Bound By His Vow: His Final Bargain / The Rings That Bind / Marriage Made of Secrets

A glint of something dark and mocking entered his gaze as it held hers. ‘You misunderstand me, Eliza. I am not offering you a rerun at being my mistress. You will be employed as my daughter’s nanny. That is all that will be required of you.’

Why was she feeling as if he had just insulted her? What right did she have to bristle at his words? He needed a nanny. He didn’t want her in any other capacity.

He didn’t want her.

The realisation pained Eliza much more than she wanted it to. What foolish part of her had clung to the idea that even after all this time he would come back for her because he had never found anyone who filled the gaping hole she had left in his life? ‘I can assure you that if you were offering me anything else I wouldn’t accept it,’ she said with a little hitch of her chin.

His gaze held hers in an assessing manner. It was unnerving to be subjected to such an intensely probing look, especially as she wasn’t entirely confident she was keeping her reaction to him concealed. ‘I wonder if that is strictly true,’ he mused. ‘Clearly your fiancé isn’t satisfying you. You still have that hungry look about you.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ she said with prickly defensiveness. ‘You’re seeing what you want to see, not what is.’ You’re seeing what I’m trying so hard to hide!

His dark brown eyes continued to impale hers. ‘Will you accept the post?’

Eliza caught at her lower lip for a brief moment. She had at her fingertips the way to keep the school open. All of her children could continue with their education. The parenting and counselling programme for single mums she had dreamt of offering could very well become a reality if there were more funds available—a programme that might have saved her mother if it had been available at the time.

‘Will another five hundred thousand pounds in cash help you come to a decision a little sooner?’

Eliza gaped at him. Was he really offering her a million pounds in cash? Did people do that? Were there really people out there who could do that?

She had grown up with next to nothing, shunted from place to place while her mother continued on a wretched cycle of drug and alcohol abuse that was her way of self-medicating far deeper emotional issues that had their origin in childhood. Eliza wasn’t used to having enough money for the necessities, let alone the luxuries. As a child she had dreamt of having enough money to get her mother the help she so desperately needed, but there hadn’t been enough for food and rent at times, let alone therapy.

She knew she came from a very different background from Leo, but he had never flaunted his wealth in the past. She had thought him surprisingly modest about it considering he was a self-made man. Thirty years ago his father had lost everything in a business deal gone sour. Leo had worked long and hard to rebuild the family engineering company from scratch. And he had done it and done it well. The Valente Engineering Company was responsible for some of the biggest projects across the globe. She had admired him for turning things around. So many people would have given up or adopted a victim mentality but he had not.

But for all the wealth Leo Valente had, it certainly hadn’t bought him happiness. Eliza could see the lines of strain on his face and the shadows in his eyes that hadn’t been there four years ago. She sent her tongue out over her lips again. ‘Cash?’

He gave a businesslike nod. ‘Cash. But only if you sign up right here and now.’

She frowned. ‘You want me to sign something?’

He took out a folded sheet of paper from the inside of his jacket without once breaking his gaze lock with hers. ‘A confidentiality agreement. No press interviews before, during or once your appointment is over.’

Eliza took the document and glanced over it. It was reasonably straightforward. She was forbidden to speak to the press, otherwise she would have to repay the amount he was giving her with twenty per cent interest. She looked up at him again. ‘You certainly put a very high price on your privacy.’

‘I have seen lives and reputations destroyed by idle speculation in the press,’ he said. ‘I will not tolerate any scurrilous rumour mongering. If you don’t think you can abide by the rules set out in that document, then I will leave now and let you get on with your life. There will be no need for any further contact between us.’

Eliza couldn’t help wondering why he wanted contact with her now. Why her? He could afford to employ the most highly qualified nanny in the world.

They hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Every time she thought of that final scene between them she felt sick to her stomach. He had been livid to find out she was already engaged to another man. His anger had been palpable. She had felt bruised by it even though he had only touched her with his gaze. Oh, those hard, bitter eyes! How they had stabbed and burned her with their hatred and loathing. He hadn’t even given her time to explain. He had stormed out of the restaurant and out of her life. He had cut all contact with her.

She could so easily have defended herself back then and in the weeks and months and years since. At any one point she could have called him and told him. She could have explained it all, but guilt had kept her silent.

It still kept her silent.

Dare she go with him? For a million pounds how could she not? Strictly speaking, the money wasn’t for her. That made it more palatable, or at least slightly. She would be doing it for the children and their poor disadvantaged mothers. It was only for a month. That wasn’t a long time by anyone’s standards. It would be over in a flash. Besides, England’s summer was turning out to be a non-event. A month’s break looking after a little girl in sun-drenched Positano would be a piece of cake.

How hard could it be?

Eliza straightened her spine and looked him in the eye as she held out her hand. ‘Do you have a pen?’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4022a603-92e3-5fee-875b-dfe6372ec5ee)

LEO WATCHED AS Eliza scratched her signature across the paper. She had a neat hand, loopy and very feminine. He had loved those soft little hands on his body. His flesh had sung with delight every time she had touched him…

He jerked his thoughts back like a rider tugging the reins on a bolting horse. He would not allow himself to think of her that way. He needed a nanny. This was strictly a business arrangement. There was nothing else he wanted from her.

Four years on he was still furious with her for what she had done. He was even more furious with himself for falling for her when she had only been using him. How had he been so beguiled by her? She had reeled him in like a dumb fish on a line. She had dangled the bait and he had gobbled it up without thinking of what he was doing. He had acted like a lovesick swain by proposing to her so quickly. He had offered her the world—his world, the one he had worked such backbreaking hours to make up from scratch.

She had captivated him from the moment she had taken the seat beside him in the bar where he had been sitting brooding into his drink on the night of his father’s funeral. There was a restless sort of energy about her that he had recognised and responded to instantly. He had felt his body start to sizzle as soon as her arm brushed against his. She had been upfront and brazen with him, but in an edgy, exhilarating way. Their first night together had been monumentally explosive. He had never felt such a maelstrom of lust. He had been totally consumed by it. He had taken what he could with her, how he could, relishing that she seemed to want to do the same. He had loved that about her, that her need for him was as lusty and racy as his for her.

Their one-night stand had morphed into a passionate three-week affair that had him issuing a romantic proposal because he couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. But all that time she had been harbouring a secret—she was already engaged to a man back home in England.

Leo looked at her left hand. Her engagement ring glinted at him, taunting him like an evil eye.

Anger was like a red mist in front of him. He had been nothing more to her than a holiday fling, a diversion—a shallow little hook-up to laugh about with her friends once she got home.

He hated her for it.

He hated her for how his life had turned out since.

The life he’d planned for himself had been derailed by her betrayal. It had had a domino effect on every part of his life since. If it hadn’t been for her perfidy he would not have met poor, sad, lonely Giulia. The guilt he felt about Giulia’s death was like a clamp around his heart. He had been the wrong person for her. She had been the wrong person for him. But in their mutual despair over being let down by the ones they had loved, they had formed a wretched sort of alliance that was always going to end in tragedy. From the first moment Giulia had set eyes on their dark-haired baby girl she had rejected her. She had seemed repulsed by her own child. The doctors talked about post-natal depression and other failure to bond issues, given that the baby had been premature and had special needs, but deep inside Leo already knew what the problem had been.

Giulia hadn’t wanted his child; she had wanted her ex’s.

He had been a very poor substitute husband for her, but he was determined to be the best possible father he could be to his little daughter.

Bringing Eliza back into his life to help with Alessandra would be a way of putting things in order once and for all. Revenge was an ugly word. He didn’t want to think along those lines. This was more of a way of drawing a line under that part of his life.

This time he would be in the driving seat. Once the month was up she could pack her bags and leave. It was a business arrangement, just like any other.

No feelings were involved.

Eliza handed him back his pen. ‘I can’t start until school finishes at the end of the week.’

Leo pocketed the pen, trying to ignore the warmth it had taken from her fingers. Trying to ignore the hot wave of lust that rumbled beneath his skin like a wild beast waking up after a long hibernation.

He had to ignore it.

He would ignore it.

‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘I will send a car to take you to the airport on Friday. The flight has already been booked.’

Her blue-green eyes widened in surprise or affront, he couldn’t be quite sure which. ‘You’re very certain of yourself, aren’t you?’

‘I’m used to getting what I want. I don’t allow minor obstacles to get in my way.’

Her chin came up a notch and her eyes took on a glittering, challenging sheen. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been described as a “minor obstacle” before. What if I turn out to be a much bigger challenge than you bargained for?’

Leo had already factored in the danger element. It was dangerous to have her back in his life. He knew that. But in a perverse sort of way he wanted that. He was sick of his pallid life. She represented all that he had lost—the colour, the vibrancy and the passion.