He barely noticed the mansion in which he lived. It was there. Ancient, beautiful, vast, handed down through the generations. Huge tracts of it were unused simply because there were so many rooms. Walls were adorned with exquisite paintings that were seldom seen. There were priceless rugs upon which no feet ever trod and windows were flung open in rooms simply to let in a bit of fresh air before they were shut again and those very rooms remained silent and empty until they were aired again.
His own quarters, done to the highest of standards, were far more modern, as was the four-bedroomed annexe in which his father lived when he wasn’t travelling, as he was now, hopefully not on the lookout for another unsuitable wife. Personally, Luca couldn’t abide the heaviness of all that traditional décor that characterised most of his estate but he didn’t care enough to do anything about it.
It was his ancestry and that was the end of it.
He barely noticed any of it, but through this window...that was what he noticed.
The rolling acres of carefully cultivated grapevines, marching in lines towards a distant horizon, punctuated by tall, elegant cypress trees...the backdrop of hazy purple mountains rising so high in the distance that the peaks were blurred by cloud...the villages clinging to the sides of the hills, white squares against lush green.
He was staring out at the scenery when the door was pushed open and, with a sigh of resignation, he slowly spun round to address whatever needed addressing.
For a few seconds, Luca only registered Roberto, who was hovering, eyeing up the desk with intent, resisting the urge to do a bit more tidying, then he stepped aside and...
He’d been relaxed back in the deep leather chair. Now Luca leant forward and every nerve and muscle in his body slowly stretched to breaking point. The woman was, naturally, registering in some part of his brain but even so his eyes were telling him that he couldn’t possibly be seeing the leggy blonde with whom he had spent three weeks of unadulterated carefree pleasure.
It wasn’t possible. For once in his life, Luca was rendered speechless and, in that brief period, Roberto pushed an obviously reluctant Cordelia into the room.
‘Will tea or coffee be taken, sir?’ he queried without a hint of irony, even though he had been banned from fetching and carrying three years previously after he had managed to drop an eye-wateringly expensive vase, which he had been lifting from its podium to dust. ‘Some wine, perhaps?’ His watery eyes glinted.
‘Just close the door behind you, Roberto,’ Luca managed to say. ‘And no tea or coffee and certainly no wine at four in the afternoon. Thank you.’
He couldn’t tear his eyes off the woman who was now pressed against the closed door. He was barely aware of drawing breath. His thought processes had been temporarily suspended and the most he could do was take in the rangy body that had been his undoing for three sensational weeks.
She was dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a loose red and white checked shirt. Her long hair was pulled back into a plait.
Luca’s nostrils flared at the memory of that vibrant hair spilling over her shoulders, a tumble of gold and vanilla and every other shade of blonde imaginable. He recalled the electric charge that had raced through his body every time he had curled his fingers in its length, held her heavy breasts in his hands, nuzzled the soft down between her thighs and felt her writhe with passion under his touch.
‘Well,’ he drawled, lazing back in the chair, ‘this is certainly a surprise.’ And, he thought, an unwelcome one, never mind the trip down memory lane, which had the annoying effect of reminding him that he had a libido.
Luca was a pragmatist. He had known from the very first time he had touched her that what they had was not destined to go anywhere. Those three weeks had been enjoyable—no, that didn’t come close to describing it, but it had been life lived in a bubble. He’d been completely free for the first time in his life and freedom had tasted sweet.
But this was his real life and never the twain should have met.
Displeasure flared inside him, partly because she had shown up here unannounced and now he would have to firmly but politely turn her away, and partly because there was a treacherous side of him that was pleased at her unexpected appearance. He realised that he’d been thinking about her, in a dark, subconscious sort of way, his thoughts titillating and illicit.
‘How can I help you?’ he pursued into the lengthening silence as she continued to hover.
Of course he knew why she was here and he wondered how she would broach the inevitable conversation. It was disappointing that it had come to this but not really that surprising. People were lamentably predictable in the ways they reacted to money.
Even her, and if it made his gut twist to wise up to the fact that she was no different from the next person, then that was his deal.
‘Is it all right if I sit?’ There was an empty chair in front of the desk and her legs were like jelly. If she didn’t sit soon, she would end up crumpled in an undignified heap on the floor and she could tell from the lack of warmth on his face that he wouldn’t be offering her tea and sympathy should that be the case.
Indeed, from the expression on his face, the last person he wanted to see at all was her.
The man staring at her with cool, assessing eyes was a stranger. He bore no resemblance to the guy who had swept her off her feet and taken her to places she had never dreamed possible with his fingers, his hands, his mouth.
But then this guy bore no resemblance to the man she’d thought she’d find when she’d set off. He worked in a vineyard. He picked grapes. Then when the season was over, he travelled. He wasn’t an itinerant, but neither was he...this.
She’d known where he worked and lived because he’d told her. She’d expected a modest dwelling, maybe shared with his father. Something modest but pretty. One of those whitewashed Mediterranean houses she’d seen in pictures over the years.
But when she’d asked after him, she’d been directed to this mansion. A lovely old woman with a crinkled face and black eyes as lively as a sparrow’s had walked with her up the hill, with carefully tended vines falling away from them in rows down towards fields and trees. There had been no conversation. Cordelia didn’t speak a word of Italian and the old lady, smiling and friendly as she was, spoke no English, so there had been no opportunity to ask what the heck was going on and why was she being taken to a vast stone fortress complete with turrets and surrounded by cypress trees.
The heat had been sapping and the pull-along had felt as heavy as lead by the time they had trudged in silence up the hill to stand in front of the fortress, which, on closer inspection, wasn’t quite as coldly unwelcoming as she’d first thought.
There were shutters in the windows and colourful flowers spilling out in borders at the front.
And now here she was and if she didn’t sit soon...
She didn’t wait for him to signal the seat in front of him. She walked towards it, her troubled blue eyes skittering away from his closed, unwelcoming face.
He didn’t want her here and it was beginning to dawn on her why that was the case.
Luca Baresi wasn’t an ordinary guy. This wasn’t the house of an ordinary man. Luca Baresi was a multimillionaire, and she wished that she’d had the common sense to look him up on the Internet before she’d packed her bag and made the trip to Italy.
But why, she asked herself feverishly, would she have done that?
She’d thought that he was a simple guy who worked in a vineyard in Italy. Simple guys didn’t have profiles on the Internet.
‘I guess you’re surprised to see me,’ she opened, clearing her throat.
‘Less surprised than you might think.’ Luca’s voice was cool.
‘I would have contacted you...phoned...but...’ Her voice trailed off. She noticed that she was plucking compulsively at the checked shirt and she sat on her hands to stop.
&nb
sp; ‘No phone number. I know. I didn’t leave you with one.’
Cordelia flushed. He couldn’t have made it any clearer that she was not welcome. She tilted her head at a combative angle and reminded herself that this trip had been voluntary. She was pregnant and she could very easily have not bothered to tell him. She was here for a reason and she’d be gone within the hour. Lord knew, a week seemed like a long time but maybe she would see a bit of Tuscany before she headed back home.
‘No,’ she said with equal cool. ‘You didn’t. Why would you when you spent three weeks lying to me? Of course, the last thing you would have encouraged would be any further contact from the country bumpkin you used for your own amusement and dumped. Heaven knows, my showing up here on your doorstep must seem like the worst of your nightmares.’
Luca had the grace to flush but he didn’t say anything because there was no point launching into self defence.
‘You said you weren’t surprised to see me here,’ Cordelia prompted icily. ‘What did you mean?’
He shrugged eloquently and sat back, steepling his fingers under his chin, then clasping his hands behind his head to look at her from under thick dark lashes.
‘You looked me up on the Internet,’ he said flatly. ‘Curiosity, no doubt. You discovered that I was not quite the person you thought I was.’
Cordelia could barely conceal her snort of disgust. She thought back to just how elegant, arrogant and self-confident he’d been. She’d naively put it down to his foreignness. Instead, those had just been the telltale traits of a man who lived in a castle and owned a million acres of vineyards. Lack of experience had not been her friend when it had come to making sense of his personality.
‘Really?’ she said, tight-lipped.
‘Really. You would have struck jackpot on the first hit and I guess that got you thinking that what we’d enjoyed might have come to something of a premature end. Were you dazzled at the thought of continuing a relationship but this time with a man worth billions instead of a guy with only the clothes on his back and a seasonal job?’ He paused, watched carefully for signs of guilt and embarrassment, and saw neither.
Luca raked his fingers through his hair and vaulted upright. The chair suddenly felt confining, the room too small.
‘I’m a rich man,’ he said, striding towards the window and looking out to everything he owned for a few seconds, before turning to face her. ‘I know how the game is played.’
The sun was no longer high in the sky and its rays through the window emphasised the pale hue of her skin and the sprinkling of freckles across her short, straight nose. His lips thinned as he felt a familiar ache in his groin.
‘So you think I’ve come here to offer myself to you because you have all this...’
‘Of course you have!’ He heard the softness of her laughter in his head, the lilt of her voice when they were in bed, talking quietly while he stroked her face. He clenched his fists because he didn’t welcome those memories. They didn’t belong here. ‘But you’ve made your trip in vain, Cordelia. Naturally, I will compensate you for your travel. But return to Cornwall you must, because you don’t, for a thousand reasons, belong here...’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘A THOUSAND REASONS?’ Cordelia enquired icily. She didn’t think so. One reason and he had just said it in four simple words. You don’t belong here.
Was this the opening she needed to take? Should she nod mutely and leave? Let him think that he had struck jackpot with his insulting, offensive and sweeping assumption?
She thought of her father. An honourable man. She’d inherited his sense of right and wrong. To walk away now without explaining why she had come in the first place...
What would that make her? In his eyes and in her own? She would know the truth and, of course, that should be all that mattered, but the very idea of leaving him with the mistaken impression that she was a seedy gold-digger willing to sacrifice herself for cash was too much to take in.
‘Cordelia.’ Luca’s voice softened. ‘You really don’t understand...’
‘I really think I do,’ she returned, without skipping a beat. ‘You think I’ve come here with a begging bowl. You think that the only reason I might have wanted to get in touch with you would be because I’ve found out how rich you are and what a catch you would be for a poor fisherman’s daughter like myself.’
‘Maybe that’s just a part of the equation,’ Luca murmured, simultaneously knowing that he should gently but firmly usher her to the door, see her on her way, yet, stupidly, finding that he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Not just yet. ‘And I mean no insult.’
‘That’s wonderful of you,’ she said tightly. ‘You mean no insult and yet you just happen to have insulted me in the worst possible way.’
‘Of course I don’t consider you a poor fisherman’s daughter. As a matter of fact, I have a great deal of respect for your father. He is an honest man making an honest living. Believe me, I have spent my adult life seeing the corruption that all this can buy.’ He gestured to encompass the vastness of his house and the enormous wealth it represented. ‘Your father... I respect him...’
‘Thank you,’ Cordelia said politely, while, inside, she raged with the force of an erupting volcano at what she could only interpret as his smug contempt for everything she stood for. How on earth could she not have seen through him? ‘I’ll make sure I tell him.’
‘Perhaps,’ Luca murmured, watching the satiny softness of her skin, the tinge of colour spreading across her high cheekbones. He had to stop himself from staring. Worse, from closing his eyes and remembering the supple strength of her beautiful body, the fullness of her breasts, the smoothness of her inner thighs. ‘Perhaps...’ he dragged his thoughts away from those dangerous zones and back to the matter at hand, which was the necessity to show her to the door ‘...you really haven’t come here because you’d sussed who I was and what I’m worth. It beggars belief that you would have taken this length of time to make your move, but were I to give you the benefit of the doubt...’ he sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, annoyed because for once in his life the logical way forward with the conversation was not one he felt comfortable taking ‘...then the outcome would be the same. Cara, we had our moment in time, and believe me when I tell you that I will cherish it for ever, but it was no more than a moment in time.’
His words slithered through her like shards of glass, destroying every rose-hued memory. She felt sick. The ground seemed to be spinning under her feet and she took a few deep breaths and balled her hands into fists.
‘My life here is prescribed,’ he said softly. ‘More than I can begin to explain. These vineyards...’ he signalled to the window, beyond which lay all those rows of carefully tended vines, heavy with grapes ‘...they are my legacy and I can no more escape my destiny than you can escape yours.’
‘My destiny to remain where I was born? You mean that destiny?’ Of course, that was what he meant. She’d told him all the ins and outs of her life, had lain in his arms and mused on all those doors that had been solidly closed for her. She’d laid bare her heartfelt wish that she could see the world, see what was out there. God, was it any wonder that, with her having shown up on his doorstep, he’d instantly jumped to all sorts of conclusions?
‘You have always wanted to see the world. If you have not researched me, if you truly arrived here thinking that you would find the impoverished manual worker you imagined me to be, then you have my most sincere apologies. It would make sense that you might find yourself tempted to cross the ocean to make contact with someone who might represent an escape from your life, which is as prescribed as my own...’
Cordelia tilted her head to one side. She was curious to see how far he would run with this particular theory. It wasn’t quite as offensive as theory number one, but nevertheless it still felt like a kick in the teeth after all the things they had shared.
/> After all the things, she mentally amended, she had shared. He’d just sat back and done the taking. And, of course, the lying.
‘But, as I said, for very many reasons, what we have is no more and cannot be resurrected.’ He looked down, lush dark lashes concealing his expression.
‘Of course,’ Cordelia expanded coolly, ‘as you mentioned, I don’t belong here.’
‘Cordelia, it’s slightly more than that.’
‘What more could there be, Luca?’ She paused and looked at him in stony silence. ‘If I’m not a gold-digger, then I’m a sad, love-struck ex who was so desperate to live a little that she decided to show up, unannounced, on the doorstep of a guy who walked away from her without a backward glance. I don’t know which is worse. Oh, no. I do know. They’re both bad.’
‘I am destined to marry a woman I have known from my childhood.’ Why bother going round the houses? He watched as the colour drained away from her face.
‘You’re engaged?’
‘Not as such.’ Luca flushed darkly and looked away from her accusing gaze.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It is an understanding.’
‘I see.’ It was a mistake coming after all. He was engaged to be married. The outcome couldn’t have been worse for her. To be faced with a baby bombshell would be his ugliest nightmare and she couldn’t do that to him. The giddiness was growing and the spinning in her head made her want to close her eyes but she gritted her teeth together and remained present.
‘I don’t think you do.’
‘You’re going to be married and yet you led me to believe...you let me think...’
‘No rings were exchanged. You misunderstand.’
‘I don’t believe I do.’
‘It was always an understanding between families. A marriage of convenience. Isabella belongs to a dynasty like mine and the union would secure an estate of unimaginable wealth.’
Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal (Once Upon a Temptation, Book 5) Page 7
