Riccardo walked in and looked around the stunning oak-panelled walls. Large bay windows dominated two of the walls and through both lay extensive views of fields and woodland. He noticed that she hadn’t followed him in but that she had remained hovering by the door, clutching her brochure.
Impatience mingled with irritation. So, yes, she had admitted that she had made a mistake with him, but did she have to take her aversion to such obvious lengths? She clearly couldn’t wait until they were outside and she could speed off in the opposite direction. He supposed it said something that she could still be affected by his presence after all this time, but he wasn’t idiot enough to think that that something was remotely flattering. Anyone bitten by a snake would probably shy away from too many future personal encounters with the species.
Accustomed to the adulation of women, Riccardo gritted his teeth and did what he had come to do. He peered at the woodwork, looked at the window frames, tried to work out what fundamental work would be needed if he bought the place. Behind him, he could sense her waiting, keen to leave, probably looking at her watch.
‘There’s another floor,’ Charlotte said, as soon as he turned around. ‘It’s been used as a suite of guest rooms, but it could be turned into pretty much anything. Would you like to have a look?’
‘No. I’d like to give that a miss, because I really don’t object to tossing a couple of million at a property having only seen a fraction of it. I’m really getting a little impatient with your wounded-party act, Charlie.’
‘Charlotte,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m not that girl you knew any more!’
Riccardo took a couple of steps towards her, and Charlotte swallowed hard but stood her ground until he was towering over her, face grim, ebony brows winged into a dark frown. Everything about him terrified her. Life for the past eight years seemed to have been a pleasant, trouble-free walk in the park compared to just this one single moment in time.
‘No, you’re not. You’re a woman about to be married who clearly can’t stand the sight of me and isn’t mature enough to conceal it.’
‘Can you blame me?’ Charlotte said in a high, accusing voice. Logic and common sense flew through the window, and in its place was a red mist of remembered hurt, misery and resentment. ‘You led me on…’
‘I promised nothing!’
‘You slept with me.’
‘I wasn’t the first!’
‘Yes, you damned well were!’ She had never told him. Now it was out, and he stared at her in shocked silence.
‘You couldn’t have been. I would have known.’
‘How?’ Charlotte demanded, her cheeks burning. ‘How would you have known?’
‘There was no…there were no signs…’
‘Oh, please! I was eighteen and you swept me off my silly feet.’
Would he have slept with her if he had known that she was a virgin? Riccardo asked himself. No. No, he wouldn’t have, because his keen antennae would have alerted him to the inherent problems. He also would have started asking a few more questions about her age because twenty-four-year-old virgins, in his experience, were pretty thin on the ground. He surfaced to find that she was still attacking him, fuelled by eight years of blistering resentment.
‘No, you don’t!’ he cut in harshly. ‘If I had known that you were a virgin, whether you were eighteen, twenty-four or fifty-six, I wouldn’t have slept with you!’
‘Because?’ She heard herself ask the question with dismay and knew that she should have listened to her head and not allowed her emotions to run wild.