‘Your father didn’t need me to point out how irresponsible you are,’ he said with that annoying, trademark lip-curl. ‘You do a fine job of that all by yourself. Your peccadilloes are splashed across the newspapers just about every week.’
Bella simmered with fury even though there was some truth in what he said. The press always targeted her, making her out to be a wild child with more money than sense. She only had to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for some ridiculous story to come out about her.
But things would be different soon.
Once she was married to Julian, the press would hopefully leave her alone. Her reputation would be spotless. ‘I’d like to stay for a few days,’ she said. ‘I hope that won’t inconvenience you?’
Those intriguing eyes glinted dangerously again. ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’
Bella put on a beseeching expression, her hatred of him tightening her spine until she could feel every knob of her vertebrae. It was positively galling to have to ask for permission to stay at her childhood home. That was one of the reasons she had turned up unannounced. She’d figured he might not be able to turn her away with the household staff looking on. ‘Please, Edoardo, may I stay for a few days?’ she asked. ‘I won’t get in your way. I promise.’
‘Do the press know where you are?’ he asked.
‘No one knows where I am,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anyone to find me. That’s why I came here. No one would ever dream of finding me here with you.’
His chiselled jaw was locked like a vice, a muscle on the left side moving in and out like a tiny heart beating under the skin. ‘I’ve a good mind to send you on your way.’
Bella pushed her bottom lip out. ‘It’s about to snow again,’ she said. ‘What if I run off the road or something? My death would be on your hands.’
‘You can’t just turn up here and expect the red carpet to be rolled out for you,’ he said with a look of stern disapproval. ‘You could at least have called and asked if it was all right to stay. Why didn’t you?’
‘Because you would have said no,’ Bella said. ‘What’s the problem with me staying a few days? I won’t get in your way.’
The muscle tapped a little harder in his jaw. ‘I don’t want a bunch of voyeurs lurking about the place,’ he said. ‘As soon as the paparazzi turn up, you can pack your bags and leave. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ Bella said, inwardly seething at his overbearing manner. What did he think she was going to do—call a press conference? She wanted to escape all that and lie low until Julian came back. She didn’t want any more scandals in her life.
‘And nor will I tolerate you bringing friends here to party all hours of the day and night,’ he said, drilling her with his diamond-hard gaze. ‘Understood?’
Bella gave him her best ‘I’ll be good’ face. ‘No parties.’
‘I mean it, Bella,’ he said. ‘I’m working on a big project just now. I don’t want to be distracted.’
‘All right, already. I get it,’ she said, flashing an irritated gaze. ‘So what’s the big important project? Is she female? Is she currently sleeping over? I wouldn’t want to cramp your style or anything.’
‘I’m not going to discuss my private life with you,’ he said. ‘Before I know it, you’d be spilling all to the press.’
Bella wondered who his latest lover was, but there was no way she was going to ask. Asking would imply she was interested. She didn’t want him thinking she spent any time at all musing over what he was doing and whom he was doing it with. He mostly kept his private life exactly that—private. His enigmatic, unknowable nature made him a target for the paparazzi but somehow he managed to keep his head below the parapet. Whereas Bella couldn’t seem to step outside her house in Chelsea without attracting a camera flash from the lurking paparazzi, who always painted her as a professional party girl with nothing better to do than get a spray tan.
Her engagement to Julian Bellamy would hopefully put all that to rest. She wanted a clean slate, and once she was married, she would have it. Julian was the nicest man she had ever met. He was nothing like the men she had dated in the past. He didn’t attract scandal or intrigue. He didn’t party or drink. He didn’t have a worldly bone in his body. He wasn’t interested in wealth and status, only helping others.
‘Would you bring in my bags for me?’ she asked Edoardo with mock sweetness. ‘They’re in the boot.’
Edoardo leaned against the front fender of her car, one ankle crossed over the other, his arms folded against the broad expanse of his chest. ‘When do I get to meet your new lover?’ he asked.
Bella pushed her chin a little higher. ‘He’s technically not my lover,’ she said. ‘We’re waiting until we get married.’
He laughed again. ‘Holy mother of Jesus.’
She threw him a look. ‘Do you mind not blaspheming?’
He pushed himself away from her car and came to stand close enough for her to smell the heat of his arrantly male flesh: sweat and hard work with a grace note of citrus that swirled around her nostrils, making them involuntarily flare. She took a prickly little breath and stepped backwards but one of her heels snagged on the crushed limestone and she would have fallen but for one of his hands snaking out and capturing her by the wrist.
Her breath completely halted as his long, tanned fingers gripped her like a steel manacle. An electric charge surged through her skin as soon as those calloused fingers made contact with her skin. She felt it sizzling all the way to the bones of her wrist; they felt like they were going to disintegrate to fine powder. She swept her tongue out over her lips as she tried to muster as much icy hauteur as she could, but even so her heart fluttered like a hummingbird behind the scaffold of her ribs as his eyes meshed with hers. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’ she asked.
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?’