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She was caught in his piercing gaze. ‘Trust me. There’s nothing more intimate on offer than that.’
Everything went very still. In the silence, Michelle became painfully aware of a sound inside her head. It was all her dreams, crumbling into dust.
‘Unless,’ he said slowly, ‘you have something more intimate in mind…?’
His voice lilted with danger. Michelle sensed it. Her mother might have seen off all her boyfriends in the past, but when it came to Alessandro Castiglione no previous experience was necessary.
Their swing seat rocked gently in the warm breeze, scented by low-growing thyme. Michelle hoped it would cool her flaming cheeks. Instead she felt hotter than ever. She began moving uneasily. Strange feelings flowed through her body every time she looked at him.
His arm dropped lazily along the back of the bench. ‘What’s the matter, cara?’
She stood up quickly. ‘I don’t like this.’
He laughed. It was a low, provocative sound.
‘No? I think you like it very much.’
Christina Hollis was born in Somerset, and now lives in the idyllic Wye Valley. She was born reading, and her childhood dream was to become a writer. This was realised when she became a successful journalist and lecturer in organic horticulture. Then she gave it all up to become a full-time mother of two, and to run half an acre of productive country garden. Writing Mills & Boon® romances is another ambition realised. It fills most of her time, between complicated rural school runs. The rest of her life is divided between garden and kitchen, either growing fruit and vegetables or cooking with them. Her daughter’s cat always closely supervises everything she does around the home, from typing to picking strawberries!
Recent titles by the same author:
THE RUTHLESS ITALIAN’S INEXPERIENCED WIFE
HER RUTHLESS ITALIAN BOSS ONE NIGHT IN HIS BED COUNT GIOVANNI’S VIRGIN THE ITALIAN BILLIONAIRE’S VIRGIN
THE TUSCAN TYCOON’S PREGNANT HOUSEKEEPER
BY
CHRISTINA HOLLIS
To all carers, everywhere
CHAPTER ONE
ANY MINUTE now! Michelle thought as the prow of the Arcadia nosed around the headland of St Valere. She had been waiting for this. Even so, she took a moment to admire her employer’s vast yacht as it cut a white slit through the bright blue Mediterranean.
It would be a terrible wrench when this temporary job came to an end—if anyone could call being housekeeper at the villa Jolie Fleur ‘work’. This position was a godsend, although the thought of her contract coming to an end lurked on her horizon like a big black cloud. And right now she was watching a thunderhead arrive to join it.
The previous day, her employer’s domestic manager had rung Michelle from the yacht. Sounding tense and exasperated, the woman had warned her that an unexpected guest was going to be staying at the villa. Michelle had soon found out why. One of her employer’s grandest guests was not fitting in to life on board ship. Michelle had laughed at this, thinking it was because of seasickness. But the truth was more than that.
Billionaire art dealer Alessandro Castiglione couldn’t be confined to the ocean. He was supposed to be taking a few weeks’ complete break from work, the housekeeper had said, but her tone had told Michelle more than her words. She had known then what was in store for her, because she had seen plenty of men like him. Alessandro Castiglione would be a driven man, who drove his staff mad at the same time. He might be, as the woman had told her, ‘The best-looking thing in every magazine!’, but Michelle knew it took more than good looks to keep a tycoon at the top of his game.
Cleaning offices in central London had given her a glimpse of the brutal side of business life. So when the domestic manager had added a bit of gossip, Michelle had taken it with a pinch of salt. This man, she’d said, had recently taken over his father’s firm and sacked nearly all its employees. If that wasn’t bad enough, the woman had added in a low voice, they were all his aunts, uncles and cousins!
What sort of man would sack his relatives? Even Michelle’s mother had never done that! She thought back to the life she had been so glad to abandon a few months earlier. Working for her mother had been hell. Mrs Spicer was an absolute perfectionist. The two of them, as Spicer and Co, had built up a reputation for fast, discreet domestic service anywhere in central London. Mrs Spicer had given the orders. Michelle had been the ‘and Co’ part of their business. She did all the dirty work.
But I’m in sole charge now! Michelle thought. Despite her nervousness, she allowed herself a small smile as she waited to greet her famous house guest. However bad he was, Alessandro Castiglione couldn’t possibly be a worse task-master than her mother.
Michelle always kept Jolie Fleur spotless, so this unexpected arrival hadn’t made too much extra work for her. And what was the worst this man could do? Sack her? She only had a few weeks left in this position anyway. He might be an unexploded bomb, but Michelle had total confidence in her skills. She knew that if she worked hard and kept out of his way there would be no reason for him to lose his temper—at least not with her.
A man who dumps his own relatives will think nothing of throwing me out on my ear, and I’m not ready to leave! She thought. A keen sense of self-preservation had got her this far in life. Now she had escaped from England, she was curious to see how much further she might go.
As she watched from the clifftop overlooking the bay, a shape detached itself from the yacht’s flight deck. It was a helicopter. Michelle shaded her eyes with her hand. It was always exciting to watch it swing into the hard blue sky with the grace of a wheeling seagull. She spent so long gazing up, the helicopter was almost overhead before she remembered she ought to be in position to welcome her unwelcome guest. She walked around to the front doors of the villa, making one last check of the exterior as she did so. The windows and white paintwork gleamed in the blinding sunlight. Inside the house, everything was ready. The caretaker and the gardener were the only permanent members of staff during the holiday season, but they weren’t anywhere to be seen.
Nervously, she checked her fingernails and her uniform. Everything was clean and neat, as usual. Keeping busy was Michelle’s way of coping with the world. With nothing left to panic about, she ran through what she would do when the unexpected house guest landed.
I’ll give him a smile and a slight bow of my head, she thought. Then I’ll extend my hand for a handshake, tell him to ring me if he needs anything, and vanish.
That didn’t sound too difficult. The tricky part was actually managing it. Michelle loved this job because it gave her the chance to spend a lot of time on her own. People always made her nervous. The prospect of meeting a man who was apparently never photographed with the same model twice—woman or car—terrified her.
The incoming helicopter’s rumble increased,
