Page 27 of Vicious Temptation
I pick up my pace as I run along the tree line, feeling my sneakers strike the gravel path, small bits of my hair sticking to my sweating forehead and cheeks, the slight evening breeze cooling me off. I breathe in the scent of woods and greenery, the cleaner air this far out from the city, and I feel a wave of peace wash over me.
I feel safer than I have in a while. More hopeful. And even though I know it’s temporary, that eventually I will have to go back, I let myself enjoy it, for now.
Because regardless of whether or not this will all end in time, for now—I think I could like it here.
9
GABRIEL
Iwake up the morning of Bella’s first day feeling more anxious than I have in a long time.
Deep down, I know this was the right choice. I wouldn’t have offered her the job if I didn’t feel sure of it. But I could see her uncertainty the first time she ate dinner with all of us, her nervousness. And Cecelia was more contentious about it all than I had expected her to be.
I’d expected something like that, though. I’d tried to make it clear that Bella was in no way a replacement for their mother—or Agnes, for that matter—but it was always going to be difficult to bring in someone new to care for them. But her attitude at the dinner table last night left me with flickers of anxiety that this might have been the wrong choice.
My alarm goes off at six like it always does, and I get out of bed, going to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face before changing into my workout clothes. The house is still quiet at this hour, and I walk down the stairs without turning on any lights, enjoying the cool, dim silence of the house before Agnes comes in in about an hour to start working on breakfast. I go all the way down to the gym in the basement, finally switching on the lights.
The home gym is one of the things I most carefully curated in this house, along with the library and the movie room. It’s large, with plenty of room to spread out everything I might need. On one side, there are thick mats laid down for stretching, ground exercises and martial arts training, with a boxing bag dangling at the far end. There’s a treadmill and a stationary bike—although, like Bella, if I want to do cardio, I’d rather go outside and run. One wall is fully mirrored, with a rack of free weights, a squat rack, and several assorted weight machines. Pretty much anything I might want to do, in terms of fitness, I can do down here.
Once I fall into my morning workout routine, a lot of the stress fades. I stretch, do a few rounds on the boxing bag for cardio, and then lift weights until my alarm goes off. By then, I’m drenched in sweat, my muscles are pleasantly sore, and my nerves are eased. I’m better able to focus on the day ahead, and I try to keep my mind on that as I go upstairs to shower—and not the beautiful girl sleeping on the next floor.
Don’t think about it, I remind myself, pushing the heel of my hand against my swelling cock as I step into the shower. My arousal has become more insistent in the past days, as if being around Bella has woken up the long-dormant desire that hasn’t bothered me much over the past years—except now, the bother is that I feel this way. I don’t want to feel an attraction to her, not least of which because it seems wrong in so many ways. She’s younger than I am, although not by a drastic amount—and I’m also her employer. She trusted me enough to take this job, to come and live here in my house, ostensibly under the impression that I wouldn’t take advantage of her or try to seduce her.
To me, jerking off in the shower thinking about her feels like it crosses that line, even if she were to never know about it.
But fuck, if it isn’t harder to keep my hands off of myself than it has been in a long time. The adrenaline from the workout only makes it more difficult—I always used to come upstairs from my workouts to the woman sleeping warmly in our bed, eager to wake her up before I left for work.
And just like that, the arousal vanishes, replaced by the heavy weight of remembered grief in my chest and guilt for thinking about Bella that way in the first place. I finish rinsing off, all thoughts of physical pleasure gone, and switch off the water, drying off and getting dressed in record time.
Downstairs, Agnes already has a breakfast burrito and coffee waiting for me on the table. “You’re too good to me,” I tell her, bending to drop a kiss on her weathered cheek before sitting down. She’s long since stopped being an employee to me, and fills the role of the female family that I no longer have—my grandmother and mother have passed, and my mother was an only child.
“You stop that. You deserve all that and more,” she tells me, patting me on the shoulder. “When did you tell Bella to come down?”
“I told her that Danny and Cecelia usually get up around eight, or a little after.” I check my watch. “It’s only seven-thirty now.” I glance over at her. “What do you think?”
“About Miss Bella?” Agnes raises an eyebrow. “She is awfully pretty. And young. And not engaged, based on the lack of a ring and the fact that she’s here at all?—”
“Don’t start,” I groan, shaking my head and reaching for my coffee. “She’s the nanny, Agnes. My employee.”
“So am I,” Agnes points out. “And you don’t treat Aldo or me like staff.”
“No, I treat you like a part of the family. Which I intend to treat Bella as, as well. Just—not that.” I frown at her. “Why do I feel like you don’t believe me?”
Agnes shrugs, a mischievous smile still at the corners of her mouth. “I’m just saying that it’s surprising to me that her father allowed this. A young, unmarried woman working as a nanny? From the D’Amelio family? I don’t know everything about the circles you run in, Gabriel, but I know enough over the years from working for your parents, and now you—her father is setting something up. Or you are, and you just don’t want to admit it.”
“I’m not,” I tell her firmly. “This has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the fact that I don’t want to marry again. And as for her father—” I shake my head. “I’m sure he would give her to me if I asked, but there’s no ulterior motive. I feel sure of that.”
“Mhmm.” Agnes still has that creased smirk at the corners of her mouth. “Of course.”
I sigh, reaching for one half of my burrito. “I meant, what do you think about her so far. And how well she’ll do at what I actually hired her for.”
Agnes purses her lips. “She’s a nervous little thing. And Cecelia isn’t her biggest fan. I think she might try to take advantage of that anxiety the girl has—jumpy as a rabbit. But all this is new to her—new home, new job—so I can understand it. She seems happy enough to be here, so I’m sure as soon as she settles in, it’ll all be well.”
I can feel myself relax a little at that. Agnes is a good judge of character, and her approval means a lot. “Good,” I tell her, taking a bite out of my burrito. “We’ll see how today goes, then.”
My mind lingers on how things are going throughout the day, flickers of worry darting in as I sit in on video call meetings and go through paperwork. It’s a boring day, very little to do other than sit in my office and catch up on correspondence, and by the time I’ve finished enough to head home, I’m ready to get back to the house and find out how the day has gone there. Agnes knows to call me if anything goes wrong, and I didn’t receive so much as a text from her, so I’m assuming all is well.
That’s only confirmed when I walk into the house, and I’m immediately assailed by both of my children flinging themselves at me happily. I see Bella trailing a little bit behind them, a tentative smile on her face, only to see her stop in her tracks, her hand pressing to her ribs as that smile falls.