‘I just can’t stay here,’ she whispered unsteadily.
‘Fine,’ he said immediately. ‘Then we will go somewhere else.’
But the moment he began striding towards her she began to stiffen. ‘I want to be on my own,’ she murmured stubbornly.
‘No.’ The refusal was absolutely rock-solid. In any other situation he would have just taken hold of her and kissed her senseless, since he knew without a doubt that kissing was one sure way he could make her respond to him.
But that was just another scene they had played before, which now needed playing differently. So he sighed heavily and, ignoring her muttered protest, firmly turned her to face him.
‘Have you any idea how frail you look?’ he murmured gently. ‘Give yourself a break, Samantha. Give me one!’ he added. ‘One split-second swoon and you could be under the wheels of the nearest car out there. So I am asking you, please, to let me come with you…’
He wasn’t sure whether it was the please that did it, or the touch of his hands, or the way his eyes wanted to swallow her up whole. But something caused the wistful sigh of surrender.
‘Come if you want.’ She capitulated, then pulled out of his grasp.
Without hesitation he reached around her and opened the front door. Sunlight flooded into them. She stepped outside and paused to wait while he pulled the door shut behind them.
‘Where shall we go?’ he asked as he came to stand beside her.
‘The—the Bressingham,’ she responded unevenly. ‘I n-need to see what you’ve done to it…’
CHAPTER TWELVE
FROM the moment she stepped through its heavy oak and glass doors, Samantha felt the tears threatening to fall once again. Beside her, André stood silent and still, waiting for her first response.
‘It’s finished,’ she whispered.
‘With the greatest test yet to come.’ He smiled briefly, following her as she walked forward until she was standing in the middle of the foyer where she began to turn in a slow circle, taking in every dearly loved, perfectly reproduced detail as she did so.
‘Nothing’s changed.’ She breathed out eventually, in a fantastical voice that drew another mocking smile. ‘Okay.’ She allowed. ‘So everything has changed. But…’
She was truly overwhelmed by what she was seeing. In fact she found she couldn’t quite believe it. The last time she had been standing right here the whole place had been reduced to a building site. She had not long since buried her father, and it had felt like the end of a special era.
Now everything was back right where it should be. The same look, the same smell, the same aged patina on the same pieces of oak, felled centuries ago and since preserved by layers of lovingly applied beeswax, many of which she had applied herself. Even the same lazy old staircase ambled up to the mezzanine dining hall, she saw, whereas the last time she’d been here there had been only a great ugly hole.
Drawn towards it by a power stronger than will, she walked up a few steps with fingers trailing the rich dark wood banister as if she was making contact with a long-lost friend; then she turned to take in the scene from this new position.
Born in the hotel, she had lived here and worked here from the time she had been old enough to carry a plate without dropping it. Her soul resided here in this great old building. Her birth name hung above its doors. She knew every quaint nook and cranny, every piece of wood, every vase and ornament or gold-framed painting on the walls.
And everything, everything was back where it should be.
‘So…what do you think?’ André prompted.
It was like asking a new mother what she thought of her baby. ‘It’s…perfect,’ she whispered.
Oh, she wasn’t so lost to sentimentality to ignore the fact that there were, in truth, many changes. Having felt the weight of the two-inch-thick health and safety report, she was well aware that, behind this outer dressing, the hotel had been virtually gutted and rebuilt. But what had risen from the rubble turned her heart over.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, referring to what the architects and designers had managed to achieve.
‘Why?’ André’s deeply dry voice queried. ‘Did you expect me to put the Visconte stamp on it the moment your back was turned?’
If nothing else, his remark made her focus on him for the first time since they’d arrived here. He was still standing where she had left him, a lean, languid figure wearing an impeccably cut suit and a cynical smile.
Her own expression changed, cooled and hardened fractionally. ‘I would rather do this by myself if you’re bent on spoiling it for me,’ she said coolly, watching his cynical look change to a grimace in acknowledgment of her chilly set-down, and she looked away from him again.
‘Who took over the project after I—left?’ she asked after a moment.
He began walking towards her. ‘The whole thing came to a halt for a while,’ he confessed. ‘Then the contractors starting yelling at me to let them get on with it, so…’ He shrugged, paused to look around him. ‘The final result is pretty impressive,’ he opined. ‘I’m pleased that you are pleased with it.’
‘Is the rest of it as impressive?’
He declined the invitation to give an opinion. ‘I’ll let you be the judge of that.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she said as he drew level with her.
‘Which one was that?’ he posed.
‘About who took over the project after I left it.’
‘Only one other person was qualified to do so,’ he drawled with a self-mocking smile which sent her eyes wide in surprise.
‘You mean—you took it over?’
‘Don’t sound so shocked.’ He scolded. ‘Being the very busy, hotshot tycoon does not absolve me of the right to a few small pleasures in life.’
Her frown came back, along with a sigh in exasperation. ‘Is it me or yourself you’re mocking when you talk like that?’
‘Both of us, I think,’ he said, then added more neutrally, ‘Come and take a look at what we’ve done with the famous Bressingham dining room.’
He placed a light hand to her lower back to urge her to turn. Her spine arched away from the heat in his fingers. Without comment he dropped the hand again, and together they walked up the rest of the stairs with her body still tingling from the briefest of touches.
Nothing had changed here either, she saw, drawing to a stop at the top of the staircase to simply absorb what was to her the loveliest room in the building. This was where life happened at the Bressingham, she recalled poignantly. A place where the hum of conversation blended with the chink of silver on china, and people relaxed in comfortable chairs while enjoying food prepared by gifted magicians. And it all took place beneath the great crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, now beautifully restored to their original glory.
The old grand piano still stood in its corner. The same brick-dust-red paint still warmed the walls. All it needed was covers placed on the tables and she would almost believe she was standing here, by the same maître d’s station, waiting to be seated for a romantic dinner.
With the man she loved…
The tears threatened again, pressing like weights against her throat in their desire to escape as a new set of memories suddenly rose up to haunt her.
‘This is where we first met,’ André murmured, telling her that his own memories were coinciding with hers. ‘I’d come here for dinner and you were playing maître d’…
She’d glanced up from her table plan to find herself looking at the most gorgeous man she had ever set eyes upon. Samantha progressed the memory. Smooth and suave, breathtakingly sophisticated in a black silk dinner suit, he’d tossed a devastating grin at her, had touched a long finger to her black bow tie and had said, ‘Snap…’
‘You took my breath away.’ André took back the moment. ‘So much so that I think I said something really stupid, like “Snap” and touched your bow tie…’
Samantha swallowed. So did he.
&
nbsp; ‘As I drew my finger away it brushed the underside of your chin, and it was like touching a small piece of heaven…’
‘Don’t,’ she whispered unevenly.
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you think the ruthless rat of a tycoon should be allowed any sentimentality?’
‘I just don’t want to talk about it,’ she answered painfully.
‘Well, I do—’ And before she could do more than gasp out a protest, he placed his hands round her waist and, with the minimum of effort, picked her and plonked her back down again, right behind the old-fashioned maître d’ station.
Her eyes leapt up to his and her mouth parted to issue a stinging rebuttal. But instead the words clogged in her throat and she found herself locked into a painful replay of one of the most precious moments in her life.
‘That’s right.’ André growled. ‘Look all wide-eyed and startled, just as you did that evening, and remember, cara, just who it is you’re looking at!’ His hand came up, a finger settling beneath her chin. The skin there seemed to actually preen itself. ‘For I am the guy who took one look at you, with your glorious hair and sensational eyes, and skin like the smoothest substance I’ve ever known, and fell so head-over-heels in love with you that he would rather cut his own throat than ever hurt you!’
Angry—he was stunningly angry, she realised belatedly. All that cynicism and mockery had been hiding a deep and burning anger, which was now spitting out at her from eyes as cold as black diamonds in a face chiselled from the hardest rock.
‘Then, why did you?’ She hit right back at him, and if his eyes were hard hers were harder. With a toss of her head she dislodged the finger. ‘I gave every single cell of myself to you—and you threw it all right back in my face! That isn’t love, André! How dare you even call it that!’
‘Are we talking about Raoul here, or the Bressingham?’ he gritted.
‘Both,’ she said. ‘Both!’
A door opened somewhere below them. André turned like a serpent sensing attack as a woman in an overall walked across the foyer and disappeared through the door by reception.
‘Who was that?’ she questioned shakily.
‘A cleaner,’ he replied, swinging his eyes back to her with a new frustration burning in them, because the interruption had ruined the moment, and he knew he would never get it back. ‘There is a whole army of them around somewhere,’ he added, withdrawing his aggressive stance with a sigh. ‘Where to now?’ he asked coolly.
She shook her head, still shaking from their confrontation. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘I—y-you choose…’
But André didn’t want to choose. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her! ‘Can’t you see—can’t you tell what I’ve tried to do here?’ he bit out angrily.
‘Kept to the letter of your contract with my father.’ She nodded.
He sighed in frustration. ‘Any second now,’ he gritted, ‘I am going to kiss that closed mind of yours right out into the open.’
‘It is open,’ she declared.
The glance he threw her actually made her skin flinch. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, and threw her completely by walking away from her.
Watching him go, she felt a moment of sheer terror. No! she wanted to cry out. Don’t walk away! Don’t give up on me now, when I need you to justify your part in everything!
He stopped. She held her breath. Had she actually shouted those words out? Turning, he flicked her a lean look that told her nothing. ‘Are you coming?’
Her heart clattered into action, relief swimming about her head while another part of her wanted to remain aloof and defiant. ‘I—yes,’ she said, and stepped away from the maître d’ station. He turned his back and started walking again. She started to follow, acutely aware that, somehow, somewhere, control had shifted from her to André.
‘Wh-where are we going?’ Weakly she tried to grab it back again.
She hadn’t got it, she realised as soon as he answered. ‘Somewhere less…emotive to finish this conversation.’ He supplied, as if throwing down a gauntlet.
But there was no such place inside this building. The moment they stepped into her father’s old office, André realised his mistake, seeing the change come over her face. Maybe he shouldn’t be doing this now, he pondered grimly as he watched the memories close around her. Maybe he should wait, give her the time and the space she wanted to recover properly, before they dug into the real issues clamouring around both of them.
Damn it, he cursed silently. How could she start to recover without the full truth to help it to happen? Turning angrily away from his moment of uncertainty, he walked over to the place where anyone who had known the late Thomas Bressingham would also know he kept his private store of spirits. It was too early for whisky; André realised that. But right now he needed something.
‘Has this room been touched at all?’
Her voice sounded thick with unshed tears. Grimacing, André added an extra tot to the glass. ‘Other than being brought up to Health and Safety standards, no,’ he replied, failing to add that it had been his strict instruction that nothing in this room must be touched unless it was absolutely necessary.
Strangely, though, he hadn’t issued that instruction out of consideration for Samantha’s feelings. He had done it for his own. He might possess a long string of premier-class hotels, but even to him the Bressingham was special… Just as Thomas Bressingham had been a special kind of man. This overcrowded, very male-orientated, private office held in its very walls some part of what had made his father-in-law special. He could never put his finger on exactly what that was, but he could always feel it when he stepped in here.
A little as his very tactile wife was feeling it now, he likened when he turned with his glass to find her wandering about the room, gently touching things with the caressing hand of a lifelong lover.
But then, she belonged in here too. A Bressingham. The last in a long line of Bressinghams.
‘Let’s talk about your father,’ he said.
A light came on in her eyes then was instantly doused again. ‘He loved this place.’ She sighed out tragically.
Grimacing at the claim, André mentally took a deep breath—and went for broke. ‘But he loved you one hell of a lot more, cara…’
If he’d put a whip to her hide Samantha could not have been more offended. ‘Because he was prepared to buy me the man I loved by giving this place to him?’ she suggested painfully.
That was it. He might as well have said it. Samantha watched him put down his glass and close the gap between them with a swiftness that sent the breath deep into her lungs. Hands gripped her shoulders, heat speared through her body, catching fire…catching fire as it always did when he touched her. His eyes glittered down on her like black storms of biting fury and, with a small shake, he compelled her to listen and believe what he was about to say to her.
She wanted to refute it, even before she’d heard it; she knew she desperately; desperately needed to refute what was coming. When he opened his mouth to speak she almost, almost flattened her own against it just to stop him from speaking.
Then he began, his voice hard-edged with honesty. ‘Your father did not give me this place to buy me, Samantha,’ he told her very precisely. ‘He gave it to me because he was broke.’
Full stop. No elaboration. His eyes said, Believe it. His silence said, Accept it.
‘No.’ she choked the denial of both.
‘Yes,’ he insisted, not angrily but so calmly that she knew it was the truth. ‘He knew he was sick. He knew he was broke, and he knew that Health and Safety were threatening to close him down if he didn’t spend millions bringing the hotel up to modern standards. So who better to pay the price than the very wealthy, very besotted future son-in-law?’
The cynicism was back. Shocked horror contracted her pupils until there was nothing left but dark green circles of truth. ‘You think I set you up!’ She gasped.
He released a hard la
ugh. ‘I am not that short on self-esteem,’ he returned then let go of her and turned to walk back to his drink.
But his hand was shaking as he lifted the glass to his lips. ‘I don’t believe you.’ She charged him. ‘It’s the reason why you didn’t trust me… Why you could believe Raoul’s version of what happened that night instead of mine!’
‘Let’s stick to one problem before we starting dealing with another,’ he clipped.
‘If you drink one more sip of that whisky, André, you will have to suffer me driving you home!’
He rounded on her furiously. ‘Who said we are leaving together?’
It shook her to the core. On a wave of hollowing weakness she stumbled into the nearest chair. The air throbbed, the anger roared like a lion in the sudden silence. He set down his glass; she pushed trembling fingers to her brow, where the muddle of memories were still struggling to sort themselves out.
‘Ex-explain about the Bressingham, then,’ she prompted eventually, taking his advice and trying, trying to stick to one problem at a time. But it was difficult, because they merged like two parts of the same whole and she couldn’t seem to separate them.
On a harsh sigh, he sank down onto the edge of her father’s desk, shoved his hands in his pockets, then sighed again.
‘Your father knew he was ill. He needed money. So naturally he came to me.’ His voice was no longer harsh, but just heavy. ‘I offered to bail him out—no strings attached. But he was too damned proud to let me do that. So he came up with his idea of an acceptable alternative,’ he explained, his tone alone telling her that it hadn’t been as acceptable to him. ‘He would give me the Bressingham on the promise that I would do what was necessary to keep it open. And I was to mention none of it to you,’ he added wearily.
‘But why?’ she questioned.
‘Why do you think?’ He sighed. ‘His precious daughter must be worried by nothing. Her wedding day was coming up. She had caught her prince. He wanted to—’
‘If you don’t stop tossing words like insults at me, I will probably pick up something heavy and throw it at you.’ Samantha cut in.
The Unforgettable Husband Page 14