Read Her Brooding Italian Boss for Free Online

wasn’t right.
    Still, somebody had to help him, and she needed a way to prove herself.
    She lifted her hand to the start button again, but paused halfway and bit her lip. The computer software would probably be in Italian—
    Though Antonio had been raised in the US—
    She shook her head. It was one thing to look at a few pieces of mail, quite another to actually write letters for him without his permission.
    But how else would she prove herself?
    * * *
    Antonio stopped his motorcycle at the front door of his father’s country house. He didn’t knock. He just entered the foyer and walked back to his father’s game room. Sure enough, there he was, playing pool.
    “I see the nap you had on the plane gave you energy too.”
    He set down his cue stick. “Antonio! Why aren’t you home?”
    “With the PA you hired for me?” He shook his head. “Because I don’t want a PA and because your meddling in my life has to stop.”
    “I don’t meddle. I anticipate.”
    Antonio groaned. “You meddle, Dad. And I can’t have it anymore. Not just because it infuriates me, but because this time you’re hurting an innocent woman. She’s going to be devastated when I send her home.”
    “So if you’re the one sending her home, how can you say that I’m the one hurting her?”
    “Because you’re the one who brought her here under false pretenses!”
    “I did no such thing. You need her.”
    Antonio groaned again. “There’s no reasoning with you. You always see what you want to see.”
    “True. But that’s also why I win so much.” He walked to the wall of pool sticks, chose one and offered it to Antonio. “Here is a place you sometimes beat me.”
    Antonio snatched the stick away from his dad. “If you win, I keep her. If I win, she goes home after a few weeks of rest. But you pay her severance and you let her stay in your penthouse in New York.”
    Constanzo grinned. “You’re on.”
    They decided on best out of three. Constanzo played pool constantly in his spare time, and was very, very good. But Antonio needed to prove a point, to get it across to his dad that he couldn’t take every matter into his own hands. He didn’t just want to win. He had to win. In the end, he beat his dad by one shot.
    Constanzo sighed. “This is a big mistake. You need her. And she needs a break.”
    Antonio headed for the door. “That’s why I’m going to let her stay a few weeks. It’ll give her time to relax enough that she can think through her problems.” He turned and faced his dad. “And
you
pay her a big enough severance that she can get a decent apartment.”
    Constanzo sighed. “It is wrong to send her home. But I lost the bet and I agree. If she must go, I’m the one who owes her severance.”
    Antonio got back on his bike feeling only slightly better. He didn’t want to hurt Laura Beth, and he didn’t like the fact that he’d had to gamble to get his way in a situation that his father shouldn’t have interfered with. But he’d won.
    Revving the bike’s engine, he shot along the hills, past the green fields to his house, the wind blowing his hair and teasing his face. By the time he got home, darkness had fully descended and he noticed a light coming from his office. Confused, he parked in the garage and entered through the series of doors that took him from the garage, through the butler’s pantry and kitchen to the main living area.
    Because there were no lights in the pool area, he thought Laura Beth must have been more tired than she’d thought and retired to her room. Glad he didn’t have to face her until the next day, he headed back to the office to turn off the light.
    But when he stepped inside, he stopped dead in his tracks. There, behind the stacks of unopened mail and the wide computer monitor, was Laura Beth.
    He raced to the desk. “What are you doing?”
    She looked up at him. “I’ve been sitting here fighting the temptation to read your mail.” She pointed at one open fan letter.