A long winding driveway led to the grey stone house, bookmarked with a substantial round tower at either end and embellished with a forest of tall elaborate chimneys and equally tall mullioned windows. Built in the style of Victorian Gothic, it was a white elephant of a house, which had been fortunate to find a buyer. Its biggest selling point, though, was its multiple views of the sea and the long sandy shoreline that lay only yards below the edge of the gardens. Parking in the cobbled courtyard and gathering up the shopping, Leah let herself in the back door, punched in the code for the alarm and headed inside.
Cameras high up the walls silently swivelled as she moved, making her inordinately conscious of their presence. She put the shopping away first in the vast kitchen with its huge central island, granite worktops and top-of-the-range fancy stove. Pam had written down explicit instructions about where to find everything she needed. Armed with the comprehensive cleaning box stored in the pantry, Leah went upstairs to start her work. The foyer was a breathtaking space, the very centre of which was the split staircase, which went up one flight and then divided imposingly into two. All that ornately carved wood would be a challenge to dust, she acknowledged ruefully as Spike scampered at her heels.
According to Pam, the six principal bedrooms were routinely prepared for guests and that was where Leah began, dusting and vacuuming as she went before shaking out the expensive linens and deftly making up the beds. The property might be Victorian, but the furnishings were light and contemporary, using the elaborate carving and fancy plasterwork as an ornamental backdrop, rather than allowing it to dictate the whole mood. Surprisingly, that decorative approach worked, and Leah was eager to explore the whole house. Unfortunately, she knew she would have her work cut out just to cover the basics of cleaning such a large property and she didn’t have time to dawdle. Despite regular sips from her water bottle, Leah got steadily warmer even though she was only wearing denim shorts and a tee.
Having completed the bedrooms and ignored the dusty staircase altogether because it looked as though it would take hours, Leah explored the ground floor, choosing where she would concentrate her energies next while reminding herself that she would be able to return to clean again the next day. Hopefully nobody would arrive before the following evening, or her goose would be cooked because no way was she likely to get around the whole house before then! It was simply too big.
Closing the door firmly on a library that was a tremendous temptation to a book lover, Leah embarked on the vast sitting room instead, relieved that the house was gloriously empty of the kind of knick-knacks that her foster mother and her sister adored. There was art on the walls and occasional elegant sculptures but no clutter to lift or work around.
She was contemplating cleaning the kitchen when she saw a door at the end of the ground-floor corridor that had previously escaped her notice. She sighed, already tired and hot as she was and wincing at the awareness that she would be returning at the crack of dawn the next morning to complete the cleaning. She had been cutting corners, she conceded guiltily, the undusted stairs looming like a monster in the back of her brain as she cleaned the cloakroom. And what about the dining room, the smaller sitting room, the library and the room with the giant snooker table?
Before she tackled the kitchen she decided to explore through that closed door, lest it was concealing a whole host of other rooms that would require her attention. The door took her into a tiled hall and she crossed it to move through glass double doors into the indoor pool area, which she had totally forgotten about. Off to one side and entirely separate there was a gym, and on the other side there was a very fancy Victorian circular conservatory area packed with towering tropical plants kept healthy by a temperature-controlled environment.
In front of her, however, stealing centre stage, was a curved, arched and tiled wall that housed an extraordinary lotus-shaped fountain fanning water down into the swimming pool. High above, an ornate cupola and a ring of gorgeous stained-glass windows cast a rainbow of light down onto the shimmering surface. Mermaids were entwined in a huge, tiled panel above the fountain. It was very Victorian and very exotic, and it had been so beautifully restored that it might have been built the day before. Presumably the feature was listed and protected by law, Leah assumed, finding it hard to credit that the Gazillionaire might have conserved the mermaids and the ornate pool out of the goodness of his heart.
Hot and sticky, Leah looked down at the cool water lapping the edge of the tiled steps and sighed with longing. She would strip off and have a sneaky swimaftershe had finished the kitchen, she promised herself. She had no swimsuit, but she could use the clean T-shirt in her bag...or she could swim naked. After all, there was nobody around to see her...
Shaking her head at that amusing thought, Leah walked back out of the pool area and got stuck in the kitchen, which, all credit to Pam’s efforts, required little attention. The pale floor, however, was a different story and she began returning it to pristine perfection. In the aftermath, hot and sweaty from her efforts, she raced upstairs to the cavernous hot press, extracted a big towel from one of the towering fleecy piles and headed straight back down to the pool. It was the work of a moment to undress and walk naked into the water, and that wonderful coolness on her overheated skin was an immediate reward that made her sigh in blissful relief.
Gio walked through the hall, noting the abandoned cleaning box, and he suppressed a sigh as he strode upstairs. The cleaner was still here, which was hardly surprising when he had arrived earlier than he had expected. He, however, wanted the house to himself. He would tell the cleaner to come back tomorrow to finish. He peeled off his jacket, removed his tie and was about to embark on his trousers when he thought he felt something nip at the back of his leg. He swung round but there was nothing there, only a faint suspicion of movement from the throw draped across the foot of the bed. Gio bent down and peered under the bed.
A small, frightened yelp sounded and something brown shot out from below and pelted full speed for the door. It was the size of a rat, but rats didn’t have purple bows in their hair so it had to be a dog. The cleaner had brought a dog in with her. Gio frowned, thinking that his dogs in Italy would have made a snack of the wretched little creature. He cast aside his jacket and started back down the stairs again. For the first time he noticed that the door to the pool complex was ajar and he strode down the corridor towards it.
From the doorway he was able to see that he had a naked mermaid in his pool. A mermaid with a topknot of cascading black curls and a pale pink bottom as ripe as a peach showing through the water as she swam. Gio grinned, amused but annoyed because, instead of reacting with the humour he was struggling to restrain, the onus was now on him to play the censorious boss and lay down the law, spelling out what she had done wrong and why she shouldn’t be doing it.
‘Hi...’ Gio murmured quietly, staying well back from the side of the pool, not wishing to make the naked intruder feel threatened.
‘Oh, for crying out loud!’ the mermaid exclaimed, throwing her hands high in dismay and then lurching across the water to grip the rail at the side to anchor herself. He caught a wickedly alluring flash of full perky breasts adorned with taut brown nipples. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
‘I think those are my questions to ask,’ Gio countered lazily.
Leah tilted her chin. ‘I’m here because I’m cleaning the house—’
Gio elevated an ebony brow in measured challenge. ‘From the pool?’
An angry flush mantled Leah’s cheeks. ‘I’ve been working here all day and I got really hot. The only person that has the right to question me is the owner of this place...and I know that’s not you—’
Gio could not help grinning because she kept on coming back at him, refusing to be quelled or cooled. ‘And how do you know that? Are you acquainted with the owner?’
‘The Gazillionaire?’ Leah quipped. ‘Are you joking? Of course, I’m not! But Idoknow that you’re not him. He looks like a wild mountain man—’
‘The Gazillionaire?’ Gio queried with raised brows as he repeated that description. ‘How...a wild mountain man?’
‘I saw a picture of him in a newspaper and he has long hair and a full beard,’ Leah informed him with a rather smug look. ‘So, what are you doing here in his house? Are you the gardener?’
‘Do I look like a gardener?’ Gio asked with interest.
Leah appraised him, which took time because he was very tall and powerfully built. He had cropped black hair and exceptionally light eyes of an unknown hue that were very obvious in his lean bronzed face. He was quite staggeringly good-looking, an acknowledgement that severely unnerved and surprised her and made her wonder why she was still hanging around naked in the water with him present.
‘No, you don’t look like a gardener,’ she admitted uneasily, noting the sunglasses stylishly hooked in the pocket of his red shirt, which was open at the neck. His trousers looked as though they might have been part of a suit, because they were narrow and very fashionable and almost indecently well fitted to his narrow hips and long powerful thighs. He emanated casual sophistication and a distinct urban edginess. ‘Not a gardener...you work for the pool company?’
‘No,’ Gio said quietly.
‘Do you work for the mountain man in some other capacity?’
His light eyes danced. ‘I might...’
‘Well, while you’re thinking about that could you move away and turn your back so that I can get out of the water and back into my clothes?’