Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
S LEEP TIGHT.
Not bloody likely.
Elizabeth lay down in his enormous, fluffy, cloud-like bed and stared at the painting on the wall opposite – it couldn’t be genuine, could it? And then he plunged the room into total darkness, and she wished he hadn’t, because robbing her eyes of sight only brightened her other senses, so that the scent of Xavier Salbatore surrounded her, shrouding her in memories and agonizing desire.
But mere minutes after her head hit the pillow, the fevered, angry thoughts dissipated, leaving only powerful, seductive memories that dragged her into a deep, suffocating sleep.
She slept better than she had in years. She slept with all of her body and mind.
And when she woke, it was to a rumbling, vaguely-familiar laugh.
Xavier!
She sat up straight in bed, disorientation making it hard to recall where she was and why, and then it all came flooding back to her.
Josh!
She pushed the thick, duck-down duvet off her and stood, amazed at how much better she felt, and completely lost as to the time. The room was pitch black, just as it had been when she’d fallen asleep. She moved towards the door, feeling her way around the edge of the bed and working from memory, then jerked it open.
Soft light flooded in; she was still none the wiser as to the hour.
She moved towards Josh’s room, but when she looked inside, it was empty. The acceleration of her heartrate was only natural. Had he wandered off? This was a new house, he’d had no idea he was here, having fallen asleep in the car on the way over. God, he had no idea who Xavier was, and what if Xavier hadn’t even heard him wake?
She moved faster, towards Xavier’s office. It too was empty.
She paused at the top of the steps, listening for any noises and yes! She did hear something. She walked quickly down the stairs. Her handbag had been moved from where she’d discarded it near the door.
The noises became louder as she moved deeper into the house until finally, she could clearly discern Xavier’s deep, husky voice and Josh’s sweet little tone, all child-like with made-up and mispronounced words in his rush to express what he was feeling.
And then, Josh’s laugh, and a loud crashing sound that had her feet bursting into action and carrying her into the room to see what had happened. Had Josh hurt himself?
No, was the simple answer. Xavier was lying on the ground, on his side, his long, muscular legs stretched straight and crossed at the ankles, his body propped on one elbow, his pose utterly nonchalant and at ease.
And Josh was standing in front of a tower of cardboard blocks with cartoon illustrations on each side. He had obviously just batted them half-way to the ground and now he gave another swing with his chubby little hand so that the blocks fell in a heap and Josh threw his head back and laughed.
Relief at seeing him so well surged inside of Ellie, but it was quickly consumed by something else. She hovered at the entrance to the room, noting how comfortable they were together, how well-suited and her whole body clutched with a sense of … exclusion.
Yes. It rushed through her, gripping her and bending her so that she was left with no idea how to process the dark, demeaning feeling.
“Mama!” The little voice broke through the moment so she had to suppress everything she felt and plaster a smile on her face. She avoided looking at Xavier yet she felt his eyes on her. Cold, accusing, hateful.
She swallowed, crouching down to Josh’s level and spreading her arms. He walked into them, pressing his head to her shoulder and wrapping his arms around her body, stroking her back. “You’re awake?” He said, and she heard the uncertainty there – and was ashamed to admit she was gratified by it.
He’d been having fun with Xavier, but he’d missed her. He’d wanted her.
“How do you feel?” She asked, pulling away a little and pressing her hand to his forehead. His temperature appeared to have broken.
“Not good,” he said.
She frowned. “You look much better.”
“No, not good,” he said adamantly.
Xavier’s voice broke through. “He enjoyed three of those iced lollies. Perhaps he is after another one.”
And inside, she felt a hint of amusement, because undoubtedly Xavier was right, but she didn’t want to reward him by acknowledging that. “If he says he’s not well, he’s not.” She lifted Josh to her hip, and held him there, like the baby he definitely wasn’t. “You should have woken me.” She spoke calmly, not wanting to alarm Josh.
Xavier took his cue from her, but there was an obvious throb of displeasure in his voice. “I tried,” he drawled cynically. “You were dead to the world.”
Her skin prickled. He’d tried? He’d been into the room while she was sleeping? He’d looked at her? Had he touched her, while she’d slept, in an attempt to wake her? She swallowed, the idea unfairly erotic. Her blood simmered.
“You gave him three iced lollies?” She muttered instead, trying to flatten the frustration out of her voice.
“He wasn’t hungry for anything else. I offered.”
She stroked Josh’s hair. “What time is it?”
“Four.”
“Four o’clock?” Her gaze pulled to the window and yes, she could see that darkness was approaching, falling early as it did in winter. “I’ve slept the day away.”
“Is that a problem?”
“I’ll be up all night.”
“That did occur to me,” he drawled, the cynical edge to the words sparking in her blood stream. Her eyes jerked to his and then away again as the power of his suggestive thoughts overtook every thread of her sanity.
“Are you hungry, darling?” She turned away from Xavier, keeping Josh on her hip, glad to have his familiar, sweet shape to hold tight. Glad to have him right there. It was weak and silly to depend on a small boy for security, and yet she did.
He was her anchor and her rock.
“Yep.”
“Traitor,” Xavier laughed, surprising Ellie by moving alongside them. And his smile was so genuine and so fulsome that it rocked her to the core. He was beautiful. Beautiful with his scarred face and enigmatic expression. Different to how he’d been when they’d first met, but no less stunning.
He caught her looking and she turned away quickly, focusing on the door. She slid through it, keeping Josh close.
“Is there a kitchen in this place?”
His voice was droll. “Two.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”
“One is down here, the other is on the rooftop. For entertaining.”
Such a rarefied existence. He had every drop of glamour and prestige at his fingertips. It was a world she’d never had any desire to enter. While her high school girlfriends had all styled themselves to within an inch of their lives, trying to look like extras from The Kardashian family, Ellie had been content to float along without an Instagram account and a backlog of selfies. She’d never aspired to money, prestige, position, power.
Yet here she was, in the lap of the luxury and promised to marry an insanely wealthy tycoon.
“I just need to fix him some pasta.”
He nodded. “It’s time for you to meet the staff.”
Staff? She stopped walking, her face tight with alarm. “What staff?”
“Relax. It’s just the housekeeper and a few casuals.” He said it so blithely, as though this wasn’t all incredibly unusual and confronting for Ellie.
“Housekeeper?” Ellie repeated, lifting her gaze to his face, trying to keep a neutral tone in her words. “Does she live here, then?”
His smile showed he understood the direction of her thoughts – that he knew she was clutching at any straw that might mean they would be alone together less frequently. “No . Janice works normal office hours – later if I’m entertaining and she’s required to oversee a dinner party or similar.”
Ellie’s stomach swirled. Dinner party? Was she expected to do this hosting now? The thought of standing side by side with Xavier Salbatore as his friends and business acquaintances came to this incredibly grand home filled her with utter dread.
“Do you… entertain often?” She asked, darting the tip of her tongue out and tracing her lower lip. Enormous brown eyes lifted to his face and heat flushed her cheeks when she realized his eyes were trained on her lips.
“Not since the accident,” he said.
Curious. She switched Joshua to her other hip and stroked his hair absent-mindedly. Beautiful soft, springy curls that tickled her nose when he crept into bed in the middle of the night and found his way to the crook of her arm.
“Have many things changed since the accident?”
He was instantly closed-off, his face shuttering as though a cord had been pulled and the blinds dropped down.
At the wide doors that led to the kitchen, he turned to face her. He was choosing his words with care, at least, she thought he was. But then he shook his head and locked himself away from her once more.
“Janice?” He called, no longer speaking to Ellie. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.”
Janice, when she appeared, was an elegant woman in perhaps her fifties, with a slick blonde bun at the nape of her neck, wearing demure cosmetics and a black pant suit. She wasn’t like the Mrs Doubtfire character Ellie had been imagining, yet she liked her immediately. Particularly when the housekeeper smiled kindly at Joshua and reached for his cheeks, pinching them so that he smiled coyly.
“You look much better, Master Salbatore,” the woman said, so Ellie’s eyes jerked to Xavier’s with impatience. Her son was not a Salbatore – yet.
But one look at the mask of stone on his face silenced her. For now.
“He is,” Xavier confirmed, his eyes searing Ellie with their intensity. “This is Joshua’s mother,” he said smoothly, and confining her to that relationship was so neat and somehow offensive that she almost rebutted him.
After all, he was the one who’d insisted they would marry. Would it kill him to announce her as his fiancé?
Fiancé? She shivered. On second thoughts, ‘Joshua’s mother’ was just fine.
“Hello, madam,” the housekeeper said, tilting her head forward in a deferential greeting.
“Call me Ellie,” Elizabeth insisted.
And Xavier made an involuntary movement. A jerk of his head and then his hand was lifting to his temple, pressing against it, his eyes closed as though there was a blinding light being shoved in his face.
Janice noticed too, and her face was lined with concern. “Sir?”
He blinked and swallowed, a rough convulsive movement of his throat. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t sound fine.
“Elizabeth was asking about dinner for Joshua. I’ll leave the two of you to discuss domestic matters.”
Ellie’s heart sank at the enormity of the life she was about to assume. And ridiculous though it seemed, given that he was clearly public enemy number one, suddenly she craved his support. “You’re not going to stay?”
His eyes sliced through her, mocking her and distancing from her all once. “No, Elizabeth. I have more important things to do than discuss macaroni pasta.” He winced then, and smiled apologetically at Janice who, judging by her surprised expression, had never heard Xavier say anything quite so rude before.
Well, Janice was in for a shock, Ellie thought. With the addition of Elizabeth to this grand home, Xavier’s manners were apparently about to take a turn for the worse.
Anxious to smooth over Janice’s worries, Ellie put her most charming foot forward. Joshua sat at the kitchen bench and then, when Ellie insisted on preparing his dinner herself, Janice chatted about the running of the house, the work she did, and the other staff who helped.
“Mr Salbatore mentioned that he would like to engage a nanny. Ordinarily I would liaise with an agency and prepare a shortlist of suitable candidates for you to interview, but obviously I wished to check with you before taking this step.”
Ellie’s gratitude expressed itself with a smile. She didn’t realise it, but it changed her whole face and Janice found herself staring, for a moment, at this beautiful, authentic, kind woman who’d floated into the middle of the cold house in Kensington. A house that was grand and expensive and very beautiful, but somewhat lacking in the soul department.
“I don’t think we need to rush on that score,” Ellie murmured, mentally wishing she could strangle Xavier for being so high-handed. “There’ll be quite enough for Joshua to adjust to without adding yet another new person into the mix.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re …”
“It’s fine,” Janice smiled warmly. “I have two children. I remember what they can be like at this age.” She reached across once more, tousling Joshua’s hair, then straightened. “But I am here to help. As much or as little as you would like.”
An understanding passed between them. An alliance. It was fresh and new but Ellie felt it, and safety and security came with it.
“For dinner, I prepare a meal and leave it laid out in this fridge,” Janice murmured, moving to a large double door refrigerator to the right side of a window. “Mr Salbatore has a large appetite,” Janice murmured, burying her head in the fridge, leaving Ellie to stand there with a bemused look on her face as she inwardly agreed with that assessment. “So I always prepare generous meals. As for preferences, he’s not fussy. So long as it’s tasty and abundant, he’ll eat it. If you, however, have more detailed requirements, I will be very happy to accommodate them. You need only provide me with a list of your favourites so that I might incorporate them into my planning.”
“Oh.” Ellie frowned, a little line forming between her brows. “I’m sure whatever Xavier likes will be fine for me,” she said with a tilt of her head.
Janice nodded. “He takes dinner in the State room,” she continued, but Ellie interrupted.
“The State Room?”
“A frightfully grand name, isn’t it?” Janice agreed with a laugh. “And I suppose the room is somewhat grand. It’s a hangover from when this house served as a diplomatic quarter. The State Room was used to host the President of the United States in the early nineteen eighties,” she said with pride.
“And Xavier eats there even when he’s on his own?”
“He likes it,” Janice said. “When you get to know him you’ll realise he’s quite stuck in his ways.”
And then, realizing what she’d said – the implication that the woman who’d borne Xavier a child barely knew him, brought a flush to Janice’s cheeks. “I don’t mean that you don’t know him, of course…”
“It’s fine,” Ellie rushed to reassure her, reaching for Josh and placing him on her hip. “Obviously nothing about this is conventional. I should say it will take us all a little time to get used to things. There will be many slips of the tongue in the meantime.”
Janice nodded, but she was more reserved as they moved from the kitchen and along the corridor, past the room Josh and Xavier had been in earlier, to another doorway.
Janice strode in first, and then waited so she could see Ellie’s surprise at the sheer size of the place.
“Wow.” She blinked at Janice then stepped into the room, placing Josh down in the middle of a timber floor that had been polished to a glossy sheen. A table sat at its centre, long enough to accommodate at least thirty guests, and there was an enormous candelabra placed right in the centre. More fine art adorned the walls, a grand piano stood proudly in the corner and the curtains were all draped in burgundy crushed velvet fabric secured with golden-tassled cords.
“Wow,” she said again, shaking her head.
“Shiny,” Josh agreed, so Ellie smiled, and reached for his plump little hand. He put it in hers and her heart squeezed.
“When you and Mr Salbatore feel like dinner – he usually eats at eight o’clock – just bring it in here and enjoy.” She smiled. “There is a sound system programed with various playlists, and I’ll set the fire before I leave.”
“And what time do you leave?” Ellie asked breathlessly.
“In about twenty minutes.” Janice smiled encouragingly. “But I’m always just a phone call away.”
Ellie shook her head, not wishing to intrude on this lovely woman’s down-time just because she, Ellie, was vibrating with nerves and anxieties at the very idea of sitting opposite this man for dinner.
“As for Master Salbatore here,” Janice said with a grin. “I suspect he would prefer to eat in the kitchen.”
“Yes,” Ellie agreed, thinking longingly of that comfortable, warm space with its neat four-person table and smell of just-baked bread. “I think you’re right.”
At eight thirty, Ellie went in search of Xavier. Her nerves were stretched to breaking point and there was nothing for it but to confront the man who’d caused all this upset and angst in her life. Josh had been asleep for hours. His fever hadn’t returned, but he was obviously wiped out from fighting off his bug.
She’d put him to bed after dinner, and then she’d begun to wait.
And she’d waited.
And minute by minute her anxiety had grown and her nerves had quivered and her doubts had exploded so that, by half past eight, she was a quivering mess. If they were going to have dinner together in that ghastly mausoleum of a room, that living museum, then she’d have sooner got it over and done with.
She found him in his study, and though she knocked before entering, and he called for her to enter, the sight of him still had her feet planting themselves to the same spot on the tapestried rug. His head was bent, his eyes focused on a point on his desk and his body was stiff. Stone-like. As if he were a statue.
Her breath whistled from her lungs and that seemed to capture his attention. He lifted his head, his eyes bleak, his skin pale beneath his darkly golden tan. “Yes?” It was a hiss. A sibilant demand for an explanation as to her arrival.
She swallowed and then assumed an air of defiance that was an utter forgery. “Janice said you eat at eight,” she intoned with her own measure of disdain. “It’s now gone half eight and I came to check if I should wait for you.”
“Is it?” He frowned, glancing at his wrist watch, his mistrust of her now par for the course, yet still oddly hurtful.
“Josh went to bed hours ago,” she confirmed. “He was tired because he’s been sick.” She was nervous and it had resulted in her babbling. She made a conscious effort to cease it and focused instead on her purpose for being in his office. “Would you like me to heat you some dinner?”
He cocked a single brow but oh! How expressive it was! How condescending and insulting. “Are you role-playing the part of the housewife now?”
“If I was doing that,” she said snippily, “I’d have cooked the dinner from scratch, wouldn’t I?”
His eyes sparked with hers and then he scraped the chair back and stood, his frame so bulky and large that she took a step back without realizing it. He grimaced in recognition.
“Leave it,” he said. “I’ll eat later. I don’t think I’m ready to play the part of the doting husband just yet.”
And he turned away, as though he couldn’t bear to look at her. He turned away and she felt as though ice had spread through her veins.
She felt pain, and she ached, and she wanted, more than anything, just to go home.