The Heirs She Carried
Author
Lynne Graham
Reads
15.2K
Chapters
10
How do you tell your billionaire boss…you're expecting his babies? Orphaned Leah has never had it easy in life. Desperate for a job, she agrees to become ruthless Giovanni Zanetti's housekeeper and finally gain some security. What she never expected was that being between his billion-dollar sheets would be so undeniably tempting… Gio's forbidden night with the totally off-limits innocent was a strictly one-time indiscretion. Anything more than that would require a level of trust he no longer has to give. Then Leah returns with a revelation that rocks the Italian's carefully constructed world: she's pregnant…with his twins!
CHAPTER ONE
‘THANK YOU...IT’S amazing,’ Zoe purred with satisfaction, having chosen the flashiest bracelet on offer and holding it up to catch the sunshine filtering through the limo window. ‘I so deserve this. Diamonds truly are the perfect foil for my beauty.’
A famous supermodel, Zoe had locked her avid and triumphant gaze to the sparkling gems as if she had won the lottery. As Gio had yet to see Zoe show that much appreciation for anything else, that glimpse of entitled avarice and unashamed vanity made his shapely mouth compress. He was glad that their affair was over, the diamonds his final gift.
Greed was a turn-off, a major turn-off for Giovanni Zanetti, and yet the richer he became, the more cunning rapacity he recognised in the women he met. For the very first time in his life he wondered what it would be like to be Mr Nobody from Nowhere, rather than the billionaire owner of a technology empire with a much-envied lifestyle. Until that moment he hadn’t known that he could even picture such a fanciful and absurd possibility because he had not appreciated that he had that much imagination. Would women even want him without the diamonds and all the other extravagant trappings he provided? It was an interesting question.
Gio was, first and foremost, a self-made man, who had grown up in dire poverty and deprivation with a violent drug-dealing father and a beaten, uninterested mother. His meteoric rise to phenomenal success had been marred by only one mistake: at twenty-one: he had been conned into marriage by a gold-digger. Aside of that damaging error of judgement, he had, eight years later, already attained almost everything he wanted in life.
Only one major goal had so far eluded him, he acknowledged wryly, and that was the acquisition of his late mother’s former familial home, the Castello Zanetti. When his unfortunate mamma had shamed her snobbish family by falling pregnant by the local bad boy, they had thrown her out and sold up, moving away to escape the humiliation of the resulting scandal. Although his mama had been a decidedly imperfect parent, alongside his papa, something visceral in Gio had always longed for a connection that rooted him in another world. And the world of history and ancestors that his mother had run from, a family tree that he could proudly claim a connection to as opposed to the shameful one he had been born into with his parents, had enormous pull with him. That house, that family property, meant a great deal to him.
As Zoe trailed a sensual hand of promise down over Gio’s lean muscular thigh, he tensed with distaste at the inevitable suspicion that his generous gift had bought her sexual enthusiasm. Revulsion gripped him. Shifting away, he was relieved that their association was at an end. Exposed as the vain and mercenary woman she was, the model had lost much of her appeal.
At the same time, Gio was, however, uneasily accustomed to the keen interest that his spectacular good looks invariably invoked. He had not a shred of vanity on that score. Indeed, he actively despised the familiar image that met him in the mirror because it reminded him sickeningly of his brutal, toxic father. The lustrous black hair, the hard chiselled jawline, the classic nose and exotic high cheekbones teamed with unusual ice-blue eyes turned the heads of both men and women in the street.
That same night at a Manhattan party, when he was literally ringed by a circle of beautiful women vying for his attention, Fabian, one of Gio’s friends, rolled his eyes to say, ‘You have got it made. Any woman you want whenever, however. I don’t think you appreciate just how lucky you are.’
‘If I weren’t rich and single, I wouldn’t be half as appealing,’ Gio retorted with innate cynicism and an acute sense of boredom.
He thought instead of the magnificent freedom of walking the beach at his rarely used house in Norfolk, England, of the cool refreshing breeze and the isolation there. He needed a break. That awareness in mind, he checked the time in the UK before calling the caretaker to instruct her to set the house up for his arrival the coming weekend.
In an anxious tone of apology and audible dismay at his unforeseen request, Miss Jenkins confided that she had broken her ankle and would need to find someone else to ensure that the coastal mansion was prepared for his occupation. Apologising for the short notice he was giving her, Gio voiced his sympathy and immediately offered a substantial amount of extra cash that the older woman could use to persuade someone trustworthy to take on that necessary task and get it done in time.
As always, he mowed down any hint of opposition like a steamroller that simply refused to be redirected. Life since adulthood had made Gio highly unfamiliar with disappointment, and even a disturbing hint of that possibility was sufficient to make him more determined than ever to leave the business world and designing women behind for a few days and enjoy that energising breeze...
* * *
Leah tempted Spike out from behind the chair. ‘Come on...the vet’s gone home. You don’t need to be nervous because you’ve had all your treatment now,’ she murmured soothingly.
A scruffy three-legged Yorkshire terrier with an incongruous purple bow on top of his tufty head crept into view. He was exceedingly small and very scared. He was terrified of all men, even of the kindly vet, but that didn’t stop him from trying to sneak up behind unsuspecting males and nip them in the back of the leg. Luckily for his victims, Spike had few remaining teeth after years of neglect. As he surged into her arms, she lifted him to pet him while she absently listened to the conversation her former foster mother, Sally, was having on the phone with her sister, Pam Jenkins.
‘Absolutely silly money,’ Sally was proclaiming, her round good-natured face below her halo of grey curls full of incredulity. ‘Clearly, the man has more money than sense, but Leah can do it, of course she can. A bit of shopping, a bit of cleaning, a few beds to make up...not a problem, Pam. Will you please stop worrying about it now? Of course, the man’s not going to sack you just because you broke your ankle!’
Sally came off the phone. ‘The Gazillionaire is coming...’
Leah grinned at the announcement, sitting back on her heels, a cascade of glossy dark ringlets framing her oval face and then tumbling back across her shoulders, her big brown eyes dancing. ‘So I gathered...and I assume that I’m going to carry out Pam’s usual work for her—’
‘Yes, she’s got a shopping list that he forwarded to her, says it’s the usual fancy stuff you’ll have to go into town to find. My goodness, do you realise what this means?’ Sally carolled in excitement. ‘You will actually get to see inside Shore House!’
The buyer of the imposing building had been christened ‘the Gazillionaire’ once word of the wildly expensive restoration and improvements he had ordered had filtered out into the nearby village. Curiosity had raged about the new owner and the house but, over the three years that the Italian had owned it, he had made very infrequent visits and neither he nor any of his guests had ever ventured into the village and even Pam had never actually met him in the flesh. Apparently, he travelled with his own personal household staff. A landscape firm in Norwich looked after the grounds and the indoor pool. Sally’s sister, Pam, was the caretaker and cleaner, but she had never dared to bring anyone with her on her visits because the house was full of cameras and she didn’t want to break the rules and lose her job. For the same reason she had been afraid to take any photos of the property.
‘I’ll go and get changed,’ Leah proffered, because she was still in her pyjamas. ‘When do you need me to go over there?’
‘Asap. So, Pam’s lawn and her shopping will wait,’ Sally told her because, with Sally busy running her small animal shelter, Leah had been looking after Pam while she recuperated from her fall. The two older women were close but, even though there was space in Sally’s old farmhouse, her younger, single sister had preferred to remain in her village home, pointing out cheerfully that she and Sally squabbled when they got under each other’s feet.
‘My goodness, I just said that you would take care of the Gazillionaire’s house for Pam without even first asking you if you would!’ Sally suddenly exclaimed in belated apology. ‘What on earth was I thinking of? With your fancy degree, cleaning would be far too much of a comedown for you—’
‘Of course, I’ll do it...aren’t I living here free of charge? And don’t talk nonsense. I’ll do virtually anything to earn cash right now,’ Leah admitted without embarrassment. ‘I hope it is absolutely silly money I’ll be paid too. You could do with some of it for the shelter. That last vet bill was steep.’
‘I don’t want the money!’ Sally informed her sternly. ‘Look at all the help you’ve given Pam. You’ve kept her garden, taken her to the hospital and done her shopping when I’ve been too busy—’
‘You took me in when I had nowhere else to go and I’m grateful, so let’s not hear any more about cleaning being beneath me,’ Leah urged, thinking that cleaning was no more humble than stacking shelves in the village supermarket, which she had also done. Unfortunately, there were few local employment opportunities. Her business degree was no more use where she lived than it had proven to be in London where, only two years earlier, she had embarked on what she initially hoped would eventually become a successful career. As her mind threatened to linger on everything that had gone so terribly wrong in the city, she buried the thought, because there was nothing attractive about bitterness.
Leah had learned very young that life could contain many bad moments, a great deal of loss and frequent disappointments, but she had taught herself not to dwell too long on the negatives. There had been Oliver, who had broken her heart, but before he came along she had lost her father, then her mother and her two siblings, and whenever she thought about her missing family a terrible wave of sadness would threaten to engulf her. Her mother was dead, and it was hard to care about whether or not her father was dead or alive because he had chosen his other family over his family with her mother, making it clear that she and her siblings were second best.
Eventually, however, Leah hoped to trace and get back in touch with her twin brother and younger sister, but that was likely to take both patience and money. She had seen her brother several times over the years, but their relationship had been strained by his drug addiction and his willingness to steal from her to fund it.
Sadly, she had left London with nothing but credit-card debt, which she had only recently contrived to pay off. Before she could move out of Sally’s home and return to urban living, she would have to have a nest egg saved up to cover accommodation and at least the chance of a proper job.
An hour later, Leah was scouring the supermarket and eventually a delicatessen for the more unusual ingredients on the shopping list. Wakame seaweed and Thai basil were not easily found in a small rural town. Equivalents or total substitutes purchased with the credit card Pam had entrusted her with, Leah drove to Shore House.
A long winding driveway led to the grey stone house, bookmarked with a substantial round tower at either end and embellished with a forest of tall elaborate chimneys and equally tall mullioned windows. Built in the style of Victorian Gothic, it was a white elephant of a house, which had been fortunate to find a buyer. Its biggest selling point, though, was its multiple views of the sea and the long sandy shoreline that lay only yards below the edge of the gardens. Parking in the cobbled courtyard and gathering up the shopping, Leah let herself in the back door, punched in the code for the alarm and headed inside.
Cameras high up the walls silently swivelled as she moved, making her inordinately conscious of their presence. She put the shopping away first in the vast kitchen with its huge central island, granite worktops and top-of-the-range fancy stove. Pam had written down explicit instructions about where to find everything she needed. Armed with the comprehensive cleaning box stored in the pantry, Leah went upstairs to start her work. The foyer was a breathtaking space, the very centre of which was the split staircase, which went up one flight and then divided imposingly into two. All that ornately carved wood would be a challenge to dust, she acknowledged ruefully as Spike scampered at her heels.
According to Pam, the six principal bedrooms were routinely prepared for guests and that was where Leah began, dusting and vacuuming as she went before shaking out the expensive linens and deftly making up the beds. The property might be Victorian, but the furnishings were light and contemporary, using the elaborate carving and fancy plasterwork as an ornamental backdrop, rather than allowing it to dictate the whole mood. Surprisingly, that decorative approach worked, and Leah was eager to explore the whole house. Unfortunately, she knew she would have her work cut out just to cover the basics of cleaning such a large property and she didn’t have time to dawdle. Despite regular sips from her water bottle, Leah got steadily warmer even though she was only wearing denim shorts and a tee.
Having completed the bedrooms and ignored the dusty staircase altogether because it looked as though it would take hours, Leah explored the ground floor, choosing where she would concentrate her energies next while reminding herself that she would be able to return to clean again the next day. Hopefully nobody would arrive before the following evening, or her goose would be cooked because no way was she likely to get around the whole house before then! It was simply too big.
Closing the door firmly on a library that was a tremendous temptation to a book lover, Leah embarked on the vast sitting room instead, relieved that the house was gloriously empty of the kind of knick-knacks that her foster mother and her sister adored. There was art on the walls and occasional elegant sculptures but no clutter to lift or work around.
She was contemplating cleaning the kitchen when she saw a door at the end of the ground-floor corridor that had previously escaped her notice. She sighed, already tired and hot as she was and wincing at the awareness that she would be returning at the crack of dawn the next morning to complete the cleaning. She had been cutting corners, she conceded guiltily, the undusted stairs looming like a monster in the back of her brain as she cleaned the cloakroom. And what about the dining room, the smaller sitting room, the library and the room with the giant snooker table?
Before she tackled the kitchen she decided to explore through that closed door, lest it was concealing a whole host of other rooms that would require her attention. The door took her into a tiled hall and she crossed it to move through glass double doors into the indoor pool area, which she had totally forgotten about. Off to one side and entirely separate there was a gym, and on the other side there was a very fancy Victorian circular conservatory area packed with towering tropical plants kept healthy by a temperature-controlled environment.
In front of her, however, stealing centre stage, was a curved, arched and tiled wall that housed an extraordinary lotus-shaped fountain fanning water down into the swimming pool. High above, an ornate cupola and a ring of gorgeous stained-glass windows cast a rainbow of light down onto the shimmering surface. Mermaids were entwined in a huge, tiled panel above the fountain. It was very Victorian and very exotic, and it had been so beautifully restored that it might have been built the day before. Presumably the feature was listed and protected by law, Leah assumed, finding it hard to credit that the Gazillionaire might have conserved the mermaids and the ornate pool out of the goodness of his heart.
Hot and sticky, Leah looked down at the cool water lapping the edge of the tiled steps and sighed with longing. She would strip off and have a sneaky swim after she had finished the kitchen, she promised herself. She had no swimsuit, but she could use the clean T-shirt in her bag...or she could swim naked. After all, there was nobody around to see her...
Shaking her head at that amusing thought, Leah walked back out of the pool area and got stuck in the kitchen, which, all credit to Pam’s efforts, required little attention. The pale floor, however, was a different story and she began returning it to pristine perfection. In the aftermath, hot and sweaty from her efforts, she raced upstairs to the cavernous hot press, extracted a big towel from one of the towering fleecy piles and headed straight back down to the pool. It was the work of a moment to undress and walk naked into the water, and that wonderful coolness on her overheated skin was an immediate reward that made her sigh in blissful relief.
* * *
Gio walked through the hall, noting the abandoned cleaning box, and he suppressed a sigh as he strode upstairs. The cleaner was still here, which was hardly surprising when he had arrived earlier than he had expected. He, however, wanted the house to himself. He would tell the cleaner to come back tomorrow to finish. He peeled off his jacket, removed his tie and was about to embark on his trousers when he thought he felt something nip at the back of his leg. He swung round but there was nothing there, only a faint suspicion of movement from the throw draped across the foot of the bed. Gio bent down and peered under the bed.
A small, frightened yelp sounded and something brown shot out from below and pelted full speed for the door. It was the size of a rat, but rats didn’t have purple bows in their hair so it had to be a dog. The cleaner had brought a dog in with her. Gio frowned, thinking that his dogs in Italy would have made a snack of the wretched little creature. He cast aside his jacket and started back down the stairs again. For the first time he noticed that the door to the pool complex was ajar and he strode down the corridor towards it.
From the doorway he was able to see that he had a naked mermaid in his pool. A mermaid with a topknot of cascading black curls and a pale pink bottom as ripe as a peach showing through the water as she swam. Gio grinned, amused but annoyed because, instead of reacting with the humour he was struggling to restrain, the onus was now on him to play the censorious boss and lay down the law, spelling out what she had done wrong and why she shouldn’t be doing it.
‘Hi...’ Gio murmured quietly, staying well back from the side of the pool, not wishing to make the naked intruder feel threatened.
‘Oh, for crying out loud!’ the mermaid exclaimed, throwing her hands high in dismay and then lurching across the water to grip the rail at the side to anchor herself. He caught a wickedly alluring flash of full perky breasts adorned with taut brown nipples. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
‘I think those are my questions to ask,’ Gio countered lazily.
Leah tilted her chin. ‘I’m here because I’m cleaning the house—’
Gio elevated an ebony brow in measured challenge. ‘From the pool?’
An angry flush mantled Leah’s cheeks. ‘I’ve been working here all day and I got really hot. The only person that has the right to question me is the owner of this place...and I know that’s not you—’
Gio could not help grinning because she kept on coming back at him, refusing to be quelled or cooled. ‘And how do you know that? Are you acquainted with the owner?’
‘The Gazillionaire?’ Leah quipped. ‘Are you joking? Of course, I’m not! But I do know that you’re not him. He looks like a wild mountain man—’
‘The Gazillionaire?’ Gio queried with raised brows as he repeated that description. ‘How...a wild mountain man?’
‘I saw a picture of him in a newspaper and he has long hair and a full beard,’ Leah informed him with a rather smug look. ‘So, what are you doing here in his house? Are you the gardener?’
‘Do I look like a gardener?’ Gio asked with interest.
Leah appraised him, which took time because he was very tall and powerfully built. He had cropped black hair and exceptionally light eyes of an unknown hue that were very obvious in his lean bronzed face. He was quite staggeringly good-looking, an acknowledgement that severely unnerved and surprised her and made her wonder why she was still hanging around naked in the water with him present.
‘No, you don’t look like a gardener,’ she admitted uneasily, noting the sunglasses stylishly hooked in the pocket of his red shirt, which was open at the neck. His trousers looked as though they might have been part of a suit, because they were narrow and very fashionable and almost indecently well fitted to his narrow hips and long powerful thighs. He emanated casual sophistication and a distinct urban edginess. ‘Not a gardener...you work for the pool company?’
‘No,’ Gio said quietly.
‘Do you work for the mountain man in some other capacity?’
His light eyes danced. ‘I might...’
‘Well, while you’re thinking about that could you move away and turn your back so that I can get out of the water and back into my clothes?’
‘I could if I were a gentleman,’ Gio told her and shrugged with easy grace. ‘I’m not.’
Temper flashed into Leah’s caramel-brown eyes. She let go of the rail and swam over to the steps in an attempt to reach for the towel lying at the edge. ‘Don’t be a pig!’ she urged.
Gio laughed with genuine appreciation and scooped up the towel, turning his back and extending it behind him.
The water rippled and shifted noisily, and he imagined her climbing out, close enough to be touched, that pale luscious wet body gleaming with water. She plucked the towel from his grasp and stepped up past him, wrapped from shoulder to calf in the largest towel he had ever seen.
‘So, you work for Mr Zanetti,’ Leah recapped, dabbing at her damp face with the loose end of the towel. ‘Are you a member of his household staff?’
‘What do you know about his household staff?’ Gio asked with a frown, wondering what had sparked that incorrect rumour.
‘Only that they travel with him, presumably doing his cooking and driving and whatnot—’
‘This Gazillionaire sounds pretty helpless,’ Gio commented, watching her scoop up her clothes. She was petite rather than tall, but that magnificent head of glossy black curls was spectacular. Add in huge brown eyes, creamy skin, delightful curves and slender shapely legs and she was a remarkably tempting package. Too short for him, of course, because, being six feet five, he preferred taller women and she was a good foot shorter than he was. Only that conviction did not explain why he had got as hard as a rock just looking at her in the towel. She might be small, he conceded, but she was all woman and incredibly sexy.
‘He’s probably too busy concentrating on the tech stuff that makes the money to waste time doing the ordinary stuff for himself,’ Leah contended as she bent to gather up her clothes while wishing that her faded blue undies had not been sitting on top of the pile. ‘And maybe he can’t cook or drive. Not everyone can. I’m a demon behind a steering wheel but I can’t cook for peanuts...’
‘I’m an excellent cook,’ Gio told her, crossing the floor to yank open a door almost concealed by the tiles. ‘Changing facilities in here...’
‘Thank you.’ Leah gave him a mischievous smile. ‘You’re more of a gentleman than you think you are.’
‘No, I’m not, but being politically correct around women is safer these days,’ Gio fired back without hesitation.
Leah vanished into a cubicle where the lights fired up automatically and shed the towel, shivering as she climbed back into her clothes, her bra sticking to her damp flesh as she hurried, thrusting her feet into her battered trainers with a sense of relief. Being naked around a strange man in an empty house was unwise. Who on earth was he? Obviously, he worked for the Gazillionaire in some capacity.
‘Are you his cook?’ she asked inquisitively as she emerged from the changing area, breathless and flushed.
On the cusp of announcing his true identity, Gio decided on a whim that was seductively playful in comparison to his usual deadly serious state of mind that he didn’t want to be a cook any more than he wanted to be himself. ‘No, office staff. I’m an executive PA—’
‘I was a PA once.’
‘How did you end up doing this job?’
‘I was a PA for a guy who was hauled away by the police for defrauding thousands of people of their savings. He set up one of those pyramid schemes. He’s in prison—’
‘Patrick Lundsworth?’ Gio incised, mentioning a name that had become a byword for dishonesty and that had been on everybody’s lips only months earlier. ‘How come you aren’t doing time as well?’
‘The police questioned me for two days, but I wasn’t much use to them. It was my first job out of university and I was the office junior. I made coffee, answered phone calls, checked emails.’ Leah grimaced. ‘I wasn’t in on anything to do with his con. I didn’t even meet any of his investors. I was lucky...or so I thought at the time—’
‘But you’ve still ended up cleaning,’ Gio reminded her drily, thinking that she was very innocent and confiding for a woman with a stranger.
‘Lundsworth has proved to be a very serious blight on my CV. I couldn’t get another job in London, so I moved up here to try and get my life sorted,’ Leah explained. ‘And hopefully memories will eventually fade and I’ll be able to get my feet back on the career ladder again.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked as she walked away from him. ‘I’m taking a break before I get back to work.’
‘Not right now. I’m going upstairs to change before I go for a walk on the beach,’ Gio responded.
‘I’ll finish here about six but I’m going to have to come back tomorrow to finish the job,’ Leah advanced uncomfortably. ‘I hope that will be all right. Is anyone else due to arrive before six tomorrow?’
‘No,’ Gio confirmed as he headed towards the stairs.
‘I’m Leah,’ she said quietly. ‘What’s your name?’
Her easy friendliness made his mouth twist. It had been so long since he had had that from a woman. Women always posed with him and played for a certain effect. It was false and it was fake but, in his world, it was a tried and tested female route to popularity with wealthy men. If he told Leah who he was, she would be aghast, apologising all over the place and out of the house within minutes. And, really, what harm had she done? A dip in his pool? A damp towel?
‘I’m Gianni,’ Gio told her truthfully, although it was not a diminutive he had used since his mother’s death. She had named her son for his father, Giovanni, because she had still been in the first fine flush of love back then and she had called her son Gianni to distinguish between them.
‘Have a lovely walk on the beach!’ she urged. ‘I’ve got the staircase to tackle.’
Gio smiled. ‘Sounds like a challenge.’
‘Have you seen how many nooks and crannies are hidden in those carvings?’ Leah asked very seriously. ‘It’s a nightmare.’
* * *
Walking along the deserted strand in jeans and a sweater, Gio recalled that conversation and laughed out loud. She would never have acted so normally with him had she known who he really was. ‘A wild mountain man’? Could it be that she had seen a photo of him on his return from his charitable trust’s trek in Borneo? Afterwards, he had cut his hair shorter and dispensed with the beard he had worn for years. And what was with the Gazillionaire tag? But, Madre di Cristo, she was outrageously pretty...and currently engaged in cleaning his stairs, he reminded himself wryly.
By the time he returned, she might be gone...although not without the little rat sneakily trailing him along the shore, Gio reckoned, casting a quick eye over his shoulder just in time to see the little dog duck behind a rock to hide. It wasn’t the brightest dog he had ever met. It was low to the ground and thought itself invisible behind the rock but, being so tall, Gio could see it clearly, cowering at the risk of being caught. He ignored it. Had it bitten him or tried to bite him earlier in the bedroom? There was no mark on his leg. He smiled, thinking it wasn’t much of an attack dog.
An hour later, Gio strode back into the house and found Leah still down on her knees on the stairs, wielding a brush and wiping the woodwork with a cloth. His breath hissed between his even white teeth as he took in the jut of her luscious behind shaped in skin-tight faded denim and he averted his attention, reminding himself that he did not perve over employees...ever! Although, strictly speaking, she wasn’t working for him, he reflected with a jab of satisfaction. It was stretching a point but when she glanced up at him, her vivid little face framed by that glorious mass of black curly hair and dominated by those huge dark sparkling eyes, whose employee she might be was the very last thing on Gio’s mind.
‘Stay and join me for dinner,’ Gio heard himself urge without any awareness that he had even considered that idea before he spoke. The immediacy of that random prompting sharply disconcerted him.
Leah flung a startled glance at him and then dropped her head to concentrate on her task. Of course, she would say no, because she had decided six months ago that she was done with men after having wasted a year on a male who had ditched her without a pang. Oliver had been an education and no mistake. He had taught her a lot, hard lessons that had hurt. But didn’t cutting herself off from the opposite sex merely hand Oliver yet another victory? A shot of defiance flared inside her at that suspicion.
‘OK,’ she said casually, as though agreement had not cost her a single moment of consideration. ‘I’ve nothing to rush home for... I assume you’re offering to cook?’
A wicked grin slanted Gio’s mobile lips as he read her dismay at the prospect that he could be expecting her to whip out the pans. ‘Sì...’
‘Oh, you’re Italian like your boss...that’s where your name comes from.’ Leah stumbled over that awkward little speech as his pale eyes, the colour of glacier ice, glittered with unhidden amusement. ‘Sorry, not very travelled or cosmopolitan here.’
‘That has an appeal all of its own,’ Gio informed her truthfully, watching her blush, wondering when he had last seen a woman blush around him and quite entranced by it, any doubts he had had about his invitation draining away. He was in the mood for company, he told himself. It was harmless.
In something of a daze, Leah gazed back at him, hopelessly captivated by his looks and charm. She didn’t think she had ever come across a more handsome guy unless he had been on a movie screen and even then, in her humble opinion, Gianni could have knocked spots off all competition. He was drop-dead gorgeous and when he smiled, she got butterflies in her tummy as though she were a teenager again. For goodness’ sake, she castigated herself, start thinking like a grown-up for once...
