Page 30 of 2 Books in One Bundle

Matteo chuckled, dragging her away from those tempting thoughts. He’d turned to the page of the frog she’d sketched the day he’d first rung the doorbell at Easton Hall.

‘He looks like a frog with attitude.’

‘He was giving me trouble. He always has.’

‘Have you wrestled him into submission now?’

She laughed. ‘That’s not really the way it works for me. They have a mind of their own. Sometimes they don’t want to be drawn the way you want to draw them. Hence these sketches. Trying to convince him to do what I wanted.’

‘That sounds—’

‘Odd. I get it.’

No one truly understood. They nodded with a fixed smile on their face when she tried to tell them.

‘No, it sounds fascinating. Like to get the perfect drawing you have to understand the characters, and for that, they become real. That takes some imagination, Lulu. I don’t know how you do it.’

She stilled at his slip. The use of her nickname. Yet he didn’t seem to have noticed. Perhaps she was reading too many things into it. Her imagination had always been the safest place to reside, after all. It was easy. Real life, that was the hard thing. She still struggled with it.

‘I don’t know how you run a multimillion-dollar business.’

‘Billion-dollar.’ The corner of his perfect lips quirked. ‘Add a few more zeros.’

She laughed and smacked him in the arm. ‘Sorry, Mr Businessman, for underestimating the number of zeros your business has.’

‘My business is easy. It’s about understanding what people want and giving it to them.’

Could he see what she wanted? Could he imagine it at all? A shiver ran through her. She repeatedly imagined seeing his body now, having felt it under his clothes. Obsessed about looking at every part of him. Even though some days she thought he could peer right inside her soul, he wasn’t a mind reader. Except, he’d seen those intimate drawings. They were her imaginings too. It wouldn’t take much to connect that those desires now involved him.

Which was another of the reasons she’d hid. Wanting him; when he was the man who sought to take everything away from her. Though he hadn’t mentioned anything over recent days. Maybe he didn’t need to add Easton Hall to his empire after all?

‘I call what you do impossible,’ she said.

‘I call your illustrations impossible. But here we are, proving we’re both making the impossible happen.’

He reverently turned a few more pages. The way he touched the paper again. Gently. With long, strong-looking fingers topped by perfect square nails. Drifting over the paper, almost as though he wanted to feel the drawings on the page.

‘Extraordinary,’ he murmured. The word was so quiet, it was almost like an exhale. There was something about his reverence that slid through her with pleasure. Winding its way on a seductive journey through her blood, heating her from the inside out.

‘Thank you. The work seems to have become a bit easier here, since I’ve settled in. Something about the sunshine. It’s making everything brighter.’

He looked up at her, slowly, almost assessing. As if he’d come to himself and remembered something long forgotten. ‘I should let you get back to it, then. So you can finish. When you’re done, I’d like to take you out to dinner.’

‘Oh.’

Louisa didn’t know what to say. She’d never been invited out to dinner by anyone before. A tiny kind of thrill skittered round her belly. She wasn’t sure if it was based on excitement or on fear.

‘There’s a littletrattoriaclose by,’ he said. ‘It’s hidden away, used more by locals than by tourists, so it won’t be too crowded. How long do you think you might be? I thought we could celebrate meeting your deadline.’

‘Maybe a day or two?’

He smiled. ‘It’s a date.’

She nodded as he walked from the room. A date? That was simply an expression. It meant nothing. Though Louisa didn’t know why she simultaneously wished it were true.

And hoped it wasn’t.

CHAPTER EIGHT