Tempestuous Reunion

‘We won’t be staying anywhere,’ he countered. ‘We’re coming home.’

‘Home?’ she echoed. ‘You’ve bought a house?’

Luc shifted a negligent hand. ‘Wait and see.’

‘I haven’t been there before, have I? It’s not something else that I’ve forgotten, is it?’

‘You’ve never been in Italy before,’ he soothed.

She hated the helicopter and insisted on a rear seat, refusing the frontal bird’s-eye view that Luc wanted her to have. The racket of the rotors and her sore head interacted unpleasantly, upsetting her stomach. She kept her head down, only raising it when they touched down on solid ground again.

Luc eased her out into the fresh air again, murmuring, ‘Lousy?’

‘Lousy,’ she gulped.

‘I should’ve thought of that, but I wanted you to see Castelleone from the air.’ Walking her way from the helipad, he carefully turned her round. ‘This is quite a good vantage point. What do you think?’

If he hadn’t been supporting her, her knees would have buckled at the sight which greeted her stunned eyes. Castelleone was a fairy-tale castle with a forest of towers and spires set against a backdrop of lush, thickly wooded hills. Late-afternoon sunlight glanced off countless gleaming windows and cast still reflections of the cream stone walls on the water-lily-strewn moat. She should have been better prepared. She should have known to think big and, where Luc was concerned, think extravagant. He might have little time for history but with what else but history could he have attained a home of such magnificence and grandeur?

‘It wasn’t for sale when I found it, and it wasn’t as pretty as it is now…’

‘Pretty?’ she protested, finding her tongue again. ‘It’s beautiful! It must have cost a fortune.’

‘I’ve got money to burn and nothing else to spend it on.’ Idle fingertips slid caressingly through her hair. ‘It’s a listed building, which is damnably inconvenient. The renovations had to be restorations. Experts are very interfering people. There were times when I wouldn’t have cared if those walls came tumbling down into that chocolate-box moat.’

‘You’re joking!’ she gasped.

‘Am I? Have you ever lived with seventeenth-century plumbing, cara? It was barbaric,’ Luc breathed above her head. ‘The experts and I came to an agreement. The plumbing went into a museum and I stopped threatening to fill in the moat. We understood each other very well after that.’

‘You said it wasn’t for sale when you first saw it.’

‘For everything there is a price, bella mia.’ With a soft laugh, he linked his arms round her. ‘The last owner had no sentimental attachment to the place. It had been a drain on his finances for too long.’

‘Did you ever tell me about it?’

‘I wanted to surprise you.’ He guided her towards the elaborate stone bridge spanning the moat. Tall studded doors stood wide on

a hall covered with exquisitely painted frescoes.

‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,’ she whispered.

‘Admittedly not everyone has a foyer full of fat cherubs and bare-breasted nymphs. I’ll concede that if I concede nothing else,’ Luc said mockingly. ‘The original builder wasn’t over-endowed with good taste.’

‘If you don’t like it, why did you buy it?’ she pressed, struggling to hold back her tiredness.

He moved a broad shoulder. ‘It’s an investment.’

‘Does that mean you plan to sell it again?’ Her dismay was evident.

‘Not if you feel you can live with all those naked women.’

‘I can live with them!’

‘Somehow,’ he murmured softly, ‘I thought you would feel like that.’

Luc appraised her pallor, the shadows like bruises below her eyes, and headed her to the curving stone staircase. ‘Bed, I think.’

‘I don’t want to go to bed. I want to see the whole castle.’ If it was a dream that Luc should want to marry her and live in this glorious building, she was afraid to sleep lest she wake up.