Page 28 of Hidden Heir With His Housekeeper

Thesignora’s gaze glided over the cheap summer dress and sneakers Bea had purchased in a discount store just outside of Paris. ‘We have uniforms—find one which fits in the storeroom, the cost will be taken out of your first pay packet.’ She checked her watch, all business. ‘Your probation lasts two weeks and can start now.’

‘Grazie,Signora Bianchi. I won’t disappoint you, I promise,’ Bea said, determined to make it so as they made their way out of the suite and down the staff staircase. It would be hard work, harder than anything she’d ever done before, but a heady sense of anticipation took hold as she was shown her cart and took a quick shower before getting dressed in the hotel’s tailored uniform.

She was feeling considerably less buoyant when she finished her first shift four hours later, and crashed onto her bunk in the staff quarters she would be sharing with six other women. Her knuckles were raw, her shoulders felt as if someone had been pummelling them with a hammer and her legs hurt, because kneeling on marble floors was hell on your knees. But as she lay, staring at the clean but worn mattress of the bunk above, a feeling of pride and validation blossomed. And the panic and devastation from that morning a week and a half ago, when Mason Foxx had looked right through her, finally began to ease.

She wasn’t doing this to make Mason Foxx think she was worthy. Because she would never see him again.

No, she was doing this for herself. And for that girl who had always believed she couldn’t be anything more than a decoration, a distraction, a vacuous, insubstantial, flaky airhead whose looks and appearance and ability to attract male attention were her only worth. Something her father had taught her but Mason had reinforced, because all he had ever seen—or everwantedto see—was the illusion her father had created.

Ironically, she actuallyhadbeen invisible today to the guests at the resort—as she’d wheeled the cumbersome cart in and out of the vacant bedrooms in her maid’s uniform. But for every toilet she’d made shine, every room she’d tidied and polished, every bed she’d smoothed fresh sheets onto and tucked with the precision her fellow maid and new best friend Marta had taught her, her confidence in her previously undiscovered work ethic increased.

Today, she’d achieved something of real value for the first time in her life. A day’s work for a day’s pay.

It was a surprisingly good feeling—despite her complete and utter exhaustion.

She held her hands up, frowning as she examined the chipped nails and sore, reddened skin. That said, she was investing in a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves with her very first pay package.

As she fell into sleep, her life seemed full of new possibilities. New horizons. New dreams. Which were a lot more prosaic than the ones she’d once had—of finding someone to love her and value her, the way her father never had. But so much more achievable. Because now all she had to do to make her dreams come true was learn how to scrub a toilet properly.

It wasn’t until three weeks later that Bea discovered she hadn’t made her last catastrophic error of judgement, not by a long shot, and that her new life was not destined to be anywhere near as simple as she had assumed.

And that Mason Foxx would always be a part of her life now... Whether she got up the guts to contact him again or not.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Four months later

‘SIGNORFOXX, the Presidential Suite is being made ready by our new housekeeping manager. Do you wish to order food or...’

‘I just want to crash,’ Mason interrupted the Portofino resort manager’s welcoming spiel. He was shattered after the flight from New York to Genoa and the drive along the coast—a journey he’d undertaken on the spur of the moment because the private eye Joe had hired five months ago had finally got a whiff of Beatrice Medford’s whereabouts.

He probably should have rented a driver as well as the luxury convertible at Genova City airport, but he’d needed time to clear his head after the long flight. And the update from the PI.

Apparently, the man had managed to track Beatrice’s movements as far as Rapallo ten days after Mason had last seen her—but then her trail had gone cold.

She was probably holed up at one of the luxury hotels in the region, because the Italian Riviera was just her style.

Off course, there was no guarantee she was still here. But Mason had been too wound up to wait any longer for more news, after having waited months already for this much, so he’d broken off delicate negotiations in Long Island to buy a chain of motels so he could fly all the way to Italy.

But as he’d driven along the coast, the picturesque coastline had done nothing to improve his mood.

How could the woman have disappeared so completely? And why had she? And how come he hadn’t been able to look at another woman, let alone date one, since she’d walked out on him?

Because it had begun to feel that his determination to find her was about more than just the need to confirm she wasn’t pregnant.

Not just every time he woke up, hard and ready for her, his heart beating ten to the dozen and his body yearning to touch her again. But every time the memory of her distraught face when she’d walked out on him crept into his consciousness—which had really started to annoy him.

He didn’t agonise over his past behaviour, because dwelling on it only led to regrets and indecision and, worst of all, weakness. And, anyway, Beatrice was the one who had nixed her chance to explain herself with her little disappearing act.

But as he waved off the bellboy to tote his own bag, the niggling thought that his search for Beatrice had become an obsession persisted.

‘Shall I instruct the housekeeper to finish the room later,signor?’ the manager asked as he swung open the door to the Presidential Suite.

The sitting area was bright and airy and scrupulously clean, and the view across the bay impressive. But the suite’s furniture was worn and fussy, its design features stuck firmly in the nineties. From what Mason had seen so far, the whole place could do with a refresh.

‘Nah.’ Mason dumped his bag on the couch in the main room. ‘She can finish. But then I don’t want to be disturbed,’ he added, dismissing the guy.

He just wanted to be left alone now. Maybe once he’d had a refresh himself, he could figure out what the hell he had been thinking, flying to Italy to chase down a woman he hardly knew but remembered far too vividly.

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