“Of the school?” Happy to have something to do besides stare at him, she leafed through the booklet and opened it to a picture of the campus and read the text aloud. “’Housed in an ancient palace with frescoes and vaulted ceilings, the Academia offers young women every opportunity for learning, both inside and outside the classroom.’” I must say it’s very impressive. They seem to do an excellent job preparing girls for a life of service.There’s an long list of alumnae, women from many countries who are artists, politicians, and business leaders.”
“I have a hard time picturing my daughters on that list,” he said soberly.
“Give them a chance. They’re only seven. Which as you know, I think is too soon to go away to school. My step-mother wanted to send me away to school when I was young, but my father intervened. Later I wanted to go when I was at a public school with my step-sisters who teased me unmercifully. I longed to get away from them and leave home, but that was not to be, not until I finished college and nanny school.”
She paused and self consciously pulled a colorful beach towel around her shoulders. She was almost naked and he was too. She tried not to notice, but her gaze kept straying to his body, as if she’d never seen a prince in a swim suit before. If only he wasn’t built like an Adonis. But he was.
“I know, when you were seven you were out with your brother already making money,” she continued. “Bear in mind the twins’ family situation is different from yours.” Or was it? Sabrina didn’t know if he was raised by two loving parents or by a raft of servants like his own daughters.
“I don’t care if they don’t follow in my footsteps. I only want what’s best for them,” he said firmly.
She remembered the last time he’d said that was when she very blithely told him that
she
was what was best for the girls. “What would be best for them would be a father who took an interest in their activities. You enrolled them in this summer camp…”
“I know what you’re getting at Sabrina,” he said. “And that is the parents’ day. I have made my position clear. I am busy Friday. If you’ll excuse me I think I’ll do a few laps.”
While she watched he dived in at the deep end. If she had any sense at all she’d leave the pool now, but she didn’t. She stayed where she, but instead of studying the school catalog, she watched fascinated while he swam back and forth.
When he got out of the water, he shook his head and returned to his chair next to her. The he continued speaking as if there had been no gap in their conversation. “You think I should forfeit an important meeting to watch my daughters sail a boat around the harbor, is that it?” he said, obviously incredulous.
“That would be a start and it would mean a lot to them,” she said, her eyes riveted on the school catalogue. She dared not risk another glance at his firm muscles or his taut stomach. The worst thing she could do was to imagine they were just an ordinary couple relaxing around the pool on their estate. The idea was beyond ridiculous. She gave herself a stern warning and a reminder of her past mistake.
“I doubt that,” he said. “The twins wouldn’t notice if I was there or not.”
She pressed her lips together to keep from giving him a lecture. She was not his personal assistant. She was not his secretary. She was most certainly not a colleague or a co-worker. She was the nanny. The last time she’d forgotten who she was, she’d been hurt so badly she didn’t know if she’d recover. But she had.
She’d gone to work in the office and successfully placed a dozen nannies (until she ran into Vittorio Monteverde) and had done a good job of it. Now she had a chance for a fresh start. She could succeed where others had failed. She knew she could. The girls only needed some attention and understanding and even some love. If their father didn’t understand that, then it was her job to show him or provide what they needed herself.
“What are their chances?” he asked her, leaning over to tap the school catalog with a pen.
She leaned in the opposite direction to escape the wave of sexual energy he radiated. But there was no escaping him. He was next to her, so close she could smell the masculine scent of his skin and hair. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to focus on his question when all she could think of was how easy it would be to brush an arm against his, to feel his skin warm against hers. “Of getting accepted? I don’t know. I can only guess they wouldn’t have any trouble. They’re smart, their spoken English is perfect, but…”
“But you don’t think they’re ready, you’ve made that clear.”
“Not at their age. I was wondering, because you speak so nostalgically of your own childhood…”
“Do I? You’re wrong. I am not nostalgic. Not at all. The word means nothing to me. I don’t look back. I don’t have time. I was merely trying to explain to you, to give you some background as to why I am in the banking business today. It may seem boring to you..” he said stiffly.
“Not at all boring,” she insisted still avoiding looking at him. “Your childhood sounds almost idyllic. And if once I did think banking was a boring job, dealing only with assets and debitures, today you gave me an insight today into your occupation and I found it more interesting than I imagined.”
“Every day isn’t like today. Most days there are no mergers. We stare at figures all day or sit in on endless meetings.” She imagined him rubbing his hand across his forehead as if to erase the images. She wondered how much he really liked his job.
“Then you are lucky to have such a beautiful, restful place as your villa to come home to where you can relax around the pool.”
“You may not believe this, but this is the first day I’ve been out here for months, maybe years. Then why have a pool? For the girls I suppose. And because there has always been a pool at the villa. When I was young we played various games out here before I had it resurfaced, but fun and games are only a memory these days.”
She stole a glance in his direction. Good thing she was seated because her knees went weak at the sight of his shoulders still covered with droplets of water. She looked away and swallowed hard.
She wanted to ask why he had no fun anymore. Was it because his wife had died and he’d been plunged into melancholy ever since? Did he need the money to keep up the villa? Was it just a habit to live a life of all work and no play?
“When you remarry surely you’ll have a different life-style, perhaps do more entertaining, and have more time for leisure?”
He laughed dryly. “Hah. You don’t know Aurora. She works even harder and longer than I do. Sometimes I wonder…”
She waited anxiously for him to finish his sentence but he didn’t. Instead he closed his eyes. She took advantage of this to let herself have a good look at him, all six foot something of muscles and bones. Because of his lack of attention she was able to watch fascinated as the lines in his forehead smoothed out and his wide generous mouth relaxed.
Sabrina forced herself to go back to her book but she couldn’t help turning her head to steal glances at her employer. Strictly against the nanny rules, she knew, but the rules weren’t written to cover an employer quite so attractive as the prince.
She kept thinking of his childhood compared to hers and his children’s life as it was now. “I keep wondering what I can do to make your daughters’ lives better besides preparing them for boarding school?”
“That’s quite enough,” he said.
But she knew it wasn’t. She should get their father more interested in them. Or at least teach them what she could and be prepared to step out of their lives in a few months.
Right now what she wanted to do was to take a swim and work off some of her frustration and anxiety about her job, her employer and the twins.
Leaving her boss either asleep or in a reverie, she slipped into the clean, cool clear water where she swam slowly back and forth, enjoying the exercise and the feeling of the refreshing water on her overheated body.
After a half hour she looked up to see the prince standing at the edge of the pool poised to dive in once again. If she’d thought he was handsome from her sideways position at the poolside, now he looked like a classic Greek statue in his swim shorts. Awestruck, her mouth fell open and she inhaled some water then choked as he hit the water in a smooth dive.
So this is what I’ve been missing, Vittorio thought as he swam back and forth. The tension in his body eased as he found his rhythm. He hadn’t realized how stressful and how fast-paced his life had become. Today he’d taken a break for a long lunch and stimulating conversation with his new nanny and now this. Not that every day could be like this. He had a bank to run that required his complete attention.
When he stopped and came up for air, he saw Sabrina was treading water with one arm on the edge of the pool. He didn’t know what had happened to him to make him behave so strangely today. First using her to help him form a merger, now treating her like a guest or someone even more important. After years of thinking of his house as a prison to escape from and not a home, avoiding the once known pleasures of the villa, from entertaining to swimming in his pool to regarding the view of the lake, he was seeing it as if for the first time.
He could blame or credit his nanny for that. From his first glimpse of her on the ferry he’d felt a magnetic attraction to her, almost a kinship. It made no sense at all. She was from a different country with a totally different background, and yet there was something in her face, an expression that he recognized, that he somehow knew…and yet…How could that be?
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” she asked, tossing her hair out of her eyes. “At home I have a membership in the YMCA. It’s an indoor pool, nothing like this.” She waved her arm at the tables and chairs, the umbrellas and the flowering shrubs around the pool. “You’re very lucky.”
“Lucky?” He spread his arms out along the tiles that faced the edge of the pool and observed her closely. Her modest wet suit clung to her body like a second skin which made his heart pound so loudly he was afraid she would hear it. Italian women wore bikinis at the beach showing more skin than Sabrina, but not one of them ever made him feel this way, the heart-stopping effect she had on him was startling. All that in her modest one-piece maillot. What had happened to him?
“Have you ever been married, Ms West?”
“No,” she said. She looked puzzled. Of course she did. She had no idea what he meant. Or how it related to the pool or the grounds or his fortunate birth-right to all this. “You’re the one who’s lucky. No ties, no broken promises, no disappointments, no betrayals, no mother-less children.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m lucky I get to take care of other people’s children. It’s the best job in the world, making a difference in a child’s life.”
He stared at her. She meant it, she really did. How different from all the previous nannies, the ones who took one look at the twins and decided no lakeside villa or extravagant salary could compensate for girls who refused to cooperate, and made their displeasure evident in various ways including snakes, spiders and other disagreeable life forms. Sabrina was a different sort of nanny. A different sort of woman. Just when he was thinking about his nanny in a way that was dangerous to his sense of discipline and distracting as well, the maid came to the pool and waved to him with an important message from one of the bank’s directors.
He pulled himself out of the pool, grabbed his towel and went directly to his office, his mind turning over the possible reasons for the call. Bad loans, personnel problems, government intervention. It turned out the director of their branch bank in Rome had left and with him a large amount of money. Vittorio was needed immediately to cooperate with the investigation and quiet the rumors of embezzlement.
He was back into his suit in minutes. He felt the adrenaline pumping. This is what he lived for, the thrill of making money, and protecting the money others had given his bank. They could simply not afford a scandal at this point or the merger would be in danger.