for her toes with the sort of determination she desperately needed.
‘I’m sorry, Alessandro,’ she said, with more truth that he could ever have imagined. ‘It’s not my place.’
He was floating on his back, watching her. When she said that, he stood up in a shower of droplets. Michelle’s eyes were instantly riveted on him. She couldn’t tear them away. He looked magnificent. Two metres of tightly packed muscles and smooth, flawless skin. He had the pale colouring of someone who spent all day behind a desk, but who would toast to a golden tan in no time at all. Michelle was imagining the effect already. Tiny trickles of water led her gaze down over his bunched pectorals and his flat, muscular belly.
Laughing at her expression, when he said his next words he gave her exactly the push she needed.
‘If you’re determined to be a member of staff, then I’ll stick to the rules too. I’m going to give you a direct order. It’s OK to enjoy life—so get into this pool and start,’ he called to her.
Every second of Michelle’s upbringing had been geared towards following orders. But this one sent a thrill through her.
Throwing off her dressing gown, she dived straight into the water. Once beneath its surface, the simple feeling of freedom relaxed her in a rush. The chill shock invigorated her, as Alessandro had promised. She surfaced, laughing and splashing. Looking around to orientate herself, she saw his dark head dip beneath the water again. Suddenly she felt his hands on her legs. Frictionless, they glided upwards over her body. Flipping onto her back, Michelle kicked away towards the side of the pool with frantic strokes. When she reached it, gasping, he was right beside her.
‘No—please don’t fool about, Alessandro. I’m not a very good swimmer!’
He smiled, his white teeth as perfect as his reply. ‘That dive looked pretty impressive to me.’
Michelle giggled. ‘It gets the shock over quickly. I’d rather do that than suffer inch by inch, edging down the steps.’
As she spoke, he looked down at her legs through the shimmering water. She blushed.
‘You’re an athlete.’ He nodded at the pale marks exposed by her bikini. ‘I can tell from your bronzage.’
During her few precious weeks of freedom Michelle had heard plenty of French spoken with a local accent. She had heard it spoken with an English accent, too. But this was the first time she had heard it given an Italian glow. She couldn’t help laughing at the sound.
‘No, I’m not! I just run whenever I get the time. It helps me think through my problems.’
‘I’m amazed a pretty young woman like you has any problems. The immaculate state of the villa shows how good you are at your job. What else is there to worry about?’
‘My mother died in April.’
His expression softened. ‘I’m sorry.’
Michelle mentally kicked herself for troubling a guest with her affairs, and spoke quickly to defuse the situation. ‘There’s no need to apologise. We were never exactly close.’
‘Close?’ Alessandro’s face compressed. He looked down at the fingers of his left hand as they spread out beneath the water. ‘Some relationships are a waste of good working time. My own mother couldn’t have picked me out of a police line-up.’
Michelle was so stunned she forgot to be polite. ‘You can’t mean that?’
He gazed across the water to the villa’s herb garden. She guessed it wasn’t because he was admiring the ornamental thyme.
‘Everything I’ve achieved in my life has been in spite of my family, not because of them.’
Michelle wondered if his remark had anything to do with those sacked relatives. She decided it was better not to ask.
‘Then I’m sorry for you. Even my mother wasn’t as bad as that.’
His attention snapped straight back to her. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy on me. It will only lead to trouble.’
Curious, she put her head on one side. ‘What do you mean?’
His eyes were twin pools of mystery. ‘If you keep looking at me like that, Michelle, you’ll soon find out.’
Chilly rivulets of water trickled from her hair and she shivered. The points of her nipples were rising—and not only from the cold. It was the way Alessandro’s gaze was totally focussed on her eyes. She could almost feel him searching her soul. No one had ever studied her so intently—not in her whole life. If she was honest, no one had paid any attention to her at all. They only noticed when she hadn’t done something. The interview she’d missed because her mother had destroyed her portfolio, the single occasion she had been too sick to turn out for Spicer and Co…
‘You have a fascinating face, Michelle. Let me draw you,’ he said abruptly.
In all her years of sketching Michelle had never had the nerve to ask a stranger to pose for her. She thought of all those lost opportunities and wished she could be spontaneous, like Alessandro. He had come straight out with a suggestion she would never have been brave enough to make in a million years. So many times she had felt the urge to sketch or paint a person, but had been too shy to do anything about it. Now he was showing her how it should be done.
‘I—I don’t know.’ She scraped her wet hair back from her face to give herself time to think. ‘I work for Mr Bartlett, really, and if he found out I was lounging around being drawn, when I should be busy in the house…’
Alessandro threw off her objection. ‘You’re working for me at the moment. Not Terence.’
Michelle paused. There was nothing she could say except, ‘If you put it like that, I can’t refuse.’
He smiled. ‘Yes…’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The more I see of you, Michelle, the more I realise you’re wasted here. You ought to be immortalised somehow. And I’m exactly the man to do it. Wait here. I’ll go and fetch my things.’
She had no choice. He vaulted out of the pool and picked up a robe from one of the poolside chairs. He pulled it on and walked quickly into the villa.
Michelle knew she should be feeling cold. She wasn’t. The sight of his muscles sleek with water had brought a slow-burning fire to life deep within her body. Alessandro Castiglione had a lot to answer for. From the moment he’d landed he had invaded every part of her life. First he’d stopped her sleeping. Then he’d aroused her by touch, outside the studio house. Now he had persuaded her to wait for him, wet through and waist-deep in water.
As he disappeared from sight, a chill wind rippled across the pool. Michelle’s skin contracted with the cold. Sinking beneath the wavelets, she let the water waft her feet off the floor of the pool. She knew she ought to thrash through a few lengths to warm herself up. Her heart wasn’t in it. Exercise no longer had the power to distract her. All she could think of was Alessandro. Big, strong Alessandro Castiglione. He acted the part of blasé tycoon to perfection, but his bitter-chocolate eyes told a different story. When Michelle shivered now, it was at the thought of his deep brown gaze. If only she could decode its meaning.
Twisting in the water,
