Rebecca Winters - The Nanny and the Millionaire - Promoted - Nanny to Wife / The Italian Tycoon and the Nanny / The Millionaire's Nanny Arrangement

Her voice lightly shook. ‘I deserved that. I’m sorry.’

‘Then I forgive you, for a wonder! But I’m still waiting.’

‘I don’t know that I can forgive you for not believing me,’ she retorted, with a shaky laugh. ‘You’ve regarded Riley as my big indiscretion from day one.’

He nearly put her palm to his mouth. ‘If I haven’t believed you, Marissa, it’s because you’re to blame, in part anyway.’ Slowly he released her. ‘Was what happened to you so cruel you can’t speak of it?’

She blinked her lashes rapidly, determined not to dissolve into tears. ‘My father was a brilliant man, strikingly handsome. I was so proud of him. When we were all together as a family, my mother, father and me, he always said he was the happiest man in the world. He adored us, especially my mother.’

‘Do you look like her?’ If so her mother had to be unforgettable.

She shook her head. ‘Riley and I take after our father. We have his colouring, his blue eyes. My mother was blond. After she was killed in the car crash with my father at the wheel he went to pieces. He was a man destroyed.’

‘I can understand that,’ he said, his own feelings solidifying into a powerful desire to keep her here with him on Wungalla.

Then she did something extraordinary. She put out her hand and lay a finger briefly against his cheek turning his face directly towards her.

‘Are you sure you can?’

Wasn’t she aware he was holding his emotions on the tightest possible rein? If the children hadn’t been around he would have given into his feelings and hauled her into his arms. ‘Trust me, Marissa,’ he said. ‘I really know what you mean. Why would you suggest otherwise? There’s a hell of a lot you don’t know about me.’

‘Maybe some time you’ll tell me,’ she said very quietly. ‘The reason I never let anyone in, is because I’m afraid they will judge him. He was a wonderful man. Know that. I’m certain he tried and tried, but he so loved her. He was desperately lonely for her. He lost all interest in life. The great wonder is he formed a relationship with Riley’s mother, someone half his age. Maybe she was the one who latched on to him. That wouldn’t have been totally strange. As I told you, he was a striking looking man.’

‘So that was how it was?’ He stared directly into her eyes, eyes what were windows opening onto her soul.

‘That was how it was,’ she said, letting him look his fill.

All his doubts melted away like ice under heat. ‘And Riley’s mother abandoned him? When did all this happen?’

Marissa picked up her story.

By the time she was finished, she was deeply upset.

Only iron discipline prevented him from lifting her right into his arms. Once he did that of course he would be damned near impossible to stop. ‘You’ll have to hide those tears, Marissa,’ he cautioned, the warning as much for himself as her. If he had never believed there was a Fate, he believed it now. ‘The children will be coming back soon.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She used the back of her hand to flick away fallen teardrops. ‘I understand now what Catholics feel when they go to confession.’

Only he was no priest. A hard ball of tension was knotting in his stomach. ‘Why don’t you stop Riley from calling you Ma?’

Her blue eyes fired.

God, he wanted to grasp a handful of her hair, pull her head back.

‘Because it’s not as simple as that, Holt!’ she declared. ‘It’s in the nature of every child to want a mother. Instead of being a sister I fitted into Riley’s idea of a mother figure. We’re very close.’

‘An obvious statement,’ he said harshly. ‘You’re going to call me Holt from now on?’

‘I won’t if you don’t want me to. Holt just slipped out.’ Why wouldn’t it? That was the way she thought of him.

‘No, that’s okay. Just checking,’ he said, his smile throwing her further off balance. ‘Riley is to start calling you Marissa. You have to cut this cord. You know that. If you don’t, you can’t blame people for getting the wrong idea. Would you like me to speak to him? It might carry a little more weight coming from me. Riley and I get along well together.’

She knew that to be true. Holt McMaster was fast turning into Riley’s hero figure. ‘No, I’ll tell him,’ she said. ‘Your sister-in-law.’

‘My ex sister-in-law,’ he corrected, tersely.

‘Never even gave me a hearing. I don’t understand that.’

‘Lois didn’t want to give you a hearing,’ he said. ‘Rest assured I’ll make the relationship perfectly plain. Are you ashamed of your father’s descent into alcoholism?’

A small silence fell. ‘I don’t like to say it but I must have been, if only because Aunt Allison never let up on him and his problem. The drinking wasn’t his problem. It was a symptom. I see now part of her problem was the fact Uncle Bryan was secretly in love with my mother. It was her way of getting even.’

‘On a child? How is such a thing possible?’ Yet such things happened. He should know.

‘She didn’t really want me, you know. I was sort of forced on her.’ She turned her face to him. ‘Has my telling you made any difference to the way you feel about me?’

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