Her Mediterranean Playboy

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘HOW are you feeling?’ Ally asked her sister, delighted in the change in her appearance. Gone was the gaunt, hollow-eyed look of before, and in its place was a freshness of complexion. Her deep blue eyes were now clear and full of hope, instead of dark and empty with despair. She had even put on a tiny bit of weight. Not much, but enough to fill out her cheekbones, giving her a healthier look overall.

  ‘I am feeling much better,’ Alex said. ‘The counselling has been so helpful, and this new medication is making me feel much more normal. I will probably always feel bad about—’ She choked up for a moment before going on, ‘About the baby. But the counsellor has helped me accept it wasn’t my fault I had a miscarriage. It was nothing I did or didn’t do. The doctor told me one in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage, but I don’t think I really heard him at the time. I would never have gone through with the abortion, but when I lost my baby I lost all hope of getting Rocco back. And yet now I can’t believe how dumb I was to imagine myself in love with someone so selfish.’

  Ally’s gaze went to the door of her sister’s room, where a young man in a wheelchair was waiting patiently to spend time with Alex. Apparently they had struck up quite a relationship in the time Alex had been in the clinic. Andrew Claxton, a fellow Australian, had been injured in a road accident in which his best friend had died. Alex, in these last few days, had been one of his mainstays of support, putting her pain aside to help him cope with the slow climb back to reclaiming life.

  It gave Ally much hope to see her sister concentrating on someone else’s issues instead of her own. It seemed to signal to her that the emotionally healing process Alex so desperately needed was now well on its way.

  And as for hers?

  Ally was still struggling to come to terms with Vittorio’s treatment of her. She felt used. She felt angry. And yet she knew a lot of the blame was her own. In her naïveté and inexperience she had stupidly fallen in love with him. And he had no doubt intended that to happen, in a twisted form of revenge for how she had deceived him.

  Thinking back over their relationship, she found it hard to put an exact time on when he must have realised the truth. It made her cringe in embarrassment at the bare-faced lies she had told to his face. But some good had come out of it all, at least. According to the morning’s newspaper, Chiara had delivered a healthy little boy, seven weeks premature, but doing very well. There was some comfort in that, if nothing else. At least Vittorio’s mission had been accomplished.

  He would soon forget all about his entanglement with her. In fact she wondered if he had spared a single thought for the woman who had spent just one magic, unforgettable moment—for her, at least—in his arms.

  Ally gave herself a stern talking-to. He had spent many such magic moments with women much more experienced than she; he was probably congratulating himself that he had avoided a very public scene by her leaving without a fuss. He had made no effort to contact her, which suggested he had no intention of continuing their affair.

  Alex was still holed up with Andrew an hour or so later when Ally next came to visit, so she retreated to the extensive gardens instead. Even though it was now close to the end of September, the leaves were only just turning to amber and red-gold hues. They fluttered to the ground at her feet in what seemed a halfhearted attempt to make way for autumn and then winter.

  She heard the crunch of leaves under someone’s feet and, expecting to see Alex’s therapist, who often sought her out on her walks in the grounds, she was totally shocked to see the tall figure of Vittorio standing there.

  ‘Hello, Alice,’ he said.

  She arched one brow at him. ‘Don’t you mean Ally?’ she asked with a guarded look.

  ‘You are one and the same, are you not?’ he returned.

  She turned away and kicked at some crunchy leaves with her foot. ‘I can’t imagine why you are here—other than to gloat over how you played me for a fool.’

  ‘Is that not what I should be saying to you?’ he countered.

  She swung back round to look at him, her eyes blazing. ‘You didn’t have to sleep with me. That was taking things too far. I only did what I did to find out what had happened between Rocco and my sister. She wouldn’t tell me all the details, and I couldn’t find out any other way. I didn’t expect you to seduce me. That was about as low as you could go, considering how…how I felt about you.’

  ‘How do you feel about me?’

  She glared at him. ‘How do you think I feel about you?’

  He waited a beat or two before asking, ‘Do you love me?’

  The question caught her totally off guard. She stood looking at him, her eyes as wide as dinner plates, her heart beating as heavily as a bass drum, her stomach tipping and tilting as she saw the glint of desire burning in his coal-black eyes.

  ‘W-what sort of question is that?’ she managed to croak, her heart still doing crazy back-flips in her chest.

  ‘I need to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because everything depends on it.’

  ‘Your business, you mean?’ she said with an embittered look. ‘You do realise all I have to do is call Paolo Lombardi and tell him what a creep his godson is, don’t you? Don’t think I won’t, because I tell you I’m sorely tempted to do so. And he would be appalled to hear of how you used me so despicably. I know I could convince him to remove his portfolio from your account. He has a lot of respect for me.’

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ Vittorio said. ‘As soon as I realised you worked for the Australian branch of his company I spoke to him about my concerns over Rocco. I thought Paolo had the right to know what was going on, in case it somehow got out in the press. We had a long discussion, and as a result I have decided to terminate Rocco’s position in my company.’

  Ally frowned. ‘But what about Chiara?’ she asked. ‘She’s just had a baby. She’ll be feeling so vulnerable right now.’

  ‘Chiara is not as naïve as I thought,’ Vittorio said. ‘It seems she has regretted her marriage from day one, and once she has recovered from the birth she is going to ask for a divorce. It is the wake-up call Rocco needs. He will either turn his life around or continue along the destructive path he has chosen.’

  ‘And what about what you did to me?’ Ally asked with a frosty glare.

  He blew out a sigh and shoved back his wayward fringe with his right hand. ‘I am sorry I did not tell you I knew who you were when I initially found out. You left your handbag in the car that first day. When Beppe brought it in he dropped it in the foyer, and amongst the things that fell out was the money Rocco had insisted you had stolen. I was furiously angry, and was about to come back upstairs to have it out with you when I saw your passport on the floor at my feet. I picked it up, and of course one glance confirmed my suspicions.’

  Ally wanted to be furious with him for allowing her to continue her charade while he had no doubt been laughing behind her back, but somehow she felt as if he had more to explain, so remained silent.

  ‘From that point on I was concerned that Rocco was not giving me the complete story of his involvement with your sister,’ he went on. ‘I had no idea he had insisted she have a termination. Nor did I know about the threats he made towards her. I can hardly believe he would do such a thing. He was even prepared to see her face the authorities over the money he gave her. One assumes he hoped no one would believe her version of events. What he did was unforgivable. I cannot think about it without wanting to throttle him.’

  Ally touched him on the arm, which stopped him in his tracks. ‘She didn’t have an abortion,’ she said, looking up at his tortured and so beloved features. ‘She lost the baby before she went through with his demand. She was off her medication. She has a condition…I don’t want to go into the details now, but without regular medication she doesn’t always act rationally. I think meeting your brother-in-law and what ensued was part of what led to a breakdown. She is on the mend now. She has even met someone who is
clearly in love with her for who she is—which is what she needs right now more than anything.’

  He cupped her cheek with the warmth of his palm. ‘Is that not what everyone needs?’ he asked, looking down at her adoringly. ‘To be loved and accepted for who they really are?’

  Ally’s heart began to flutter about in her chest. ‘I—I’m not sure what you’re saying…’

  He smiled and brushed the pad of his thumb across the cushion of her bottom lip, where the tip of her tongue had so recently passed. ‘You could have ruined me. You had the chance in your hands and yet you did not do so. You said it yourself just now. All you had to do was talk to Paolo Lombardi and ask him to withdraw every single euro he has invested with me, and yet you did not. Why did you not take your revenge on me while you had the chance?’

  Ally moistened her dry lips again, and raised her eyes to his. ‘Because I don’t believe in hurting the people I love,’ she said. ‘It’s sort of my life’s credo.’

  ‘You love me, Alice Benton?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly misting over. ‘Enough to marry me as soon as it can be arranged?’

  She blinked at him in surprised delight. ‘You really mean it?’

  ‘Am I not doing a good enough job of proposing, tesore mio?’ he asked with a self-deprecating smile. ‘Do I need to find some other way of convincing you I am for real?’

  She gave him a pert little smile in return. ‘Perhaps you could run by me those fringe benefits you mentioned a few days ago? I seem to remember they were pretty convincing at the time.’

  His eyes danced with amusement. ‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said, and kissed her passionately and lingeringly until her head was spinning.

  He lifted his mouth from hers after a few breathless minutes and asked, ‘Now will you agree to marry me? Or do I have to kiss you again?’

  Ally smiled as she hugged him tightly around the waist. ‘Yes, I will certainly marry you. I love you, Vittorio Vassallo. I love, love, love you.’

  He brought his mouth back down to the soft bow of hers. ‘Then I think it is time you called me Vito,’ he said, and sealed her mouth with a kiss that totally blew her mind.

  ITALIAN BOSS, HOUSEKEEPER MISTRESS

  Kate Hewitt

  CHAPTER ONE

  ZOE CLARK slipped the sunglasses off her nose to survey the discreet grey limousine idling at the kerb.

  ‘Nice,’ she murmured as the uniformed driver opened the door with a flourish. He’d already taken her one beaten up suitcase and stowed it in the boot.

  Now she slipped into the cool leather interior of the luxury car and leaned her head back against the plush seat.

  This was going to be a fantastic summer.

  A smile bloomed and grew across her face as she leaned forward and flipped open the mini-fridge.

  ‘Is this complimentary?’ she called to the driver.

  He stiffened before answering in heavily accented English, ‘Of course.’

  Zoe grinned and plucked a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. She’d rather have had the little bottle of cognac, but she didn’t think it would be prudent to meet her future employer with brandy on her breath.

  She took a swig of juice as the limousine pulled away from Milan’s Malpensa Airport and into the teeming traffic.

  The sky was cloudless and blue, the sun glinting brightly off the cars that zipped and zoomed their way across half a dozen motorway lanes.

  Zoe sipped her drink, feeling the first familiar wave of fatigue crash over her. She hadn’t slept much on the plane, and now a bit grimly she wondered if her employer would expect her to start work that morning.

  For a moment she imagined him greeting her at the door of his villa, a feather duster and frilly apron in hand. What exactly did the temporary housekeeper of an Italian villa in the lakes do?

  The job description had been surprisingly pithy—a scant two lines of tiny print in the back of the New York Times. Blink and you’d miss it. But Zoe had had a lifetime’s experience of looking at such ads, circling them in red ink—usually with a pen that was sputtering or leaking or had lost its life altogether—before handing them hopefully to her mother.

  What about this one?

  There was always something better, something great right around the corner. There had to be.

  The driver turned off the motorway, leaving behind the rolling hills of Lombardy as well as the endless traffic of the capital’s outskirts for a smaller road lined with plane trees. Zoe glanced at the small road sign that read ‘Como: 25 kilometres’ before leaning her head once more against the soft leather seat and closing her eyes.

  She must have dozed—she could sleep anywhere, except perhaps on planes—for when she woke the car was climbing higher into the hills, the dark green, densely forested peaks of the mountains providing a stunning backdrop.

  She rapped on the dividing window, and with a long-suffering air the driver pressed a button so the glass slid smoothly away.

  ‘Are we almost there?’

  ‘Sì, signorina.’

  Zoe sat back, taking in the ancient winding road, and the wrought-iron gates that presented themselves at intervals, guarding the wealthy residents within, whose villas could barely be glimpsed through the heavy foliage of rhododendrons and bougainvillea. As the car continued up the twisting road the lake shimmered enticingly at each bend, before disappearing again, and Zoe found herself turning around to look at it, to find its brilliant blue promise winking at her from between the trees.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ she said to the driver, before realising belatedly that he’d already pressed a button to return the dividing glass to its original place.

  Then the car was turning smoothly into a narrow lane, and the driver spoke into an intercom affixed to an ancient crumbling wall. Zoe couldn’t hear what was spoken, but after a moment the iron gates swung inwards, and the car proceeded up the lane.

  Foliage crowded the car densely on both sides of the drive, so that when it finally fell away to reveal the villa Zoe let her breath out in a sharp, impressed exhalation.

  Wow.

  A sweep of jewel-green lawn led up to a villa that seemed more like a palace—a palazzo—than the villa Zoe had been imagining.

  This place was a castle.

  And she was supposed to clean it all?

  She counted twenty-two multi-paned windows glinting in the sunlight before she stopped.

  The car pulled round the circular drive to the front of the villa. A pair of solid oak doors, looking as if they’d survived the Dark Ages, remained ominously shut.

  Zoe climbed out of the car before the driver could come round, earning his continued disapproval. He took her suitcase from the boot and deposited it on the crumbling portico.

  ‘Here you are, signorina.’

  It took Zoe a moment to realise he was leaving.

  ‘Wait—you’re going?’ she demanded, hearing an annoying edge of panic creep into her voice. ‘Don’t you work here?’

  ‘I am hired only,’ the driver replied, his voice stiff with disdain, before he slammed the door and drove away.

  As the sound of his motor faded into the distance, Zoe was conscious of how surprisingly silent it was. A bird twittered nearby, and the breeze, cool and fresh from the lake, rustled the leaves of the palm trees that fringed the great lawn.

  The owner of the villa—her employer, Leandro Filametti—obviously knew she was here. Someone had answered the intercom and opened the gates. So why the silent treatment now?

  Squaring her shoulders, Zoe marched up to the front door, lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it drop. A deep, melancholy boom reverberated through her bones—and hopefully through the house—and then there was silence.

  Zoe waited. The bird twittered again, fretfully this time, its tranquillity disturbed. Zoe raised her hand to the knocker once more, her fingers curling around the sun-warmed metal, but before she could drop it to sound the boom again the door opened, pulling her with it.

  ‘Argh!’
With a surprised yelp she tried to disentangle her fingers from the knocker, and in the process nearly fell headlong into the man who had opened the door.

  Firm hands curled around her shoulders and righted her once more. Zoe was conscious of a sudden sense of strength and power, although she couldn’t really see the man in front of her. Once she was steady, she looked up, and found her breath coming out in a rush once more.

  The man was beautiful. Zoe didn’t know if he was her employer or a gardener, but she certainly liked looking at him. His hair was light brown and a bit ragged, touching the back of his collar. Eyes the same colour as the lake—a deep blue-green—were narrowed against the sunlight, or perhaps in disapproval. He didn’t look very friendly.

  Zoe straightened, unable to keep her gaze from wandering down the length of him. He was tall, a few inches over six feet, dressed in a faded grey tee shirt and worn jeans that hugged his long powerful legs. His feet were tanned and bare.

  Zoe swallowed. ‘Hello…um…Ciao. Il mi…’ Her few words of Italian, snatched on the plane from a battered phrasebook, seemed to have leaked out of her brain. She smiled with bright determination. ‘I’m Zoe Clark.’

  ‘The housekeeper.’ He spoke with little accent, his voice cutting and precise. He stepped back, opening the door wider, yet somehow the gesture still seemed unfriendly. ‘Come in.’

  Zoe stepped into a foyer, the black and white marble cool even through her flip-flops. The light was dim, and as her eyes adjusted she saw a sweeping spiral staircase in front of her, ornate and yet also clearly in disrepair. Her glance took in sheet-shrouded tables, and a bronze statue of a cupid that looked in need of some serious polish.

  The man cleared his throat and her gaze snapped back to him. ‘Are you Leandro Filametti?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The one word was spoken with a brusque flatness that made Zoe want to recoil. Instead, she jutted her chin and thrust out her hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’