The Boss's Christmas Seduction: Unlocking her Innocence / Million Dollar Christmas Proposal / Not Just the Boss's Plaything. Lucy Monroe

of appointments, she was satisfied with her day’s work. Apprehensive about being around when Vito came home, she took Harvey out for a long walk on the estate. A muddy Land Rover stopped beside her on one of the lanes and a tall blond man in his early thirties climbed out to introduce himself as the estate manager, Damien Skeel. It was wonderful to give her name to someone and see no awareness of her past in their response. Damien kept right on smiling at her, told her that his staff were delighted that the Christmas party was going ahead and urged her to contact him if she needed assistance with anything.

      By then it was getting dark and Ava hastened home. She used the castle’s rear entrance and straight away took care of feeding Harvey. She was about to head upstairs to freshen up when Eleanor Dobbs rushed through the green beige door that separated the main house from the kitchen wing, her face flushed and tense.

      ‘Mr Barbieri is very angry that his brother’s room was empty. It’s my fault that it was done … I mean, I asked you to help. I told him that but I don’t think he was listening,’ she explained unhappily.

      Ava stiffened. ‘Oh, dear,’ she muttered regretfully, suddenly wishing that she had never got involved.

      ‘What the hell were you thinking of?’ Vito roared at her as she crossed the hall a minute later and looked up to see him framed in the doorway of the library.

       CHAPTER SIX

      VITO was an intimidating sight. Still clad in a dark business suit teamed with a gold silk tie, he strode forward, his big broad shoulders blocking out the wall lights behind him. Ava had never quite appreciated how much taller he was than her until he stood in front of her, towering over her by a good nine inches, his face racked with condemnation.

      Her breath rattled in her dry throat, a flush highlighting her pale complexion because it was the first time she had seen him since they had parted in his bedroom the previous evening and at that moment she was more conscious of that earlier intimacy than of her apparent offence. As she clashed with his hard gaze an utterly inappropriate tingle of erotic awareness spread through her body like poison. Vito grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the library, where he shut the door behind them.

      ‘Per meraviglia! What were you thinking of?’ he demanded a second time, his Italian accent giving every word with a growling edge. ‘I came home, noticed the door was open … saw the room stripped. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Who, I wondered, could possibly have the colossal nerve and insensitivity to go against my wishes in my own home?’

      While he spoke, his breath fracturing audibly with the force of his wrath, his eyes hot and bright with outrage, Ava hastily thought of, and discarded, several possible responses in favour of simple honesty. ‘I thought it was for the best—’

      ‘You thought?’ Vito erupted with incredulous bite. ‘What the hell has it got to do with you?’

      ‘Obviously I should have asked you about what you wanted done first,’ Ava declared shakily, for she had never dreamt that her intervention might rouse such a reaction.

      ‘It was none of your business!’ Vito glowered at her in a tempestuous fury she had not known he was capable of experiencing. He was in such a rage that he could hardly get the words out and she knew that he was finding it a struggle to voice his feelings in English rather than Italian.

      ‘I thought I understood how you felt. Obviously I was mistaken but I honestly believed that clearing the room would make you feel better,’ Ava protested tautly.

      ‘How the hell could a bare room make me feel better? It’s simply another reminder that Olly’s gone!’ Vito ground out bitterly while treating her to a burning look of fierce rage.

      Was that rage directed at her as the driver of the car that awful night? As she couldn’t blame him if that was the underlying source powering him, her shoulders slumped. ‘I didn’t get rid of the personal stuff. His collections and photos and books and letters were all boxed up and kept,’ Ava told him eagerly.

      Vito snatched in a ragged breath, his mouth settled into a tough, contemptuous line. ‘I want it all put back … exactly as it was!’

      Ava straightened her slim shoulders, her bright blue eyes deeply troubled by that instruction. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea—’

      ‘You don’t think?’ Vito’s deep drawl scissored over the words like a slashing knife. ‘What has it got to do with you? Did seeing that room empty of Olly make you feel guilty? Is that what your invasion of my privacy is really all about?’

      ‘Yes, seeing his room again made me feel guilty and very sad. But then even being in this house makes me feel guilty. But I’m used to feeling like that and it didn’t influence my decision.’

      ‘Your decision?’ Vito derided with positive savagery, his voice raw with aggrieved bitterness. ‘You killed my brother. Was that not enough for you? What gave you the insane idea that desecrating his room and my memory of him would make me feel better?’

      At that lethal reminder, spoken to her by him for the first time, Ava flinched as though he had struck her. The blood slid away from below her skin, leaving only sick pallor in its wake. He had the right to hate and revile her: who could deny him that outlet when he had never before confronted her on that score? Her tummy filled with nausea and an appalling sense of shame and guilt that she knew she could do nothing to assuage.

      ‘I was unforgivably high-handed … I can see that now,’ Ava admitted jerkily, pained regret slicing through her that she could have been that thoughtless and inconsiderate. Unfortunately she had always been quick to act on a gut reaction and think about consequences later and this time it had gone badly wrong for her. ‘But I honestly wasn’t thinking about how I felt when I cleared the room. I was thinking about you.’

      ‘I don’t want you thinking about me!’ Vito roared as he strode across to the decanter set on the sofa table and poured himself a shot of whiskey. ‘My thoughts and feelings about my brother’s death are entirely my affair and not something I intend to discuss.’

      ‘Yes, I have got that message but that locked-up untouched room didn’t strike me as a healthy approach to grief,’ Ava dared to argue, her attention resting on the rigid angles and hollows of his strong face and the force of control he was clearly utilising to hide his feelings. He was as locked up inside as that blasted room, she thought in sudden frustration, but it was a revelation to her that he possessed the depth that fostered such powerful emotions.

      ‘What would you know about it?’ Vito slashed back at her rudely, for once making no attempt to hide how upset he was, which she found oddly touching.

      ‘I’ve been through something similar and talking about it or even writing about it for purely your own benefit helps,’ she murmured ruefully. ‘Grief can devour you alive if you get stuck in it.’

      He skimmed her with cutting emphasis. ‘Spare me the platitudes! And don’t ever interfere in my life again!’

      ‘I won’t, but remember that it was you who told me that you can’t live in the past for ever and that life has to go on,’ Ava reminded him wretchedly. ‘I’m sorry if I misinterpreted what you meant by that. I thought I was helping.’

      ‘I don’t need or want your help!’ Vito slammed at her in a wrathful fury as he wrenched open the library door again. ‘Tell Eleanor I’m eating out tonight!’

      And Ava was left standing there in the pool of light by the desk. She gritted her teeth. She was hurting, Vito was hurting but he didn’t want anyone, least of all her, to recognise the fact. That wounded her but she had no right to feel wounded because she had been insensitive not to broach the topic of clearing Olly’s room with him personally.

      A soft knock sounded on the door and Ava moved forward to open it. ‘Vito said—’

      ‘Don’t