Her Brooding Italian Boss Read Online Free PDF Page A

she was still working temp jobs.
    Damn it.
    He couldn’t embarrass her by refusing to let her work for him. But he didn’t want to be living with an attractive woman—the first woman to stir something inside him since Gisella. Worse, he didn’t want someone rifling through his things.
    He’d give Laura Beth a few days to rest in his country house, then gently explain that he didn’t want a PA. Since he was essentially firing her, he’d send her back to the US with a good-sized severance check and the codes for his dad’s penthouse so she’d be okay until she found a new job.
    But today, once he had her settled, he intended to have this out with his dad.

CHAPTER THREE
    L AURA B ETH WATCHED Antonio climb into the limo. He didn’t say a word the entire drive to his father’s house.
    Nerves skittered along her skin. He didn’t want her. It seemed he didn’t want a PA at all...
Constanzo
did. And the second he got out of the car, Antonio would fire her.
    They reached Constanzo’s beautiful country home and he unceremoniously got out. Angry, too, he didn’t say a word to his son. When the limo began moving again, she couldn’t take the quiet.
    “I’m so sorry.”
    Antonio stared out the window. “Not your fault. As I told you on the plane, my dad has the mistaken belief that everything he wants should be there when he wants it. Sometimes that translates into a belief that everyone in his life should do what he wants when he wants it done.”
    With that the car got quiet again. Any second now she expected him to apologize and fire her. But he didn’t. The twenty-minute drive was extremely quiet, but with every mile that passed without him saying, “You’re fired,” her spirits lifted a bit. They drove up to his gorgeous country home and he got out as if nothing were amiss.
    Exiting the limo, she glanced around. Antonio’s home was nestled in a silent stretch of Italian countryside. Hills and valleys layered in rich green grass with a spattering of wildflowers surrounded the new house. A smaller, much older house sat at the end of a stone path.
    As if seeing the direction of her gaze, Antonio said, “That’s my studio.”
    She tilted her head as she studied it. In some ways the old stone house was more beautiful than the big elaborate home that had obviously been built within the past few years—probably for his wife.
    Her face heated as envy tightened her chest, so she quickly reprimanded herself. This man she thought so handsome had had a wife, someone he’d adored. She’d been hired to be a glorified secretary. She was pregnant with another man’s child.
And
she’d also decided the night before that she was no longer going to try to fit herself into a world too grand for her. Being jealous of Antonio’s dead wife, being attracted to a famous artist slated to inherit the estate of one of the world’s wealthiest men...that was foolishness that she’d nip in the bud every time it popped into her head, until it left for good.
    Antonio motioned to the door and she walked before him into the grand foyer of his home. A wide circular stairway and marble floors welcomed her. To the right, a painting of what looked to be the field outside his house brightened the huge foyer with its rich greens and striking blues of both the flowers and sky.
    “I’ve seen this before.”
    He laughed. “In Tucker and Olivia’s Montauk mansion.”
    She faced him. “That’s right!”
    “I bought it back from them.”
    “I can see why. It’s beautiful.”
    “It was the first thing I painted when I rented the run-down shack I now use as a studio.”
    He walked up behind her. Little pinpricks of awareness danced up her spine. “The second I set foot on Italian soil, I knew this was my home, that the time I’d spent in foster care in America was an aberration. An accident.” He pointed at the painting. “This picture captures all the happiness of that discovery.”
    “I see it.”
    He sniffed a laugh. “Tucker did