CHAPTER SEVEN
HE’DMADEA serious error of judgement. It had been days since those moments at the lake where some kind of enchantment had overtaken him and he’d brushed his lips across Louisa’s perfect, tempting throat as she laughed. Lost any sense in the moment. Took her perfect mouth with his own.
Why do I want...to be bad...so badly?
That same phrase could apply to him as well. From the moment his lips had touched her skin, he’d been a condemned man. Doomed to crave more of her. Her gasp, the breathy moan. The way she’d opened for him. Tongue tentatively touching his own. It was all he could think about. Whereas Louisa?
He wasn’t sure. Fearing he’d frightened her. He knew passion and desire, and believed she’d been as affected as him. The colour high on her cheeks as she’d slid down his body. The way her breath had hitched. Nipples obvious points against the soft fabric of her dress. Except, now, it was as if she’d disappeared. Locking herself away with her artwork. Barely coming out for meals as if she’d been avoiding him. All he knew was that Louisa was keeping to herself. So absorbed, it was as if he didn’t exist.
He needed to apologise for it, fix it somehow, even though he wasn’t sorry at all. His body craved more of her. His mind? Matteo shook his head, trying to get the persistent vision of her head thrown back in his arms, her laughter, from it. How he’d imagined her head thrown back, not in laughter, but in ecstasy...
He couldn’t. Shouldn’t.
Why?
That one word had run through his head like a broken record. They were both adults. Clearly attracted to each other.
Why, why, why?
He could add more words to that single one his brain locked onto, like some kind of chant. Sheltered, innocent. He’d lost his own innocence years ago. Life teaching him how cold and cruel it could be. Yet that afternoon on the lake when he’d shown Louisa her first beach, he’d simply taken.Thinking more clearly, as he was now, for someone who’d lived her life locked away it must have come as a shock. He should apologise. Her avoiding him, becoming fearful of the world, was not part of his plan.
Eyes on the prize, Matteo.
Louisa had her whole life, now in front of her. A world she needed to see. A right to reside she needed to relinquish. He wasn’t going to get that by seduction, as tempting as she was.
Matteo made his way to the space he now called her workroom. Knocked gently. Opened the door when there was no answer because she might be avoiding him, but they needed to talk. Perhaps she was walking about the grounds. She seemed to love the gardens here. He’d catch flashes of her gleaming copper hair in fiery contrast to the trees and shrubbery, but when he went to find her, she’d be gone. Disappearing like a ghost.
It was beyond frustrating. As was the way she’d been so non-committal about him seeing her artwork. It wasn’t as if she’d said no.
It was that she hadn’t really said anything at all.
He walked to her drawing table, art supplies neatly put away. The sketchbooks that she drew in, stacked beside it. He looked at a few scraps of paper tacked to the table, almost like a mood board. Sketches of ink pen, a little frog in a crown. A frog with personality judging by the way that crown sat slightly askew. An almost...smirk on its wide froggy mouth. Her attention to detail, the frog’s princely little outfit. A red fitted jacket that looked like velvet though how she’d achieved that with pen, ink and what appeared to be coloured pencil was beyond him. Little yellow-and-blue-striped bloomers. His spotted skin. It was extraordinary.
He smiled. Wanting to find out more about the story she illustrated. To his shame he’d not paid much attention, and this was such an integral part of who Louisa was. Committed to her work, clearly taking pride in it, worried about deadlines.
He glanced at the carefully stacked sketch pads.
‘Her work’s really something.’
The words of that contractor who’d packed away her things. He’d almost berated the man for looking but why should this artwork be hidden? Yet another temptation in his path, yet this wouldn’t hurt anyone if he gave into it. A quick scan of her illustrations and he’d leave. Continue looking for her. Which one to choose? He grabbed the sketch pad at the top, one with a beige cover. Placed it on the tabletop and opened.
These drawings were different from the sketches tacked to her desk. No whimsy about them at all. Pages filled with dark ink and nightmare creatures hiding in the shadows with twisted faces and evil grins. Hands reaching out of the darkness.
Nightmares.
That night of the storm. The cry that had him out of bed. Had that been Louisa? A heat rose inside him, like anger. He wanted to know what had caused the fear and horror he saw on these pages. To fix it, somehow. Matteo kept turning more pages, and the pictures changed. Drawings of people now, or disembodied parts of them at least. Hands, feet, eyes. All in exquisite detail.
They somehow felt intimate. However, he didn’t think they were from life. Still, the bitter spike of something like jealousy overcame him, because they were all of a man. Although there was a familiarity about the sketches. Matteo couldn’t put his finger on it... He kept going, and then he saw it. A full drawing of the statue of David on one page. On the other, Louisa had drawn him, not as the statue, but as if he were a real person. They must be from pictures. She’d never travelled before. The brilliance of them, sketching marble then making that marble come to life in pencil, pen and ink.
He should stop. This book was obviously private, unlike the sketches for her work. Yet he couldn’t. He was like a man possessed. Here was the woman she hid. What other secrets would he find? He wanted to know more of what made Louisa tick. He flicked over pages of detailed drawings, until the drawings changed again.
A sketch of a couple. If he’d thought that the pictures of David were somehow intimate, this was about intimacy. She’d inked so few lines on the page yet there was no hiding what this drawing was about. The pair, naked. You couldn’t see their faces but there was no doubt what they were doing. He turned the page, another scene. A couple lying on a bed. Rumpled sheets. The man’s hand lazily resting on the woman’s stomach. This was like looking through a window, except into Louisa’s soul. Then the detail drawings. Hands clutching sheets, backs arched. Fingers pressing into flesh. Bodies connected.
Heat roared over him, rushing low. The weight of his desire overcoming sensible thought. He couldn’t stop turning page after page. They were magnificent, erotic. Couple after couple making love, kissing. Touching. Questing mouths and hands. Such a contrast to the innocence Louisa always portrayed to the world. He lost himself in her pictures, not thinking whether he should or shouldn’t.
Not thinking much, other than about a need to see more. He fixed on the last picture, a naked couple entwined, wrapped together and also wrapped in what looked like...wind. With scattered leaves whirling about them as if they’d both been picked up into the air. The woman, hair long and wild, curling round them both in the maelstrom. The man. Dark hair, mouth at her throat...
Were they her fantasies? In a general continuum of the acts of lovemaking they were tame enough. But that they’d come from her at all, given for the best part of her life she’d been isolated... Here he’d spent time berating himself for kissing her, yet these pictures weren’t soft sketches filled with innocent love and romance. They scorched the pages with yearning and passion. A need he knew exactly how to fulfil...
‘What are you doing?’
He hadn’t heard the door open. Matteo snapped the sketchbook shut. A fresh heat burned through him but this wasn’t desire, it was something like shame.
Louisa looked to the sketchbook under his fingers and stormed up to him, eyes narrowed, lips thin in anger. She reached out, hand trembling. Snatched the book from the desk’s surface, holding it to her chest.
‘You had no right. That’s private.’ Her voice was so quiet. As if he’d somehow forced his way into her life and exposed her deepest secrets. Her face flushed red. Her pale skin hiding nothing. He liked the way she blushed, but this time it wasn’t something sweet and innocent. The way her mouth dropped, it was as if she were humiliated.
‘I know.’
The taint of guilt slicked over him then. He’d embarrassed her by invading her space, her privacy. It had been the wrong thing to do and he was sorry, in some ways. In others, he wasn’t sorry at all. Because he’d learned something about Louisa today.
That she desired.
‘They’re things you shouldn’t have looked at. Things I never—’
‘I’m sorry, Lu—Louisa.’
She whipped round, her hair swirling like the woman in the last picture, long, loose. Glorious. Like this, in her fury, it was as if she were on fire.
‘Oh, really? Then why were you in here?’
He held his hands out, placating. ‘I was looking for you. I didn’t know where you were, and I haven’t seen you much over the past few days. I thought you were avoiding me.’
‘I was working. Something I thought you might understand.’
‘I do.’ Or at least, he did now. He’d not really thought much about her work before. When she’d first worried about missing her deadline and needing her things he’d dismissed her, told her she should take a break. To have fun. Now... ‘You’re exceptionally talented.’
Her skin flared an even brighter red. Louisa chewed on her lower lip. Clutching the sketch pad to her chest. Her fingers blanched white around the edges.
‘You know what I think?’ he went on. ‘I think you’re feeling ashamed right now of what I’ve seen, and you shouldn’t.’
‘How do you know anything about what I’m feeling?’
‘Because I’m human. Those pictures are all about humanity. Passion. It isn’t something to be ashamed of, or to hide. It’s normal, and I won’t judge you for it.’
It was as if she almost folded in on herself. Shoulders drooping. Hair covering her face. ‘You’re lying.’
‘Why would I lie?’
He wanted her to face him, to be proud of what he’d seen. Instead, she snorted, turned her back to him. Walked to the French doors overlooking the lake and stared outside.
‘People lie all the time, Matteo. They say one thing, mean another. Think only about themselves, not caring who they hurt in the process.’
His gut clenched, hard and angry. He wanted to ask who had hurt her. Who’d put that haunted look on her face. Who’d made her draw, not those pictures of lovemaking and ecstasy, but the darker ones. The ones that looked like, not what she craved, but what she feared. Yet he was also angry at himself. How wounded she appeared, all because of his curiosity, when he should have known better.
People were entitled to their secrets. She could keep hers. All he’d been looking for was a way in, and he’d found it. Anything to show her that living in a huge old home in the country with only staff for company was a waste. That she was a woman of passion and desire. Someone who clearly wanted more, and the world was there for her taking.
He needed to repair what he’d done here. She wanted truth, and he wanted trust. The only way he could achieve either was to give a tiny bit of himself. Not one that would crack him open too wide, but enough for Louisa to know that he was telling the truth.
Matteo shook his head, began to prise open the vault to the memories he preferred to keep hidden. Part of him rebelled at the disclosure, because truths could cause the most painful of wounds if twisted against you. But this was Louisa. Lulu. As harmless as a kitten.
‘I know what it’s like to be lied to,’ he said, ‘and I promised myself I’d never do that to another person. Even if the truth hurt.’
Louisa held on to her sketchbook as if it were a kind of life preserver. The only thing keeping her afloat. The one she’d especially wanted nobody to see. It contained her darkest nightmares, where the fear overcame her. Waking her in the night. Compelling her to draw because if she captured them on paper, they might stop tormenting her. Then those other dreams, her fantasies. The ones that taunted her in another way. She’d captured them to make them real, because she’d never wanted a relationship but, sometimes, she wanted.In the end she’d learned that dreams couldn’t hurt you. Not like people.
People were all risk. Little reward.
Though the way she’d seen Matteo when she’d stood at the door, paralysed. The intensity on his face as he looked at her most private sketchbook. The unalloyed fascination as his hands touched the pages gently, almost reverently.
Before the shock and anger overtook her, she’d imagined those fingers touching her.
That last drawing, two people caught in a whirlwind. She’d felt like that down at the lake, in his arms. When his lips slipped over her skin. Their kiss, which rocked the very core of her. It was like discovering a part of herself that had been missing for so long. Here, in this glorious sunshine, far from everywhere familiar, the fears that plagued her nights had begun leaching away. Turning into something more heated, insistent like a ceaselessly beating drum.
Need.
He’d been right, she had been avoiding him. Her work being a convenient excuse. But she couldn’t think about that right now, not with the man those recent desires had begun tangling round standing right in front of her. A man who claimed he knew how much untruths hurt. If they talked about him, he wouldn’t talk about her and what he’d seen.
‘Who lied to you?’
He turned away, walking to the glass doors overlooking the lake, hands in his pockets. As if he was trying to distance himself from some memory. Nothing about him was open right now. He’d closed himself off from her.
‘When I was six, an older cousin told me I wasn’t a real Bainbridge. That I was adopted and I’d never be one of them. I was a fake, a phony. Until then, I’d had no idea.’
Her stomach dropped. She couldn’t imagine what that would have been like. How could anyone say that to a child? Though she understood this family. They were only after perfection, not failure. Blood and legacy were the only things important to any of them.
‘Matteo, I’m—’
He cut off her words of sympathy with the slice of his hand through the air. Okay, so he didn’t want to talk about it. That she understood all too well. The sympathetic looks from the police after her mother had finally been found out. The empathy from her psychologist. In the end she was sick of it all. Of being thought of as unwell for so many years, then being thought of as somehow broken. When all she’d wanted was for things to go back to how they were before her father died. When she was a normal child with her whole life ahead of her.
‘It was a gift,’ he said, yet his voice sounded choked. ‘I finally realised why my parents didn’t treat me the same as Felicity. Sent me away when she got sick. It made sense. I wasn’t theirs.’
She shook her head. ‘No, that can’t be right.’
‘It can. What other explanation is there?’
‘Your parents had adopted you. They wanted you.’
He turned. Mouth a thin, brutal line.
‘They wanted what every Bainbridge wants. An heir. Someone to carry on the family wealth, the family name if they’re lucky enough to have a boy. Don’t worry, I’ve reconciled myself to the realisation.’
Yet everything about him now seemed so hard and tense. As if one wrong move and he’d crack and break into a million pieces.
‘Have you?’
‘It is what it is. I can’t change it. They got their true heir in the end.’
‘Are you sure about that? What about Felicity?’
‘What about her?’
Louisa had been surprised to see Felicity at Mae’s funeral. It had been clear she was a Bainbridge, the pale skin and hair a giveaway, yet Louisa had never met her before. Then she’d introduced herself, whilst seeming to search the small crowd of mourners as if looking for something, or someone...
‘I get the idea you don’t see her much. Have you asked her whether it’s what she wanted? Whether she thinks of herself as the sole heir?’
He shook his head. ‘Of course not. I don’t see her because she’s working as a nanny and travels a lot. Both of us are busy.’
He reached almost reflexively into his pocket, pulled out his phone. Seemed to think better of it, shoved it back as if it might burn him. Louisa knew all about avoidance of the things that hurt you the most. Sometimes the greatest kindness was to let someone hide.
Hadn’t she been hiding long enough?
‘Did you want to see some of my illustrations?’
Matteo’s eyes widened at the sudden change of subject. ‘I’d love to see what you want to show me.’
Words loaded, replete with meaning. Was there an answer?
Everything.
No. Where did that come from?
She didn’t know. These thoughts, they intruded when she was around him. Insistent things that whispered she was entitled to whatever reward Matteo could provide to her. She’d waited long enough.
‘I don’t really show people my work before it’s finished.’ She grabbed a sketchbook and placed it on her table. Sure, she’d struggled with the pictures, and these were the sorts of drawing she’d generally file in a cabinet when done. Putting the characters who’d invaded her brain to bed. When she gave her drawings over for the last time, it was as if she set her characters free. And set herself free as well...till the next project held her captive.
‘Why?’
How to explain something that made little sense, even to her? ‘It’s like when I share my illustrations, they stop being mine and become someone else’s. Like the other person takes some of the magic away.’
He hesitated then, his hand halting over the page.
‘I don’t want to ruin the magic for you. I know how important your work is.’
Something inside her warmed. He understood part of what this meant to her. Her mother had always disparaged her ‘doodling’. In spite of the woman, she’d built a career on it but still occasionally heard that critical voice, telling her what she was doing had no value.
‘It’s okay,’ she said.
‘I feel privileged.’ Matteo’s voice carried a weight, as though he meant it. ‘What book are you illustrating?’
‘A reimagining of The Frog Prince.’
‘Always children’s stories?’
She nodded. ‘I like them, the innocence of it. And I love the idea that something I’m doing is giving children joy.’
The only thing that had given her much happiness as a child was reading. In those illustrated children’s books she’d found an escape. Some days, after her father had died, when she was in and out of hospital, books and the fantasy world she could immerse herself in were all that had kept her going. It had been something her mother couldn’t steal from her.
She wanted to give that escape to other children as well.
‘Have you ever thought of writing your own?’
Louisa stilled. There were other sketchbooks. The stories she’d written and drawn for Mae. About two children and their stupendous summer adventures, which had made Mae laugh. But they were more personal, private things. Created because she’d wanted to make a woman she loved remember happier times. Some of the happiest times of Louisa’s own life.
Still, she shook her head. ‘It’s not for me. Let the author take the accolades. I’m not really into the idea of book signings and publicity.’
Matteo frowned, skewered her with his hot brown gaze that saw too much, even though he didn’t say anything in response.
She opened the first page of her sketchbook and slid it over to him.
‘Here are some working drawings, the ones I did when I was a bit stuck.’
They stood side by side. The man somehow radiated heat. The warmth from his body slid through her. His presence was palpable as a touch, like a finger gently stroked down her spine. Goosebumps skittered across her skin.
How could the proximity of a person do this to her? This sparkling sensation that lit up every nerve of her body. Made her catch her breath whenever he was close.
Made her want him closer...
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 little trattoria close 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.