She’d stared but was undaunted. She was familiar with staggering wealth. She knew what it could and couldn’t buy, and a seventy-nine-year-old woman was not one of those things on the table for sale, and she intended to make that very clear.
She’d been shown in by a young girl with a cheerful demeanour and not many words, and she’d been feeling pleasantly bolshie until now. Until she stood in this exquisite sitting room, with the door quietly shutting behind her, staring at the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life.
He was tall, a few inches over six feet, with a body that was lean and muscular, as sinewy as an athlete’s. He was wearing a short-sleeved white polo shirt and dark trousers that rode just low enough on his lean hips to emphasise the taut narrowing of his waist and the length of his legs. His dark hair was slightly too long, curling against the collar of his polo shirt, and he had lashes to die for, lush and dark, shielding eyes that were as cool as black ice. And he was burnished bronze, exotically stunning.
He took her breath away and the confidence with which she had sauntered into the house evaporated as fast as dew on a summer’s morning.
‘Well?’
Izzy discovered that her mouth was dry and she averted her eyes because the temptation to stare was overwhelming. Unfortunately, eyes averted, she could still see the image of him in her head, so drop-dead gorgeous with olive skin, eyes as dark as midnight and features that were so perfectly chiselled that for a second you could almost overlook the glacial lack of welcome in his expression.
Not for long, though, as his coldly delivered question snapped her right back down to earth with a bump.
‘Izzy Stowe,’ she said abruptly. He strolled towards her and she backed away a couple of inches and folded her arms in a gesture that was semi-belligerent, semi-defensive.
‘And you are standing in my living room because...?’
‘You sent a note to Evelyn Scott. You wanted to discuss the business of bullying her into selling the cottage.’ Defiant words, she thought, which was precisely the opposite of how she was feeling. Intimidated, was more like it. She shuddered to think how Evelyn would have coped. Evelyn was lively, but she was older, and might have been easily cowed by this kind of man. Frankly, who wouldn’t? He looked the sort who’d had dungeons constructed for anyone who dared get in his way.
‘I have no desire to talk to anyone but Mrs Scott. The door is behind you, Miss Stowe.’
With great effort, Izzy stayed her ground.
How rude!But why should she be surprised? Anyone who was happy to use bully-boy tactics on an old woman wasn’t exactly going to be the sort who prioritised good manners and common courtesy, was he?
‘Evelyn has given me full permission to deal with this situation.’ She remained where she was but she badly wanted to turn tail and flee.
‘Your qualifications being...?’
‘We’re old friends and I want to look out for her.’
‘Isn’t she capable of looking out for herself? She seemed very determined in her replies to my legal team when they’ve been in contact with her.’
‘Would you mind if I sit?’ Izzy noted his hesitation and knew that he was weighing up his options. He was a busy man, she guessed, with limited time to spare running round for an elusive old woman. Another day waiting for a meeting would be an unnecessary delay and maybe he was weighing up the odds of the result being exactly the same—no Evelyn butheragain.
He nodded curtly to one of the chairs and Izzy tentatively inched towards it and sat. Immediately she felt at a disadvantage, because he continued to tower over her, but her legs had been wobbly.
‘Speak.’
One word delivered as he continued to stand over her, staring down through narrowed eyes.
Izzy noted that the invitation to take tea had obviously been rescinded now that she had been the one to show up rather than Evelyn. He hadn’t even offered her a glass of water and he showed zero signs of remedying the oversight.
‘Would you mind sitting?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to have this conversation craning my neck.’
She half-expected him to ignore her but instead he dragged a footstool over and positioned it directly in front of her so that she had no option but to look at him. Up close like this, he was even more forbidding, because he was so much closer—close enough for her to breathe in the warm, woody scent of whatever aftershave he was wearing, and definitely close enough to see the unforgiving coldness in his dark eyes.
‘Evelyn has confided in me about her situation.’ Izzy kept her voice even and calm. His eyes were sooty-black and scarily watchful, and she could sense her every word being carefully dissected and meticulously inspected from every angle. She shivered.
‘Are you related to Mrs Scott?’
‘MissScott. Evelyn never married.’
‘That’s of little relevance to this situation.’
‘Is it, Mr Ricci?’ Izzy asked quietly. ‘That cottage is where Evelyn’s lived most of her adult life. Well over five decades. It’s all she’s ever known. She has no husband, no partner and no children. Do you really think she’s going to jump for joy at the thought of leaving the one place in the world that represents stability for her? Furthermore, she has all her friends within driving distance, and all her social meetings happen in the town. Yet you want to drive her away from the one place she’s ever called home.’
‘That’s a very rousing speech, Miss Stowe, but I don’t care for the emotive vocabulary. I have not been using bullyingtactics and my desire is not todriveanyone anywhere. Nor, for that matter, is it any of my concern whether the woman never chose to get married.’
