Sharon Kendrick - Italian Boss, Housekeeper Bride

The more people you told, the weaker you became. Because knowledge was power—and, surely, this quiet Englishwoman already knew far too much about how he lived his life. For now, he had her loyalty, because she owed him a great debt—but what if greed reared its ugly head and persuaded her to sell out, as he had seen happen so many times in the past? What if she discovered that she could make enough to keep her in comfort for many years if she sold her story to the papers, who were always hungry to find out more about him?

‘No, Natasha—I wasn’t expecting anyone,’ he said, with blunt honesty.

‘You’re back from America early.’

‘I haven’t been in America. I flew to Italy, instead.’

‘Oh? Any special reason?’ She pushed the sugar towards him, knowing that she was being unusually persistent—but she had never seen him look quite so troubled before.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

But, because she loved him, Natasha chose to ignore the sudden dark, repressive tone of his voice. ‘Something’s wrong—isn’t it, Raffaele?’

Inexplicably, he felt the flicker of temptation for one brief moment, before his mouth curved with an aristocratic disdain he rarely used on her. ‘It is not your place to ask me such a question,’ he answered coolly. ‘You know that.’

Yes, she knew that—and mainly she accepted it. Just as she accepted so many other things about his life. Like the women who sometimes shared his bed, who would wander down to breakfast in the morning, all tousle-haired and pink-cheeked, long after he had left for the City. They would giggle as they demanded she make them French toast and orange juice and Natasha’s jealous heart would break into a thousand pieces.

It was true that there hadn’t been any of those interlopers for some time—in fact, he was probably gearing up for another any day now. Maybe that was what was bugging him? Was some woman giving him the run-around, for once—instead of the other way round? In which case, why didn’t he damned well tell her? At least, that way she would be able to steel her heart against the pain to come. Against the projected and mostly hidden fear that, this time, his affair might be serious.

But then Natasha felt ashamed at her self-seeking—for wasn’t there another part of Raffaele’s life which threatened to mar its near perfection? His beautiful half sister, who was nearly a whole generation younger than him. Could that be the reason behind his unscheduled trip to Italy?

She cleared her throat. ‘Elisabetta’s okay, isn’t she?’

Raffaele stilled, the coffee cup almost to his lips. He put it down with a clatter, untasted. ‘What makes you ask about my sister?’ he questioned, in a voice of dangerous stealth.

She could hardly say Because, in your charm-filled life, she seems to be the one area which causes you concern. That really would be stepping over the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Natasha shrugged, remembering the anxious phone call he had taken from Elisabetta’s psychiatrist a couple of weeks ago, which had resulted in him sitting in his study until darkness had fallen. It had been left to Natasha to wander in unnoticed and gently wonder if he wanted to put the light on, to remind him that he had a dinner engagement that evening.

‘Just a hunch that all wasn’t well.’

‘Well, don’t have hunches!’ he flared. ‘I don’t pay you to have hunches!’

She stared at him, and his words felt as if they had lanced through her heart. ‘No, of course you don’t. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.’

But Raffaele saw the faint tremble of her lips, which she’d tried and failed to hide, and relented with a sigh. ‘No, I am the one who should be sorry, cara. I should not have spoken to you that way.’

But he had—and maybe he would continue to do so—and could she bear that? Natasha pinned her shoulders back as once more she felt the distant beat of apprehension—and this time it wasn’t about Raffaele, but about her.

Didn’t they say that familiarity bred contempt—was that why he thought he could talk to her any old way and she would just take it? Oh, yes, sometimes he called her cara—but that was more a term of endearment. He certainly didn’t mean it in the romantic ‘darling’ sense.

Was she blinding herself to the fact that her position here was slowly being eroded? Was she going to wait until it became untenable before she had the courage to walk away from him?

She was beginning to recognise that as Sam grew older he would begin to notice the things which made him different from his schoolfriends. That the sumptuous home in which he lived was not really his home, but belonged to his mother’s billionaire employer. How long before that started to matter and his friends started making fun of him for being different?

‘I’d better go and get on,’ she said stiffly. ‘I want to make a cake—Sam’s bringing a friend home for tea.’ And she turned away before he could see the stupid tears which were threatening to prick at the corners of her eyes.

But Raffaele saw the rigid set of her shoulders and, for once, he realised he had hurt her. He knew that whatever else happened, Natasha didn’t deserve that. Maybe it was time that he told someone other than his attorney. Troy saw things only in black-and-white, in the way that lawyers did. That was what they were paid to do—to deal with practicalities, not emotion.

But, even for a man who had spent his life running from emotion and all its messy consequences, sometimes, like now, facing it seemed unavoidable. And Natasha was a woman—they seemed to do emotion better than men. Certainly, better than this man. Wouldn’t a feminine perspective from an impartial party be useful? What possible harm could there be to run it past her?

Maybe it was true what they said—that if you spoke the words out loud it made you see them differently.

Raffaele had spent most of his thirty-four years pressing all the right buttons and had achieved huge international success, but what he liked best was the control that success gave him and the power which came with it. But these past weeks he had felt it slipping away from him—and the sensation made him uneasy.

‘Natasha?’

‘What?’ she answered, but she didn’t turn back; she was too busy blinking away the last of her tears.

Natasha would tell him the truth, even if he didn’t want to hear it. ‘Elisabetta’s in a clinic,’ he said bluntly. ‘She has been secretly flown to England, and I’m terrified the press are going to find her.’

NATASHA froze, her own fears crumbling to unimportant dust as she tried to take in what Raffaele had just told her—a lightning bolt from the blue. ‘What?’

‘My sister has been admitted to a private clinic in the south of England, with an acute anxiety attack,’ Raffaele said, as if he were reading from a charge sheet.

Natasha blinked away her thoughtlessly self-indulgent tears and turned round to face him, her hands automatically reaching out towards him in an instinctive gesture of comfort. But she saw him flinch and stare at them as if they were something untoward—which she guessed they were—and they dropped to her sides like stones.

‘We’ve been trying to keep it out of the papers,’ he said, still in that same, flat voice.

‘We?’

‘Me. Troy. The doctors in charge. They’re worried that it will add to her stress. If the papers get hold of it, then she’ll be harassed when they discharge her—and it’ll drag her right back down. The security at the clinic is tight, but there are always photographers loitering around in the hope of sniffing out a new story. And you know how everyone loves this particular modern fairytale—“the girl who has everything suddenly fighting for her sanity”.’