Page 19 of 2 Books in One Bundle

Sadly, she didn’t seem to want the money to leave Easton Hall. That would change. It always did. He just had to find the right price.

‘I want to make sure you have what you need here,’ he said. ‘It’s downstairs this time.’

She laughed and it was a joyous sound, like birdsong in the early morning. ‘Why didn’t you show me that first?’

‘I thought you’d want to know where you were sleeping. That seems important to you.’

The smile on her face dimmed a little, all of her becoming more contemplative. ‘So few people understand.’

He didn’t. Not at all. Still, he could pretend.

But the thought of that pretence made something in his chest tighten. He rubbed at it, a strange kind of ache. Because in this moment hewantedto understand what made someone desire a place, a sense of belonging. Wanted to understand the woman.

Something about Louisa fascinated him. With so much hidden he was almost compelled to unravel all her secrets. What made a young woman stay in a home caring for her older relative? Eschew everything that appeared to signify modern style? Over the past years, working most days and rarely taking a break, he seemed to have lost his curiosity. Every interaction was one of problem and solution. Week after week, always on the move, putting out spot fires. With Louisa, he had the overwhelming desire to simply stop and learn more.

In the past, that curiosity had been dangerous.

‘Do you want to know why you don’t look like your parents?’

His whole life Matteo had been surrounded by people with blonde hair, pale skin and glacial blue eyes. He’d never really thought about why his skin tanned in the sun or his eyes were brown until his older cousin had pointed it out.

Then, he’d wanted to know.

‘You’re a fake.’

Curiosity killed the cat...

He’d approached his parents and that day they’d told him the truth. That he was adopted, but it didn’t make any difference. Until Felicity came along and fell ill. Then their lies were exposed.

Yet his adoption was old news. Not something he needed to think about any more. Being curious about Louisa would never be a bad thing. If he learned more, he could work out how to get her to leave Easton Hall.

All he needed was the right trigger point.

He almost looked forward to seeing how the game would play out between them. Whether he could coax anything more than the occasional whisper of pink on her cheeks from her. She seemed so...restrained. Then a vision flashed into his head of his fingers running through her glorious red hair, gripping it, drawing her head back to expose her perfect pale neck...

No. He needed to remind his errant body that seduction wasn’t the game here. He was simply reacting to a beautiful woman unlike anyone he’d ever met before. It was the novelty of her.

Novelties always wore off.

‘Come with me,’ he said, motioning out of the door of her room.

They went back down the stairs, Louisa walking beside him in one of the dresses she’d modelled for him a couple of days earlier. It gave him a strange sense of satisfaction to see her wearing what he’d provided for her. To know that she liked it.

‘I can see why you have an affinity for this place,’ she said. ‘I think it would be easy to love.’

There was that word again. Love. He didn’t understand it.

‘The UK’s never seemed like home to me.’

‘Why?’

What admission could he make that didn’t damn him? The adopted child, unwanted by his birth mother. Unwanted by his adoptive family. What did that make him? Better to talk about what he could answer.

‘When I found out I had Italian heritage, I visited here.’

To see if he could find any hint of the family he’d been sure was out there, somewhere, even though the DNA testing had turned up no relatives. It was as if his birth mother, father, had dissolved into the past as though they’d never existed. He was the only evidence that they’d lived at all. In the end he had himself, and that was what mattered.

Except he now had responsibility for Louisa too...