“I guess I am.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Sabrina. What do I know about children, especially my own. You could be right. What is your theory of how their little minds work? If you have one I’d be glad to hear it.” He paused and scrutinized her, his gaze traveling from her dark hair to her sporty shirt and down to her leather sandals. Quite a contrast from his ex-fiancée, she imagined. But just the outfit for being shut up in a tower for the weekend.
Sabrina stood and walked back to the window. As if there was someone outside who could help them. She didn’t want to consider two or three days stuck in the tower with a man who didn’t want her there, was sorry she’d ever come and was going to fire her as soon as he could.
“Take your time. Think it over. We have plenty of time.”
“I know that,” she said. “I have no idea what got into the twins. If your theory is correct, it’s because they have a void in their lives which they believe someone can fill.”
“Not ‘someone’ – you,” Vittorio said, pointing an accusing finger at Sabrina. “You can take that as a compliment or not. All I can say is that you’ve done something no other nanny has done. You’ve made them want you to stay. How did you do it?”
“I am touched, and I do take it as a compliment. All I did was to…, I don’t know.” She looked back over her shoulder and met his inquisitive gaze. “Maybe I did something wrong. I wasn’t strict enough or I was too much a friend and not enough of a nanny. I can’t fault them. They’re only children. They don’t want to go away to school. And they don’t want a nanny breathing down their necks telling them what to do. I sympathize with them. I have a stepmother who does that to me even now and I’m grown up. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. It was too easy for me to understand them and to sympathize with them. I had no mother and I missed her terribly.” She buried her face in her hands.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Vittorio said, his voice somewhat softened. “You were only doing your job. If we can stick it out for a weekend, there’s no great harm done. They’ll come back on Sunday night or Monday morning and they’ll let us out. They’ll be disappointed we haven’t decided to get married so you can be their mother, but they’ll get over it.” He paused and looked at her with narrowed eyes for a long moment.
She shifted from one foot to another. How was she going to handle being with him in this small space? The weekend had scarcely begun and already her heart was pounding and her palms were damp. How was she going to control her nerves? She glanced out the window again. If only it wasn’t so far to the ground, she’d be tempted to jump.
“You could stay on as their nanny,” he suggested. “It’s not what they planned, but it’s better than nothing.”
Better than nothing
, he said. Sabrina shook her head, and walked around the small room, picturing the years going by as she turned into Nanny Chisholm, her gray hair in a knot on top of her head, taking naps and going to bed at nine while her employer entertained girlfriends at the pool, worked side by side on mergers and finally married someone else equally wealthy and titled. It was all too horrible a scenario.
“I don’t think so. The twins want a mother, not a nanny. If you are convinced your former fiancée isn’t suitable, there must be other wealthy, titled and beautiful women who might fit the bill, a woman who likes children and who the children might like.”
“I don’t intend to marry again. Not to anyone. It was a mistake to think I could do it. Not after what happened.”
Sabrina glanced at him. There was a shuttered look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before, even the night she stumbled into his library and showed her the portrait of his wife. Not only that but a tightening of the muscles around his mouth gave her the impression she was treading on shaky ground by bringing up the subject of marriage. What had happened in his past to make him not want to remarry? His wife died. That’s all she knew. She couldn’t say,
What happened?
She didn’t dare ask for more information. It was obviously too painful a topic.
“There has to be another solution,” he said, changing the subject. “Another boarding school or a new nanny if you don’t choose to stay. I don’t blame you for wanting out of here. This can’t be easy for you. First the snakes, now the tower. And what’s worse, the pressure to become a mother to twins who are a handful, to put it mildly.”
“It isn’t the twins,” she said. “I love their vivid imagination, the way they play together and the special bond they have with each other. I admire their energy and their ingenuity. Who else would have thought up this scheme?” She smiled to herself and shook her head. “The picnic basket, the false alarm with one being hurt. Knowing this weekend the house would be deserted. We may not approve of everything they do, but we have to admit they’re clever girls. After all, they are your daughters and they’ve obviously inherited some of your acumen. Or did they get that from your wife?”
He scowled at her, then stood up and opened the wine bottle with the corkscrew they’d provided. She didn’t blame him if he refused to answer. But what did she have to lose by quizzing him, she’d be leaving after she got out of the tower and never have another chance to ask him anything.
“My wife,” he said, attacking the cork with a vengeance, ”was not a good mother. She didn’t want to be a mother. She didn’t want to be a wife, at least not my wife. The girls know nothing about this. No one does so I would appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”
“Of course,” she said, hoping he’d continue. When he didn’t, she said, “They’re really delightful girls. Whatever you’ve done or haven’t done, they’ve turned out remarkably well. And I’ve had a good time with them. Very good.”
“And with me?” he asked, quirking one eyebrow.
“That is not the question,” she said, feeling a flush creep up her cheeks. A good time with Vittorio? She’d had the best time of her life with him at his office, at his pool and in the restaurant. And now…. What now?
“Very well, I won’t embarrass you any further, but I did notice you said ‘had’ in the past tense. ‘had a good time. So you’re determined to leave?”
“Yes, well…” What could she say, knowing her job was over. “You known I can’t justify staying here without having anything to do other than enjoy myself. I need to be needed.” She’d had an amazing experience, living the life of a servant in his house. She almost felt like a part of the family.But she’d failed. Failed the task she’d been hired to do. To get them into the boarding school. She couldn’t stay. What possible reason could there be if the girls were gone?
Maybe he thought he could continue flirting with her while she was falling in love with him. In love? She took a step backward, turned and looked out the window again. The view of the lake and the extensive gardens faded while she stood there shocked at what had occurred to her. It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t be in love with the father of her charges. She barely knew him. She knew about his childhood and she knew his children. She knew very little about his first marriage. She found him sexy and tantalizing, interesting and smart, but was that love?
“I’ve enjoyed my stay here,” she said, realizing he was waiting for a reply. “I understand the girls better than most I suppose because of my own situation. I’m sure you’ll come up with a solution for their future.”
“Then why are you leaving?” he asked.
What did he expect? That she’d stick around forever as the family retainer while he dallied with various women and never married any of them?
“I’ve failed you. You know that. We had an agreement. I would get the twins prepared for the academy but I didn’t. I take responsibility for that. I know when my time is up.” She’d known the last time but she’d stayed on too long, until the pain of watching the man she loved fall in love with someone else. She wouldn’t let that happen again.
“This seems to be a time for reviewing the past and looking to the future,” she said, leaning back against the brick wall of the tower. She was proud of how sensible and detached she sounded while inside her stomach was churning, and her heart was hurting at the thought of leaving this beautiful place and the twins and yes, the prince too. If she’d learned one thing in the past few years, it was when to cut her losses and this was definitely the time.
“You’re right,” he agreed, to her surprise. “So that’s what we’re supposed to do this weekend, make plans for the future?”
“Can’t you get some work done?”
“Without my computer or my phone I’m stuck. I suggest we make the most of it. Seeing the door is locked, the trip down to the ground too dangerous, either by rappelling or by climbing down on a rope which we don’t have. What we do have…” He pointed to the picnic basket, “is food and of course a bed and bathroom.”
Sabrina ignored the narrow bed, no sense wondering who was going to sleep in it. Probably no one. She couldn’t imagine relaxing enough to even close her eyes with Vittorio only a few feet away in the small room. Curious, she opened the bathroom door just as Vittorio reached for the doorknob so did she. They pulled on it together and it swung open on rusty hinges. Inside was a large tub made of antique zinc.
“From the eighteenth century,” Vittorio muttered. “A soaking tub. Hasn’t been used since.” He looked out the bathroom window. “When the tub is drained, the water irrigates the garden below. Very ingenious.”
“And a commode,” she noted and pulled the chain. A rush of orange water came cascading through the pipes. “Have you never been up here?”
He shook his head. He shook his head. “I hate to tell you lest it spoil your impression of me as an intrepid young boy, but as children we were afraid of the ghost of Allesandra. Our grandmother scared us with tales of our ancestor roaming the halls late at night and she told us to keep out of this place. So we did. Obviously my girls are cut from another cloth. No ghost has been able to scare them away from here.”
She smiled at the thought of Vittorio running through the drafty halls pursued by a ghost.
“I now know my daughters are braver than I was,” he said wryly. He picked up a ribbon from the floor. “God only knows how long they’ve used this place as a playroom.”
“I take responsibility for this fiasco,” Sabrina confessed. “They told me the story of the princess locked up in a tower, but I never dreamed they might get the idea to lock someone up themselves.”
“It would serve them right if we disappeared like the Princess Allesandra,” Vittorio said. He stood with his back to the bolted door, looking less like the lord of the manor than just another man locked up in a tower, no longer the successful businessman in an Enzo Tovari suit, an expensive Egyptian cotton shirt and his hair combed back. Now there was a lock of hair falling over his forehead, wrinkled sleeves rolled up over muscular arms and a look of faint amusement on his face at the thought of disappearing which was a relief from signs of anger and frustration at being cooped up with her for a weekend.
“We both know what they hope,” she said briskly. “That their father and their nanny will fall into each others’ arms and pledge their love. When they return on Monday we will all be one big happy family.” She kept a light touch with this scenario so he’d know how ridiculous she thought it was. “Of course it’s just a fairy tale with the usual happy ending. The kind that never happens in real life. Believe me I know. It’s what I dreamed over and over my whole childhood. When my father remarried I got a rude awakening from the dream.”
“The idea is if they have a mother and father they will never have to go away to school,” he said. “They’ll never have to learn advanced math or to speak French or ancient history. Never have to study. I can see their point.” He brushed his hands together. “Now that we have them analyzed and figured out, and I can’t accomplish anything to do with the bank, what will we do all weekend? Since you like telling stories, maybe you can tell me one.”
She sighed. Telling stories to a prince was not the same as entertaining seven-year-olds. “All right. But first let’s see what’s in the picnic basket.”