He wasn’t fooled by the attempt at lightness. “Where is your home?” Though he knew, of course. He had photos of the mansion in Buckinghamshire she’d grown up in as well as the Knightsbridge townhouse Augustine called home, and the Chelsea flat Katherine Beauchamp had lived in when she’d moved to London.
“England.” She wiped her hands on the dry edges of the tea towel. “If you haven’t been here in four years, the bed linen is going to need changing. Are there any sheets?”
He compressed his lips, frustration gnawing at his gut. “In the laundry.” He moved across the kitchen and pushed a timber door inwards. He turned the light on and crouched down, pulling a set of crisp white sheets from a drawer.
She was standing behind him when he stood up. When her hands extended to take the sheets, he gave them to her but didn’t relinquish his own hold. “What are you hiding from?”
She made a gasping sound and he knew he was onto something. Did she have information? Having lived with Augustine, perhaps she’d witnessed her father’s crimes and could cast light on the details. “Nothing,” she promised. Her smile was a valiant effort. “Where’s the bedroom?”
He let it go; in that moment, at least. “This way.” He pulled the sheets back and moved ahead of her through the house. The stairs creaked as he moved up them, though they were as sturdy as the day they’d been built.
“How old is this place?” She asked as if reading his thoughts, her hand on the intricately carved oak bannister.
“It was built in the seventeenth century,” he said factually, though pride was rich in his tone.
“Woah.”
“It has been in my mother’s side of the family since then.”
“Amazing. She doesn’t come here either?”
“No. She’s dead. Both of my parents are dead.”
Kate stopped walking and Benedetto, at the top of the stairs, turned to look back at her. Tears glistened on her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have no need to be sorry,” he lied, thinking that her father had been the reason his had died.
“My mum is dead too,” she said, moving up the stairs once more. She caught up to him at the top. He studied her carefully.
“Yes?”
“Mmm.” Kate took the sheets once more and nodded down the hallway. “This way?”
“Yes. When did she die?” Though he knew that too.
“When I was a baby,” she said stiffly. “A car accident.”
A drunk on a motorbike, he added mentally. He reached around a corner and flicked a final switch on. It didn’t have any effect so he pulled his cell-phone from his pocket and used it as a torch to cross the bedroom. He reached for the lamp and it bathed the room in a warm glow.
“Oh, shoot,” she murmured. “I left my phone at the auction. It’s in one of the rooms near the ballroom. Do you mind if I use yours to text Saphire, my colleague? I just need to let her know to grab it for me.”
“Of course,” he nodded, handing it over. He stripped the bed while she messaged her friend, and by the time he’d replaced the pillows, she had finished tapping out her message. The bed lay between them, enormous and smelling like lemons and lavender.
Nerves jostled inside Kate, suddenly.
Despite their earlier intimacy, everything was different here. “I think the champagne’s worn off,” she joked awkwardly, fidgeting her fingers in front of her. She caught herself after a minute and straightened. “Sorry. Bad habit.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What is a bad habit?”
She turned away from him on the guise of pushing the windows open. The stars sparkled in the blanket of the black sky. “Fidgeting,” she said simply, spinning back to him. He was right behind her, his broad frame illuminated by the stars and the moon.
“Who says?”
Something flashed in her eyes. “Everyone.” She lifted her fingers to his shirt; they were shaking. Slowly, she undid his top button. Her eyes were huge in her pretty face. “I want to see you,” she said simply, moving to the next button.
He watched as she painstakingly undid each and every button. By the time she had reached the final one he wanted to rip his shirt off. Talk about agonising foreplay! He was desperate now to feel her touch on his bare chest. His breathing was ragged as she tentatively lifted her fingers and brushed them across his hair-roughened flesh.
She made a noise of surprise as her fingers grazed his abdominal muscles, tapering down to the waistband of his pants.
