Breathless, she struggled to find the words to answer. ‘It was a job. It was good to have something to do.’

His eyes gleamed. ‘You like to keep busy.’

‘I like having something to do.’

‘What will you do now it’s finished?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’

‘I have an idea,’ he said, his hand curling around her neck, subtly but deliberately drawing her closer. ‘If you were interested.’

‘What does it involve?’

‘It’s not really a job as such,’ he told her, his lips agonisingly close to her mouth. ‘More a pastime.’

‘What are the conditions?’

‘Very favourable. Although,’ he added, his lips brushing her cheek, tickling her eyelashes, kissing the tip of her nose as he drew her against him length to length, ‘I have to warn you, there are some long night shifts involved.’

What was he offering her? That she become his mistress? That she warm his bed at night and grow his child by day? Should she be outraged? Her mind tried to make sense of it all but her brain was marshmallow under his slow sensual onslaught and right now, pressed up against his slick, tightly wound body, their legs tangling underwater and his hand weaving through her hair, outrage was the last thing she felt. Hadn’t she secretly yearned for him to come after her? Hadn’t she secretly prayed it was not just a one-night stand?

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His teeth nipped an ear lobe and she gasped, feeling the tie at her neck release and his hand at her breast, rolling one slippery, hard nipple between his fingers. Oh, God, how was she supposed to think?

‘Will I need a reference?’ she asked, his mouth at her throat, the thick column of his erection nudging her belly, answering an earlier question in graphic, carnal detail.

‘No reference required,’ he gasped, his mouth over her nipple, his tongue working at the pebbled peak, driving her wild with need. ‘Just an interview. Easy questions.’

He asked one of those questions now, tugging at her bikini bottoms. She answered by letting him push them down and curling her legs around him, opening himself for him.

His mouth was finally on hers, finally tearing her soul out again in a gut-wrenching kiss that left her almost shattered and ended only with the need to breathe. ‘It sounds tempting,’ she gasped, ‘but how can I be sure I’m the right person you’re looking for?’

He surged into her, hard and fast and deep and she took his glorious length to her heart, crying out with the effort. ‘Believe me,’ he told her through gritted teeth as he slowly withdrew, ‘you’re perfect.’

She came in a blaze of shooting stars—wave after endless wave of stars that splintered and shattered with his shuddering climax—and a solitary tear escaped from her eye.

You’re perfect, he’d told her. You’re perfect.

Nobody had ever said those words to her, nobody but her mother. But he’d said those words. He’d said them as if he believed them and he’d made her believe them. And her heart hoped and prayed. Surely he must love her, just a little?

He never told her she’d got the position, not officially, and he didn’t move her things into his room, but she spent plenty of nights there in his arms—those nights he didn’t come padding into her room in the dead of night.

His mood changed too. He was back to his old self. He’d visit the kitchen, spend time there with her and Rosa, sampling dishes and stealing breadsticks and even kisses when Rosa’s back was turned and he got the chance.

And Angie felt herself fall deeper and deeper in love, dreading the day this child would be born. On the kitchen wall the calendar mocked her, every page turned bringing her closer to the inevitable—closer to the birth, closer to her departure until there was only one month to go.

Dominic said nothing about afterwards. He made love to her tenderly at night and he took her out for dinner on Rosa’s days off and walks along rugged coastal paths on perfect autumn days, and her heart ached and grew heavy like the baby inside her.

She loved him. She loved him as she had loved no other and she loved this child because it was part of him. It would break her heart to leave them both. But what choice did she have? She would not beg to stay on, especially after all the trouble he’d gone to to secure her house. She would not plead. She would walk out with her head, if not her heart, held high. She could not bear it if he rejected her.




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