A Very Serious Proposal

"Don't come any closer."

My four-year-old daughter considered Alessandro Romano's warning for approximately half a second.

Then she took three more steps.

I stood in the dining-room doorway with a serving platter balanced against my wrist, watching the only good job I had found in six months prepare to disappear.

Sophie stopped beside his chair. Her borrowed princess dress glittered under the chandelier. Her crown had slipped over one ear, and Button, her threadbare rabbit, dangled beneath her arm.

"I'm going to marry you when I grow up," she announced.

Eight men stopped eating.

At the head of the table, Alessandro lowered his knife.

He was an enormous man. Not just tall, although at six-foot-four he made the dining chairs look badly designed. Everything about him seemed deliberate: the broad shoulders beneath his black shirt, the dark hair pushed back from his forehead, the tattooed fingers resting beside a crystal glass.

Even his stillness took up space.

Sophie inspected him with interest.

"You'll have to wait quite a long time," she added. "I'm only four."

A man halfway down the table made a strangled noise into his napkin.

I put the platter on the nearest sideboard before I could drop it.

"Sophie Bennett."

She glanced back at me. "I'm talking, Mommy."

Then Alessandro laughed.

It was brief and rough, as if the sound had caught somewhere on its way out. The man beside him looked up so sharply that his fork struck his plate.

I reached my daughter and lifted her onto my hip.

"Mr. Romano, I'm sorry. Teresa was helping her change after the birthday party in the staff kitchen. I thought she was still there."

I could hear myself giving unnecessary details. Fear did that to me. It turned every sentence into an application for forgiveness.

"I got changed already," Sophie said. "I wanted him to see my crown."

"He has guests."

"They're all eating."

Alessandro's eyes moved from her face to mine.

I had worked in his house for twelve days. Until that evening, our longest conversation had concerned a delivery left at the wrong entrance.

"Your daughter," he said.

"Yes."

"I had gathered that," he replied.

Heat rose into my face. Someone at the table studied his wine with desperate concentration.

Sophie leaned toward Alessandro.

"Why do you have drawings on your hands?"

I tightened my hold on her.

"Sophie, we don't ask people—"

"Mommy says staring is rude," she explained to him. "You can tell me later."

His gaze dropped to the dark ink across his fingers. For one moment he looked less like a man answering an interruption and more like someone who had forgotten what his own hands looked like.

Then his expression closed.

"Take her upstairs, Miss Bennett."

"Of course."

I carried Sophie out before she could arrange any further engagements.

In the corridor, she pressed her mouth to my ear.

"Did he like my dress?"

"I think he was trying to eat dinner."

"He looked sad."

I stopped beside the staircase.

From the dining room came the quiet scrape of cutlery. Conversation had resumed, lower than before.

"Some people don't want company when they're sad," I told her.

She considered that, then tucked Button between us.

"I do."

I kissed the side of her head. "I know, sweetheart."

Our room was above the old carriage house, connected to the mansion by an enclosed passage. Teresa, the housekeeper, had offered it as part of my wages. There was a small bedroom, a bathroom, and a sitting room with a sofa that folded out if we ever had visitors.

We had no one to invite.

My mother had died five years earlier. Sophie's father had left during my pregnancy, answering fewer calls until he stopped answering altogether. I had spent the years since learning which bills could wait and which promises employers forgot when business slowed.

This position had meant regular pay, a preschool nearby, and a lock on a door that belonged to us for as long as I kept the job.

I sat on Sophie's bed while she fell asleep, still clutching the crown.

Then I packed.

I knew what everyone said about Alessandro Romano. He owned hotels, commercial buildings, and a logistics company that put his name on trucks all over Pennsylvania. Men with considerably more money than I had fell silent when he entered a room.

I knew something else, too.

Seven years earlier, his wife and their unborn baby had died in a car accident. Since then, children had rarely entered the mansion. Staff lowered their voices outside his study. Nobody used his wife's sitting room.

Perhaps nothing would happen after tonight.

Perhaps he would be perfectly reasonable.

I had built enough of my life around perhaps.

Before dawn, I dressed Sophie in her yellow sweater and a warm coat. She watched sleepily as I closed our one suitcase.

"Are we going on a trip?"

"We're going into town."

"Can we have pancakes?"

I checked the cash in my wallet without letting her see.

"We'll find some breakfast."

She accepted that answer. I hated how grateful I was.

Outside, the gravel was damp and the windows of the mansion reflected a pale gray sky. I pulled the suitcase with one hand and held Sophie's with the other.

We were halfway down the drive when a door opened behind us.

"Miss Bennett."

I turned.

Alessandro came down the steps alone. His hair was wet, his shirt open at the throat. Without the dinner guests and the long table between us, he looked younger than I had thought.

He still looked formidable.

His gaze moved to the suitcase.

"Where are you going?"

"I thought it would be better if we left."

"Better for whom?"

I couldn't think of an answer that would not sound insulting.

Sophie solved the problem by pulling free.

"Wait," she said.

She marched up to him and began searching her coat pocket.

"Sophie, come back here."

"I have to give him something."

Alessandro stopped in front of her. He did not bend, so she took his hand and tugged until he lowered it.

Into his palm she placed a smooth gray pebble.

A silver line ran through its center. She had found it beside the preschool fence and carried it for three days, convinced it had fallen from the moon.

"It's treasure," she said.

He stared at it.

"I can see that."

"You keep it when you're sad."

I approached slowly. "Sweetheart, Mr. Romano doesn't need—"

"You have me," she told me, as if that settled the distribution of valuables. Then she looked back at him. "Now you have something, too."

His fingers closed around the stone.

For a few seconds, he said nothing.

Then he looked at me.

"The child stays."

My embarrassment vanished.

"My daughter stays with me."

His gaze sharpened. I held it, although my heart was hammering.

"That is what I meant," he said.

"Then please say what you mean."

Silence settled between us. Sophie leaned against my leg, completely unaware that I had just spoken to my employer in a way his guests probably never dared.

Alessandro looked down at her, then back at me.

"Neither of you needs to leave because she interrupted dinner. You still have a job. Your rooms are still yours."

My throat tightened unexpectedly.

"I didn't know what you would do."

His expression changed, slightly.

"Apparently I have given people reason to wonder."

He stepped aside, leaving the driveway clear.

"You may go if you wish. But Teresa makes pancakes on Saturdays, and your daughter seems to be expecting some."

Sophie turned an accusing face toward me.

"You didn't tell me that."

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

I looked at the open drive, then at the suitcase.

"We forgot Button," Sophie said suddenly.

She had left him on the bench beside the service entrance while I put on her gloves.

Alessandro reached for the suitcase handle.

"Get the rabbit. We'll discuss your hours after breakfast."

"I can carry my own suitcase."

"I noticed."

He waited until I released it.

Inside, the entrance hall smelled of coffee. Sophie ran to the bench, rescued Button, then stopped beneath a framed photograph on the adjoining corridor wall.

I had passed it several times without looking closely.

Two women stood beneath a flowering tree.

Sophie pointed.

"Mommy, why does he have Grandma's picture?"

I moved closer.

The woman on the left wore a pale dress and a silver oval pendant.

My mother's pendant.

My mother's smile.

Behind me, Alessandro set down our suitcase.

And suddenly leaving was the last thing I could think about.