Page 5 of 2 Books in One Bundle
He might have cared once, when he’d been capable of it. But that child with the capacity to love and care was gone. Ground out of him by constant disappointment. Love didn’t matter. Caring didn’t matter. People shouldn’t be disposable, yet he’d learned that he was. Twice. His birth mother, whoever she was, abandoning him on a hospital doorstep. Then the family who’d adopted him, who hadn’t wanted him either. Not when they finally had a child of their own blood...
Blood always won out, in this family at least.
They hadn’t cared about him, until he’d become successful.Finallyclaiming him as a Bainbridge when he craved to rub their noses in the certainty that he wanted nothing to do with them. Would have changed his name to eschew the family completely, had he known who he really was. But all his searches had been fruitless. Not even genealogy DNA testing, his last hope of finding his birth family, had turned up a relative. It had only given hints at his heritage. Italian. Which accounted for his colouring and his name. It gave him nothing more.
He was truly alone.
‘You’ll be looked after,’ Matteo said. He’d promised Mae, and he delivered on his promises. Louisa would see reason. He’d ensure that she was well compensated, with a bank account so fat and full she could do whatever she dreamed. Travel the world, buy a home of her own, drape herself in jewels. He’d learned over the years that was what people wanted.
His riches.
She might look innocent and guileless, but she’d be no different.
No one he’d met ever was.
Louisa could barely catch her breath, as the heavy weight of dread crushed her chest. She hardly believed a word Matty said. He had to be wrong.
Yet why would he lie?
No, it would be okay. Ithadto be okay.
Still, a voice inside Louisa’s head shouted a warning that if she let him in, she’d lose the only home she’d ever really had. The only place she felt safe. She was torn between being polite and listening to that voice.
The same voice that had whispered once that she wasn’t really sick. That it was her mother making her ill, hurting her whilst claiming it was love. The voice that had told her she needed to getsomeoneto listen because no doctor, no matter how clever they were with all their medicines and needles and procedures, could make her well.
That voice had saved her life.
But this wasMatty.
She looked up at him, towering above her. Broad. Strong.
Handsome...
No. Why was she thinking like this? He’d come to take away...everything. Then he raised an eyebrow, his lip quirked. And in a flash, he wasn’t Matty at all. He was the man that boy had grown into. Matteo Bainbridge. Carrying an arrogance and assertion that seemed to hold her in some kind of thrall. An almost cool disdain for everything around him. Something about it made her tingle all over, though she didn’t like to think too hard why that was.
Mae had always taught her to be polite. To be a good hostess, even though her great-aunt had stopped entertaining years ago. But one thing Louisa was certain of: had Matteo arrived on Mae’s doorstep whilst she was alive, she would have welcomed him in with open arms.
Louisa felt obliged to do the same.
She forced herself to prise her fingers away from their death grip on the door. Stand back a little, although she wanted to slam the ancient wood firmly in his face because that door had protected the home from any number of invaders in the past.
Still, if he really did own the home, she needed to hear what he had to say.
‘Okay, come in.’
None of that sounded like a good hostess, at all. Still, Matteo’s lips curled into a smile that looked every bit the frog prince she’d just drawn, and kind of gloating as well.
‘Thank you.’
She gestured him inside as he seemed to sweep in exactly as if he owned the place. Which, if she believed him, he did. He cast an appraising eye over the threadbare Axminster, looking around him as if searching for what was wrong, rather than focussing on what was right.
‘Follow me to the kitchen.’
He didn’t follow, of course he didn’t. A man who looked as if he ruled the world wouldn’t follow anyone. He moved into lockstep beside her, but it seemed almost uncomfortable. As though he had to adjust his pace, slow it to fit hers.
‘Where’s Mrs Fancutt?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to speak with her about chasing away my structural engineer.’
Louisa missed a step, falling behind Matteo’s long, powerful stride. Hurried to catch up. She didn’t want Mrs Fancutt getting into trouble. She was Easton Hall’s long-term housekeeper. If Matteo was telling the truth and the home was really his, the woman deserved to be kept on in the role.
