A Royal Wedding(5)
‘Did you hear me? I said Bruno will arrange for your return.’
It was all she could do not to stamp her foot. ‘And I said I’m not leaving!
One arm swept in a wide arc. ‘I have no dealings with you. My arrangement was with Professor Rousseau.’
‘No. According to the documents, your arrangement was with her business, Archival Survival. When the Professor was unable to come, she contracted me.’
He grunted, no way about to concede the point. ‘So what is her excuse for being unable to fulfil her contractual obligations herself?’
‘If you’d read this letter you’d know. Her mother is in hospital after suffering a major stroke and she’s rushed to be with her while she clings to life. Admittedly, as excuses go, that’s pretty thin. Clearly it’s more about inconveniencing you.’
If his eyes were lasers, she figured, with the heated glare he gave her she’d be wearing holes right now, and she wondered if she’d overstepped the mark. She’d grown up in a family that prided itself on being straight-talking. Over the years she’d learned to curb that trait while in civilised company. The Count, she’d already decided, for all his flash clothes and a portrait gallery full of titled ancestors, didn’t qualify.
‘I expected an expert. I do not intend spending a week babysitting someone’s apprentice.’
She sucked in air, hating the fact it was tinged with a hint of sandalwood and spice, with undertones of something else altogether more musky, hating the possibility that it might come from him, hating the possibility that there might be something about him she approved of when the rest of him was so damned objectionable.
But that was still okay, she figured, because finding something she might possibly like only made her more resentful towards him. ‘Seeing you refuse to read this letter, where all the facts are set out in black and white, perhaps I should spell it out for you? I have a Masters in Fine Arts from Melbourne University and a PhD in Antiquities from Oxford, where my thesis was on the preservation and conservation of ancient texts and the challenge of discerning fraud where it was perpetrated centuries ago. So if there’s an apprentice on this island right now, I don’t think it’s me. Does that make you feel more comfortable?’
He arched one critical eyebrow high. ‘You look barely out of high school.’
‘I’m twenty-eight years old. But don’t take my word for it. Perhaps you’d like to check my passport?’
Dust motes danced on the slanted sunlit air between them, oblivious of the tension—dust motes that disappeared with those slanting rays as the sun was swallowed up by a cloud and the room darkened. She resisted the urge to shiver, resisted that damned illogical brain cell that suggested there was some connection between the Count’s dark looks and the weather. And instead she decided that his momentary silence meant assent.
‘And so right now I’d like to get to work. After all, I believe you want this text taken off your hands as soon as possible, and we’ve already wasted enough time, don’t you agree? Perhaps you could arrange someone to show me to the documents so I might get started?’
He scowled as he took the letter from her hands then, scanning its contents, finding everything was as she said and finding nothing to arm him with the ammunition to demand she leave.
He wanted her gone.
He didn’t want women around the place. Not young women, and definitely not halfway to pretty. He had his fix of women once a month, when the launch brought across a local village woman. He never asked her name; she never offered it. Each time she would just wait for him naked in the guest-suite bed, then throw back the covers and close her eyes.
And afterwards the launch would take her back to her village, considerably better off than before she had made the crossing.
No, Alessandro had no need for women.
He shrugged and tossed the letter down on his wide desk. What did it matter what the letter said or didn’t say? ‘I said you are not welcome here, Ms Hunter.’
She stiffened to stone right where she stood, her mouth pursing. ‘Dr Hunter, actually. And I will ensure my stay is as brief as possible. I have no desire to stay any longer than necessary where I am not welcome, I can assure you.’
He sniffed at the correction as he regarded her solemnly. She looked like a woman who had no desires, period. Sure, she was younger than the dried-up Professor, but with her scraped-back hair and that pursed mouth, and in khaki pants and T-shirt, it wasn’t as if she was anything like the women who had once graced his arm and his bed.