Page 53 of 2 Books in One Bundle
Louisa tore off her reading glasses and tossed them on top of her sketchpad. ‘What did you do?’
Matteo’s gaze left hers for a moment, settling on the little frog prince she’d drawn. His focus seemed to be distant. The corners of his mouth kicking up before he came back to himself and turned to her once more, clasping his hands in front of him.
‘Your home’s safe. They won’t be coming after it any more.’
Louisa sat there, mouth slightly open, hand clasping her cup of tea. She looked beautiful. With her hair wild and loose. Her verdant green eyes that had haunted so many of his thoughts, glimmering. It was clear she’d made changes in her life, moved on. Those changes appeared to have been good to her. When he’d spoken to Mrs Fancutt to check how the staff were faring back in the UK, she’d commented about it. Telling him he’d done well. That Mae would be happy.
Louisa’s grown into herself.
Yet he’d done nothing except cause her pain. He wasn’t responsible for her growth. It was all down to her. He realised she’d been underestimated. She’d kept her past with her mother so well hidden that no one recognised the depths of strength this woman held within herself, to merely survive.
Now, she was so cool and sharp. He deserved every part of her disdain. The hardness that seemed to coat her in a thin veneer. He hated that he might have done that to her. Might have made her somehow disappointed in life, because he was sure she was disappointed in him. That disappointment was the most painful wound she could have inflicted, because he’d realised in the days after she’d left that he’d basked in her approval like an elixir.
Craved it, because what he truly wanted was her love. A love she’d freely offered and that he’d unthinkingly rejected.
‘How did you do it?’
‘The why is probably more important.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yet that’s not the question I asked.’
The burn was well deserved. She wanted answers, and he was here to give them to her. To apologise, to beg for forgiveness. To ask her to allow him to come back into her life. To say that he would take her love if she still offered it, and cherish her, rather than flinging her emotions back in her face.
‘How did I get them to call off their legal action?’ He shrugged. That had been the easy part in the end. ‘I offered them money.’
A great deal of money, but he’d come to realise it didn’t matter. Why should it, when his quest for revenge had lost him someone whose importance had become vital to him?
‘That must have hurt,’ she said.
The pain was nothing compared to the agony of watching her walk out of the door. Waiting for her to return in the assuredness she would, then realising she had no intention of coming back. Though he didn’t think she’d want to hear that, not right now.
He shrugged. ‘Money’s nothing when compared to certainty. They did a lot of posturing, so I did a little of my own. I’ve been investigating their charities but haven’t been able to pin anything on them. Just rumours, suspicions, reports that didn’t add up. I warned them they’d attracted my attention and that they could use the funds to rectify what I suspected were anomalies in their accounts. It seemed they took my advice.’
Whilst he didn’t have solid evidence, he’d seen the fear in their eyes. They wouldn’t learn. One day they’d slip, and there would be no more of his money to bail them out. The regulators would catch them. He’d wasted too much of his life on them already, the hatred, the revenge. What he wanted to focus on now was love.
‘Is that all you came to tell me?’
He had so much more to say. That life without her had become a cold, dark place. How, when she’d walked away, the meaning for everything he’d done in the past and what he’d worked towards in the future had simply evaporated. How he’d thought she was trapped in the past when the person who’d been trapped all along was him.
But even more, he wanted to reassure her that Easton Hall was safe. That she could live in it, and that he’d never try to take it away from her.
‘I came to tell you that I’ll continue with whatever repairs Easton Hall needs. Anything you want will be done. The house is your home to live in for as long as you want. For ever, if that’s what you choose. Because all I want, Lulu, is for you to be happy.’
Louisa stood up, her chair scraping on the rustic tiles of the kitchen floor. She couldn’t sit still. She wanted to pace. Only a few months ago this would have been everything she’d dreamed of. Yet she realised all of her dreams since leaving Matteo were still bound up in him. The passion, the pleasure.
That didn’t make dreams reality.
‘What if I don’t want to live there?’
‘Then you don’t have to. After what you’ve inherited already from Mae’s estate, you’re a wealthy woman but, as you’ve reminded me, Easton Hall has beenyourhome and you still deserve part of it. If you want to move away for ever, we can calculate the value of your right to reside, and I’ll pay you for it. Then you can go anywhere you want in the world.’
What did she really want? She wrapped her arms around herself, turned away and looked out of a small kitchen window to Lake Como and the tiny dot on the other side that was Villa Arcadia.
There was so much she had to say, she hardly knew where to start. Though, where better than one of the things that had hurt her the most?
‘You said I wouldn’t survive on my own.’
She heard Matteo’s chair move out from the table. A prickle at the back of her neck. A slide of warmth telling her he was close.
