Page 2 of The Housekeeper and the Brooding Billionaire

His aunt had threatened it would happen if he stayed immured here, but he’d brushed off her concern. There were reasons he wouldn’t return to Rome or any of his old haunts. A penance to be paid.

Mad or not, Alessio refused to wait here, wondering. He turned and strode from his study, hurrying down the tower’s ancient stone staircase, its steps hollowed from centuries of footsteps, and outside.

The cobblestones were damp from the mist, but spring sunshine was already piercing the fog. He felt its warmth on his face as he plunged towards the shore.

There was nothing. No evidence anyone had been here. Nor any sound. Unless...did he imagine the soft splash of water towards the end of the cove?

He headed to the promontory, every sense alert in the foggy stillness, but heard nothing over the ragged rush of his pulse. He continued to the pier. The few boats there were familiar. Nothing to indicate a stranger’s presence.

It had been imagination. A phantom conjured by guilt, regret and too little sleep.

Yet Alessio was too unsettled to go back to his office. He took the narrow, cobbled street that circled the island, past familiar buildings, some empty and some tenanted by families who’d lived here almost as long as his own, most of them reliant on his family for work. They were a tight-knit community.

Not for the first time, he felt grateful for the way they’d closed ranks when tragedy had struck. The paparazzi printed unspeakable things about him, and society gossips were agog with speculation. But not a word had escaped from L’Isola del Drago about the events on which the world continued to speculate.

He was a lucky man to have such loyalty.

Alessio’s mouth twisted. Lucky? In his people’s loyalty and in business, definitely. Three years of complete dedication to the company had brought unheralded success. As for anything else...

There is no anything else.

He inhaled the scent of freshly baked bread and realised he’d already circumnavigated the small island, reaching the tiny bakery that kept the residents supplied with bread and baked goods.

He could call on Mario for an early morning chat over a cornetto pastry. It had been weeks since he’d looked in on the old man. But he couldn’t face talking to anyone today, even someone who’d known him from the cradle.

Especiallysomeone who knew him so well.

Alessio was striding towards thecastellowhen the mist on the lake lifted and with it every hair on his body.

She was there.

The woman he’d seen earlier.

A rogue shaft of sunlight lit her from behind, turning her into a silhouette as she emerged from the green depths and waded towards the shore, shoulders back and hips undulating in a gait that was pure feminine allure.

Alessio’s heart threatened to burst the confines of his ribs as he took her in. Face in shadow, wet hair slicked back and clinging to her skull. Slender arms. Narrow waist and flaring hips.

He must have made a sound. What, he couldn’t imagine, for his larynx had frozen. But she stopped, head jerking towards him as if she’d been unaware of his presence.

For another devastating second the illusion held, his brain telling him it was Antonia, or her wraith.

Except this was no wraith. Nor a haunting memory. The gap in the mist widened, the shaft of sunlight opening further, gilding the young woman’s arm and one pale, wet thigh, turning her from shadow into cream and gold and slick, living flesh.

Alessio’s lungs burst into life as the breath he’d held escaped and he dragged in oxygen so fast it slammed into his tight chest.

Of course it wasn’t Antonia.

She’d been gone for three years. Nor had she possessed a sapphire-blue one-piece swimsuit. Antonia had preferred bikinis.

He blinked, taking in the sleek shape of the woman who’d stopped in knee-deep water, as if wondering if it were safe to come ashore.

He would have told her the place was cursed, warned her to go back to wherever she’d come from, except his throat had constricted so badly it felt wrapped in barbed wire.

So he stood, hands clenched at his sides, listening to his drumming pulse and staring.

The high-necked swimsuit should have been demure, except it clung to delectable curves and a slim waist. Dimly he thought of the Renaissance painting of Venus emerging from her bath that hung in the principal guest suite. But Venus lacked this woman’s punch-to-the-belly sexiness. Even her pale bare shoulders, glistening in the first rays of the sun, looked sleekly inviting.

That, finally, freed him from stasis. This was no ghost but a flesh-and-blood woman.

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