She could feel the silken rush of heat low in her core and she turned away, terrified he would somehow guess the crazy thoughts which were crowding her mind. ‘In that case, why don’t we get on with the tour?’ Her voice was artificially bright as she pointed an unsteady finger down towards one of the corridors leading off the Great Hall. ‘We can do the ground floor first.’
‘Perfetto,’he said, his brief smile almost making her want to weep because he looked so beautiful.
Niccolò followed the bright-haired woman through the shadowed rooms, forcing himself to concentrate on the panelled walls and worn flagstones and the jewel-coloured light spilling through the stained-glass windows. He looked around with a connoisseur’s eye and thought how beautiful the bare bones of the house were, and how much better it would look if some money were lavished on it.
‘This is the room where the original family chose to eat,’ his red-headed guide informed him chattily. ‘It gave them a little privacy, away from the watchful eyes of their servants.’
‘Sì, the ever-watchful eyes of servants,’ he observed. ‘Though in a house this size it would be impossible not to have them around.’
‘Yes, staff can be a bit of a double-edged sword, can’t they?’ she said, a slightly acid note entering her voice. ‘A bit like a trip to the dentist. You know you have to endure them, you just wish you didn’t have to.’
Her sharp interjection gave him the excuse he needed to study her again, but he didn’t stop to wonder what had motivated it because he was so captivated by the eyes which were gazing up at him. They really were the most extraordinary colour—as green as fresh pistachios and fringed by lashes the same colour as her hair. Her bare lips were curiously inviting and he found himself staring at them for a second longer than was necessary. Was that the reason why—to his unexpected delight—she actuallyblushed?
As if she had revealed too much of herself she turned her back on him, and now he was presented with the equally delectable sway of her buttocks, green silk gleaming enticingly as it moved over the fleshy globes. The pale red hair reached almost to her waist and he wondered how it might feel to run his fingers through the heavy strands. His heart was pounding and suddenly Niccolò felt alive. The bleakness which was clogging his heart seemed to have been granted a temporary amnesty by the sudden urgent needs of his body and he wanted to taste her. To cover those soft lips with his own. Yet the sting of desire was coupled with confusion—because he couldn’t recall such a fierce and indiscriminate hunger beyond his teenage years, when his behaviour had been governed by the unstoppable flood of hormones. His mouth hardened. And look what had happened as a result of that.
‘Are you looking at this as a family home?’ she questioned.
Her words burst the bubble of painful thoughts and he narrowed his eyes in question.
‘If...if you decide to buy, I mean,’ she added briskly. ‘There are...there are lots of good local schools nearby.’
Niccolò knew exactly what she was doing. Trying to establish whether or not he was single. It happened. In fact, it happened a lot of the time. A clumsy query prompted by a fruitless search for the outline of a wedding ring, or the image of a smiling baby on the home screen of his phone. The thought of that made his heart twist and he wanted to recoil with all the hurt which was still inside him, but years of self-discipline enabled him to stem his reaction with a brief tightening of his hands.
‘No, I don’t have any family,’ he clipped out. ‘And that situation isn’t going to change.’
‘Right,’ she said.
He knew he’d given her more information than was needed and wondered what had prompted his uncharacteristic disclosure. Was it to make her understand what kind of man he really was? To warn her that, while he acknowledged the powerful and unusual chemistry which was simmering between them, he wasn’t looking for a wife to grace this elegant abode. Or anywhere else. ‘If you must know, I’m looking for a property to develop in southern England.’
‘Develop?’The word triggered an instant reaction and she was staring at him as if he had just proposed conducting a sacrificial rite beneath the beamed ceilings of the ancient building. ‘You can’t do that!’ she blustered indignantly.
‘Why not?’
‘Because this is a Grade I listed property and there are strict rules concerning what you can and can’t do with it.’
‘What do you imagine I want to do with it?’ he demanded sarcastically. ‘Build a three-storey extension on the side and put in an underground swimming pool?’
‘I don’t know—you tell me!’ she flared back, as if he had touched a raw nerve. ‘We have far too many people coming to this part of the world, flashing their cash and trying to...’
‘Trying to what?’ he questioned as her words tailed away.
She shook her head, as if she had said too much. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘No, tell me. I’m curious.’ And he was, despite the fact that people rarely spoke to him with such insulting candour.
She shrugged and, in the subdued lighting, the dark green straps of her dress shimmered. ‘To change things.’
‘And you don’t like change?’
‘Does anyone?’ She seemed to remember that she was supposed to be helping sell her friend’s house and shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t mind the changes we’re in control of.’
Was there any such thing? Niccolò wondered. He thought of his dead sister. Of his mother. And the father who had never bothered to hide his contempt for him after the accident. He thought of a simple decision which could have changed the whole course of everybody’s lives, his own included—and how the nightmare would never have happened. But nobody could rewrite the past—no matter how much they wanted to, he reminded himself bitterly. It was the present which should be concerning him.
‘I’m not planning a major assault on a much-loved landmark building. I’m not totally without taste or sensitivity,’ he said quietly, because he wanted to wipe that melancholic expression from her face.
‘What are you planning to do with it, then?’ she ventured curiously, before adding, ‘If you buy it, that is.’
He curved her a smile. ‘Why don’t you have dinner with me tonight and I’ll tell you?’
