left without a word, and Meghan sank down on the bed, enjoying the softness, relieved to be alone even though her nerves felt as if they were jangling and jumping throughout her taut body.
Why was she here?
She looked in the mirror. Her hair had come undone, her face was pale and tense, her eyes as wide and frightened as a doe’s.
Why was she here?
It wasn’t for the money. She could have left Spoleto without it, Meghan acknowledged. Admittedly, it would come in handy, but still …
She didn’t need it. Didn’t even want it, perhaps.
She owed nothing to Alessandro di Agnio, nothing to anyone.
Yet she’d agreed. Willingly.
What did that make her? Meghan wondered. To agree to come to a strange man’s house, despite the desire in his eyes, the assessment of his gaze, the innuendo in his tone.
He knew what she was.
Everyone knows what you are.
The voices from her past clamoured inside her head—a knowing hiss, a contemptuous snarl.
Had she come here to prove Alessandro di Agnio wrong … or right?
Or to prove something to herself? And to Stephen.
She stood up, filled with a sudden restless energy, and moved to the French doors that looked out on the villa’s gardens. She saw a swimming pool set in resplendent grounds, closed now, and beyond that terraced gardens, shadowed and bare.
Meghan shivered. The night air in the mountains was cool, and her simple white shirt didn’t give her much warmth or protection. She took in a shaky breath and set about repairing herself.
A few minutes later, her hair neat and her face clean, she stepped outside. The villa was quiet. She couldn’t hear the murmur of voices or the clank of pans from the kitchen. Nothing.
Carefully she walked down the front stairs. A single light flickered in the foyer, and a pair of double doors had been left slightly open, leading to what looked like the lounge.
Meghan’s heart thudded in fresh anxiety and she wiped her palms along the sides of the skirt.
She supposed she should go in there, search out Alessandro and his weasely friend. Do what she was being paid to do. Pass out hors d’oeuvres. Make conversation, smile. Flirt.
Except, quite suddenly, she couldn’t. The thought made her ill; she was sickened by the very fact that Alessandro had asked and she’d agreed.
She couldn’t do this.
She was doing this.
She shook her head, biting her lips, and half slunk down the hallway in search of the kitchen.
Ana looked up in frowning surprise as Meghan entered the spacious room. Gleaming chrome appliances and granite worktops gave way to a breakfast nook and more French doors that led out to the terrace and swimming pool. Although it was in darkness, Meghan could imagine the stunning view of hills Tre Querce possessed.
‘I’m here to help,’ she began awkwardly in Italian. ‘I mean … to serve. You know?’
Ana stared at her. A pot bubbled on the stove, emitting a wonderful spicy scent. A green salad was in the process of being made on the worktop, next to fat red tomatoes and yellow peppers in a basket.
‘Signor di Agnio doesn’t want you here,’ Ana said after a moment, choosing her words with care. ‘He wants you in the lounge. Now.’
Meghan shook her head. Her nerves were taut as wire, threatening to snap. She couldn’t face it … them.
‘Perhaps,’ she finally said, speaking slowly as she searched for the right words. ‘But I came here to serve the food, and this is where the food is.’
‘No.’ Ana shook her head.
Meghan clenched her fists at her sides but kept her smile in place. ‘Why don’t I just put an apron on?’ she suggested, and, spying one hanging on a hook by the door, slipped it on before Ana could protest.
The housekeeper shrugged, and turned away with a grunt.
Meghan scanned the worktop, wishing she could make herself useful. She wondered about the men waiting for her. What did they really expect? Would Alessandro come and find her?
She shivered. It was stupid to have come here, to have thought she could exorcise her personal demons by seeing this little arrangement through. She didn’t have the strength, the power.
The control.
All she wanted to do now was run away. Hide. But where? She suddenly appreciated how isolated Villa Tre Querce was, how isolated she was.
How alone.
Vulnerable.
‘I thought you’d be hiding in here.’
She turned to see Alessandro standing in the kitchen doorway, one shoulder leaning against the frame. He’d changed out of his suit and now wore a casual white button-down shirt, open at the neck to expose the tanned column of his throat. He wore faded jeans with a leather belt, casual yet expensive, and fitting him far too wonderfully.
It was not, Meghan thought, an outfit a man wore to a business dinner. He looked too relaxed, too comfortable in his own skin for her liking. He looked ready to be entertained, amused, enjoyed.
She wanted business suits, papers and briefcases, laptops and mobiles. A business dinner, with both men too involved in their work to spare her a glance.
Except that was not how it was going to be … how Alessandro would let it be. She could tell that right now, in the way his lips curled upwards in a predatory smile, his eyes taking in her appearance, resting on her face with a flare of hunger, desire.
She was not making that up, she knew, nor the answering flicker in her own core.
She swallowed. ‘Where else would I be? And I’m not hiding.’
‘Of course not.’ Humour lurked in those steely eyes, in the twitching of his moulded lips. He took a step into the kitchen. ‘I thought I told you to meet me in the lounge.’
‘Is your dinner companion in there?’ She hated the fact that her voice wavered. ‘Has he arrived already?’
‘You’ll see.’ He twitched the apron from around her neck, balling it in his fist before tossing it aside. ‘You don’t need that.’
One more piece of her armour taken away. One more layer stripped bare.
‘I didn’t want to get my uniform dirty.’
He raised one eyebrow. ‘Uniform?’ he asked with obvious scepticism, before turning to leave the kitchen, clearly expecting her to follow. And, wordlessly, she did.
She followed him to the lounge, its double doors opening to a room scattered with comfortable sofas upholstered in varying shades of cream. The few pieces of artwork on the walls were vivid splashes of colour, still-lifes of flowers, scenes of Umbria in bold strokes, that made Meghan pause to admire their sheer vivacity.
Then she looked around. The room was empty.
‘Where is your guests?’ she began, but something in Alessandro’s satisfied look as he stood in the doorway made the question die on her lips. She had a bad feeling about this.
‘ You are my guest, Meghan,’ he said softly. ‘There is no one else.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘NO.’ MEGHAN said the first word that came to mind, desperately wanting it to be true. ‘No, no, no.’
‘Yes.’ Alessandro smiled. He seemed pleased. Far too pleased. As