‘A heart attack. I believe it was very sudden,’ Hilary proffered, grateful that she at least knew that much and praying that he would ask for no other details.
Roel swung away from her and strode over to the tall windows. His powerful shoulders were rigid with tension below the expensive cloth of his jacket. He was closing her out and she knew it. He had mentally dismissed her from his presence as surely as if he had slammed a door in her face.
‘Roel…’ she murmured, aching with a compassion she was afraid to show for fear of offending.
‘Go check the dinner menu,’ he advised very drily.
Hilary’s troubled gaze sparked and she stood taller. ‘I couldn’t care less about stuff like that. Don’t push me away. I was very close to my gran and I was devastated when she passed away—’
‘Some of us choose not to parade private emotions,’ Roel whipped back.
‘OK…OK!’ Hilary threw up both hands in a peacemaking gesture, expressive brows raised at his vehemence.
Face pale and tight with discomfiture, for he could not have rejected her attempt to offer comfort more clearly, she spun round and walked out of the room.
So what do you do for an encore? a snide little voice asked inside Roel’s head. Kick puppies? Do a Scrooge for the festive season?
Umberto was in the corridor. With him was another man, who was carrying her case. Hilary came to an abrupt halt.
‘Signora.’ With a smooth inclination of his head, the manservant thrust open the door of the next room and stood back so that she could enter it first.
His and hers bedrooms, Hilary registered, blinking at the magnificence of the furniture and the awesome amount of space. Just as well it didn’t seem to be the thing for wealthy husbands and wives to share the same room. My goodness, that could have got really embarrassing, she told herself. But that attempt to give her thoughts a different direction didn’t work. Nor did pursing her lips so hard they went numb. When she got an unwelcome glimpse of her reflection in a fancy dressing mirror, she could see that her eyes were still overbright with the threat of stupid, weak, impressionable tears! How could one hard word from Roel turn her to weepy mush?
Why did she have to recall that Roel had once acted more relaxed around her? Yeah, much as if she were the equivalent of hair-trimming wallpaper, she jeered inwardly. But it was true. One day when she had confided how much she still missed her gran he had started telling her about how his grandfather, Clemente, had gone to Nepal to ‘find himself’ when he was sixty-five years old. Better late than never, she had teased and Roel had groaned.
Snatching in a stark breath, Hilary made herself concentrate and she followed Umberto from the room. ‘I’d appreciate a quick tour of the house,’ she told him with a friendly smile, knowing that the request was a necessity. She could hardly pretend that she had been living below Roel’s roof if she didn’t even know her way round it.
Even so the amount of deception involved in the pretence she had taken on with such little forethought was beginning to unnerve Hilary. In just a couple of days, she reflected, Roel would surely regain his memory and he would have no further need for her then. Would he appreciate that she had been trying to help him out? That in fact she had only acted like a good mate?
Umberto was very precise. He would have been happy to show her the interior of every cupboard. Hilary speeded him up by darting from one room to the next, amazed at the sheer size of the house, daunted by the extreme formality of the furniture and all the staff but enchanted by the many paintings. In the basement kitchen she made the acquaintance of the chef but demonstrated dismay rather than approbation when she learned that the exact same menus were rotated on a seasonal basis every year. Scenting the likelihood of greater gastronomic freedom, the French chef kissed her hand, rushed out to the back garden, plucked a vibrant yellow rosebud and raced after her to bestow it on her. Laughing, she slid the bloom into her hair and went back upstairs to freshen up before dinner.
The slender contents of her suitcase had already been tidied away into the dressing room. She had to open every drawer and wardrobe door to find a change of clothes. The shower in the en suite was a multi-jet delight. Smiling at such unfamiliar luxury and wrapped in a giant fleecy towel, she padded barefoot out of the bathroom again.
Roel was in the bedroom waiting for her. She jerked to a halt, her bemused gaze taking in the open door that evidently connected with his room.
‘Dio mio…I like the rose,’ Roel murmured softly.
Hilary semi-raised a self-conscious hand to the bud that she had threaded back into her hair again. ‘Your chef gave it to me…’
Roel had shed his business suit for black designer chinos of faultless cut and a blue casual shirt. He looked so downright gorgeous that she couldn’t stop staring. His smouldering dark sexual attraction hit her like a tidal wave and swept her straight out of her depth and under.
Her admission made Roel quirk an ebony brow. He was not amused by his chef’s impertinence. Yet he could see what had inspired the gesture. His wife had flawless skin, grey eyes as deep as a northern glacier lake and a mouth as provocatively ripe as a cherry. He felt his body harden with almost scientific interest. Every time he saw her, did he always want to have her again? Was he always this hungry to sink into that slim, shapely body of hers?
The awareness of her own naked skin below the towel gripped Hilary with painful shyness. She was mortified by the generous swell of her full breasts above the fleecy fabric but when she collided with Roel’s burning golden gaze her embarrassment was blotted out by the strength of her own response to his overwhelming masculinity. The tingle in her pelvis e
xpanded into a burst of shameless heat and her legs shook. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even think of anything to say.
The atmosphere was electric.
‘I want you, cara,’ Roel breathed.
That confession sent pleasure and pain rushing through Hilary in equal parts. Once she had nurtured secret fantasies of such a magical moment. The moment when Roel would miraculously cast aside all formality and see her as a desirable woman. What had once been her most fervent dream was actually happening. Roel was saying he wanted her and in every one of her dreams she had always thrown herself at him in joyful reward. Only in the present circumstance that was not an indulgence that she could allow herself.
Roel didn’t really want her, Hilary reminded herself with pained reluctance. He was expressing a natural desire for a woman who was in fact an illusion: his wife, the woman he believed he had a normal marriage with and whom he understandably believed he could trust. But she was not that mythical wife. She was just someone he had once paid to go through a wedding ceremony with him, someone whom he cared nothing about on a personal basis. And as if all that were not enough, she was also way beneath his touch in terms of status and success.
Interpreting the forlorn air of desperation that her expressive face wore, Roel was frowning with incomprehension when he reached for her. ‘Hilary—?’
‘We don’t have this sort of relationship,’ Hilary protested half under her breath.