He put the glass down on the counter. ‘What’s with all the questions?’ he asked. ‘Are you jealous?’
‘Of course I’m not jealous!’ Bella retorted. ‘I just think you could really hurt her if you don’t do the right thing by her.’
‘It’s not my problem.’
‘It is your problem,’ she said. ‘You should nip it in the bud before she gets too involved. You shouldn’t encourage her to just drop by if you’re not serious about her.’
‘I didn’t encourage her to drop by,’ he said. ‘I’ve given her no encouragement, full-stop.’
Bella folded her arms across her chest. ‘She obviously thinks you have,’ she said.
‘Then she’s mistaken.’
‘Is she who you went to last night?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Who did you see?’
He leaned back against the counter in an indolent fashion. ‘Are you sure you’re not jealous?’ he asked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘How could I be?’ she asked. ‘I’m about to get engaged.’
‘It’s not official.’
‘It will be soon.’
‘There’s been nothing in the press about your relationship with your preacher boy,’ he said. ‘Not even a whisper.’
‘That’s because Julian doesn’t attract press attention,’
she said. ‘Anyway, I want to wait until he gets back from Bangladesh before we tell anyone anything. I’m going to meet his family and then we’re going to make a formal announcement.’
‘You’re assuming, of course, that I’ll agree to this match.’
Bella unfolded her arms and clenched her fists. ‘You can’t prevent me from marrying the man I love.’
His blue-green eyes challenged hers. ‘If you love him so much then why aren’t you over there with him?’ he asked.
Bella floundered for a moment. ‘I … I have things to see to here,’ she said. ‘I’d be in the way over there. I need to learn the ropes a bit before I go with him on a mission.’
He made a sound of scorn in his throat. ‘I just can’t see you handing out trinkets to the natives.’
‘That’s not what missionaries do these days,’ she said. ‘They help to build schools and hospitals.’
‘And what will you do when you do accompany him?’ he asked.
‘I’ll support him in any way I can,’ she said.
‘It’s what every man of the cloth needs,’ he said with a curl of his lip. ‘A rich wife to bankroll every do-good project.’
Bella glowered at him. ‘You think I haven’t got a clue, don’t you? You think I’m too stupid to do anything but get my nails done.’
‘You’re not stupid,’ he said. ‘You’re naïve. You’ve lived a sheltered life. You don’t know how the other half lives. You don’t know how desperate and ruthless people can be.’
‘Like you, you mean?’ she said with an arch look.
His eyes glinted as they locked down on hers. ‘I can be very ruthless when I go after something I want.’
Bella felt the skin of her arms lift in a tiny shiver. ‘You can’t always have everything you want,’ she said.
The corner of his mouth lifted in a devilish smile. ‘Who’s going to stop me?’ he asked.
She quickly moistened her parchment-dry lips, her heart doing double time inside her ribcage. ‘I’m not going to sleep with you, Edoardo.’
He picked up a lock of her hair and coiled it around his finger. She felt the gentle pull on her scalp; it made her backbone tingle and fizz like an effervescent liquid was being poured down its length. ‘I’m not planning on us doing too much sleeping once I have you in my bed,’ he said.
Bella’s insides flickered and flashed with red-hot lust. She felt shocked at her involuntary response to his incendiary words. After years of keeping her distance, her body now seemed to have a mind of its own. It totally disregarded her common sense. Her body was drawn to him, lured into his sensual orbit like a satellite.
‘Read my lips, Edoardo,’ she said stiffly. ‘I am not going to end up in bed with you, asleep or not.’
He slowly unwound her hair, his eyes meshed with hers in a sensual lock that felt like an intimate caress at the secret heart of her femininity. ‘Want to put money on that, princess?’
Bella gave her head a toss as she stepped away from him. ‘I don’t need to,’ she said. ‘I already know who’s going to win.’
‘So do I,’ he said and, before she could get in the last word, he left.
BELLA kept out of Edoardo’s way for the next couple of days. She caught up with some old friends in the village and ate out rather than spend time alone with him at the manor.
But as the week drew to a close, she felt increasingly bored and restless. She hadn’t heard from Julian, as he had gone to a new mission in the mountains where the telephone signal was poor. With each day that passed without a message from him, she felt more insecure. She needed his reassurance and encouragement. She needed his enthusiasm and positive attitude to life.
A niggling doubt had started playing at the corners of her mind about how she would fit into his life of self-sacrifice. She admired his commitment and faith enormously, but she sometimes wondered if he could be passionate about anything other than trying to save the world. She knew it was selfish of her to want to be the central focus of his attention, but she couldn’t help wondering if he truly loved her the way she wanted to be loved.
Her mother’s desertion when she was so young had made her insecure about intimate relationships. She loved too deeply and too quickly, only to be disappointed when the other party pulled away from her. Was Julian’s trip abroad his way of distancing himself? She knew he loved her, but it wasn’t a passionate all-or-nothing love.
It was a safe love.
A love she could count on to get her through the bad times as well as the good. A love that would be the solid foundation of a well-ordered family life.
It was what she wanted. What she needed. She didn’t want to be like her mother, flitting off to somewhere exotic on yet another passionate fling that would only end in tears and heartbreak.
She didn’t
