Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Sinful Proposals. Cathy Williams

also kill off his curiosity stone-dead because he certainly wouldn’t keep prying for extraneous information when he knew that he might be provided with information that would make him feel uncomfortable. Rich people always, but always, felt uncomfortable when they were treated to tales of hardship, poverty or despair.

      But mostly, if her body kept ignoring the fact that he was from a different world, then wasn’t it time that her head took control?

      ‘I just want to say...’ She turned to him the minute they were in the kitchen, making sure to keep her voice low just in case Flora decided that the television programme she was watching wasn’t as much fun as seeking out her nearly drowned babysitter, to whom she’d been giving swimming lessons. ‘I just want to say,’ she repeated, ‘that I’m handing in my resignation.’ She tried a laugh. ‘It goes down as the shortest job in history.’

      ‘What are you talking about? Why are you handing in your resignation?’ She’d washed her hair but already the late-afternoon heat was drying it, throwing blonde strands in stark relief. It hung down her back, almost to her waist. And she didn’t wear make-up. He had never known a woman who didn’t lather on the war-paint the second she was out of the bath. But her skin was satiny-smooth and clear. His gaze lingered on her ripe, full lips and he looked away because he could already feel his body stirring into life. Once again. Just as it had when he’d been holding her, wet and trembling, against him and as light as a feather despite the fact that she was tall.

      He’d had a battle not to stare at the plump thrust of her breasts under the bikini top, not to get trapped by the sight of that tightened nipple poking against the wet cloth. She had been utterly unaware of just how revealing the swimsuit was and, thankfully, just as utterly unaware of the effect it had been having on him.

      It seemed his body had decided to raise two fingers to common sense. He’d never had to deal with self-denial and he was finding it difficult.

      He wondered whether his mother would have been amused by the fact that the woman she had done her best to set him up with had left him cold while the office junior was sending his blood pressure into the stratosphere.

      The difficult, stubborn office junior whom he’d had to cajole into this job. The job she was now talking about ditching.

      ‘Because I think it’s safe to say that I failed.’ She looked away quickly. ‘You didn’t pay me to...to...’

      ‘Endanger your life?’

      ‘I should never have gone anywhere near that swimming pool considering I can barely doggy-paddle from one side to the next.’

      ‘You’re good for Flora and I wouldn’t dream of accepting your resignation.’ And that, he reminded himself heavily, was why he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. She was good for Flora and, in turn, that was proving to be good for his relationship with his daughter and he wasn’t going to risk fooling around with that...

      ‘You don’t have to say that,’ Sunny said fiercely.

      ‘You’re right. I don’t. So why don’t you just take me at my word?’ He ran his fingers through his hair and stood up to pour them both some water. ‘You’ve probably had enough of this stuff for the day. Want something stronger?’

      ‘This is fine. But you don’t pay me to get myself in situations where I need rescuing.’

      ‘I haven’t rescued a damsel in distress for a while. Maybe it was time that I brushed up on the skill.’ He looked at her over the rim of the glass and was surprised at how vulnerable she seemed. Scratch a little under the surface and it was easy to reach the person who didn’t spend her every waking moment doing her job and keeping the world at bay.

      Was that why he found her so intensely appealing? She made him feel young again for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was thirty-one and most of the time he felt much older. But something about her...

      Was it the same thing that appealed to his daughter?

      He fought to stop the senseless speculation.

      ‘I don’t need rescuing,’ she heard herself say. ‘And I’ve never been a damsel in distress. In fact, I disapprove of all those limp women who think that they need rescuing by some big, strong guy...’

      ‘Is that your way of telling me that you think I’m big and strong?’ He caught her eye, raised his eyebrows and grinned crookedly, unable to help himself. ‘So tell me why you’ve never learned to swim.’

      Sunny took a deep breath. Would he be amused if he knew her background? Pity she would find hard to tolerate but she somehow didn’t think that he would pity her. Certainly, it would reposition the lines between them which, for him, were clear but for her too blurred for comfort.

      She was an underling in a company he could buy ten times over. Had he given them the job because of Katherine? She didn’t know. What she did know was that Katherine was far more in his league than she was so it was totally out of order for her to even look at him in any way other than someone way down the pecking order who was working for him.

      Get the boundary lines back in place, at least in her mind, and maybe she would stop responding like the teenager she no longer was. And he would keep his distance, too.

      ‘I guess you think that I’m like all the other people who work for the company,’ she said, tilting her chin and maintaining eye contact, even though she could read nothing on his face.

      ‘Do I? Tell me what you think I think about all the other people who work for the company. I’m all ears...bearing in mind I haven’t met most of them...’

      Sunny blushed. Explaining about her past was something she had never done. The other kids at the boarding school into which she had been accepted had known that her circumstances had not been like theirs, had known that she had been given a scholarship, one of only three full scholarships awarded to kids from underprivileged backgrounds.

      But she had never talked about hers.

      There was no reason to talk about it now but something in her head was telling her that she had to recognise the lines drawn in the sand between them because she couldn’t understand her response to him and she was desperate to keep it at bay.

      She needed to tell him more for her sake than for his.

      And part of her...wanted to.

      ‘I didn’t have a cosseted childhood,’ she said steadily. ‘In fact, I had a pretty awful time growing up, although I just accepted it for what it was and never really spent too much time thinking of how it could have been different. I learned early on that what you can’t change you just have to accept...’

      She remembered the way Flora had, very briefly, communicated with her father and allowed him into her world and she wondered whether her words of advice had been taken on board. Accept the things you can’t change.

      Stefano was listening intently, his head ever so slightly tilted to one side.

      When women launched into anecdotes about their past, they did it to try and engage his attention and encourage his interest.

      He didn’t get the feeling that she was trying to encourage his interest.

      There was an underlying defiance to her voice that made him wonder whether she was even trying to engage his attention at all or whether she was, in some obscure way, trying to warn him off.

      Surely not.

      Surely she couldn’t have noticed the effect she had on him. For once, he was in the company of a woman who was...unpredictable. A woman he couldn’t read, a woman who wasn’t out to impress him.

      Throw sexy into the mix and was it any wonder that she turned him on?

      ‘Tell me,’ he encouraged huskily and he caught the wary look she shot him from under her lashes.

      ‘Most of the people I work with come from good, solid, middle-class backgrounds.’ She stared at her fingers, inspecting her fingernails