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She had never felt this sexually wound up in her school days or for that matter her adult days until the day she’d met Samuele. In her head, her life was pretty much divided into the pre-and post-Samuele days, and now his presence and the knock-on effects seemed to have altered every aspect of herself.
She kept pushing away the intense feelings he aroused in her, but they just kept pushing right back. It felt like an emotional tug of war and, as much as she might call for a referee’s intervention, she had already been pulled well and truly over that red line, she thought with a despairing surge of self-realisation.
Well, it was done now; she had finally allowed herself to care enough for someone and had been rejected...and she’d survived the experience. Well, for an entire fortnight she had... She took a deep, steadying breath. See, she was still breathing so it wasn’t terminal! So long as heneverdiscovered that she lay in bed every nightlongingfor him, she could cope.
At a distance he’d sent her nervous system into meltdown; this close to him there was no possibility she could pretend, to herself at least. But although she might have lost the ability to lie to herself, she could still fake it with the best of them in front of him.
‘Would you like coffee?’
‘No.’ She took out the file and put it on his desk. ‘I’ve made some notes,’ she offered.
He looked at her blankly.
‘The applications for the nanny,’ she said, all business. ‘Your message didn’t say, but I assumed this was what we were going to discuss?’
‘Ah, yes...I thought I might go and see Mattio later, take him for walk maybe?’
‘It’s Rosa’s afternoon off, I’m afraid,’ she said, unable to resist the dig.
Did he get it or had she been too subtle? It was hard to tell. The planes and angles of his face were designed to be inscrutable, though on anyone else she would have called the dark bands along the slashing angles of his cheekbones a blush.
‘You could come too.’
‘Come where?’ She regarded him warily, thinking that this encounter was all as tense and awkward as she’d imagined. Maybe he was working up to some sarcastic remark about her ducking out of sight at the stables the other week?
‘You like the rose gardens, I understand.’
Understand...understand from who? ‘What, have you got a spy network watching my every move?’ She was only half joking. ‘Fine, you really don’t have to ask my permission to take Mattio for a walk. Tomorrow?’ She raised a cool brow. The significance of his suit, beside the fact it made him look even more exclusive and unattainable, had not been lost on her.
‘I’ve obviously caught you on your way to...’
It could have been just about any place; he seemed to commute to many of the world’s capitals the way some people took a bus to the next town, only for him it was a private jet.
‘I just got back actually.’ Samuele reached for his tie, loosening the constriction at his neck. ‘I’d like to know how you think Mattio is getting on. If there are any changes you think should be made...any improvements...?’
He was delaying bringing up the real reason he wanted to talk to her, and he knew it. Finding the right words was not something that he normally struggled with but, in his defence, these particular words were of the life-changing variety. ‘Is there anything you need?’
‘Wouldn’t that be something better discussed with the new nanny? There are some very good candidates here, several with rave reviews.’ She was glad, of course, she told herself fiercely, that Mattio would be in the care of someone who came highly recommended by satisfied previous parents, who knew a lot more about child development than she did. She’d always known she had been a brief stopgap in a desperate situation, but the knowledge that her time left with Mattio was coming to a swift end felt like a heavy weight pressing on her chest.
‘I have...a...’ He paused and dragged a hand down his cleanly shaven cheek before clenching his long fingers into a fist. It was so unlike his normal cool, articulate self that she stared. Perhaps his thoughts were still on whatever high-powered business had taken him away from home this time.
The tension in the room was almost a physical presence; suddenly she couldn’t stand it any more and surged to her feet.
‘Look, shall I come back if you’re...busy,’ she hastily substituted, thinkingdistractedwas nearer the mark.
He watched silently as she turned and moved towards the door, offering no opinion on what she’d just said... She stopped and swung back, the feelings that she had been suppressing suddenly bubbling to the surface and spilling out into hasty speech.
‘Look, Iknowit was just meaningless sex and Iknowthat it’s not going to happen again, so treating me with simple basiccivilityis not going to raise my expectations for a repeat performance.’ Her dark angry eyes raked his face. ‘Are youpunishingme for sleeping with you by ignoring me? I wasn’t stalking you the other morning, you know—I was just passing by. How was I to know you were some sort of horse whisperer? Oh, God!’ She finally ran out of breath but not nearly soon enough.
Her horror-filled eyes met his momentarily before she squeezed them closed, and with nothing to duck down behind this time, she covered her face with her hands instead.
She kept them there as his hands on her shoulders guided her back to the chair and then pushed her into it again.
‘It was the best meaningless sex I have ever had—youwere the best meaningless sex I have ever had.’ Maybe meaningless sex was all he was capable of, Samuele thought bleakly. Not that he envied his father or his brother, but at least they had been capable of feeling a deep unselfish love for someone else, even if it had been based on lies.
Her hands fell away. ‘Am I meant to be flattered—?’ She broke off when she registered the expression on his face.
His eyes were filled with emotions too intense and complex for her to even begin to guess the cause and his grin lacked its normal voltage.
