Julius didn’t care how many impertinent questions she asked, he wasn’t going to admit to his current sex drought. He’d been busy. He was working on some new top-secret software. He wasn’t like his twin brother, Jake, who had sex as if he were training for the Olympics. Nor was he like his father, who had a reputation as a womaniser that was regrettably well deserved.
Julius enjoyed the company of women. He dated from time to time. He enjoyed the physicality of sex but he didn’t care for the politics of it. The agenda women brought to the bedroom irked him. If he wanted to marry and settle down, then he would make the decision when he was good and ready. Although he seriously wondered if he would ever be ready. Having witnessed his parents’ turbulent marriage, acrimonious divorce, remarriage and ongoing drama-filled relationship, he wasn’t sure he wanted to sign up for the potential for so much disruption and chaos.
‘I know why you’ve agreed to have me here, so don’t bother pretending otherwise.’ Holly’s look had a bad-girl gleam to it that messed with his hormones. He felt a stirring in his groin. A lightning flash of unbidden lust that made his blood throb and pound in his veins. He was surprised—and deeply annoyed—by his reaction to her. She was obviously well aware of her effect on the male gaze, exploiting it for all it was worth. Her unusual beauty, even though it was currently downplayed, was the sort that could stop a bullet train in its tracks. She had a sensual air about her. A way of moving her body that made him ache to see what she looked like naked. He kept his expression masked but he wondered if she sensed the impact she had on him.
How had he got himself into this? Julius thought. He should have called an agency. Employed someone who had credentials. Someone who had training. Manners. Decorum. Why had he allowed Sophia to talk him into taking on someone as cheeky and wilful as Holly Perez? She was going to be living under his roof. For a month!
‘You are mistaken, Miss Perez,’ he said coolly. ‘My taste in women is far more sophisticated.’
She adopted a femme fatale pose, all slinky hips and shoulders, her mouth in a come-and-get-me moue. ‘Of course it is,’ she said with a devilish little twinkle that matched the diamond in her nose.
Julius felt the swell of his flesh at her brazen sexuality. The pounding and purring of his blood drove every rational thought out of his brain. Sex was suddenly all he could think about. Hot, sweaty, bed-wrecking sex. Mind-blowing caveman sex. Driving himself into her tight, wet warmth and exploding like a bomb. How long had it been? Clearly too long if he was getting jumpy at this outrageous little flirt. Holly Perez was a troublemaker. It might as well be branded across her forehead. He wasn’t going to fall for it. He was not at the mercy of his hormones...or at least he hadn’t been before now.
Holly moved around his office with cat-like grace. Slinky, silent, sensuous. Dangerous, if stroked the wrong way. Although when he checked he noticed she didn’t have claws. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. When she lifted her hand to push her hair back off her face he noticed a long white scar on the fine blue-veined skin of her wrist. ‘How did you get that scar?’ he asked.
A mask came down over her features as she pushed down her sleeve. ‘I broke my arm when I was a kid. I had to have it pinned and plated.’
Julius let a silence slip past. He watched as she fiddled with the hem of her sleeve, her fingertips tugging and twisting the light cotton fabric as if it irritated her skin. Her eyebrows were drawn together, her forehead pleated, her expression broody. It intrigued him how quickly she had switched from impudent vamp to bad-tempered brat.
‘Would you like to look around the villa?’
She gave an indifferent shrug. ‘Whatever.’
Julius had intended to get Sophia to give Holly a guided tour but he decided he would do it. He told himself it was so he could check she didn’t pilfer any of his belongings or carve her initials or a curse word into one of his antiques. Why on earth had he agreed to this? God knew what she would get up to once out of his sight.
He led the way out of his office. ‘I detect a trace of an English accent,’ he said as they walked along the hall. ‘Are you originally from the UK?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We moved out here when I was young. My father was Argentinian.’
‘Was?’
‘He died when I was three. I don’t remember him, so there’s no need to get all soppy and sentimental and feel sorry for me.’
Julius glanced down at her walking beside him. She barely came up to his shoulder. ‘Is your mother still alive?’
‘No.’
‘What happened?’
‘She died.’
‘How?’
Holly threw him a hardened look. ‘Didn’t Natalia show you my file?’
Julius was a little ashamed he hadn’t read it in more detail. But then he hadn’t planned on having anything to do with her. Apart from Sophia, he didn’t have much to do with his staff on a personal level. They did their job. He did his. He’d focussed on Holly’s rap sheet without looking at the story behind the miscreant behaviour. Some people were born bad, others had bad things happen to them and they turned bad as a result. Where did Holly fit on the spectrum? ‘I’d like you to tell me.’
‘She killed herself when I was seventeen.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She gave another careless shrug. ‘So what about your parents?’
‘They’re both alive and well.’ And driving him nuts as usual.
Holly stopped in front of a painting. It was a landscape he’d bought at an auction his sister, Miranda, had given him the heads-up on. Miranda was an art restorer, yet another Ravensdale sibling who had disappointed their parents by not treading the boards.
Holly resumed walking, idly picking up objects he had on display, turning them over in her hands and putting them down again. Julius hoped she wasn’t sizing them up for later theft.
‘You got any brothers or sisters?’ she asked after a long silence.
Julius was finding it a novel experience, meeting someone who knew nothing about his family. Didn’t the girl have a smartphone? Internet access? Read newspapers or gossip magazines? ‘I have a twin brother and a sister ten years younger.’
She stopped walking to look up at him. ‘Are you identical?’
‘Yes.’
Her eyes suddenly danced with impish mischief, dimples appearing either side of her mouth, completely transforming her features. ‘Ever swapped places with him?’
He put on what his kid sister called his ‘I’m too old for all that nonsense’ face. ‘Not for a very long time.’
‘Can your parents tell you apart?’
‘They can now but not when we were younger,’ he said. Mostly because they hadn’t been around enough. Their fame was far more important to them than their family. Not that he was bitter. Much. ‘What about you? Do you have any siblings?’
‘No.’ Her dimpled smile faded and the frown reinstated itself on her forehead as she resumed walking along the corridor. ‘There’s just me...’
Julius heard something in her tone that suggested a resigned sense of profound aloneness. He hadn’t expected to feel sorry for her. He had strong values on what constituted good and bad behaviour. The law was the law. Breaking it just because you’d had a difficult childhood wasn’t a good enough excuse, in his opinion. But something about her intrigued him. She was light and dark. Moon shadows and bright sunlight. She reminded him of a complicated puzzle that would need more than one attempt to solve it.
Maybe his housekeeper’s mission would prove far more interesting than he’d first thought.