you a bad mother! All you need is some tender loving care and some time to heal. I will stay and help as long as you need me—that’s a promise.’
‘Grazie. I am very lucky to have found you. It is clear my daughter is quite at home with you. It does my heart good to know that.’
At that moment, Dante was privately echoing his sister’s feelings on the matter. When he saw Bliss reach out to comfort his sister, as if giving solace to others was a natural and integral part of her make-up, he couldn’t stem the tide of pleasure and need that pulsed through him at the sight of her small, perfect hand against Tatiana’s arm. So much so, he almost wished it were him she was administering to. What was it about this pretty English girl with her mercurial violet eyes that tugged on his affections and desire more than any woman he’d known in ages? He’d barely been acquainted with her for five minutes and yet he was craving her attention like a lovesick teenager pining after the prettiest girl in the classroom. With a colossal effort he banished such thoughts as well as he could, knowing his first priority was to his sister and her little daughter. As soon as his mother arrived from Milan, Dante would go back to his work and put every thought of the arresting Bliss Maguire far from his mind.
But as Bliss returned to the living room later on that evening after bathing Renata and putting her to bed Dante’s hungry gaze followed her slim, denim-clad figure with unapologetic thirst, a quiet but explosive tension criss-crossing his taut midsection and making his body too unsettled to sit. Her feet were tantalisingly bare and the sweet tip-tilted curves of her breasts beneath her tight black tee shirt were all too evident to his appreciative male gaze. As she moved fluidly across to one of the couches, picked up a satin cushion and sat down with it clutched to her chest Dante was perturbed at how forcibly desire banished every single thought in his head except his very primeval need to make love to her.
‘Your niece is fast asleep. Poor little thing just couldn’t stay awake. Don’t worry if she wakes in the night—I’ll easily hear her from the room next door.’
For a long moment words were a commodity that Dante could no longer count on. Her eyes were so ravishing and her voice so soft that he was caught up in the spell of her. Pushing out of his chair, he stood by the armchair he had just vacated, the tension in him totally annihilating the possibility of keeping still right then. Mamma mia! What was this woman doing to him? He had hired her to help with Renny—not become an object of his suddenly unquenchable lust!
‘Dante?’
‘I hope she will not wake and that you will get a good night’s rest. I have become only too aware that looking after children is very tiring. In a good way, of course, but still tiring.’
His concern warmed Bliss more than it had a right to. ‘It must also take a lot out of you, doing what you do.’ Her interest in this man overriding her vow to keep as professionally distant as possible, she hugged the cream satin cushion to her breast and waited for him to answer.
‘Being a hotelier is not hard.’ Shrugging one wide muscular shoulder beneath his white shirt, Dante didn’t seem to consider it to be that big a deal. But running, not just one, but several international hotels must require a lot of business acumen as well as flair and dedication, Bliss imagined. Either he was being overly modest, or he simply had so much talent and ability that he didn’t view problems in that arena as other people might. Observing the coolly self-possessed and confident demeanour he presented, Bliss had no doubt it was the latter.
‘My father bought the lease on a hotel when I was only small. He worked hard to make it a success and eventually was able to buy it outright. By the time my brother Stefano and I were grown, he owned several other hotels as well. It was really not so difficult to join the business and help increase its success.’ What Dante didn’t reveal to the interested young woman seated on his sister’s couch was that when he had first stepped in to join his father, Antonio had already lost two of his hotels in investments that hadn’t come off and had been close to losing another. After studying accountancy and business management on a part-time basis in the evenings as well as learning the business firsthand from his father, Dante had acquired a distinct flair for doing exactly what was required to turn things around. In less than two years after he had officially started working with his father, they had not only regained the two hotels they had lost, but acquired another two as well. By the time Stefano had come along to swell the ranks, the di Andrea hotels had gone from strength to strength, earning an international reputation for first-class service and what Antonio proudly called ‘old-fashioned style and comfort’. The customers were always right and nothing they required was too difficult or impossible to get. With such a motto, as far as Dante was concerned, they could not lose.
‘And do you enjoy your work?’ Bliss wanted to know.
‘I am passionate about it.’ One corner of Dante’s intriguing mouth lifted ever so slightly at the edges as if he was amused she even had to ask such a question.
Bliss couldn’t help but sigh enviously. ‘I wish I could find a job or career I was passionate about.’
‘You do not like working behind the beauty counter?’
‘Are you joking?’ She made a face and moved the satin cushion to one side. ‘Sometimes I think I’d rather dig roads! At least I’d be out in the open in the fresh air instead of almost choking to death beneath the fumes of perfume.’
Dante couldn’t imagine a more preposterous scenario if he tried, and nor could he understand the suddenly overwhelming urge to protect this woman from such circumstances that she would be willing to consider such an outrageous option—even if she was only joking. Those small, perfect hands of hers were not made for hard manual labour. No, he could think of much better uses to put those hands to, and none of them involved digging up concrete.
‘You did not go to college or university?’ he asked her, at a loss to know why she was doing a job she clearly disliked so much. A defensive look darkened her eyes and she crossed her arms in front of her chest as if subconsciously seeking protection from unhappy memories.
‘No, I didn’t. My family’s circumstances weren’t conducive to me going. I went out to work to support myself when I was sixteen.’
‘You did not live at home?’
‘Yes, I lived at home.’ Swallowing down the almost intolerable ache inside her throat, Bliss made a snap decision to throw caution to the wind and tell this man the truth. It was a first for her. Hardly anyone knew the real circumstances of her family life, not even her best friend, Trudy. ‘When I was sixteen, my mother took her own life. My father already had a drink problem and it simply got worse. I had to look after him as well as myself…then two years after Mum died he just walked out. All he left was a note telling me not to look for him. I haven’t seen him in over seven years.’
Dante fell thoughtfully silent for a moment before speaking. ‘That must have been…very difficult.’
Glancing up at him, her violet eyes flashing like little shards of coloured ice, Bliss shook her head.
‘No. It was horrible and it was hell but it wasn’t “difficult”. Difficult means troublesome or perplexing and losing both my parents in the space of two years far exceeded that. Anyway…I don’t know why I told you all that. I’m not generally known for spilling my guts to a complete stranger.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘I WOULD like to think by now that I am not a stranger to you, Bliss. And I am more sorry than I can say that such a terrible thing happened to you.’
Instinctively
