CHAPTER ONE
‘THANKYOU...IT’Samazing,’ Zoe purred with satisfaction, having chosen the flashiest bracelet on offer and holding it up to catch the sunshine filtering through the limo window. ‘Isodeserve this. Diamonds truly are the perfect foil for my beauty.’
A famous supermodel, Zoe had locked her avid and triumphant gaze to the sparkling gems as if she had won the lottery. As Gio had yet to see Zoe show that much appreciation for anything else, that glimpse of entitled avarice and unashamed vanity made his shapely mouth compress. He was glad that their affair was over, the diamonds his final gift.
Greed was a turn-off, a major turn-off for Giovanni Zanetti, and yet the richer he became, the more cunning rapacity he recognised in the women he met. For the very first time in his life he wondered what it would be like to be Mr Nobody from Nowhere, rather than the billionaire owner of a technology empire with a much-envied lifestyle. Until that moment he hadn’t known that he could even picture such a fanciful and absurd possibility because he had not appreciated that he had that much imagination. Would women even want him without the diamonds and all the other extravagant trappings he provided? It was an interesting question.
Gio was, first and foremost, a self-made man, who had grown up in dire poverty and deprivation with a violent drug-dealing father and a beaten, uninterested mother. His meteoric rise to phenomenal success had been marred by only one mistake: at twenty-one: he had been conned into marriage by a gold-digger. Aside of that damaging error of judgement, he had, eight years later, already attained almost everything he wanted in life.
Only one major goal had so far eluded him, he acknowledged wryly, and that was the acquisition of his late mother’s former familial home, the Castello Zanetti. When his unfortunatemammahad shamed her snobbish family by falling pregnant by the local bad boy, they had thrown her out and sold up, moving away to escape the humiliation of the resulting scandal. Although his mama had been a decidedly imperfect parent, alongside his papa, something visceral in Gio had always longed for a connection that rooted him in another world. And the world of history and ancestors that his mother had run from, a family tree that he could proudly claim a connection to as opposed to the shameful one he had been born into with his parents, had enormous pull with him. That house, that family property, meant a great deal to him.
As Zoe trailed a sensual hand of promise down over Gio’s lean muscular thigh, he tensed with distaste at the inevitable suspicion that his generous gift hadboughther sexual enthusiasm. Revulsion gripped him. Shifting away, he was relieved that their association was at an end. Exposed as the vain and mercenary woman she was, the model had lost much of her appeal.
At the same time, Gio was, however, uneasily accustomed to the keen interest that his spectacular good looks invariably invoked. He had not a shred of vanity on that score. Indeed, he actively despised the familiar image that met him in the mirror because it reminded him sickeningly of his brutal, toxic father. The lustrous black hair, the hard chiselled jawline, the classic nose and exotic high cheekbones teamed with unusual ice-blue eyes turned the heads of both men and women in the street.
That same night at a Manhattan party, when he was literally ringed by a circle of beautiful women vying for his attention, Fabian, one of Gio’s friends, rolled his eyes to say, ‘You have got it made. Any woman you want whenever, however. I don’t think you appreciate just how lucky you are.’
‘If I weren’t rich and single, I wouldn’t be half as appealing,’ Gio retorted with innate cynicism and an acute sense of boredom.
He thought instead of the magnificent freedom of walking the beach at his rarely used house in Norfolk, England, of the cool refreshing breeze and the isolation there. He needed a break. That awareness in mind, he checked the time in the UK before calling the caretaker to instruct her to set the house up for his arrival the coming weekend.
In an anxious tone of apology and audible dismay at his unforeseen request, Miss Jenkins confided that she had broken her ankle and would need to find someone else to ensure that the coastal mansion was prepared for his occupation. Apologising for the short notice he was giving her, Gio voiced his sympathy and immediately offered a substantial amount of extra cash that the older woman could use to persuade someone trustworthy to take on that necessary task and get it done in time.
As always, he mowed down any hint of opposition like a steamroller that simply refused to be redirected. Life since adulthood had made Gio highly unfamiliar with disappointment, and even a disturbing hint of that possibility was sufficient to make him more determined than ever to leave the business world and designing women behind for a few days and enjoy that energising breeze...
Leah tempted Spike out from behind the chair. ‘Come on...the vet’s gone home. You don’t need to be nervous because you’ve had all your treatment now,’ she murmured soothingly.
A scruffy three-legged Yorkshire terrier with an incongruous purple bow on top of his tufty head crept into view. He was exceedingly small and very scared. He was terrified of all men, even of the kindly vet, but that didn’t stop him from trying to sneak up behind unsuspecting males and nip them in the back of the leg. Luckily for his victims, Spike had few remaining teeth after years of neglect. As he surged into her arms, she lifted him to pet him while she absently listened to the conversation her former foster mother, Sally, was having on the phone with her sister, Pam Jenkins.
‘Absolutelysillymoney,’ Sally was proclaiming, her round good-natured face below her halo of grey curls full of incredulity. ‘Clearly, the man has more money than sense, but Leah can do it, of course she can. A bit of shopping, a bit of cleaning, a few beds to make up...not a problem, Pam. Will youpleasestop worrying about it now? Of course, the man’s not going to sack you just because you broke your ankle!’
Sally came off the phone. ‘The Gazillionaire is coming...’
Leah grinned at the announcement, sitting back on her heels, a cascade of glossy dark ringlets framing her oval face and then tumbling back across her shoulders, her big brown eyes dancing. ‘So I gathered...and I assume that I’m going to carry out Pam’s usual work for her—’
‘Yes, she’s got a shopping list that he forwarded to her, says it’s the usual fancy stuff you’ll have to go into town to find. My goodness, do you realise what this means?’ Sally carolled in excitement. ‘You will actually get toseeinside Shore House!’
The buyer of the imposing building had been christened ‘the Gazillionaire’ once word of the wildly expensive restoration and improvements he had ordered had filtered out into the nearby village. Curiosity had raged about the new owner and the house but, over the three years that the Italian had owned it, he had made very infrequent visits and neither he nor any of his guests had ever ventured into the village and even Pam had never actually met him in the flesh. Apparently, he travelled with his own personal household staff. A landscape firm in Norwich looked after the grounds and the indoor pool. Sally’s sister, Pam, was the caretaker and cleaner, but she had never dared to bring anyone with her on her visits because the house was full of cameras and she didn’t want to break the rules and lose her job. For the same reason she had been afraid to take any photos of the property.
‘I’ll go and get changed,’ Leah proffered, because she was still in her pyjamas. ‘When do you need me to go over there?’
‘Asap. So, Pam’s lawn andhershopping will wait,’ Sally told her because, with Sally busy running her small animal shelter, Leah had been looking after Pam while she recuperated from her fall. The two older women were close but, even though there was space in Sally’s old farmhouse, her younger, single sister had preferred to remain in her village home, pointing out cheerfully that she and Sally squabbled when they got under each other’s feet.
‘My goodness, I just said that you would take care of the Gazillionaire’s house for Pam without even first asking you if you would!’ Sally suddenly exclaimed in belated apology. ‘What on earth was I thinking of? With your fancy degree, cleaning would be far too much of a comedown for you—’
‘Of course, I’ll do it...aren’t I living here free of charge? And don’t talk nonsense. I’ll do virtually anything to earn cash right now,’ Leah admitted without embarrassment. ‘I hope itisabsolutely silly money I’ll be paid too. You could do with some of it for the shelter. That last vet bill was steep.’
‘I don’t want the money!’ Sally informed her sternly. ‘Look at all the help you’ve given Pam. You’ve kept her garden, taken her to the hospital and done her shopping when I’ve been too busy—’
‘You took me in when I had nowhere else to go and I’m grateful, so let’s not hear any more about cleaning being beneath me,’ Leah urged, thinking that cleaning was no more humble than stacking shelves in the village supermarket, which she had also done. Unfortunately, there were few local employment opportunities. Her business degree was no more use where she lived than it had proven to be in London where, only two years earlier, she had embarked on what she initially hoped would eventually become a successful career. As her mind threatened to linger on everything that had gone so terribly wrong in the city, she buried the thought, because there was nothing attractive about bitterness.
Leah had learned very young that life could contain many bad moments, a great deal of loss and frequent disappointments, but she had taught herself not to dwell too long on the negatives. There had been Oliver, who had broken her heart, but before he came along she had lost her father, then her mother and her two siblings, and whenever she thought about her missing family a terrible wave of sadness would threaten to engulf her. Her mother was dead, and it was hard to care about whether or not her father was dead or alive because he had chosen hisotherfamily over his family with her mother, making it clear that she and her siblings were second best.
Eventually, however, Leah hoped to trace and get back in touch with her twin brother and younger sister, but that was likely to take both patience and money. She had seen her brother several times over the years, but their relationship had been strained by his drug addiction and his willingness to steal from her to fund it.
Sadly, she had left London with nothing but credit-card debt, which she had only recently contrived to pay off. Before she could move out of Sally’s home and return to urban living, she would have to have a nest egg saved up to cover accommodation and at least the chance of a proper job.
An hour later, Leah was scouring the supermarket and eventually a delicatessen for the more unusual ingredients on the shopping list. Wakame seaweed and Thai basil were not easily found in a small rural town. Equivalents or total substitutes purchased with the credit card Pam had entrusted her with, Leah drove to Shore House.