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It was an immediate reaction that infuriated her because Sofia knew that she should know better.
From the age of thirteen she had known what it felt like to be the unwilling object of attention from the opposite sex. She had fought off unwanted, uninvited advances and then, when she’d been fifteen, one advance in particular from a married friend of her mother’s had made her realise that her looks weren’t a blessing in disguise. They were a curse.
Since then, she had been at pains to guard herself against men, holding out for ‘the one’ but not caring all that much if ‘the one’ never came her way—just knowing that she would never, ever sell herself short or settle for anything less than what she thought she deserved.
And she would certainly never allow looks to define her the way they had her mother.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said, a little more sharply than she’d intended. She stood back and the guy brushed past her. And there it went again...that tingle of sexual awareness that seemed to bypass all her natural defence systems.
She inched back when, having surveyed the impressive hall, he spun round to look at her.
‘Where are they?’
‘Who?’
‘The Walters. Where are they? Shouldn’t they be here to meet and greet?’
Sofia was torn between marvelling at the sheer audacity of the man and bristling at his arrogance.
He was looking at her, his dark eyes veiled and lazily assessing.
‘I don’t think they were planning on deferring their skiing holiday to give the temporary gardener the red-carpet treatment.’
‘Nice house.’
‘Is that all you’ve brought with you by way of luggage?’ She eyed the battered hold-all.
Rafael shrugged. ‘I like to travel light.’
‘Can I get something for you to drink? Eat?’
‘Is that your job here? Housekeeper?’
Rafael knew exactly what the woman did. In fact, he knew a great deal more about her than she ever could have imagined, because he had done some extensive background checks himself. His godfather might have had romantic notions of destiny throwing a daughter his way. Rafael was a little less trusting on that front.
The one thing he hadn’t known was just quite how stunning she would be in the flesh. Long, dark, curling hair was carelessly tied back. Her skin was the colour of pale coffee and as smooth as silk and her eyes were vivid green, densely lashed and almond-shaped.
Not exactly the meek and mild goody-two-shoes his godfather was doubtless hoping for. Wasn’t life full of surprises?
‘I’m the nanny.’ Sofia stuck out her chin at a defiant angle. She was a nanny, and she wasn’t ashamed of that, but in her heart she could have been so much more. However, a chequered background that involved far too much moving around had wreaked havoc with her education.
Hopes for a rewarding career had died a slow death over the years, because doors never opened for someone with a patchy academic record. Yes, she was making up for lost time now, but it wasn’t going to happen overnight, and meanwhile...
‘Does the nanny have a name?’
‘Sofia. Sofia Suarez. You never said—do you want anything to eat or drink? Naturally, I cannot raid the liquor cabinet to offer you anything alcoholic, but tea? Coffee? I could make you a sandwich.’
‘Nothing alcoholic? In that case, I’ll forgo the tea and coffee for some water, and a sandwich would be good.’ He strolled through the kitchen. Big kitchen. Big house. Expensive people leading an expensive lifestyle.
‘Please don’t touch anything,’ she said anxiously from behind him as he began opening drawers. Rafael slowly turned to look at her.
‘If they’ve left you in charge here, they must expect you to open drawers and cupboards.’
‘Of course, but...’ Slow, hot colour crept into her cheeks.
‘But you’re the nanny and, when it comes to pecking order, the nanny ranks higher than the gardener?’
‘You don’t look like a gardener,’ Sofia said, changing the subject and turning her back to him as she expertly began making him a ham and cheese sandwich, which was exactly what she had had for her lunch. She hadn’t yet had dinner but somehow breaking bread with this dark, arrogant man sent a trickle of cold apprehension racing up and down her spine.
Rafael grunted, watching and appreciating the length of her limbs, the willowy suppleness of her body, the innate grace with which she carried herself.
‘You need to check her out,’ his godfather had said urgently. ‘I know I’m harbouring romantic notions of this young lady, but I’m no fool. I don’t know what she’s like, what sort of character she has. My dear boy, it would mean so much to me if you could check her out, but incognito. She must have no idea of the vast fortune that could be hers, as I wouldn’t want that to influence her responses.
‘To be blunt, I wouldn’t want her to edit her personality to appeal. I would hope for someone kind, considerate, smart...and if she’s not, well, a bridge to be crossed but not yet. Check her out—that’s number one. And then...here’s the sweetener to the deal if you take this on, my dear boy...my company. All my shares. You can move in and troubleshoot my stepson back into place. With my own flesh and blood in place, rightfully there, and you by her side at the helm, all my worries would end. You have said yourself that your own empire virtually runs itself. It’s time you found a new challenge.’
Rafael had no need for his godfather’s shares, although the leisure business would certainly be a healthy addition to his own vast portfolio. No, what motivated him went beyond anything tangible. The bottom line was that David had been there for him, mentor and friend, during all those long years when his own parents had jumped ship to do their own thing. His earliest memories of happiness didn’t involve his parents. They involved his godfather. Without him, his life would have lacked all structure, and God only knew where he would have ended up. David was the only human being Rafael actually loved and there was no request he would ever have turned down. The handover of shares, which would enable him to sort out the problem with Freddy, was icing on the cake.
‘Have you...um...?’ Sofia found that she was flustered and distracted by the play of muscle and sinew just visible beneath the old T-shirt and faded jeans as he strolled to sit at the kitchen table, a vast affair fashioned out of glass and chrome and hideously unsuitable for anyone with kids.
‘Have I...um...what?’
‘Been a gardener for long,’ Sofia said with strained politeness as her disobedient eyes fastened onto his lean, beautiful face, only to skitter away in alarm because she never stared at any man. It just wasn’t her thing. Least of all an over-the-top-good-looking one like this because, in her experience, good-looking always signalled trouble.
Just like that, he looked up, their eyes tangled and for a few seconds she found that she couldn’t breathe.
‘It’s a burgeoning career,’ Rafael said vaguely. ‘And, on the subject of people not looking the part, you look nothing like a nanny.’
Sofia stiffened, wondered whether this was going to be the start of the flirting game. He was going to be stationed in the annex by the pool. Coming as he did by word of mouth, she doubted that he would prove any kind of threat, but he could prove a nuisance, and she was going to be here on her own with him.
‘Do you have a lot of experience of nannies?’ she asked courteously. ‘Maybe you expect me to be older? Perhaps with a wart or two on my chin?’
‘We could have conversed in Spanish but I am more comfortable speaking English and you’ve answered in kind. You’re bilingual. Not what I would have expected.’ Rafael pushed away his empty plate and then relaxed back with his hands behind his head. ‘Now that we’re on the subject of expectations.’
‘You’re finished eating. I think I should show you where you’ll be staying. Like you said, you’re hot and tired.’
‘Is that your way of telling me that you don’t want me asking any more questions?’
Sofia shrugged and didn’t bother to beat about the bush. ‘I suppose it is.’
Rafael didn’t budge. He was here on a mission. The sooner he got the job done, the quicker he would be able to dump this ridiculous charade of being a gardener. The closest he’d ever got to gardening was the book he’d bought the day before he left London. He’d speed-read a few pages. How hard could it be to turn over some soil and run a lawn mower over a lawn? But, still, he didn’t want to hang around.
But first he had to get past whatever defences this woman had erected and suss her out.
More than that. If she passed the litmus test...
His dark eyes roved lazily over her. Graceful as a gazelle and just as skittish...
‘What’s it like, working here?’ He chose to prolong the conversation.
Sofia clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘I thought you were tired. If I show you to your quarters, you can get an early night, and tomorrow I have a list of what you need to do.’
‘I’ve never been a fan of early nights. What other languages do you speak?’
‘What others do you?’
‘French. Spanish. Italian. Some Mandarin. A sprinkling of a few others...’
‘Very unusual for a gardener,’ Sofia said tartly and Rafael laughed under his breath.
‘Touché. I learnt them on the various jobs I’ve had over the years. I also have a curious mind and, face it, if people are conversing in a foreign language around you then you need to understand what they’re saying, as far as I am concerned. What about you?’
Sofia hesitated. She rarely got the chance to talk to guys. When she wasn’t working, she was studying, looking ahead to a brighter future.
Guys and dating didn’t feature in her calendar, not at this point in time.
But having this good-looking man here in the kitchen, asking her about herself...
She could feel her guard drop a little. The man was going to be around until James and Elizabeth returned with the kids and chances were that they would be thrown into each other’s company frequently. Life would be easier if she opened up a little.
And he was so damned good-looking, so darkly, sinfully spectacular, and he didn’t make her feel...threatened.
She was far too practical for a guy like him to get to her, but he was brilliant eye-candy, and it wouldn’t hurt to give a little. At least converse.
‘I... I spent a great deal of my life on the move,’ she volunteered hesitantly. She sat opposite him and propped her hand under her chin. ‘My mother and I actually used to live in this part of the world, and we returned here eventually, but in the interim life was spent with suitcases at the ready.’
‘That so? Why? It’s a beautiful area...just the sort of place made for roots being put down.’
Sofia shrugged. There was only so far she was prepared to go sharing confidences with a complete stranger, however compelling his attentiveness was. ‘At any rate, we moved about a bit, here and there. Long story, and frankly none of your business. I picked up English from some of the people we met along the way and made sure to practise whenever I could. I’ve always been good at languages.’
And libraries had such huge choice when it came to audio-learning. Wherever and whenever, she’d made the local library her first port of call. In a life of constant moving, libraries had become safe havens, places of stillness and peace. There was a big world out there and she would need to be fluent in English to navigate it successfully. One day.
‘And your mother? Where is she now?’
Sofia glanced away. ‘She died a few months ago. But she’d been ill for a couple of years prior to that. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not talk about that.’ She stood up and smiled politely. ‘I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.’
Rafael vaulted upright. As he came to stand behind her, once again Sofia was intensely aware of his physicality.
At five-ten, she was tall, but he was several inches taller and something about his height, his muscularity, his lazy, masculine magnetism, made her feel feminine and girlish and nothing like the woman with her head firmly screwed on who was determined to control the outcome of her life because she had never had much control over the experiences of her past.
She’d moved from her home in Argentina to another and another before her mother had decided that settling down with an American tourist who had been backpacking through South America at the time might be a good idea. He had been ten years her junior and as responsible as a toddler. The marriage had lasted a year and a half, at which point he had disappeared back to his home in Florida, and they had upped sticks and headed in the opposite direction.
Story of her mother’s life. Pregnant by an older man who had dumped her, breaking her heart in the process, from there on she had launched herself into a career of making the most of her good looks, which had never faded over time.
But that had all changed when, after years spent abroad, they had returned to her mother’s home town where she had spent her final years being cared for by her sister, old friends who had rallied together and, of course, her daughter.
She wondered what this guy would make of her convoluted life history. He had landed here, roving gardener, so he must love moving around, never standing still, the very things she had come to loathe. They couldn’t be more different and yet the urge to confide was so strong that it was scary.
‘If you’re ready?’ She eyed his bag and moved towards the door. ‘I have things to do...’ She glanced away from dark, speculative eyes that were a little too interested for her liking.
So darkly, dangerously sexy...
For a fleeting second she wondered... What is he really doing here...?
CHAPTER TWO
‘NICE PLACE,’ RAFAEL said neutrally as they headed out of the house, swinging round to the back, away from the main lodgings.
Night had gathered around them and Rafael had morphed into a tall, dark shadow, his gait loose-limbed and oddly graceful for a man of his size.
Sofia was accustomed to the size of the mansion where she worked, as well as to the several acres of manicured lawns surrounding the house.
‘It’s very big,’ she agreed, breathing in the fragranced air and making sure to keep some distance between them. It was cooler now, with a whispery breeze that lifted her hair and blew tendrils away from her face.
‘Enjoy working here?’
‘That’s where you’ll be staying. Straight ahead. It’s entirely self-contained, so there will be no need for you to come to the main house.’
‘Unless I want to.’
Sofia shivered and hugged herself. She had picked up something in that low, lazy drawl but then, when she thought about it, she wondered whether it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her.
‘Have you been to this part of the world before?’
‘This particular country has passed me by,’ Rafael murmured.
‘In that case, I can tell you where you need to go to buy...err...food or whatever else you might need.’
‘Or you could show me.’
Sofia didn’t say anything. Was this a come-on? It sounded like one but it didn’t feel like one because his drawl was lazy and mildly amused. None of that skin-crawling invasion of her privacy and space that always alerted her to a man on the make.
She thought back to all those years ago and to one of those men on the make, but she had just been a kid of fifteen and he had been old enough to be her father—a friend of a friend of her mother’s, drunk at a house party, one of the few her mother had ever had. She remembered the terror of her bedroom door slowly being pushed open and the fear when she had worked out why he had crept into the room.
Sofia knew that she might not have had the strength to fight him off and that he had only scarpered because a couple had stumbled up the stairs, opening doors in search of the upstairs bathroom. They had spooked the guy out of the bedroom because, drunk as he was, he’d still known what the fallout would be if he were to be caught. She’d been saved by the bell but it had been a sharp learning curve for her. Be wary had become the motto branded at the back of her brain, and she had lived her life accordingly.
Four years later, when she had made the mistake of falling for a boy her own age—only to discover that she had been the object of a bet as to whether he could get the hot chick into bed inside a month—‘be wary’ had become ‘stay away’.
She was disturbed that these wayward memories had jumped out of her without warning because she’d always thought that they were buried and forgotten.
She slid her eyes sideways. He wasn’t looking at her. He was frowning and staring at the grand quarters they were approaching, usually used as guest quarters for overspill at parties. James had decided that it would do for the gardener, possibly because it would have been unthinkable to accommodate him in the main house. A gardener roaming through their luxury villa and making himself at home in their kitchen would never have done.
Sofia stuck the key in the lock and stood back so that he could precede her into the two-bedroomed dwelling. She switched on all the lights and watched as he strolled around for a few seconds before heading off in the direction of the kitchen, having tossed his battered hold-all on the ground by the staircase.
She followed. The housekeeper had tidied the place but it felt stuffy and airless.
‘Who usually uses this?’ He appeared in the doorway of the kitchen and lounged indolently against the doorframe, looking at her with his head tilted to one side.
‘Overnight guests. If the big house is full.’ He was so breathtakingly beautiful that she couldn’t help but stare at him. It was almost too much of a mammoth effort to look away.
‘I’m surprised they didn’t choose to stick you in here,’ he mused, spinning around and then heading straight for the kitchen cupboards, which he proceeded to open and close. ‘The very least they could have done was to equip me with a few essentials.’
Sofia gasped and then burst out laughing, surprising herself as much as it seemed to surprise Rafael. Laughing with a guy, any guy, wasn’t something she could remember having done in years.
‘Share the joke?’ He raised both eyebrows and her outburst of laughter subsided into a wicked grin.
‘You. You’re so...so...brazen...’
‘Explain.’ But he was smiling crookedly back at her, his dark eyes unreadable.
‘You don’t seem at all grateful to be here.’
‘Why should I be grateful?’
‘Well, I gather from the Walters that they were more or less put in a position where they had to give you this gardening job for a month. It’s a really cushy number.’ She glanced around her at the luxurious accommodation. ‘And most people would be over the moon to have this place to stay.’
‘I’m not most people,’ Rafael said. ‘You’ll figure that out soon enough.’ He paused but kept his fabulous eyes pinned to her face, which made her colour rise further and made her heart flutter a little more furiously in her chest.
‘Well, upstairs is self-explanatory. Two bedrooms and there’s linen in the cupboard on the landing.’
‘You still haven’t told me why you don’t stay out here.’
‘I...the Walters... James and Elizabeth think it’s more convenient for me to be at hand. You know...close to the kids.’
‘Actually, I don’t know.’ He began heading up the stairs and for a few seconds Sofia wasn’t sure whether he actually expected her to traipse along in his wake or not. She had shown him the lodge, she’d done what she had to do, and in the morning she would show him the list of stuff she had been given for him to start on. Elizabeth kept a vigilant eye on the garden but messages were always relayed via her husband to the team that came weekly to prune, trim, plant and uproot. He was officious in his dealings with them. He wouldn’t be winning any popularity contests with his employees any time soon. He’d had no choice but to house this outrageous stranger but he had made sure to leave two A4 sheets of paper full of detailed instructions.
‘What do you mean?’ She roused herself from her ruminations and found herself following him up the stairs, stopping short as he pushed open one of the bedroom doors, before spinning around to look at her through narrowed eyes.
‘I mean,’ Rafael said slowly, ‘By having you on tap, well, does that mean that you don’t get any time off?’
‘No, well...’ Flustered, Sofia met his dark, speculative gaze, vibrant green eyes clashing with dark, fathomless ones. ‘They do go out quite a bit and it’s just more convenient for me to be there rather than having to decamp all the time when I need to babysit.’
‘And do you get paid extra for all this babysitting? Hefty price for being on permanent stand by?’
‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’ she threw at him, uncomfortable because he was voicing the very resentments that had piled up inside her over the months. The job was extremely well paid but in return...
She needed the money. That was the bottom line. She had debts and nothing had been left when her mother had died. She had returned to ground zero after a long spell away with not much to show for it. One child, one divorce, any number of relationships that had ended up nowhere and only just enough money made over the years to ensure that her mother had enough for tickets back to base camp and sufficient cash as a down payment on a rented condo on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, close to where her sister lived.
Sofia had not had the opportunity to do any saving of her own and this nanny job was well paid—their luck with nannies hadn’t been stellar, from what Elizabeth Walters had let slip, and Sofia wondered whether they’d set this sort of honey trap to ensure she wasn’t tempted to quit.
‘I’m a curious kind of guy,’ Rafael said mildly, watching her carefully. So carefully that she began to fidget. ‘Stay a while,’ he coaxed, strolling out of the room, his demeanour that of lord rather than serf. He glanced over his shoulder as she followed like a puppet, which was not like her at all. ‘I’m new to this country. I don’t know a soul. It would be nice for me to have some company this evening, if only to learn a little about the place, so that I can familiarise myself better with it when I get out there to explore.’
‘You’re here to pull up weeds and plant shrubs, not explore,’ Sofia reminded him, but she felt that tug of amusement again. He was so high-handed that it should have put her back up, but strangely it didn’t.
Where she had spent her life trying hard to stay under the radar—partly to deter the advances of lecherous men and partly because she was so focused on her future that she knew that, at least for her, diplomacy was definitely the better part of valour—he was the opposite. Oil to her water, chalk to her cheese, darkness to her light.
She shivered, wondering whether the strange pull she felt tugging her towards him stemmed from the fascination she felt when confronted with her polar opposite or whether she wasn’t just lonely.
Rafael shrugged. ‘And I’m sure I’ll be doing just that but I don’t intend to come all the way out here and leave...empty-handed.’
‘What does that mean?’ Sofia questioned.
‘It means that this is a beautiful part of the world and I won’t be burying myself in somebody’s back garden pulling up weeds without taking some time out to surface.’
‘I don’t think James Walters is going to appreciate your sense of adventure.’
Rafael shrugged.
‘Don’t you care?’ Sofia asked curiously.
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you could end up with a poor reference. Mr Walters would enjoy nothing better.’ She blushed a bright red. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘But you did.’ He began heading out of the lodge and back towards the main house, and Sofia was struck yet again by the man’s arrogant assumption that he could do whatever he wanted, safe in the knowledge that no one was going to object. In this instance, the ‘no one’ just happened to be her. She’d already walked him to the lodge, and left him in no doubt that she wasn’t interested in his company, yet he had decided to ignore her completely. She belatedly remembered how keen she had been to be rid of him and how annoyed she’d been at his late arrival.