The Italian's Christmas Housekeeper - Шэрон Кендрик (2019)

He had waited for a moment to see if she would recognise him. If she knew who he was—or, rather, who he had been. But no. He was familiar with recognition in all its forms—from greedy delight right through to feigned ignorance—but there had been no trace of any of those on her face. And why should there be? She was much younger than him and from a different country. How would she have known that in his native Italy he had once been famous?

He watched her busying herself, her curvy silhouette reminding him of the bottles of Verdicchio which used to line the shelves of the city bar he’d swept as a boy, before the talent scouts had discovered him and ended his childhood. She turned to switch on the coffee maker and a sudden dryness turned his throat to dust because...her breasts. He swallowed. Madonna mia—what breasts! He was glad when she turned away to open the fridge door because his erection was pressing uncomfortably against his shorts, though, when she did, he then became mesmerised by her shapely bottom. He was just fantasising about what her shiny brown hair would look like loose when she turned around and surveyed him with eyes as grey as the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore—that beautiful church in Naples, which had once been an orphanage.

Their gazes clashed and mingled and something unspoken fizzled in the air as Salvio felt a leap of something he couldn’t define. The hardness in his groin was familiar but the sudden clench of his heart was not. Was it lust? His mouth twisted. Of course it was lust—for what else could it be? It just happened to be more powerful than usual because it had taken him by surprise.

Yet there was no answering hunger in her quiet, grey gaze—something which perplexed him, for when didn’t a woman look at him with desire in her eyes? She was wary, he found himself thinking, with a flicker of amusement. Almost as if she were silently reproaching him for his insolent appraisal—and maybe that sentiment was richly deserved. What was he doing surveying her curvy body, like a boy from a single-sex school who was meeting a beautiful woman for the first time?

‘You’re the cook?’ he questioned, trying to redeem himself with a safe, if rather banal question.

She nodded. ‘Sort of. Officially, I’m the housekeeper but I do a bit of everything. Answer the door to guests and make sure their rooms are serviced, that sort of thing.’ She pushed the coffee towards him. ‘Will there be anything else, Signor De Gennaro?’

He smiled. ‘Salvio. And you are?’

She looked taken aback, as if people didn’t ask her name very often. ‘It’s Molly,’ she answered shyly, in a voice so soft it felt like silk lingerie brushing against his skin. ‘Molly Miller.’

Molly Miller. He found himself wanting to repeat it, but the conversation—such as it was—was terminated by the sudden sweep of car headlights arcing powerfully across the room. As he heard the sound of a large car swishing over gravel, Salvio saw the way she flinched and automatically tugged at her drab dress so that it hung more uniformly over her wide hips.

‘That’s the Averys.’

‘I thought it must be.’

‘You’d better... You’d better go,’ she said, unable to keep the waver of urgency from her voice. ‘I’m supposed to be preparing dinner and Lady Avery won’t like finding a guest in the kitchen.’

Salvio was tempted to tell her that he didn’t give a damn what Lady Avery would or wouldn’t like but he could see the fear which had darkened her soft grey eyes. With a flicker of irritation he picked up his espresso and water and headed for the door. ‘Grazie mille,’ he said, leaving the warm and steamy kitchen and walking rapidly towards the staircase, reluctant to be around when the Averys burst into the hallway.