‘Mr Vasilikos,’ the stepdaughter returned briefly, with the slightest nod of her head. Then she looked across at her stepmother. ‘Would you like me to pour? Or do you want to be mother?’ she said.
Max heard the bite in her voice as she addressed the owner of the house and found himself sharpening his scrutiny.
‘Please do pour, Ellen, dear,’ said Mrs Mountford, ignoring the distinctly baiting note in her stepdaughter’s tone of voice.
‘Cream and sugar, Mr Vasilikos?’ she asked, looking straight at him.
There was a gritty quality to her voice, as if she found the exchange difficult. Her colour was still heightened, but subsiding. Her skin tone, distinctly less pale than her stepsister’s carefully made up features, definitely looked better when she wasn’t colouring up, Max decided. In fact, now he came to realise it, she had what might almost be described as a healthy glow about her—as if she spent most of her time outside. Not like the delicate hothouse plant her stepsister looked to be.
‘Just black, please,’ he answered. He didn’t particularly want coffee, let alone polite chit-chat, but it was a ritual to be got through, he acknowledged, before he could expect a tour of the property that he was interested in.
He watched Pauline Mountford’s sadly unlovely stepdaughter pour the coffee from a silver jug into a porcelain cup and hand it to him. He took it with a murmur of thanks, his fingers inadvertently making contact with hers, and she grabbed her hand back as if the slight touch had been an unpleasant electric shock. Then she ferociously busied herself pouring the other three cups of coffee, handing them to her stepmother and sister, before sitting back with her own and stirring it rapidly.
Max sat back, crossing one leg over the oth
er, and took a contemplative sip of his coffee. Time to get the conversation going where he wanted it to go.
‘So,’ he opened, with a courteous smile of interest at Pauline Mountford, ‘what makes you wish to part with such a beautiful property?’
Personally, he might think the decor too overdone, but it was obviously to his hostess’s taste, and there was no point in alienating her. Decor could easily be changed—it was the house itself he was interested in.
And he was interested—most decidedly so. That same feeling that had struck him from the first was strengthening all the time. Again, he wondered why.
Maybe it’s coming from the house itself?
The fanciful idea was in his head before he could stop it, making its mark.
As he’d spoken he’d seen Pauline Mountford’s stepdaughter’s coffee cup jerk in her grip and her expression darken. But his hostess was replying.
‘Oh, sadly there are too many memories here! Since my husband died I find them too painful. I know I must be brave and make a new life for myself now.’ She gave a resigned sigh, a catch audible in her voice. ‘It will be a wrench, though...’ She shook her head sadly.
‘Poor Mummy.’ Her daughter reached her hand across and patted her mother’s arm, her voice warm with sympathy. Chloe Mountford looked at him. ‘This last year’s been just dreadful,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Max murmured. ‘But I can understand your reasons for wishing to sell.’
A sharp clunk came from the sofa opposite, and his eyes flicked to see his hostess’s stepdaughter had dropped her coffee cup on to its saucer. Her expression, he could tell, was tight. His focus sharpened. Beneath his swift glance in her direction he saw her cheeks redden again. Then she reached for the silver coffee pot and busied herself pouring another cup. She did not speak, but the tightness in her face was unabated, even as the colour started to ebb. She took a single gulp from the refilled cup, then abruptly got to her feet.
‘I must go and see about lunch,’ she said brusquely, pushing past the furniture to get to the service door.
As she left Pauline Mountford leant towards him slightly. ‘Poor Ellen took my husband’s death very hard,’ she confided in a low voice. ‘She was quite devoted to him.’ A little frown formed on her well-preserved and, he suspected, well-Botoxed forehead. ‘Possibly too much so...’ She sighed.
Then her expression changed and she brightened.
‘I’m sure you would like to see the rest of the house before lunch. Chloe will be delighted to take you on the grand tour!’ she gave a light laugh.
Her daughter got to her feet and Max did likewise. He was keen to see the house—and not keen to hear any more about the personal circumstances of the Mountford family, which were of no interest to him whatsoever. Chloe Mountford might be too thin, and her stepsister just the opposite, but he found neither attractive. All that attracted him here was the house itself.
It was an attraction that the ‘grand tour’ only intensified. By the time he reached the upper floor, with its array of bedrooms opening off a long, spacious landing, and stood in the window embrasure of the master bedroom, gazing with satisfaction over the gardens to let his gaze rest on the reed-edged lake beyond, its glassy waters flanked by sheltering woodland, his mind was made up.
Haughton Court would be his. He was determined on it.
CHAPTER TWO
ELLEN MADE IT to the kitchen, her heart knocking. Having anyone arrive to look over her home, thinking he was going to buy it, was bad enough—but...oh, dear Lord...that it was such a man as Max Vasilikos! She felt her cheeks flame again, just as they’d flamed—horribly, hideously—in that first punishingly embarrassing moment of all but sending him flying at the back door.
She had been gawping like an idiot at the devastating male standing in front of her. Six foot plus, broad-shouldered, muscled, and just ludicrously good-looking, with classic ‘tall dark stranger’ looks and olive skin tones. Sable hair and charcoal eyes, a sculpted mouth, incised cheekbones and a jaw cut from the smoothest marble...
The impact he’d made had hit her all over again when she’d taken in the coffee. At least by then she’d been a fraction more prepared—prepared, too, for what she’d known would be the inevitable pitying glance he’d cast at her as she took her place beside Chloe.