Edoardo thought of the highbrow, vacuous crowd she would have swarming around her like bees around a honey pot. The press would besiege the place. They would crawl over his private domain like ants at a picnic. His private sanctuary would become party central. And, if that weren’t enough, he would have to watch Bella smiling up at some toffee-nosed man who—he could almost guarantee—only wanted her for her money. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted it, otherwise he would’ve left you the manor in the first place.’
She narrowed her eyes to hairpin-thin slits. ‘You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘All that talk of wanting me was rubbish. You don’t want me at all. You want the power. It turns you on, doesn’t it? You get off on it. You just want the rush it gives you to have me squirming in the palm of your uncivilised hand.’
Edoardo captured one of her wrists and held her fast. The urge to touch her had been unstoppable. He had barely even realised he had reached for her when he heard the gasp of her breath. He saw the sudden flare of her pupils. He felt the rapid jump of her pulse. He brought her closer, inch by inch, watching as her brown eyes went wider and wider. ‘Maybe I should show you just how uncivilised I can be,’ he drawled silkily.
Her pulse went wild beneath his fingers as he tugged her against his swollen groin. She swallowed and then licked her lips, her gaze tracking to his mouth as it came inexorably closer. He felt the soft gust of her breath against his lips. ‘If you kiss me I will scratch your eyes out,’ she said in a breathless little voice that was at odds with her warning.
‘Before or after I kiss you?’
Her eyes blazed with hatred. ‘During.’
He held her gaze for a throbbing heartbeat. ‘I’d better not risk it, then,’ he said, stepped back from her and reached for his keys on the hook near the door.
She blinked a couple of times as if she had been expecting him to call her bluff. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
He tossed the keys in the air before deftly catching them. ‘Out.’
‘Out where?’ she asked with another frown. ‘It’s close to midnight.’
‘Can you let Fergus out before you go to bed?’ he asked. ‘I might not get back before dawn.’
She gave him an irritated look. ‘Is that how you stay under the press’s radar?’ she asked. ‘By keeping your liaisons the other side of midnight?’
‘Works for me,’ he said, shouldering open the kitchen door.
She threw him a caustic glare. ‘You disgust me.’
‘Right back at you, princess,’ he said and let the door swing shut behind him.
* * *
Bella was too annoyed to sleep. She tossed and turned and counted sheep and sheep dogs. She got up and had a glass of water. She checked on Fergus three times. She couldn’t stop her mind from conjuring up images of Edoardo with one of his anonymous women. It disgusted her that he could just go out like that and find someone to slake his lust with. She could just imagine the type of woman he would go for: someone brash and bold, someone who would be confident sexually. His lovers wouldn’t agonise over their breasts or thighs, they wouldn’t worry about bikini waxes and whether they weren’t responsive enough in his arms. He would make them respond just by looking at them, just like he did to her.
‘Grrrhhh,’ Bella said as she threw off the covers yet again.
She was out in the garden waiting for Fergus to come back in when she saw the twin beams of Edoardo’s car headlights move across the fields of the estate as he came up the long driveway. ‘Fergus?’ she called out softly. ‘Come on. Hurry up. I’m freezing to death out here.’
There was still no sign of the dog when Edoardo’s car purred its way back to the garage. Bella listened as his footsteps crunched over the gravel of the driveway. She slunk against the shadows of the manor, holding the edges of her dressing gown tighter around her body. She didn’t want him to think she had been losing sleep over his nocturnal activities. She didn’t want him to think she had been waiting up for him to return, even though—subconsciously, at least—she had.
It was unnaturally, eerily quiet.
The night sounds that had seemed as loud as an orchestra rehearsing just moments ago had stilled as if silenced by a conductor’s baton.
Bella edged her way along the manor with her back against the icy-cold, hard stone. Her skin was pebbled with goose bumps and her heart hammered like a piston. She inched her way closer to the window of the morning room. She took a breath and started to climb the trellis, where the gnarled and twisted skeleton of some clematis was situated, when a pair of strong arms suddenly tackled her from behind. ‘Oomph!’ she gasped as she fell backwards against a strong male body.