Page 8 of His Housekeeper's Twin Baby Confession
Mute with awe, Carrie reluctantly left the kitchen and followed Matt again. He deftly showed her an informal media room that looked more like a home cinema. A formal dining room. A gym with a lap pool. And then an elevator door which Matt pointed to and said, ‘That brings you up to Mr Black’s sleeping quarters, his office and the rooftop terrace.’
There was also an entertaining space the size of a small ballroom with French doors leading out onto a wide terrace and a wrought-iron staircase that led to the rooftop terrace on the upper level.
It was dizzying...the sheer scale of the apartment over three floors.
‘And these are your rooms, Miss Taylor.’
The man opened a door with a flourish and Carrie walked inside, taking in a huge bedroom, en suite bathroom and walk-in closet. French doors led out to a balcony, with jaw-dropping views over the park.
‘Please help yourself to anything in the kitchen. The phone in the reception hall will dial directly down to me if you need anything. I believe your luggage will be arriving soon.’
Carrie turned around, feeling overwhelmed and seriously doubtful that she’d ever find her way back to that reception hall. ‘Thank you, Matt.’
The man ducked his head and was gone, leaving her alone in the vast space. She went over to the French doors and opened them, stepping out onto her own private balcony with sweeping views across Central Park.
Carrie shook her head and smiled wryly.
Not bad for a housekeeper.
Not bad for a girl who had grown up on a council estate with a single mother who had worked her fingers to the bone to provide for them both.
Carrie’s mother had never hidden the truth of her birth, once she was old enough to understand. Her father had seduced her mother into an affair, but as soon as she’d fallen pregnant he’d revealed he was married and had dumped her. Carrie had never met him, but she knew he’d had a family of his own the whole time he’d been with her mother.
The stain of abandonment was something she could never fully wash away, no matter how much her mother had tried to make up for it, and it had left a weak spot in her self-esteem. A weak spot that had been exploited and manipulated when she’d been at her most vulnerable, after her mother had died.
That was when her husband had come along and made her believe he could heal the hurt places inside her...give her a life that she’d only imagined in her most private moments. A family. Unconditional love. Security.
But it had all been a toxic lie.
Carrie forced unwelcome thoughts of the past out of her head and rested her arms on the stone wall, taking in the view...the verdant green and the tall, elegant buildings on the other side of the park that mirrored the one she was in. The sounds from the street far below barely even permeated the rarefied air up here.
She wandered back through the apartment and stood at the doors of the elevator that went to the upper floor. Telling herself she was only doing her job by acquainting herself with everything, Carrie got inside, and the lift ascended silently, its doors opening again with a melodicping.
She entered a corridor much like the one she’d just left, except up here there was only a couple of doors, one at the end. She walked to it and hesitated, before telling herself she was being ridiculous. She routinely had to go into her boss’s bedroom in London, for various reasons.
She opened the door. His scent immediately hit her nostrils. Dark and woodsy and something like...leather. The room was vast and dressed in dark earthen tones. A massive bed dominated the space, but she avoided looking at that and investigated further to find an en suite bathroom and a walk-in closet.
There was also a lounge area, with a TV and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. They contained mostly non-fiction books on economics and business, and some thrillers and light fiction. Carrie couldn’t imagine Massimo sitting still for long enough to relax and read. The man had an electric energy about him.
She was turning to leave when she saw some photos on a table, framed. She walked over and picked one up. It showed a young man—gorgeous, but not Massimo—with a wide smile, dressed in a motor racing suit standing beside a car, holding up a trophy. Carrie knew that her boss had had a younger brother who’d died tragically on the racing track.
She put the picture back, feeling even more like a voyeur. She’d looked her boss up after she’d been offered the job, and knew about as much as any of the general public did about his infamously tragic family history. His brother’s death had been only the tip of the iceberg...
His mother had been a stunningly beautiful Italian countess and his father the aristocratic heir to one of Europe’s biggest estates. The Earl and Countess of Linden had lived a fast and glamorous life, rarely out of the papers with their tempestuous relationship, allegations of affairs, and more sordid rumours of drugs and gambling.
Massimo’s mother had died of a suspected drug overdose on the family estate outside London, and then a year later his father had died in a helicopter crash en route to a casino in Monte Carlo. The fact that he’d been flying the helicopter, and had been responsible for the death of his young and beautiful lover—another European aristocrat—had only added to the reams of newsprint about the ill-fated family.
As far as Carrie had been able to make out Massimo would have only been eighteen and his younger brother sixteen at the time his father had died.
The current Earl of Linden certainly hadn’t inherited his family’s excesses. Quite the opposite. His lifestyle was positively monk-like in comparison.
Monk-like, and yet he didn’t make Carrie think of chaste monks...
She felt warm all of a sudden, and spied more French doors leading out onto what had to be the rooftop terrace. She opened them and went outside to a vast, breathtaking space that gave even more spectacular views than the level below.
‘Not bad, hmm?’
Carrie whirled around. Massimo was standing behind her, tie off, shirt open at his throat, hands in his pockets. She felt caught. Exposed. Hot.
