Whether or not she was single was of no interest to him. So what if her voice at the other end of the line had recently begun to stir something inside him he’d thought long dead? Given that he’d sworn off women for the foreseeable future, the wounds caused by his short but ill-fated marriage still savagely raw, it was intrusive and annoying and not to be encouraged.
‘You’ve been working on the wrong place,’ he said, angered by the unacceptable direction of his thoughts when he worked so hard to keep them under control.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I instructed you to fix up the accommodation at the winery. This is not the winery.’
Her brows snapped together. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘This is Casa do São Romão, not Quinta do São Romão. So you’ve broken into what was once, briefly, my home. You’ve been poking your nose into places where you do not belong and sleeping in my bed. And in the meantime, the task I did assign you remains unfulfilled.’
She stared at him, confusion written all over her lovely face. ‘What?’
‘You’ve made a mistake, Ms Garrett,’ he said grimly, although actually, to call Orla’s actions ‘a mistake’ was an understatement. She’d invaded his space. Whether she knew it or not, she’d seen things he’d never intended anyone to see. Not even he had ever again wanted to have to confront the evidence of his torment, his grief and his guilt, which he’d indulged at length before locking away for ever. If this house had been left to rack and ruin, taking with it the memories contained within and turning them to dust, that would have been fine with him.
But at least the contract between him and Orla’s company had come with an NDA. At least the truth about his supposedly perfect marriage would never emerge. The thought of it brought him out in a cold sweat. He judged himself plenty. He didn’t need judgement from anywhere else.
‘I can’t have,’ said Orla, visibly blanching, evidently stunned.
‘Are you suggesting it’s I who’s made the mistake?’
‘What? N-no. Of course not,’ she stammered, the blush hitting her cheeks turning them from deathly pale to a pretty pink. ‘There must have been a communication error. I’m so sorry. I’ll make this right.’
There was nothing she could do to make anything right. What was done could not be undone. He should know. His son couldn’t be reborn with a heartbeat instead of without one. He couldn’t rewind time so that he could both erase the argument that had caused that and subsequently see what was happening with Calysta in time to stop her taking her own life. No one could. What he could do was get rid of Orla before he lost his grip on his fast-unravelling control.
‘You have five minutes to get your things,’ he said, his voice low and tight with the effort of holding himself together when inside he was being torn apart, ‘and then I want you gone.’