Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper
Hired: impoverished housekeeper! Though Sarah Halliday is very ordinary, her dangerously attractive new boss is not content with her scrubbing the marble floors of his Tuscan palazzo… Bedded: Italian’s mistress Instead she finds herself catapulted into Lorenzo Cavalleri’s star-studded life – with a wardrobe to match! Make-up masks her blushes, silk evening gowns flatter her fuller figure, but underneath Sarah’s still the shy, frumpy housekeeper Lorenzo hired – and not the sophisticated bedroom siren he seems to be expecting…At His Service From glass slippers to silk sheets
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Lorenzo barely recognised that guttural rasp as his own voice. He took hold of her upper arms, wrenching her round. He could feel the heat coming off her damp, voluptuous body, and as he touched her she gave a shivery gasp, jerking beneath his cold, wet hands.
That was what did itâwhat tore through his iron selfcontrol. That shiver of sensual awareness seemed to reverberate through his own body and galvanise him into actions he couldnât control. Suddenly he was pulling her against him as their mouths met and their lips parted, and he was running his slippery hands over her bare back beneath her hot, vanilla-scented hair, dripping cold water on her burning skin.
The kiss was hungry, devouring, urgent. She moved round so that she was leaning with her back against the sink, her fingers grasping his shoulders. Lorenzo could feel the jut of her hipbones against his, rising, pressing against his thudding body. His arousal was so sudden, so intense, it was almost painful. He fumbled for the bow at the back of her apron, stretched to breaking point as his fingers moved across her bare, satin-smooth back. He wanted to have her now, standing up against the sinkâ¦
As if sheâd read his mind she shifted slightly, tearing her lips from his for a moment as she hoisted herself upwards so that she was half sitting on the edge of the worktop. The movement made a little space between them, and without the bewitching ecstasy of her mouth on his, her hot body pressed against him, Lorenzo was pierced through with sudden chilling awareness.
What the hell was he doing?
A self-confessed romance junkie, India Grey was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon® Writersâ Guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept those guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Yearâs Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she gained a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University, and in a stroke of genius on the part of the gods of Romance met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity and heaps of pink washing, generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. Sheâs just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!
For Debbie and Alyson,
without whose wit, wisdom and daily conferences in the school car park this book would have been written much more quickly (but at further risk to my sanity).
CHAPTER ONE
ELIGIBLE bachelor.
Sarah came to a standstill in the middle of the car park, her fist tightening around the envelope in her hand.
She had to find an eligible bachelor. As an item in a scavenger hunt.
Since sheâd conspicuously failed to find one of those in real life, her chances of success tonight seemed slim.
Beyond the rows of shiny Mercedes and BMWs parked outside Oxfordshireâs trendiest dining pub, the fields and streams and woodland coppices she had grown up amongst lay golden and peaceful in the low summer sun. She gazed out across them, the envelope still clutched in her hand as adrenaline fizzed through her bloodstream and her mind raced.
She didnât have to go in there; didnât have to take part in this stupid scavenger hunt for her sisterâs hen weekend; didnât have to be the butt of everyoneâs jokes all the timeâSarah, nearly thirty and on the shelf. No, she knew these fields like the back of her hand, and could remember loads of good hiding places.
Thrusting a hand through her tangled curls, she sighed. Hiding up a tree might be considerably more appealing than going into a pub and having to find an eligible bachelor, but at the age of twenty-nine it was slightly less socially acceptable. And she couldnât really spend the rest of her life hiding. Everyone said she had to get back out there and face it all again, for Lottieâs sake. Children needed two parents, didnât they? Girls needed fathers. Sooner or later she should at least try to find someone to fill the rather sudden vacancy left by Rupert.
The prospect made her feel cold inside.
Later. Definitely later, rather than sooner. Right now she was going toâ
The doors to the bar opened and a group of city types spilled out, laughing and slapping each other on the back in an excess of beery camaraderie. They barely glanced at her as they walked past, but almost as an afterthought the last one dutifully held the door open for her.
Hell. There was no way she could not go in now. Theyâd think she was some kind of weirdo whose idea of a good night out was hanging around in a pub car park. Stammering her thanks, she slipped into the dim interior of the bar, shoving the envelope into the back pocket of her jeans with a shaking hand.
