‘You can’t tell me what to do!’
‘No. I can’t. What Icansay, however, is that the option I am presenting makes sense and is the right course of action given the circumstances. I am far from being a monster, which you would see if you would just drop the emotionalism for five seconds.’ Their eyes tangled and Izzy shot him a scorching look from under her lashes.
‘Some things can’t just be looked at with pure common sense.Some things areinvestedwith emotion. It’s just thatyou,’ she returned without blinking an eye, ‘can’t see that becauseyouare as cold as ice!’
‘Not always...’ Gabriel murmured. Their eyes tangled and just like that the atmosphere between them shifted. Hot colour rose to her cheeks and suddenly the room felt way too stifling and way too small, the walls closing in as he continued to look at her with lazy, hooded eyes. She was clutching the sides of her chair so that her knuckles were white and leaning ever so slightly forward, unable to drag her gaze away from his lean, darkly handsome face.
He was the first to break eye contact. ‘It’s not a simple case of black and white.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and sighed impatiently. ‘I’m not a charitable organisation, neither am I Father Christmas. I don’t intend to reside here permanently, nor am I qualified to manage these vineyards the way they deserve to be managed. The guy currently in charge here is renting a lodge in the town. Not ideal. He needs help. The staff, too, will have to be accommodated some distance away, simply because the cottage is out of bounds as a housing compound.’
‘If you’re not going to be here, why can’t you use this place for them? It’s big enough.’
‘Not the point. I want to increase production and I’ll need to buy up what’s beyond the cottage. There will be infringement to a large degree on your friend’s privacy.’
‘And you explained all of that to her?’
‘I...tried,’ Gabriel said heavily.
‘Well,’ Izzy couldn’t resist sniping with heavy sarcasm, ‘You obviously failed, because Evelyn thinks it’s all over bar the shouting, that she’s going to be safe where she is.’
‘What is her story? Why has she never thought of moving? She’s on her own. Surely it’s lonely being stuck out here? Wouldn’t she rather be close to her friends? Her...whatever it is she does to occupy her time? Leisure activities? I know she devotes a considerable amount of time to her vegetables and the garden, and it seems she’s an active member of the local gardening society, but are there other hobbies she would want to pursue that require her to be closer to the centre of the town?’
‘Evelyn is...’ Izzy breathed in deeply. ‘Her entire life was devoted to the family she used to work for. They lived in this house, you see, and they actually bequeathed her the cottage because she was more than just a nanny. She was a family friend.’
‘What family?’ He frowned. ‘I had no idea the family I bought this place from had children. Or a nanny.’
‘I believe the place was bought and sold a couple of times before it became yours.’
Silence fell. Izzy fiddled with the stem of the glass and then nervously swallowed far too much of the golden wine and winced.
Gabriel looked at her, eyes narrowed, without saying a word. Her tone of voice. Her face, that delicate blush...
Had he ever met any woman whose face revealed so much? She was feisty and spirited and wasn’t afraid of speaking her mind, but there was also a blushing ingenuousness about her that fascinated him.
Right now, her expressive face was leading him to conclusions that all seemed to tie together and make sense of her presence in the area, as they did her determination to defend Evelyn against the Big Bad Wolf.
‘This family you’re talking about...’ He reached forward, elbow on the table, and gently hooked his finger under her chin so that she was looking at him. On the periphery of his mind, he was aware that her skin was very soft and satiny smooth, and he had to resist the urge to cup the side of her face with his hand, to stroke her cheek, to touch her lips with his thumb. He dropped his hand and sat back.
Izzy looked away and then twirled her hair in her hands, sifting her fingers through its length.
‘Evelyn used to work for my grandparents. It’s no big secret. She was my mother’s nanny and remained with the family until the day they sold the place and moved away when my grandfather became ill. They needed somewhere smaller. They wanted to take Evelyn with them, but she wanted to remain in the area, and so they gave her the cottage and the land around it as a measure of thanking her for her service over the years.’
‘Your family used to live here?’
‘It’s no big deal, like I said.’
No big deal? Gabriel thought. He had built an image in his head of fetching innocence, an ingenuousness that was refreshing. But of course, he’d been wildly off-target. If her grandparents had owned this property and the vineyards that went with it, they would not have been scraping the barrel to find food. He might have extended the original property and dragged it out of disrepair, because the years and the people before him had been unable to keep the place going, but even so...
The ethereal blonde with the big blue eyes was a trust-fund kid, and didn’t he know all about trust-fund kids? You couldn’t trust them as far as you could throw them because the assumption that they would get what they wanted was woven into their DNA. His ex had taught him a lot when it came to that particular subject. He might not have been the perfect husband, but she’d been able to trust him, and he’d mistakenly thought the same until she’d let him down in the biggest way possible. So, rich kids? Thanks, but no thanks.
Yet he had to concede that his daughter had taken a liking to this woman. In fact, Rosa had been unable to talk about anything else but the cottage, the apple tree and the blonde’s amazing talent at drawing.
‘My mother was an only child,’ Izzy volunteered reluctantly. ‘She talked a lot about Nanny Scott.’
‘Talkedabout?’
‘My mother died twelve years ago,’ Izzy said shortly. ‘I was ten at the time.’
‘Twelve years ago,’ he murmured. ‘You were only a child. I’m sorry.’
