… to serve. You know?’
Ana stared at her. A pot bubbled on the stove, emitting a wonderful spicy scent. A green salad was in the process of being made on the worktop, next to fat red tomatoes and yellow peppers in a basket.
‘Signor di Agnio doesn’t want you here,’ Ana said after a moment, choosing her words with care. ‘He wants you in the lounge. Now.’
Meghan shook her head. Her nerves were taut as wire, threatening to snap. She couldn’t face it … them.
‘Perhaps,’ she finally said, speaking slowly as she searched for the right words. ‘But I came here to serve the food, and this is where the food is.’
‘No.’ Ana shook her head.
Meghan clenched her fists at her sides but kept her smile in place. ‘Why don’t I just put an apron on?’ she suggested, and, spying one hanging on a hook by the door, slipped it on before Ana could protest.
The housekeeper shrugged, and turned away with a grunt.
Meghan scanned the worktop, wishing she could make herself useful. She wondered about the men waiting for her. What did they really expect? Would Alessandro come and find her?
She shivered. It was stupid to have come here, to have thought she could exorcise her personal demons by seeing this little arrangement through. She didn’t have the strength, the power.
The control.
All she wanted to do now was run away. Hide. But where? She suddenly appreciated how isolated Villa Tre Querce was, how isolated she was.
How alone.
Vulnerable.
‘I thought you’d be hiding in here.’
She turned to see Alessandro standing in the kitchen doorway, one shoulder leaning against the frame. He’d changed out of his suit and now wore a casual white button-down shirt, open at the neck to expose the tanned column of his throat. He wore faded jeans with a leather belt, casual yet expensive, and fitting him far too wonderfully.
It was not, Meghan thought, an outfit a man wore to a business dinner. He looked too relaxed, too comfortable in his own skin for her liking. He looked ready to be entertained, amused, enjoyed.
She wanted business suits, papers and briefcases, laptops and mobiles. A business dinner, with both men too involved in their work to spare her a glance.
Except that was not how it was going to be … how Alessandro would let it be. She could tell that right now, in the way his lips curled upwards in a predatory smile, his eyes taking in her appearance, resting on her face with a flare of hunger, desire.
She was not making that up, she knew, nor the answering flicker in her own core.
She swallowed. ‘Where else would I be? And I’m not hiding.’
‘Of course not.’ Humour lurked in those steely eyes, in the twitching of his moulded lips. He took a step into the kitchen. ‘I thought I told you to meet me in the lounge.’
‘Is your dinner companion in there?’ She hated the fact that her voice wavered. ‘Has he arrived already?’
‘You’ll see.’ He twitched the apron from around her neck, balling it in his fist before tossing it aside. ‘You don’t need that.’
One more piece of her armour taken away. One more layer stripped bare.
‘I didn’t want to get my uniform dirty.’
He raised one eyebrow. ‘Uniform?’ he asked with obvious scepticism, before turning to leave the kitchen, clearly expecting her to follow. And, wordlessly, she did.
She followed him to the lounge, its double doors opening to a room scattered with comfortable sofas upholstered in varying shades of cream. The few pieces of artwork on the walls were vivid splashes of colour, still-lifes of flowers, scenes of Umbria in bold strokes, that made Meghan pause to admire their sheer vivacity.
Then she looked around. The room was empty.
‘Where is your guests?’ she began, but something in Alessandro’s satisfied look as he stood in the doorway made the question die on her lips. She had a bad feeling about this.
‘ You are my guest, Meghan,’ he said softly. ‘There is no one else.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘NO.’ MEGHAN said the first word that came to mind, desperately wanting it to be true. ‘No, no, no.’
‘Yes.’ Alessandro smiled. He seemed pleased. Far too pleased. As if he’d given her a gift, a pleasant surprise. A treat.
‘You hired me to be a waitress,’ Meghan pointed out in what she hoped was a reasonable tone. ‘For a dinner party. That’s why I’m here.’
‘I hired you,’ he agreed, ‘but, as you remember, it was for a quiet dinner for two. There are two of us in this room right now.’
His words drenched her in icy shock. Meghan stared incredulously. ‘You never even intended for someone else to come? What about the man you ate lunch with?’
Alessandro’s expression hardened. ‘He has other plans for the evening. He is a business acquaintance, nothing more.’
‘And what am I?’ Her voice rose shrilly, and she pressed a fist to her lips. She moved around the room restlessly, seeking escape, but there was none. She didn’t have a car. She didn’t even know where the villa was. She had no place to go in Spoleto. And Alessandro was blocking the door.
She’d walked straight into a trap. She’d agreed to it willingly. Who wouldn’t think she deserved this, that she wanted this? Disgust roiled through her, washed over in sickening waves. Terror followed on its heels. She closed her eyes, struggling for composure. Control.
She opened them, saw Alessandro regarding her with a mixture of curiosity and compassion. She took a deep, shuddering breath. There was always Ana in the kitchen. She could handle this. She had to handle this.
‘Whatever you thought about me, it’s wrong. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to have dinner with you. Take me back to Spoleto now or I’ll press charges.’
Alessandro raised his eyebrows, taking in her words with a thoughtful nod. ‘You’re scared,’ he said after a moment.
Meghan laughed shrilly. ‘Of course I’m scared! A strange man—a powerful man—has trapped me in his house, alone! Under false pretences! Now, let me go.’
He continued watching her, his expression assessing but not without compassion. Meghan didn’t care. Couldn’t think. She paced the room, caged and desperate.
‘Why weren’t you frightened,’ he asked after a moment, ‘when you believed I’d hired you to serve my lunch guest and me? Then there would have been two men here with you. Shouldn’t that have been twice as alarming?’
Meghan whirled around and glared at him, fear replaced
