Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Sinful Proposals. Cathy Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ Would he be amused if he knew her background? Pity she would find hard to tolerate but she somehow didn’t think that he would pity her. Certainly, it would reposition the lines between them which, for him, were clear but for her too blurred for comfort.

      She was an underling in a company he could buy ten times over. Had he given them the job because of Katherine? She didn’t know. What she did know was that Katherine was far more in his league than she was so it was totally out of order for her to even look at him in any way other than someone way down the pecking order who was working for him.

      Get the boundary lines back in place, at least in her mind, and maybe she would stop responding like the teenager she no longer was. And he would keep his distance, too.

      ‘I guess you think that I’m like all the other people who work for the company,’ she said, tilting her chin and maintaining eye contact, even though she could read nothing on his face.

      ‘Do I? Tell me what you think I think about all the other people who work for the company. I’m all ears...bearing in mind I haven’t met most of them...’

      Sunny blushed. Explaining about her past was something she had never done. The other kids at the boarding school into which she had been accepted had known that her circumstances had not been like theirs, had known that she had been given a scholarship, one of only three full scholarships awarded to kids from underprivileged backgrounds.

      But she had never talked about hers.

      There was no reason to talk about it now but something in her head was telling her that she had to recognise the lines drawn in the sand between them because she couldn’t understand her response to him and she was desperate to keep it at bay.

      She needed to tell him more for her sake than for his.

      And part of her...wanted to.

      ‘I didn’t have a cosseted childhood,’ she said steadily. ‘In fact, I had a pretty awful time growing up, although I just accepted it for what it was and never really spent too much time thinking of how it could have been different. I learned early on that what you can’t change you just have to accept...’

      She remembered the way Flora had, very briefly, communicated with her father and allowed him into her world and she wondered whether her words of advice had been taken on board. Accept the things you can’t change.

      Stefano was listening intently, his head ever so slightly tilted to one side.

      When women launched into anecdotes about their past, they did it to try and engage his attention and encourage his interest.

      He didn’t get the feeling that she was trying to encourage his interest.

      There was an underlying defiance to her voice that made him wonder whether she was even trying to engage his attention at all or whether she was, in some obscure way, trying to warn him off.

      Surely not.

      Surely she couldn’t have noticed the effect she had on him. For once, he was in the company of a woman who was...unpredictable. A woman he couldn’t read, a woman who wasn’t out to impress him.

      Throw sexy into the mix and was it any wonder that she turned him on?

      ‘Tell me,’ he encouraged huskily and he caught the wary look she shot him from under her lashes.

      ‘Most of the people I work with come from good, solid, middle-class backgrounds.’ She stared at her fingers, inspecting her fingernails while talking. ‘I don’t have a problem with that. It’s great, but a good, solid, middle-class background was so far out of my reach when I was a kid...’ She sighed and stopped fidgeting to look him squarely in the eyes. ‘My mother drank and took drugs. She was weak, easily influenced by men, and I spent my childhood never knowing what life was going to bring from one day to the next. There were times when I was taken into care and other times when there were little periods of stability. My schooling was patchy and then, when I was still far too young, my mother died from an overdose and I was taken into care permanently. Eventually I was fostered, which was a nightmare, and thankfully I managed to win a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school. In between all of that, there was no opportunity to really crack on with the swimming lessons.’ She smiled wryly. ‘It was all I could do to make sure I kept ahead with my schoolwork, to be honest.’

      ‘Why did you choose to tell me...?’

      ‘Because you were curious. Hence your question about how it was that I couldn’t swim. In your world, there’s no such thing as an adult who doesn’t know how to swim. I think, in your world, most people don’t know what it’s like to grow up without their own private swimming pool and holidays abroad by the sea.’

      Stefano didn’t say anything. She was beginning to make sense to him. He was beginning to understand the layers she had constructed to protect herself and he was also beginning to understand why it was so important for her to work hard and build a career.

      A career would be something tangible she could hold onto and he guessed that, after a turbulent childhood, that would mean a lot to her.

      And she was right. He’d been curious about her. He’d wanted to find out what made her tick even though it went against his better judgement.

      Sunny shrugged. ‘I don’t share details of my past with people as a rule,’ she explained, ‘but neither is it some great big secret and it was easier to just fill you in than to have you constantly asking pointed questions. Also, you should know because you might want to change your mind about hiring me as a babysitter for Flora.’

      ‘Why would I change my mind?’

      ‘Because...’ Flustered, she looked away.

      ‘Because you think I’m probably a snob...’

      ‘I don’t think anything. I was just...giving you the opportunity... Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m more than happy to continue working for you until the end of next week. Who will be taking over after I’ve gone? Have you managed to secure another nanny?’

      She was a wrong-side-of-the-tracks girl and she had made sure to tell him that, made sure to point out their differences, because she had picked up something. Probably she hadn’t even consciously registered it, but she had picked up something, some vibe he had been giving off, and she was firing a warning shot from the bows.

      Except when had he become the sort of guy who got scared at warnings being fired? His learning curve at the hands of his ex-wife had freed him from any hesitations when it came to women. He played fair, he laid out the rules of the game and within those constraints it had never, not once, occurred to him, ever, that he might allow anything of himself to get out of control. He’d buried his emotions so deep that he had no idea where they were or if he would ever be able to find them and that suited him.

      So if she was trying to warn him off by filling him in on the horrors of her background...

      She truly must think him a crashing snob.

      ‘My mother usually helps out. Right now, as I have explained, she’s in Scotland but she will pick up the slack until I can secure someone else. Flora gets along with my mother slightly better than she gets along with me, which is not terribly well, but at least she isn’t outright rude, as she’s enjoyed being with the nannies I’ve hired in the past. Now, why don’t I get Eric to drop you at your flat, just long СКАЧАТЬ