Chapter Two
‘I DON’T WANT to go,’ Flora said stubbornly.
‘Why not?’ Perched on the bar-stool in the cramped kitchen of their Ealing flat, Amy swung her thick blond plait over her shoulder and looked at her sister incredulously. ‘A trip to Scotland with your hot, billionaire boss on his private jet. What’s not to like?’
Flora was about to blurt out that the thought of being incarcerated with an arrogant man like Vito Monticello for any amount of time was horrific, but she quickly clamped her lips shut. Amy might worry and it had always been her default setting to keep her little sister free from care.
And anyway, it wasn’t strictly true, was it?
Mostly her aversion was more to do with her own feelings and her inexplicable reaction to someone who was so far out of her orbit that he might as well have hailed from a completely different universe.
What had happened today had felt crazy. And weird.
He made her aware of her body in a way that had never happened before.
‘I don’t particularly want to get on a private jet with him,’ she told her sister calmly. ‘For a start, it’s right before the holidays.’
‘And?’ Amy drummed her fingernails on the kitchen counter impatiently. ‘You’ll be back in time for Christmas Day, won’t you?’
Well, yes, of course she would be—but that wasn’t the point.
Flora felt flustered as she tried to hold back a sudden rush of emotion, not wanting to swamp the baby chick she’d cared for ever since their mother had fallen to her death while rock climbing, a sport she had pursued to the exclusion of everything else—even her own children.
Amy had been only ten and Flora a mere eight years older when they’d been brutally orphaned, and it had been a tough battle to convince social services she was capable of being a stand-in mum.
But she’d done it. Somehow. She’d managed to create a warm and cosy little nest on a shoestring budget.
She’d fitted her life around the grieving little girl and had nurtured her, fiercely contradicting anyone who ever praised her for making ‘sacrifices’.
Because that word hadn’t even figured on her radar.
She’d done it out of love.
Yet sometimes the fear which had underpinned that love had terrified her.
It still did.
She was so proud of her younger sister. The way she’d entered nursing at eighteen and shown a real aptitude for the caring profession.
Meeting an Aussie doctor and getting engaged just before she qualified hadn’t been part of anyone’s vision, and though Flora was delighted that Amy had found love, that didn’t stop her fretting.
She was so young—just twenty-one. And she was going such a long way away.
But thoughts like that were selfish and she mustn’t allow them head space.
‘I was hoping to be here in the run-up to the holidays to do all the prep,’ she husked. ‘It’s going to be your last one here, after all.’
‘Rubbish!’ negated her sister. ‘I’m only going to be a plane ride away.
And you’ll be coming out to Brisbane for turkey on the beach next year, remember?
Anyway, Brett and I can do Christmas for you for a change!
We’d love to.’ She beamed. ‘And when you get back from Scotland you won’t have to lift a finger. ’
Flora did her best to appear happy, especially as Amy seemed to be so excited about the prospect.
Perhaps she and Brett would welcome a bit of personal space in the cramped Ealing apartment for once.
Did they sometimes think that three was a crowd—and that she was a bit of a gooseberry who cramped their style?
And wasn’t she?
It seemed to go even further downhill from there.
Usually, Flora loved the run-up to Christmas—but this year it seemed to pass her by and there was only one person responsible.
Vito Monticello’s killjoy attitude had extended far beyond his own vast office and, during his first few days of prowling around his London empire, had demanded the removal of every single Christmas decoration in the Verdenergia building.
The tall conifer tree which decorated the shiny marble foyer had been the only thing which had been allowed to remain and even that had been after a battle, when Flora had explained that sometimes she saw little children stopping to look at it, their noses pressed against the window.
‘Oh, very well,’ he had conceded, with an impatient sigh. ‘But everything else goes, understand?’
‘If you insist. But people won’t be very happy about it.’
His jet brows had been elevated in arrogant query as he awaited an explanation.
‘For the past few months all the staff have been making their offices into little grottos,’ Flora informed him weakly. ‘It’s a company tradition, apparently.’
‘Peccato,’ he snapped. ‘Too bad. Let them create their little grottos at home. It’s a fire risk.’
Vito’s contempt for the Christmas holidays equalled his powerful work ethic which definitely wasn’t what Flora was used to—though fortunately she had no trouble matching it.
She’d never been a stranger to hard work.
In fact, it was quite nice to feel that she’d done something worthwhile for once.
Even working later than usual in the evenings became something of a pleasure, especially when she thought about all the overtime pay she was stacking up.
But it was more than that. Deep down, she rather enjoyed the mercurial company of the Italian tycoon—he was certainly a lot more interesting than Julian.
And another thing—once word spread through the company that Vito was going to be around until Christmas, it had impacted onto her. His new secretary.
Suddenly, she was popular.
Flora was used to being invisible. The frumpy ex-librarian who nobody really noticed.
But not anymore. Colleagues (always women) were suddenly clamouring to buy her coffee, or invite her out for drinks.
Even when she refused, politely stating she would be eating her usual sandwich at her desk until after the big boss had returned to Italy, and that she didn’t tend to socialise after work—that didn’t seem to deter them.
She was waylaid by the water cooler and confronted in the corridors, and the question they asked was always the same.
‘So. What’s he like?’
She would manufacture a close approximation of a smile before trotting out her stock answer (which she’d had to rehearse) knowing it would be extremely unprofessional to convey what she really felt about her boss.
That Vito Monticello was utterly distracting—like a dark star which had fallen from the heavens and taken up temporary residence in the Chairman’s office. They already knew that!
Or that it was difficult not to just sit there gazing at him, while forbidden fantasies strayed into her head.
Neither did she pass on that he sometimes had a very short fuse and occasionally lost his rag when women tried to ring him at the office, which they often did.
These unknown females were always put through to her and Flora had strict instructions to field them, though some of the callers were very insistent.
Especially that stunning model who had recently broken off her engagement to a royal prince and explained that Vito would definitely want to speak to her.
But, mystifyingly, he didn’t. She promised the woman that she would deliver a message but she was only a quarter of the way through reciting it when her boss’s impatient wave of his hand cut short her words.
‘Why the hell can’t they take a hint?’ he had demanded. ‘Why do they make such doormats of themselves? If I wanted them to ring me, I would have given them my private cell phone number!’
There was, of course, no answer to that.
‘He’s very efficient,’ Flora would say smoothly, meeting the question in yet another eager pair of eyes. ‘He works from early in the morning until late in the evening.’
‘He’s definitely single. Right?’
Flora shrugged. ‘As far as I know.’
‘And he’s staying at the Granchester?’
‘Yes.’ It wasn’t breaking any kind of confidentiality code to confirm this.
The fact that he was occupying the finest suite in London’s premier hotel was common tabloid fodder.
Someone in the post room had pointed the article out to her and suggested that even this degree of luxury might be considered slumming it for a man who was famed for having the most beautiful apartment in Milan.
It had been the first and only time Flora had been tempted to access the internet and dig out what information she could about her boss.
But she had resisted. His private life was none of her business.
What if she gave herself away by letting on she knew where he lived and what he liked to do in his spare time—wouldn’t he rightly think she’d been snooping?
And since such behaviour would be abhorrent to both of them, she put the thought right out of her mind and acted with nothing but cool professionalism whenever he was around.
It was why she prided herself on only speaking to him when it was necessary, though at times he seemed rather bemused by her lack of engagement.
Several times she caught him watching her and once, when she’d managed to track down a file—which everyone else thought Julian might have deleted—he grudgingly bit out some uncharacteristic praise.
But she simply nodded politely and rarely made small talk, even when early on she had discovered his preferred mix of coffee beans and had managed to procure a supply from a small shop in Soho.
‘Mmm,’ he’d remarked, his eyes narrowing with surprise. ‘Nice.’