full, pert breasts, while the frayed shorts emphasised the length of her slender legs. Striding up to her, he saw that she wasn’t as young as he’d first thought, and neither was she intimidated by him—far from it. This girl wasn’t afraid of anything, he sensed as she held his stare.
‘And you are?’ he prompted shortly.
In contrast to his irritable mood, she appeared to be relaxed and slightly bemused.
‘Cassandra Rich. Your new gardener?’
Something about the surname chimed in his head, but he pushed that aside for now. Evaluating staff was his strength. The success of his business had been founded on that skill.
He stared deep into a frank, cornflower-blue gaze and ran a quick assessment. She was fresh, bright and intelligent. Inner strength, combined with the summing up she was giving him, was so novel and unexpected that he almost broke into a smile—something he did so rarely that his body took the cue and responded more insistently.
‘I’m here for the summer,’ she volunteered, glancing around.
Good. That gave him time to work with, he reasoned dryly.
Was he in lust with this woman?
Possibly. She was so unlike the sophisticated types he was used to she required further study—and a category all her own.
‘Where’s the rest of the gardening team?’ he demanded, frowning.
‘They’re taking staggered holidays,’ she explained with a shrug, drawing his attention to her bright blue eyes as she pushed a lock of her honey-gold hair away from them. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she added, ‘to plug the gap.’
He had moved on from assessing her unusually forward manner to wondering about the rest of her hair, hidden beneath the ugly cap. He could so easily imagine freeing it and seeing it cascade down her back, just before he fisted a hank of it to pull her head back to kiss her throat.
‘You can handle this entire estate on your own?’ he demanded sceptically, bringing himself back with difficulty to the business side of this encounter.
‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’ she said. ‘At least until the others return.’
‘Yes, you will,’ he confirmed sharply, still trying to work out whether her manner was impudent or overly straightforward. Meanwhile, she was staring at him inquisitively, as she might study an unusual exhibit in a gallery. They were polar opposites, curious about each other—the billionaire, hard and driven, and the mystery girl who gave casual a new edge.
His groin tightened when she smiled. He liked the way her full lips curved and her ski-slope nose wrinkled attractively.
‘I’m not as helpless as I look,’ she assured him. ‘And I promise I won’t let you down.’
Her promise pleased him. ‘If you were helpless you wouldn’t be employed here.’
He turned away, knowing he should feel exhausted, but he was suddenly wide-awake.
He hadn’t slept for the past twenty-four hours as he’d wrestled a trade agreement to the table that would benefit not just his own group of companies but his country. Word of his success had spread like wildfire in the power halls of Rome, attracting lean, predatory women with crippling shoes and sprayed-on clothes—another reason he had been pleased to leave the city. He could have called any one of them to accompany him to Tuscany. They were decorative and efficient and they knew the score, but none of them had appealed. He didn’t know what he wanted, but it wasn’t that.
‘If there’s anything I can do for you?’ the girl called after him, stopping him in his tracks.
Was she referring to a cup of coffee or something more?
‘No. Thank you.’ He didn’t want company, he reminded himself. At least not yet.
Success in business rode him. It also turned him on. He’d been cramped up in the city for too long. He was a physical man, bound by convention in a custom-made suit, who was forced to spend most of his working life in air-conditioned offices when what he longed for was his wild land in Tuscany. Tucked between majestic granite mountains, his country estate was an indulgence he chose not to share with anyone—certainly not with some member of his part-time staff.
‘Anything at all?’ she pressed.
Did she have any idea how provocative she was? As he had turned to face her she had opened her arms wide, putting her impressive breasts on show.
‘Nothing. Thank you,’ he repeated irritably. ‘Get back to your gardening.’
He needed relief in the form of a woman, but this woman was too young and too inexperienced for him to waste his time on.
He ground his jaw with impatience when she started to follow him, and made a gesture to indicate that she should go back. The only conversation he was interested in was with real people like Maria and Giuseppe, and he resented her intrusion. She had changed the dynamics completely. She was an outsider, an interloper, and though she might hold appeal, was that smile as innocent as it looked?
If there was one thing he understood, it was the needs of a woman’s body and the workings of her mind, but this girl was so different it frustrated him that he had yet to make a judgement about her.
Cass shivered involuntarily. What was wrong with her? After deciding the safest thing was to steer clear of Marco di Fivizzano, she was doing the absolute opposite. It was as if her feet had a mind of their own and had decided to follow him to the house. She should know better, when he came from the same shallow, glitzy world as her parents—
‘Watch out!’ he snapped.
‘Sorry.’ She jumped back with alarm, realising he’d stopped, and she’d almost cannoned into him.
‘Have you nothing better to do than follow me to the house?’ he demanded in a tone that spoke of deals hard won and nights without sleep.
‘I’ve finished for the day,’ she explained, ‘and I just thought—’
‘I might need help?’ he queried. He stared down at her from his great height as if she were an irritation he didn’t yet have an answer to. ‘If you’re going to be here for the summer, you’d better tell me something about yourself.’
Her brain had stalled beneath the blazing stare. What could she tell him?
How much did she want to tell him?
‘Come on—keep up,’ he insisted, striding ahead. ‘Let’s start with where you come from.’
‘England—the UK.’ She had to jog to keep up with him. ‘It’s a region called the Lake District. I don’t expect you—’
‘I know the area. Family?’
The word ‘family’ was enough to spear her with ugly memories. That was what she didn’t want to talk about, let alone take her thoughts back to the day a small bewildered child had stood at the side of the family swimming pool looking down at her parents floating, drowned after a drug-fuelled fight. She settled for the heavily censored version.
‘I
