Harlequin Presents--April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Dani Collins

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  Evandro was looking at Jenna, holding out his hand to her.

  Saying nothing now, only waiting for her to accept. She lifted her face, looking up at him. His strong features were shadowed in the night, and she caught the faint scent of his aftershave.

  His outstretched hand touched her hair.

  “Always wear it long, and loose, and lovely. It’s a crime to hide it with pins.”

  There was a smile in his voice as he spoke, but something more than a smile. Something that seemed to reach into her, touching her deep within. With the lightest touch, his hand smoothed down the length of her hair. The sensation was so light it was scarcely there, yet it made her tremble. She could not move, not a muscle. Could only stand, gazing up at him. Eyes wide, so wide, drinking him in...wanting nothing more in all the world but to be here, like this.

  Looking as she did now, for him, for this man.

  For the man who was like none other in all the world. The man who of all the men in all the world had the power to make her feel as she felt now.

  Dear Reader,

  When my editor asked if I’d like to put a contemporary romance spin on one of the great classic novels of English literature—Charlotte Brontë’s immortal Jane Eyre—I was torn between eagerness and terror at “meddling with a masterpiece.” But the former prevailed, and the result is Cinderella in the Boss’s Palazzo. I only hope that my attempt is seen as homage, not insult!

  Although updated to the current time, and with Yorkshire-set Thornfield Hall transformed into an elegant Italian palazzo, the heart of the story remains. A young woman of courage and conviction, whom life has not treated kindly, seeks to find happiness with a man cruelly blighted by the mistakes of his youth.

  I hope that both those who know and love the original will find a wry enjoyment in this adaptation, and, perhaps, that those who have not yet read Brontë’s masterpiece will be enthused to do so. Mr. Rochester stole my heart when I was even younger than the original Jane Eyre, and he holds a place there to this day. Perhaps he does with you, as well...

  Julia

  Cinderella in the Boss’s Palazzo

  Julia James

  Julia James lives in England and adores the peaceful verdant countryside and the wild shores of Cornwall. She also loves the Mediterranean—so rich in myth and history, with its sunbaked landscapes and olive groves, ancient ruins and azure seas. “The perfect setting for romance!” she says. “Rivaled only by the lush tropical heat of the Caribbean—palms swaying by a silver-sand beach lapped by turquoise waters... What more could lovers want?”

  Books by Julia James

  Harlequin Presents

  Billionaire’s Mediterranean Proposal

  Irresistible Bargain with the Greek

  The Greek’s Duty-Bound Royal Bride

  The Greek’s Penniless Cinderella

  Mistress to Wife

  Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

  Carrying His Scandalous Heir

  One Night With Consequences

  Heiress’s Pregnancy Scandal

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  For CB—for her immortal original

  Contents

  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

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  JENNA STARED AGAIN at the letter she was holding in her hand. Typed on thick, expensive paper, it was signed by someone calling themselves the Executive Assistant to Signor Evandro Rocceforte at Rocceforte Industriale SpA in Turin. She reread it, feeling a mixture of trepidation and gratification at the offer within.

  She’d felt the same conflicting emotions the day she’d received her confirmed offer of a university place to read Modern Languages eight years ago—the offer that had dispelled all the dismissive disparagement and indifference she’d grown up with. Her degree had been proof that she was right to believe in herself, as had the teaching certificate she’d achieved after that. There was also the fact that she had survived the last four relentless years at an overlarge, understaffed primary school in one of the most deprived parts of London.

  She was ready for a change, and this post, if she took it, could not be more different: tutor to a seven-year-old girl—her sole charge—working and living in a palazzo in Italy.

  Anticipation unfurled inside her, along with a desire to accept this next challenge in her life, this complete change of scene. She wasn’t outgoing or charismatic, and certainly no great beauty. She knew and had accepted that she was the kind of person who could walk into a room and no one would notice. But that wouldn’t matter in her new post any more than it had mattered at the school she’d taught at.

  Resolutely, she sat down at her keyboard and began to type her letter of acceptance.

  * * *

  Evandro Rocceforte stared darkly at his computer screen, his strong, commanding features stark, his formidably astute business mind not on the impressive company accounts displayed in front of him, but on the most recent conversation he’d had with his lawyer, who was deploring the punitive settlement he’d agreed to make his ex-wife.

  In the bitter, gruellingly protracted divorce proceedings Berenice had played ruthless hardball for one purpose only. To punish him. Not just for daring to divorce her, but for a crime even greater.

  For seeing through her.

  For seeing through the glamour, beauty and glittering charisma she presented to the world—had once presented to him, until, disillusioned and hardened, not least by her constant infidelities, he’d seen her for the woman she truly was. Self-obsessed, manipulative, and narcissistic. A woman who lived by the motto Me, Me, Me.

  She wanted every man in the world to adore her, pander to her, do what she wanted. Once, he had been such a man. Such a fool.

  But no longer—regardless of Berenice’s attempts to use her seductive charms to lure him back. He knew she would eventually turn on him with a savage fury when he refused to be beguiled. The way she had turned every weapon she could on him when he had finally pressed for divorce.

  Including the most powerful of all.

  The bleak expression that Evandro knew marred his slate-dark eyes hardened. Ever since Berenice had given birth to Amelie she’d used the child as a weapon against him, and now she had forced Evandro into a hellish, no-holds-barred custody battle.

  But Evandro had fought back hard—for this was a battle he must win. He must protect Amelie from her toxic mother, who could no more love her own daughter than she could love any human being who was not herself. It had cost him a fortune, on top of the divorce settlement, but Berenice had eventually agreed to relinquish Amelie to him, with one further condition...

  He slewed his mind away, refusing to think about the final condition Berenice had imposed on him in exchange for custody of Amelie—the vengeful threat she’d made in order to gratify her monstrous ego and assuage her fury at his rejection. But her threat would never find meat to feed on. He would make sure of it.

  Since his divorce had finally come through he had celebrated his hard-won freedom up to the hilt—his torrid affair last wi
nter with the voluptuously sultry Bianca Ingrani was proof of that. Bianca—or any of her equally attentive sisterhood—would have been only too happy to become the next Signora Rocceforte. And why not? He’d just become one of Italy’s most eligible single men—mega-rich, midthirties, and with the kind of striking, powerful looks that had always drawn female eyes to him.

  But affairs were all that Bianca would get—or any woman he might take into his life now.

  His lawyer’s objection to the final price Berenice had extracted from him sounded in his head again, but he pushed it ruthlessly aside. It would never matter—he would not permit it.

  He shifted position, flexing his broad shoulders. All he’d sought with Bianca was celebration, diversion, hedonistic indulgence—only that. He took an incisive breath. He had another focus to his life now. Something far more important. Someone far more important.

  Amelie. The child he’d fought for so relentlessly, so determinedly.

  His mood grew dark again. What did he really know about fatherhood? Berenice had deliberately kept Amelie abroad with her, minimising his contact with his daughter, right up to the moment of finally conceding custody.

  Well, he would do his best by Amelie, however much of a stranger he was to her. His daughter was safely here in Italy, installed in the tranquil palazzo that would now be her home, and her future looked good.

  That was all that mattered.

  * * *

  ‘Finish all the sums, and then it will be time for lunch,’ Jenna said, brightly but firmly, to her pupil.

  She spoke in English for lessons, as she’d been asked to do at her appointment, but in French or Italian otherwise. Her charge, thanks to her parentage and upbringing, was trilingual, and Jenna knew it was her own ability in all three languages, as well as her experience as a primary school teacher, that had landed her this job.

  Not that her young pupil was very keen on schoolwork. Getting Amelie to focus on anything, least of all maths, was a challenge. But that was not surprising.

  Only very recently brought to Italy, to live with a newly divorced father she’d seen very little of up until now, the poor mite had been dragged around Europe and America all her life by her jet-setting socialite mother, living in luxury hotel suites or staying as fleeting house guests in mansions and villas from Beverly Hills to the Hamptons and back to the South of France, constantly on the move, never knowing stability or a traditional home life.

  Jenna had gathered that the young girl was treated, at best, as some kind of dressed-up doll, to be shown off to cooing friends. When not useful, she had been indifferently handed back to an endless succession of nannies and maids, often for days and weeks at a time, while her mother swanned off elsewhere. Inevitably, Amelie’s education had suffered, and Jenna had been tasked with trying to bring her up to speed, preparing her to start school in the autumn.

  Jenna’s eyes went to the sash windows of the spacious room that had been set aside as a schoolroom, glancing out over the gardens beyond, verdant in the early summer sunshine. It must surely help that the little girl now finally had a chance of a stable home life here at this beautiful palazzo, set deep in the Italian countryside amongst rolling hills, farmland and vineyards, with wonderful gardens and extensive grounds to play in, an outdoor swimming pool to enjoy, and woods beyond to explore.

  Jenna had been enchanted by the eighteenth-century palazzo from the moment of her arrival three weeks ago. A miniature masterpiece, built as a rural retreat for a now extinct aristocratic family, it was beautifully decorated, with painted ceilings and walls stencilled with classical-style murals. The wide sash windows were draped in light-coloured, delicately patterned silk curtains, and the elegant fireplaces were all gleaming white marble, like the floors. It couldn’t have been more different from the ugly concrete-block urban school she’d taught at in London.

  How incredibly lucky I was to get this job, she thought appreciatively. And as it’s only till the autumn, I’ll make sure to make the very most of it.

  Her thoughts were recalled to her charge, whose fair head was now bent—brow furrowed in novel concentration—over her work. Jenna found herself wondering just who the little girl took after. She had seen a photograph of Amelie’s mother, set on the little girl’s dressing table—looking glamorous, as any self-respecting jet-setting socialite should—but apart from the shape of her face and her brown eyes, there seemed little resemblance. Amelie’s mother was dark-haired—so had the little girl’s blond locks come from her father’s side?

  From what Jenna had learned from the housekeeper, Signora Farrafacci, an English woman who had married an Italian, Amelie’s father was from a prestigious Northern Italian family which had come to wealth and prominence in the nineteenth century, when Italy had started to industrialise.

  ‘Will Amelie’s father be living here too?’ Jenna had asked, as there had been no sign of him when she’d arrived, nor since. Other than her young charge she had only seen the staff who looked after the palazzo, and she found herself hoping that Amelie had not simply been shuffled from one absent parent to another.

  She knew from experience that it was all too easy for the children of divorced parents to slip between the cracks—to be important to no one, and parked wherever might be the least inconvenient for the parents. Made invisible.

  As I was...

  She did not want that to be Amelie’s fate.

  ‘Signor Rocceforte likes to visit whenever he can, but he is a very busy man—one of Italy’s top industrialists!’ the housekeeper had answered Jenna proudly. ‘So his arrival is never predictable. I keep everything in good order, and it would be prudent for you—’ she’d cast an eye at Jenna ‘—to bear in mind that he may arrive at any point. He is a good employer,’ she went on meaningfully, ‘but he does not suffer fools gladly. He’ll want to see what progress the little signorina is making.’

  As she checked Amelie’s work now, Jenna hoped he would appreciate that maths was not proving to be his daughter’s best subject...

  ‘The more you do, the easier they’ll be,’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘But I don’t like it!’ Amelie retorted. ‘Maman never does anything she doesn’t like. She gets angry if someone tries to make her. She throws things! She threw a shoe at a maid once, because she brought her the wrong colour scarf. The heel was sharp and it made the maid’s cheek bleed. She ran out and that made Maman angrier, yelling at her to come back. Then she sent me out of her bedroom, because she said I made things worse...’

  The speech, which had started with an air of defiance, ended with a quiet trailing off. There was a pinched, unhappy look on the girl’s face, and Jenna found her heart squeezing with both pity...and memory. Memory of her father’s wife snapping at her to get out of the way, to stop making a nuisance of herself...

  To divert Amelie from her distressing thoughts, Jenna chose her words carefully. ‘Do you know, there’s a saying in England that goes, Keep your temper; nobody wants it?’ she said lightly.

  For a moment, the unhappy, pinched look was still on the little girl’s face, and then, to Jenna’s relief, she broke into a smile.

  ‘That’s funny!’ she exclaimed. ‘Keep your temper; nobody wants it!’ she repeated in a sing-song voice. Then her expression changed again. ‘Do you think my papà will lose his temper with me?’ she asked, and the fearful, unhappy look was back on her face.

  ‘I’m sure he won’t,’ Jenna said.

  After an ill-tempered and capricious mother, the last thing Amelie needed was a critical father finding fault with her.

  She needs love, and warmth, and open affection—and to know above all that she is wanted and valued. Something I didn’t ever know...

  Setting aside Amelie’s schoolwork, they went down to lunch and did what they always did when the weather was fine—took their food outside to eat on the wide, paved terrace overlooking the spacious gardens.r />
  Jenna looked with growing fondness at her charge as the little girl tucked into an appetising chicken salad.

  I see so much of myself in her—uprooted, anxious and unsure. Wanted by no one. Doomed to a lonely childhood... I don’t want that for Amelie.

  But that depended on the little girl’s still absent father.

  Would he come home soon? No one seemed to know.

  * * *

  Evandro glanced out of the window, impatient to land and deplane. His non-stop schedule had taken him across Europe and up and down Italy, checking on various multimillion-euro projects and assessing and clinching potential new ventures first-hand.

  He had crammed three months of business travel into three weeks for one purpose only—to clear his diary and enable him to get to the palazzo. To see the little girl he had finally extracted from the unloving arms of her vengeful mother. To give her a better life.

  I’ll build a good relationship with her—even though I’ll have to learn from scratch. I’ll protect her from the ills of her mother—protect her always...whatever it takes.

  Like a sudden shadow over the bright sun, his lawyer’s warning sounded in his head.

  ‘Do you realise the implications?’ his lawyer had asked forebodingly.

  Evandro had looked the man in the eye. ‘They won’t apply,’ he’d answered tersely. Then, with a twist of his mouth, he’d added, ‘Not after finally escaping ten years of a hellish marriage. No, it’s Amelie who is the focus of my attention now—she’s my only priority.’

  A priority he would be making real from this very day onward.

  The plane’s wheels touched down with the merest bump, and minutes later he was on his way to his office. He had a few essential debriefings to get through before he could go to his apartment and pack for the palazzo. Then he would take the autostrada south. To Amelie.