Charade in Winter Read online

  ‘You’re the cook?’ he questioned, trying to redeem himself with a safe, if rather banal question.

  She nodded. ‘Sort of. Officially, I’m the housekeeper but I do a bit of everything. Answer the door to guests and make sure their rooms are serviced, that sort of thing.’ She pushed the coffee towards him. ‘Will there be anything else, Signor De Gennaro?’

  He smiled. ‘Salvio. And you are?’

  She looked taken aback, as if people didn’t ask her name very often. ‘It’s Molly,’ she answered shyly, in a voice so soft it felt like silk lingerie brushing against his skin. ‘Molly Miller.’

  Molly Miller. He found himself wanting to repeat it, but the conversation—such as it was—was terminated by the sudden sweep of car headlights arcing powerfully across the room. As he heard the sound of a large car swishing over gravel, Salvio saw the way she flinched and automatically tugged at her drab dress so that it hung more uniformly over her wide hips.

  ‘That’s the Averys.’

  ‘I thought it must be.’

  ‘You’d better…you’d better go,’ she said, unable to keep the waver of urgency from her voice. ‘I’m supposed to be preparing dinner and Lady Avery won’t like finding a guest in the kitchen.’

  Salvio was tempted to tell her that he didn’t give a damn what Lady Avery would or wouldn’t like but he could see the fear which had darkened her soft grey eyes. With a flicker of irritation he picked up his espresso and water and headed for the door. ‘Grazie mille,’ he said, leaving the warm and steamy kitchen and walking rapidly towards the staircase, reluctant to be around when the Averys burst into the hallway.

  But once back in his own room, he was irritated to discover that the low burn of desire was refusing to leave him. So that instead of the hot shower he’d promised himself, Salvio found himself standing beneath jets of punishingly cold water as he tried to push the curves of the sweet little housekeeper from the forefront of his mind and to quell the exquisite hardness which throbbed at his groin.

  Copyright © 2018 by Sharon Kendrick

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  THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS HOUSEKEEPER

  by Sharon Kendrick,

  available November 2018 wherever

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  ISBN-13: 978-1-488-05096-1

  CHARADE IN WINTER

  First published in 1977

  This edition published in 2018

  Copyright © 1977 by ANNE MATHER

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