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‘Fine,’ she said awkwardly and he turned round and looked at her with a frown.
‘Is that going to be the full extent of your contribution to this conversation?’ he asked coolly. ‘Monosyllabic answers? Flora talks about you.’
‘Does she?’ She fiddled with her hair and reminded herself that this was a perfectly normal business conversation, that of course he would be interested in knowing what she did with his daughter. But she still felt horribly nervous and she knew it was because she was too aware of him for her own good. If this strange reaction was her body reminding her that she was still alive, then she resented the reminder.
‘Tell me what you two do together.’ He dragged out a chair, sat down and began tucking into his sandwich.
‘Oh, the usual.’ Their eyes met and she reddened. Did she really want him asking why she was so jumpy around him? No. But he would if she continued to stutter and stammer and, as he had pointed out, answer his questions with unhelpful monosyllables. ‘Nothing very child-oriented, I’m afraid, although we did do a spot of baking yesterday after dinner.’
‘A failure, I’ve been told.’
‘I’m not very good when it comes to stuff like that,’ she said vaguely.
‘No mother-daughter bonding sessions in front of a stove?’
‘No.’ Sunny heard the tightness creep into her voice and she lowered her eyes. ‘Nothing like that.’
A girl with secrets. Was he really interested in finding out what those secrets were? Did he care one way or another? She was here to do a job and she was doing a damn fine job. Then she’d be gone...
He found his curiosity unsettling because it was something he never felt with any of the women he dated. He had been through one disastrous relationship and now he made sure to keep everything light and superficial when it came to the opposite sex. Curiosity was definitely neither light nor superficial.
But it was something she roused in him for no reason he could begin to understand.
‘I think Flora’s unhappy and lonely.’ She rushed into saying more than she had intended because she didn’t want him quizzing her about her past. Being here had brought home to her the differences in their worlds and she didn’t want him judging her because of her background. She was an aspiring lawyer, coerced into doing an impromptu job for him. She didn’t want him feeling sorry for her or pitying her.
‘I mean...she’s been displaced from everything she knew and I just get the feeling that she hasn’t settled here just yet. She hasn’t mentioned her school once and that’s saying something.’
Stefano shoved his plate to one side and sat back, arms folded behind his head. ‘Is that right?’ he drawled and Sunny bristled.
‘She’s just a child and she’s had to endure some pretty major life changes.’ The way he was staring at her with those dark, dark speculative eyes made her feel all hot and bothered and she was suddenly as angry with him as she was with herself for feeling so exposed.
‘And I hope you don’t mind me being honest,’ she said tersely, ‘but I don’t suppose it helps that you work such long hours.’ Oh, he’s never here, Flora had shrugged apropos of nothing in particular a couple of evenings ago, and Sunny had heard the hurt in her voice and been moved by it.
Stefano stiffened at the implied criticism in her voice, yet she was only stating the obvious, wasn’t she? He wondered when positive criticism had become something he could do without. He certainly never encountered it in his day-to-day life.
‘It’s impossible for me to conduct a nine-to-five existence.’
Sunny shrugged. ‘It’s none of my business anyway.’
Perversely, the fact that she was happy to back away from the contentious conversation rather than pursue it made him want to prolong it. ‘Don’t start conversations you don’t want to finish,’ he inserted. ‘I’m a big boy. I can take whatever you have to say to me. Did Flora tell you that?’
‘A passing remark. Look—’ Sunny raised her eyes to his and felt heat creep into her face ‘—I’m not here to have opinions on...on...how you handle Flora. I’m just here in a babysitting capacity. I need the money. I don’t suppose any of your nannies tell you what they really think because they’d just be here to do a babysitting job, like me.’
‘They don’t tell me what they think because they’re intimidated by me,’ Stefano said drily. ‘You don’t like being around me but you’re not intimidated by me. At least, that’s the impression I’ve got. Am I wrong?’
Sunny had no idea how they had got where they had but this felt like a very personal conversation. Or maybe it was the intimacy of being in the kitchen with him, just the two of them, that made it feel more personal than it really was.
‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘True or false?’
‘I try not to be intimidated by anyone,’ she was spurred into responding.
‘And that works for you?’
‘Yes. Yes, it does.’ Colour flared in her cheeks but she held his gaze defiantly. ‘I like to think, What’s the worst that can happen? I mean, you can sack me from this job but, if you do, then that’s fine. I’d be more than happy to return to my restaurant work.’
‘Long hours,’ he mused, startling her by the sudden change of topic.
‘What do you mean?’
‘When do you get time to relax? Do you have a busy social life on the weekends?’
‘I’m too busy building a career to have a busy social life on the weekends,’ she snapped.
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty-four, although I don’t see what my age has to do with anything.’
‘Katherine told me that you’re one of the most dedicated employees in the company. You’re in by eight every morning, sometimes earlier, and if you leave promptly for your job in the restaurant it never seems to affect the quality of your work, which is always of the highest standard. Which means, I’m guessing, that you work on weekends...’
Sunny was torn between pleasure that her hard work had been noted and dismay that she had been a topic of discussion. ‘You have to work hard in order to get on,’ she muttered, flushing.
‘To the extent that it consumes your every waking hour?’
‘It seems that work consumes all your waking hours,’ Sunny said defensively. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, Mr Gunn.’
‘If you call me Mr Gunn again, I’ll sack you.’
She didn’t know whether he was joking or not and she bit back the temptation to keep arguing with him.
‘And, believe it or not, work doesn’t consume all my waking hours,’ he told her softly, ‘I know how to play as well...’
Sunny stared. The tenor of his voice was so...sexy...and when she looked at him it felt as though his eyes were boring straight past her defences, seeing into parts of her that were soft and yielding and vulnerable, parts of her that hadn’t been forced into toughening up over the years.
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