It was almost as if her room at Easton Hall had been lifted complete and placed here. Her bed. The rocking chair in the corner that used to be her father’s. The rug on the floor. The paintings on the walls.Everything, down to the sketch pad and pens on the bedside table. Matteo stood at the door, head cocked to the side. Watching her. Not as if she were someone strange. But with a look on his face that was softer than she’d seen before.
Her heart filled with something warm and bright as the sunshine outside. A sensation gifting her that most cherished of feelings,hope, that in the mess of all of this, something could go right for once.
She didn’t know what to do, what to say. It overwhelmed her. Instead, she ran to Matteo and simply hurled herself into him. He caught her with an ‘oof’ and then his strong arms wrapped round her. Keeping her together. Keeping her safe. Like the night he’d carried her out of Easton Hall when she’d been too paralysed to move.
Tears prickled her eyes.
‘Thank you. It’s everything I could have wanted,’ she said, her voice cracking. Burying her face into his muscular chest. His heart thumping a steady, comforting beat. Other things came to her awareness. How solid he was. The heat and muscle of him. His stance didn’t change, but something about him relaxed into her. The way they began meld together. His hands loosely stroking up and down her spine. She breathed him in, the scent of freshly laundered clothes and the spicy scent she’d begun to associate with him in the car...
She craved to simply absorb him into her. Have him fill every empty space. Her nipples tightened in her bra. Heat built between her legs. Naked want became like a living thing. Grabbing her by the throat, leaving her breathless. He shifted his legs, spread them a little wider, his hand on her back drifting a little lower before stopping. He loosened his arms, and she looked up at him, tears pooling in her eyes. Not caring that he could see the emotion.
‘You can’t know what this means to me.’
‘I wanted to make you feel at home.’
His eyelids were hooded, golden brown eyes almost drowned out by his fathomless pupils. His lashes, impossibly long. Stubble darkening his angular jaw. Matteo’s lips parted as if trying to get more air, then his gaze flicked. To her eyes, lips, throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed in a swallow.
She wished she could be the sort of woman who’d know what to do here, rather than a person who sketched her fantasies instead of acting them out for real. If she were the type of person who took chances, she might get up on her toes and press her lips to his. But chances meant risk and risk had ceased to have any part in her life, long ago.
She tried to give him a happy smile, which halted with the merest of frowns creasing his brow as she stepped back from his embrace. Trying to pretend that nothing had happened, when it was as if the world had tilted on its axis.
‘How did you manage it? I thought we couldn’t go into the house.’
‘You’d be surprised what I’m able to do,’ he said.
She wasn’t, not now. Louisa thought he could achieve just about anything he put his mind to. Somewhere in the far reaches of her consciousness that realisation sounded a prickle of warning, but she was too overcome to pay it any attention.
‘I heard you talking to the stylist about your clothes. I’m having them professionally cleaned. The soft furnishings were smoke damaged, but I requested as close a facsimile as I could get for your room here.’
‘I-it’s very kind of you.’ What more could she say? She was completely overcome by the thought and his generosity.
He shrugged. ‘It’s okay.’
The unmoved expression on his face told her he thought it was nothing.
‘You don’t understand.’ She shook her head. How to make him see that this meant something more? ‘It shows that you thought of me. For so many years, people only thought of themselves. This is rare, because in my life not many people have been kind.’
Kind? He wasn’t kind. Other words were routinely used to describe him. Business magazines called him driven. His opposition called him ruthless. Women he dated might have called him focussed during the early stages, then remote just before their fling inevitably ended. He was a man who got what he wanted, and one wordneverused to describe him was kind.
He’d brought her things to Italy for his own ends because he wanted her comfortable.Comfortablewas the place where he would encourage her to relinquish her right to reside. She’d see a world not to fear, but to explore. Why would she ever want to go back to Easton Hall after that?
Matteo turned and walked to the window, placing his hands on the ledge, pretending to look at the magnificent view he never really had the time to stop and take in anymore. Willing himself not to turn round, take Louisa into his arms again. Kiss her. He almost laughed. Akindman wouldn’t be thinking those thoughts.
It had been another moment with Louisa in his arms. The softness of her body. The curves. The warmth. With another woman, he might explore the situation. But he was no fool. There was no way she could be anything other than entirely innocent. Whilst he was all for something more casual, for a woman like her with sex would come love. They walked hand in hand, which was why in the past he’d only dated woman with the same sense of world-weariness as himself. Women who knew what they wanted, took it when offered, and walked away. This was a woman who’d want romance and gentle words, seduction and softness. Eliciting her sighs of pleasure. They’d be the sweetest of music...
Why was he even thinking of that? None of these things were for him. He didn’t do romance. He certainly didn’t do love. He didn’t know what it was. His childhood had proven to him that it didn’t exist.
Those thoughts were enough to crush any desire right out of him. He realised long ago that his sole purpose in life was to succeeddespitehis family, to exact his revenge of taking their most prized possession. His success was the only thing that made people want him. Buzzing about like bees to the wealthy honeypot. It was how it had always been, people wanting him, not for who he was, the orphaned boy, but what he could provide them. For his parents, being an heir until his sister was born and he was cast aside. As for others, it was all about his power, his position. At least people were transparent that way. No longer would anyone fool him into believing they wanted Matteo Bainbridge theman. It was easier to know they wanted him for material things. Life was predictable then. There were no cruel surprises.
Matteo took a deep breath. He couldn’t stare out of the window indefinitely. There was more he needed to show her. He turned round and Louisa was looking about the room. For the first time since leaving Easton Hall she seemed calmer. All of her, smoothed out. A slight smile on her face as her gaze fell on all of her familiar things. He wanted her to look at him again as if he was a man who could solve all her problems. There was something gratifying about it, something that stroked an ego he didn’t even realise was important to him. If it could get him what he wanted in the end? All the better.
‘There’s more to show you,’ he said.
‘More? Haven’t you done enough with this?’
She swept her arms wide around the room. This was nothing. Paying an engineer to urgently assess the living spaces of Easton Hall to safely allow people to collect her things. Hiring a team of interior decorators to find what matched the items that were smoke-and-water-damaged, fit everything in. Sure, he might have told them what room he thought suited best in the villa. The one with the finest view because Lake Como was beautiful at this time of the year.
But it happened because of his money, for no other reason.
