by Jennie Lucas
‘I would rather boil in oil,’ she said looking down her nose at him. ‘You have no right to speak to me this way. I’ve done nothing to encourage you to think I...I fancy you.’ Or at least not since I was a silly little
sixteen-year-old. ‘You have no place in my life. You never have and you never will.’
He leaned back in his chair with an indolent look. ‘I’m at the centre of your life, baby girl,’ he said. ‘You can’t do a thing without me. I could cut off your allowance right here and now if I thought it was warranted.’
Bella felt her heart slam against her ribcage. ‘You can’t do that.’ Please God, you can’t do that.
‘You need to have another look at the fine print on your father’s will,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you check it out? I have the number of the lawyer in my phone.’
Bella looked at the mobile phone he was holding up. She swallowed once, twice. She suspected he wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true. Her father’s will was incredibly complicated. She had read it years ago but it had been full of the sort of legalese that made it almost indecipherable. The financial-guardianship arrangement with Edoardo only made it a thousand times worse. ‘What do I have to do to prove I’m old enough to make my own decisions, including choosing the man I want to marry?’ she asked.
He studied her features for a moment, his gaze unnervingly steady on hers. ‘I have no problem with you marrying,’ he said. ‘I just want to be sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.’
She frowned at him. ‘What other reason could there be other than I love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him?’
‘People get married for lots of reasons,’ he said. ‘Mutual convenience, sharing familial wealth, arrangements between families—to name just a few.’
‘Why is it so hard for you to accept that I’m truly in love?’ she asked.
‘What do you love about him?’
Bella found his direct look rather confronting. It made her feel as if he was seeing right inside her to where she kept her insecurities stashed away. She didn’t want to be questioned on her love for Julian. She just loved him. He was perfect for her; he made her feel special.
He made her feel safe.
She shifted her gaze to the left of Edoardo’s and answered, ‘I love that he devotes so much of his time and energy to people less fortunate. He cares about people. All people. He can talk to anyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor. He makes no distinction.’
There was a ticking silence.
‘Anything else?’ he asked.
She moistened her dry lips. ‘I love that he loves me and he’s not afraid to say it.’
‘Words are cheap,’ he said. ‘Anyone can say them. The point is whether there’s any truth in them in their actions.’
Bella gave him a direct look of her own. ‘Have you ever been in love?’
His mouth cocked up at one side as if he found the notion amusing. ‘No.’
‘You seem very certain about that.’
‘I am.’
‘Not even a teensy, weensy little crush?’
‘No.’
‘So you just have sex for the physical release it offers?’ she asked.
His eyes seemed to heat and smoulder the longer they held hers. ‘It’s the only reason I have sex.’ He paused for a beat as his gaze continued to stoke hers. ‘What about you?’
Bella felt a tremor of unruly forbidden desire roll through her like a bowling ball pitched down a steep descent. Her body shook and sizzled with it, every sensitive nerve suddenly awake and alert. She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs under the table, but if anything it concentrated the wicked sensations in the secret heart of her. It was as if he had a direct line to her womanhood by just looking at her. He was stroking her with his gaze, making love to her with his mind. She could see it in his expression—the knowing curve of his sensual lips and the slightly hooded gaze as it focused on her mouth.
She felt his kiss as surely as if he had closed the distance between them and pressed his mouth to hers. Her lips buzzed and tingled. Her tongue grew restless inside her mouth in its hunger to feel his mate with it. Her breasts felt full and sensitive behind the lace of her bra. Her knickers were damp. She could feel the moisture seeping from her and wondered if he had any idea of how much sensual power he had over her.
Of course he did.
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
Bella felt a blush steal across her cheeks. ‘That’s because it’s none of your business.’
‘You asked me first,’ he pointed out. ‘Fair’s fair, and all that.’
She pressed her lips together for a moment. ‘Sex is an important part of an intimate relationship,’ she said. ‘It’s a chance to connect on both a physical and emotional level. It builds a stronger bond between two people who care about each other.’
‘You sound like you just read that from a textbook,’ he said, his mouth still cocked mockingly. ‘How about you tell me what you really think?’
Bella felt her flush deepen. It seemed to spread all over her body. She felt hot. Scorching hot. She had never had a conversation like this with anyone, not even with one of her girlfriends.
Sex was something she’d had to work at. She had never felt all that comfortable with her body. She had spent most of the time during sex worrying if the cellulite on her thighs was showing or whether her partner was comparing her breasts to other women’s.
As for her pleasure, well, that was another thing she wasn’t too confident about. She had never been able to have an orgasm with a partner. She just wasn’t able to relax or feel comfortable enough to let herself go.
That was why Julian had been such a refreshing change from her previous dates. He had never pressured her for sex. He had told her he was celibate and intended to stay that way until he was married. He had made a promise to God, and he was going to keep it. She had found that so endearing, so admirable, she had decided he would be the perfect husband for her.
‘I think sex means different things to different people,’ she finally said. ‘What’s right for one person might not be right for another. It’s all a matter of feeling comfortable enough to express yourself in a...sexual way.’
‘How do you know if you’ll be comfortable with this Julian fellow?’ he asked.
Bella picked up her wine glass for something to do with her hands. ‘Because I know he’ll always treat me with the utmost respect,’ she said. ‘He believes sex is God’s gift to be treasured, not something to be dishonoured by selfish demands.’
He gave a little snort. ‘You mean he’ll pray before he peels back the sheets on your wedding night.’
She gave him a withering look. ‘You are such a heathen.’
‘And you are a silly little fool,’ he threw back. ‘You haven’t got a clue what you’re getting yourself into. What if he’s hiding who he really is? What if this celibacy thing is just a ruse to get his hands on your money?’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’
‘I mean it, Bella,’ he said, his blue-green gaze suddenly intense and serious. ‘You are one of the richest young women in Britain. It’s no wonder men are beating a steady path to your door.’
Bella froze him with her stare. ‘I don’t suppose it has ever occurred to you that it might be because of my dazzling beauty and vivacious personality?’
He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something but then closed it. He let out a long breath and pushed back a thick lock of his hair that had fallen forward on his forehead. ‘Your beauty and personality are without question,’ he said. ‘I just think you need to be a little more objective about this.’
She sat back in her chair with a thump. ‘Thus speaks the man who measures everything by checks and balances,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t y
ou do things sometimes just because it feels right?’
His eyes remained steady on hers. ‘Gut feeling doesn’t cut it with me,’ he said. ‘It’s too easy to allow your emotional investment in something or someone to cloud your judgement. The heavier the investment, the harder it is to see things and people for what or who they are.’
‘How did you get so cynical?’ Bella asked.
His eyes moved away from hers as he reached to top up their wine glasses. The sound of the wine making a glock-glock-glock noise as it poured out of the bottle was deafening in the silence. ‘Born that way,’ he said.
‘I don’t believe that.’
He met her gaze, his mocking half-smile back in place. ‘Still trying to save my sorry soul, Bella?’ he asked. ‘I thought you gave up on that little mission years ago.’
‘Have you told anyone about your childhood? About where you came from?’ she asked.
A mask slipped over his features like a dust sheet over a piece of furniture. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘You must have had parents,’ she said. ‘A mother, at least. Who was she?’
‘Leave it, Bella.’
‘You must remember something about your childhood,’ Bella pressed on. ‘You can’t have blocked everything out. You weren’t born a teenager with authority issues. You were once a baby, a toddler, a young child.’
He let out a short, impatient-sounding breath and reached for his glass. ‘I don’t remember much of my childhood at all,’ he said and drank a deep mouthful of his wine.
Bella watched his Adam’s apple go up and down. Even though his expression was masked, there was anger in the action as he swallowed the liquid—anger and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. ‘Tell me what you do remember,’ she said.
The silence was long and brooding, the air so thick it felt like the ceiling had slowly lowered, compressing all the oxygen.
Bella continued to search his features. The stony mask had slipped just a fraction. She could see the flicker of a blood vessel in his temple. The grooves beside his mouth deepened as if he was holding back a lifetime of suppressed emotion. His nostrils flared as he took a breath. His eyes hardened to granite. His fingers around his glass tightened until she could see the whitening of his knuckles.
‘Why did you get kicked out of all those foster homes?’ she asked.
His eyes collided with hers. They were dark with a glitter that made the backs of her knees go fizzy again. ‘Why do you think I was kicked out?’ he asked with a tilt of his lips that looked more like a snarl than a smile. ‘I was a rebel. A lost cause. Bad to the core. Beyond salvation.’
Bella swallowed a thick knot in her throat. He was so intimidating when he was in this mood but she was determined to find out more about him. His enigmatic nature intrigued her. She had always found his aloof, keep-away-from-me manner compellingly attractive. ‘What happened to your parents?’ she asked.
‘They died.’ He said the words as if they meant nothing to him. He showed no emotion at all. Not even a flicker. His face was like a marble statue, a blank, impenetrable mask.
‘So you were an orphan?’ Bella prompted.
‘Yeah, that’s me.’ He gave a little laugh as he swirled the contents of his glass. ‘An orphan.’
‘Since when?’ she asked. ‘I mean, how old were you when your parents died?’
It seemed like a full year before he spoke; Bella waited out each pulsing second of the long, protracted silence. It was a silent battle of wills, but somehow she suspected the battle was not between her and him. It was between two parts of himself: the aloof loner who didn’t need anyone and the man behind the mask who secretly did.
‘I don’t remember my father,’ he said with the same blank, indifferent expression.
‘He died when you were a baby?’ she guessed.
‘Yes.’ There was still no emotion. No grief or sense of loss.
Bella moistened her lips, waiting a beat or two before asking, ‘What happened?’
At first she didn’t think he was going to answer. The silence stretched and stretched interminably.
‘Motorbike accident,’ he finally said. ‘He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Can’t have been pretty.’
Bella winced. ‘What about your mother?’
A tiny, almost imperceptible spasm tugged at the lower quadrant of his jaw. ‘I was five,’ he said and twirled his wine again, his eyes staring down at the liquid as it splashed against the sides of the glass.
‘What happened to her?’
‘She died.’
‘How?’
There was another silence before he spoke. A bruised silence. ‘Suicide.’
She gasped. ‘Oh, my God, that’s terrible.’
He gave a careless shrug. ‘It wasn’t much of a life for her once my father died.’ He tipped back his head and drained his glass, setting it down on the table with a little thump.
Bella frowned as she thought of him as a young motherless boy. She had been totally devastated when her mother had driven away that day, but at least she had known her mother was still alive. How had Edoardo coped with losing his mother so young? ‘Your father was Italian, wasn’t he?’
‘Yep.’
‘And your mother?’
‘English,’ he said. ‘She met my father while on a working holiday in Italy.’
‘Who looked after you after she died?’
He put his napkin next to his plate and pushed back from the table, his expression closing like a door that had been clicked shut on a sliver of a view. ‘Fergus needs to go outside,’ he said. ‘He’s too stiff to use the pet door now.’
Bella sat back with a frown pulling at her forehead as she watched him stride from the room. He had told her things she was almost certain he hadn’t even told her father. Her father had said Edoardo had always refused to speak of his early childhood and he wasn’t to be pressured to reveal things he didn’t want to reveal. She, like her father, had assumed it had been because Edoardo was ashamed of his background, given that it was so different from theirs. His youth had been misspent on rebellious behaviour that had alienated him from the very people who had wanted to help him. He had used the very words the authorities would have used to describe him: a rebel, a lost cause, bad to the core, beyond salvation. Was he really all or any of those things? What had happened to make him so distrustful of people? What had made him the closed-off enigma he was today?
And why on earth did it matter to her to find out? It wasn’t as if it was any of her business.
He was her enemy.
He hated her as much as she hated him.
She chewed at her lower lip as she looked at his empty chair. It shouldn’t matter to her what had happened to him. He had been surly and uncommunicative for as long as she had known him. He had clearly inveigled his way into her father’s trust and taken control of her life. He had done nothing but taunt and ridicule her from the moment she had turned up at what used to be her house. He was threatening to ruin her wedding plans. He was the spanner in the works, the fly in the ointment, the brick wall she had to climb over or knock down.
It shouldn’t matter... But somehow—rather surprisingly—it did.
CHAPTER FOUR
EDOARDO waited for Fergus to sniff every tree and shrub in the garden as the moon watched on with its wise and silent silver eye. The air was cold and fresh; the smell of the damp earth was like breathing in a restorative potion.
It cleared his head.
It grounded him.
It reminded him of how far he had moved from his previous life—a life where he’d had no control. No hope. Only pain and miserable, relentless suffering.
Haverton Manor was his sanctuary, the only place he had ever called home. The only place he had ever wanted to call home.
He clenched his fists and then slowly released them. The past was in the past and he should not have let Bella get under his skin enough to pick at the hard crust that covered what was left of his soul. Inside him were wounds he would allow no one to see. The scars he wore on the outside of his body were nothing to the ones on the inside. He could not bear pity. He could not stomach people’s interest in what he wanted to forget. He didn’t want to be painted as a victim. He had no time for people who saw themselves as victims.
He was a survivor.
He would not allow his past to cast a shadow over his future. He had proved all his critics wrong. He had made something of himself. He had used every opportunity Godfrey Haverton had offered him to better himself. He was educated. He was wealthy. He had everything he had ever dreamed of when he had been that cowering child shrinking away from the drunken blows of a cruel and sadistic stepfather. He had pictured his future in his head as a way to block out what was happening to him: he had pictured the luxury cars, the lush, rolling fields of a country estate, the opulent mansion, the beautiful women and the designer clothes.
He had made it come true.
Haverton estate was his: every field and pasture, every hill and hillock, the lake, the woods and most importantly the manor—his very own regal residence, the ultimate symbol of having left his past well and truly behind.
No one would be able to take it off him. No one could toss him out on the street in the cold and wet. No one could deny him a roof over his head.
When he was a child he had dreamed of owning a place such as this. His very own fortress, his castle and his base. His home.
Godfrey had known how important the manor was to him: it was the first place he had felt safe. The first place he had put down roots. The first place he had discovered friendship and loyalty. Within these walls he had learned all he needed to learn in order to make something of his life. Before he had come here he had been close to giving up. He had gone beyond the point of caring what happened to him. But Godfrey had woken something in him with his quiet, patient way. He hadn’t pressured him to open up. He hadn’t bribed him or coerced him in any way. He had simply planted the seeds of hope in Edoardo’s mind, seeds that had grown and grown until Edoardo had started to see the possibility of changing his life, becoming something other than a victim of circumstance and cruelty.