Benjamin folded his arms over his chest as he waited for Freya’s response. Since opening the door and stepping into the newly revealed room, she hadn’t moved a muscle. He didn’t think she’d even taken a breath.
‘What do you think?’ he asked roughly. His heart beat heavily through the tightness in his chest, his stomach twisting.
She shook her head, her throat moving, then slowly turned her head to look at him. Her black eyes were wide and shining. ‘You did this...for me?’
‘You’re a professional dancer. You need to practise.’
She needed to dance. Freya was a woman with ballet flowing in her veins, ballet the air she breathed. To deny her the opportunity to dance in the chateau was tantamount to torture.
She raised a hand that had a slight tremor in it to her mouth. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You can say whether you like it or not,’ he commented wryly.
She blinked and gave a muffled laugh. ‘I can’t believe this.’
‘Is it suitable for your needs?’
‘It’s perfect. Beautiful. Just beautiful. And it’s so light and high.’ She drifted forward into the centre of the huge room, her head now turning in all directions, then stopped when she caught his reflection in the walled mirror. Her forehead creased. ‘How did you do it? When did you do it?’
‘This week. When we agreed to marry.’
‘But how?’
‘By calling the director of a Parisian ballet company for guidance and employing a top building team.’
‘But how?’ she repeated.
‘By paying them ten times their usual rate to stop what they were doing to make it happen. I had hoped it would be completed for our wedding so I could surprise you with it then but there was a delay with the flooring.’ Specialist flooring for dancers.
‘How?’ she virtually shrieked, bouncing on her toes and waving her arms in the air. ‘From conception to finished product in...what? Five days? How is that even possible? How many rooms were knocked down?’
‘Only three.’
‘Only? You knocked three rooms into...this, and I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t hear anything or see anything, not even a single contractor.’
‘They used the tradesman’s entrance. The walls were knocked down when you were on your walks.’
‘But...’
‘No more questions about it. It is done and it is for you. I appreciate you will not spend many nights here once your break is over but this is your home now and when you are here I want you to feel at home.’
The animation that had overtaken her limbs disappeared as she stilled. An emotion he didn’t recognise flickered over her face. She chewed at her lip as she stared at him, the intensity of her gaze seeming to cut through the distance between them and burn straight in his chest...
Backing away from her with lungs so tight he could hardly pull air into them, he said, ‘I have work to get on with so I shall leave you to enjoy your new dance studio. If there is anything you are not happy with, tell me and we shall change it.’
He left the studio in quick strides and had reached the top of the stairs when she called after him. ‘Benjamin?’
It was the first time she’d called him by his name.
‘Oui?’
‘Thank you.’
‘De rien. Enjoy your dancing. I will see you at dinner.’
* * *
Freya sat in the middle of the wonderful dance studio Benjamin had created, just for her, soaking it all in with a heart thumping so madly she was surprised her ribs didn’t crack with the force.
This was a studio every little girl who dreamed of being a ballerina dreamed of dancing in. The left wall was a mirror, the rest painted soft white, a barre traversing the entire room, broken only by a huge round window at the far end, a floor-to-ceiling cupboard by the door and a beautiful high table next to it.
Eventually she pulled herself out of her stupor, got to her feet and opened the cupboard.
Inside it lay rows of pointe shoes, rows of ballet slippers all lying below a row of assorted practice outfits. They were all her exact size.
Further exploration revealed the tools needed to soften the pointe shoes and she pounced on them with glee.
Ignoring the cosy armchair placed in the corner, she sat cross-legged on the floor and began to massage the stiff toe cup, then, when she felt it was softened sufficiently, moved on to the shank, the hard sole that supported the arch of her foot, and gently bent it back and forth at the three-quarter mark. When she was happy with both shoes—by now convinced Benjamin had got Compania de Ballet de Casillas own shoemakers to provide them for her, the shoes’ response to her well-practised manipulations rendering the alcohol spray and hammer often used to soften them redundant—she stripped her clothes off, pulled on a pair of tights and a leotard, and put the softened pointe shoes on, binding the ribbons securely.
Atop the table next to the cupboard sat a small sound system. Preloaded into it was the music for every ballet that had ever been created.
She found the music to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, still her favourite after all these years, and pressed play.
Music filled the room, startling her into spinning round and gazing up at the ceiling where she spotted small, unobtrusive speakers placed at strategic intervals.
She covered her mouth as fresh emotion filled her.
Benjamin had done this, all of this, for her.
She blinked to focus herself and stood by the barre to begin simple stretching exercises that would warm her body and limber her up. A dancer’s life was fraught with injury and not doing enough of a warm-up beforehand was a shortcut to a sprain or strain, as was a hard floor that didn’t have any buoyancy for the inevitable falls.
Benjamin had had a semi-sprung sub-floor fitted that would be the perfect cushion for her falls.
The exercises she did were moves she had made thousands of times and the familiarity of them and the comfort of the music settled her stomach into an ease she had begun to fear she would never find again.
Her mind began to drift as it always did when doing her barre exercises alone. She imagined herself dancing the balcony scene where Romeo and Juliet danced the pas de deux, imagining it as she always did when visualising this scene, with a faceless partner.
But this time the imaginary faceless partner didn’t remain faceless for long.
It was Benjamin’s face that flowed through her mind, his strong arms around her waist then lifting her into the air, his green eyes burning with longing into hers...
An ache ripped through her, pulling the air from her lungs with its force, the strength so powerful that she dragged herself from her trance-like state to rush to the sound system and skip to the Dance of the Knights, breathing heavily, fear gripping her.
A knock on the door should have been a welcome distraction but what if it was him, catching her now, at this moment when she couldn’t trust herself not to fly into his arms and beg him to make love to her again?
Benjamin had stolen her, she reminded herself, again, desperately.
She had insisted on this marriage because there had been no other choice.
But Benjamin had knocked down three rooms in his chateau to create a dance studio any ballerina would want to die in, and he had done that for her. He’d been under no obligation. He got nothing out of it for himself.
This was the man who had almost bankrupted himself so his mother could live the last of her life in beauty.
Her heart heavy though a little calmer, she braced herself before opening the door.
Christabel stood there with a tray and a smile. ‘Monsieur Guillem thought you would be hungry. Chef has made you a whole grain tortilla wrap with avocado, chicken, tomato and lettuce. She can make you something else if...’
‘This is perfect,’ Freya interrupted with a grateful smile. Benjamin’s chef had proven herself to be a shining star, keen to provide the resident ballerina with the nutritious meals she depended on an
d make them as appetising as they could be. Freya had never eaten so well and had not been in the least surprised to learn the chef had once been awarded her own Michelin star.
Once Christabel had gone, Freya poured herself a glass of iced water from the jug delivered with her wrap and ignored the armchair to sit on the curved ledge of the enormous round window.
Chewing slowly, she gazed out. The window overlooked the back garden giving her the perfect view to appreciate the stunning landscape, including the cherubic fountain in the centre that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the palace of Versailles.
Slowly but surely she was starting to appreciate the beauty of Benjamin’s chateau without angry eyes, like a filter being removed from the lens to reveal it in all its glory.
This was a chateau childish dreams were made of.
And now, with this wonderful studio, she had a place in it that was all her own.
Maybe one day it really would feel like home to her.
When she was about to pop the last bite of her delicious wrap into her mouth, her heart leapt into it instead as she saw Benjamin stroll by talking animatedly on his phone.
Her leaping heart began to beat so hard it became a heavy thrum and she found herself unable to tear her eyes away. Her suddenly greedy eyes soaked in everything about him, from the way his long, muscular legs filled the black jeans he wore and the way his muscles bunched beneath his black T-shirt...he had changed his clothing since he had left her in the studio. Even with her distance she could see how untamed his thick black hair had become and the shadow on his jaw hinting at black stubble about to break free... She had never seen a more rampantly masculine sight and it filled her with a longing that kept her rooted, right until the moment he turned his head.
She pressed her back into the curve of the window quickly before he could look up and see her staring down at him.
* * *
‘You are happy with your studio?’ Benjamin asked that evening as they dined together. This evening he had decided to eat the same meal as Freya, pork tenderloin with a lentil salad that he found, to his utmost surprise, to be extremely tasty. It wasn’t quite hitting the spot the way his rich meals usually did but that would be rectified by the cheeses he liked to finish his meals with.
She lifted her eyes from her plate to his and gave a dreamy sigh. ‘It’s...perfect. I’m still rather overawed, to be honest.’
‘As long as you are happy with it that is all that matters.’ He reached for his glass of white wine. Freya, as usual, had stuck to water, the wine glass laid out for her as usual remaining empty.
‘I am.’ She looked, if not happy, then more content than he had ever seen her. Her time spent in her new studio seemed to have freed something inside her, all her hostility towards him gone.
‘Bien. I hope you are as happy with the houses my employee has found for you. I’ve had him searching for an apartment in Madrid...’ he found himself almost choking at the word ‘...and a house in London as per the terms of our contract. He has narrowed them down to a choice of five for each. I will forward the email with all the details to you later.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I assume you will want to view your preferred ones?’
‘Just the London ones. The Madrid apartment is only going to be somewhere for me to sleep so don’t bother with anything fancy as it will be a waste.’
The relief at this was dimmed by what it represented. If she only intended to use the Madrid apartment as a base to rest her head, what did that mean for the London house?
‘I have appointments in Greece on Friday but we can fly over on Saturday. Tell me which ones you like the look of and I will get Giles to book viewings.’
He waited for her to respond, his sharp eyes noting she was rubbing the napkin between her fingers.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked when her silence continued.
She pulled her lips in together, colour heightening across her cheekbones, then took a number of deep breaths.
‘Freya?’
‘Can I have a glass of wine, please?’ she said quietly. ‘There is something I need to tell you.’
Apprehension filling him, he took the bottle from the ice bucket and filled her glass.
She took a large sip then set the glass on the table, clutching the stem in her hand.
Then she took another deep breath and squared her shoulders before squaring her jaw. ‘My mother is ill. The house in London is not for me. It’s for her. For both of them.’
Now Benjamin was the one to take a long drink of his wine.
‘What is wrong with her?’ he asked, already knowing from her tone and the serious hue reflecting from her eyes that it was not good.
He watched the signs of her faltering composure, the fluttering of the hand not clinging to her glass, the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the movement of her throat.
‘She has a rare degenerative neurological disease that affects muscle movement. There is no cure.’
Banging immediately set off in his head. ‘No cure...?’
‘It’s terminal,’ she supplied matter-of-factly but with the slightest cracking of her voice on the final syllable.
Benjamin swore under his breath, a clammy feeling crawling over his skin.
‘I want her to end her days in a home that has space and with a garden she can sit out in and listen to the birds and feel the breeze on her face.’
‘I understand that,’ he said heavily.
Her smile when she met his eyes was sad. ‘I know you do.’
His heart ached in a way it hadn’t done in seven years, the beats dense and weighty. ‘Is there nothing that can be done for her?’
‘There has been a medical development in America recently, a treatment that slows it down in some cases and in even rarer cases reverses some of the symptoms. Not permanently though. No one has found a permanent reversal.’
Everything suddenly became clear.
Pushing his unfinished plate to one side, Benjamin rubbed his temples. ‘That’s why you married me. To pay for the treatment.’
‘Yes.’ She shuffled her chair back a little and stretched her neck. ‘It’s not authorised for use in the UK because it’s unproven and incredibly expensive. The money I get from our marriage is to pay for her to have a doctor fly to England every month and administer it to her in a private hospital. It won’t keep her alive for ever, but it might give us an extra year or two, and they could be good years for her. The money Javier paid after we signed the contract on our engagement has paid for two cycles of it. Her speech and breathing have improved a little and she’s got slightly more movement in her hands. It’s stopped it getting any worse. For now,’ she added with a sigh. ‘None of us are stupid enough to think it will hold it off for ever.’
‘Miracles do happen.’ But his words were automatic. Miracles were something he had stopped believing in during his mother’s battle with cancer.
Freya shook her head ruefully. ‘Not for my mother. When the treatment is developed more in the future they might be able to fully reverse it and hold the symptoms off permanently but that will come way too late for Mum. We’re just grateful that she’s receiving any benefit from it. She’s already proving to be one of the lucky rare ones.’
Lucky to be trapped in a failing body with no hope of lasting longer than a year or two?
‘And now I can give them a home too.’ She paused and blinked rapidly. ‘I never told them. I was scared to jinx it. They’ve wanted to move for years. They live in a two-bedroom third-floor flat in a building with communal gardens that are used by the local drug addicts. They’re basically prisoners in their own home now.’
‘We can fly to London tomorrow to look at the houses.’
She blinked again, this time in astonishment. ‘Don’t you have to work?’
‘Some things are more important. We can fly out after breakfast.’
He saw her throat move. ‘That is incredibly generous of you. Thank you.’
&n
bsp; ‘If I had known why you wanted a house I would have made it a priority.’
‘I didn’t think you’d care.’
He winced at her unflinching honesty. ‘I cannot say I blame you for that.’
‘It wasn’t just that I didn’t think you’d care,’ she said in a softer, more reflective tone. ‘I’m not good at opening up in any capacity, especially about such personal matters.’
‘Your dance does your talking for you.’
For a moment she just stared at him, eyes glistening before she jerked a nod. ‘It’s the only way I know how. I find it hard opening up at the best of times. I didn’t want to share something so personal with someone I hated.’
He hesitated before asking, ‘Does that mean you no longer hate me?’
‘I don’t know.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘You’re not the complete monster I thought you were. You had your reasons to do what you did. I feel a certain...kinship, I think the word is. I understand what you were going through when your mother was ill because I’m living it myself. You signed a contract without reading the terms and conditions; I signed a contract pledging my life in exchange for an extension to hers. If that makes me a gold-digger then I can live with that.’
He closed his eyes briefly and breathed heavily. ‘You are not a gold-digger. I should never have called you that.’
She shrugged, her shoulders tight. ‘It doesn’t matter. You could have called me worse.’
He’d thought worse. When he recalled the things he had thought about her he wanted to retch. She had married him to extend her mother’s life. He had married her out of vengeance against his oldest friend.
‘It does matter. I know what it’s like to watch someone you love slowly lose their life. You will do anything to help them and give them more time.’
Their eyes met. Something, a flash of understanding, passed between them that, like a switch being flicked, darkened and deepened.
He blew out a long puff of air and got to his feet. ‘We’ll make an early start tomorrow. Get some sleep and I will see you in the morning.’
There was a smattering of confusion in her returning stare before she nodded. ‘See you in the morning.’
Billionaire's Bride for Revenge (Billionaire?s Bride for Revenge) Page 12
