The Housekeeper And The Brooding Billionaire

Growing up near the beach, ANNIE WEST spent lots of time observing tall, burnished lifeguards—early research! Now she spends her days fantasizing about gorgeous men and their love lives. Annie has been a reader all her life. She also loves travel, long walks, good company and great food. You can contact her at [email protected] or via PO Box 1041, Warners Bay, NSW 2282, Australia. Books by Annie West A Consequence Made in Greece The Innocent’s Protector in Paradise One Night with Her Forgotten Husband The Desert King Meets His Match Reclaiming His Runaway Cinderella Reunited by the Greek’s Baby Royal Scandals Pregnant with His Majesty’s Heir Claiming His Virgin Princess Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk. The Housekeeper and the Brooding Billionaire Annie West www.millsandboon.co.uk ISBN: 978-0-008-92870-4 THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE BROODING BILLIONAIRE © 2023 by Annie West Published in Great Britain 2023by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental. 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Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries. www.millsandboon.co.uk Note to Readers This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings: Change of font size and line height Change of background and font colours Change of font Change justification Text to speech Had she been too hasty? Conte Alessio’s eyes narrowed, almost as if he read her thoughts. Then his mouth lifted up at one corner. She couldn’t call it a smile. There was nothing warm or carefree about it. Nevertheless, she couldn’t drag her gaze away from that hint of dark amusement. She stood transfixed, wondering how sensible her plan to work here for three months really was. “My temporary housekeeper?” he mused. Gone was the gruff challenge. His voice was soft as velvet and dark with something she didn’t recognize, an undercurrent that eddied around her suddenly wobbly knees. It made her wish, again, that she wore her housekeeping clothes, instead of a dripping wet swimsuit. The conte kept his eyes on hers. But for the first time in years, Charlotte felt out of her depth, unsettled by the unfamiliar coiling heat low in her pelvis. And the uncanny suspicion he knew it. “I’ll see you in my study in thirty minutes.” His tone suggested her first day was going to be even more difficult than she’d feared. With special thanks to the lovely Franca Poli, who is always so supportive and ready to help with my queries. This one is for Dottie Auletto, a good friend who always had such faith in my stories and who will be greatly missed. Contents Cover About the Author Booklist Title Page Copyright Note to Readers Introduction Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN EPILOGUE Extract About the Publisher CHAPTER ONE HE STOOD BY the arched window, staring into the solid wall of mist that covered the lake. It would suit his mood if that grey pall stayed all day, locking the island in from the outside world, away from the rising sun. This day didn’t deserve light. Nor do you. Pain jabbed his ribs, piercing yet so familiar he almost welcomed it. Pain was now a permanent companion, a sign of life. Alessio grunted with mirthless laughter. On days like this, life wasn’t necessarily a positive. He scraped his hand around his neck, easing taut muscles. He’d been awake all night, using the excuse of the auction in East Asia as an excuse to avoid bed and the sleepless hours he knew awaited him. The staff in the Asian office were the best. All his employees were. They could run a high-profile fine art auction without his online supervision. Even an event as spectacular as the one they’d just concluded, where fortunes had changed hands to secure some of the most exquisite antiques, paintings and ceramics the market had seen in a decade. It had been one of his company’s most successful events. That was saying something since his family’s auction house had been brokering the sale of precious items to the world’s elite for two centuries. Alessio should be jubilant. His staff were. His extended family would be when company dividends were paid. Yet he’d felt no pleasure at the success of an event a year in the planning. Not surprising. His life was as much a blank as the lake mist out there. No peaks of pleasure or even satisfaction. Not since