His Final Bargain Read online

  His expression pulsed again with bitterness. ‘Did you have a good laugh about it with your friends when you came home? Is that why you let me make a fool of myself, just so you could dine out on it ever since?’

  Eliza got to her feet and wrapped her arms around her body as if she were cold, even though the flat was stuffy from being closed up all day. She went over to the window and looked at the solitary rose bush in the front garden. It had a single bloom on it but the rain and the wind had assaulted its velvet petals until only three were left clinging precariously to the craggy, thorny stem. ‘I didn’t tell anyone about it,’ she said. ‘When I came back home it felt like it had all been a dream.’

  ‘Did you tell your fiancé about us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She grasped her elbows a bit tighter and turned to face him. ‘He wouldn’t have understood.’

  ‘I bet he wouldn’t.’ He gave a little sound of disdain. ‘His fiancée opens her legs for the first man she meets in a bar while on holiday. Yes, I would imagine he would find that rather hard to understand.’

  Eliza gave him a glacial look. ‘I think it might be time for you to leave. Your five minutes is up.’

  He closed the distance between them in one stride. He towered over her, making her breath stall again in her chest. She saw his nostrils flare as if he was taking in her scent. She could smell his: a complex mix of wood and citrus and spice that tantalised her senses and stirred up a host of memories she had tried for so long to suppress. She felt her blood start to thunder through the network of her veins. She felt her skin tighten and tingle with awareness. She felt her insides coil and flex with a powerful stirring of lust. Her body recognised the intimate chemistry of his. It was as if she was finely tuned to his radar. No other man made her so aware of her body, so acutely aware of her primal reaction to him.

  ‘I have another proposal for you,’ he said.

  Eliza swallowed tightly and hoped he hadn’t seen it. ‘Not marriage, I hope.’

  He laughed but it wasn’t a nice sound. ‘Not marriage, no,’ he said. ‘A business proposal—a very lucrative one.’

  Eliza tried to read his expression. There was something in his dark brown eyes that was slightly menacing. Her heart beat a little bit faster as fear climbed up her spine with icy-cold fingers. ‘I don’t want or need your money,’ she said with a flash of stubborn pride.

  His top lip gave a sardonic curl. ‘Perhaps not, but your cash-strapped community school does.’

  She desperately tried to conceal her shock. How on earth did he know? The press article hadn’t even gone to press. The journalist and photographer had only just left the school a couple of hours ago. How had he found out about it so quickly? Had he done his own research? What else had he uncovered about her? She gave him a wary look. ‘What are you offering?’

  ‘Five hundred thousand pounds.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘On what condition?’

  His eyes glinted dangerously. ‘On the condition you spend the next month with me in Italy.’

  Eliza felt her heart drop like an anchor. She moistened her lips, struggling to maintain her outwardly calm composure when everything inside her was in a frenzied turmoil. ‘In…in what capacity?’

  ‘I need a nanny.’

  A pain sliced through the middle of her heart like the slash of a scimitar. ‘You’re…married?’

  His eyes remained cold and hard, his mouth a grim flat line. ‘Widowed,’ he said. ‘I have a daughter. She’s three.’

  Eliza mentally did the sums. He must have met his wife not long after she left Italy. For some reason that hurt much more than if his marriage had been a more recent thing. He had moved on with his life so quickly. No long, lonely months of pining for her, of not eating and not sleeping. No. He had forgotten all about her, while she had never forgotten him, not even for a day. But there had been nothing in the press about him marrying or even about his wife dying. Who was she? What had happened to her? Should she ask?

  Eliza glanced at his left hand. ‘You’re not wearing a wedding ring.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What…urn—happened?’

  His eyes continued to brutalise hers with their dark brooding intensity. ‘To my wife?’

  Eliza nodded. She felt sick with anguish hearing him say those words. My wife. Those words had been meant for her, not someone else. She couldn’t bear to think of him with someone else, making love with someone else, loving someone else. She had taught herself not to think about it. It was too painful to imagine the life she might have had with him if things had been different.

  If she had been free…

  ‘Giulia killed herself.’ He said the words without any trace of emotion. He might have been reading the evening news, so indifferent was his tone. And yet something about his expression—that flicker of pain that came and went in his eyes—hinted that his wife’s death had been a shattering blow to him.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Eliza said. ‘How devastating that must have been…must still be…’

  ‘It has been very difficult for my daughter,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t understand why her mother is no longer around.’

  Eliza understood all too well the utter despair little children felt when a parent died or deserted them. She had been just seven years old when her mother had left her with distant relatives to go on a drugs and drinking binge that had ended in her death. But it had been months and months before her great-aunt had told her that her mother wasn’t coming back to collect her. She hadn’t even been taken to the graveside to say a proper goodbye. ‘Have you explained to your daughter that her mother has passed away?’ she asked.

  ‘Alessandra is only three years old.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she won’t be able to understand what’s happened,’ she said. ‘It’s important to be truthful with her, not harshly or insensitively, but compassionately. Little children understand much more than we give them credit for.’

  He moved to the other side of the room, standing with his back to her as he looked at the street outside. It seemed a long time before he spoke. ‘Alessandra is not like other little children.’

  Eliza moistened her parchment-dry lips. ‘Look—I’m not sure if I’m the right person to help you. I work full-time as a primary school teacher. I have commitments and responsibilities to see to. I can’t just up and leave the country for four weeks.’

  He turned back around and pinned her with his gaze. ‘Without my help you won’t even have a job. Your school is about to be shut down.’

  She frowned at him. ‘How do you know that? How can you possibly know that? There’s been nothing in the press so far.’

  ‘I have my contacts.’

  He had definitely done his research, Eliza thought. Who had he been talking to? She knew he was a powerful man, but it made her uneasy to think he had found out so much about her situation. What else had he found out?

  ‘The summer holidays begin this weekend,’ he said. ‘You have six weeks to do what you like.’

  ‘I’ve made other plans for the holidays. I don’t want to change them at the last minute.’

  He hooked one dark brow upwards. ‘Not even for half a million pounds?’

  Eliza pictured the money, great big piles of it. More money than she had ever seen. Money that would give her little primary school children the educational boost they so desperately needed to get out of the cycle of poverty they had been born into. But a month was a long time to spend with a man who was little more than a stranger to her now. What did he want from her? What would he want her to do? Was this some sort of payback or revenge attempt? How could she know what was behind his offer? He said he wanted a nanny, but what if he wanted more?

  What if he wanted her?

  ‘Why me?’

  His inscrutable eyes gave nothing away. ‘You have the qualifications I require for the post.’

  It was Eliza’s turn to arch an eyebrow. ‘I just bet I do. Young and female w
ith a pulse, correct?’

  A glint of something dark and mocking entered his gaze as it held hers. ‘You misunderstand me, Eliza. I am not offering you a rerun at being my mistress. You will be employed as my daughter’s nanny. That is all that will be required of you.’

  Why was she feeling as if he had just insulted her? What right did she have to bristle at his words? He needed a nanny. He didn’t want her in any other capacity.

  He didn’t want her.

  The realisation pained Eliza much more than she wanted it to. What foolish part of her had clung to the idea that even after all this time he would come back for her because he had never found anyone who filled the gaping hole she had left in his life? ‘I can assure you that if you were offering me anything else I wouldn’t accept it,’ she said with a little hitch of her chin.

  His gaze held hers in an assessing manner. It was unnerving to be subjected to such an intensely probing look, especially as she wasn’t entirely confident she was keeping her reaction to him concealed. ‘I wonder if that is strictly true,’ he mused. ‘Clearly your fiancé isn’t satisfying you. You still have that hungry look about you.’

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ she said with prickly defensiveness. ‘You’re seeing what you want to see, not what is.’ You’re seeing what I’m trying so hard to hide!

  His dark brown eyes continued to impale hers. ‘Will you accept the post?’

  Eliza caught at her lower lip for a brief moment. She had at her fingertips the way to keep the school open. All of her children could continue with their education. The parenting and counselling programme for single mums she had dreamt of offering could very well become a reality if there were more funds available—a programme that might have saved her mother if it had been available at the time.

  ‘Will another five hundred thousand pounds in cash help you come to a decision a little sooner?’

  Eliza gaped at him. Was he really offering her a million pounds in cash? Did people do that? Were there really people out there who could do that?

  She had grown up with next to nothing, shunted from place to place while her mother continued on a wretched cycle of drug and alcohol abuse that was her way of self-medicating far deeper emotional issues that had their origin in childhood. Eliza wasn’t used to having enough money for the necessities, let alone the luxuries. As a child she had dreamt of having enough money to get her mother the help she so desperately needed, but there hadn’t been enough for food and rent at times, let alone therapy.

  She knew she came from a very different background from Leo, but he had never flaunted his wealth in the past. She had thought him surprisingly modest about it considering he was a self-made man. Thirty years ago his father had lost everything in a business deal gone sour. Leo had worked long and hard to rebuild the family engineering company from scratch. And he had done it and done it well. The Valente Engineering Company was responsible for some of the biggest projects across the globe. She had admired him for turning things around. So many people would have given up or adopted a victim mentality but he had not.

  But for all the wealth Leo Valente had, it certainly hadn’t bought him happiness. Eliza could see the lines of strain on his face and the shadows in his eyes that hadn’t been there four years ago. She sent her tongue out over her lips again. ‘Cash?’

  He gave a businesslike nod. ‘Cash. But only if you sign up right here and now.’

  She frowned. ‘You want me to sign something?’

  He took out a folded sheet of paper from the inside of his jacket without once breaking his gaze lock with hers. ‘A confidentiality agreement. No press interviews before, during or once your appointment is over.’

  Eliza took the document and glanced over it. It was reasonably straightforward. She was forbidden to speak to the press, otherwise she would have to repay the amount he was giving her with twenty per cent interest. She looked up at him again. ‘You certainly put a very high price on your privacy.’

  ‘I have seen lives and reputations destroyed by idle speculation in the press,’ he said. ‘I will not tolerate any scurrilous rumour mongering. If you don’t think you can abide by the rules set out in that document, then I will leave now and let you get on with your life. There will be no need for any further contact between us.’

  Eliza couldn’t help wondering why he wanted contact with her now. Why her? He could afford to employ the most highly qualified nanny in the world.

  They hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Every time she thought of that final scene between them she felt sick to her stomach. He had been livid to find out she was already engaged to another man. His anger had been palpable. She had felt bruised by it even though he had only touched her with his gaze. Oh, those hard, bitter eyes! How they had stabbed and burned her with their hatred and loathing. He hadn’t even given her time to explain. He had stormed out of the restaurant and out of her life. He had cut all contact with her.

  She could so easily have defended herself back then and in the weeks and months and years since. At any one point she could have called him and told him. She could have explained it all, but guilt had kept her silent.

  It still kept her silent.

  Dare she go with him? For a million pounds how could she not? Strictly speaking, the money wasn’t for her. That made it more palatable, or at least slightly. She would be doing it for the children and their poor disadvantaged mothers. It was only for a month. That wasn’t a long time by anyone’s standards. It would be over in a flash. Besides, England’s summer was turning out to be a non-event. A month’s break looking after a little girl in sun-drenched Positano would be a piece of cake.

  How hard could it be?

  Eliza straightened her spine and looked him in the eye as she held out her hand. ‘Do you have a pen?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  LEO WATCHED AS Eliza scratched her signature across the paper. She had a neat hand, loopy and very feminine. He had loved those soft little hands on his body. His flesh had sung with delight every time she had touched him…

  He jerked his thoughts back like a rider tugging the reins on a bolting horse. He would not allow himself to think of her that way. He needed a nanny. This was strictly a business arrangement. There was nothing else he wanted from her.

  Four years on he was still furious with her for what she had done. He was even more furious with himself for falling for her when she had only been using him. How had he been so beguiled by her? She had reeled him in like a dumb fish on a line. She had dangled the bait and he had gobbled it up without thinking of what he was doing. He had acted like a lovesick swain by proposing to her so quickly. He had offered her the world—his world, the one he had worked such backbreaking hours to make up from scratch.

  She had captivated him from the moment she had taken the seat beside him in the bar where he had been sitting brooding into his drink on the night of his father’s funeral. There was a restless sort of energy about her that he had recognised and responded to instantly. He had felt his body start to sizzle as soon as her arm brushed against his. She had been upfront and brazen with him, but in an edgy, exhilarating way. Their first night together had been monumentally explosive. He had never felt such a maelstrom of lust. He had been totally consumed by it. He had taken what he could with her, how he could, relishing that she seemed to want to do the same. He had loved that about her, that her need for him was as lusty and racy as his for her.

  Their one-night stand had morphed into a passionate three-week affair that had him issuing a romantic proposal because he couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. But all that time she had been harbouring a secret—she was already engaged to a man back home in England.

  Leo looked at her left hand. Her engagement ring glinted at him, taunting him like an evil eye.

  Anger was like a red mist in front of him. He had been nothing more to her than a holiday fling, a diversion—a shallow little hook-up to laugh about with her friends once she got home.

  He hated
her for it.

  He hated her for how his life had turned out since.

  The life he’d planned for himself had been derailed by her betrayal. It had had a domino effect on every part of his life since. If it hadn’t been for her perfidy he would not have met poor, sad, lonely Giulia. The guilt he felt about Giulia’s death was like a clamp around his heart. He had been the wrong person for her. She had been the wrong person for him. But in their mutual despair over being let down by the ones they had loved, they had formed a wretched sort of alliance that was always going to end in tragedy. From the first moment Giulia had set eyes on their dark-haired baby girl she had rejected her. She had seemed repulsed by her own child. The doctors talked about post-natal depression and other failure to bond issues, given that the baby had been premature and had special needs, but deep inside Leo already knew what the problem had been.

  Giulia hadn’t wanted his child; she had wanted her ex’s.

  He had been a very poor substitute husband for her, but he was determined to be the best possible father he could be to his little daughter.

  Bringing Eliza back into his life to help with Alessandra would be a way of putting things in order once and for all. Revenge was an ugly word. He didn’t want to think along those lines. This was more of a way of drawing a line under that part of his life.

  This time he would be in the driving seat. Once the month was up she could pack her bags and leave. It was a business arrangement, just like any other.

  No feelings were involved.

  Eliza handed him back his pen. ‘I can’t start until school finishes at the end of the week.’

  Leo pocketed the pen, trying to ignore the warmth it had taken from her fingers. Trying to ignore the hot wave of lust that rumbled beneath his skin like a wild beast waking up after a long hibernation.

  He had to ignore it.

  He would ignore it.

  ‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘I will send a car to take you to the airport on Friday. The flight has already been booked.’