Never Gamble With a Caffarelli (Those Scandalous Caffarellis 3)

Remy rolled his eyes. Some things never changed. ‘I might pop over in a couple of weeks to see you once I’ve sorted out a few business issues. I’ll bring Angelique with me.’

Vittorio gave another cynical grunt. ‘That’s if she’s still with you by then.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ANGELIQUE CAME DOWN to the large sitting room where Remy was stoking a roaring fire. Warmth was spreading throughout the house now the heating was on but the sound of the flames crackling and spitting in the fireplace reminded her of cosy times with her grandparents when she was young.

The removals company had obviously come and taken away her father’s personal belongings, leaving just the original furniture. Without Henri’s things here it was like stepping back in time to a happier period in her life.

But it still annoyed her that Remy had possession of her family home and was so determined to keep it. It was all very well sleeping with him and fancying herself in love with him, but at the end of the day she had to get her home back.

Her goal was to get the deeds to Tarrantloch back where they belonged. Nothing else was supposed to distract her from that.

Not Remy with his smouldering looks, spine-loosening smile, his magical touch and mind-blowing love-making. She could indulge in an affair with him for the period of their marriage but it had to end with her achieving her mission.

Tarrantloch was meant to be hers and she would not be satisfied until she had it back in her possession.

Remy stood up and glanced at her over his shoulder. ‘Warming up?’

‘You certainly move fast.’ Angelique walked further into the room. ‘You’ve had every trace of my father’s occupation of the place removed.’

He kicked a piece of charcoal back into the fire with the side of his shoe before he looked at her again. ‘That’s normally what a new owner does, is it not?’

Angelique set her jaw. Did he have to rub it in every chance he got? ‘What do you plan to do with it?’

‘I want to base myself here.’ He dusted off his hands from having placed another log on the fire. ‘It’s private and far enough away from a major city to put off the paparazzi.’

She frowned at him. ‘But you’re a big city man. You spend most of your time in casinos and clubs. You’d be bored out of your mind up here in the highlands with nothing but the wind and the rain and the snow for company.’

‘I don’t know about that...’ He nudged absently at the fire with the poker. ‘Rafe’s been raving about the mansion he bought in Oxfordshire—the one that Poppy’s grandmother used to work in when she was growing up.’ He put the poker back in its holder and faced her again. ‘He originally planned to turn it into a luxury hotel for the rich and famous but now he’s living there with Poppy. It’s home to them now, it’s where they plan to bring up a family.’

‘That’s all very well and good, but you’re not a family man,’ Angelique pointed out. ‘You’re going to get lonely up here unless you regularly fly in some party girls to while away the long winter nights.’

He shrugged a shoulder and kicked at another piece of charcoal that had fallen out of the fire. ‘It may surprise you, but I don’t spend all of my time partying and gambling. That’s one of the reasons I love Dharbiri so much. It’s so different from the life I live in the city.’

‘It’s certainly different.’ Her tone was wry. ‘It’s not a place I’m going to forget in a hurry.’

He met her gaze across the glow of the firelight. ‘Apart from the sand and the heat it’s much the same as here. It has a bleak sort of raw beauty about it. You can hear the silence.’

She gave him a knowing look. ‘It might be isolated and a little bleak up here but no one’s going to come barging in threatening to flay you alive if you have an unchaperoned woman in your room.’

He acknowledged that with little incline of his head. ‘Perhaps not, but I bet there are quaint old ways and customs up here in the highlands and on some of the west coast islands.’

‘I still don’t think you’ll last a winter up here.’ Angelique sat down on the sofa and curled her legs underneath her body. ‘It can get snowbound for weeks and the wind can bore ice-pick holes in your chest. And don’t get me started about the rain in summer. It goes on for weeks at a time. Quite frankly, I don’t even know why they bother calling it summer. It should be called the wet season, like in the tropics.’ She flicked her hair back behind her shoulders. ‘Oh, and did I mention the midges and mosquitoes? They’re as big as Clydesdales.’

He crossed one ankle over the other as he leaned against the mantelpiece, a lazy smile curving his lips. ‘If it’s as bad as you say then why do you love it up here so much?’

She looked at the flickering flames before she answered. ‘I spent some of the happiest days of my life up here when I was a child.’

‘You came here with your parents?’

‘My mother,’ Angelique said. ‘It was her parents’, my grandparents’, home. My father never used to come because he was always too busy with work. I think the truth was he didn’t get on with my grandparents. They didn’t like him. I was too young to remember specific conversations but I got the impression they thought he was two-faced.’ She looked back at the fire again. ‘They were right. Everything changed when my nanna died. The grief hit my mother hard and then my granddad died less than a year later. It was devastating for my mother. That’s when things started to get a little crazy at home.’

Remy was frowning when she looked at him again. ‘That’s when she became depressed?’

Angelique nodded. ‘She must have felt so lonely once her parents were gone. She was shy and lacked confidence, which was probably why my father was attracted to her in the first place. He saw her as someone he could control.’

Remy’s frown was more of anger than anything. ‘I wish I’d flattened him when I had the chance. What a cowardly son of a bitch.’