The Italian's Christmas Housekeeper

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘The fireguard?’ he echoed disbelievingly, looking momentarily bemused before nodding. ‘Wait here,’ he said, and climbed out of bed.

  Quite honestly, Molly didn’t feel as if she had the strength or inclination to go anywhere—especially not when an unclothed Salvio was walking towards the door, seemingly unaware of the fact that it was the middle of winter and the snow was thick on the ground outside. She gazed at him as if hypnotised—her eyes drinking in the pale globes of his buttocks, which contrasted so vividly with the burnished olive of his thighs. And then he turned round, frowning with faint concern as he surveyed her, as if he had suddenly remembered that she’d just announced her pregnancy and wasn’t quite sure how to deal with her any more.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  She guessed he was being literal too and that it would have been pointless to have asked for a crystal ball to reassure her about her baby’s future. And pointless to have asked for some affirmation that he wasn’t planning on deserting his unplanned child, even if he wanted nothing more to do with her. But unlike her brother, Molly had never been a fantasist. She cleared her throat and nodded. ‘A drink of water would be nice.’

  She waited for him to say something like, I’ll bring it to your room, but he didn’t. Which presumably meant it was okay to stay here.

  Of course it was okay to stay here—they’d just had sex, hadn’t they?

  But it wasn’t easy to shrug off a lifetime of being deferential and Molly even felt slightly guilty about rushing into the luxurious en-suite bathroom and availing herself of the upmarket facilities. She splashed her face with water and smoothed down her mussed hair before returning to the bed and burrowing down beneath the duvet.

  And then he was back and Molly quickly averted her eyes because the front view of the naked Neapolitan was much more daunting than the back had been—particularly as he seemed to be getting aroused again.

  Did he read something in her expression? Was that why he gave a savage kind of laugh as he handed her the glass of water? ‘Don’t worry,’ he grated. ‘I’ll endeavour to keep my appetite in check while we discuss how we’re going to handle this.’

  The large gulp of water she’d been taking nearly choked her and Molly put the glass down on the bedside table with a hand which was trembling. ‘There’s nothing to handle,’ she said shakily. ‘I’m having this baby, no matter what you say.’

  ‘You think I would want anything other than that?’ he demanded savagely.

  ‘I wasn’t... I wasn’t sure.’

  Salvio climbed into bed, disappointed yet strangely relieved that her magnificent breasts weren’t on show, meaning he’d be able to concentrate on what he needed to say and not on how much he would like to lose himself in her sweet tightness again. He pulled the cover over the inconvenient hardening of his groin. Was she really as innocent as she seemed? Physically, yes—he had discovered that for himself. But was she really so unschooled in the ways of the world that she didn’t realise that she was now in possession of what so many women strived for?

  A billionaire father for her baby.

  A meal ticket for life.

  And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. Fate had thrown him a curveball and he was just going to have to deal with it.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said suddenly.

  She blinked. ‘Me?’

  The sigh he gave wasn’t exaggerated. ‘Look, Molly—I think you’re in danger of overplaying the wide-eyed innocent, don’t you? We’ve had sex on a number of occasions and you’ve just informed me you’re pregnant. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be interested in hearing about your past, but you’ll probably agree that this is no ordinary situation.’

  Molly’s heart clenched as his cruel words rained down on her. Wouldn’t another man at least have pretended to be interested in what had made her the person she was today? Gone through some kind of polite ritual of getting to know her. Maybe she should be grateful that he hadn’t. He might be cruel, but at least he wasn’t a hypocrite. He wasn’t pretending to feel stuff about her and building up her hopes to smash them down again. At least she knew where she stood.

  ‘I was born in a little cottage—’

  ‘Please. Spare me the violins. Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?’ he interrupted coolly. ‘Parents?’

  Molly shrugged. ‘My father left my mother when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,’ she said flatly.

  She saw a flare of something she didn’t recognise in his black eyes.

  ‘That must have been hard,’ he said softly.

  ‘It was,’ she conceded. ‘Less so for me than for my little brother, Robbie. He...well, he adored our mother. So did I, obviously—but I was busy keeping on top of everything so that social services were happy to let me run the home.’

  ‘And then?’ he prompted, when her words died away.

  Molly swallowed. ‘Mum died when Robbie was twelve, but they let us carry on living together. Just me and him. I fought like crazy not to have him taken into care and I succeeded.’

  His dark brows knitted together. ‘And what was that like?’

  She thought she detected a note of sympathy in his voice, or was that simply wishful thinking? Of course it was. He was cruel and ruthless, she reminded herself. He was only asking her these questions because he felt he needed to—not because he wanted to. For a moment Molly was tempted to gloss over the facts. To tell him that Robbie had turned out fine. But what if he found out the truth and then accused her of lying? Wouldn’t that make this already difficult situation even worse than it already was?

  ‘Robbie went off the rails a bit,’ she admitted. ‘He did what a lot of troubled teenagers do. Got in with the wrong crowd. Got into trouble with the police. And then he started...’

  Her voice tailed off again, knowing this was something she couldn’t just consign to the past. Because the counsellor had told her that addictions never really went away. They just sat there, brooding and waiting for someone to feed them. And wasn’t she scared stiff that they were being fed right now—that someone was busy dealing cards across a light-washed table in the centre of a darkened room somewhere in the Outback?

  ‘What did he start, Molly?’ prompted Salvio softly.

  ‘Gambling.’ She stared down at her short, sensible fingernails before glancing up again to meet the ebony gleam of his eyes. ‘It started off with fruit machines and then he met someone in the arcade who said a bright boy like him would probably be good at cards. That he could win enough money to buy the kind of things he’d never had. And that’s when it all started.’

  ‘It?’

  Molly shrugged. ‘I think Robbie was still missing Mum. I know he’d been frustrated and unhappy that we’d been so poor while she was alive. Whatever it was, he started playing poker and he was good at it. At first. He started winning money but he spent it just as quickly. More quickly than it was coming in. And the trouble with cards is that the more you want to win—the worse you become. They say that your opponent can smell desperation and Robbie was as desperate as hell. He started getting into debt. Big debt. But the banks didn’t want to know and so he borrowed from some pay-day lenders and they...they...’

  ‘They came after him?’ Salvio finished grimly.

  Molly nodded. ‘I managed to use most of my savings to pay them off, though there’s still an outstanding debt which never seems to go down because the interest rates they charge are astronomical. I wanted Robbie to have a fresh start. To get away from all the bad influences in his life. So he went to Australia to get the whole gambling bug out of his system and promised to attend Gamblers Anonymous. That’s why I was working for the Averys. They were hardly ever in the house so I got to live there rent-free. Plus they paid me a lot of money to look after all their valuable artefacts. They said their insurance was lower if they had someone living permanently on the premises.’<
br />
  ‘And then I came along,’ he mused softly.

  Molly’s head jerked back as something in his tone alerted her to danger. ‘I’m sorry?’

  His bare shoulders gleamed like gold in the soft light from the lamp. ‘A young attractive woman like you must have found it incredibly limiting to be shut away in that huge house in the middle of nowhere working for people who only appeared intermittently,’ he observed. ‘It must have seemed like a gilded prison.’

  ‘I was grateful for a roof over my head and the chance to save,’ she said.

  ‘And the opportunity to meet a rich man who might make a useful lover?’

  Molly’s mouth fell open. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘I don’t think so, mia bedda,’ he contradicted silkily. ‘I base my opinions on experience. It’s one of the drawbacks of being wealthy and single—that women come at you from all angles. You must have acknowledged that I was attracted to you, and I can’t help wondering whether you saw me as an easy way out of your dilemma. Were the bitter tears you cried real, or manufactured, I wonder? Did you intend those sobs to stir my conscience?’

  Molly sat up in bed, her skin icy with goosebumps, despite the duvet which covered most of her naked body. ‘You think I pretended to cry? That I deliberately got myself pregnant to get you to pay off my brother’s debts? That I would cold-bloodedly use my baby as a bargaining tool?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that. But I do think that fate has played right into your hardworking little hands,’ he said slowly. ‘Don’t you?’

  Her voice was shaking as she shook her head. ‘No. No, I don’t.’ Pushing the duvet away, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, acutely conscious of her wobbly bottom as she bent down and started pulling on her discarded clothes with fingers which were trembling, telling herself she would manage. Somehow. Because she had always managed before, hadn’t she? Fully dressed now, Molly turned round, steeling herself not to react to his muscular olive body outlined so starkly against the snowy white bedding. ‘There’s nothing more to be said, is there?’

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh, I think there’s plenty which needs to be said, but not tonight, not when emotions are running high. I need to think first before I come to any decision.’

  Molly was tempted to tell him that maybe he should have done that before he had taken her to bed and then come out with a stream of unreasonable accusations, but what was the point in inflaming an already inflamed situation? And she couldn’t really blame him for the sex, could she? Not when she had been complicit every step of the way. Not when she had desperately wanted him to touch her.

  And the awful thing was that she still did.

  Tilting her chin upwards and adopting the most dignified stance possible—which wasn’t easy in the circumstances—she walked out of Salvio’s bedroom without another word.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A COLD BLUE light filtered into the tiny bedroom, startling Molly from the bewildering landscape of unsettled sleep—one haunted by Salvio and the memory of his hard, thrusting body. Disorientated, she sat up in bed, wondering if she’d dreamt it all. Until the delicious aching at her breasts and soft throb between her legs reminded her that it had happened. Her heart began to race. It had actually happened. At the end of an evening’s service she had informed her employer she was pregnant with his baby.

  And had then been carried up the staircase and willingly had sex with him, despite all the things he’d accused her of.

  Did he really believe it was his wealth which had attracted her to him, when she would have found him irresistible if he’d been covered in mud and sweat from working the fields?

  Slowly, she got out of bed. She didn’t know what Salvio wanted. All she knew was what she wanted. Her hand crept down to cover the soft flesh of her belly. She wanted this baby.

  And nothing Salvio did or said was going to change her mind.

  She showered and washed her hair—pulling on clean jeans and a jumper the colour of a winter sky before going downstairs, to be greeted by the aroma of coffee. In the kitchen she found Salvio pouring himself an inky cupful, and although he looked up as she walked in, his face registered no emotion. He merely gestured to the pot.

  ‘Want some?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, thanks. I’ll make myself some tea.’ She was certain herbal tea was better for babies than super-strong coffee, but mainly she welcomed the opportunity of being able to busy herself with the kettle. Anything rather than having to confront the distracting vision of Salvio in faded jeans and a sweater as black as his hair. She could feel him watching her and she had to try very hard not to appear clumsy—no mean feat when that piercing gaze was trained on her like a bird of prey. But when she couldn’t dunk her peppermint teabag a moment longer, she was forced to turn around and face him, glad he was now silhouetted against the window and his features were mostly in shadow.

  ‘So,’ he said, without preamble. ‘We need to work out what we’re going to do about the astonishing piece of news you dropped into my lap last night. Any ideas, Molly?’

  Molly had thought about this a lot during those long hours when sleep had eluded her. Be practical, she urged herself. Take the emotion out of it and think facts. She cleared her throat. ‘Obviously finding a job is paramount,’ she said cautiously. ‘A live-in job, of course.’

  ‘A live-in job,’ he repeated slowly. ‘And when the baby is born, what then?’

  Molly hoped her shrug conveyed more confidence than she actually felt. ‘Lots of people don’t mind their staff having a baby around the place. Well, maybe not lots of people,’ she amended when she heard his faintly incredulous snort and acknowledged that he might have a point. ‘But houses which already have children tend to be more accommodating. Who knows? I might even switch my role from housekeeper to nanny.’

  ‘And that’s what you want, is it?’

  Molly suppressed the frustration which had flared up inside her. Of course it wasn’t. But she couldn’t really tell him that none of this was what she wanted—not without betraying the child she carried. She hadn’t planned to get pregnant, but she would make the best of it. Just as she hadn’t planned for the father of her child to be a cold-hearted billionaire who right now felt so distant that he might as well have been on another planet, rather than standing on the other side of the kitchen. She wanted what most women wanted when they found themselves in this situation—a stable life and a man who adored them. ‘Life is all about adaptation,’ she said stolidly when, to her surprise, he nodded, walking away from the window and putting his coffee cup down on the table before pulling out a chair.

  ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Here. Sit down. We need to talk about this properly.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t sit down.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I still have to clear up the house, after the party.’

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘I can’t leave it, it’s what you’re paying me—’

  ‘I said leave it, Molly,’ he snapped. ‘I can easily get people in to do that for me later. Just sit down, will you?’

  Molly opened her mouth to refuse. To tell him that the walls felt as if they were closing in on her and his presence was making her jittery. But what else could she do? Flounce out into the snow, two days before Christmas Day—with nowhere to go and a child in her belly? Ignoring the chair he was holding out for her, she chose one at the opposite end of the table and sank down onto it, her mouth unsmiling as she looked at him questioningly.

  ‘I’ve given a lot of thought to what’s happened,’ he said, without preamble.

  Join the club. ‘And did you come to any conclusions?’

  Salvio’s eyes narrowed as she stared at him suspiciously. She wasn’t behaving as he had expected her to behave. Although what did he know? He’d never had to face something like this before and never with so
meone like her. After her departure last night, he’d thought she might try to creep back into his bed—maybe even whisper how sorry she was for flouncing out like that—before turning her lips to his for another hungry kiss. He was used to the inconsistency of women—and in truth he would have welcomed a reconnection with those amazing curves. Another bout of amazing sex might have given him a brief and welcome respite from his concerns about the future.

  She hadn’t done that, of course, and so he had braced himself for sulks or tears or reproachful looks when he bumped into her this morning. But no. Not that either. Sitting there in a soft sweater which matched her grey eyes, with her hair loose and shining around her shoulders, she looked the picture of health—despite the shadows beneath her eyes, which suggested her night had been as troubled as his.

  And the crazy thing was that this morning he hadn’t woken up feeling all the things he was expecting to feel. There had been residual shock, yes, but the thought of a baby hadn’t filled him with horror. He might even have acknowledged the faint flicker of warmth in his heart as a tenuous glimmer of pleasure, if he hadn’t been such a confirmed cynic.

  ‘Every problem has a solution if you come at it from enough angles,’ he said carefully. ‘And I have a proposition to put to you.’

  She creased her brow. ‘You do?’

  There was a pause. ‘I don’t want you finding a job as a housekeeper, or looking after someone else’s children.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Salvio tensed, sensing the beginning of a negotiation. Was she testing out how much money he was prepared to give her? ‘Isn’t it obvious? Because you’re pregnant with my baby.’ His voice deepened. ‘And although this is a child I never intended to have, I’m prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.’

  ‘How...how cold-blooded you make it sound,’ she breathed.