Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

‘She lacks your elegance,’ Andreo drawled. ‘He had no taste.’

The Mercedes purred through sleepy Gascon villages lined with ancient stone houses. She had forgotten how lovely the lush green landscape was in early summer. The little town of Bordeilles was on the River Dronne and she could remember visiting the tall dignified château that towered over the other buildings.

‘Aren’t you going the wrong way?’ she murmured.

‘I’m taking you home with me, amore.’

‘I should argue but I can’t be bothered.’ But she knew even as she said it that she was talking nonsense, making excuses sooner than admit that wild horses could not have torn her from his side. She just needed to be with him and she refused to question why that was. A couple of kilometres beyond the town he swung off the road and into a dusty laneway where he paused and lowered the window.

‘That’s it over there…’

She looked across a field of yellow black-eyed sunflowers to see the building with the tower that sat on the far side of it. Fashioned of the local honey-coloured stone and roofed with warm reddish-brown tiles, the house looked as if it had stood in that precise spot for ever.

‘How old is it?’ she asked as he drove on down the lane.

‘Fourteenth century. It was a priory and it holds a special place in my heart. I bought it when I was eighteen—’

‘Eighteen?’ she gasped, sitting up out of her slump.

‘I ran away from home because my family persisted in treating me like a teenager—’

‘You were a teenager at eighteen—’

Andreo gave her a mocking glance. ‘We’ll talk about my misspent youth some other time.’

He drew up in the deep shade of a grove of stately chestnut trees. At the foot of the hill, a slow-moving river wound through a meadow. There was a stillness that she could literally hear. Drenched in late afternoon sunshine, the house drew her out of the car and the shadows. She roved ahead of him to where the ancient studded wooden door already stood wide in welcome on a hall painted a deep blue as intense as the sky.

‘Blue…’

‘My favourite colour,’ Andreo breathed huskily from behind her. ‘Just like your eyes.’

If I didn’t already love him, Pippa reflected helplessly, I would love him now for talking nonsense and owning this glorious house. ‘Is there someone else here?’

‘I asked my housekeeper to air it, stock up for my arrival and then go home again,’ Andreo confided. ‘She lives only a couple of fields away.’

‘You plan everything, don’t you?’

‘Don’t you?’

She was surprised by that comeback, even more surprised to acknowledge that he was right. She did plan virtually everything in her life. Only she hadn’t planned on him or the baby. Once more she thought of the baby as the tiny new life force it was: part of him, part of her, an individual created between them and dependent on them both. Her throat thickened. Slowly she turned to face him, blue eyes softening as she let her admiring attention rest on his breathtakingly handsome features. If their baby was a boy, he would be very handsome, and if their baby was a girl, she hoped she inherited her blue eyes and Andreo’s gorgeous black hair.

‘You’ll stay, cara?’

With difficulty she shook free of her sentimental little daydream and focused on him. He was temptation personified to her. ‘But only—’

Andreo placed a reproachful forefinger briefly against her full pink lower lip. ‘No boundaries,’ he warned her lazily. ‘I don’t like boundaries.’

‘I need them.’

‘You have to trust me.’

She felt like glass he could see through: naked and vulnerable. He had cut through her intended protests to the heart of the matter. An issue of trust. He might as well have asked her to scale Everest barefoot, she thought in dismay. She did not think that she had it in her to truly trust a male of his calibre. He was far too rich and good-looking. Not his fault, she conceded painfully. Nature had blessed him with lean, dark, devastating features and an incredibly powerful sexual aura. He had become a target for women and had learnt to appreciate the extent of his own power. But wasn’t she going to have to trust him again to tell him about the baby she carried? How could she expect more from him than she was prepared to give herself?

‘No boundaries,’ Andreo repeated softly, closing a lean strong hand over hers and leading her up the wide stone staircase to the upper floor.

In the bedroom, her attention was stolen by the massive arched window that looked right out over the river valley. The view was spectacular and the light so strong that it hurt her eyes with its brilliance. Coming to a halt behind her, Andreo ran down the zip on her dress and lingered to press his lips to the soft, sensitive spot where her neck met the slope of her shoulder.

The unbearably delicious sensation made her squirm in his hold and with a helpless gasp she let her head fall back. He skimmed the light dress down over her arms and she curved her hands down to ensure the fabric did not catch and linger at her wrists.