Right now, she was in Italy, and had been for the past six weeks, visiting her sister. Reminiscing about the cottage, about her desire to return there to live out her final days, had been replaced by disturbing insinuations that she might just return to Italy and call it quits with England.
‘You’re barely ever in the country,’ she had grumbled a couple of weeks earlier, which was something Theo had not been able to refute. ‘And when you are, well, what am I but the ageing mother you are duty-bound to visit? It’s not as though there will ever be a daughter-in-law for me, or grandchildren, or any of those things a woman of my age should be looking forward to. What is the point of my being in London, Theo? I would see the same amount of you if I lived in Timbuktu.’
Theo loved his mother, but he could not promise a wife he had no intention of acquiring or grandchildren that didn’t feature in his future.
If he honestly thought that she would be happy in Italy, then he would have encouraged her to stay on at the villa he had bought for her six years previously, but she had lived far too long away from the small village in which she had grown up and where her sister now lived. After two weeks, she would always return to London, relieved to be back and full of tales of Flora’s exasperating bossiness.
Right now, she was recuperating, so Flora was full of tender, loving care. However, should his mother decide to turn her stay there into a permanent situation, then Flora would soon become the chivvying older sister who drove his mother crazy.
‘Why are you getting dressed?’ Theo asked the cottage’s present resident in bemusement. She was small and round but he still found himself being distracted by the pure clarity of her turquoise eyes and her flawless complexion. Healthy living, he thought absently, staring down at her. ‘And you still haven’t told me who you are.’
‘I don’t think this is the time to start making chit chat.’ Becky blinked and made a concerted effort to gather her wits because he was just another hapless tourist in need of her services. It was getting colder and colder in the little hallway and the snow was becoming thicker and thicker. ‘I’ll come with you but you’ll have to drive me back.’ She swerved past him, out into the little gravelled circular courtyard, and gaped at the racing-red Ferrari parked at a jaunty angle, as though he had swung recklessly into her drive and screeched to a racing driver’s halt. ‘Don’t tell me that you came here in that!’
Theo swung round. She had zipped past him like a pocket rocket and now she was glaring, hands on her hips, woolly hat almost covering her eyes.
And he had no idea what the hell was going on. He felt like he needed to rewind the conversation and start again in a more normal fashion, because he’d obviously missed a few crucial links in the chain.
‘Come again?’ was all he could find to say, the man who was never lost for words, the man who could speak volumes with a single glance, a man who could close impossible deals with the right vocabulary.
‘Are you completely mad?’ Becky breathed an inward sigh of relief because she felt safer being the angry, disapproving vet, concerned for her safety in nasty weather conditions, and impatient with some expensive, arrogant guy who was clueless about the Cotswolds. ‘There’s no way I’m getting into that thing with you! And I can’t believe you actually thought that driving all the way out here to get me was a good idea! Don’t you people know anything at all? Not that you have to be a genius to work out that these un-gritted roads are lethal for silly little cars like that!’
‘Silly little car?’
‘I’d find the roads difficult and I drive a sensible car!’
‘That silly little car happens to be a top-end Ferrari that cost more than you probably earn in a year!’ Theo raked fingers frustratedly through his hair. ‘And I have no bloody idea why we’re standing out here in a blizzard having a chat about cars!’
‘Well, how the heck are we supposed to get to your animal if we don’t drive there? Unless you’ve got a helicopter stashed away somewhere? Have you?’
‘Animal? What animal?’
‘Your cat!’
‘I don’t have a cat! Why would I have a cat? Why would I have any sort of animal, and what would lead you to think that I had?’
‘You mean you haven’t come to get me out to tend to an animal?’
‘You’re a vet.’ The weathered bag, the layers of warm, outdoor clothing, the wellies for tramping through mud. All made sense now.
Theo had come to the cottage to have a look, to stake his claim and to ascertain how much he would pay for the place. As little as possible, had been his way of thinking. It had been bought at a bargain-basement price from his mother, who had been so desperate to flee that she had taken the first offer on the place. He had intended to do the same, to assess the state of disrepair and put in the lowest possible offer, at least to start with.
‘That’s right—and if you don’t have an animal, and don’t need my services, then why the heck are you here?’
‘This is ridiculous. It’s freezing out here. I refuse to have a conversation in sub-zero temperatures.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t feel comfortable letting you into my house.’ Becky squinted up at him. She was a mere five-foot-four and he absolutely towered over her. He was a tall, powerfully built stranger who had arrived in a frivolous boy-racer car out of the blue and she was on her own out here. No one would hear her scream for help. Should she need help.
Theo was outraged. No one, but no one, had ever had the temerity to say anything like that to him in his life before, least of all a woman. ‘Exactly what are you suggesting?’ he asked with withering cool, and Becky reddened but stoutly stood her ground.
‘I don’t know you.’ She tilted her chin at a mutinous angle, challenging him to disagree with her. Every pore and fibre of her being was alert to him. It was as though, for the first time in her life, she was aware of her body, aware of her femininity, aware of her breasts—heavy and pushing against her bra—aware of her stiff and sensitive nipples, aware of her nakedness beneath her thick layer of clothes. Her discomfort was intense and bewildering.
‘You could be anyone. I thought you were here because you needed my help with an animal, but you don’t, so who the heck are you and why do you think I would let you into my house?’
‘Your house?’ Cool grey eyes skirted the rambling building and its surrounding fields. ‘You’re a little young to be the proud owner of a house this size, aren’t you?’
‘I’m older than you think.’ Becky rushed into self-defence mode. ‘And, not that it’s any of your business, but yes, this house is mine. Or at least, I’m in charge while my parents are abroad and, that being the case, I won’t be letting you inside. I don’t even know your name.’
‘Theo Rushing.’ Some of the jigsaw immediately fell into place. He had expected to descend on the owners of the property. He hadn’t known what, precisely, he would find but he had not been predisposed to be charitable to anyone who could have taken advantage of a distraught young woman, as his mother had been at the time.
At any rate, he had come with his cheque book, but without the actual owners at hand his cheque book was as useful as a three-pound note, because the belligerent little ball in front of him would not be able to make any decisions about anything.
Furthermore, she struck him as just the sort who would bite off the hand clutching the bank notes, or at least try and persuade her parents to...
He was accustomed to women wanting to please him. Faced with narrowed, suspicious eyes and the body language of a guard dog about to attack, he was forced to concede that announcing the purpose for his visit might not be such a good idea.
‘I’m here to buy this cottage so you’ll find yourself without a roof over your head in roughly a month and a half’ wasn’t going to win him brownie points.