The Boss's Christmas Seduction: Unlocking her Innocence / Million Dollar Christmas Proposal / Not Just the Boss's Plaything

‘No need with a big staff and only two people to look after.’ The girl laughed, clearly unfamiliar with Ava’s past history with the Barbieri family.

Ava ate because she was indeed hungry and then she dug out a notebook and began to draw up a to-do list. Obviously calling the caterers came first and she would have to visit the garden centre that usually supplied the wreaths and garlands for the house. For the first time she wondered how she would get around because she had been banned from driving for the foreseeable future. Deeming that a problem better dealt with in daylight, she unpacked her holdall, which took all of five minutes. She took Harvey downstairs and, as directed by the housekeeper, she fed the dog in a rear hall before clipping on his lead and setting off through the solar-lit wintry gardens to take him for a brisk walk. The dim light was eerie, casting flickering shadows in the breeze with only the sound of her own feet crunching on the gravel paths in her ears. The whole place was just crammed with memories for her, she acknowledged painfully, for she could still remember sunbathing on the lawn and larking about with Olly while they studied for their final exams … the exams her friend had never actually got to sit. Ava had sat hers because her case had taken months to come to court. For most of that period she had been away at school where she was shunned like a leper for the tragedy she had caused and when she had finally come home her welcome there had proved even colder.

That night she slept in her comfortable bed, too exhausted to be kept awake by her mental turmoil. When she rose she was shocked to discover that it was almost nine, that she still felt tender in a certain place and was in no mood to celebrate the loss of her virginity. Clad in her jeans, her trusty notebook in her back pocket, she clattered downstairs with Harvey to take care of his needs first. Eleanor Dobbs was waiting for her when she came back indoors to direct her into the dining room for breakfast.

‘Could I have a word with you after you’ve eaten?’ she asked.

‘Of course. Is Vito here?’ Ava enquired stiffly, guessing that Eleanor wanted to discuss arrangements for the party.

‘The helicopter picks him up at seven most mornings,’ the older woman explained.

So, Vito was still locked into very early morning starts, Ava reflected without surprise while she tucked into cereal, fruit and coffee for breakfast. Work motivated him as nothing else could and he didn’t work because he needed more money either. Fabulously wealthy though he was, Vito still worked virtually every day of the week because he had once been the child of a spendthrift bankrupt and had lived through periods of great insecurity. He had only put down permanent roots at Bolderwood for Olly’s benefit, recognising that the little boy had needed a place he could call home.

Digging out her notebook before she even left the dining room, Ava called the local caterers, who had provided the food and refreshments at the last party. She arranged a meeting for the following day and was heading up the stairs when the housekeeper appeared again.

‘There’s something I want to show you,’ Eleanor told her uncomfortably. ‘I thought maybe you could help.’

Ava lifted a fine brow. ‘In any way I can,’ she said evenly, wondering why the other woman was so tense.

Ava’s tension mounted, however, when Eleanor Dobbs took her upstairs to what had once been Olly’s room. She unlocked the door and spread it wide. Ava stood on the threshold in shock, for the room was untouched and looked as though it was just waiting for Olly to walk back in and occupy it. ‘Why hasn’t it been cleared?’

‘I offered to do that soon after the funeral but Mr Barbieri said no. He used to come in here then but as far as I’m aware it’s a couple of years since he did that.’ The older woman grimaced. ‘After all this time it just doesn’t seem right to leave the room like this …’

Ava breathed in deep and straightened her shoulders. ‘I’ll sort it out,’ she announced. ‘Just bring me some boxes and bags and I’ll go through all this stuff and decide what should be kept and stored. Then you can clear the room.’

‘I’m very grateful,’ Eleanor said ruefully. ‘I didn’t like to approach Mr Barbieri about it again. It’s a sensitive subject.’

Alone again, Ava touched one of Olly’s fossil specimens and tears swam in her eyes. Time had stood still within these walls, transforming the room into Vito’s version of a shrine. That wasn’t healthy, she thought painfully, recalling his speech to her about life going on.

The housekeeper helped her sort through Olly’s possessions. Ava bagged his clothes for charity and put his Harry Potter first editions, the fossil collection and his photo albums into boxes. Leafing through the particular album that captured her two-year friendship with Vito’s brother, she laughed and smiled through her tears as warmer less painful memories flooded back to her. It was the first time she had allowed herself to recall the good times they had had together and afterwards, although she felt drained, she also felt curiously lighter of heart.

When the job was complete she took Harvey out to the garden where roses were still blooming in the mild winter temperature and as she looked at those beautiful blooms an idea came to her and she went back indoors to get scissors. She had never got to say an official goodbye to Olly, but she could now visit his grave and pay her last respects without fear of offending anyone as her appearance at his funeral would have done. Her battered fake leather jacket zipped up against the breeze, she left Harvey in Eleanor’s care and walked out onto the road, turning towards the small stone church little more than a hundred yards away. It had once been part of the Bolderwood estate, having been built and maintained by the original owners of the castle, but to maintain his privacy Vito had provided separate access for the church.

A blonde woman climbing out of a sporty car parked outside an elegant house opposite the church stared at Ava with a frown as she opened the gate of the cemetery, which was surrounded by a low wall. Ava laid her flowers down on Olly’s grave, noting with a quivering mouth that a stone angel presided over his final resting place: Olly had had great faith in angels.

‘It is you, isn’t it?’ a sharp female voice exclaimed abruptly.

Ava spun round and recognised the blonde she had seen at the house across the road. She was very attractive, beautifully dressed in the sort of garments that shrieked their designer labels, and Ava felt very much at a disadvantage with her wan face and shabby clothing. A faint spark of familiarity tugged at the back of Ava’s brain though and she surmised that she had seen the woman before. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know you.’

‘Why would you know me? I’m Katrina Orpington but we’ve never moved in the same social circles,’ the blonde informed her scornfully. ‘But I still know you—you’re that Fitzgerald girl, the one who killed Vito’s little brother! What on earth are you doing here at Oliver’s grave?’

Chalk white though she was, Ava stood her ground. Her picture had been in the local paper a lot at the time of the court case and evidently she had been recognised. ‘I just wanted to see where he was buried … It may be my fault that he died but he was my best friend,’ she pointed out unhappily.

The blonde’s lip curled with contempt. ‘Well, I think your presence here is in very bad taste. Crocodile tears won’t wipe out what you did. I’ll never forget Vito’s face that night—he was devastated!’

‘Yes … I’m sure he was.’ Ava’s voice had shrunk to a mere whisper. ‘But I can’t change that and I didn’t mean to offend anyone by coming here.’

‘You have a thick skin and a lot of nerve, I’ll give you that!’ the blonde pronounced, turning away to stalk back out of the cemetery.

Moisture stinging on her cheeks in the steadily cooling afternoon air, Ava went into the church and sat down on a rear pew, using the silence and sense of peace that churches always gave her to get a grip on her seesawing emotions. There was no escaping what she had done but she had to live with it, trust that she’d learned from it, hope that people would eventually stop seeing her as a killer and give her the opportunity to prove that she could be more than the sum total of her past sins. She thought of the previous night and cringed, deciding that she had sunk to slut level with Vito Barbieri, an unwelcome reading of the situation at a time when her spirits were already low. Feeling deeply vulnerable and alone, she said a prayer and then walked quickly back to the castle.

The afternoon flew by as Ava checked the rooms that would be used for the party and talked to the housekeeper about which pieces of furniture would need to be moved. Having made endless detailed lists and another couple of appointments, she was satisfied with her day’s work. Apprehensive about being around when Vito came home, she took Harvey out for a long walk on the estate. A muddy Land Rover stopped beside her on one of the lanes and a tall blond man in his early thirties climbed out to introduce himself as the estate manager, Damien Skeel. It was wonderful to give her name to someone and see no awareness of her past in their response. Damien kept right on smiling at her, told her that his staff were delighted that the Christmas party was going ahead and urged her to contact him if she needed assistance with anything.

By then it was getting dark and Ava hastened home. She used the castle’s rear entrance and straight away took care of feeding Harvey. She was about to head upstairs to freshen up when Eleanor Dobbs rushed through the green beige door that separated the main house from the kitchen wing, her face flushed and tense.

‘Mr Barbieri is very angry that his brother’s room was empty. It’s my fault that it was done … I mean, I asked you to help. I told him that but I don’t think he was listening,’ she explained unhappily.

Ava stiffened. ‘Oh, dear,’ she muttered regretfully, suddenly wishing that she had never got involved.

‘What the hell were you thinking of?’ Vito roared at her as she crossed the hall a minute later and looked up to see him framed in the doorway of the library.

CHAPTER SIX

VITO was an intimidating sight. Still clad in a dark business suit teamed with a gold silk tie, he strode forward, his big broad shoulders blocking out the wall lights behind him. Ava had never quite appreciated how much taller he was than her until he stood in front of her, towering over her by a good nine inches, his face racked with condemnation.

Her breath rattled in her dry throat, a flush highlighting her pale complexion because it was the first time she had seen him since they had parted in his bedroom the previous evening and at that moment she was more conscious of that earlier intimacy than of her apparent offence. As she clashed with his hard gaze an utterly inappropriate tingle of erotic awareness spread through her body like poison. Vito grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the library, where he shut the door behind them.

‘Per meraviglia! What were you thinking of?’ he demanded a second time, his Italian accent giving every word with a growling edge. ‘I came home, noticed the door was open … saw the room stripped. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Who, I wondered, could possibly have the colossal nerve and insensitivity to go against my wishes in my own home?’

While he spoke, his breath fracturing audibly with the force of his wrath, his eyes hot and bright with outrage, Ava hastily thought of, and discarded, several possible responses in favour of simple honesty. ‘I thought it was for the best—’

‘You thought?’ Vito erupted with incredulous bite. ‘What the hell has it got to do with you?’

‘Obviously I should have asked you about what you wanted done first,’ Ava declared shakily, for she had never dreamt that her intervention might rouse such a reaction.

‘It was none of your business!’ Vito glowered at her in a tempestuous fury she had not known he was capable of experiencing. He was in such a rage that he could hardly get the words out and she knew that he was finding it a struggle to voice his feelings in English rather than Italian.

‘I thought I understood how you felt. Obviously I was mistaken but I honestly believed that clearing the room would make you feel better,’ Ava protested tautly.

‘How the hell could a bare room make me feel better? It’s simply another reminder that Olly’s gone!’ Vito ground out bitterly while treating her to a burning look of fierce rage.

Was that rage directed at her as the driver of the car that awful night? As she couldn’t blame him if that was the underlying source powering him, her shoulders slumped. ‘I didn’t get rid of the personal stuff. His collections and photos and books and letters were all boxed up and kept,’ Ava told him eagerly.

Vito snatched in a ragged breath, his mouth settled into a tough, contemptuous line. ‘I want it all put back … exactly as it was!’

Ava straightened her slim shoulders, her bright blue eyes deeply troubled by that instruction. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea—’

‘You don’t think?’ Vito’s deep drawl scissored over the words like a slashing knife. ‘What has it got to do with you? Did seeing that room empty of Olly make you feel guilty? Is that what your invasion of my privacy is really all about?’

‘Yes, seeing his room again made me feel guilty and very sad. But then even being in this house makes me feel guilty. But I’m used to feeling like that and it didn’t influence my decision.’

‘Your decision?’ Vito derided with positive savagery, his voice raw with aggrieved bitterness. ‘You killed my brother. Was that not enough for you? What gave you the insane idea that desecrating his room and my memory of him would make me feel better?’

At that lethal reminder, spoken to her by him for the first time, Ava flinched as though he had struck her. The blood slid away from below her skin, leaving only sick pallor in its wake. He had the right to hate and revile her: who could deny him that outlet when he had never before confronted her on that score? Her tummy filled with nausea and an appalling sense of shame and guilt that she knew she could do nothing to assuage.

‘I was unforgivably high-handed … I can see that now,’ Ava admitted jerkily, pained regret slicing through her that she could have been that thoughtless and inconsiderate. Unfortunately she had always been quick to act on a gut reaction and think about consequences later and this time it had gone badly wrong for her. ‘But I honestly wasn’t thinking about how I felt when I cleared the room. I was thinking about you.’

‘I don’t want you thinking about me!’ Vito roared as he strode across to the decanter set on the sofa table and poured himself a shot of whiskey. ‘My thoughts and feelings about my brother’s death are entirely my affair and not something I intend to discuss.’

‘Yes, I have got that message but that locked-up untouched room didn’t strike me as a healthy approach to grief,’ Ava dared to argue, her attention resting on the rigid angles and hollows of his strong face and the force of control he was clearly utilising to hide his feelings. He was as locked up inside as that blasted room, she thought in sudden frustration, but it was a revelation to her that he possessed the depth that fostered such powerful emotions.

‘What would you know about it?’ Vito slashed back at her rudely, for once making no attempt to hide how upset he was, which she found oddly touching.

‘I’ve been through something similar and talking about it or even writing about it for purely your own benefit helps,’ she murmured ruefully. ‘Grief can devour you alive if you get stuck in it.’

He skimmed her with cutting emphasis. ‘Spare me the platitudes! And don’t ever interfere in my life again!’

‘I won’t, but remember that it was you who told me that you can’t live in the past for ever and that life has to go on,’ Ava reminded him wretchedly. ‘I’m sorry if I misinterpreted what you meant by that. I thought I was helping.’

‘I don’t need or want your help!’ Vito slammed at her in a wrathful fury as he wrenched open the library door again. ‘Tell Eleanor I’m eating out tonight!’

And Ava was left standing there in the pool of light by the desk. She gritted her teeth. She was hurting, Vito was hurting but he didn’t want anyone, least of all her, to recognise the fact. That wounded her but she had no right to feel wounded because she had been insensitive not to broach the topic of clearing Olly’s room with him personally.

A soft knock sounded on the door and Ava moved forward to open it. ‘Vito said—’

‘Don’t worry, I heard him,’ Eleanor confided with a grimace and she winced as the sound of a powerful car tearing down the drive carried indoors. ‘I hope you told the boss that clearing that room was my idea.’

‘I encouraged you and I got stuck in first. I thought it was the right thing to do as well. Forget about it,’ Ava advised.

Eleanor frowned. ‘I’ve never seen Mr Barbieri lose his temper like that. Should I start putting the room back the way it was?’

‘I would wait and see how he feels about it tomorrow … but maybe listening to my opinion isn’t the right way to go,’ Ava pointed out heavily, reaching down to fondle Harvey’s ears as he bumped against her knee.

‘Harvey’s got a lovely nature,’ the housekeeper remarked in the awkward silence. ‘I’ll spread the word about him needing a home but, if you ask me, he’s already happy to have found a home with you.’

‘But pets aren’t allowed where I live in London,’ Ava muttered, struggling to concentrate when all she could hear, over and over again in her buzzing head, was Vito saying, ‘You killed my brother.’ And she had, not deliberately but through recklessness and bad judgement. That was a truth she had to live with, but just then acknowledging it wounded her as much as it had the day in hospital when she had first learned that Olly had died in the crash.

Ava had no appetite for the delicious evening meal brought to her in the solitary splendour of the dining room. After rooting through Vito’s library to find a Jane Austen novel she hadn’t read in several years, she went for a swim in the basement, desperate to escape her unhappy thoughts. Afterwards, the warmth and privacy in her bedroom along with Harvey’s relaxing presence enclosed her. Momentarily she remembered how noisy prison had been and how comfortless, with metal furniture fixed to the wall and a tiny floor space with only a view of another prison block out of the small window. Bells had rung sounding out meal times and exercise periods, barred gates had clanged and sometimes alarms had gone off as well. Pounding music had been an almost constant backdrop while other inmates shouted from cell to cell, bored silly at being locked up for so many hours a day. She shivered. The first two years she had had to struggle to get through every day but she had eventually settled into a routine. She had found work helping others to read and write and had learned to appreciate tiny things like the right to buy a hot chocolate drink or a snack with her meagre earnings. She had also learned very fast to stop feeling sorry for herself because there were so many others dealing with much worse stuff than she had on her plate.

Recalling that stark reality, Ava decided to run a bath in the opulent turret room en suite and luxuriate in the selection of bathing products available. Staying at the castle was very much like staying at a five-star hotel. It was a luxury holiday and she ought to make the most of it because reality would soon be back loudly knocking at her door again, she reminded herself impatiently. But she felt so horribly guilty about having wounded Vito by forcing him to face up to his half-brother’s death all over again. She had trod in hobnail boots all over his sensibilities by foolishly underestimating his attachment to the picture of the past that could still flourish in that locked room. He was right. Who was she to say it was healthy or otherwise to leave that room as though time had stopped dead?

Ava wasted a lot of time lounging in the decadent bath, topping up the water to warm it when she got cold, fighting with all her might to escape her unhappy thoughts. She had screwed up again and she clenched her teeth hard and tried again to blank her mind. She donned her pyjamas, blew dry her hair and set her mobile phone alarm to wake her up early. But not early enough to run into Vito as she was convinced that he wouldn’t want to share the breakfast table with her. She took Harvey out for a last run before clambering into her comfortable bed to read until she got sleepy.

When the door opened rather abruptly, Harvey leapt up and barked and Ava sat up with a start. Just about the very last person she was expecting walked in, leaning back against the door to close it. Harvey barked again, tense with suspicion at the interruption. Ava leant out of bed to soothe him into silence and he subsided and slunk back to his favourite spot by the dying fire.

‘I saw the light from outside and realised you were still awake,’ Vito informed her as she glanced at her watch to note that it was after eleven. ‘Damien gave me a lift home from the village pub.’

Absolutely flummoxed by his appearance in her bedroom wearing nothing more than his boxer shorts—his towelling robe was, after all, still lying in a heap on her floor—with his hair still tousled and damp from the shower, Ava was as tense as a bowstring but trying against all the odds to act normally. ‘Oh, yes, I met Damien when I was out walking today and he introduced himself. He’s very friendly.’

His face tensed, his eyes narrowing with laser precision. ‘Was he flirting with you?’

‘Possibly,’ Ava responded tactfully, because Damien had been flirting like mad with her during their brief conversation, even confessing to her that young single women were scarcer than hens’ teeth in the neighbourhood and that he had started attending the church services in the hope of meeting more people, only to discover that the greater part of the congregation was as old as the hills.

‘I’ll warn him off … I don’t share,’ Vito delivered darkly.

Ava blinked. ‘You really don’t need to warn him off.’

‘I don’t do one-night stands either,’ Vito continued with lashings of assurance.

In the act of dragging her eyes from his truly magnificent physique, Ava blushed like a tongue-tied adolescent and could think of absolutely nothing to say to that when he was clearly, in spite of their earlier difference of opinion, planning to spend the night with her.

‘But I think, right now, I could be very much into fun, bella mia,’ he confided raggedly, the tough front lurching slightly.

‘I don’t know how to do casual,’ Ava told him jerkily, her nerves getting the better of her vocal cords but the sting of his reproof about casual sex unforgotten.

‘I don’t either,’ Vito murmured silkily, tossing something down on the bedside cabinet and throwing the duvet back and climbing into the bed beside her as though he slept with her every night and it were the most normal thing he could do.

‘Vito …’ Ava began in a troubled voice.

Vito ran a finger caressingly down the length of her slender throat to rest where a tiny pulse was beating out her tension below her collarbone. Hot golden eyes looked levelly into hers. ‘I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.’

‘Oh,’ Ava said stupidly, but in truth she was transfixed by the admission from such a source. Vito, who needed no one, listened to no one and who never confessed to human weakness was telling her something she had never expected to hear from him. He wanted—no, needed—to be with her and he could not have said anything more calculated to appeal to her.

He brushed his lips very gently across hers, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘Do you want me to leave?’

Ava froze at the offer. ‘Er, no—’

‘But hopefully you don’t want me to stay because you wanted me at eighteen and couldn’t have me?’ he pressed, evidently concerned that that might be the case.