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‘Who’s your latest admirer?’
Sunny sighed and looked at Claire. ‘He’s not an admirer,’ she admitted. Although why else would he be here? If not to try and get her into bed? She wasn’t vain but she was realistic and being realistic protected her against having her head turned by meaningless, pretty words. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of him and I’ll make sure he doesn’t come here again.’
Claire laughed. ‘He looks rich. He can come whenever he wants, just as long as he puts his hand in his pocket and actually shows up in time to order food and drink!’
‘I’ll pass that on.’ Sunny smiled weakly. She had no intention of doing any such thing. What she intended to do was find out just what he had said to Katherine and whether he had compromised her position in the company.
And she would have to do that without letting her temper explode. She would have to be cool, calm and collected whilst leaving him in no doubt that she wasn’t interested in whatever he had to say to her.
She emerged and Stefano was almost surprised because he had half expected her to have disappeared through a back door. But there she was, in jeans and a T-shirt and, without the cap, her hair was long. Very long. Every shade of blonde feathering in curls down her back, although that didn’t last very long because, even as she walked towards him, she was stuffing it into a ponytail.
She had the long, slender body of a ballet dancer and her movements were graceful. She was scowling, but not even the scowl could hide that startling, unusual prettiness. When she had been created, some small added ingredient had been thrown into the mix, elevating her from good-looking to unbelievably striking. Her green eyes were narrowed suspiciously on him as she finally came to a stop directly in front of him.
‘I want to know what you said to Katherine.’
‘You’re not, are you?’ Stefano stood up, towering over her, and she automatically fell back a step or two.
‘Not what?’
‘Sunny.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets as they headed to the door. ‘Your mother must rue the day she named you that. Unless, of course...’ he pushed open the restaurant door, allowing her to brush past him ‘...you’re sunny with everyone else but reserve all your bulldog belligerence for me...is that it? And, if so, why?’
‘My mother died when I was a child,’ Sunny said coldly. ‘What did you tell Katherine?’ She didn’t want him walking next to her...didn’t want him escorting her the short distance to her flat, but she felt as if she had no choice.
‘I told her that I wanted to discuss something with you of a personal nature and she was kind enough to provide me with your address.’
‘How dare you?’ She rounded on him, hands on her hips, so furious that she felt she might explode. ‘Do you have any idea how important that job is to me?’ A series of scenarios ran through her head, each worse than the one before. He had put poor Katherine in a position...he was so important that she had had no choice but to do as he had asked...but in the morning, she, Sunny, would be called in for a little chat...she would be told that fraternising with clients was frowned upon...she would be warned...she might even be sacked... She hadn’t been there very long and the last thing the company would want would be a lawyer who couldn’t be trusted around clients...she would lose her job, her career and everything that made sense of her life...
And it would all be this man’s fault.
‘I don’t want anything to do with you and how dare you tell my boss that you want my address? So that you can try and come on to me? How dare you?’ Tears of anger and frustration were pricking the back of her eyes.
With just the street lights for illumination, his face was all angles and shadows. He towered over her and she couldn’t read the expression on his face.
Just in case he hadn’t got the drift, though, she thought that she should make herself perfectly clear.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you, Mr Gunn, and I don’t want you pestering me. I don’t care how rich or powerful you are or how much business you’re going to bring to the firm... I don’t come as part of what’s on offer to you!’
Stefano was genuinely outraged that she had pigeonholed him as desperate and downright stupid enough to think about making a pass at her.
‘Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?’ he asked coolly.
That threw her and for a few seconds she stared at him in sudden confusion.
‘Anyway, I hope I’ve made myself clear,’ she muttered, dragging her eyes away from him and walking briskly towards the flat. He kept pace with her.
The flat she shared with Amy was cheap and thus located in a fairly dodgy part of town. A hop and a skip away, smart restaurants and trendy cafés lined the high street but here all of that gave way to rundown houses that were mostly let to people who couldn’t afford anything better, and a couple of off licences and corner shops that stayed open beyond the call of duty.
‘So—’ she stopped in front of the door that led up to the flat she shared at the top of the converted Victorian house ‘—I’d appreciate it if you just left me alone, and please don’t discuss me with my boss. It could jeopardise my position in the company.’
‘Like I said...you’re getting ahead of yourself here. I think you’re confusing me with the sort of sad loser who’s into pursuing reluctant women and can’t take no for an answer.’
Sunny stared at him in silence, slowly realising that she had misunderstood the situation.
Mortification swept over her in a hot, burning tide. ‘You said you had a proposition for me...’ she stammered, so taken aback that she was barely aware of him removing the key from her hand, opening the door and urging her inside.
He shouldn’t be coming in. He definitely should not be coming in. Amy wasn’t going to be there. She was on nights and wouldn’t be back until the following morning and Sunny couldn’t imagine him being in the flat with her, just the two of them.
Although he wasn’t interested in her, was he? When you thought about it, why the heck would he be? He could have any woman he wanted. He would just have to snap his fingers! She was so embarrassed at jumping to erroneous conclusions that she would happily have stepped into the hole if the ground had opened up beneath her feet.
While this jumble of thoughts was chaotically running through her head, they took the stairs and he let them into the flat with the key, which she had failed to take from him.
It was a very small two-bedroom flat with barely room to swing a cat. The décor was shabby and the furniture looked as though it had mostly been reclaimed from a skip somewhere. Not even the cheerful prints Blu-tacked to the walls could lift the place into something more cheerful. But it worked for both of them. They got along very well and, because Amy worked nights most of the month, they tended to see one another only in passing.
Looking around him, Stefano realised that he had never been anywhere like this before in his life. He knew that by anyone’s standards his life had been one of unsurpassed privilege. The only child of a wealthy Scottish landowner and an Italian mother who, herself, had inherited a tidy sum of money when her parents had passed away, he had never had any occasion to find himself slumming it. Alicia, of course, had not had money but he had rarely ventured into the quarters she shared with her friends.
Here, amidst this drab, unappealing ordinariness, Sunny was the equivalent of an orchid in a patch of weeds. He could almost understand why she had misinterpreted his intentions, although that did nothing to detract from the umbrage he felt.
Although, a little voice whispered in his head, hadn’t he looked at her with sexual interest? It wasn’t going to happen.
Stefano swept that unwanted thought aside as fast as it had come.
‘My daughter liked you,’ he said without preamble.
‘Did she? I have no idea why. I gave her work to do and I don’t suppose many eight-year-olds would have appreciated that.’ But she felt a rare bloom of pleasure at his words.
Released from the discomfort of thinking that he was just someone else attracted to her because of the way she looked, Sunny knew that she should be able to relax, but she was still as tense as a piece of elastic stretched to breaking point. He had sprawled out on one of the chairs in the tiny sitting room and he was just so wildly exotic that she could scarcely look at him without her breath catching in her throat and a weird tension invading her body.
‘I had to bring Flora in with me because she managed to successfully see off the last nanny and my mother had to go unexpectedly to Scotland...’
‘Oh.’ Where was this going? Sunny was bewildered. ‘When you say see off the last nanny...’ This for no other reason than to fill the silence.
‘Flora enjoys making life as difficult for her nannies as she humanly can.’ Stefano sighed and raked his fingers through his hair.
‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’ His wife wasn’t around. He was an eligible bachelor. The office gossip mill had made that perfectly clear from day one, when speculation had been rife that he was only handing them business because of Katherine. She perched on the edge of a chair and looked at him steadily.
‘My mother will be up in Scotland for the next month. I have a nanny to cover for Flora during the day, as she’s on holidays, but not even the most long-suffering of nannies, and Edith is about as long-suffering as they come, is willing to do day and night cover. I’m wrapped up in some pretty important deals over the next fortnight and my proposal was for you to work for me between five and ten every evening, Monday to Friday.’
‘I’m sorry but that’s out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t have to give long explanations,’ Sunny told him stiffly. Something about the prospect of being inside his house sent shivers through her. No matter that she now knew that he had no interest in her aside from babysitter for his daughter. ‘But, in case it’s missed you, I actually already have a job after work and it’s a job I enjoy and wouldn’t want to lose. Also...’
Stefano tilted his head to one side. Flora had been animated on the drive back to the house. In fact, she had been the most animated he’d seen her since she had arrived in London. She had actually spoken to him, as opposed to sitting in surly silence and answering his questions in monosyllables.
‘Also...?’ he prompted softly.
Sunny shrugged and reddened. ‘Nothing. I... I just can’t do it. I’m sorry.’
‘But you don’t know what the terms and conditions are,’ he murmured. He wondered what else she had been about to say. She was guarded and that was something he never saw in the women he met. And the way she had rushed into the assumption that he’d been after her for sex. Was she accustomed to having to fend off men? Had she suffered from office pests? They were out there, no question of it, and she had the looks to provoke over-enthusiasm in most red-blooded men, he would have thought.
Or maybe one pest in particular had made her suspicious of all men...
He was a little unnerved at the amount of time he was wasting in pointless speculation.
‘Unless, of course, you have a boyfriend...someone who might not want you to spend time away from the flat when you’re not at work...’
Sunny laughed shortly. ‘I wouldn’t let any guy tell me what I could or couldn’t do.’ The words were out before she could take them back. ‘By which,’ she continued lamely, ‘I mean that I’m...my own person...not that it’s any business of yours whether I have a boyfriend or not anyway... I just... I’m sorry...’
‘I’m sure the restaurant could spare you for a couple of weeks. In fact, I don’t see that as a problem at all. I’ll personally arrange for a replacement and cover the costs myself. And with regard to what you earn there...’ He paused, allowing speculation to take root in her head and spout tendrils. ‘I’ll quadruple it.’ He sat back and watched her narrowly. ‘I’d like you to work for me and I’m prepared to pay you far, far more than you would earn in the restaurant, including tips...’
‘I don’t understand,’ Sunny stammered, thoroughly taken aback. ‘Why can’t you just go and employ someone from an agency?’
‘Flora averages a nanny a fortnight and, during that fortnight, I’m bombarded with complaints from whatever nanny happens to be working for me. I don’t need that. She’s taken a liking to you and I’m prepared to take a gamble.’
‘I have no experience of looking after children, Mr Gunn.’
‘For God’s sake, there’s no need to keep calling me Mr Gunn.’ He paused and watched her, trying to read behind the cautious exterior.
Agitated, Sunny looked away. ‘Don’t you have a...um...a partner?’
‘Partner?’
‘A girlfriend? Someone who could step in and help out?’ She had no idea from whence the rumour had sprung that he was interested in Katherine. Maybe the rumours had been wrong. Maybe there was someone else in the background, although it beggared belief that he would bring work to a new, small company and not use one of the top guns to handle his business.
‘Now, now, Sunny—or shall I call you Miss Porter as you seem determined to stick to the formalities?—would you say that you’re entitled to ask that question considering you’ve surrounded yourself with No Trespassing signs?’ He watched her squirm for a few seconds. ‘There’s no handy woman ready to jump in and help out.’ He thought of Katherine and his mother’s fine intentions to set him up. Nice enough woman but he certainly couldn’t picture her in the role of surrogate mother. Indeed, she had seemed distinctly uncomfortable when presented with Flora.
‘What about Flora’s mother?’ It seemed an obvious enough question and she was surprised when the shutters snapped down, coldly locking her out. As No Trespassing signs went, she’d just stumbled into an almighty giant-sized one.
‘Flora’s mother died several months ago,’ Stefano said abruptly. ‘Now, are you willing to take the job or not? I’ve given you my offer and, from the looks of it, you could do with the money. You can bring your work to the house if you want to do overtime and that’s an added bonus, considering working in a restaurant doesn’t afford that luxury. And I may be misreading the situation, but if you’re intent on a career then the lack of overtime must be a decided drawback to someone young and ambitious.’
‘I’m not sure whether it would be entirely ethical for me to work with a client.’
‘In which case, I’ll take my considerably well-paid work away from your law firm. How does that sound?’
‘You wouldn’t.’ Sunny was aghast at that threat because, if he did that, then the worst-case scenarios would be a great deal worse than the ones she had conjured up in her head when he’d told her that he’d spoken to Katherine.
‘Yes. I would. You would be surprised at the lengths I would go to in order to get what I want.’ He thought of that small but perceptible change in his daughter on the drive back to his house. For that reason alone it was worth the hassle of being here. He could hardly believe that she was kicking up a fuss at being paid handsomely to do a babysitting job of limited duration. ‘And, just for your information, I have already cleared the way with Katherine. I explained the situation and she’s more than happy for you to help out.’
‘Is she? Didn’t she...ah...volunteer to do it herself?’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘No reason.’ Annoyed with herself for being drawn into that faux pas, she stared down at her trainers. ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’
‘I prefer positive thinking. Like I said, Flora doesn’t warm to people easily but she warmed to you. It’s good enough for me. Now, the job. Yes or no? You’ll start first thing on Monday. I’ll have my driver collect you from work and return you to your flat. Meals will be provided and you’re free to do as you wish with Flora, although she’s accustomed to being in bed by eight. I’ll open an account for you if you want to take her anywhere. Feel free to use it.’
It was a fantastic opportunity to add to her savings. She knew that. She might even treat herself to some new work clothes. So why was she still hesitating? It was crazy.
‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll take the job.’
CHAPTER THREE
STEFANO’S HOUSE, on the outskirts of London, was a dream house.
For one man and a young child, it was ridiculously big. There were six bedrooms, five bathrooms, too many undefined reception rooms to count and a kitchen that was spacious enough for a table at one end that could seat ten. It opened out to a spread of perfectly manicured lawns, in the middle of which was a magnificent swimming pool.
Paradise for an eight-year-old child and Sunny wondered whether the pool was used during the day. The weather had certainly been hot enough for swimming.
Life here couldn’t have been more different for Flora than her own life had been for her. She wondered what it would have been like had she, as a kid, been exposed to this level of opulence. She would have been terrified.
Now, as an adult, she could see the many material advantages but she was also beginning to see the many drawbacks. After four days of babysitting, she was slowly realising certain things and there was no need for Flora to verbalise them.
Surrounded by all this luxury, Flora was confused and unhappy. Her mother had died and she had been yanked across the ocean to a life she had never known and a father she seemed to resent.
‘I hate it here,’ she had confided the evening before, as Sunny had been about to switch off the bedroom light and leave the room. ‘I want to go back to New Zealand.’
‘I get that.’ Sunny had sat on the bed. There were no signposts as to how she should connect with a kid and it wasn’t in her to be patronising. She had had to grow up fast and that had implanted in her the belief that kids could deal with honesty far better than most adults thought.
They didn’t like being patronised and Sunny didn’t see why she should patronise Flora.
‘Sometimes circumstances change and, when that happens, you just have to go with it because you can never change things back to the way they were. That’s just the truth.’
Flora, she had discovered, was as mature as she herself had been at that age, although not for similar reasons. She was just a grown-up child with shaped opinions and the sort of suspicious, cautious nature that Sunny could understand because she, too, shared those traits. She had no time for her father and Sunny could have told her another harsh truth, which was that she was here and having him around was also something she couldn’t change so she might as well accept it.
It wasn’t in her brief to broker a relationship between father and daughter, however. In fact, it wasn’t in her brief to be curious about the dynamics of the household at all. She was there to babysit, no more, no less, but she liked the kid and she knew that Flora liked her, even though she still didn’t understand why because they never did anything Sunny imagined an eight-year-old would find fun. When she’d been eight, there had been no exciting trips to Adventure Parks or shiny new toys. She had taken refuge in books and so pointing Flora in the direction of more serious pursuits came as the natural choice.
They watched telly, always the National Geographic channel which they both enjoyed. They’d played a game of Scrabble and Sunny had laughed and told Flora that she could allow her to win or they could both play to the best of their ability and see what happened. The evening before, after they had eaten an early dinner at six, they had both attempted to bake and it had been a miserable failure.
‘I didn’t do much baking as a child,’ Sunny had said truthfully, ‘and I don’t think I ever got the hang of it. We’ll have to bin the bread. Or else hang onto it in case we need a lethal weapon.’ Which had made Flora laugh until she cried.
Between eight and ten Sunny worked and then Stefano would return with his driver.
His presence filled the house. He would stride in and Sunny would know that she’d been bracing herself for the brief encounter. They would exchange a couple of sentences and then the driver would whisk her away back to her flat and once there she would think about him. She tried to fight those thoughts and when she couldn’t she uneasily told herself that it was only natural that he was in her head because she was now working for him. If she hadn’t been, she would have forgotten all about him, however startling the impact he had made on her had been.
Now, with Flora in bed, Sunny settled down for her two hours’ work, which was absolute bliss because it was a luxury she could never had afforded when she’d been working at the restaurant. She was given the most basic of tasks but they tended to be time-consuming and it was good to be able to work her way through them in the peace and quiet of the sprawling mansion.
Having explored all of the rooms on the ground floor, she had settled on the smallest and the cosiest as her work room. It overlooked the back gardens and she enjoyed glancing up and letting her eyes wander over a vista of mown grass, sweeping trees and, in the distance, the open fields onto which the house backed. Compared to the view from the flat she shared, which gave onto the grimy pavements outside and a lone tree which looked as though it was pining to be anywhere but on a road in London, the view here was breathtaking and it made her feel as though she was on holiday.
Legs tucked under her, her long hair untidily pulled over one shoulder, she was hardly aware of Stefano’s appearance in the doorway until he spoke and then she yelped in shock, eyes adjusting to the impressive sight of him.
When she could predict his arrival back, she had time to brace herself for the physical impact he still seemed to have on her. With no time to prepare herself, she could only stare while her heart sped up and her mouth went dry.
He was tugging his tie off, dragging it down so that he could undo the top two buttons of his white shirt, and she tried her best not to gape at the sliver of brown skin exposed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she stammered, gathering the bits of paper spread around her and smartly shutting her computer.
‘I live here.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘No need to rush, Sunny. I’m back early so we can have a catch-up.’
‘A catch-up? On what?’
Stefano banked down a flare of irritation. Her desperation not to be in his company had not abated. They crossed paths when he returned from work and she was always packed up, jacket on, exchanging a few sentences on the move as she headed out the front door. Whatever she did with Flora, she was doing it right because his daughter, when prompted, actually now deigned to show some interest in his questions rather than sullenly sitting at the breakfast table in front of her cellphone playing games. The top-of-the-range cellphone, in retrospect, had not been the cleverest purchase on the planet.
‘I haven’t eaten,’ he said evenly, keen eyes noting the blonde length of her hair which, for once, wasn’t tied back, probably an omission because she hadn’t expected him home at eight-thirty. ‘Why don’t you join me in the kitchen?’
‘Of course,’ Sunny dutifully replied. She sneaked a covert look as he rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing muscled forearms sprinkled with dark hair. Everything about him was intensely masculine and her body behaved in disconcerting ways when she was confronted with it.
He was already moving off towards the kitchen and she followed, taking all her work with her and her bag so that she could leg it at speed as soon as their catch-up was finished.
‘Drink?’ He moved to the wine cooler, which was built into the range of pale cupboards, and extracted a bottle of white wine.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Relax, Sunny. One drink isn’t going to hurt you.’ Without giving her time for a second polite refusal, he poured them both a glass, handed one to her and rummaged for ingredients for a sandwich. ‘How are you finding the job?’