Italian Boss, Housekeeper Bride

Natasha entered the room just in time to hear Troy’s enthusiastic statement and, for a moment, she honestly thought that she might drop her tray. She felt the blood drain from her face and her knees grow weak and some terrible roaring sound deafened her ears—like the sound of an express train racing through her head.

‘Natasha?’ Raffaele was frowning at her. ‘Are you sick?’

‘I…’

‘Put the damned tray down,’ he instructed tersely, but he had risen from his chair and was taking it from her himself. He put it down on the desk and caught her by the arm. ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’

But with a few deep breaths Natasha had quickly recovered her equilibrium and she shook him off, telling herself that it was very important she didn’t make a fool of herself.

Raffaele had been nothing but decent and fair to her over the years, and he had done more for Sam than could reasonably be expected of a boss. So she was not going to blow the whole thing by showing her distress at what was, after all, a long overdue piece of news. Or had she really expected a man like Raffaele to remain single for the rest of his life, just so that she could maintain her little fantasies about him?

‘You’re getting married?’ she exclaimed brightly, and then forced the next word out, even though it felt like a fishbone stuck in her throat. ‘Congratulations!’

Raffaele was staring at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. ‘So this is how gossip begins!’ he objected moodily. ‘Something half overheard and then, before you know it, you are dealing with “fact”—only, it isn’t fact at all. Just some crazy conjecture!’

‘You mean, you’re not getting married?’ questioned Natasha cautiously, unable to prevent the wild leap of her heart, and thankful that he wouldn’t be able to detect it.

‘Of course I’m not getting married!’ he retorted.

‘I’m trying to persuade him to get married,’ said Troy.

‘Oh.’ Natasha forced a smile as she looked at Troy, hating—just hating—Raffaele’s smart-aleck lawyer at that moment. She cleared her throat as she began to pour their coffee. ‘Isn’t marriage an honourable institution that isn’t supposed to be entered into lightly?’ she asked, as casually as if she was enquiring whether they wanted milk or sugar. ‘Who’s the lucky woman?’

‘I’m not talking about a real marriage,’ said Troy. ‘I’m talking about a pretend one.’

‘A pretend one?’ said Raffaele and Natasha at exactly the same moment, and Natasha began to fiddle around unnecessarily with the sugar bowl.

Troy nodded. ‘You don’t have to actually go through with it—just make the gestures. You know—you buy a whopping engagement ring and then you pose with your fiancée for the papers and she gives them a few interviews telling them where the wedding will be, where she’s going to buy her dress. They love all that kind of stuff.’

‘You seem remarkably well informed on the subject,’ remarked Raffaele, with a sardonic elevation of his black brows.

‘I try,’ said Troy modestly.

‘And even if I were to entertain such a bizarre remedy, aren’t you forgetting one thing?’

‘Like what?’

Raffaele’s black eyes were like hard, cold jet. ‘That there isn’t a candidate.’

Did he hear Natasha’s pent-up sigh of relief? Was that why he turned his head and fixed her with an impenetrable stare. ‘Didn’t you say you had a cake to make?’

Natasha blinked. Of all the times to prove that he had actually been listening to something she had to say he had to choose this one! ‘Er…yes.’

‘Well, then, run along, cara,’ he said softly.

‘Right.’ Reluctantly, Natasha headed for the door, while they just carried on with their conversation as if she was invisible. Which I might as well be, she thought furiously.

‘You just need someone who is prepared to go along with it,’ Troy was saying.

‘Like who? Oh, I can see your reasoning. It’s a good idea, Troy—but there’s just one problem, and it’s the nightmare scenario.’ Raffaele’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Most women I know would be only to happy to go through with it—the difficulty would be getting them off my back afterwards.’

Troy laughed. ‘Which is why we choose someone who wouldn’t dare try to hang around.’

‘Again, I say—who?’

Fascinating as she found the subject, Natasha knew that she really couldn’t justify hanging around any longer, and she was almost out of the door when her eagle eye spotted a rogue little yellow plastic brick lying underneath one of the two wing chairs by the bookcase.

Now, how the hell had that gotten in here—especially when Sam wasn’t even supposed to go into Raffaele’s study? She was so fastidious about keeping all signs of young children carefully hidden away. Raffaele might be tolerant, and kinder to her son than his position warranted, but he certainly didn’t want to be tripping up over model soldiers every time he came home.

She made a little exclamation of annoyance as she leaned over to retrieve the brick, and as the sound diverted his attention Raffaele found his eyes drawn to her bent figure.

Nobody could accuse Natasha of vanity—indeed, the garments she wore for work wouldn’t have been out of place in a boot-camp and they’d never have been Raffaele’s choice for a woman—never in a million years. He’d often used to think that here was a woman who would never distract him as she went about her work.

Maybe it was something to do with the fact that his nerves were on edge, or that it had been a long time since he’d had someone in his bed. Or maybe it was just something as simple as the fact that the moment had caught her with the material of her dress stretched tight across her derrière. Raffaele swallowed. And a very attractive derrière it was, too.

He narrowed his eyes and became aware of Troy’s gaze following exactly the same path as his.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Troy softly. ‘Yes. That is perfect.’

Why was it that Raffaele found himself looking at his lawyer with cold distaste, wanting to tell him not to dare look at Natasha in that way—that she deserved his respect, not his predatory gaze? He shook himself. Predatory? Over Natasha?

She was straightening up now, with a piece of yellow plastic held between her fingers, and the fabric fell loose away from where it had been moulded to the tight, high curve of her buttocks. And all Raffaele could think was why the hell had he never noticed that before?

‘You wouldn’t have wanted to have stepped on that with bare feet!’ she said triumphantly, and put it in her pocket as she marched out without a backwards glance.

Raffaele watched as she shut the door behind her, and suddenly there was Troy, sitting with some dumb, expectant grin on his face, looking at him as if he had found the key to the universe.

‘Well? What do you think, Raffaele? Isn’t this the answer to our predicament? Wouldn’t Natasha do?’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘NO!’ RAFFAELE snapped back, in an icy voice. ‘Natasha would not do! She’s my housekeeper, for Dio’s sake!’

Outside the study door, the sound of her name halted Natasha right in her tracks and presented her with an age-old moral dilemma. Should she stay or should she go? Should she listen or not? But, surely, if they were talking about her didn’t she have every right to listen?

Heart thumping, and with misgivings which were making her forehead ice into a cold sweat, she put her head close to the door. Their voices were muffled, but she could make out certain words like unsuitable, inappropriate. And then something else, which ended with Raffaele saying, quite loudly and quite forcefully, ‘No one would ever believe it!’

And Troy’s response. ‘Why not ask her?’

She heard the sound of a chair being scraped back, and instinct made her move quickly away from her giveaway position. She hurried down to the kitchen, realising that time was tight if she wanted to have the cake made before she went out to collect Sam.

The radio was blaring as she changed her mind about lemon drizzle and instead made cupcakes, which she iced in lurid shades of green and blue, especially designed to appeal to small boys—and to hell with the additives!

Despite the apron she’d put on, she’d still managed to get splodges of cake mixture over her dress—and she was going to have to leave in a minute. She ran upstairs and changed into something warmer—because the autumn afternoons were beginning to bite.

She put on a pale blue sweater, which brought out the colour in her eyes, and a pair of old jeans Then she brushed her hair and wove it into its habitual French plait. Her fingers hesitated over the little tub of lipgloss which had been on special offer at the chemist back in the summer, and which some impulse had made her buy. She’d only used it a couple of times, and it didn’t really seem to be her, so she’d put the top back on and had never used it again.

So what was it that made her pick it up today? Did it have something to do with the way the two men had looked at her in the study—or rather the way they’d not looked at her? As if she was some old piece of furniture—reliably comfortable, but not something you’d want to show off to a guest.

Defiantly, she opened it and stroked on some of the strawberry-scented gloss. Perhaps some of her reluctance to dress up had come from knowing that she could never compete with the other mothers, who arrived at the school looking as if they’d stepped out of the pages of a glossy magazine. Maybe that was why she was always being mistaken for one of the nannies—though she had to admit that most of them made more of an effort than she did.

Outside, the late-afternoon sky was a clear blue and the trees were etched against it in startling relief. All the leaves were turning rich shades of bronze and toffee and gold and, in the distance, she thought she could smell the faint drift of smoke, which was unusual in London, though this area was exclusive enough to have gardens big enough to cope with bonfires.

Natasha was suddenly overcome with the sense of nostalgia which autumn always provoked. The end of the summer and the start of winter and soon Sam beginning full-time school. During no other season was she quite so aware of the passing of time as this, when the leaves began their dizzy spiralling dance to the ground below.

There were luxury cars in abundance parked in the streets near the school—most people had to travel from all over the capital to get there—and Natasha never forgot to count her blessings that she lived close enough to walk there.

She watched as the children began to file out in their rather old-fashioned uniform of knee-length shorts for the little boys and kilts for the girls, along with thick sweaters which looked like home-knits, and sturdy shoes and dark socks. Sam was excitedly anticipating the time when he would graduate to long trousers—like the ‘big’ boys at the middle school—and Natasha began to wonder how long she could let things continue like this. With Sam getting more and more used to the luxurious lifestyle which Raffaele could afford to give him. Was it time for her to start getting real? To live within her means?

‘Maman!’ Sam called as he came running over, his little friend in tow. ‘You’re wearing lipstick!’

‘Hello, darling—was it a French day today?’

‘You’re wearing lipstick!’ accused her son again.

‘Yes, I am—do you like it?’ She smiled down at Sam’s best friend. ‘Hello, Serge. How are you?’

‘Très bien, merci!’ replied Serge, with the solemn confidence learnt from his French diplomat father.

‘Well, that’s good,’ she replied, as the three of them began to walk the route home, which took them past the area’s best conker tree. ‘I’ve made monster cakes!’

‘Monster cakes?’ Serge frowned as Sam began to scoop up the shiny brown nuts. ‘But what are monster cakes?’

‘It means you turn into a monster if you eat them!’ chanted Sam. ‘Will Raffaele be there?’

‘He’s probably busy, darling—we’ll see.’

‘Oh!’

The boys played with their conkers in the garden and then came inside for supper. Because it was Friday, there was no homework, so she left them playing a complicated game with battleships. She was just wondering whether Raffaele wanted her to make him supper when she almost collided with him.

‘Just the person I wanted to see,’ he said grimly.

It didn’t sound that way. And why was he looking at her like that, with an expression on his face she had never seen before? The black eyes were brilliant and piercing and they narrowed as they swept over her, as if they were assessing her for something—but what?

Some kind of sixth sense set off a distant clamour which seemed to make Natasha acutely aware of the pulsing of her blood—as if something had just sprung to life within her. Alarmingly, she felt the tips of her breasts begin to rub against the rough lace of her bra and the corresponding flood of colour to her cheeks.

‘Well, here I am,’ she said.

But Raffaele wasn’t listening. He was struck by the way her cheeks were looking uncharacteristically pink—like the wild roses of summer. And by the way…the way…Madre di Dio, but this could not be happening!

Irresistibly, he found his gaze locked onto the luscious curve of her breasts, and he started wondering whether this was because of what had happened earlier—an awakening which had been triggered by something as simple as a woman bending down to pick up a toy. The sudden realisation that behind the guise of her unerring efficiency Natasha was a woman. A real flesh-and-blood one at that. He found that he wanted to cup his palms over those buttocks and bring her right up close against him.

‘Any more news about Elisabetta?’

Her question was like an icy bath on his senses, and he discovered that he had been guilty of some very impure thoughts, indeed—and that wasn’t on his agenda at all. He hardened his voice. Elisabetta was the reason he was about to do all this—and the only reason, he reminded himself.

‘No,’ he said, staring at her mouth and thinking that there was something different about that, too. Was it all shiny and pink? Or was that just his imagination? He frowned. Was he out of his mind to go through with this crazy scheme? And yet hadn’t he been racking his brains all day and coming up with remarkably few solutions to this particular dilemma? For all his wealth and power and connections there were some things he couldn’t control, and the press was one of them. ‘Is Sam here?’

‘He’s downstairs with Serge. He’s got a new conker he wants to show you.’

For a moment the tension on his face eased, the faint smile nudging at the corners of his mouth completely transforming his rugged features.

‘I’ll go down and take a look.’ He raised his brows. ‘And later—will he be here then?’

She shook her head and frowned. ‘No, he’s going to stay over at Serge’s—it’s his turn this week. Is there a problem?’

‘Not really,’ he said smoothly. ‘I suggest that you and I eat together.’

Natasha shrugged. It wasn’t as if their eating together was unknown. She didn’t go out that often—and certainly not when Raffaele was around. She felt that being there was part of the fabulous deal he had made with her—she made the house warm and comfortable when he was home.

She wanted to ask him what was on his mind and, yet, there was something very censorious in his eyes which dared her to even try—a dark, warning light that made her very aware of his position over her. Because—despite all their familiarity and the usual ease with which they lived their lives—sometimes Raffaele unmistakably pulled rank, and he was doing it now. This wasn’t a casual suggestion that they might eat supper together, it was an order, and Natasha’s pulse began to race. ‘Sure. Would you like me to cook something special?’

‘No. That won’t be necessary. I’ll cook.’

Raffaele? Cook? ‘R-right.’

Her anxiety grew as she saw the boys off when Serge’s impossibly glamorous nanny came to collect them. Natasha could tell that she was dawdling unnecessarily in the hall.

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