The Tuscan Tycoon's Pregnant Housekeeper
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‘My mother died in April.’
His expression softened. ‘I’m sorry.’
Michelle mentally kicked herself for troubling a guest with her affairs, and spoke quickly to defuse the situation. ‘There’s no need to apologise. We were never exactly close.’
‘Close?’ Alessandro’s face compressed. He looked down at the fingers of his left hand as they spread out beneath the water. ‘Some relationships are a waste of good working time. My own mother couldn’t have picked me out of a police line-up.’
Michelle was so stunned she forgot to be polite. ‘You can’t mean that?’
He gazed across the water to the villa’s herb garden. She guessed it wasn’t because he was admiring the ornamental thyme.
‘Everything I’ve achieved in my life has been in spite of my family, not because of them.’
Michelle wondered if his remark had anything to do with those sacked relatives. She decided it was better not to ask.
‘Then I’m sorry for you. Even my mother wasn’t as bad as that.’
His attention snapped straight back to her. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy on me. It will only lead to trouble.’
Curious, she put her head on one side. ‘What do you mean?’
His eyes were twin pools of mystery. ‘If you keep looking at me like that, Michelle, you’ll soon find out.’
Chilly rivulets of water trickled from her hair and she shivered. The points of her nipples were rising—and not only from the cold. It was the way Alessandro’s gaze was totally focussed on her eyes. She could almost feel him searching her soul. No one had ever studied her so intently—not in her whole life. If she was honest, no one had paid any attention to her at all. They only noticed when she hadn’t done something. The interview she’d missed because her mother had destroyed her portfolio, the single occasion she had been too sick to turn out for Spicer and Co…
‘You have a fascinating face, Michelle. Let me draw you,’ he said abruptly.
In all her years of sketching Michelle had never had the nerve to ask a stranger to pose for her. She thought of all those lost opportunities and wished she could be spontaneous, like Alessandro. He had come straight out with a suggestion she would never have been brave enough to make in a million years. So many times she had felt the urge to sketch or paint a person, but had been too shy to do anything about it. Now he was showing her how it should be done.
‘I—I don’t know.’ She scraped her wet hair back from her face to give herself time to think. ‘I work for Mr Bartlett, really, and if he found out I was lounging around being drawn, when I should be busy in the house…’
Alessandro threw off her objection. ‘You’re working for me at the moment. Not Terence.’
Michelle paused. There was nothing she could say except, ‘If you put it like that, I can’t refuse.’
He smiled. ‘Yes…’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The more I see of you, Michelle, the more I realise you’re wasted here. You ought to be immortalised somehow. And I’m exactly the man to do it. Wait here. I’ll go and fetch my things.’
She had no choice. He vaulted out of the pool and picked up a robe from one of the poolside chairs. He pulled it on and walked quickly into the villa.
Michelle knew she should be feeling cold. She wasn’t. The sight of his muscles sleek with water had brought a slow-burning fire to life deep within her body. Alessandro Castiglione had a lot to answer for. From the moment he’d landed he had invaded every part of her life. First he’d stopped her sleeping. Then he’d aroused her by touch, outside the studio house. Now he had persuaded her to wait for him, wet through and waist-deep in water.
As he disappeared from sight, a chill wind rippled across the pool. Michelle’s skin contracted with the cold. Sinking beneath the wavelets, she let the water waft her feet off the floor of the pool. She knew she ought to thrash through a few lengths to warm herself up. Her heart wasn’t in it. Exercise no longer had the power to distract her. All she could think of was Alessandro. Big, strong Alessandro Castiglione. He acted the part of blas'e tycoon to perfection, but his bitter-chocolate eyes told a different story. When Michelle shivered now, it was at the thought of his deep brown gaze. If only she could decode its meaning.
Twisting in the water, she saw Alessandro walking back towards the pool. He was dressed now in jeans and a tight white tee shirt. His muscles were still on display, and Michelle felt them through her fantasies. Those jeans were so well cut they were obviously made for him. ‘Casual’ still meant ‘designer chic’ in his circles. The sketchbook under his arm was bound in leather, and he was carrying a long metal container. He put this down beside one of the poolside chairs.
‘If you could swim a few lengths for me, Michelle, I’ll try out a few ideas…I need something to make my working days worthwhile. Art is my therapy.’
‘And mine. I always wanted to go to art college, but it wasn’t possible for me to finish the course,’ Michelle said shyly.
He was already rifling through the contents of his art box. Selecting a piece of willow charcoal, he made a few swift, sweeping strokes across his sketchbook.
‘A little taster for you.’ He showed her the pad. She was amazed. In a few strokes he had laid her down on his plain white sheet with nothing more than a sliver of burnt wood.
‘You swim slowly, up and down.’
As he sketched, he asked her all sorts of questions about her own work. His conversation was light and insubstantial—until he asked her something that really burst her bubble.
‘What made you give up your art course?’
She didn’t answer for a while. Then she rolled onto her back to watch him.
‘The answer to that is the same as it is to most of your other questions—my mother,’ she said at last. ‘Mum didn’t consider art to be a proper job. There was no room for anything in my life unless she thought it had value. As a child, I was a disappointment to her. If I couldn’t be beautiful, then I had to be useful.’