CHAPTER FOUR
“You must get the most incredible fruit out here.” Kate reached up and plucked a single orange blossom to her nose. It was sweetly fragrant, a heady mix of sunshine and joy.
Beside her, Benedetto walked, hands stuffed in the pockets of the faded jeans he’d found in the wardrobe. His jumper was a dark grey and dressed like this, casually, he looked completely like himself. Kate knew the moment he appeared in this outfit that she had been right.
He might wear suits and tuxedos in his day to day life, but that was a costume. He was this person.
This outdoorsy, rugged, wild type of man.
“I would pick it, growing up, so that my father could make jam.”
“Your dad made jam?” She asked, picking another blossom and joining it to the other in her hand.
“The best,” his smile was teasing. “Don’t tell me you’re going to find that strange? And here I had you pegged as a feminist.”
“I don’t find it strange,” she laughed. “I like it. I especially like the thought of you wearing a cute little kiddy apron and helping him stir it.” She sobered. “It’s just … I can’t imagine my dad ever doing anything so domestic.” She pulled a face.
Benedetto nodded. “Tell me about him.” Only he didn’t want to know.
The day they’d shared had shocked him for its easiness.
They’d cleaned the house and she’d sung, showing that her voice was beautiful and melodious.
They’d made love after lunch and dozed in the faded hammock that had once hung with splashes of bright colour between the fig and the olive tree in the front garden.
And now, as the sun was dipping down over the surrounding hills, they walked side by side as though they’d known one another for years, not a day and a half.
The mention of Augustine Beauchamp filled him with a river of ill-will.
It reminded him that he was full of hatred and anger.
It reminded him that this woman was just a means to an end and that he was foolish to be getting to know her so well.
It reminded him that he had used her for sex and sent proof of that act to the one man who would understand what he’d done, and why.
His face paled beneath his tan.
“And ruin this paradise?” She said with forced-lightness, grabbing another blossom and pinched all three between her fingers. “Look.” She held it out to him; he saw only a collection of tiny flowers. “It’s a fairy bouquet.”
He arched a brow sardonically and she burst out laughing.
“I used to make them when I was little. Hundreds of them. One time, I picked all of the blossoms off our pear tree and made strands and strands and strands of white ribbons. It took me a whole day, but it was so beautiful.” She sighed at the memory.
“Of course I was in so much trouble when my father found out. The tree hadn’t borne fruit for three years so I’d sort of ruined something special. ” She shook her head.
“How old were you?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. Six or seven perhaps.”
“Too young to understand what you were doing,” he pointed out, taking the bouquet from her and twirling it in his own fingers. His eyes latched to hers and something sharp and bright flared between them.
Kate looked away from him, her eyes seeking out something — anything — that would distract her.
“What other fruits do you grow here?”
He was happy to let her move their conversation along. He draped an arm casually around her shoulders, though his brain was shouting at him to stop this madness. He had done what he’d set out to do and now he should have been driving her back to Rome and forgetting he ever knew her.
“I’ll have to check that the trees are in order,” he said thoughtfully. “But when my father lived here there were oranges, lemons, limes, cumquats, grapes, pears, apples, olives and a heap of macadamia nuts too. He had a goat that made his milk, and chickens for eggs.”
“Woah. It’s like your own River Cottage,” she said with a shake of her head. “How incredible it must be to live like that. I can barely open a tin of baked beans. I can’t imagine being so self-sufficient.”
“He was very in touch with nature.” Benedetto’s voice didn’t show how that statement pained him. To imagine his father leaving this paradise to answer fictitious charges in England. To have spent his dying days in a cold British jail!
“And you must have been too, to grow up like that.”
He shrugged.
Kate stopped walking so that she could stand in front of him and wrap her arms around his waist. The difference in their sizes was more obvious now than when they’d first met and she’d been in heels.
“When I first met you, I remember thinking that you were sort of wild. That you looked like a man who could tame a beast with his bare hands.” She linked her fingers through his now and brought them to her lips. “I think I was right.”
His heart was squeezing painfully in his chest. Why was she looking at him like that? As if he could give her something more than this? He couldn’t! He couldn’t give her anything. He’d taken from her exactly what he’d needed and soon it would be over.
“I left this life, remember? I turned my back on what my father had valued because I wanted to make my mark in the world. I didn’t want to idle in an ancient home, cara, even one so charming as this. You have a romantic impression of me that isn’t borne out by the facts.”
“You really prefer your life? A life of corporate boredom and money and meaningless sex and the trappings of success without any real …”
“What do you know of my life?” He demanded, with a sharper tone than he’d intended to employ. He saw something like fear clot her eyes and if he were feeling less emotional himself he might have stopped to wonder why she had that reaction.
She studied him carefully and then stepped away. “Nothing, I guess.” She wrapped her arms around her waist in a futile attempt to warm up. Only it wasn’t the cool wind that had chilled her. It was his sudden attitude shift.
It felt good to push her away. It felt right. He had let things get too complicated; a foolish, stupid move not worthy of him. After all, he was used to having meaningless sex with beautiful women.
But this place was magical.
This place could cast a spell on any who submitted to it as they had.
He felt the magic and it was changing him.
He would not allow it to.
“We have only just met,” he added, his tone cool now.
“I know.” She lifted her head to look up at him.
Her eyes were bleak. He hated that. He hated that her eyes were as expressive as her father’s.
In Augustine’s eyes he had seen belligerence and cruelty and disinterest. In hers he saw everything that was kind, good and vulnerable.
“I guess I’ve known men like you before,” she said, and her words were like a knife in his gut.
Was she possibly comparing him to her father?
“Have you?”
It wasn’t true; no one was like Benedetto Arnaud. “I hate the world you live in,” she said instead. “I hate the waste. The wanton spending. You threw two hundred thousand pounds at me as though it were nothing. Don’t you see how disgusting that is?”
“I gave the money to a charity,” he pointed out, wondering at how her face could fill with such passion.
“As though it were nothing,” she repeated. “You spent in the blink of an eye what most people spend a lifetime trying to save.”
“So it offends you that I have money?” He countered. “Yet you work for a charity that exists because of people like me.”
She frowned; he ached to kiss those pouted lips. “How do you make that sound wrong in some way?” She said finally.
“It’s not wrong. It is simply the way of the world.”
“What do you even do? To have this kind of money?”
He dug his hands back into his pockets. They were safer there. He needed a physical barrier to stop from reaching for her and reinstating the sweetness they’d been sharing a moment earlier. “I build things,” he said simply.
“What kinds of things?”
“High rises mostly.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you?”
“I guess if I had my phone I could have googled you.”
Icy panic dredged through him. If she had her phone and googled him she would have very quickly seen that his father had been incarcerated for murder and from there, a few clicks would have shown that her father had been the presiding judge.
He blinked his eyes closed and thanked the heavens for whatever stroke of luck had led to her forgetting her phone.
“Don’t google me,” he said, his voice thick. “I will answer any question you ask. I would prefer you to speak to me rather than read about me.”
She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Why? Would I see something on the internet you wouldn’t like?”
“Anyone in my position has things on the internet about them that are simply not true.” He took a step forward, moving them nearer to the tangle of rose bushes.
They were a mess. “My mother loved the rose garden; or so my father said. He used to take a tremendous amount of pride in maintaining it for her.” He sighed roughly.
“He would hate to know it was like this.”
“Why don’t you hire someone to maintain the house and garden?” She asked, following his gaze into the garden. Her heart was beating fast; her head was spinning. Had they just been arguing? And if so, what about?
“It never occurred to me,” he said after a beat had passed. “I should though. You’re right.”
His quick agreement pleased her. She wrapped the words up and clutched them to her soul.
“You said last night that you haven’t been with anyone in a long time. Why not?” He asked, linking his fingers to hers and pulling her gently towards him. He pressed a kiss against her soft hair and he felt the answering thudding in her heart.
She closed her eyes and breathed in every detail of his nearness. “I haven’t been bought before.” Her words were an attempt at lightness. They didn’t succeed.
“That has no bearing on why you slept with me.”