She was going to stop noticingthe way he looked if it killed her. The truth was, she was emphaticallynotattracted to men like Gabriel Ricci. He wasn’t easygoing and he wasn’t fun-loving. He was yet another example of a rich financier who put money above everything else. Never having been allowed to be a rebel, part of her knew that her aversion to ambitious, ruthless workaholics was her way of sticking two fingers up at her domineering older brother and the way he had controlled her life.
The best thing she could do would be to ignore Gabriel’s impact and instead focus on trying to get him to change his mind about the cottage. He’d told her that he was a guy who never changed direction but even the most unlikely people changed direction.
Look at Max! Who would ever have thought that her work-orientated, driven older brother, so accustomed to running her life, would have found it in himself to understand where she’d been coming from with the hotel? Would have sympathised with the whole Jefferson saga and held off on ferrying her back to Hawaii to pick up where she had left off? Just went to show that there was no such thing as someone never changing direction. Given the circumstances with Evelyn, it was a fortifying conclusion.
Izzy returned to the kitchen, freshly showered and in soft grey trousers and a loose, pale grey T-shirt. She had tied her hair back into a braid, but her hair was so curly that it refused to obey the rules, and she knew that the neat look she was aiming for was a borderline failure.
Gabriel was nowhere to be seen, and for a hopeful moment she wondered whether he had taken himself back off to work. But, just as she was about to start exploring the kitchen with relative confidence that she wouldn’t be interrupted, she heard footsteps and then there he was, framed in the doorway, still in those faded jeans and that white T-shirt, still barefoot.
She could feel every muscle in her body tense and she had to make an effort to breathe evenly.
‘Is...is Rosa asleep?’
‘At last. She was very over-excited.’ He strolled towards the fridge, took out a bottle of water and drank from it, before turning to her.
‘I...er...’ Izzy was uncertain as to how this time of the evening would evolve. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll just head upstairs...’
‘Marie prepares food every day while we’re in residence. Join me.’
‘I don’t mind taking my food upstairs. I’m not sure how you spend the evenings once Rosa is asleep, but I wouldn’t want to interrupt your pattern.’
Izzy knew that this was precisely how she shouldnotbe acting but he made her so jittery that she couldn’t think straight in his presence. Yet she needed to. She needed to hammer home her point of view or else why was she here? She couldn’t afford to dither and hope that he did the right thing off his own bat. She took a deep breath and risked a smile. ‘Except I would say that your pattern’s probably really disrupted already with Rosa’s nanny lying on a hospital bed. Can I ask something?’
She watched as he peered inside the frying pan, tidily covered on the stove, and then the fridge, from which he retrieved a perfectly prepared salad under cling film. He fetched plates from a cupboard. He still hadn’t said anything although, once plates wer on the table, along with the opened bottle of wine, he quirked an eyebrow and said wryly, ‘Could I stop you?’
‘Why do you employ a nanny that your daughter dislikes?’
‘Is that what Rosa has told you?’
Izzy nodded. This was really none of her business because whether Rosa liked her nanny or not was beside the point. The woman would recover, return to work and Izzy would be off, whether she succeeded in changing Gabriel’s mind or not. They were all ships passing in the night so curiosity was a waste of time.
Still...the more she saw of the little girl, the more she liked her, and she was deeply curious as to the strange set-up with Bella.
And, if she were to be completely honest with herself, the distant set-up Rosa had with her mother—who, from all accounts, spent an awful lot of time socialising, shopping and pampering herself—concerned her. Izzy vaguely knew, from conversations with James over the years, that her own mother had been absent for much of her brothers’ formative years—having dispatched both James and Max to boarding schools practically from the time they’d taken their first steps—but for her, things had been different.
Her memories were much rosier. Her mother had treated her like a doll, dressing her up and letting her experiment with her make-up, shoes and clothes. Izzy had known that her parents were both away a lot, compared to the parents of all her friends, but when they’d been around her mother had delighted in doing all sorts of mother-and-daughter things with her.
‘I adore having a little girl,’ she had once sighed, when Izzy had been turning eight, and that passing comment had thrilled her to the bone.
And then, in a heartbeat, both her parents were gone and she was left with a great empty space inside her, even though people had rallied around. And of course both her brothers had taken her under their wing and done their utmost to numb the shock and pain. That great, empty space had never really been filled. It had sat right alongside her every step of the way as she had moved from childhood into adolescence and then into adulthood.
Izzy thought it sad that Rosa’s passing remarks about her mother were so lacking in affection. Of course, she knew that it might just be the nonchalance of a child, but there were so few stories she shared that seemed special. And could she actually be telling the truth when she’d flippantly let slip that she was taken out of school quite often and taught by Bella on the move, to accommodate her mother’s love of travelling to far-flung places?
With a grim nanny in the equation, however competent she might technically be, it all seemed desperately sad.
‘It’s none of my business,’ she said when he failed to answer. ‘Whatever Marie has cooked, it smells delicious. Is this your routine when you’re here? She cooks for you and you have your dinner on your own?’
‘It’s my routine wherever in the world I happen to be,’ Gabriel responded drily. ‘Unless, which is more often the case, I go out to eat.’
He looked at her with a hooded expression. This was a novel experience for him and normal rules did not apply. What else had Rosa said to her? He was well aware that Izzy was here under duress and nursing some notion that he might be prepared to back down on his plans for the cottage.
He wasn’t concerned about using her. He had met very many rich young things, and the one thing he knew for sure about all of them was that they were hard as nails. Whatever the guise. Wealth created a veneer, made you think that you could take what you wanted without conscience. Izzy might appear to be as pure as the driven snow but he would bet his life that she was tough as old boots. She probably thought that she could change his mind because she would have been conditioned to expect to get her own way in most situations. The overriding power of his past experience was a force that locked the door on trust.
His eyes drifted to her full pink mouth, that tangle of blonde hair and the pure cornflower blue of her big, wide eyes. Sexy as hell, he thought, and no doubt as experienced as any woman he had ever slept with, even though she might not give off the same vibes.
Just thinking about her in that way sent a rush of hot blood straight down to his groin and he shifted uncomfortably, turning away for a moment to busy himself doing something with whatever Marie had cooked—some kind of chicken dish. He was back to his usual cool when he strolled to the table, waving down her offer to help as he deposited the salad, cutlery and then the pan, not bothering to decant its contents.
Gabriel had suspected for some time that Bianca played fast and loose with the parenting process, although there was no way he would ever put his daughter in the position of having to provide answers to his questions.
