Kate Hewitt - Italian Boss, Housekeeper Mistress

KATE HEWITTdiscovered her first Mills & Boon ®romance on a trip to England when she was thirteen, and she’s continued to read them ever since.

She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it too. That story was one sentence long — fortunately, they’ve become a bit more detailed as she’s grown older.

She has written plays, short stories, and magazine serials for many years, but writing romance remains her first love. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, travelling, and learning to knit.

After marrying the man of her dreams — her older brother’s childhood friend — she lived in England for six years and now resides in Connecticut with her husband, her three young children, and the possibility of one day getting a dog.

Kate loves to hear from readers — you can contact her through her website, www.kate–hewitt.com.

Dear Reader,

Italy in summer … can you think of anything better? Sun-drenched afternoons idling in a boat on the lake, pavement cafés enjoying tiny cups of espresso and baskets of pastries, street markets with barrels of mozzarella and ropes of garlic — writing this story was a feast of the senses.

My hero, Leandro, is a man who’s sworn off such earthly pleasures, and all because of a scandal in his past. It takes his feisty American housekeeper Zoe to reawaken his need and desire for not just pleasure, but love.

I was so thrilled to be able to be part of this anthology, and I hope you enjoy these wonderful stories of men and women discovering both passion and love during one memorable summer in Italy …

Kate

Italian Boss, Housekeeper Mistress

Kate Hewitt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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ZOE CLARK slipped the sunglasses off her nose to survey the discreet grey limousine idling at the kerb.

‘Nice,’ she murmured as the uniformed driver opened the door with a flourish. He’d already taken her one beaten up suitcase and stowed it in the boot.

Now she slipped into the cool leather interior of the luxury car and leaned her head back against the plush seat.

This was going to be a fantastic summer.

A smile bloomed and grew across her face as she leaned forward and flipped open the mini-fridge.

‘Is this complimentary?’ she called to the driver.

He stiffened before answering in heavily accented English, ‘Of course.’

Zoe grinned and plucked a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. She’d rather have had the little bottle of cognac, but she didn’t think it would be prudent to meet her future employer with brandy on her breath.

She took a swig of juice as the limousine pulled away from Milan’s Malpensa Airport and into the teeming traffic.

The sky was cloudless and blue, the sun glinting brightly off the cars that zipped and zoomed their way across half a dozen motorway lanes.

Zoe sipped her drink, feeling the first familiar wave of fatigue crash over her. She hadn’t slept much on the plane, and now a bit grimly she wondered if her employer would expect her to start work that morning.

For a moment she imagined him greeting her at the door of his villa, a feather duster and frilly apron in hand. What exactly did the temporary housekeeper of an Italian villa in the lakes do?

The job description had been surprisingly pithy—a scant two lines of tiny print in the back of the New York Times . Blink and you’d miss it. But Zoe had had a lifetime’s experience of looking at such ads, circling them in red ink—usually with a pen that was sputtering or leaking or had lost its life altogether—before handing them hopefully to her mother.

What about this one?

There was always something better, something great right around the corner. There had to be.

The driver turned off the motorway, leaving behind the rolling hills of Lombardy as well as the endless traffic of the capital’s outskirts for a smaller road lined with plane trees. Zoe glanced at the small road sign that read ‘Como: 25 kilometres’ before leaning her head once more against the soft leather seat and closing her eyes.

She must have dozed—she could sleep anywhere, except perhaps on planes—for when she woke the car was climbing higher into the hills, the dark green, densely forested peaks of the mountains providing a stunning backdrop.

She rapped on the dividing window, and with a long-suffering air the driver pressed a button so the glass slid smoothly away.

‘Are we almost there?’

‘Sì, signorina.’

Zoe sat back, taking in the ancient winding road, and the wrought-iron gates that presented themselves at intervals, guarding the wealthy residents within, whose villas could barely be glimpsed through the heavy foliage of rhododendrons and bougainvillea. As the car continued up the twisting road the lake shimmered enticingly at each bend, before disappearing again, and Zoe found herself turning around to look at it, to find its brilliant blue promise winking at her from between the trees.

‘This is beautiful,’ she said to the driver, before realising belatedly that he’d already pressed a button to return the dividing glass to its original place.

Then the car was turning smoothly into a narrow lane, and the driver spoke into an intercom affixed to an ancient crumbling wall. Zoe couldn’t hear what was spoken, but after a moment the iron gates swung inwards, and the car proceeded up the lane.

Foliage crowded the car densely on both sides of the drive, so that when it finally fell away to reveal the villa Zoe let her breath out in a sharp, impressed exhalation.

Wow .

A sweep of jewel-green lawn led up to a villa that seemed more like a palace—a palazzo —than the villa Zoe had been imagining.

This place was a castle .

And she was supposed to clean it all?

She counted twenty-two multi-paned windows glinting in the sunlight before she stopped.

The car pulled round the circular drive to the front of the villa. A pair of solid oak doors, looking as if they’d survived the Dark Ages, remained ominously shut.

Zoe climbed out of the car before the driver could come round, earning his continued disapproval. He took her suitcase from the boot and deposited it on the crumbling portico.

‘Here you are, signorina .’

It took Zoe a moment to realise he was leaving.

‘Wait—you’re going?’ she demanded, hearing an annoying edge of panic creep into her voice. ‘Don’t you work here?’

‘I am hired only,’ the driver replied, his voice stiff with disdain, before he slammed the door and drove away.

As the sound of his motor faded into the distance, Zoe was conscious of how surprisingly silent it was. A bird twittered nearby, and the breeze, cool and fresh from the lake, rustled the leaves of the palm trees that fringed the great lawn.