The Prince's Nanny (12 page)

“Some juice would be nice,” she said and thumbed through her pocket dictionary.  “
Spremuta dell’arancia sanguigna
.”

The maid beamed her approval at Sabrina’s attempt at Italian and quickly brought her a fresh cold drink.  Sabrina cautioned herself not to become accustomed to being waited on or to lunching with her employer.  And most of all not to get carried away by a friendly gesture.  None of these things would likely happen again.

In the house, Vittorio stood at the window of his office looking out toward the pool without really seeing the trees or the crystal-clear water.  He had work to do.  He didn’t need any distractions, but for once his well-trained and disciplined mind wouldn’t cooperate.  All he could think about was Sabrina.  It was impossible to concentrate on the upcoming merger after
a day like this
. He couldn’t remember relaxing and enjoying the company of a woman so much.  It was almost as if…  No, that couldn’t be.

 The face and voice of Aurora had somehow faded away.  When he thought of her he wondered how he could consider marrying her when he felt absolutely nothing.  Not that he’d expected to find passion or excitement again.  He didn’t want to.  He wanted to avoid being swept away.  The last time had been so gut-wrenchingly painful when it ended.

  He blinked and there she was.  His nanny was walking slowly toward the pool.  She took off her robe and appeared in a swim suit that was modest by Italian standards, but still showed her uplifted breasts, her long legs and her hips to full advantage.  He pressed his face against the window but she had taken a seat in a chaise lounge and was out of sight.  He was irrationally, undeniably, crashingly disappointed.

He told himself to go back to his desk.  What was wrong with him?  He shouldn’t have held her hand.  It only made him want to do more than that.  He’d driven around the lake a few times just to prolong the ride back from the restaurant, but eventually it had to end.  But he hadn’t wanted it to.  He’d wanted to continue their conversation, to find out more about her.  He told himself to forget it. It would be wrong to even consider more intimate contact with her.

 But the next thing he knew he was in his bedroom tearing off his clothes and grabbing a pair of swimming trunks he hadn’t worn for years.  The pool was there.  His nanny was there.  He’d worked hard today.  Hell, he’d worked hard for the past seven years.  Was it so wrong to want to enjoy life for a change?  To sit outside in the sun, to relax and continue the conversation they’d started at the restaurant?

Wasn’t that the way his life was supposed to go, sharing his life with a companion until he’d made the mistake of his life in choosing Elena for his wife.  There was no going back, no rectifying that mistake.  He had to live with the results of that decision, and that’s just what he was doing.

He was on his way to the pool when his cell phone rang and it was Aurora calling from Rome.  Just what he needed for a large dose of reality.  He hadn’t realized how much her voice grated on his nerves.

“I received an e-mail message from your daughters,” she said in an icy tone.  “It disturbed me quite a bit.”  When Aurora was angry, she did nothing to conceal it.  That was part of her charm, she’d explained to him, that she was up-front about her feelings.  With her what you saw was what you got.  At first he’d found it refreshing and appealing, but not now.  Not today.

“What was it?” he asked impatiently, standing at the window hoping to catch a glimpse of Sabrina.

“They thought I should know about your new nanny.”

“So you should,” he agreed readily.  “Since we decided that the girls need more supervision.”

“I had no idea she would be young and attractive.  I thought she would be an older, more serious type of woman.  I strongly suggest you get rid of her at once.”

“Aurora, be sensible.  The girls are meddling.  Naturally they don’t want a nanny.  They don’t want to go to boarding school either.  But this nanny is here to make sure they get accepted at the Academy.  I can’t object to that.”

“They will be accepted.  I will call the director myself.”

“That’s not the way I want to go about it,” Vittorio said.  “Either they get accepted on their own merits, or they don’t.  They cannot be allowed to think they are privileged and that there is no consequence to their actions.”

“Very well, Vittorio,” she said.  “They are your daughters, but after we’re married…”

Suddenly the thought of marriage to Aurora made his blood run cold.

“In any case, I will expect you at the fashion run-way in Rome this weekend.”

“Not this weekend.  I won’t be there,” he said.  “I am busy,” he said curtly.  “And I will continue to be busy. Good-bye, Aurora.”  He heaved a sigh of relief.  He had to break it off with her.  He knew that now.  It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Out on the stone path he realized it was the first time he’d gotten that close to the free-form pool fringed with pines, cypress and brilliant camellias in bloom since he’d had it installed to replace the crumbling old cement pool no one ever used.  He sometimes watched the girls playing there with their nanny or baby-sitter, but only from the window.

The sound of water cascading down the man-made rocky waterfall concealed his footsteps.  He told himself he’d been too busy to enjoy it, but was that really the reason?  Being busy had become such a convenient excuse for any and everything he didn’t want to do.  Now he wanted to sit in the sun-dappled terrace around the pool and talk to his new nanny.  What about?  The obvious subject was the merger and his work or the girls and their future, but it seemed they had only scratched the surface of topics to discuss.  Which had nothing to do with the way Sabrina looked in her swimming suit and the fact that the view from his office was not nearly good enough.  The tantalizing glimpse of her only made him want to see more.

Suddenly an appropriate subject came to mind, one that was apropos to her job as a nanny and his job as a father.

“About that snake,” he said suddenly as he approached her chair.  “What happened to it?”

She was so startled she dropped the book she was reading, took her sunglasses off and looked up at him, her eyes wide, her lips – pink and ripe and tantalizingly kissable - parted.

Chapter Six

The sight of her employer at the pool where she least expected him still wearing a swimming suit so surprised Sabrina that she sat up abruptly and the book she was reading slid off her lap.

“The snake was given its freedom to chase mice and other rodents,” she blurted trying not to stare at his broad shoulders, his bare chest sprinkled with dark hair and his muscular legs.

“Good,” he said.  Then he picked up her book and handed it to her, his hand brushing hers and causing a
frisson
of awareness to travel up her arm.  “The Guide to the International Academia of Florence,” he said after a glance at the title.  She was glad he’d changed the subject.  She had no more to say about snakes.  She could think of nothing coherent to say on any subject, not with him standing there, looming over her, half naked.  She gripped the book tightly to keep her hands from shaking.  A sudden chill had caused goosebumps to run up and down her arms despite the warm afternoon sun.

She shaded her eyes with one hand.  It wasn’t so much to block the sun, but to block the view of the man who stood over her, formidable and charismatic, bigger and sexier than any man had a right to be.  And completely at home, dressed for an afternoon around the pool.  Even though she’d been lead to believe he never took time off, never relaxed, never used his pool.

“I thought I could get some research done here at the pool, maybe I was wrong…” she trailed off.  Reading anything with him there was impossible.“It must be the atmosphere, the smell of the rain-washed flowers, the pool…Did Nanny Chisholm do much swimming and sunning?” she asked.

“I rather doubt it, but you are nothing like our Scottish nanny.  Remind me to show you a photograph of her.  Why shouldn’t you use the pool for research or just relaxation?  You deserve it after what you did this morning,” he said.

She took a sip of the delicious fresh juice to help her find her voice and recover from the shock of seeing her employer here at his own pool when she imagined he’d be inside working.  “I found the book in their room. It will help me prepare the children for their interview next week.”

“What is your opinion?” he asked, taking a seat in the chaise next to hers as if their meeting at the pool was nothing out of the ordinary.  Did he know she’d be there?  Did he hope to be alone?  She might never know.