Kitabı oku: «The Italian Millionaire's Virgin Wife»

The Italian Millionaire’s Virgin Wife
Diana Hamilton

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

ANDREO PASCALI, cursing the day the admirable Knox had left his employ, taking retirement to make her home with her recently widowed sister in Kent, impatiently lifted the final sheet of paper, scanned it in a nanosecond and even more impatiently tossed it aside.

‘No details,’ he dismissed tersely, his wide sensual mouth tightening with annoyance, lancing a look of displeasure at his current lover.

Though current was on the verge of becoming past. Trisha was becoming far too demanding and clingy—definitely against his emphatically stated ground rules.

Only last evening he’d returned from the agency with the intention of wrestling with the problem of how to come up with an idea for a sensational TV commercial, one bearing the inimitable Pascali stamp of excellence and selling clout for something as deeply uninspiring as a brand of ready meals, only to find that Trisha had let herself in and was waiting for him with a wretched Chinese takeaway festering in the oven. She’d done that fluffing up thing with her hair, accompanying it with the usual pouty mouth bit—once sexily amusing but now utterly boring—and had told him, sounding deadly serious, ‘What you need, light of my life, is a wife. Then you wouldn’t be facing these dreary interviews and wasting the time you say is so precious.’

His scowl darkened. As a hint, it seriously raised his annoyance threshold. She knew darn well he didn’t need or want a wife. He wanted an unobtrusive housekeeper and at this rate it didn’t look as if he was going to get one!

‘The last two girls seemed perfectly fine,’ he snapped. ‘Though, I grant you, the first applicant was a nightmare.’ Eighty if she was a day, even though her letter of application had given her age as fifty, dotty as they came. He’d had Trisha make her a cup of tea and had personally put her into a taxi. She’d given the address of a retirement home to the driver and waved maniacally as she’d been driven away.

‘There was nothing wrong with the other two,’ he reiterated tightly. Vital energy, constrained for too long, had him on his feet, pacing the confines of his home office. ‘Good qualifications, excellent references,’ he reminded with a bite.

‘Darling,’ Trisha soothed with a sycophantic smile. ‘Don’t get cross. I offered my help and advice when you said you didn’t do domestic stuff. And my advice is that both those girls wouldn’t stay for longer than a few weeks. Reasonably bright, passably pretty, leave to get married in no time. You need a middle-aged home body. And there are no details because she didn’t send a letter of application; she simply phoned yesterday afternoon and asked for an interview.’

Had sounded bossy, too. Andreo wouldn’t find bossiness in the least bit sexy. Whereas either of the previous two…

And having seen her when admitting her to Andreo’s darling home, and again when seeing the third applicant out, she’d reached the conclusion that Mercy Howard would do very nicely. Twenty-two years old, so sadly not middle-aged, but plain as a house brick and decidedly, wholesomely dumpy—no competition. Beginning to feel on shaky ground herself, she didn’t want the complications of round the clock competition. Andreo never gave a thought to marriage. Before the start of their relationship he’d stated that he didn’t do long-term stuff. She’d gone along with that. Well, she’d have been a fool to throw a spanner in the works at that stage. Her sole aim was to make him change his mind, decide he wanted her as his wife, setting her up for a life of ease and giving her access to untold wealth.

No, the woman who didn’t find Andreo Pascali’s perfect bone structure, tall lean physique and dark charismatic Latin looks seriously lust-worthy—not to mention his wildly impressive bank account—was yet to be born. The Howard female wouldn’t be any different, but darling Andreo wouldn’t be remotely tempted to take any notice of her no doubt clumsy attempts to hit on him.

‘You might as well see her since she’s here,’ Trisha cooed, running her fingers through his midnight hair. ‘You never know, she could well be just what we’re looking for.’

Disliking the proprietorial ‘we’ bit and even more disliking the impression of being humoured, Andreo jerked his head away, stiffened his impressive shoulders and positioned himself behind his desk again, a massive frown bringing his brows down in two straight black bars. Trisha’s time was definitely up. He’d have his PA select a suitably expensive piece of jewellery and deliver it to her apartment first thing in the morning accompanied by his standard note saying farewell and no regrets.

And, unless the fourth applicant was over eighty and completely doolally, the job was hers. He had important creative work to get stuck into.

The moment she’d found the address she was looking for, Mercy had felt horrible qualms. A converted warehouse in one of the trendiest Thames-side areas was hardly the right setting for a humble country bumpkin. How often had Carly teased, ‘Get streetwise, kid,’ when she’d confessed to being appalled, mystified or downright scared of the frenetic life of this great cosmopolitan city? Despite being in London for two years, she was still an old-fashioned country vicar’s daughter at heart with old-fashioned values and a yearning for the much slower pace of life she’d been used to.

But she had determination on her side and, clutching her large shabby handbag, had marched up to the fine wooden door, pressing a bell. Startled by a voice issuing from some sort of discreet metal contraption, she had obeyed instructions and given her name and business.

Eventually the door had swung open as if by magic and she’d found herself walking into a huge vestibule, the ceiling of which soared three storeys high, with a staircase winding up and leading to balustraded floors. To be met by a big-haired blonde of such magnificent proportions, shown to full advantage by pink harem pants and a toning glittery, clingy top, that Mercy had immediately felt like a small fat grey mouse, her modest five-three seeming to diminish to a mere inch or two.

Consulting a clipboard, the blonde had announced, ‘You must be Ms Howard.’ A wide white smile followed a minute scrutiny of her less than flattering boxy grey suit, sensible shoes and unwieldy handbag. ‘I’m Signor Pascali’s—’ the coy arching of one artfully darkened brow, followed by a huskily stressed ‘—friend.’ A meaningful simper, then, ‘He is interviewing at the moment, so if you’d like to take a seat I’m sure he won’t keep you waiting for too long.’

The leather and chrome seat she located beside a glass-topped table was surprisingly comfortable. But Mercy couldn’t relax even though she planted her feet together and cradled her comfy old handbag on her lap. The qualms had begun first thing this morning when Carly had gleefully apprised her of the exact identity of her hoped-for future employer.

‘I sat up half the night on the net researching the guy. Get this—he’s a living legend and he’s only thirty-one! He owns, directs and literally is the creative genius behind the Pascali Ad Agency. Worth billions in his own right, not counting a load of family dosh. His main home is here in London—presumably where you’ll be working and living—plus he owns a villa near Amalfi and an apartment in Rome. Interested in modern art. No wife and kids, so there won’t be much for you to do other than flick a duster over his Picassos and Hockneys!’ Shrugging into the navy tailored suit jacket, the one with a discreet embroidered logo of the world-famous cosmetic company she worked for on the narrow lapel, the dark colour of the sleek fabric drawing attention to her enviably straight jaw-length ash-blonde bob, she blew Mercy a kiss. ‘Must dash before I’m late again. And the best of luck—and remember, you’ve got a beautiful smile, so use it a lot!’

Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, having been up most of the night cleaning offices, which was increasingly the only type of work the domestic agency found for her because, according to one of her workmates, she was always reliable, thorough and never ever called in sick, she had found it impossible to grab the customary two hours or so of rest, getting more and more het up about the coming interview.

Coming across the job vacancy as she’d browsed through an up-market magazine while waiting for a routine six-monthly dental check-up yesterday lunchtime, it had seemed that her guardian angel was working overtime on her behalf. A live-in housekeeper was required for an Andreo Pascali, the salary quoted large enough to make her eyes pop out of her head.

On that kind of money, no living expenses—and presumably she’d be fed as well as housed—she could do a huge amount to help her brother James through his medical training, far more than she was managing at the moment even though she scraped together every penny that wasn’t needed for her share of the rent and food.

Hopelessly impractical where money matters were concerned, he’d feel utterly at sea if he finished his gruelling training—and already he was talking about eventually going on to take a higher degree in surgery—and woke up to the fact that he was saddled with a mountainous student debt.

Convinced that the job vacancy she’d happened across had been heaven-sent, she’d phoned and stated—well, more demanded, she recollected with a flush of discomfiture—that she needed an appointment for an interview. It had all seemed to fit so perfectly, given that only the day before Carly had dropped her bombshell.

The old school friend she’d shared the tiny flat with for the last two years was moving out, moving in with her boyfriend, marriage definitely on the cards.

She’d been genuinely happy for her, of course she had. How could she be otherwise when Carly had been so good to her? Two years ago, days after her twentieth birthday, she’d been at her wits’ end, stricken with grief at the death of her remaining parent, not knowing how she would manage to help her brilliant brother through his long years of training and exist on her odd job earnings now that her mother’s church pension had died with her.

Leaving school herself at sixteen on the death of her father, she’d agreed with her mother that it was her duty to earn something to put by for her much brighter younger brother’s education. She’d taken any work she could find in the village where the family had moved from the vicarage to live in a small cottage owned by the church authorities which was a guaranteed home for their mother’s lifetime.

Times had been hard but contented. She’d been planning to work full-time towards a qualification in catering and housecraft to open up a future of professional housekeeping or, more adventurously, starting up her own business catering for private dinner parties and weddings. That ambition had been put on hold but, even so, she had enjoyed the work she did find. Cleaning, tidying gardens, shopping for the housebound, dog-walking.

It had been Carly who’d stepped in at that worrisome time. She worked as a beautician in a swanky London store and had offered, ‘You can share with me. The flat’s not much bigger than a shoe box but we’d manage. You could share the rent so you’d be doing me a favour. And there are loads of domestic agencies just crying out for recruits. I could fix up some interviews. Okay?’

So she’d got a home and a job and her father’s spinster aunt, a retired schoolmistress, had offered James a home during his vacations. A quiet Cornish village where he could revise and study in peace and quiet before returning to the famous London teaching hospital for his next term of training.

Now, as the statuesque blonde escorted a tall, graceful, fine-featured brunette—probably with a whole pile of qualifications tucked up in her smart leather shoulder purse—over to the front door, telling her, ‘You will be contacted within the next day or two to let you know whether you are on the short list,’ Mercy’s spirits dropped through the soles of her brown lace-ups. She felt totally out of place.

And if that with-it, confident-looking woman might not even make a short list, what hope had she? And had been left for a further ten minutes to stew, torn between the desire to slope away, advertise for someone prepared to share the tiny flat when Carly moved out at the end of the week and carry on as before, scratching to save every penny she could, and the need to tough it out, give it her best shot. After all, she had nothing to lose except the tube fare.

Still dithering, the decision to flee or fight was taken out of her hands when the blonde bombshell beckoned from the doorway of the room she’d previously entered on the far side of the vast vestibule.

Heart thumping at the base of her throat, Mercy rose to her feet, wishing she’d at least had something more impressive to wear than the sober and sensible suit that had been bought for her father’s funeral all those years ago.

But then she heartened herself by deciding that ‘sensible’ would be a quality any employer would look for in a housekeeper, so sensible and practical was the way she would pitch it. A girl didn’t have to be a vision of loveliness to wash dishes and polish floors, did she?

And the legendary, super well-heeled Signor Pascali was only a human being, just as she was, wasn’t he?

But there were human beings and human beings was her first insane thought when the too-handsome-by-a-country-mile specimen viewed her dumpy personage across the cluttered expanse of his desk.

His lean, strong face was taut with barely concealed impatience and there was an aura of predatory stillness about the honed, whiplash tight, power-packed frame that suggested a tendency to leap on anyone who stepped out of line and tear them apart limb from limb.

The dark grey eyes continued to assess her until she felt like squirming through the floorboards. His eyes spoke of a vital volatility, though, and that eased her somewhat because if he really was a creative genius then he probably wasn’t noticing the toffee-coloured corkscrew curls that made her look as if she’d been in a wind tunnel for hours no matter how hard she tried to tame them, or her plain face. He was probably miles away on some fantastically creative plane or other.

But the comforting illusion was shattered when those eyes finally got down as far as her clumpy shoes. A terse hand movement gestured her to take the hot seat opposite him and he simultaneously turned to his hovering blonde ‘friend’.

‘I need coffee, Trisha. Now.’ He would conduct this final interview on his own, without annoying twittered interruptions regarding qualifications, experience, references. He’d wasted too much time already.

Sensing a reluctance, he added, ‘And a cup for—’ he consulted a sheet of paper ‘—Ms Mercy Howard.’

The command, delivered in that slightly accented rough velvet voice had the blonde—Trisha—scurrying away, Mercy noted, an odd squirmy feeling starting up inside her as her eyes homed in on his wide, sensual mouth. Never having thought of any part of any male before in those terms, it gave her a decidedly peculiar feeling.

With his about to be ex-lover out of the way, Andreo lounged back in his chair and regarded the final applicant from beneath lowered lids, not prepared to waste a moment more of his valuable time. He had two options. Contact either one of the two earlier candidates and offer the job or hire this one.

His smoky eyes narrowed further. He took advice from no one, but in this case maybe Trisha did have a point, he reluctantly conceded. Both of the other two women had been lookers, beautifully turned out and groomed, self-assured and confident in themselves. Hire one of them and wait to see how long it would take for her to persuade some poor sucker to slip a plain gold band on her wedding finger.

Then he’d have to go through this whole charade again.

With this one he wouldn’t run nearly the same risk, he decided. A plump no-nonsense—apart from her weird hair—little personage, the only sign of discomfiture showing in her rapidly pinkening unremarkable face.

The job was hers.

‘Experience of running a household?’ he barked out. Better go through some of the motions. Unless some serious flaw was unearthed, he had another housekeeper after two irritating weeks without one. His life would go on as before, letting him concentrate on what was important without having to bother about tiresome domestic matters like finding clean socks and figuring out how to make a decent cup of coffee.

Mercy breathed a short sigh of relief. The way he’d been looking at her, as if she were a previously undiscovered life form, had seriously unnerved her. Clasping her hands together, she answered in a rush. ‘I ran my mother’s household for four years, plus holding down several part-time jobs. And I began studying catering and housecraft at night school, but had to—’ About to explain the circumstances that had led to her abandoning the course, namely her mother’s deteriorating health, she found herself robbed of speech when Signor Pascali slotted in, ‘Boyfriends?’

Her mouth falling open as she swallowed her words, Mercy floundered. What had that to do with her ability to housekeep? ‘No,’ she finally answered when the impatient tightening of his mouth indicated that he’d waited too long for a response he’d expected to receive at the double.

‘Any family commitments?’ Then, as if the question needed elaboration, ‘Any children? Aged relatives with health or drink problems who will expect you to drop everything and deal with regular minor emergencies?’

Mercy stiffened, primming her innocent of make-up full lips. Despite his devastating looks, this man was a bully. Time to stand up for herself; she probably wouldn’t make the short list in any case.

‘Signor Pascali, my father was a man of the cloth. Apart from a sip of Communion wine, alcohol never crossed his lips. My mother was a gentle soul who never once made an unreasonable demand. Sadly, they are both gone. I do have a great-aunt in robust health and, as she lives in Cornwall, I’m hardly likely to rush to her side should she have the misfortune to suffer a head cold—not that she would dream of expecting me to. And, as for children, of course I don’t have any. I am unmarried.’

‘The unmarried state doesn’t necessarily indicate the absence of offspring, in my experience,’ he remarked in what she considered to be deep cynicism, but his sudden grin splintered her prickly mood, rendering him so handsome it made her eyes water. And he had laughing eyes, she noted, quite transfixed as he shot forward in his seat with an excess of energy, briefly consulting the sheet of paper on the desk in front of him, complacently reflecting that as a vicar’s daughter she would probably have old fashioned moral values and be unlikely to do drugs or throw wild parties during his occasional absences.

‘If you accept the position, Howard, you will have your own suite of rooms which you will keep to when off duty. You will manage all domestic matters unobtrusively. I do not wish to be informed or consulted on such trifles. For example, should a water pipe spring a leak you will contact a plumber and get it fixed without bothering me. You will deal with my laundry—I use two shirts a day. I rise at six-thirty and breakfast at eight after my usual run and shower. I rarely spend the evenings at home but when I intend to you will be notified and will prepare a meal for nine o’clock. On the occasions when I entertain, whether à deux or a dinner party for up to twenty you will contact the firm of caterers I always use and make all the necessary arrangements. And if I have an overnight guest then her requirements will be conveyed to you. Any questions?’

Mercy snatched in a ragged breath. Was it possible that he was about to offer her the job? It would be a life-saver! Her mind churning, her eyes widening as she struggled to come up with something both pertinent and sensible to ask him, not a single thing occurred to her except a disapproving need to know if the overnighting female guest was always the big blonde or whether he liked to ring the changes. And, as that would mark her down as being unbearably prissy, she was reduced to shaking her head and giving him a breathy ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Gathering herself and thankfully finding a competent tone from somewhere, she tacked on, ‘It seems quite straightforward.’

Plainly keen, Andreo decided. None of the usual questions about days off or holiday entitlement. His mind made up, he smiled into a pair of startlingly blue eyes. He leaned back, his indolent pose at odds with his driven inner need to be done with the whole business, see a housekeeper installed right now and wash his hands of the horrifying range of chores needed to ensure a smooth-running domestic life that had so unexpectedly loomed up since Knox had so inconveniently retired.

‘Welcome on board, Howard.’ He rose, his height and the intimidating breadth of his dark-shirted shoulders looming over her, a strong, finely made hand extended. ‘You take up your duties as of tomorrow.’

Mercy’s poleaxed gaze flicked up from that extended hand to lock with those dark pewter eyes. She’d got the peach of a job! Just like that! Her soft mouth dropped open then firmed decisively as she told him, ‘Thank you. However, I can’t possibly begin tomorrow.’

‘And why not?’ emerged on a bite as he dropped back into his seat at speed, his classic features hardening.

He was going to be a handful, Mercy labelled, refusing to quail beneath all that feature-darkening displeasure. Plainly he was used to getting all his own way. It was about time that someone taught him that life wasn’t like that. Despite her self-acknowledged unprepossessing mousy appearance and her willingness to bend over backwards to help everyone, she was capable of putting her foot down if circumstances warranted it.

Giving him a moment to stew, she told him firmly, ‘I am presently employed through a domestic agency. I am required to give a full week’s notice. Of course I could merely leave and sacrifice a week’s wages—which I would expect you to reimburse. But I never go back on a commitment. I would be happy to take up the position when I’ve served my notice,’ she enforced, desperately hoping that she hadn’t blown it.

Andreo’s intimidating frown dissolved. The most glamorous, self-assured females around had been known to fall over backwards in their desire to comply with his slightest wishes, but now he’d been put in his place by a frumpy little glorified char-lady who should, by rights, have been willing to tie herself in knots in order to secure such a highly paid position. It was a novel experience and one which set his mouth twitching.

The twitch grew to a full blown grin as he shot to his feet. ‘Then I’ll expect you to take up your duties in one week, Howard. When the coffee finally arrives would you ask to be shown over the property?’ Long legs propelled him towards the door. At least she’d proved she had integrity, he excused his uncharacteristic acceptance of non-compliance to his dictates, his mind sharply dismissing her and homing in on the work awaiting him at the agency.

Still reeling from the effect of that devastating smile, plus her good fortune in landing the job, Mercy composed herself to wait. The legendary Andreo Pascali wasn’t as intimidating as she’d feared he would be.

Not if he was handled firmly.