Page 18 of The Billionaire's Seduction Revenge

He arched a single, dark brow.

“You speak English perfectly. Because you were educated there?”

“I went to an international school, in Rome,” he corrected. “Most of my teachers were either English or American. Our lessons were predominantly in English.”

“Did you learn any other languages?”

He hesitated a moment, sipped his wine, then answered with a nod of his head. “French, German, some Cantonese.”

She scraped the last of her risotto from the plate with a self-deprecating smile. “You make me quite envious. My brain for languages is extremely limited.”

“You speak Italian?”

“Enough to get by,” she said with a nod. “It’s improving, a little, with your grandfather’s help. Some afternoons, he’ll speak to me only in Italian. I’d started to wonder—,”

“Go on,” Vasilios commanded and Emma sat up a little straighter, because it was easy to imagine this man in charge of any room in which he stood. His natural authority was obvious. “What were you going to say?” He softened his voice noticeably for the second question.

“I wondered if it’s because he’s tiring out, in the afternoons. Sometimes, he’s quiet. Things are harder. He can’t think so clearly.” She sat back as the waitress appeared to clear their plates. “He’s on a lot of medication; that’s one of the side effects.”

Vasilios’s hand clamped around his wine glass then released again. “I’d wondered about this too.”

“You’ve noticed him slipping?”

“I wondered if he feels this to be the case,” Vasilios said. “If you are simply hired by him, then it shows he’s aware that he needs help. My grandfather has always hated the idea of live-in help. Even when my father was young, and my grandmother struggling with becoming a mother, he wouldn’t allow her to hire a nanny. He finds it invasive.”

Emma hated to think of Costa in that light. Her own marriage had been a disaster in almost every way—the only benefit had been her husband’s family, who’d come to be more like her own family. But if Jack had survived, and they’d divorced—which surely they would have—that would have all changed, anyway.

“Was she happy?” Emma asked softly.

“I can’t answer that. She got sick when I was a teenager, away at school. I was too young and selfish to see her as a person in her own right, she was simply mynonna.It’s only as I grew older, and came to understand the nature of my grandfather’s relationships, the way he would use the pool house, that I understood what he’d put her through. I imagine she was resigned to her life, but no, I don’t think she was particularly happy.”

“It was a different generation,” Emma remarked. “So much more submissive.”

“Not always,” he said with a lift of his shoulders. “But certainly in my grandparents’ case. He had all the power and she very little. It wasn’t good for either of them.”

“You think that enabled him to treat her as he did?”

“Absolutely. Why behave better when there could be no consequence to your misbehaviour?”

“Some might say making the right decision is its own reward.”

Their eyes met and held and something tingled the length of Emma’s spine. She felt his approval and warmth exploded through her body.

She liked the way he was looking at her.

Just for a moment she allowed herself to imagine this was a date—that he was interested in her as a woman. The very idea made her want to burst out laughing, or break out in a sweat. It was preposterous.

He was exactly the kind of man she swore she’d never get involved with. Her husband had been all alpha male confidence and charm—God’s gift to women, and he’d known it. Emma wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

She was far better to think of this as a job interview.

“Tell me about yourself,” he invited, and there was just enough of something in his tone to make all of her good intentions scatter in the wind. He was so effortlessly handsome and sexy, his voice was like sun-warmed caramel, running over her skin.

“There’s not much to tell,” she lied.

“Not much that you care to tell?” He corrected perceptively. “I have noticed your reticence to discuss your personal life.”

“You hardly know me,” she pointed out with a slight quiver to her voice. “Am I supposed to have been shouting my personal history from the rooftops?”

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