style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Why don’t you go through to the kitchen and make us some coffee…’ He nodded in the direction of the room straight ahead of him ‘…while I take our bags upstairs?’
Kenzie was looking around, loving the panelled walls and polished wood floors, the chandelier and wall lights shimmering crystal, and the lovely wide staircase leading up to the second floor. She was so surprised by the house he had brought her to instead of the cold, impersonal hotel she had been expecting that she couldn’t even think of an argument to his suggestion as she made her way slowly to the kitchen.
The sort of beautiful old-fashioned kitchen she would have loved for her own, a deep green Aga its dominating feature, pots and pans hanging down over a table scored by years of use, with the more modern features like the fridge and dishwasher hidden away behind doors of the same oak as the array of kitchen cabinets.
Why on earth had Dominick, of all people, bought a beautiful old house like this one?
And where were all the staff needed to run such a big house? she suddenly wondered.
Surely a cook was necessary, if nothing else. Or did Dominick include feeding him as part of the weekend she owed him?
Not that she couldn’t cook, in fact she enjoyed it, but despite Dominick’s warning that the only person she would have to socialize with this weekend was him, she hadn’t for a moment thought that the two of them would be completely alone.
‘No coffee?’ He raised his dark brows in question as he joined her in the kitchen to find her just standing there. ‘Never mind, we’ll make some in a minute,’ he dismissed. ‘Perhaps you would like to have a look at the swimming pool first?’
Somewhere in this big, beautiful house was a swimming pool?
Well, why not? Dominick might not have made anywhere his permanent home the last twenty years, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have every comfort in the numerous houses he did own.
‘Why not?’ She shrugged, needing time to collect her scattered thoughts, and a tour around the swimming pool was as good a way to spend them as any.
‘The rose garden,’ Dominick told her economically as they went outside. ‘The stables.’ He pointed over to the buildings some distance away from the house. ‘The swimming pool,’ he said with satisfaction as he took a key from his pocket and unlocked a door.
Surely swimming pool was too mundane a description of the domed building he took her into, she thought, gazing at the huge windows along each side, the big glass doors at the end wall that opened out onto a terrace, and the full-length pool lined with white and blue mosaics. The pool was surrounded by alabaster pillers, and Greek statues of partially dressed women, set amongst huge urns of overflowing flowers.
‘Someone else’s fantasy, not mine,’ Dominick drawled dryly as Kenzie turned slowly to look at him.
She could have guessed that; she didn’t think this romantic setting was Dominick’s taste at all.
But it was hers, she realized, the warm enchantment of the place definitely appealing to her. So much so that she longed to get her costume from her bag upstairs and immerse herself in the lovely cool water.
But not if that was going to mean Dominick joining her!
She was already aware of Dominick enough as it was, and had been so since the moment she had joined him in the car earlier. The darkness of his hair had still been damp from the shower he must have taken, his jaw clean-shaven, his muscled arms bare beneath the black polo shirt he wore, and his legs long in the black fitted denims.
Just looking at him had been enough to put all her senses on alert.
And that awareness had only deepened during the journey down here, an emotion she had hopefully kept hidden behind her dark sunglasses.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Perhaps we should go and have that coffee now?’ she prompted quietly, finding this setting far too—intimate, for comfort.
Dominick deliberately put his hand beneath her elbow on the pretext of helping her up the steps as they walked back to the house, and was rewarded by her huskily indrawn breath and the sudden stiffness of her arm before she pulled sharply away from him to walk several feet away.
He smiled to himself as her actions told him that, although Kenzie might try to deny it, even to herself, she still obviously desired him…
‘Only trying to be helpful,’ he said with a shrug.
He set about preparing the coffee himself once they reached the kitchen, and Kenzie was no longer able to hide her eyes behind dark glasses now that they were back inside the house. Her green eyes looked at him beneath her long, lowered lashes as she sat at the kitchen table watching him fill the coffee machine and set it on to percolate.
‘I hope you’re going to be more helpful when it comes to preparing dinner,’ he rebuked mockingly as he got out the mugs. ‘As I’m sure you remember, making coffee and warming ready-prepared meals in a microwave is as far as my culinary talents go!’
Kenzie did remember. She also knew that was because until the two of them had married Dominick had either eaten out or had a live-in cook who had prepared his meals when he had been at home. Any of his homes.
‘Where’s the staff, Dominick?’ she probed warily.
‘There isn’t any,’ he said, sounding unconcerned by her enquiry. ‘A woman from the village comes in to check on the place, and she put some flowers in vases and brought in some food for this weekend, but other than that there isn’t anyone.’
Meaning they were going to be completely alone here this weekend.
Surely flowers in vases and food for the weekend weren’t the details Dominick had told her he still had to finalize before confirming this weekend away?
And what were the two of them doing alone here for the weekend, anyway? What—
‘Why don’t you stop thinking so much and go and take a swim instead, Kenzie?’ Dominick cut into her thoughts harshly, his brown eyes hard and glittering. ‘And you accused me of having an overactive imagination!’ he added with obvious disgust. ‘I thought I had assured you I don’t take unwilling women to my bed!’
What about willing ones?
Kenzie was fast coming to the conclusion she wasn’t unwilling, and that she never would be where Dominick, the man she loved, was concerned.
Dominick had been her husband, the only man she had shared every intimacy with, and the more time she spent in his company, the harder she was finding it to separate that man she’d fallen for from the stranger he should be to her now.
Was this how all the other women she’d read about felt when they had been married to a man and were thinking about sleeping with him again? A certain curiosity? To see if there really was no last vestige of feeling, no hope, left between them?
She stood up abruptly. ‘I think I will go and take that swim, if you don’t mind.’ A plunge into cold water was probably exactly what she needed!
‘I was the one to suggest it, so why should I mind?’ Dominick shrugged, obviously still deeply annoyed. ‘The
