Uncovering the Silveri Secret (2 page)

One corner of his mouth came up in a sardonic smile. ‘Now look who’s blaspheming.’

Bella’s stomach dropped like an out-of-control elevator when his thumb pressed against her leaping pulse on the underside of her wrist. She hadn’t been so close to him in years. Not since
that
kiss. Ever since that night, she had assiduously avoided any physical contact with him. But now her skin on her wrist felt like it was being scorched. It felt hot and tingly, as if electrodes had zapped the nerves. ‘Get your filthy hands off me,’ she said but her voice came out raspy and uneven.

His fingers tightened for an infinitesimal moment, his unusual blue-green eyes holding hers, sending a riot of sensations tumbling down the length of her spine. She could sense
him
so close to her pelvis, that essential part of him that defined him as a virile and potent male. Her body felt its primal magnetic pull just as it had all those years ago. What would it feel like to press against him now that she was no longer that gauche, inexperienced, slightly inebriated teenager?

‘Say please,’ he said.

She gritted her teeth.
‘Please.’

He released her and she rubbed at her wrist, shooting him a livid glare. ‘You’ve made me all dirty, you bastard,’ she said.

‘It’s good clean dirt,’ he said. ‘The kind that washes off.’

Bella looked at the cuff of her shirt below the sleeve of her jacket that now had a full set of his dusty fingerprints on it. She could still feel the pressure of his fingers as if he had indelibly branded her flesh. ‘This shirt cost me five-hundred pounds,’ she said. ‘And now you’ve completely ruined it.’

‘You’re a fool, paying that for a shirt,’ he said. ‘The colour doesn’t even suit you.’

She stiffened her shoulders in outrage. ‘Since when did you become a personal stylist?’ she jeered. ‘You don’t know the first thing about fashion.’

‘I know what suits a woman and what doesn’t.’

She scoffed. ‘I bet you do,’ she said. ‘The less clothes the better, right?’

His eyes glinted as they did a lazy sweep of her form. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

Bella felt her skin tingle all over as if he had physically removed her clothes, button by button, zip by zip, piece by piece. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining how his work-roughened hands would feel on the softer smooth skin of her body. Would they catch and snare like a thorn on silk? Would they scratch or would they caress? Would they...?

She pulled back from her wayward thoughts with a hard mental slap. ‘I’m going inside to say hello to Mrs Baker,’ she said and swished past him to go to the front door.

‘Mrs Baker is away on leave.’

Bella stopped as if she had suddenly come up against an invisible wall. She turned around to look at him with a quizzical frown. ‘So who’s doing the cooking and cleaning?’ she asked.

‘I’m taking care of it.’

Her frown deepened. ‘You?’

‘You have a problem with that?’ he asked.

Bella blew out a little breath. She had a very
big
problem with it. Without Mrs Baker bustling about the place, she would be alone in the house with Edoardo. She hadn’t planned on being alone with him. It was a very big house, but still...

In the past he had lived in the gamekeeper’s cottage. But, since her father had left him Haverton Manor, he had the perfect right to live inside the house. He managed her father’s investments and operated his own property-development business out of the study next to the library. Apart from the occasional business trip abroad, he lived and worked here.

He slept here.

In
her
house.

‘I hope you don’t expect me to take over the kitchen,’ Bella said, shooting him another glare. ‘I came to have a break.’

‘Your whole life is one long holiday,’ he said with a sneer that boiled her blood. ‘You wouldn’t know how to do a decent day’s work if you tried.’

Bella gave her head a little toss. She wasn’t going to tell him about her plans to help Julian fund his mission work with a good chunk of her inheritance. Edoardo could jolly well go on thinking she was a flaky airhead just like everybody else. ‘Why would I need to work?’ she asked. ‘I have millions of pounds waiting for me to collect when I’m twenty-five.’

The muscle near his tightly set mouth started hammering again and his eyes turned to blue-green granite. ‘Do you ever spare a thought for how hard your father had to work to make his money?’ he asked. ‘Or do you just spend it as fast as it’s dropped in your account?’

Bella gave him another defiant look. ‘It’s my money to spend how I damn well like,’ she said. ‘You’re just jealous because you came from nothing. You got lucky with my father. If it hadn’t been for him, you’d be pacing a prison cell somewhere, not playing lord of the manor.’

His eyes glittered with sparks of acrimony. ‘You’re just like your gold-digging bitch of a mother,’ he said. ‘I suppose you know she was here a couple of days ago?’

Bella tried to disguise her surprise.
And hurt.
She hadn’t seen or heard from her mother in months. The last time she had heard from Claudia was when she’d called to say she was moving to Spain with a new
husband—her second since her divorce from Bella’s father. Claudia had needed money for the honeymoon. But then, Claudia always needed money, and Bella always felt pressured into giving it. ‘What did she want?’ she asked.

‘What do you think she wanted?’ he asked, that hard gaze glittering with cynicism.

Bella gave him an arch look. ‘Maybe she wanted to check you were still managing my assets properly.’

A frown suddenly pulled at his brow. ‘If you want a blow-by-blow inspection of the books, then all you have to do is ask,’ he said. ‘I’ve offered to meet with you more regularly but you’ve always refused. The last three meetings, you didn’t even have the decency to show up in person.’

Bella felt a little ashamed of herself. She had no question over his management of her father’s estate. The profits had steadily grown from the moment he had taken over the share portfolio in the months before her father had died from cancer. His street-smart intelligence and clever intuition had saved her assets where other investors’ had been lost during the economic turmoil of the past few years.

A couple of times a year he would insist they meet so he could go through the estate books with her. At first she had suffered those meetings, all the while sitting silently seething at how he was in control of her life. But even in that large, swanky London office he had seemed a little too close to her. The last meeting she had attended in person, her mind had wandered off into dangerous territory as she sat staring at the dark pepper of stubble around his mouth as he patiently explained the stocks and shares. She had tried to focus but within seconds she had started gazing at his hands as he had turned the pages of the meticulous report he had prepared. He had looked up at one point and locked gazes with her. She still remembered the throb of that silence. She had felt it deep inside her body.

She could still feel it.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Bella said. ‘I’m sure you’re doing all you can to keep things in order.’

There was a tight little silence.

‘Are you expecting your boyfriend to join you?’ he asked.

Bella tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear that the chilly breeze had worked loose. ‘He’s away on a mission in Bangladesh,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d come here until he gets back.’

‘London nightlife losing its appeal?’ he asked.

She gave him a brittle glare. ‘I haven’t been to a nightclub in ages. It’s not my scene any more.’

‘Prayer meetings more your thing?’

Oh, how she hated him for his mockery. ‘I bet you’ve never got down on your knees in your life,’ she tossed back.

His eyes slid to her pelvis and back with deliberate slowness. They seemed to burn with a secret erotic message as they met hers. ‘Say the word, princess, and I’ll be on my knees before you can say “heavens above.”’

Bella’s insides coiled and flexed with hot, traitorous desire. It simmered between her thighs. A flickering pulse that made her aware of every muscle and nerve and cell at the feminine heart of her.

He was the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks. She was the rich heiress with a pedigree that went back centuries.

She was about to become engaged.

It was forbidden.

He
was forbidden.

Bella gave him a frosty look. ‘I don’t think there’s a prayer on this earth that could save your soul,’ she said.

‘Why not try some laying on of hands instead?’ he said with a bitter smile.

She felt that disturbing little flicker again. It made her hate him all the more. She hated that he could have this effect on her, even now. How could he make her body act so shamelessly wanton just by being near him? It annoyed her that he had so much sensual power over her. It shocked her that she couldn’t control her reaction to him. It was even more shocking to know he was well aware of his impact on her. She could see it in those darkly brooding, indolent looks he gave her. The slow burn of his gaze made her skin feel like it was going to melt off her bones. ‘Go to hell,’ she bit out through tightly clenched teeth.

‘You think I haven’t already been there?’ he asked.

Bella couldn’t hold his gaze. It seemed to burn through her like a laser beam, touching her, stroking her, making her feel sensations she should not be feeling.

She turned on her heels and marched inside, closing the door with a satisfying clunk of metal and wood.

Edoardo let out a long hiss from between his teeth once she had gone inside the manor. He clenched and unclenched his fist a couple of times but he could still feel the tingling of where his hand had touched her wrist.

He should have frogmarched her back to her car and sent her packing. She was nothing but trouble.

And temptation.

He blew out another harsh breath. Yes, well, Bella Haverton was nothing if not tempting. She was a pint-sized little she-devil with an uppity attitude that stuck in his craw like a twig. He wanted her as much as he hated her. For years he had burned with lust for her. She was the temptation he had taught himself to resist, all except for that one night when she had pushed and pushed until he had snapped. He had kissed her roughly, angrily. The searing heat of that kiss had been building up for months and months. All those ‘come and get me’ looks she had been casting him, all those flirty little accidental touches as she had moved past him in the doorway had slowly but surely corroded his iron self-control. It had been like a massive explosion once their mouths met.

He still didn’t know quite how he’d had the strength of will to pull back from her, but somehow he had. She had been only sixteen, young, passionate and way out of her depth. He was nine years older than her, but he was centuries older in terms of experience. He hadn’t wanted to betray the trust Godfrey Haverton had placed in him. It had never been spoken in so many words, but he had always sensed Godfrey trusted him not to do the wrong thing by his young daughter.

It was different now she was older. There was no reason why he couldn’t indulge in a hot little affair with her. She might fancy herself in love with some other man, but she couldn’t hide the fact she still wanted him. He saw it in her eyes: the hunger, the wildfire passion she tried so desperately to hide from him.

He could
still
taste her.

All those years had passed, but he could still remember her hot, wet sweetness, the way her mouth had felt, the way it had moved against his. His body jammed with lust at the mere thought of driving into her, feeling her softness against his hardness, her arms tightly around him, her mouth on his, her tongue tangling with his in a sensual duel.

He had not touched her again until today. It had been like touching a live wire. His fingers still fizzed with the sensation. The ache to touch her again was like a pulse in his blood. It roared and screamed through his veins.

He
wanted
her.

He
lusted
after her.

There was a part of him that didn’t
want
to want her. She was the one person who could make him lose control, and control was everything to him. He was not proud of the way he had grabbed her that night all those years ago. He had acted on impulse, not reason. She had that power over him.

She
still
had that power over him.

Bella always liked to play the haughty aristocrat with him. She looked down her nose at him as if he had just crawled out from a primeval swamp with his knuckles dragging along the ground. He could think of nothing better than taking her down a peg or two.

And she had played right into his hands by turning up unannounced.

He gave an inward smile. She might think she could flounce in and take charge, issuing orders as if he was nothing but a lowly servant paid to wait on her hand and foot. Had she forgotten how her father’s will was written?

He
was in charge now.

And he was not going to let her forget it.

CHAPTER TWO

A
S
SOON
as Bella stepped inside the foyer, she felt a pang of emptiness that was like a hollow ache inside her chest. There was no hint of pipe tobacco. No sound of a walking stick tapping against the floorboards. No sound of classical music playing softly in the background.

There wasn’t even the sound of Mrs Baker singing tonelessly in the kitchen. No homely sounds of pots and pans clattering. No delicious smells of home baking, just the sharp tang of fresh paint lingering in the air and a silence that was measured by the methodical ticking of the grandfather clock: Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

She wandered through the lower floor of the manor, noting the newly painted kitchen and conservatory. The formal sitting room, overlooking the garden, the lake and the rolling fields beyond, had also had a bit of a makeover. Edoardo had spent much of the past five years restoring the manor to its former glory. He did most of the work himself. It wasn’t that he was
short of money; he could easily have afforded to outsource to contractors but he seemed to enjoy doing hands-on work.

Bella had only been seven years old when he had come to live at Haverton Manor. It had been the year after her mother had left. Her father had taken Edoardo on as a project, presumably to distract himself from his own misery at being deserted by his young wife and left to care for a small child on his own.

Edoardo had been kicked out of every foster home in the county. At sixteen he had clocked up enough minor offences to put him in juvenile detention until he turned eighteen. Bella remembered a surly adolescent with a bad attitude. He had seemed to wear a perpetual scowl. He solved conflicts with his fists. He swore like a trooper. He didn’t have manners. He didn’t have friends, only enemies.

But somehow her father had seen behind the bad-boy façade to the young man with the potential to go places and achieve great things. And under Godfrey Haverton’s steady and patient tutelage, Edoardo had managed to finish school and earn a place at university, where he studied commerce and business.

Edoardo had used the leg-up to good purpose. Godfrey had given him a small loan, and from that he had purchased his first property and subdivided it. He reinvested the profits in more property, which he subsequently restored and resold. His business had grown from those humble beginnings to what was now a highly successful property-investment portfolio that was constantly expanding. He also managed her father’s estate, which was held in trust for Bella until she reached the age of twenty-five. With just one year to go until she could access her substantial inheritance, Edoardo was a thorn in her side she tried to avoid as much as possible.

Each month he dutifully transferred her allowance into her bank account. She had mostly kept within her budget, but now and again an extra expense would come in and she would have to suffer the indignity of contacting him to ask him to provide her with more funds. It infuriated her that her father had set things up in such a way, that he had chosen Edoardo as her trustee rather than appoint someone else—someone more impartial. Her father had trusted Edoardo more than he trusted her, and that hurt. It made the ill feelings she had always harboured against Edoardo all the more intense. To add insult to injury, her father had given him
her
ancestral home. She loved Haverton Manor. It was where she had spent the happiest days of her life before her mother had left. Now it was Edoardo’s and there was not a thing she could do about it.

Bella hated him with a passion that seemed to become more and more fervent as each year passed. It simmered and boiled inside her. She could not imagine it ever abating.

He was her enemy and she couldn’t wait until he was no longer in control of her life.

Bella moved through the upper floors, taking in the view from each window, reacquainting herself with the memories of the grand old house where she had spent her early childhood before she’d gone away to boarding school. Her nursery was on the top floor, along with a nanny’s flat and a toy room that was as big as some children’s bedrooms. The nursery hadn’t been renovated as yet. She was surprised to find some of her childhood things were still there. She hadn’t been back to pack them up since her father’s funeral. She wondered why Edoardo hadn’t packed them up and posted them off to her.

Going into that room was like stepping back in time to a period when her life had been a lot less complicated. She picked up her old teddy bear with his faded blue waistcoat. She held him to her face and breathed in the smell of childhood innocence. She had been so happy before her mother had left. Her life had seemed so perfect. But then, she had been very young and not tuned in to the undercurrents of her parents’ marriage.

Looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, Bella could see her mother was a flighty and moody woman who was soon bored by country life. Claudia craved attention and excitement. Marrying a very rich man who was twenty-five years older than her had probably been enormously exciting at first, but in time she’d come to resent how her social-butterfly wings had been clipped.

And yet, while Bella could understand the frustration and loneliness her mother had felt in her sterile marriage, she still could not understand why Claudia had left
her
behind. Hadn’t she loved her at all? Had her new boyfriend been more important than the child she had given birth to?

The hurt Bella felt still niggled at her. She had papered it over with various coping mechanisms but now and again it would resurface. She could still remember the devastation she had felt when her mother had driven away with her new lover. She had stood there on the front steps, not sure what was happening. Why was Mummy leaving without saying goodbye? Where was she going? When would she be back? Would she
ever
be back?

Bella sighed and looked out of the window. Her eye caught a movement in the garden below, and she put the teddy bear back on the shelf and moved across to the window.

Edoardo was walking down to the lake; Fergus was following faithfully a few paces behind. Every now and again he would stop and wait for the elderly dog to catch up. He would stoop down and give Fergus’s ears or frail shoulders a little rub before moving forward again.

His care and concern for the dog didn’t fit with Bella’s impression of him as an aloof lone-agent who shied away from attachment. He had never shown any affection for anyone or anything before. He hadn’t appeared to grieve the loss of her father, but then, she hadn’t been around to notice all that much. He had been marble-faced at the funeral. He had barely uttered a word to her, or to anyone. At the reading of the will he had seemed unsurprised by the way her father had left things, which seemed to suggest he had a part in their planning.

She had flayed him with her sharp tongue that day. The air had rung with her vitriol. She had ranted and fumed and screamed at him. She had even come close to slapping him. But he had not moved a muscle on his face. He had looked down at her with that slightly condescending look of his and listened to her blistering tirade as if she’d been a spoilt, wilful child having a tantrum.

Bella moved away from the window with a frustrated sigh. She didn’t know how to handle Edoardo. She had
never
known. In the past she had tried to dismiss him as one of the servants, someone she had to tolerate but not like, or even interact with unless absolutely necessary. But she had always found his presence disturbing. He did things to her just by looking at her. He made her feel things she had no right to feel. Was he doing it deliberately? Was he winding her up just to show he had the upper hand until she turned twenty-five?

He had always viewed her as the spoilt princess, the shallow socialite who spent money like it was going out of fashion. When she was younger she had tried her best to understand him. She had sensed the world he had come from was wildly different from hers from the occasional snippet of gossip from the locals, but when she had asked him about his childhood, he would cut her off with a curt command to mind her own business. What annoyed her more was that he must have spoken to her father about her probing him, as Godfrey had expressly forbidden her ever to speak to Edoardo about his childhood. He’d insisted that Edoardo deserved a chance to put his delinquent past behind him. It had driven another wedge between Bella and her father, making her feel more and more isolated and shut out.

Over the years her empathy towards Edoardo had turned to dislike and then to hatred. During her adolescence she had brazenly taunted him with saucy come-hither looks in an effort to get some sort of rise out of him. His aloofness had made her angry. She’d been used to boys noticing her, dancing around her, telling her how beautiful she was.

He had done none of that.

It was as if he didn’t see her as anything but an annoying child. But then, that night in the library when she’d been sixteen, she had overstepped the mark. With a bit of Dutch courage on board—compliments of some cherry brandy she had found—she had been determined to get him to notice her. She had perched on his desk with her skirt ruched up and with the first four buttons of her top undone, showing more than a glimpse of the cleavage that had begun to blossom a couple of summers before.

He had come in and stopped short when he’d seen her draped like a burlesque dancer on his desk. He had barked at her in his usual growly way to get out of his hair. But, instead of scampering off like a dismissed child, she had slithered off the desk, come over to him and tiptoed her fingertips over his chest. Even then he had resisted her. He had stood as still as stone, but she had felt empowered by the way his eyes had darkened and the way he had drawn in a sharp breath as her loose hair brushed against his arm. She’d pressed closer, breathing in the scent of him, allowing him to breathe in hers.

She could still remember the exact moment he’d snapped. He’d seemed to teeter on the edge of control for long, pulsing seconds. But then he had finally grabbed her roughly—she had thought in order to push her away—and slammed his mouth down on hers. It was a kiss of hunger and frustration, of anger and lust, of forbidden longings. It had shaken her to the very core of her being. And, when he’d finally wrenched his mouth off hers and thrust her from him, she could tell it had done exactly the same to him...

Bella pushed back from her thoughts of the past. It was her future she had to think about now.

A future that could not happen without Edoardo’s co-operation.

* * *

Edoardo was in the kitchen a few hours later preparing a meal. He knew the exact moment Bella entered the room even though his back was turned away from the door. It wasn’t the sound of her footfall or even the fact that Fergus opened one eye and lifted one faded steel-grey ear. It was the way the back of his neck tingled, as if she had trailed her slim, elegant white fingers through his hair. His body had always felt her presence like a sophisticated radar tracking a target. He had spent years of his life suppressing his reaction to her. He had hardly even noticed her until she had reached adolescence. But then, as if a switch had been turned on in his body, he had noticed everything: her long, glossy brown hair and those big, Bambi toffee-brown eyes with their dark fringe of impossibly long lashes.

He had noticed the graceful way she moved, like a ballerina across a dance floor or a swan gliding across the surface of a lake. He had noticed her porcelain skin, the way it was milky-white compared to his deep olive-brown. He had noticed her smell, that gorgeous mix of honeysuckle and orange blossom with a hint of vanilla. At just five-foot-five she was petite up against his six-foot-three frame. He towered over her. One of his hands could swallow both of hers whole. His body would crush hers if he took possession of her.

He
ached
to take possession of her. His body had been humming with it ever since he had grabbed her wrist outside. His fingers could still feel where they had come in contact with her skin. Her skin had felt like satin. He wondered if the rest of her body would be as silky-smooth.

How long before he caved in to the temptation? He had always been wary around her, distant to the point of rude. It wasn’t just because of his sense of obligation to her father: he had a feeling she would do more than move him physically. He didn’t want her to use him like she used the other men in her life. The men she dated were just playthings she picked up and put down again when her interest waned. He would allow no one—not even Bella Haverton—to use him for sport or entertainment.

‘Dinner will be ready in half an hour,’ he said.

‘Would you like some help?’ she asked.

Edoardo flicked the tea towel over his shoulder as he turned to face her. She looked young, fresh and innocent, yet worldly and defiant at the same time. It was a potent mix she had always played to her advantage. She was like a chameleon: a woman-child, a sexy siren and a doe-eyed innocent all wrapped in a knockout package.

Her clothes draped her model-slim figure like an evening glove on a slender arm. She could make a bin liner look like a million-dollar designer outfit. Her make-up was subtle and yet brought out the toffee-brown of her eyes and the lush thickness of her lashes. The lip-gloss she was wearing made her bee-stung lips all the more tempting and alluring.

She was playing her ice-maiden game now but Edoardo could see straight through it. She couldn’t hide the way her body reacted to him. She was aware of him in the same way he was aware of her. There was a sexual energy in the air between them—a current, a force, that crackled every time their eyes met.

‘You can pour a glass of wine for us both,’ he said. ‘There’s a red open over there, or there’s white, if you prefer, in the fridge.’

She poured a glass of red for them both and handed him one. He felt the zap of her fingers as they briefly met his around the stem of the glass. He saw the flare of reaction in her brown eyes.
‘Salut,’
he said, holding her gaze as the blood thundered in his loins.