Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Sinful Proposals: Seduced into Her Boss's Service / Wearing the De Angelis Ring / The Surprise De Angelis Baby. CATHY WILLIAMS
Читать онлайн книгу.
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.
‘I... I...’ Her voice was cracked and she cleared her throat. ‘I plan on getting through my LPC exams and then...then I’ll have plenty of time to go out and have fun...more than enough time...’ Because, right now, clubbing and going to pubs and bars just wasn’t on the agenda.
When did she ever have fun?
That was something that she never really thought about. A history of insecurity and rootlessness had instilled in her a need to ground herself, to have the security she had missed out on and that security, she had always known, would come in the form of her career. She had learned to distrust the attention she got from men and she had learned that at an early age, so fun, for her, wasn’t about guys and dates and flirting. Her one stab at fun had run aground and she wasn’t going to repeat the experience. She just didn’t have it in her to enjoy life the way other girls her age did. As she’d told her young charge, what you couldn’t change you simply had to accept, like it or not.
So fun for her wasn’t about all those things girls her age were interested in.
Suddenly the life she was looking at, the life she had strived with every ounce of her being to secure, looked empty and lacking.
Stefano watched the play of expression on her face. There was a luminosity to her face and a guilelessness that was at odds with the tough exterior.
His eyes drifted lower, to the jut of her breasts underneath the T-shirt. Small breasts, a neat handful. He drew his breath in sharply at the unexpected image of her in his king-sized bed, with all that blonde hair across his pillow...lying naked and hot for him.
His erection was as swift as it was hard and painful, bulging against the zip, and now that his imagination had taken flight, it was flying without restraint.
What would it feel like to have her delicate tongue flicking against his shaft? How would she taste? He imagined her writhing under his exploring mouth and hands, twisting and moaning and begging, desperate for him to take her.
She was too young to be so utterly controlled and he wanted to smash through that control and see what was underneath...
Hell, where were his thoughts going? Aside from anything else, there was no way he was going to jeopardise the tenuous, fragile shoots of a relationship tentatively trying to establish themselves with Flora by hitting on her babysitter.
He shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease the pain of his erection, annoyed with himself for his utter lack of self-control. ‘There’s another reason I wanted to talk to you.’ He dragged his brain back into gear but for a few seconds he had to look outside rather than at her face. ‘I have to be at a breakfast meeting on Saturday and I want to ask you whether you would step in and cover here. Naturally, you will be paid handsomely for putting yourself out...’
‘Saturday...’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
Her