Hired: Mistress: Wanted: Mistress and Mother / His Private Mistress / The Millionaire's Secret Mistress

‘I won’t sleep,’ Matilda sighed dreamily, wandering over to the window and pressing her face against the glass, like a child staring into a toy-shop Christmas display. ‘I’ll spend the whole night watching the water and then I’ll be too exhausted to do your garden. It’s just divine…’

‘And,’ Dante said with a teasing dramatic note to his voice that Matilda had never heard before, ‘it has running water.’

‘You’re kidding.’ Matilda played along, liking the change in him, the funnier, more relaxed side of him she was slowly starting to witness.

‘Not just that, but hot running water.’ Dante smiled, sliding open the en suite door as Matilda reluctantly peeled herself away from the view and padded over. ‘See for yourself.’

The smile was wiped off her face as she stepped inside. Fabulous it might be but she couldn’t possibly use it, her frantic eyes scanning the equally massive window for even a chink of a blind or curtain.

‘No one can see.’ Dante rolled his eyes at her expression.

‘Apart from every passing sailor and the nightly ferry load on its way to Tasmania!’ Matilda gulped.

‘The windows are treated, I mean tinted,’ Dante simultaneously explained and corrected himself. Even a couple of hours ago she’d have felt stupid or gauche, but his smile seemed genuine enough at least that Matilda was able to smile back. ‘I promise that no one will see you.’

‘Good.’

‘Now that we’ve taken care of that, can we eat?’

This time she didn’t even bother to argue.

Wandering back along the hallway, Dante put his fingers to his lips and pushed open Alex’s door to check on his daughter. Matilda stood there as he crept inside. The little girl was lying with one skinny leg sticking out of between the bars of her cot, her tiny, angelic face relaxed in sleep. Matilda felt her heart go out to this beautiful child who had been through so, so much, a lump building in her throat as Dante slowly moved her leg back in then retrieved a sheet that had fallen from the cot and with supreme tenderness tucked it around Alex, gently stroking her shoulder as she stirred slightly. But Matilda wasn’t watching Alex any more. Instead, she was watching Dante, a sting of tears in her eyes as she glimpsed again his tenderness, slotted in another piece of the puzzle that enthralled her.

When he wasn’t being superior or scathing he was actually incredibly nice.

Incredibly nice, Matilda thought a little later as Dante carried two steaming plates into the lounge room and they shared a casual dinner. And whether it was the wine or the mood, conversation came incredibly easily, so much so that when Matilda made a brief reference to her recent break-up, she didn’t jump as if she’d been burnt when Dante asked what had gone wrong. She just gave a thoughtful shrug and pondered a moment before answering.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Matilda finally admitted. ‘I don’t really know when the problems started. For ages we were really happy. Edward’s career was taking off, we were looking at houses and then all of a sudden we seemed to be arguing over everything. Nothing I did was ever right, from the way I dressed to the friends I had. It was as if nothing I did could make him happy.’

‘So everything was perfect and then out of the blue arguments started?’ Dante gave her a rather disbelieving frown as she nodded. ‘It doesn’t happen like that, Matilda,’ Dante said. ‘There is no such thing as perfect. There must have been something that irked, a warning that all was not OK—there always is.’

‘How do you know?’ Matilda asked, ‘I mean how do you know all these things?’

‘It’s my job to know how people’s minds work,’ Dante responded, but then softened it with a hint of personal insight. ‘I was in a relationship too, Matilda. I do know that they are not all perfect!’

According to everyone, his had been, but Matilda didn’t say it, not wanting to break the moment, liking this less reticent Dante she was seeing, actually enjoying talking to him. ‘I supposed he always flirted when we were out and it annoyed me,’ Matilda admitted. ‘We’d go to business dinners and I didn’t like the way he was with some of the women. I don’t think I’m a jealous person, but if he was like that when I was there…’ Her voice trailed off, embarrassed now at having said so much, but Dante just nodded, leaning back on the sofa. His stance was so incredibly nonjudgmental, inexplicably she wanted to continue, actually wanted to tell him how Edward had made her feel, wanted Dante to hear this and hoping maybe in return she’d hear about him, too. ‘He wasn’t cheating. But I wondered in years to come…’

‘Probably.’ Dante shrugged. ‘No doubt when you’d just had a baby, or your work was busy and you were too tired to focus enough on him, not quite at your goal weight.’ He must have registered her frown, her mouth opening then holding back a question that, despite the nature of this personal conversation, wasn’t one she had any right to ask, but Dante answered it anyway. ‘No, Matilda, I didn’t have an affair, if that’s what you are thinking. I like beautiful women as much as any man and, yes, at various times in our relationship Jasmine and I faced all of the things I’ve outlined, but I can truthfully say it would never have entered my head to look at another woman in that way. I wanted to fix our problems, Matilda, not add to them.’

And it was so refreshing to hear it, a completely different perspective, her doubts about opening up to him quashed now as she saw the last painful months through different eyes.

‘In the end he spent so much time at work there really wasn’t much room for anything else…’

‘Anything else?’ Dante asked, painfully direct, and Matilda took a gulp of her drink then nodded.

‘You know, for months I’ve been going over and over it, wondering if I was just imagining things, if Edward was right, that it was my fault he couldn’t…’ She snapped her mouth closed. In an unguarded moment she’d revealed way, way more than she’d intended and she halted the conversation there, hoping that Dante would take the cue and do the same, but he was way too sharp.

‘What was your fault?’

‘Nothing.’ Matilda’s voice was high. ‘Wasn’t what I told you reason enough to end things?’

‘Of course.’

Silence hung in the air. As understanding as Dante might have been, he certainly couldn’t help her with the rest. There was no way she could go there, the words that had been said agony to repeat even to herself. It was none of his damn business anyway.

‘You know, people like Edward normally don’t respond too well to their own failings—they’d rather make you feel like shit than even consider that they had a problem.’ His voice was deep and unusually gentle, and though she couldn’t bring herself to look at him she could feel his eyes on her. His insight floored her. She felt transparent, as if somehow he had seen into the deepest, darkest part of her and somehow shed light on it, somehow pried open the lid on her shame. And it was madness, sheer madness that she wanted to open it up more, to let out the pain that was curled up inside there…to share it with Dante.

‘He said that it was my fault…’ Matilda gagged on the words, screwed her eyes closed, as somehow she told him, told him what she hadn’t been able to tell even some of her closest friends. ‘That maybe if I was more interesting, made a bit more effort, that he wouldn’t look at other women, that he wouldn’t have…’ She couldn’t go there, couldn’t tell him everything, she could feel the icy chill of perspiration between her breasts, could feel her neck and her face darkening in the shame of the harsh, cruel words that had been uttered.

‘I would imagine that it’s incredibly difficult to be amazing in bed when you’ve been ignored all evening!’ Her closed eyes snapped open, her mouth gaping as Dante, as direct as ever, got straight to the point. ‘I would think it would be impossible, in fact, to give completely of yourself when you’re wondering who he’s really holding—whether it’s the woman in his arms or the one you caught him chatting to at the bar earlier.’

And she hadn’t anticipated crying, but as his words tore through her only then did she truly acknowledge the pain, the pain that had been there for so long now, the bitter aftermath that had lingered long after she’d moved out and moved on with her life. But they were quiet tears, no sobs, no real outward display of emotion other than the salty rivers that ran down her smeared cheeks, stinging her reddened face as Dante gently spoke on, almost hitting the mark but not quite. She’d revealed so much to him, but her ultimate shame was still locked inside.

‘It was him with the problem, not you.’ His accent was thick.

‘He said the same thing—the other way around, of course.’ Matilda sniffed. ‘I guess it’s a matter of opinion who’s right! I spent the last few months trying to get back what we’d once had, trying to make it work, but in the end…’ She shook her head, unwilling now to go on, the last painful rows still too raw for shared introspection. Thankfully Dante sensed it, offering her another drink from the bottle they’d practically finished, but Matilda declined. ‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ Dante frowned.

‘What about your relationship?’ Matilda ventured.

‘What about it?’

‘You said that it wasn’t perfect…’

‘No.’ Dante shook his head.

‘You did,’ Matilda insisted.

‘I said that I knew that they were not all perfect—it doesn’t mean I was referring to mine.’

Matilda knew he was lying and she also knew that he was closing the subject, yet she refused to leave it there. She’d revealed so much of herself, had felt close to a man for the first time in ages and didn’t want it to end like this, didn’t want Dante to shut her out all over again.

‘You said that you wanted to fix your problems, Dante,’ Matilda quoted softly. ‘What were they?’

‘Does it matter now?’ Dante asked, swilling the wine around his glass and refusing to look at her. ‘As you said, there are always two sides—is it fair to give mine when Jasmine isn’t here to give hers?’

‘I think so,’ Matilda breathed, chewing on her bottom lip. And even if her voice was tentative, she reeled at her boldness, laid her heart on the line a little bit more, bracing herself for pain as she did so. ‘If you want to get close to someone then you have to give a bit of yourself—even the bad bits.’

‘And you want to get close?’

He did look at her this time, and she stared back transfixed, a tiny nervous nod affirming her want. ‘Tell me about you, how you’re feeling…’

‘Which part of hell do you want to visit?’

She didn’t flinch, didn’t say anything, just stared back, watching as slowly he placed his glass on the table. His elbows on his knees, he raked a hand through his hair and so palpable was his pain Matilda was sure if she lifted her hand she’d be able to reach out and touch it. She held her breath as finally he looked up and stared at her for the longest time before speaking.

‘Always there is…’ He didn’t get to start, let alone finish. A piercing scream from the intercom made them both jump. He picked up the intercom, which had been placed on the coffee table, and stood up. ‘I have to go to her and then I think I’ll head to bed, I’ve got a pile of paperwork to read. ’Night, Matilda.’