His black hair was slightly long, curling at the nape of his neck, and the arrangement of his features...was dramatic. Everything about him oozed exotic sex appeal and she found that she was holding her breath.
Horrified to be caught staring, she pulled herself together at speed and stood up, hand automatically outstretched.
‘Mr Gunn. I’m Sunny Porter...’
His cool fingers as they briefly touched her sent an electric impulse racing through her body and when she withdrew her hand she had to fight not to wipe it on her skirt.
‘Flora...’ she turned to the child, who hadn’t glanced up and was ferociously highlighting the photocopied piece of printed paper which Sunny had given her ‘...your father’s here.’
‘Flora!’ Stefano’s tone was sharp but he modulated it to add, ‘It’s time to go.’
‘I’d rather stay here,’ Flora said coolly, throwing Stefano a challenging stare.
For a few terse seconds complete silence greeted this mutinous remark. Embarrassed, Sunny cleared her throat and began shuffling her papers together. She could feel his presence and it was suffocating.
‘You seem to have captured my daughter’s interest with...what exactly is she doing?’
Sunny reluctantly looked up. She was tall, at five eight, but she still had to crane her neck to meet his eyes.
She’s beautiful was the thought that sprang into Stefano’s head as he stared down at her. Not just pretty or attractive, but a stunner, even though she couldn’t have done more to try and conceal that fact.
Her clothes were cheap and drab, the colours draining, but they still couldn’t subdue the radiant, startling beauty of her heart-shaped face and those huge green eyes. His gaze roamed the contours of her face, taking in the small straight nose and the full, perfectly formed mouth.
Sunny was used to men staring but Stefano’s brooding dark eyes didn’t send her irritation levels soaring. Instead, she felt her nipples pinch with sudden, forceful awareness and an unfamiliar, horrifying and unwelcome dampness spread uncomfortably between her legs.
Her response confused and panicked her.
Having lived the unstable, disjointed and bewildering life of a child with a mother whose primary concerns were men, drugs and drink, a mother who had been prone to disappearing for days on end, leaving her with a neighbour, any neighbour, Sunny prided herself on being tough, on being able to handle any situation.
Especially men.
She’d been attracting their attention since the minute she had become a teenager and started to develop. When her mother had died from an overdose, leaving behind her eleven-year-old daughter, she had been fostered by a couple and had lived on her nerves, uncomfortable with her foster father’s leering eyes, terrified into locking her bedroom door every night although he’d stared but never touched.
At thirteen she had won a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school and, even there, she had been ostracised because of her remarkable looks. She was the cuckoo in the nest, out of her depth with girls who came from serious money, isolated because whenever boys happened to be around, they drooled over her.
She had hated every second of it all but the shell she had developed had protected her, had allowed her to ignore what couldn’t be changed.
Men were driven to look at her. She had learned to blank them out.
She had told herself that the guy for her would be one who would want her for her brain, for what she had to say, for her personality.
Except when, at university, that guy had come along, dear, sweet John, who had been kind and chivalrous and thoughtful; she just hadn’t been able to respond physically to him. That had been two years ago but it still hurt to think about it.
Had she, under the tough shell, been secretly searching for love? Had she longed for someone to ignite the sort of gentle romance she’d fantasised about in the deepest, darkest corners of her mind? Was that what had driven her to John, who had ticked all the right boxes as candidate for the Big Romance? If that had been the case, then she’d been way off mark and what she’d got hadn’t been a Big Romance, but yet another tough learning curve which had closed the doors, for good, on any stupid belief that she was destined for a happy-ever-after life with the perfect soulmate. John should have been the perfect soulmate and she should have wanted to touch him all the time. It hadn’t been that way at all. She’d concluded what she should have concluded a long time ago, which was that her background had irretrievably damaged her. She had moved on and accepted her lot.
So why was she all hot and bothered now? In the presence of a man like Stefano Gunn? Since when had she ever felt hot and bothered when some guy stared at her? Hadn’t she stopped being an idiot two years ago when she and John had ended their doomed relationship?
‘Flora didn’t want to play with...any of her expensive toys—’ she fought to remember that this was a very important client and swallowed down her natural instinct to be contemptuous ‘—so I gave her some work to do and she’s been doing it for the past three hours.’
‘Work?’ He drew her aside while Flora continued doing what she was doing with the highlighters and making a pointed show of disinterest in his arrival.
‘Not actual work,’ Sunny explained, shifting a few inches away from him in an attempt to ward off the disconcerting impact of his presence. ‘I photocopied some pages of one of my law books, Petersen versus Shaw, and asked her to read it and highlight the bits she thought were relevant to Petersen winning the case.’
‘You did...what?’
‘My apologies, Mr Gunn.’ She stiffened, automatically defensive. What else was she supposed to do? Magic up some Lego and play building games with her? Was that even what eight-year-old girls were interested in doing? ‘She said she was bored with whatever...games are on her iPad...or laptop...and I had a stack of work to get through...’
‘I’m not criticising you,’ Stefano said drily. ‘I’m expressing open-mouthed amazement that Flora was drawn into doing something like that.’
Sunny relaxed and stole a glance at his handsome face. His voice was deep and lazy, as velvety as the smoothest of chocolate and his bronzed colouring spoke of an exotically foreign gene pool. And she could breathe him in, a woody, clean, utterly masculine scent that made her senses swirl.
‘She’s more than welcome to take the little file back with her.’ She could feel the hot burn of an uncustomary blush. ‘It’s a historic case. I would never have given her anything that could have remotely been seen as sensitive information.’
‘What are you doing later?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Her eyes flew to his face in consternation.
‘Later. What are you doing?’ The Savoy Grill would have to be put on hold. ‘I’d like to thank you for your impromptu babysitting by taking you out to dinner.’
‘There’s no need!’ Sunny was aghast at the thought of having dinner with him. She was aghast at the thought of doing anything with the man, aside from saying goodbye and never clapping eyes on him again. He did something to her that she didn’t like—something that made mincemeat of her nervous system—and for someone who valued her control that was tantamount to disastrous.
Stefano eyed her narrowly, taken aback by her horrified refusal.
‘I... I couldn’t.’ She backtracked from being outright rude. ‘I...happen to have a job that starts at six so I couldn’t possibly...and there’s really no need to thank me... All in a day’s work...’
‘A job?’ He frowned. ‘What job?’
‘I... I work four nights in a restaurant... Qualifying to be a lawyer costs money, Mr Gunn,’ she said bluntly. ‘I also have rent to pay and food to buy. What I earn here doesn’t quite stretch to cover it all.’
‘In which case,’ Stefano said smoothly, ‘have dinner with me. I have a proposition for you and I think you’ll find it...irresistible...’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_97c2bcd7-771b-5f09-abbe-14ece7eeedf4)
SUNNY BARELY HAD time to make it home, change quickly and head out to the restaurant, which was just five minutes from where she lived and attracted an eclectic crowd of tourists and students because it was cheap, which appealed to the students, and trendy, which appealed to the tourists.
She had been lucky to get the job. The tips might not have been great because students were notoriously stingy when it came to that sort of thing, but the pay was better than average and the young couple who owned the place were generous, which meant that at the end of the week, if the takings had been particularly high, the staff were all given a small bonus over and above what they were paid.
Every penny went into Sunny’s savings.
She was out of breath by the time she flew into the kitchen to change at speed out of her jeans and T-shirt and into the uniform, which was a jazzy red number, trousers and a T-shirt with the restaurant logo printed in bold white across the front, and a cap. Sunny had no idea what the significance of the outfit was and neither did Tom and Claire. They had decided on it because, Claire had confided, giggling, it had been a cheap bulk buy and the punters had seemed to like it so they had stuck with it.
‘It’s going to be a busy one tonight...’ Claire was rushed off her feet. Tom was supervising in the kitchens, barking orders at the staff, and the other two waitresses were already zooming in and out, pinning orders to the cork board in the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Sunny apologised, stuffing her hair into the cap. ‘I got held up at work.’
‘No matter, darling. Go, go...go! Tom’s having a meltdown because the tuna delivery hasn’t arrived yet. You don’t want to get anywhere near him!’
The trickle of customers was fast becoming a flood and Sunny went into autodrive. She had been working at TWC Eaterie for eight months and she knew the ropes. Take orders, smile a lot, race between kitchen and tables, deliver the orders and as soon as one set of diners had finished eating, get the bill to them as fast as she could so that the table could be cleared, making way for another lot to sit down. Sometimes, if the customers seemed to be dawdling a little too much over their coffees, Claire would turn up the volume on the music, just a notch, and that always seemed to remind them that it was time to go.
Sunny had her patch and she could work the tables blindfold. She chatted without really noticing who she was chatting to and she always added a smiley face to the bill when she brought it because she had read somewhere that it encouraged diners to leave bigger tips than they normally would.
This evening, she was particularly oblivious to the crowd. She’d thought of nothing but Stefano on the Tube ride back and he was still in her head as she dashed around the restaurant, distracting her, which got on her nerves.
The man had got under her skin.
Was it because he was just so good-looking? And why should that have made a difference anyway? Sunny had never been susceptible to good-looking men. She’d been chased by enough of them and heard enough of their corny lines to know that they were usually full of themselves and arrogantly all too aware of the effect they had on the opposite sex.
So why had Stefano Gunn proved the exception? Especially when she had given up on men? If she hadn’t been able to feel any sort of physical attraction to a guy who had been perfect, then there was no hope for her. She had reconciled herself to that fact. She had assumed that she was frigid, a consequence of her turbulent background and a mother who had set a poor example when it came to self-restraint and decorum.
She touched the locket she wore around her neck. In it was one of only a handful of pictures she had of her damaged parent. Annie Porter might have been a terrible mother but there was still a big place in Sunny’s heart for her. She felt that that must be what unconditional love was all about. Her mother would be the only recipient of that sort of love as far as Sunny was concerned. If she ever loved anyone again, and she wasn’t even sure that she had loved John nearly as much as he had loved her, then there would be so many conditions that the weight of them would probably kill off any relationship before it could get going. Suited her.
But she hadn’t had a relationship with anyone since John and she wondered whether the effect Stefano had had on her had been a timely reminder that she was still young.
It made no difference anyway. She wasn’t going to see him again. She had politely turned down his offer for dinner and had shown no interest in whatever proposition he had for her that she might find irresistible.
Dinner and a proposition could only add up to one thing as far as Sunny was concerned.
Bed.
Perhaps he saw her as a possible easy conquest. He was staggeringly rich and staggeringly good-looking and maybe he thought that if he made a pass at her, she wouldn’t be able to resist. Maybe he thought that, as a relative junior in the company, she would be awestruck and open-mouthed and breathless with girlish excitement if he so much as glanced in her direction.
Maybe...no, almost certainly, that was where the irresistible aspect of his so-called offer came in.
She was so wrapped up in thoughts that she wanted to box away that she was convinced her mind was playing tricks on her when, with the crowd finally and thankfully beginning to thin out, she heard the sound of his dark, velvety voice behind her.
She spun round, only just managing to hang on to the tray she was balancing and stared.
It was a little after ten and he looked as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as when she had last seen him at five-thirty, although he was no longer wearing his suit.
The suit had been replaced by a pair of black jeans and a fitted black jumper that did remarkable things for his lean, muscular build.
She couldn’t find a thing to say. She actually blinked several times to make sure that she wasn’t seeing things, that her mind hadn’t conjured up his image because she had been thinking so much about him.
‘So this is where you work...’
Sunny was galvanised into movement. ‘What are you doing here, Mr Gunn?’ She wasn’t in the office now and she didn’t see why she should try and modulate her voice to accommodate him. She stared at his face but she was aware of every part of him with every pore in her body. ‘Look, I can’t stop to chat to you.’ She turned round abruptly and began heading towards the kitchen, heart beating like a sledgehammer inside her.
Fi, one of the girls who worked the tables with her, the only full-time waitress among them and a bubbly brunette who specialised in having boyfriend problems, was taking a little time out to catch her breath because her stint was almost over. Sunny was very tempted to ask her whether Stefano was still outside and, if he was, whether she could take his order but then she knew that that would lead to endless curiosity and, as always, the part of her that clammed up at the thought of confiding slammed into gear.
Maybe he would get the message and leave. Maybe he’d already left. Her hands were clammy and she wiped them on her trousers as she headed back out to the restaurant, which was now practically empty.
There was no avoiding or ignoring him. His presence was so powerful that it would have been impossible to overlook him even though he was sitting right at the back. He had pushed his chair at an angle so that he could stretch out his long legs and he looked utterly composed and relaxed.
Stifling a sigh of frustration, Sunny walked towards him, taking her time.
‘I’m afraid we’ve already taken last orders,’ she said ungraciously, ‘so if you’ve come here expecting a meal, then you’re going to be disappointed.’
‘Oh, dear. And the menu looked so interesting. Perhaps another day. However, that being the case, I’m assuming you’ll be leaving shortly?’
‘How did you even find out where I worked?’ She looked at him with great reluctance and was assailed by the same unwelcome heady discomfiture she had felt before. His eyes were as dark as night and as captivating as an open flame to a moth. There was nothing safe or comforting about him but he had the sort of face she felt driven to stare at and the sort of compelling personality that wanted to suck her in and she had no intention of being sucked in.
Her memories of her mother were scattered but she remembered enough. She remembered how pretty her mother had been and how helpless she had been at the hands of men who had taken advantage of her. The roller-coaster ride that had been her childhood had built in her a capacity for self-control she never relinquished and a determination never to find herself in any situation with anyone that made her feel helpless. John had never made her feel helpless.
But something about Stefano Gunn made her feel helpless.
‘Sit.’
Sunny folded her arms and stared at him. ‘We’re not in an office now, Mr Gunn...’
‘Stefano, please.’
She chose to ignore that interruption. ‘So I feel it’s okay for me to be direct with you.’
‘I’ve always encouraged directness in other people,’ Stefano murmured. She was even more eye-catching than he remembered, even though the hair, he noted, was still tucked away and she wore no make-up.
She’d turned down his offer for dinner and rejected what he had to say without bothering to give him a hearing. She’d been pointedly polite about it but she hadn’t been able to get away from him fast enough.
He was accustomed to women bending over backwards to attract his attention. He’d never been in the position of being with a woman who so clearly couldn’t wait to escape his presence and he hadn’t known whether to be irritated or amused by that.
‘I don’t know how you managed to find out where I work...’
‘Not that difficult. I got your address from Katherine, went to your house, spoke to the girl who shares your flat with you, who told me where you worked and here I am.’
‘You spoke to Katherine?’ Sunny was outraged. She glanced round to see Claire looking at her curiously. ‘I have to finish clearing the tables,’ she muttered.
‘I’ll wait until you’re finished and walk you home.’
‘I don’t need an escort, Mr Gunn.’
‘I told you, the name is Stefano.’ An edge of impatience had crept into his voice. Her simmering hostility and mutinous stubbornness, rather than putting him off, was goading him into digging his heels in. He’d come here to talk to her and talk to her he would. Maybe if it hadn’t been for Flora, he would have shrugged off her cool refusal to listen to him although a little voice in his head was telling him that she posed a challenge and a challenge was something he had not experienced in a very long time.
Sunny didn’t bother to answer. She knew she was attracting interested looks from her friends in the restaurant and that in itself made her bristle with annoyance at him.
How dared he track her down like this?
How dared he think that he could stampede over her very clear refusal to listen to his proposition?
How dared he think he could try and sweet-talk her into bed because he was filthy rich and she was just an ordinary junior in a law firm and therefore open to persuasion?
And how dared he compromise her position in the company by talking to her boss about her?
Rage bubbled up inside her as she raced through the remainder of her chores, wiping the tables and then, finally, changing back into her jeans and T-shirt and the denim jacket she had brought along because it was now quite cool outside.
‘He’s still there, you know,’ Claire said, lounging by the kitchen door with a tea towel slung over her shoulder. She and Tom would stay on for at least another hour and in the morning they would count the takings. It had been a very good night. ‘I know you’ve made a point of pretending not to notice, but he hasn’t gone.’
Sunny flushed and scowled.
‘My darling, none of us can miss the way the guys who come in here stare at you. I don’t mean to intrude... I know you’re a very private person, but haven’t you ever been tempted to...to...?’
‘Never,’ Sunny said fiercely. ‘I don’t go for guys who are drawn to me because of the way I look.’ She remembered her foster father’s lecherous eyes following her through the house, while his invalid wife remained cheerfully oblivious, and shuddered.
‘Who’s your latest admirer?’
Sunny sighed and looked at Claire. ‘He’s not an admirer,’ she admitted. Although why else would he be here? If not to try and get her into bed? She wasn’t vain but she was realistic and being realistic protected her against having her head turned by meaningless, pretty words. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of him and I’ll make sure he doesn’t come here again.’
Claire laughed. ‘He looks rich. He can come whenever he wants, just as long as he puts his hand in his pocket and actually shows up in time to order food and drink!’
‘I’ll pass that on.’ Sunny smiled weakly. She had no intention of doing any such thing. What she intended to do was find out just what he had said to Katherine and whether he had compromised her position in the company.
And she would have to do that without letting her temper explode. She would have to be cool, calm and collected whilst leaving him in no doubt that she wasn’t interested in whatever he had to say to her.
She emerged and Stefano was almost surprised because he had half expected her to have disappeared through a back door. But there she was, in jeans and a T-shirt and, without the cap, her hair was long. Very long. Every shade of blonde feathering in curls down her back, although that didn’t last very long because, even as she walked towards him, she was stuffing it into a ponytail.
She had the long, slender body of a ballet dancer and her movements were graceful. She was scowling, but not even the scowl could hide that startling, unusual prettiness. When she had been created, some small added ingredient had been thrown into the mix, elevating her from good-looking to unbelievably striking. Her green eyes were narrowed suspiciously on him as she finally came to a stop directly in front of him.
‘I want to know what you said to Katherine.’
‘You’re not, are you?’ Stefano stood up, towering over her, and she automatically fell back a step or two.
‘Not what?’
‘Sunny.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets as they headed to the door. ‘Your mother must rue the day she named you that. Unless, of course...’ he pushed open the restaurant door, allowing her to brush past him ‘...you’re sunny with everyone else but reserve all your bulldog belligerence for me...is that it? And, if so, why?’
‘My mother died when I was a child,’ Sunny said coldly. ‘What did you tell Katherine?’ She didn’t want him walking next to her...didn’t want him escorting her the short distance to her flat, but she felt as if she had no choice.
‘I told her that I wanted to discuss something with you of a personal nature and she was kind enough to provide me with your address.’
‘How dare you?’ She rounded on him, hands on her hips, so furious that she felt she might explode. ‘Do you have any idea how important that job is to me?’ A series of scenarios ran through her head, each worse than the one before. He had put poor Katherine in a position...he was so important that she had had no choice but to do as he had asked...but in the morning, she, Sunny, would be called in for a little chat...she would be told that fraternising with clients was frowned upon...she would be warned...she might even be sacked... She hadn’t been there very long and the last thing the company would want would be a lawyer who couldn’t be trusted around clients...she would lose her job, her career and everything that made sense of her life...
And it would all be this man’s fault.
‘I don’t want anything to do with you and how dare you tell my boss that you want my address? So that you can try and come on to me? How dare you?’ Tears of anger and frustration were pricking the back of her eyes.
With just the street lights for illumination, his face was all angles and shadows. He towered over her and she couldn’t read the expression on his face.
Just in case he hadn’t got the drift, though, she thought that she should make herself perfectly clear.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you, Mr Gunn, and I don’t want you pestering me. I don’t care how rich or powerful you are or how much business you’re going to bring to the firm... I don’t come as part of what’s on offer to you!’
Stefano was genuinely outraged that she had pigeonholed him as desperate and downright stupid enough to think about making a pass at her.
‘Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?’ he asked coolly.
That threw her and for a few seconds she stared at him in sudden confusion.
‘Anyway, I hope I’ve made myself clear,’ she muttered, dragging her eyes away from him and walking briskly towards the flat. He kept pace with her.
The flat she shared with Amy was cheap and thus located in a fairly dodgy part of town. A hop and a skip away, smart restaurants and trendy cafés lined the high street but here all of that gave way to rundown houses that were mostly let to people who couldn’t afford anything better, and a couple of off licences and corner shops that stayed open beyond the call of duty.
‘So—’ she stopped in front of the door that led up to the flat she shared at the top of the converted Victorian house ‘—I’d appreciate it if you just left me alone, and please don’t discuss me with my boss. It could jeopardise my position in the company.’
‘Like I said...you’re getting ahead of yourself here. I think you’re confusing me with the sort of sad loser who’s into pursuing reluctant women and can’t take no for an answer.’
Sunny stared at him in silence, slowly realising that she had misunderstood the situation.
Mortification swept over her in a hot, burning tide. ‘You said you had a proposition for me...’ she stammered, so taken aback that she was barely aware of him removing the key from her hand, opening the door and urging her inside.
He shouldn’t be coming in. He definitely should not be coming in. Amy wasn’t going to be there. She was on nights and wouldn’t be back until the following morning and Sunny couldn’t imagine him being in the flat with her, just the two of them.
Although he wasn’t interested in her, was he? When you thought about it, why the heck would he be? He could have any woman he wanted. He would just have to snap his fingers! She was so embarrassed at jumping to erroneous conclusions that she would happily have stepped into the hole if the ground had opened up beneath her feet.
While this jumble of thoughts was chaotically running through her head, they took the stairs and he let them into the flat with the key, which she had failed to take from him.
It was a very small two-bedroom flat with barely room to swing a cat. The décor was shabby and the furniture looked as though it had mostly been reclaimed from a skip somewhere. Not even the cheerful prints Blu-tacked to the walls could lift the place into something more cheerful. But it worked for both of them. They got along very well and, because Amy worked nights most of the month, they tended to see one another only in passing.
Looking around him, Stefano realised that he had never been anywhere like this before in his life. He knew that by anyone’s standards his life had been one of unsurpassed privilege. The only child of a wealthy Scottish landowner and an Italian mother who, herself, had inherited a tidy sum of money when her parents had passed away, he had never had any occasion to find himself slumming it. Alicia, of course, had not had money but he had rarely ventured into the quarters she shared with her friends.
Here, amidst this drab, unappealing ordinariness, Sunny was the equivalent of an orchid in a patch of weeds. He could almost understand why she had misinterpreted his intentions, although that did nothing to detract from the umbrage he felt.
Although, a little voice whispered in his head, hadn’t he looked at her with sexual interest? It wasn’t going to happen.
Stefano swept that unwanted thought aside as fast as it had come.
‘My daughter liked you,’ he said without preamble.
‘Did she? I have no idea why. I gave her work to do and I don’t suppose many eight-year-olds would have appreciated that.’ But she felt a rare bloom of pleasure at his words.
Released from the discomfort of thinking that he was just someone else attracted to her because of the way she looked, Sunny knew that she should be able to relax, but she was still as tense as a piece of elastic stretched to breaking point. He had sprawled out on one of the chairs in the tiny sitting room and he was just so wildly exotic that she could scarcely look at him without her breath catching in her throat and a weird tension invading her body.
‘I had to bring Flora in with me because she managed to successfully see off the last nanny and my mother had to go unexpectedly to Scotland...’
‘Oh.’ Where was this going? Sunny was bewildered. ‘When you say see off the last nanny...’ This for no other reason than to fill the silence.
‘Flora enjoys making life as difficult for her nannies as she humanly can.’ Stefano sighed and raked his fingers through his hair.
‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’ His wife wasn’t around. He was an eligible bachelor. The office gossip mill had made that perfectly clear from day one, when speculation had been rife that he was only handing them business because of Katherine. She perched on the edge of a chair and looked at him steadily.
‘My mother will be up in Scotland for the next month. I have a nanny to cover for Flora during the day, as she’s on holidays, but not even the most long-suffering of nannies, and Edith is about as long-suffering as they come, is willing to do day and night cover. I’m wrapped up in some pretty important deals over the next fortnight and my proposal was for you to work for me between five and ten every evening, Monday to Friday.’
‘I’m sorry but that’s out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t have to give long explanations,’ Sunny told him stiffly. Something about the prospect of being inside his house sent shivers through her. No matter that she now knew that he had no interest in her aside from babysitter for his daughter. ‘But, in case it’s missed you, I actually already have a job after work and it’s a job I enjoy and wouldn’t want to lose. Also...’
Stefano tilted his head to one side. Flora had been animated on the drive back to the house. In fact, she had been the most animated he’d seen her since she had arrived in London. She had actually spoken to him, as opposed to sitting in surly silence and answering his questions in monosyllables.
‘Also...?’ he prompted softly.
Sunny shrugged and reddened. ‘Nothing. I... I just can’t do it. I’m sorry.’
‘But you don’t know what the terms and conditions are,’ he murmured. He wondered what else she had been about to say. She was guarded and that was something he never saw in the women he met. And the way she had rushed into the assumption that he’d been after her for sex. Was she accustomed to having to fend off men? Had she suffered from office pests? They were out there, no question of it, and she had the looks to provoke over-enthusiasm in most red-blooded men, he would have thought.
Or maybe one pest in particular had made her suspicious of all men...
He was a little unnerved at the amount of time he was wasting in pointless speculation.
‘Unless, of course, you have a boyfriend...someone who might not want you to spend time away from the flat when you’re not at work...’
Sunny laughed shortly. ‘I wouldn’t let any guy tell me what I could or couldn’t do.’ The words were out before she could take them back. ‘By which,’ she continued lamely, ‘I mean that I’m...my own person...not that it’s any business of yours whether I have a boyfriend or not anyway... I just... I’m sorry...’
‘I’m sure the restaurant could spare you for a couple of weeks. In fact, I don’t see that as a problem at all. I’ll personally arrange for a replacement and cover the costs myself. And with regard to what you earn there...’ He paused, allowing speculation to take root in her head and spout tendrils. ‘I’ll quadruple it.’ He sat back and watched her narrowly. ‘I’d like you to work for me and I’m prepared to pay you far, far more than you would earn in the restaurant, including tips...’
‘I don’t understand,’ Sunny stammered, thoroughly taken aback. ‘Why can’t you just go and employ someone from an agency?’
‘Flora averages a nanny a fortnight and, during that fortnight, I’m bombarded with complaints from whatever nanny happens to be working for me. I don’t need that. She’s taken a liking to you and I’m prepared to take a gamble.’
‘I have no experience of looking after children, Mr Gunn.’
‘For God’s sake, there’s no need to keep calling me Mr Gunn.’ He paused and watched her, trying to read behind the cautious exterior.
Agitated, Sunny looked away. ‘Don’t you have a...um...a partner?’
‘Partner?’
‘A girlfriend? Someone who could step in and help out?’ She had no idea from whence the rumour had sprung that he was interested in Katherine. Maybe the rumours had been wrong. Maybe there was someone else in the background, although it beggared belief that he would bring work to a new, small company and not use one of the top guns to handle his business.
‘Now, now, Sunny—or shall I call you Miss Porter as you seem determined to stick to the formalities?—would you say that you’re entitled to ask that question considering you’ve surrounded yourself with No Trespassing signs?’ He watched her squirm for a few seconds. ‘There’s no handy woman ready to jump in and help out.’ He thought of Katherine and his mother’s fine intentions to set him up. Nice enough woman but he certainly couldn’t picture her in the role of surrogate mother. Indeed, she had seemed distinctly uncomfortable when presented with Flora.
‘What about Flora’s mother?’ It seemed an obvious enough question and she was surprised when the shutters snapped down, coldly locking her out. As No Trespassing signs went, she’d just stumbled into an almighty giant-sized one.
‘Flora’s mother died several months ago,’ Stefano said abruptly. ‘Now, are you willing to take the job or not? I’ve given you my offer and, from the looks of it, you could do with the money. You can bring your work to the house if you want to do overtime and that’s an added bonus, considering working in a restaurant doesn’t afford that luxury. And I may be misreading the situation, but if you’re intent on a career then the lack of overtime must be a decided drawback to someone young and ambitious.’
‘I’m not sure whether it would be entirely ethical for me to work with a client.’
‘In which case, I’ll take my considerably well-paid work away from your law firm. How does that sound?’
‘You wouldn’t.’ Sunny was aghast at that threat because, if he did that, then the worst-case scenarios would be a great deal worse than the ones she had conjured up in her head when he’d told her that he’d spoken to Katherine.
‘Yes. I would. You would be surprised at the lengths I would go to in order to get what I want.’ He thought of that small but perceptible change in his daughter on the drive back to his house. For that reason alone it was worth the hassle of being here. He could hardly believe that she was kicking up a fuss at being paid handsomely to do a babysitting job of limited duration. ‘And, just for your information, I have already cleared the way with Katherine. I explained the situation and she’s more than happy for you to help out.’
‘Is she? Didn’t she...ah...volunteer to do it herself?’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘No reason.’ Annoyed with herself for being drawn into that faux pas, she stared down at her trainers. ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’
‘I prefer positive thinking. Like I said, Flora doesn’t warm to people easily but she warmed to you. It’s good enough for me. Now, the job. Yes or no? You’ll start first thing on Monday. I’ll have my driver collect you from work and return you to your flat. Meals will be provided and you’re free to do as you wish with Flora, although she’s accustomed to being in bed by eight. I’ll open an account for you if you want to take her anywhere. Feel free to use it.’
It was a fantastic opportunity to add to her savings. She knew that. She might even treat herself to some new work clothes. So why was she still hesitating? It was crazy.
‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll take the job.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_4c047f63-dee6-5d6d-a77e-2919b5a4caca)
STEFANO’S HOUSE, on the outskirts of London, was a dream house.
For one man and a young child, it was ridiculously big. There were six bedrooms, five bathrooms, too many undefined reception rooms to count and a kitchen that was spacious enough for a table at one end that could seat ten. It opened out to a spread of perfectly manicured lawns, in the middle of which was a magnificent swimming pool.
Paradise for an eight-year-old child and Sunny wondered whether the pool was used during the day. The weather had certainly been hot enough for swimming.
Life here couldn’t have been more different for Flora than her own life had been for her. She wondered what it would have been like had she, as a kid, been exposed to this level of opulence. She would have been terrified.
Now, as an adult, she could see the many material advantages but she was also beginning to see the many drawbacks. After four days of babysitting, she was slowly realising certain things and there was no need for Flora to verbalise them.
Surrounded by all this luxury, Flora was confused and unhappy. Her mother had died and she had been yanked across the ocean to a life she had never known and a father she seemed to resent.
‘I hate it here,’ she had confided the evening before, as Sunny had been about to switch off the bedroom light and leave the room. ‘I want to go back to New Zealand.’
‘I get that.’ Sunny had sat on the bed. There were no signposts as to how she should connect with a kid and it wasn’t in her to be patronising. She had had to grow up fast and that had implanted in her the belief that kids could deal with honesty far better than most adults thought.
They didn’t like being patronised and Sunny didn’t see why she should patronise Flora.
‘Sometimes circumstances change and, when that happens, you just have to go with it because you can never change things back to the way they were. That’s just the truth.’
Flora, she had discovered, was as mature as she herself had been at that age, although not for similar reasons. She was just a grown-up child with shaped opinions and the sort of suspicious, cautious nature that Sunny could understand because she, too, shared those traits. She had no time for her father and Sunny could have told her another harsh truth, which was that she was here and having him around was also something she couldn’t change so she might as well accept it.
It wasn’t in her brief to broker a relationship between father and daughter, however. In fact, it wasn’t in her brief to be curious about the dynamics of the household at all. She was there to babysit, no more, no less, but she liked the kid and she knew that Flora liked her, even though she still didn’t understand why because they never did anything Sunny imagined an eight-year-old would find fun. When she’d been eight, there had been no exciting trips to Adventure Parks or shiny new toys. She had taken refuge in books and so pointing Flora in the direction of more serious pursuits came as the natural choice.
They watched telly, always the National Geographic channel which they both enjoyed. They’d played a game of Scrabble and Sunny had laughed and told Flora that she could allow her to win or they could both play to the best of their ability and see what happened. The evening before, after they had eaten an early dinner at six, they had both attempted to bake and it had been a miserable failure.
‘I didn’t do much baking as a child,’ Sunny had said truthfully, ‘and I don’t think I ever got the hang of it. We’ll have to bin the bread. Or else hang onto it in case we need a lethal weapon.’ Which had made Flora laugh until she cried.
Between eight and ten Sunny worked and then Stefano would return with his driver.
His presence filled the house. He would stride in and Sunny would know that she’d been bracing herself for the brief encounter. They would exchange a couple of sentences and then the driver would whisk her away back to her flat and once there she would think about him. She tried to fight those thoughts and when she couldn’t she uneasily told herself that it was only natural that he was in her head because she was now working for him. If she hadn’t been, she would have forgotten all about him, however startling the impact he had made on her had been.
Now, with Flora in bed, Sunny settled down for her two hours’ work, which was absolute bliss because it was a luxury she could never had afforded when she’d been working at the restaurant. She was given the most basic of tasks but they tended to be time-consuming and it was good to be able to work her way through them in the peace and quiet of the sprawling mansion.
Having explored all of the rooms on the ground floor, she had settled on the smallest and the cosiest as her work room. It overlooked the back gardens and she enjoyed glancing up and letting her eyes wander over a vista of mown grass, sweeping trees and, in the distance, the open fields onto which the house backed. Compared to the view from the flat she shared, which gave onto the grimy pavements outside and a lone tree which looked as though it was pining to be anywhere but on a road in London, the view here was breathtaking and it made her feel as though she was on holiday.
Legs tucked under her, her long hair untidily pulled over one shoulder, she was hardly aware of Stefano’s appearance in the doorway until he spoke and then she yelped in shock, eyes adjusting to the impressive sight of him.
When she could predict his arrival back, she had time to brace herself for the physical impact he still seemed to have on her. With no time to prepare herself, she could only stare while her heart sped up and her mouth went dry.
He was tugging his tie off, dragging it down so that he could undo the top two buttons of his white shirt, and she tried her best not to gape at the sliver of brown skin exposed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she stammered, gathering the bits of paper spread around her and smartly shutting her computer.
‘I live here.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘No need to rush, Sunny. I’m back early so we can have a catch-up.’
‘A catch-up? On what?’
Stefano banked down a flare of irritation. Her desperation not to be in his company had not abated. They crossed paths when he returned from work and she was always packed up, jacket on, exchanging a few sentences on the move as she headed out the front door. Whatever she did with Flora, she was doing it right because his daughter, when prompted, actually now deigned to show some interest in his questions rather than sullenly sitting at the breakfast table in front of her cellphone playing games. The top-of-the-range cellphone, in retrospect, had not been the cleverest purchase on the planet.
‘I haven’t eaten,’ he said evenly, keen eyes noting the blonde length of her hair which, for once, wasn’t tied back, probably an omission because she hadn’t expected him home at eight-thirty. ‘Why don’t you join me in the kitchen?’
‘Of course,’ Sunny dutifully replied. She sneaked a covert look as he rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing muscled forearms sprinkled with dark hair. Everything about him was intensely masculine and her body behaved in disconcerting ways when she was confronted with it.
He was already moving off towards the kitchen and she followed, taking all her work with her and her bag so that she could leg it at speed as soon as their catch-up was finished.
‘Drink?’ He moved to the wine cooler, which was built into the range of pale cupboards, and extracted a bottle of white wine.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Relax, Sunny. One drink isn’t going to hurt you.’ Without giving her time for a second polite refusal, he poured them both a glass, handed one to her and rummaged for ingredients for a sandwich. ‘How are you finding the job?’
‘Fine,’ she said awkwardly and he turned round and looked at her with a frown.
‘Is that going to be the full extent of your contribution to this conversation?’ he asked coolly. ‘Monosyllabic answers? Flora talks about you.’
‘Does she?’ She fiddled with her hair and reminded herself that this was a perfectly normal business conversation, that of course he would be interested in knowing what she did with his daughter. But she still felt horribly nervous and she knew it was because she was too aware of him for her own good. If this strange reaction was her body reminding her that she was still alive, then she resented the reminder.
‘Tell me what you two do together.’ He dragged out a chair, sat down and began tucking into his sandwich.
‘Oh, the usual.’ Their eyes met and she reddened. Did she really want him asking why she was so jumpy around him? No. But he would if she continued to stutter and stammer and, as he had pointed out, answer his questions with unhelpful monosyllables. ‘Nothing very child-oriented, I’m afraid, although we did do a spot of baking yesterday after dinner.’
‘A failure, I’ve been told.’
‘I’m not very good when it comes to stuff like that,’ she said vaguely.
‘No mother-daughter bonding sessions in front of a stove?’
‘No.’ Sunny heard the tightness creep into her voice and she lowered her eyes. ‘Nothing like that.’
A girl with secrets. Was he really interested in finding out what those secrets were? Did he care one way or another? She was here to do a job and she was doing a damn fine job. Then she’d be gone...
He found his curiosity unsettling because it was something he never felt with any of the women he dated. He had been through one disastrous relationship and now he made sure to keep everything light and superficial when it came to the opposite sex. Curiosity was definitely neither light nor superficial.
But it was something she roused in him for no reason he could begin to understand.
‘I think Flora’s unhappy and lonely.’ She rushed into saying more than she had intended because she didn’t want him quizzing her about her past. Being here had brought home to her the differences in their worlds and she didn’t want him judging her because of her background. She was an aspiring lawyer, coerced into doing an impromptu job for him. She didn’t want him feeling sorry for her or pitying her.
‘I mean...she’s been displaced from everything she knew and I just get the feeling that she hasn’t settled here just yet. She hasn’t mentioned her school once and that’s saying something.’
Stefano shoved his plate to one side and sat back, arms folded behind his head. ‘Is that right?’ he drawled and Sunny bristled.
‘She’s just a child and she’s had to endure some pretty major life changes.’ The way he was staring at her with those dark, dark speculative eyes made her feel all hot and bothered and she was suddenly as angry with him as she was with herself for feeling so exposed.
‘And I hope you don’t mind me being honest,’ she said tersely, ‘but I don’t suppose it helps that you work such long hours.’ Oh, he’s never here, Flora had shrugged apropos of nothing in particular a couple of evenings ago, and Sunny had heard the hurt in her voice and been moved by it.
Stefano stiffened at the implied criticism in her voice, yet she was only stating the obvious, wasn’t she? He wondered when positive criticism had become something he could do without. He certainly never encountered it in his day-to-day life.
‘It’s impossible for me to conduct a nine-to-five existence.’
Sunny shrugged. ‘It’s none of my business anyway.’
Perversely, the fact that she was happy to back away from the contentious conversation rather than pursue it made him want to prolong it. ‘Don’t start conversations you don’t want to finish,’ he inserted. ‘I’m a big boy. I can take whatever you have to say to me. Did Flora tell you that?’
‘A passing remark. Look—’ Sunny raised her eyes to his and felt heat creep into her face ‘—I’m not here to have opinions on...on...how you handle Flora. I’m just here in a babysitting capacity. I need the money. I don’t suppose any of your nannies tell you what they really think because they’d just be here to do a babysitting job, like me.’
‘They don’t tell me what they think because they’re intimidated by me,’ Stefano said drily. ‘You don’t like being around me but you’re not intimidated by me. At least, that’s the impression I’ve got. Am I wrong?’
Sunny had no idea how they had got where they had but this felt like a very personal conversation. Or maybe it was the intimacy of being in the kitchen with him, just the two of them, that made it feel more personal than it really was.
‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘True or false?’
‘I try not to be intimidated by anyone,’ she was spurred into responding.
‘And that works for you?’
‘Yes. Yes, it does.’ Colour flared in her cheeks but she held his gaze defiantly. ‘I like to think, What’s the worst that can happen? I mean, you can sack me from this job but, if you do, then that’s fine. I’d be more than happy to return to my restaurant work.’
‘Long hours,’ he mused, startling her by the sudden change of topic.
‘What do you mean?’
‘When do you get time to relax? Do you have a busy social life on the weekends?’
‘I’m too busy building a career to have a busy social life on the weekends,’ she snapped.
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty-four, although I don’t see what my age has to do with anything.’
‘Katherine told me that you’re one of the most dedicated employees in the company. You’re in by eight every morning, sometimes earlier, and if you leave promptly for your job in the restaurant it never seems to affect the quality of your work, which is always of the highest standard. Which means, I’m guessing, that you work on weekends...’
Sunny was torn between pleasure that her hard work had been noted and dismay that she had been a topic of discussion. ‘You have to work hard in order to get on,’ she muttered, flushing.
‘To the extent that it consumes your every waking hour?’
‘It seems that work consumes all your waking hours,’ Sunny said defensively. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, Mr Gunn.’
‘If you call me Mr Gunn again, I’ll sack you.’
She didn’t know whether he was joking or not and she bit back the temptation to keep arguing with him.
‘And, believe it or not, work doesn’t consume all my waking hours,’ he told her softly, ‘I know how to play as well...’
Sunny stared. The tenor of his voice was so...sexy...and when she looked at him it felt as though his eyes were boring straight past her defences, seeing into parts of her that were soft and yielding and vulnerable, parts of her that hadn’t been forced into toughening up over the years.

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