CHAPTER THREE #2
She swallowed; her neck knotted beneath his thorough inspection. “It was stupid. I should have just stayed here.”
Her happiness was visibly ebbing. He pressed a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face so that he could stare into her enormous eyes. “Thank you,” he said simply, and because she still seemed dubious, he smiled; this time, he made sure it breathed gratitude across his entire face.
“Thank you,” he repeated.
And she nodded, mollified apparently but still reserved.
“Tea?”
He pulled a face. “Is there another option?”
She laughed softly. “There’s coffee as well.”
He breathed a sigh of exaggerated relief. “Excellent.”
Kate walked ahead of him into the kitchen.
The sight of his shirt falling almost to her knees made his smile broaden.
She had said she hadn’t been with anyone in a really long time.
He had. He’d spent the weekend before with Alexandra, the Brazilian supermodel.
And yet with all her gorgeous long legs and hours spent beautifying herself each day, she couldn’t hold a candle to Kate’s natural style and grace.
“You didn’t wear shoes,” he remarked, lifting an old pot from beneath the sink and rinsing it before filling it.
There was firewood beside the stove. He loaded some into the hearth and then added paper and struck a match.
His body remembered the actions from his childhood; he worked on muscle memory and Kate watched, breathless at the beauty of not just this kitchen, but also this man.
He was so right in these surrounds. He placed the pot on top of the grill and then looked at her.
She was staring at him, her expression unmistakably thoughtful.
“What is it?” He prompted.
“You really suit this. More than the tux and all the money stuff.”
“The money stuff?” He pushed, leaning against the bench beside her as the water began to heat.
“Yeah.” She bumped her hip to his, her smile playful. “You know, the mansion on the river. The priceless art. The fancy car. The spending two hundred thousand euros as though it’s nothing … none of that really fits. This is you. Right here. I feel like you’re more at peace somehow.”
He pierced her soul with his stare. His eyes saw every single bit of her then. “You are different to what I expected.”
A frown tugged at her lips. “Since yesterday? In what way?”
“You looked so untouchable and cold up on that stage. I had you pegged as one of those wealthy, boring society women. You know, daughter of some rich couple. Raised in luxury.”
“You thought I was a snob? Benedetto, I’m a secretary,” she pointed out. “For a charity. I earn practically nothing. I borrowed the dress I was wearing yesterday. I live in a tiny flat that looks out on my neighbour’s washing line from one window and a train station from the other.”
“So why do you seem like you weren't born to that kind of lifestyle?” He pushed, curious at how much she would reveal. Why was she using a different name? Why wasn’t she owning up to the truth of her family?
She stared at him for a couple of silent beats of time. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “This is who I am.”
He let it go. They had time. Eventually she’d answer his questions more truthfully; he was sure of it.
“Anyway, you still bid on me. Even though you thought I was going to be some princess type?”
“I happen to like princess types,” he said with a shrug.
“No, you don’t. They annoy you.” She lifted a finger to his lips. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do. You don’t like the trappings of wealth and yet you live a rarified life. You don’t like expensive women and yet you seek them out. Why aren’t you living your truth, Benedetto Arnaud?”
Her psycho-analysis was oddly accurate. So much so it sent shivers down his spine. He volleyed the question back to her to buy for time. “Are you living your truth?”
Her smile shone with the force of the sun beyond the window. “I am now.”
The pot began to boil. She moved towards it but he caught her wrist and brought her back to his body. “But you weren’t? At some time?”
She thought about obfuscating, but there was no sense in lying to him.
She was as far from her father and his life as she could be.
Worlds apart. Besides, with Benedetto she felt …
safe. It didn’t make sense, but she was completely at ease.
“I guess not.” She smiled to brush him off. “Coffee? Black?”
He nodded, rubbing a hand across his stubbled jaw.
He had sent his picture. He had taken the revenge he’d desperately craved for years.
Knowledge that Benedetto had slept with Katherine would undoubtedly torment Augustine, as he’d intended.
He should, therefore, have made an excuse and ended things.
There was no longer a purpose to their time together.
And yet he felt an invisible tug towards her, like he was bound to her by a force beyond explanation.
“In what way?”
She stared, midway through emptying coffee into a mug. He tried not to grimace at the fact it was instant. Coffee was coffee.
“Huh?”
“In what way were you not living your truth, as you put it?”
She lifted the pot and was about to tip boiling water into the mug when he made a sound and took it from her gently. “Allow me.”
He lifted the mug over the sink and half filled it with the water before placing it on the bench. “Yours?”
Wordlessly she held her teacup to him and he repeated the action with the water.
She thanked him and poured a splash of milk into it before cradling it in her hands. “It’s cool this morning. You can tell Autumn is on its way.”
He nodded. “It’s always earlier here, too.” He nodded towards the terrace and she followed him silently.
The doors were swollen; again he had to nudge it with his shoulder.
The terrace was overgrown, like the rest of the house.
“It’s like Narnia,” she said softly then turned to look up at him with eyes that sparkled with magic.
“Or the cottage in Hansel and Gretel. Everything all overgrown and whispering secrets of their own. Don’t you feel a bit like an invader?
Like the house and the garden have their own little life and we don’t belong? ”
He nodded. “It has always been like that. My parents lived here when they were first married. They had no running water. No electricity. It was exactly as it had been for centuries.”
“That must have been so romantic,” she sighed, settling herself into a cane chair and crossing her legs. She sipped her tea and stared out at the view. Perfect clouds drifted slowly before her, their edges rimmed in gold, their faces splashed with peach.
“Perhaps.”
“What happened to your parents?”
He took the seat beside her and sipped his coffee.
He turned his head away so she wouldn’t see the way his features contorted in disgust at the taste.
“My mother died when I was born. Here. In this house.” He turned his head to look inside the windows.
“Labour was sudden. They had no phone. My father could not even get her into the car in time. I was born, and she bled to death in the garden.”
“Oh my God.” Kate stood up and crossed to sit on his lap. She wrapped an arm around his neck and buried her head in his neck. “I am so, so sorry. That’s awful.”
“Yes,” he agreed grimly. “Though romantic, this house and its remoteness, led to her death.”
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, for lack of anything else to say.
He nodded. “There is no reason to think she would have survived if she’d been in town. In any event, my father modernised the home afterwards. It was painstaking.”
“I’m surprised he stayed, in a way. It must have been hard to be here without her.”
“Yes. Incredibly.” He sighed. “But it was where they’d been their happiest. He was … he met my mother and wanted to change his life completely. He grew up in the south of Italy, and moved here for her.”
“A new life together,” she smiled. “That’s so beautiful. They must have loved one another very much.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “I believe they did.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Helena,” he tilted his head to see her face. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Because. It seems weird to be in her home and not know her name. Don’t you think?”
His heart turned over at the simple sentiment. “I think you have the habit of saying what I least expect.”
She laughed unsteadily. “Yes. I’m a bit weird.”
“No, not weird,” he assured her. “Unique. Beautiful.” Perfect. That word again breathed through his mind.
“What about your dad?” She asked, sipping her tea.
Benedetto stiffened imperceptibly. “He died a few years ago. He was in poor health.”
Fortunately, Kate was a romantic soul, and her mind took a different direction from her inquisitive path. “He must have been, in some way, waiting to join her for all those years.”
“Yes,” Benedetto nodded.
“How about your father?” He asked with a degree of assumed nonchalance that almost pained him. “Are you close to him?”
She was nowhere nearly as masterful at covering her emotions as he. “Not really.”
The answer surprised him. He had not known this. In every way he had seen proof of their tightness. In any interviews he’d ever given, Lord Beauchamp had boasted about his daughter; his protégé.
“No?” He sipped his coffee, hoping he seemed only casually interested in her revelation.
“We’re different people,” she said with finality. The conversation, so far as Kate was concerned, was over. She placed her tea cup down on the table in front of them and stood. “And we have a house to clean. Come on.”