Bound To The Tuscan Billionaire

He pressed on with one thought driving him. Cassandra was alone in the dark, stranded on his estate, and whether or not that was thanks to her own stubbornness, she was a member of his staff and he had a duty of care towards her. He could only imagine her relief when he arrived to save the day.

He had never been so pleased to see the house. He was less pleased to discover that floodwater was lapping around the front step. Parking up, he waded to the front door. Inserting his key, he pushed, but the door wouldn’t open. He put his shoulder to it, but that made no difference. The house was in darkness. He glanced across the courtyard and called out. There was no sign of life. Where was she?

‘Cassandra!’

Framing his face with his hands, he peered into one of the windows, but all he could see was blackness beyond. Turning up his collar, he retraced his steps. It brought him a moment’s humour to see the ground might be flooded but Cassandra’s trench was doing its job in directing the water safely away from her seedlings. He skidded to a halt at the back door. It was wide open. His heart jumped at the thought she might have run out into the night; people had died in similar weather conditions.

‘Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me?’

He spun around at the sound of her voice. Moonlight framed her. She was at the far end of the kitchen soaked to the skin, with her hair hanging in straggles down her back as she dragged a sandbag across the floor.

‘Those candles have gone out again,’ she shouted as she backed into the hall. ‘Can you close the door and light them for me?’

‘Leave that!’ He swore viciously as he tore off his jacket. He was at her side in an instant. ‘You light the candles. I’ll take the sandbag.’

She shook him off. The brief contact between them was electrifying.

‘If you want to help me, grab another bag!’ she yelled. ‘The river must have burst its banks—’

‘Clearly,’ he said dryly, wrestling the sandbag from her grasp. He laid it down on top of the others. That was why he’d been unable to get in—and now she was rolling up his Persian carpets.

‘Help me,’ she insisted impatiently. ‘It will be faster if the two of us do it.’

‘Have you lit those candles yet?’ he pressed, frowning.

‘Have you got any manners?’ she fired back with a scowl twice as deep as his.

He straightened up with surprise. No one had ever talked to him this way before.

‘Thank you would be a start,’ she told him sharply.

An almighty thunder crash brought an end to their discussion. As lightning flashed repeatedly he could see the wide-eyed shock on her face.

‘You’re safe,’ he insisted, when nature paused to take a breath.

‘If it doesn’t stop raining soon, we’ll be sunk—quite literally,’ she said. ‘Here—catch this.’

She tossed him a towel to mop up the water leaking through her barricade. Far from cowering in a corner, waiting for her white knight to arrive, Signorina Rich was firmly in control. He surprised himself by liking that. But, then, he liked her. He couldn’t help himself. He admired her grit.

‘Well? Are you going to help me to roll up these rugs or not?’ she demanded, glancing back at him as she lit the candles on the hall table.

There were plenty of things he would like to help Signorina Rich with, and rolling rugs wasn’t at the top of his list.

It was all going well for her until she crossed the room in the half-light and caught her foot under a rug. As she stumbled he caught her close. It only took an instant to absorb how good she felt beneath his hands. Candlelight mapped the changes in her eyes from blue to black. She held her breath, almost as if she thought he was going to kiss her. Would she fight him? Would she yield hungrily? It was irrelevant to him. He might want to kiss her, he might even ache to kiss her, but he would never be so self-indulgent.

Delay was the servant of pleasure, he mused dryly as he steadied her.

‘Be careful you don’t trip up again.’

The look she gave him suggested that tripping up over a rug, or anything else for that matter, was the last thing on her mind.

‘Shall we carry on?’ she suggested. ‘The rugs?’ she added pointedly.

She got more brownie points for effort, and his senses got a second jolt when she brushed past him. She’d keep, he reassured his aching flesh. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Having been forced to work together, Cass was surprised to discover how well they could read each other’s intentions—to her surprise, they made a great team. It was certainly a pleasure watching Marco wielding his immense physical strength.

‘I’ll move things out of the way so you can take that rug into the dining room,’ she told him, holding her breath as Marco shouldered the weight of the wool rug as if it were a bag of feathers. Opening the door wide, she cleared a space for him, only to find him breathing down her neck. Their hands brushed. Their bodies touched. Their breath mingled as he turned around. They were just too dangerously close—

‘Great job,’ she said, stepping back. Now she realised that in her hurry to get away from him she had made it sound as if their positions in life had been reversed and Marco was her assistant. Oh, well. There was nothing she could do about that now. Ducking beneath his arm, she slipped away.

‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.

‘To my bed.’ She turned and shrugged. ‘We’ve done all we can tonight. I’m going to have a bath first—try to warm up. The power may be off but the water should still be warm in the reserve tank—and I promise I won’t use it all.’

‘A bath in the dark?’ he queried.

‘I’ll manage—I’ll take some candles.’ She glanced at his fist on the door. Was he going to try and stop her leaving? The tension between them had suddenly roared off the scale.

‘You’re in a hurry to get away.’

His murmur hit her straight between the shoulder blades in a deliciously dangerous quiver of awareness. ‘I’m cold,’ she excused herself, hugging her body and acting fragile. She doubted he was convinced, but at least he lifted his hand from the door.

‘You’ve done well tonight,’ he said as he stood back.

‘And now I’m freezing,’ she reminded him in a stronger voice. That wasn’t so far from the truth. She was soaking wet. ‘If you could get the power back on...’ she suggested hopefully.

Marco narrowed his eyes and looked at her. ‘You’d better take that bath,’ he said, to her relief. ‘And don’t forget to reassure your godmother that you’re safe. A storm like this will have made the international news. And anyone else, of course, who might be interested,’ he added as an apparent afterthought.

He didn’t fool her. ‘There is no one else.’ She guessed that was his real question. ‘And I will speak to my godmother as soon as the phone line comes back.’

‘You obviously think a lot of her.’

Passion and gratitude swept over her. ‘My godmother is the most wonderful woman on earth. She took me in—’

‘When your parents were killed,’ Marco supplied thoughtfully.

‘Yes.’ She firmed her lips, reluctant to say anything more. How much did he know?

‘Why did you leave her to come here to work in Tuscany?’

‘It’s a great job,’ she said frankly. ‘And I can’t just live off her. She found this opportunity for me when I left my last job. She found it through one of her friends, another keen gardener. It would have been churlish of me to turn it down.’

Though maybe she should have done, Cass reflected as Marco continued to stare at her. He was beginning to make her nervous. She decided to give him a little more. ‘I can easily get a job at another supermarket when I go home, and in the meantime this job is perfect for me.’

‘Perfect,’ Marco echoed without comment or expression.

He might want to know more, but she wasn’t going to discuss her personal life with someone who was practically a stranger.