For the first time in months, she could feel a tiny ray of optimism trying to break through the dense storm clouds overhead and her nerves ratcheted up a couple of notches because she wasdesperatenot to blow this opportunity.
She inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, counted to ten and headed for the entrance of the wine bar.
Looking up from the report he had been reading, Niccolo saw the woman hovering in the doorway and drew in a sharp breath. She was arrestingly pretty yet he was surprised at how riveted he was by her blonde good looks because she was not at all the sort of woman he usually went for. He liked his women earthy, flamboyant, confident and on the same page as he was. Sexy, busty brunettes who didn’t play coy games and never asked for more than he was willing to give.
His ex-wife, a refined Italian beauty with a pedigree as long as your arm, had charmed him with her softly spoken, coy, genteel cool. She had played hard to get, reaching out just so far before shyly pulling back. After four months and in a headlong rush of thwarted passion—partly driven, he had retrospectively concluded, by the fact that were he not so rich, she wouldn’t have spared him a second glance—Niccolo had proposed.
Very quickly, he realised that with refinement came problems he just hadn’t anticipated. The new Mrs Caroline Ferri of the impeccable lineage and the cut-glass accent—because she had been privately educated at a boarding school in the Shires—was agonisingly and, in the end, infuriatingly high maintenance. Her demands became imperious. She required constant attention and round-the-clock adulation. She had Annalise but parenthood was not something she relished. As the only child of cold, distant parents who resided in regal splendour in Italy, she lacked any desire to bond with her child because her own parents had never bonded with her.
Niccolo, driven by ambition though he was, understood the importance of family, and their lives veered off in different directions very quickly from that point.
The ending of their marriage had been in the making before it had really even begun, although he would always feel subliminal guilt about the way everything had unravelled—so quickly and so completely.
He was adept at learning lessons. Promise nothing and look for less when it came to women. In the end, it was all about fun and sex. The obvious worked. The woman hovering nervously by the door was the opposite of obvious.
Tall and willowy, with her hair scraped back into some kind of bun, she was clutching her backpack in front of her with the tenacity of someone warding off evil spirits.
But her face...perfectly heart-shaped with a small, straight nose and a full, inviting mouth. Her pink tongue flicked out, moistening her lips, and Niccolo was shocked at the sudden surge in his libido, which went from zero to ten in the space of seconds.
He fidgeted, returned to his phone and only raised his eyes again when he was aware of a shadow across the table.
In the space of time it took Sophie to approach the table where Niccolo was sprawled in a chair, staring at his mobile phone, she registered that this was not what she had been expecting.
By the time she was standing directly in front of him, her nerves had had time to multiply tenfold. She cleared her throat and shifted awkwardly. She felt like an idiot in this smart place. Her clothes were all wrong. Her capacious backpack was all wrong. She knew that she shouldn’t be feeling like this. She had never been awed by expensive restaurants or flashy houses or idiotic, over-fast cars, but she felt awkward now, and she registered, subliminally, that it was the guy sitting in front of her who was encouraging that response.
Evalina had somehow managed to give the impression that her employer was a kindly, middle-aged, man—a devoted dad, a widower who had never quite got over the death of his wife. Details had been in scant supply, but Sophie had had no problem filling in all the gaps herself.
She had pictured a small, thin Italian gentleman who worked hard to make a good living. He would adjust his specs and they would have a comfortable conversation during which Sophie would do her utmost to reassure him that she would be a brilliant nanny for Annalise. She had done a lot of background research into things to do in London with young kids and all sorts of brochures were stuffed into her backpack, to be produced as evidence of her commitment.
This guy...
He looked as comfortable as a prowling shark in a tank full of minnows. He was younger than she had expected, mid-thirties perhaps, and his face was the perfect blend of beauty and power. Dark, dark eyes and raven-black hair cropped short so that nothing deflected from his harsh, stunningly perfect features. And where Evalina was slender and slight, her nephew was not. The opposite. He dwarfed the chair in which he was sitting.
In all respects, the man was breathtaking.
Apprehension threaded through her and her breathing quickened.
No, this was emphaticallynotwhat she had expected, and it certainly was not what she felt she could deal with at this moment in time. A too good-looking employer, free, single and unencumbered, who could get it into his head that his live-in nanny might be interested in some after-hours hanky-panky... Sophie wasn’t vain, but she was realistic. She knew that her looks attracted attention just as much as she knew how much of a problem that could be. She’d learned how to ignore lascivious stares from men and protect herself, but she was still raw from her recent disastrous relationship and the last thing she knew she could emotionally handle would be a guy showing any kind of interest in her. At this moment in time, she just felt way too fragile to deal with anything like that.
She felt faint as she saw all of her hopes of some kind of breathing space fly through the window.
‘Who are you?’
Sophie blinked. His voice matched his looks. Dark...exotic...strangely mesmerising.
‘Sophie Baxter.’ She held out her hand and wondered how she could phrase the beginning of her excuse for backing out of the arrangement his aunt had made. ‘Your aunt? Evalina? She recommended me to you about the...er...vacancy for the nanny job to replace her now that she’s had to return to Italy? I’m really sorry about your father, by the way. It must be worrying for you, stuck over here when you know he’s been in an accident...’
‘You’rethe woman my aunt has recommended?’
Sophie instantly felt her hackles rise. He sounded horrified.
‘Sit.’ He half rose, as though belatedly remembering that there was something calledcommon courtesyand nodded to the chair opposite, and Sophie duly sat down, defences fully in place at his surprising reaction.
‘Were you expecting someone else?’ she asked politely, eyes reluctantly riveted to his dark face as he lounged back in the chair and looked at her with brooding intensity.
‘You’re younger than I expected,’ Niccolo said flatly. ‘When my aunt told me that one of her friends at the allotment would be perfect to stand in for her in her absence, I was expecting a woman of a similar age.’
‘My apologies for being twenty-five,’ Sophie replied coldly. ‘I didn’t realise there was an age threshold for the position. Evalina never mentioned that.’