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‘Correct. Unbeknownst to me, my grandmother had made a new will. Apparently she thought I’d rather have the money than be burdened with the house.’
‘Good. Then it’s all cleared up.’
‘No, it’s not. My grandmother thought wrong. I do want the house. So this is what we’ll do. I’ll buy the house back from you and give you a five-per-cent profit.’
She laughed. She simply couldn’t help it. The audacity of the man was amazing. Did he think he could tell her what to do? Did he think that she would let this opportunity be taken from her just like that? She met his eyes unflinchingly. ‘No, sir, this is not what we will do. I bought the house because I wanted it.’
‘I’ll give you a ten-per-cent profit,’ he said calmly.
‘No.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want this house. It’s a beautiful old house and I’m going to fix it up and make it even more wonderful. I’m going to make it a masterpiece of renovation,’ she said loftily. ’then I’ll sell it for every penny it’s worth to someone who’ll recognise the value of it. That’s the business I’m in. That’s what I do for a living.’ And she was very, very good at it. She had an eye for what would work, and what would not, and a brother who was an architect.
House renovation hadn’t exactly been the career she’d dreamed of since she was five. She’d wanted to be a ballerina then. She’d fallen into the remodelling business by coincidence, helping out a friend of her mother’s restore a trashed townhouse in Georgetown, a yuppie Washington DC neighbourhood. I can do this, too, she’d thought, and with a loan from her father she’d done just that. She’d made a huge profit. She’d paid off the loan and bought another house, repeating the process.
Now, six years later, she was making a respectable living, which was very nice because she loved to travel, which she did in between projects. She loved travelling even more than remodelling houses, which was a lot of fun. Having a job you loved doing was a great blessing, and she was well aware of it. She loved counting her blessings, which were many.
Clint was not happy with her reply. His jaw worked. ‘I don’t want it renovated,’ he said tightly.
’that’s too bad, because it’s not for you to decide.’ She couldn’t help feeling a nasty little twinge of triumph. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. ‘Besides, it’s stupid not to fix this house up. Have you seen the electricial wiring? It’s ancient! It’s a fire hazard! And the plumbing is medieval.’ She was beginning to like this man less and less. Which was not promising because she had liked him not at all to start with. He was arrogant and presumptuous and condescending.
He was also dangerously handsome and sexy.
All in all, a toxic mixture and not one that was easily dealt with. There was an innate sexuality about him that was hard to miss. It was nothing he did or said in particular. It was just there, an aura, something radiating from him, something that affected her more than she was willing to admit. It seemed so primal that it frightened her a little. After all, she was not the kind of woman who let herself be swept away just by a good body and a handsome face. She wanted more, a whole lot more.
He was observing her with an infuriating glint in his eyes. ’there’s more to you than meets the eye, is there?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said coldly. ‘I’ve never had a first impression of myself.’
His mouth curved in amusement and for a moment, a long, endless moment, their eyes were locked in a wordless sizing up of each other, a recognition of each other, an acknowledgement. Her body grew warm, her pulse throbbed and knees began to tremble. It was hard to breathe. It was terrifying. He hadn’t even touched her. She broke her gaze away. She wanted to run away, out of that room with its dangerous vibrations, but she fought the impulse.
‘If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’ She heard the nervous quiver in her voice and prayed he wouldn’t notice.
Before she’d gone down on her knees again, he’d bent down and without a word rolled up the last strip of heavy carpeting and slung it over his shoulder as if it were nothing more than a wet towel.
‘In the skip?’ he enquired.
‘Yes.’ She watched him go, thrown completely off balance. She didn’t like the feeling. One moment he was insufferably autocratic, the next he made a helpful gesture like this—helping her do the very thing he was angry at her for doing. Through the window she saw him toss the carpeting effortlessly into the skip. He had dropped the subject of buying the house. He had not insisted, or made threats. However, she was not deluding herself in thinking the issue was dismissed and the discussion over. Clint Bracamonte was not a man who gave up.
He strode up to his car and opened the back, taking out two paper grocery bags. He put them down in the kitchen, then washed his hands before taking out the contents.
Strawberries, asparagus, sirloin steak, French bread, and double cream, butter, mushrooms, onions, the makings for a salad, and a small selection of French cheeses. A bottle of red wine with an impressive label joined the luscious foodstuffs on the counter.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked.
He smiled at her, a true blue Boy Scout smile that threw her even more off-balance. ‘I’m inviting you to dinner,’ he said, ’to repay you for your hospitality.’
She was lost for words.
What could she possibly say? Get out of my house and take your steak and strawberries with you? She’d be nuts. She’d worked like a horse all day, surviving on a breakfast burrito, a peanut butter sandwich and a couple of chocolate bars. She was famished. She stared longingly at the food he’d taken out of the bag. Why eat chicken soup and crackers if she could dine on steak, asparagus and strawberries and cream? And wine, too.
He studied her face, waiting for an answer. ’so, what do you say? It looks to me as if you could use a good meal.’ His voice was even. ‘You put in quite a day’s work.’
So she had. She straightened. ‘I’d love a good meal.’ It was the truth, and she wasn’t in the habit of lying. Also, it was difficult to resist him. She had to admit it. Besides, there was no harm in a meal together, was there?
‘Excellent.’ He reached in a drawer, found a corkscrew and opened the bottle. ‘How about a glass before dinner? Or are you a purist and want your wine to breathe first?’
‘I’m a purist only when it’s convenient. I’d like a glass now.’
Wine in hand, she left the kitchen, allowing him the freedom to do his cooking all by himself. She wasn’t much of a cook herself. It simply wasn’t one of her talents. However, she did like eating good food. Eating in nice restaurants worked very well, or at her mother’s house. Her mother did like cooking. Only her mother, as well as her father, were not presently in the neighbourhood. The government had sent them to Stockholm, Sweden.
Livia went into the living-room and started emptying drawers and packing more boxes, sipping wine. A vague, uneasy feeling stirred inside her. She pushed it back. Nonsense. No reason to feel this way. No obligation, no duty. The house was hers. Everything in it was hers. She’d bought it fair and square with her own money.
Yet the little fairy inside her was not happy.
When she was little, her mother had explained about that little voice inside her that sometimes bothered her when she’d done something wrong. It belonged to her personal little fairy of virtue that lived in her heart. The fairy loved her very much. The fairy told her what was right and wrong. As a little girl she had imagined the little fairy with small fluttering wings of gossamer silk, and a tiny candle in her delicate little hands, a candle to guide her on the right path.
As she was packing the boxes, the fairy fluttered nervously. Livia told the fairy to go for a nice long walk. The fairy did not oblige. Livia kept on packing. Ashtrays, doilies, chipped vases, a stained tea cosy, a box of buttons, a worn-out Scrabble game, a soft baby toy. She smiled as she looked at the brightly coloured cloth ball. Someone must have left it here. She tossed it into the box.
Her hands were dry from all the dust and all the washing she’d been doing. This wasn’t the sort of job that was compatible with soft hands and lovely, long nails, polished burnished copper or honey rose.
Clint called her less than an hour later. By then she was practically passing out from hunger. The table had been set. He’d even found a white tablecloth and candles. They were baby-blue and sat in crystal candlesticks. She liked the candlesticks. She was going to keep them for herself.
‘My grandmother loved these candlesticks,’ he said. ’she’d brought them with her from Poland when she and my grandfather emigrated. They were a wedding gift.’
Oh, great. Now she was going to have to feel guilty. No, she was already feeling guilty. Inside her the little fairy was practically screaming.
‘You can have them,’ she heard herself say. Guilt was a nasty emotion and not one she intended to cultivate.
‘I’ll buy them from you.’
Their eyes met. ‘I can’t have you buy back your own grandmother’s favourite candlesticks,’ she said. ‘Just take them.’
‘All that businesslike behaviour covers up a soft heart, doesn’t it?’ he said with a crooked smile.
‘Oh, please, spare me,’ she said derisively and concentrated on her food, which was delicious. She wanted to ask him who he was, what he was. But something inside her kept her from asking. The less she knew, the better it was. She already knew about a Polish grandmother and wedding-gift candlesticks. She wanted him out of her way. If he didn’t like her carting out all the old furniture, what was he going to say when the contractor arrived and some of the walls were going to come down?
‘What were you doing in the rainforest?’ she heard herself ask. She couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know. ‘Catching tropical birds and smuggling them out? Cutting down the trees for tooth-pick companies?’
He raised his brows. ’do you always think so well of people, or is it just me?’
She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look. ‘Just a few wild guesses, that’s all.’ She smiled. ‘May I assume you’re doing something more honourable?’
‘I’m involved in a research project. I study the interaction between the indigenous people and their rainforest environment.’
‘Ah, a scientist.’
‘I’m an ecological anthropologist.’
It sounded very impressive. She was impressed. ’do you live with the people you’re studying?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘I live in a traditional longhouse village.’
‘Live? Are you going back?’
‘Yes.’ He was on home leave for two months, he said, working for the University of Virginia, giving lectures and interviews in various places. After that he would go back to Kalimantan. He gave her this information in short, crisp sentences.
‘Why do you want this house, then? You’re not going to live here anyway.’
He gave her a dark, inscrutable look. ‘For starters, I intended to live here for the next couple of months while I’m in the country. And more importantly, this was my grandmother’s house and the place I call home.’
The place I call home. Had he no family, then? No parents? The guilt stirred some more and again she forced it down. ‘I see,’ she said, cutting a piece of steak. ‘Obviously your grandmother had other ideas.’
His jaw tightened and he did not respond. For a while they ate in tense silence.
‘What are your plans for this house?’ he asked then. His voice was coolly casual.
She swallowed a piece of steak. ‘I told you. I’m going to renovate it, then sell it.’
‘What sort of renovation do you have in mind?’
She didn’t want to discuss it. Yet he was not being unreasonable asking these questions. Anyone coming to the house could conceivably be interested in what she intended to do. It was not exactly a terribly sensitive, private, personal thing. Only it was. She glanced at her plate.
‘I’m going to add another bathroom upstairs and modernise the two existing ones and put in a whirlpool bath. The kitchen is going to be overhauled.’ There was more. Walls were going to come down, a sunroom added. She didn’t tell him.
‘Are you an architect?’
‘No. I’m good with hammer and saw and paint.’
He studied her face. ’there’s a whole lot more to it than that.’
So there was. ‘I know what I’m doing. I’ve done it plenty of times before.’
‘Ah, a handywoman.’ He poured more wine. She kept looking at his hands, which aroused disturbing images in her mind.
If she weren’t feeling so off-balance, it would be very pleasant, actually, sitting here in such a civilised fashion eating a wonderful meal, fixed by a man. The man she married would have to be willing and able to cook. This was one of the prerequisites, if not the most important one. Most important was, of course, his eternal devotion.
He buttered a piece of bread. ‘Are you going to have contractors, plumbers, electricians, workmen around here?’
‘Yes. All the wiring is going to be replaced and most of the plumbing.’
‘And you’re dealing with these men on your own?’
She raised a quizzical brow. ‘Yes, I am.’ And she was very good, too. Growing up with four brothers was good for many things. ‘Is there a problem with that?’
‘I imagine there could be many. Many men are not comfortable taking orders from women, especially not if they perceive their manly domain invaded.’
She nodded. ‘Men with shaky egos, yes, I’ve noticed. You have to know how to handle them.’
His mouth quirked. ‘And you do?’
‘I’m an expert.’
Humour sparked in his eyes. ‘No pushover, are you?’
‘I grew up with four brothers. I learned to hold my own.’ Unfortunately she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hold her own with this man.
His eyes narrowed, scrutinising her, assessing her, and she felt again that odd reaction—the warmth, that hypnotic feeling of not being in control. His black eyes seemed to look straight inside her very soul.
She didn’t want anybody looking into her soul uninvited, and certainly not this man. She got up from the table. ’thank you for a delicious dinner,’ she said nicely. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to go back to work.’
She hoped he would leave now. Put his things in his car and go. A while later she heard strange sounds coming from outside and looked out of the window. Clint was standing on a ladder, sawing a big dead limb off one of the old oaks. Transfixed, she watched the movement of his body, noticing the effortless control he had over it. Powerful arms, a strong back straining under his shirt. The sound of the limb crashing to the ground startled her out of her trance. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
She stayed out of his way for the rest of the evening, knowing he wasn’t leaving, not knowing what to do about it. She slept restlessly, aware of his presence down the hall, seeing in her mind the intent look in his black eyes, feeling apprehension shiver through her body.
The next morning he was gone by the time she came downstairs, but when she looked in his room his things were still there. He hadn’t given up.
Well, she hadn’t expected him to, had she?
She was angry and relieved at the same time.
* * *
‘I thought I’d come along and see if I could help,’ said Sara. ‘My mom’s babysitting the kids.’ Sara had short red hair, lots of freckles and a big smiling mouth. She was Jack’s wife and Livia loved her. The two of them had arrived around ten that morning and Jack had brought the blueprints for the remodelling work.
Livia and Jack had had the opportunity to tour the house on several occasions before the sale was finalised so they’d been able to plot and plan and take measurements ahead of time.
Jack was moving through the house, blueprints in hand, double-checking everything, while Livia was in the kitchen with Sara making coffee.
‘I can use all the help I can get,’ said Livia. ‘I’ve sorted through everything downstairs, and now I have to do the upstairs bedrooms yet. All those drawers and wardrobes…I’ll never buy a furnished house again!’
‘You mentioned something about the attic,’ Sara said. ‘And I dreamed about it, can you believe it?’
Livia took out three coffee-mugs and spooned coffee crystals into them. ‘With you, I believe anything. So what did you dream?’
’that we found a huge box of valuable antique jewellery.’
Livia laughed. ’they took her personal belongings out of the house, Sara. Her papers, jewellery, that sort of thing.’
‘Maybe they didn’t look in the attic. I can’t wait to get up there and see what treasures are hidden there. Maybe a long-lost Van Gogh painting! Or maybe a Picasso! Just imagine! You’ll be rich!’
Livia laughed and poured hot water into the mugs. ‘Oh, be quiet, Sara! You read too many hidden treasure stories to your children. It’s gone to your head.’ Sara and Jack had two little girls and Sara loved reading to them.
‘Well, it could happen, couldn’t it? You hear about that sort of thing sometimes. This coffee is awful. Is it instant?’
‘You were sitting here watching me make it. Of course it’s instant.’
