‘Che cosa?’ he murmured.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian,’ she managed, wondering if he even realised he’d spoken in his native tongue. She’d been trying to learn Italian on an app over the last two years, in case anyone from Lorenti Corp came to Westwick, but she wasn’t confident enough to converse in it yet.
He frowned. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Westwick Hall’s estate manager. Your assistant said you wanted to speak with me?’
Now that he was no longer in shadow, she could see his face, and it wasn’t helping the swooping sensation in her stomach. His features were sharper and more dramatic now, having lost the softness of youth—but his eyes, that rich dark brown flecked with molten gold which held so many secrets, were exactly the same… The scar on the left side of his face was also still there, slashing across his cheek all the way to his hairline. But where the scar had been disfiguring that summer, the livid bruising and stitching fresh, now it only made him look more striking.
Something else about him, though, wasverydifferent. Or maybe she simply hadn’t noticed it when she was eight—and a child, instead of a woman. The combination of those harsh features, his magnetic eyes and his tall, muscular build made him look incredibly…hot…
She dragged in a breath. No,hotwas too basic—more likebreath-taking. Her stomach fluttered, annoyingly.
She’d never been the type to swoon over good-looking guys, because they usually turned out to be egotistical arseholes. Not that she’d ever met any who wereasgood-looking as this man.
She mentally kicked herself. Again.Hard.
So what if Dario Lorenti’s rugged male beauty—accentuated by that designer suit and the dark scowl on his face—was making her light-headed. He was still technically her boss.
Plus, while she’d never been interested in celebrity gossip, Joss and Becca—the Hall’s cleaners—had told her all about Lorenti’s playboy reputation, because they were celebrity news junkies. So, even if he looked like every woman’s fantasy, he really wasn’t.
It also became clear he was nowhere near as impressed with her appearance when his eyes narrowed, and his gaze swept over her grubby clothes.
‘How old are you?’ he demanded, his tone as searing as the inspection.
‘I’m twenty-two,’ she replied firmly, trying not to sound defensive.
One dark brow lifted. ‘How can you have the experience to run a large estate at this age?’
She winced at the judgemental tone and the note of criticism.
The truth was, although she’d worked for two years as the previous estate manager’s assistant and taken courses at the local agricultural college in project management, shedidn’thave the experience. But that was hardly her fault.
‘When Mr Chambers quit two years ago, no one else would take the job at the reduced salary we could offer,’ she said. ‘And Lorenti Corp didn’t respond to any of my emails outlining the problem.’
She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, to stop them trembling.
This meeting was not going how she’d hoped. Why was he being so hostile? And why did she get the feeling his harsh expression wasn’t just about her lack of qualifications?
‘So, I stepped up to the role as an interim arrangement,’ she finished.
And maybe if you’d replied to a single one of my emails you would know all this already.
The muscle in his jaw tensed, making the scar on his cheek flex. But then the flecks of gold in his irises shimmered, his gaze intensifying as if he was seeing her properly for the first time. ‘What is your name?’
‘Tallulah Whittaker,’ she blurted out, not sure why she’d given him her full name.
Everyone called her Tali, because she had never felt like a Tallulah. The florid, old-fashioned name had belonged to her father’s grandmother, and she’d always considered it just another burden her dad had saddled her with—along with his disinterest, and the crippling bouts of sadness which had dogged her mother for years after he’d walked out on them.
But the formality of her proper name felt like a trusty shield against Lorenti’s disapproval.
His eyes narrowed even more as he studied her.
Suddenly, heady recollections of the brooding, unhappy teenager whose enforced solitude she had insisted on disturbing that summer swirled through her consciousness.
Should she tell him they had met before?
Perhaps he hadn’t completely forgotten the little girl who had worked so hard to entertain him that summer. But as he continued to stare at her, his inscrutable gaze made her palms start to sweat, still buried in her back pockets. And it occurred to her this meeting was already awkward enough, without bringing up ancient history. Plus, if she had ever known that boy, she certainly did not know the man he had become.
