‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ he said.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘While your intended fiancé is out of sight, you’ve been up to all sorts of mischief, haven’t you?’
She coloured up and glowered at him at the same time. ‘At least I’m not messing with your feelings,’ she said. ‘You don’t have any, or at least certainly not for me.’
‘Does that annoy you, Bella?’ he asked. ‘That I haven’t prostrated myself before you like all your other suitors, declaring my undying love for you at every available opportunity?’
She gave him a flinty look. ‘I wouldn’t believe you if you did.’
Edoardo gave a little rumble of laughter. ‘No, you wouldn’t, would you? You know me too well for that. I might want you like the very devil, but I don’t love you. That stings a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t bother me one little bit,’ she said with a pert hitch of her chin. ‘I have no feelings for you either.’
‘Other than lust.’
Her cheeks pooled with colour. ‘At least that is something I can control,’ she said.
‘Can you?’ he asked, taking her chin between his finger and thumb, holding her gaze steady. ‘Can you really?’
Her throat rose and fell, and her eyes flickered.
‘Why don’t you try me and see?’
He was sorely tempted. He felt the urge rising in him like a flash flood. Blood pumped and poured. His need for her was a hungry beast inside him, rampaging through his body until he was almost shaking with it.
But instead he dropped his hand from her face and stepped away. ‘Maybe some other time,’ he said.
For a nanosecond he thought her expression showed disappointment, but she quickly masked it. ‘There’s not going to be another time,’ she said. ‘As soon as this snow melts, I’m out of here.’
‘What if it doesn’t melt for another week?’ he asked as he shouldered open the door.
She set her mouth grimly. ‘Then I’ll go out there with a hair dryer and melt it myself.’
* * *
Bella slept fitfully until about two in the morning. She got up and looked out of the window. The snow was still falling but not as heavily now. It looked like a winter fairyland outside. It was a scene she was going to miss dreadfully when she left Haverton Manor for the final time. She tried to imagine how it would be once the guardianship period was over. There would be no reason to see Edoardo again. No more twice-yearly meetings. No more monthly phone calls, texts or emails. He would go his way and she would go hers.
They would never have to see or speak to each other ever again.
She turned from the window with a frown. She had to stop thinking about him. She had to stop wondering why he was the enigma he was. What had put that hard cynicism in his eyes? What had made him so self-
sufficient that nothing or no one touched his heart?
She couldn’t stop thinking of him as a little five-year-old orphan. Who had looked after him? Comforted him? Who had nurtured him? Who had loved him? Had anyone?
For all these years she had thought of him as a rebel who didn’t fit in anywhere, who didn’t want to fit in anywhere. But what if his childhood had made him that way? What would it take to unlock the guard he had on his heart?
Would he ever come to a point in his life where possessions and financial security were no longer enough? Would he crave the connection he had been pushing away for most of his life?
Bella went downstairs in search of a hot drink and was waiting for the milk to heat in the microwave when Edoardo came in. He was still dressed in the clothes he’d had on earlier and there were snowflakes in his hair.
‘Waiting up for me, Bella?’ he asked as he shrugged off his coat.
She gave him a scornful look. ‘You must be joking.’
‘Rebecca sends her regards,’ he said and dusted the snow out of his hair with one hand.
Bella glared at him. ‘You talked about me while you were...in bed together?’
‘We weren’t anywhere near a bed.’
‘Please spare me the lurid details,’ she said with a roll of her eyes.
‘I was helping her with a horse that had injured itself on a neighbouring property,’ he said. ‘Do you remember the Atkinsons’ place? The new owner has thoroughbreds. One of the brood mares cut her foreleg on some wire. Rebecca needed an extra pair of hands.’
‘Oh...’ She chewed at her lip for a moment.