She didn’t trust herself to say more than that. Just a small noise, urging him to continue.
He crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I don’t know how long this will last. I don’t have the answers I thought I did. You’ve surprised me. But I know I don’t want this to end.’
Relief began to shift inside her. ‘I don’t, either.’
‘I know.’
His arrogance would have been galling if it wasn’t so completely his trademark.
A smile lifted her lips.
‘I can’t take any more time off work. For this to work, we’d need to be based in Rome. If you wished to take on assignments, you could use my jet for as long as we continue this arrangement.’
Alarm bells began to tremor, just a little. She lifted her eyes to his, confusion marching across her face. ‘What arrangement?’
‘You being my mistress.’
And just like that, as if a pin had been slipped into a balloon, her happiness burst. She stared at him, non-comprehending. ‘Your mistress?’ she croaked after a moment.
He nodded, reaching for her, and she was so shocked that she didn’t resist at first. She let him draw her gently towards him, her coffee between them, his body so familiar to her, so perfectly matched; he was everything she wanted.
‘It would be more of this, more of what we’ve shared these last two weeks, until we’re ready to move on.’
It was as though she were being pushed towards a cliff in a
little buggy over which she had no control. His words were so calm, so ordered, and he spoke with the total authority of a man who had made a plan and expected it to be adhered to. But the last part of his calmly delivered directive rocked her to the core of her being.
Ready to move on.
Her insides began to fill with heat, as though lava were being poured through her body, and she shook her head urgently, pulling away from him, sipping her coffee then placing the cup down so she could dig her hands into the pockets of her shorts.
‘We can put a time limit on it again, if that helps,’ he murmured, standing exactly where he was, watching her with eyes that saw too much. ‘A month?’
Her eyes swept shut as disbelief spun through her. ‘A month,’ she repeated, nodding a little, even though she had no intention of going along with it. Disbelief was running rampant through her.
A month.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Her lungs seemed to be squeezing shut; she couldn’t get enough air. She bit down on her lip and tried to stay focussed; she tried not to let herself give in to the tears that were threatening to fill her eyes.
‘I can help you with Almer Hall.’
Her eyes burst open and tore to him. He was watching her, completely still, his body unmoving.
‘What?’
‘I want to help you,’ he said, but it was as though the words were being torn from him against his will.
‘Help me how?’
‘There are four mortgages against the title.’ Now he moved, walking towards her, his eyes holding the slightest recrimination. ‘You’ve been chipping away at them, but not in a way that will make any real dent.’
A sense of defeat made her defensive. ‘How do you even know that? It’s private.’
‘I have ties at your bank.’
‘Jesus.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘And they, what—handed over confidential financial information?’
‘This information is not confidential—just difficult to obtain unless you know what you’re doing. And I do know what I’m doing, Jemima. I want to help you with Almer Hall.’