His Final Bargain(3)

'Five hundred thousand pounds.'

Her eyes widened. 'On what condition?'

His eyes glinted dangerously. 'On the condition you spend the next month with me in Italy.'

Eliza felt her heart drop like an anchor. She moistened her lips,  struggling to maintain her outwardly calm composure when everything  inside her was in a frenzied turmoil. 'In … in what capacity?'

'I need a nanny.'

A pain sliced through the middle of her heart like the slash of a scimitar. 'You're … married?'                       
       
           



       

His eyes remained cold and hard, his mouth a grim flat line. 'Widowed,' he said. 'I have a daughter. She's three.'

Eliza mentally did the sums. He must have met his wife not long after  she left Italy. For some reason that hurt much more than if his marriage  had been a more recent thing. He had moved on with his life so quickly.  No long, lonely months of pining for her, of not eating and not  sleeping. No. He had forgotten all about her, while she had never  forgotten him, not even for a day. But there had been nothing in the  press about him marrying or even about his wife dying. Who was she? What  had happened to her? Should she ask?

Eliza glanced at his left hand. 'You're not wearing a wedding ring.'

'No.'

'What … urn-happened?'

His eyes continued to brutalise hers with their dark brooding intensity. 'To my wife?'

Eliza nodded. She felt sick with anguish hearing him say those words. My  wife. Those words had been meant for her, not someone else. She  couldn't bear to think of him with someone else, making love with  someone else, loving someone else. She had taught herself not to think  about it. It was too painful to imagine the life she might have had with  him if things had been different.

If she had been free …

'Giulia killed herself.' He said the words without any trace of emotion.  He might have been reading the evening news, so indifferent was his  tone. And yet something about his expression-that flicker of pain that  came and went in his eyes-hinted that his wife's death had been a  shattering blow to him.

'I'm very sorry,' Eliza said. 'How devastating that must have been … must still be … '

'It has been very difficult for my daughter,' he said. 'She doesn't understand why her mother is no longer around.'

Eliza understood all too well the utter despair little children felt  when a parent died or deserted them. She had been just seven years old  when her mother had left her with distant relatives to go on a drugs and  drinking binge that had ended in her death. But it had been months and  months before her great-aunt had told her that her mother wasn't coming  back to collect her. She hadn't even been taken to the graveside to say a  proper goodbye. 'Have you explained to your daughter that her mother  has passed away?' she asked.

'Alessandra is only three years old.'

'That doesn't mean she won't be able to understand what's happened,' she  said. 'It's important to be truthful with her, not harshly or  insensitively, but compassionately. Little children understand much more  than we give them credit for.'

He moved to the other side of the room, standing with his back to her as  he looked at the street outside. It seemed a long time before he spoke.  'Alessandra is not like other little children.'

Eliza moistened her parchment-dry lips. 'Look-I'm not sure if I'm the  right person to help you. I work full-time as a primary school teacher. I  have commitments and responsibilities to see to. I can't just up and  leave the country for four weeks.'

He turned back around and pinned her with his gaze. 'Without my help you  won't even have a job. Your school is about to be shut down.'

She frowned at him. 'How do you know that? How can you possibly know that? There's been nothing in the press so far.'

'I have my contacts.'

He had definitely done his research, Eliza thought. Who had he been  talking to? She knew he was a powerful man, but it made her uneasy to  think he had found out so much about her situation. What else had he  found out?

'The summer holidays begin this weekend,' he said. 'You have six weeks to do what you like.'

'I've made other plans for the holidays. I don't want to change them at the last minute.'

He hooked one dark brow upwards. 'Not even for half a million pounds?'

Eliza pictured the money, great big piles of it. More money than she had  ever seen. Money that would give her little primary school children the  educational boost they so desperately needed to get out of the cycle of  poverty they had been born into. But a month was a long time to spend  with a man who was little more than a stranger to her now. What did he  want from her? What would he want her to do? Was this some sort of  payback or revenge attempt? How could she know what was behind his  offer? He said he wanted a nanny, but what if he wanted more?

What if he wanted her?

'Why me?'

His inscrutable eyes gave nothing away. 'You have the qualifications I require for the post.'                       
       
           



       

It was Eliza's turn to arch an eyebrow. 'I just bet I do. Young and female with a pulse, correct?'

A glint of something dark and mocking entered his gaze as it held hers.  'You misunderstand me, Eliza. I am not offering you a rerun at being my  mistress. You will be employed as my daughter's nanny. That is all that  will be required of you.'

Why was she feeling as if he had just insulted her? What right did she  have to bristle at his words? He needed a nanny. He didn't want her in  any other capacity.

He didn't want her.

The realisation pained Eliza much more than she wanted it to. What  foolish part of her had clung to the idea that even after all this time  he would come back for her because he had never found anyone who filled  the gaping hole she had left in his life? 'I can assure you that if you  were offering me anything else I wouldn't accept it,' she said with a  little hitch of her chin.

His gaze held hers in an assessing manner. It was unnerving to be  subjected to such an intensely probing look, especially as she wasn't  entirely confident she was keeping her reaction to him concealed. 'I  wonder if that is strictly true,' he mused. 'Clearly your fiancé isn't  satisfying you. You still have that hungry look about you.'

'You're mistaken,' she said with prickly defensiveness. 'You're seeing  what you want to see, not what is.' You're seeing what I'm trying so  hard to hide!

His dark brown eyes continued to impale hers. 'Will you accept the post?'

Eliza caught at her lower lip for a brief moment. She had at her  fingertips the way to keep the school open. All of her children could  continue with their education. The parenting and counselling programme  for single mums she had dreamt of offering could very well become a  reality if there were more funds available-a programme that might have  saved her mother if it had been available at the time.

'Will another five hundred thousand pounds in cash help you come to a decision a little sooner?'

Eliza gaped at him. Was he really offering her a million pounds in cash?  Did people do that? Were there really people out there who could do  that?

She had grown up with next to nothing, shunted from place to place while  her mother continued on a wretched cycle of drug and alcohol abuse that  was her way of self-medicating far deeper emotional issues that had  their origin in childhood. Eliza wasn't used to having enough money for  the necessities, let alone the luxuries. As a child she had dreamt of  having enough money to get her mother the help she so desperately  needed, but there hadn't been enough for food and rent at times, let  alone therapy.

She knew she came from a very different background from Leo, but he had  never flaunted his wealth in the past. She had thought him surprisingly  modest about it considering he was a self-made man. Thirty years ago his  father had lost everything in a business deal gone sour. Leo had worked  long and hard to rebuild the family engineering company from scratch.  And he had done it and done it well. The Valente Engineering Company was  responsible for some of the biggest projects across the globe. She had  admired him for turning things around. So many people would have given  up or adopted a victim mentality but he had not.

But for all the wealth Leo Valente had, it certainly hadn't bought him  happiness. Eliza could see the lines of strain on his face and the  shadows in his eyes that hadn't been there four years ago. She sent her  tongue out over her lips again. 'Cash?'

He gave a businesslike nod. 'Cash. But only if you sign up right here and now.'

She frowned. 'You want me to sign something?'

He took out a folded sheet of paper from the inside of his jacket  without once breaking his gaze lock with hers. 'A confidentiality  agreement. No press interviews before, during or once your appointment  is over.'

Eliza took the document and glanced over it. It was reasonably  straightforward. She was forbidden to speak to the press, otherwise she  would have to repay the amount he was giving her with twenty per cent  interest. She looked up at him again. 'You certainly put a very high  price on your privacy.'