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

But once back in his own room, he was irritated to discover that the low burn of desire was refusing to leave him. So that instead of the hot shower he’d promised himself, Salvio found himself standing beneath jets of punishingly cold water as he tried to push the curves of the sweet little housekeeper from the forefront of his mind and to quell the exquisite hardness which throbbed at his groin.

CHAPTER TWO

‘MOLLY, THESE POTATOES are frightful. We can’t possibly ask Signor De Gennaro to eat them. Have they even seen an oven? They’re like rocks!’

Molly could feel herself flushing to the roots of her hair as she met Lady Avery’s accusing stare. Were they? She blinked. Surely she’d blasted them for the required time, carefully basting them with goose fat to make them all golden and crispy? But no. Now she stopped to look at them properly—they were definitely on the anaemic side.

She could feel her cheeks growing even pinker as she reached towards the table to pick up the dish. ‘I’m so sorry, Lady Avery. I’ll pop them back in the—’

‘Don’t bother!’ snapped her employer. ‘It will be midnight before they’re fit to eat and I don’t intend going to bed on a full stomach. And I’m sure Salvio won’t want to either.’

Was it Molly’s imagination, or did Lady Avery shoot the Italian a complicit smile from the other side of the table? The way she said his name sounded unmistakably predatory and the look she was giving him was enough to make Molly’s stomach turn. Surely the aristocrat wasn’t hinting that she intended ending up in bed with him, not with her husband sitting only a few feet away?

Yet it had struck her as odd when Sarah Avery had come down for dinner wearing the tightest and lowest-cut dress imaginable, so that the priceless blaze of the Avery diamonds dazzled like stars against her aging skin. She’d been flirting outrageously with the Italian businessman ever since Molly had served pre-dinner drinks and showed no sign of stopping. And meanwhile, her husband—two decades older and already a quarter of the way through his second bottle of burgundy—seemed oblivious to the undercurrents which had been swirling around the dinner table ever since they’d sat down.

The meal had been a disaster from the moment she’d put the starters on the table and Molly couldn’t understand why. She was a good cook. She knew that. Hadn’t she spent years cooking for her mother and little brother, trying to produce tasty food on a shoestring budget? And hadn’t part of her job interview for Lady Avery consisted of producing a full afternoon tea—including a rich and rather heavy fruit cake—within the space of just two hours...a feat she had managed with ease? A simple meal for just three people should have been a breeze, but Molly hadn’t factored in Salvio De Gennaro, or the effect his brooding presence would have on her employer. Or, if she was being honest, on her.

After he’d swept out of the kitchen earlier that afternoon, it had taken ages for her heart to stop thumping and to be able to concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing. She’d felt all giddy and stupidly...excited. She remembered the way he had looked into her eyes with that dark and piercing gaze and wondered if she’d imagined the pulsing crackle of electricity between them before telling herself that, yes, of course she had. Unless she really thought a man who could have his pick of any woman on the planet would have the slightest interest in a naïve country girl who was carrying far too much weight around her hips.

In her dreams!