Christmas Contract For His Cinderella (HQR Presents)

by Jane Porter

  So why the sudden frisson of awareness shooting through her, warming her from the inside out?

  “I’m afraid you lost me,” she said huskily. “What wedding?”

  “Mine.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “Perhaps you didn’t know that my wife died shortly after my youngest was born.”

  Monet had known, but she’d blocked that from her mind, too.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, fixing her gaze on the sharp knot of his blue tie, the silk gleaming in the soft overhead light. Of course he was exquisitely tailored. Marcu looked sleek and polished, Italian style and sophistication personified. Perhaps if she kept her attention fixed to the crisp white points of his collar, and the smooth lapels of his jacket, she could keep from seeing the face she’d once loved. It had taken her forever to get over him, and she would not allow herself to feel any attraction, or interest, or concern or affection.

  “I need help with the children until after the wedding, and then it will get easier,” he said. “I won’t need your assistance longer than four weeks. Five, if it’s really rough going.”

  Four or five weeks, working with him? Minding his children while he married again? “Does that include the honeymoon?” she asked drily.

  He shrugged. “I have a conference mid-January in Singapore. I’m speaking so it depends on Vittoria if she’d like to make that our honeymoon.”

  Monet was appalled but it was none of her business. She wasn’t going to get involved. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but I’ve already paid you back the cost of the airline ticket, and the cash you lent me, with interest. Our debt should be settled.”

  “The debt is settled, the favor is not.”

  “They are one and the same.”

  “No, they are not one and the same. You do not owe me financially, but you owe me for the position you put me in when you left the palazzo, and the speculation you created by abruptly departing without saying goodbye to your mother, my father, my brother and sisters. You put me in a most difficult position, and that is the score that is to be settled now as once again I am in a difficult position and this time you can help me.”

  It crossed her mind that she could argue this point forever with him, but he would never change his stance. Marcu was fixed. He was absolutely immovable. Even at twenty-five he’d been mentally strong, physically strong, a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps that had been his appeal. Monet had been raised by a woman who couldn’t put down permanent roots, and didn’t know how to make a home, or even make responsible decisions. Monet’s mother, Candie, was impulsive and irrational. Marcu was the opposite. He was analytical, cautious, risk-averse. He was reason personified.

  The only time he’d ever surprised her was the night he’d kissed her, and made love to her, only stopping short of taking her virginity. And then his regret, and his scorn, had scarred her. In mere minutes he’d gone from passionate and sensual, to callous and cold.

  Monet had left less than fourteen hours later, flying out of Palermo with nothing but the smallest knapsack of clothing. She owned very little. She and her mother had lived off the generosity of Marcu’s father and Monet was not about to take any of the gifts he’d bestowed on her.

  It proved easy to leave Palermo, and yet once she’d arrived in London, far too hard to forget Palermo. Not because she missed her mother, but Monet missed everything else—the busy life at the historic sprawling palazzo, Marcu’s younger brother and sisters, and then there was Marcu himself...

  In that first year in London Monet spent far too many nights sleepless, agonizing over the evening in Marcu’s arms. It hurt to remember his kisses and his touch, and yet they were the most potent, powerful emotions and sensations she had ever felt. She had felt like a flame—flickering, hot, radiant. He had woken something inside of her that she hadn’t known existed. And his harsh rejection of her had been confusing...shattering.

  She’d worked to forget Sicily. She’d tried to put the entire Uberto family from her mind, and yet she missed the children. They had become the only family she’d ever really known.

  She had also been in desperate need of a job, and her father, a man she’d only seen a handful of times in her life, had introduced her to a family in need of a nanny while the children were out of school for the summer holiday. She’d performed the job so well that the family had kept her on for the coming school year. She helped with the children, and their schoolwork, and ferrying them from one after-school activity to another. She’d stayed with that family until the parents divorced and could no longer keep her on, but she’d found another job right away, and then another until she’d realized that she couldn’t continue in child care—all the goodbyes were too hard on her heart—and she went to work in retail.

  She’d started downstairs at the register in hats and gloves, and then when they were short-staffed in bridal, went to the fifth floor to fill in, and had never left the bridal department. If others thought she was too young to be the manager of the department at twenty-six, no one said so, because despite her age, she had style and flair and an eye for quality. Monet wasn’t entirely surprised. She was her mother’s daughter after all.

  “I know this is a lot to take in so I propose we postpone further conversation until you’ve finished here, and we can go to dinner and relax and have a civilized discussion.” Marcu gave her an encouraging smile. “It will give you an opportunity to ask the questions that I’m sure will come to you—”

  “But I have no questions,” she interrupted, refusing to fall for his charm, painfully aware that in the past she’d found Marcu nearly irresistible—and he knew it, too. He knew exactly how to play her, just as he’d successfully played her eight years ago. She had no wish to fall in with his plans again and rose, indicating she was finished with the conversation.

  “Marcu, I have no interest in this position. It’s pointless to continue as I have no wish to waste your time, nor do I wish to waste my own. I’m to return here early tomorrow morning and I still need to find a missing gown before Mrs. Wilkerson descends on us again.” She drew another short, tight breath. “I wish I could say it was good to see you, but that would be a lie, and after all these years there is no point in either of us lying to the other.”

  “I never imagined you to be vindictive.”

  “Vindictive? Not at all. Just because I can’t fall in line with your plans doesn’t mean I harbor you ill will. You were important to me once. But that was years and years ago.”

  He rose as well, and he towered over her now. “You made me a promise, Monet. I’m afraid you can’t say no...at least not yet, not until you have heard me out, and you haven’t. You don’t know the details. You don’t know the time frame. You don’t know the salary, or the benefits.”

  She threw up her hands. “There are no benefits to working for you!”

  “You once loved us. You used to say that we were the family you never had.”

  “I was young and naive. I know better now.”

  “Did something happen after you left Palermo? Did something occur that I do not know about?”

  “No. You know everything.”

  “Then why so much scorn and hatred for my family? How did they hurt you?”

  She couldn’t immediately answer, not when her emotions bubbled up, her chest too hot and tender. She had once loved them all. She had once dreamed of being part of them, a cherished member of the family. But that wasn’t to be. She wasn’t one of them. She hadn’t any hope of being one of them. Her eyes stung, and her throat ached. Monet fought to speak. “It was good of your family to tolerate me for so many years, especially in light of who I was. So no, I do not hate your entire family. I do not speak of your brother and sisters with scorn.”

  “So your anger is with me, and my father, then?”

  This is precisely what she didn’t want to do. Dredge up the past. Relive the old pain. She dug her nails into her p
alms, fighting for control. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t wish to discuss it. I don’t live in the past, and neither should you.”

  “Unfortunately, it does matter to me, and unfortunately you are in my debt, so we will discuss it later, over dinner. I shall leave you now to finish up here. My car will be downstairs waiting for you. I look forward to continuing our discussion then.” He nodded at her and walked away, heading for the gleaming elevators against the distant wall.

  She stood there watching him until the elevators opened and he stepped in. He never once turned around until he was inside the elevator and then, and only then, did he turn and look back to find her still standing where he’d left her. Their gazes met and held, a fierce silent challenge that was only broken by the closing of the doors.

  * * *

  He crossed his arms over his chest and exhaled in the privacy of the elevator. Marcu hadn’t missed the challenge in Monet’s eyes, or her defiant expression as she’d stared him down until the elevator doors closed, blocking the view. He’d expected some resistance from her but this was ridiculous. Monet Wilde needed to remember that she owed him, and not the other way around.

  Further, she hadn’t been his first pick for child care.

  He hadn’t even thought of her until after he’d exhausted every resource, trying to find someone already familiar with his children to take care of them over the Christmas holidays. Their nanny of the past two and a half years had a family emergency and needed to be with her own parents, and he understood that it was an emergency but Marcu was now in a terrible bind because he wouldn’t let just anyone be with his children. He was very selective, very protective, and he needed more than a warm body to mind his three young children over Christmas. Marcu hadn’t even thought of Monet until the last woman he’d interviewed for the position had exited the room and he’d faced the window, disappointed, and deeply troubled. He didn’t want his children to be with a stranger.

  He didn’t trust strangers.

  But then, he didn’t trust many people, period.

  He was well aware that his lack of trust was a problem. It had been a problem for much of his adult life, resulting in a tendency to overanalyze, which wasn’t a bad thing as a venture capitalist, but an issue when it came to his social life. Until very recently he’d refused to extend himself beyond his small, trusted inner circle, but when it became obvious that his inner circle would not provide him with a replacement wife to mother his young children, he’d been forced to go further afield. After a series of excruciating dates he’d found a suitable prospect in twenty-nine-year-old Vittoria Bonfiglio, and it was his plan to propose to her on Christmas Eve, but first, he needed some time alone with her, something difficult to achieve when his children were running wild while their nanny was at home in England with her family.

  Which is when Monet came to mind. He hadn’t thought of her in years, and yet once he’d thought of her, she seemed to be the perfect solution.

  He knew her, and she’d never once betrayed his trust. She’d always been good with his younger brother and sisters—why wouldn’t she be as patient and kind with his three?

  And once Marcu set his mind on something, it was relatively easy to make things happen. It took him less than fifteen minutes to locate her—she lived in London, and worked at Bernard Department Store. She wasn’t married. She might have a boyfriend. Marcu didn’t care. He needed her for four weeks, five weeks tops, and then she could return to her life in retail and he’d have his new bride and his child-care issue would be permanently sorted.

  It didn’t cross his mind that she’d say no, because she owed him. She’d left Palermo in his debt and he was calling in the favor.

  * * *

  Even after Marcu was gone, Monet couldn’t move. She was too stunned to do anything but wish the ground would swallow her whole.

  All she’d wanted today was to go home after work, take a long hot bath, change into cozy pajamas and curl up on her couch and stream her favorite television programs, lost in the pleasure of diverting entertainment.

  She wouldn’t be going home anytime soon now.

  There would be no long hot bath or a satisfying hour or two of her favorite program.

  Slowly she turned, her gaze sweeping the fifth floor. Over the years this elegant, luxurious space had come to feel more like home than her own flat. She was good at what she did. She knew how to soothe the nervous bride, and organize the overwhelmed one. Who would have thought this would be her gift, never mind her skill set?

  The illegitimate daughter of a struggling French actress and an English banker, Monet had a most unusual and Bohemian upbringings. By eighteen, she had seen far more of the world than her peers, having lived in Ireland, France, Sicily, Morocco, and three different American states.

  She’d spent the longest stretch in Sicily, Palermo being her home for six years from the time she was nearly twelve until she’d turned eighteen. Even after she’d left Palermo, her mother had continued to live with Sicilian aristocrat Matteo Uberto for another three years. But after leaving, Monet never returned to Sicily. She didn’t want to see any of the Uberto family, and she’d rebuffed Marcu when he tried to visit her in London three years ago, just as she’d rebuffed his father a year earlier when Matteo appeared on her doorstep with wine and flowers and a delicate negligee more appropriate for your paramour than your former lover’s daughter. It was that visit by Matteo that ensured she finally closed the door on the past, locking it securely.

  She had nothing in common with this family she had lived with for six years of her life. Yes, they’d shared meals together, and yes, they’d gone to the movies, and various plays, ballets, and operas together, as well as shared holidays at the beach and Christmases at the palazzo, but in the end she was not one of them, not a member of the family, or a member of Sicilian aristocratic society.

  No, she was the bastard daughter of a careless British banker, and a French actress more famous for her affairs and her wealthy lovers then her acting talent, and therefore to be treated as someone cheap and unimportant.

  Monet could live with cheap. She couldn’t bear to be unimportant, though. She didn’t need to be valued by the world, but she’d craved Marcu’s love, and respect.

  Instead he’d been the first to shame her, but Monet was a quick learner, and she vowed to never be dependent on anyone again, and she hadn’t been.

  Determined to be different from her mother in every way, she not only rejected all things scandalous, but also pushed away her colorful, Bohemian past. She was no longer Candie’s daughter. She was no longer vulnerable, or apologetic. She was herself, her own creation and invention. Unlike her mother, Monet didn’t need men. It might not be fair, but it was easier to view them with suspicion than be open to their advances.

  It didn’t stop men from pursuing her, though, and they did. They were intrigued by her very French cheekbones, pouting lips, golden-brown eyes and long thick dark hair, but they didn’t know her, and they didn’t realize that while she might look like a siren on the outside, she was British on the inside, and not about to indulge in meaningless affairs. She wasn’t interested in sex, which is why at twenty-six, she was still a virgin, and quite possibly frigid. Monet didn’t care if she was. She wasn’t interested in labels, nor did she care what men thought, aware that to most men, women were just toys—playthings—and she had no desire to be anyone’s plaything. Her mother, Matteo, and Marcu Uberto had made sure of that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AN HOUR LATER Monet was outside, and the black car was where Marcu said it would be, parked in front of Bernard’s front doors. The driver appeared the moment she stepped outside, and he opened a large black umbrella to protect her from the flurries of snow. She murmured her thanks as she stepped into the car.

  She glimpsed Marcu and held her breath, careful to keep a distance between them.

  “So what exactly do you do here?” he
asked, as the car pulled away from the curb, sliding into the stream of traffic.

  She placed her purse on her lap, and rested her hands on the purse clasp. “Manage the department. Assist brides finding their dream gown. Keep mothers from overwhelming their emotional daughters.”

  “An interesting choice for you, given your background.”

  Her chin notched up. “Because my mother never married?” she asked, a dark elegant winged eyebrow arching higher.

  Of course he’d find it ironic that she’d work as a bridal-gown consultant, but most people didn’t know her background. In fact, the only ones who knew her background were the father who’d never been part of her life and the Uberto family.

  “Any problems closing?” he asked a moment later, his tone one of excessive politeness.

  She nearly rolled her eyes. Surely they were beyond such superficial pleasantries. “No.”

  “Were you working at Bernard’s when I reached out to you a few years ago?”

  “I was. I’ve been there for four years now.”

  “Why wouldn’t you see me when I reached out to you?” he asked.

  Her shoulders lifted, and fell. “There was no point.” She turned her head, her gaze resting on his hard masculine profile illuminated by the streetlights. He had a perfect face—broad brow, straight, strong nose, wide firm lips, angled jaw, square chin. And yet it wasn’t the individual features that made him attractive, it was the way they came together—the quirk of his lips, the creases at the corner of his eyes, the blue gleam in his eyes. She steeled herself against the curve of his lips and the piercing blue of his eyes now. “Was there?”

  “I don’t understand,” he answered simply.