the wind, his dark hair tousled, his smile lighting up the world for her. How laughter had shaken his shoulders as they’d laughed at something absurd that had caught his humour. How his dark eyes had blazed with fierce desire as he’d swept her into his arms and lowered his possessing mouth to hers...
‘Just sign,’ he said again, wiping all the anguished memories from her. His eyes bored into hers. ‘It’s for your own good,’ he said.
His voice was soft, but there was a weight of intent in it that pressed upon her.
She lowered her head, breaking the crushing gaze that was bending her to his will. His words echoed hollowly. Forcing her to accept their truth. The truth as he saw it—the truth as he had made her see it. She could not go on as she had sought to do, locked in a toxic, unwinnable power struggle in the bitter aftermath of her father’s death.
Slowly, carefully, she set her signature to the document before her, on the final page of it. The only clause visible was full of incomprehensible legal jargon she did not bother to read. Then, swallowing, she sheathed the pen and put it down. It was done—finally done. She had no claim on what had once been her home. Now it was just one more property in Max Vasilikos’s investment portfolio.
Emotion twisted inside her. Impulsively she spoke. ‘Max! Please... I know that the future of Haughton is nothing to do with me...’ She swallowed and her voice changed, becoming imploring. ‘But this was once a happy family home. Please—think how it could be so again!’
She saw a veil come down over his eyes. He straightened, took a step away, glanced around the room they were in. The original dark panelling was still there, and the serried ranks of books, the smoke-stained fireplace with its hearthrug and her father’s worn leather chair. Then his eyes came back to her.
‘When I first came to Haughton,’ he said slowly, ‘my plan, if I decided to buy it, was to realise the value in it and likely sell it on, or rent it out for revenue. But...’ His eyes flickered to the tall windows, out over the gardens beyond, then moved back to her again. ‘But as I walked around, saw it for myself, I realised that I did not want that.’
He looked at her. His expression was still veiled, but there was something behind that veil that caught at her, though she did not know why.
‘I realised,’ he said slowly, and now a different note had entered his voice, ‘that I wanted to keep this house for myself. That I wanted to make this house my home.’
He looked at her. The veil was impenetrable now, and yet she gazed at him fixedly still.
‘I still want that—for it to be a home,’ he said.
For just a fraction of a moment his eyes met hers. Then she pulled her eyes away, closing them tightly. Emotion was sweeping up in her.
‘I’m glad.’ Her voice was tight with emotion. ‘Oh, Max, I’m glad!’ Her eyes flew open again. ‘It deserves to be loved and cherished, to be a happy home again.’
There was a catch in her voice, a catch in her heart. To hear that this was what Max wanted—that Haughton would be protected from the fate she’d dreaded for it—was wonderful! And yet her heart ached to know that he would make a home here for himself...only for himself.
Until one day he brings his wife here!
Images forced themselves upon her. Max carrying his bride over the threshold, sweeping her up the stairs...his threshold, his stairs, his bride. Max running effortlessly on untired limbs around the pathway beside the lake, taking in his domain, making it his own. Max surrounded one day by children—a Christmas tree here in this hall, where she had once opened her childhood presents—their laughter echoing as hers had once done.
Max’s children. Max’s bride and Max’s wife. Max’s home.
And she would be in Canada, or any place in the world. For where she was would not matter—could not matter. Because she would be without Haughton.
Without Max.
Pain lanced at her and she got to her feet, scraping her father’s chair on the floorboards. She faced Max. He was still standing there, his expression still veiled, still resting his gaze on her.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It does. It does deserve that.’
He spoke the words heavily, incisively, as if they were being carved into him. He looked at her, held her eyes unreadably for one last moment longer, then spoke again.
‘And I hope beyond all things that it will be my home—’
She stared at him. Why had he said that? It was his home now—her signature had made it so.
But he was speaking still. ‘That, however, depends entirely on you.’
Bewilderment filled her. There was something in his eyes now—something that, had the sombreness and the despair of the moment not overwhelmed her, she would have said was a glint.
‘You should always read what you’re signing before you sign it, Ellen,’ he said softly, and his eyes were still holding hers.
‘It’s a contract of sale,’ she said.
Her voice was neutral, but she was trying desperately in her head not to hear the seductive, sensuous echo of his naming of her, that had sent a thousand dangerous whispers across her skin.
‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed.
‘Selling you my share of Haughton.’
‘No,’ said Max, in measured, deliberate tones. ‘It is not that.’ He paused. ‘Read it—you’ve signed it...now read it.’
Numbly, she turned back the pages to reach the opening page. But it was full of legalese and jargon, and the words swam in front of her eyes.
Then Max was speaking again. ‘It is a contract of sale,’ he said, ‘but you are not the vendor.’ He paused. ‘I am.’
MAX’S EYES WERE holding hers and not letting them go—not letting them go for an instant...a single second.
‘You see...’ he said, and he spoke in the same measured tones, but now there was something else in his voice—something that was an emotion rising up to break through, an emotion that was possessing every cell in his body. ‘You see, I am selling you the two-thirds share of Haughton I have already purchased from your stepmother and stepsister. Which, Ellen—’ and now the emotion broke through finally, unstoppably, blazing through him, lighting up his eyes with the fire he had banked down with every ounce of his strength since he’d watched her walk up to him across the lawns ‘—which I now restore to you.’
For one last moment he held on to his self-control.
‘I’ve given you a very good price,’ he told her. ‘I believe even on your teacher’s salary you can afford to pay me a hundred pounds. How does that sound? I hope it’s acceptable—because you’ve just put your signature to it.’
She
