Page 5 of Hired By The Forbidden Italian
Her heart was pounding.
‘I should ask,’ she said, breaking the electric silence but not the eye contact that held her spellbound, ‘do you intend to employ me for the position or not? Because if not, then I’ll make my way back home and won’t waste either your time or mine any further.’
CHAPTER TWO
NICCOLOWASBEGINNINGto wonder how a straightforward path had managed to become so convoluted. Expectations of a homely, middle-aged spinster baking cakes with Annalise while he carried on with his hectic work life now seemed as ridiculous as believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Should he have firmly but politely told the woman now looking stubbornly at him that the position was no longer on the table? No further explanations needed.
Rhetorical question because he knew the answer to that one: he should have. The minute he had clocked what his aunt was up to, he should have taken appropriate steps to ensure the situation was nipped in the bud.
He knew that neither Evalina, nor his parents, could fully understand just how bitter the lessons learnt during his marriage had been for him and all the more so because of the speed with which his life had raced out of control, veering over the side of the cliff before he had time to find a brake or a rudder or anything at all that could help control its devastating collapse. Nor would they ever understand how profoundly he had absorbed the ruinous path his parents had taken, content to work for nothing, to enjoy the simple pleasures of life without realising that simple pleasures were never enough. The day of reckoning would always come, and when it did, simple pleasures just didn’t cut it. His father’s day of reckoning, after years of working for a pittance in a company that had never been going to elevate him beyond a certain point, had come when he’d had a stroke. When he had had to retire from his job. What kind of future would they both have been facing had he, Niccolo, not had the wherewithal to rescue them? To give them the life he felt they deserved?
And his marriage? A fiasco. He had thought, against his better judgement, to find that elusive love and happiness his parents had been desperate for him to have. It had been a mistake, with his daughter the only good thing to emerge from the disaster. He could remember those endless times facing a ceaseless barrage of recrimination from his wife, the tug of war trying to balance work and play, with Caroline wanting‘fun and attention’and viciously condemning when he failed to deliver. From the moment the ring had been put on her finger, life had changed for him.
Nothing was ever right, and living in a war zone had driven him to despair.
Silence had become his friend.
No one knew how deeply affected he had been, so, of course, any hint of compliance by hiring the woman should have been out of the question.
The last thing he needed was his aunt imagining that he had conceded to her Cupid tricks. That would be opening a Pandora’s box.
On the other hand...
He was in a bind. He needed cover and he knew that there were some things you couldn’t throw money at and get the required happy outcome.
The woman knew his daughter.
Was it any wonder he had hesitated? Why he had fought the impulse to do what his head had immediately told him to do? Why he had done the sensible thing and broached the thorny and delicate matter of laying down ground rules should he decide that he was prepared to go on his aunt’s recommendations?
However much he disapproved of the reasoning behind said recommendations?
The fact that his first glimpse of her had taken his breath away had nothing to do with any subsequent decisions. The opposite! It had been all the more imperative to make it clear that he was out of bounds.
Whatever response he had anticipated, it hadn’t been the one he’d received.
Who the heck was doing the interviewing here?
‘Well?’
Still reeling from the shock of someone actually daring to think the unthinkable, Niccolo scowled.
‘I’ve been put in an awkward position,’ he returned, reasserting authority at speed. ‘Evalina has vanished and I need help. So, to answer your question, the offer remains on the table with, as we have both acknowledged, certain conditions and ground rules in place.’ He paused and searched for a less contentious footing from which to start their relationship. She was going to be in charge of his daughter, and a brooding and resentful nanny was the last thing he needed.
His eyes roved lazily over her cool, determined face and for the first time he found himself dealing with a situation he couldn’t really remember having encountered before—an attractive woman who didn’t automatically seek to please him.
He didn’t want to stare or make her feel uncomfortable in any way, but hell, she was just so...spellbinding. The way she was dressed and the tightly pulled-back hair advertised someone wanting to downplay her assets, but nothing could quite extinguish her impact.
He looked away and shifted, annoyed with himself for being unable to control instincts he should be able to master.
‘Tell me how you met my aunt,’ he said abruptly, slamming shut the door on an imagination that was threatening to steer his responses. ‘You seem, if you don’t mind me saying, somewhat young to be working on an allotment.’
Sophie’s heart was still pounding. He unsettled her in ways she couldn’t quite understand. He had been open and honest with her, which had allowed her to be open with him in return. They had cleared the air. A little embarrassed, she wondered how she could have gone down the road of issuing warnings. The more she looked at him—and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from looking—the more she realised that he was probably the last man on the planet to give the nanny a second glance.
The man oozed sinful sex appeal. He could snap his fingers and have any woman down tools and race towards him. Sophie knew that she was attractive enough, just as she knew that there were far more beautiful women out there than her and he was a guy who would have no problem getting any of them.
Had Scott, with his determined pursuit that had spanned so many years, somehow given her an inflated idea of how appealing she was to the opposite sex?
