Life here couldn’t have been more different for Flora than her own life had been for her. She wondered what it would have been like had she, as a kid, been exposed to this level of opulence. She would have been terrified.
Now, as an adult, she could see the many material advantages but she was also beginning to see the many drawbacks. After four days of babysitting, she was slowly realising certain things and there was no need for Flora to verbalise them.
Surrounded by all this luxury, Flora was confused and unhappy. Her mother had died and she had been yanked across the ocean to a life she had never known and a father she seemed to resent.
‘I hate it here,’ she had confided the evening before, as Sunny had been about to switch off the bedroom light and leave the room. ‘I want to go back to New Zealand.’
‘I get that.’ Sunny had sat on the bed. There were no signposts as to how she should connect with a kid and it wasn’t in her to be patronising. She had had to grow up fast and that had implanted in her the belief that kids could deal with honesty far better than most adults thought.
They didn’t like being patronised and Sunny didn’t see why she should patronise Flora.
‘Sometimes circumstances change and, when that happens, you just have to go with it because you can never change things back to the way they were. That’s just the truth.’
Flora, she had discovered, was as mature as she herself had been at that age, although not for similar reasons. She was just a grown-up child with shaped opinions and the sort of suspicious, cautious nature that Sunny could understand because she, too, shared those traits. She had no time for her father and Sunny could have told her another harsh truth, which was that she was here and having him around was also something she couldn’t change so she might as well accept it.
It wasn’t in her brief to broker a relationship between father and daughter, however. In fact, it wasn’t in her brief to be curious about the dynamics of the household at all. She was there to babysit, no more, no less, but she liked the kid and she knew that Flora liked her, even though she still didn’t understand why because they never did anything Sunny imagined an eight-year-old would find fun. When she’d been eight, there had been no exciting trips to Adventure Parks or shiny new toys. She had taken refuge in books and so pointing Flora in the direction of more serious pursuits came as the natural choice.
They watched telly, always the National Geographic channel which they both enjoyed. They’d played a game of Scrabble and Sunny had laughed and told Flora that she could allow her to win or they could both play to the best of their ability and see what happened. The evening before, after they had eaten an early dinner at six, they had both attempted to bake and it had been a miserable failure.
‘I didn’t do much baking as a child,’ Sunny had said truthfully, ‘and I don’t think I ever got the hang of it. We’ll have to bin the bread. Or else hang onto it in case we need a lethal weapon.’ Which had made Flora laugh until she cried.
Between eight and ten Sunny worked and then Stefano would return with his driver.
His presence filled the house. He would stride in and Sunny would know that she’d been bracing herself for the brief encounter. They would exchange a couple of sentences and then the driver would whisk her away back to her flat and once there she would think about him. She tried to fight those thoughts and when she couldn’t she uneasily told herself that it was only natural that he was in her head because she was now working for him. If she hadn’t been, she would have forgotten all about him, however startling the impact he had made on her had been.
Now, with Flora in bed, Sunny settled down for her two hours’ work, which was absolute bliss because it was a luxury she could never had afforded when she’d been working at the restaurant. She was given the most basic of tasks but they tended to be time-consuming and it was good to be able to work her way through them in the peace and quiet of the sprawling mansion.
Having explored all of the rooms on the ground floor, she had settled on the smallest and the cosiest as her work room. It overlooked the back gardens and she enjoyed glancing up and letting her eyes wander over a vista of mown grass, sweeping trees and, in the distance, the open fields onto which the house backed. Compared to the view from the flat she shared, which gave onto the grimy pavements outside and a lone tree which looked as though it was pining to be anywhere but on a road in London, the view here was breathtaking and it made her feel as though she was on holiday.
Legs tucked under her, her long hair untidily pulled over one shoulder, she was hardly aware of Stefano’s appearance in the doorway until he spoke and then she yelped in shock, eyes adjusting to the impressive sight of him.
When she could predict his arrival back, she had time to brace herself for the physical impact he still seemed to have on her. With no time to prepare herself, she could only stare while her heart sped up and her mouth went dry.
He was tugging his tie off, dragging it down so that he could undo the top two buttons of his white shirt, and she tried her best not to gape at the sliver of brown skin exposed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she stammered, gathering the bits of paper spread around her and smartly shutting her computer.
‘I live here.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘No need to rush, Sunny. I’m back early so we can have a catch-up.’
‘A catch-up? On what?’
Stefano banked down a flare of irritation. Her desperation not to be in his company had not abated. They crossed paths when he returned from work and she was always packed up, jacket on, exchanging a few sentences on the move as she headed out the front door. Whatever she did with Flora, she was doing it right because his daughter, when prompted, actually now deigned to show some interest in his questions rather than sullenly sitting at the breakfast table in front of her cellphone playing games. The top-of-the-range cellphone, in retrospect, had not been the cleverest purchase on the planet.
‘I haven’t eaten,’ he said evenly, keen eyes noting the blonde length of her hair which, for once, wasn’t tied back, probably an omission because she hadn’t expected him home at eight-thirty. ‘Why don’t you join me in the kitchen?’
‘Of course,’ Sunny dutifully replied. She sneaked a covert look as he rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing muscled forearms sprinkled with dark hair. Everything about him was intensely masculine and her body behaved in disconcerting ways when she was confronted with it.
He was already moving off towards the kitchen and she followed, taking all her work with her and her bag so that she could leg it at speed as soon as their catch-up was finished.
‘Drink?’ He moved to the wine cooler, which was built into the range of pale cupboards, and extracted a bottle of white wine.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Relax, Sunny. One drink isn’t going to hurt you.’ Without giving her time for a second polite refusal, he poured them both a glass, handed one to her and rummaged for ingredients for a sandwich. ‘How are you finding the job?’
‘Fine,’ she said awkwardly and he turned round and looked at her with a frown.
‘Is that going to be the full extent of your contribution to this conversation?’ he asked coolly. ‘Monosyllabic answers? Flora talks about you.’
‘Does she?’ She fiddled with her hair and reminded herself that this was a perfectly normal business conversation, that of course he would be interested in knowing what she did with his daughter. But she still felt horribly nervous and she knew it was because she was too aware of him for her own good. If this strange reaction was her body reminding her that she was still alive, then she resented the reminder.
‘Tell me what you two do together.’ He dragged out a chair, sat down and began tucking into his sandwich.
‘Oh,