“You must get the most incredible fruit out here.” Kate reached up and plucked a single orange blossom to her nose. It was sweetly fragrant, a heady mix of sunshine and joy.

Beside her, Benedetto walked, hands stuffed in the pockets of the faded jeans he’d found in the wardrobe. His jumper was a dark grey and dressed like this, casually, he looked completely like himself. Kate knew the moment he appeared in this outfit that she had been right.

He might wear suits and tuxedos in his day to day life, but that was a costume. He was this person.

This outdoorsy, rugged, wild type of man.

“I would pick it, growing up, so that my father could make jam.”

“Your dad made jam?” She asked, picking another blossom and joining it to the other in her hand.

“The best,” his smile was teasing. “Don’t tell me you’re going to find that strange? And here I had you pegged as a feminist.”

“I don’t find it strange,” she laughed. “I like it. I especially like the thought of you wearing a cute little kiddy apron and helping him stir it.” She sobered. “It’s just … I can’t imagine my dad ever doing anything so domestic.” She pulled a face.

Benedetto nodded. “Tell me about him.” Only he didn’t want to know. The day they’d shared had shocked him for its easiness. They’d cleaned the house and she’d sung, showing that her voice was beautiful and melodious. They’d made love after lunch and dozed in the faded hammock that had once hung with splashes of bright colour between the fig and the olive tree in the front garden. And now, as the sun was dipping down over the surrounding hills, they walked side by side as though they’d known one another for years, not a day and a half.

The mention of Augustine Beauchamp filled him with a river of ill-will. It reminded him that he was full of hatred and anger. It reminded him that this woman was just a means to an end and that he was foolish to be getting to know her so well. It reminded him that he had used her for sex and sent proof of that act to the one man who would understand what he’d done, and why.

His face paled beneath his tan.

“And ruin this paradise?” She said with forced-lightness, grabbing another blossom and pinched all three between her fingers. “Look.” She held it out to him; he saw only a collection of tiny flowers. “It’s a fairy bouquet.”

He arched a brow sardonically and she burst out laughing.

“I used to make them when I was little. Hundreds of them. One time, I picked all of the blossoms off our pear tree and made strands and strands and strands of white ribbons. It took me a whole day, but it was so beautiful.” She sighed at the memory. “Of course I was in so much trouble when my father found out. The tree hadn’t borne fruit for three years so I’d sort of ruined something special.” She shook her head.

“How old were you?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. Six or seven perhaps.”

“Too young to understand what you were doing,” he pointed out, taking the bouquet from her and twirling it in his own fingers. His eyes latched to hers and something sharp and bright flared between them.

Kate looked away from him, her eyes seeking out something — anything — that would distract her.

“What other fruits do you grow here?”

He was happy to let her move their conversation along. He draped an arm casually around her shoulders, though his brain was shouting at him to stop this madness. He had done what he’d set out to do and now he should have been driving her back to Rome and forgetting he ever knew her.

“I’ll have to check that the trees are in order,” he said thoughtfully. “But when my father lived here there were oranges, lemons, limes, cumquats, grapes, pears, apples, olives and a heap of macadamia nuts too. He had a goat that made his milk, and chickens for eggs.”

“Woah. It’s like your own River Cottage,” she said with a shake of her head. “How incredible it must be to live like that. I can barely open a tin of baked beans. I can’t imagine being so self-sufficient.”

“He was very in touch with nature.” Benedetto’s voice didn’t show how that statement pained him. To imagine his father leaving this paradise to answer fictitious charges in England. To have spent his dying days in a cold British jail!

“And you must have been too, to grow up like that.”

He shrugged.

Kate stopped walking so that she could stand in front of him and wrap her arms around his waist. The difference in their sizes was more obvious now than when they’d first met and she’d been in heels.

“When I first met you, I remember thinking that you were sort of wild. That you looked like a man who could tame a beast with his bare hands.” She linked her fingers through his now and brought them to her lips. “I think I was right.”

His heart was squeezing painfully in his chest. Why was she looking at him like that? As if he could give her something more than this? He couldn’t! He couldn’t give her anything. He’d taken from her exactly what he’d needed and soon it would be over.

“I left this life, remember? I turned my back on what my father had valued because I wanted to make my mark in the world. I didn’t want to idle in an ancient home, cara, even one so charming as this. You have a romantic impression of me that isn’t borne out by the facts.”

“You really prefer your life? A life of corporate boredom and money and meaningless sex and the trappings of success without any real …”

“What do you know of my life?” He demanded, with a sharper tone than he’d intended to employ. He saw something like fear clot her eyes and if he were feeling less emotional himself he might have stopped to wonder why she had that reaction.

She studied him carefully and then stepped away. “Nothing, I guess.” She wrapped her arms around her waist in a futile attempt to warm up. Only it wasn’t the cool wind that had chilled her. It was his sudden attitude shift.

It felt good to push her away. It felt right. He had let things get too complicated; a foolish, stupid move not worthy of him. After all, he was used to having meaningless sex with beautiful women.

But this place was magical.

This place could cast a spell on any who submitted to it as they had.

He felt the magic and it was changing him.

He would not allow it to.

“We have only just met,” he added, his tone cool now.

“I know.” She lifted her head to look up at him. Her eyes were bleak. He hated that. He hated that her eyes were as expressive as her father’s. In Augustine’s eyes he had seen belligerence and cruelty and disinterest. In hers he saw everything that was kind, good and vulnerable. “I guess I’ve known men like you before,” she said, and her words were like a knife in his gut. Was she possibly comparing him to her father?

“Have you?”

It wasn’t true; no one was like Benedetto Arnaud. “I hate the world you live in,” she said instead. “I hate the waste. The wanton spending. You threw two hundred thousand pounds at me as though it were nothing. Don’t you see how disgusting that is?”

“I gave the money to a charity,” he pointed out, wondering at how her face could fill with such passion.

“As though it were nothing,” she repeated. “You spent in the blink of an eye what most people spend a lifetime trying to save.”

“So it offends you that I have money?” He countered. “Yet you work for a charity that exists because of people like me.”

She frowned; he ached to kiss those pouted lips. “How do you make that sound wrong in some way?” She said finally.

“It’s not wrong. It is simply the way of the world.”

“What do you even do? To have this kind of money?”

He dug his hands back into his pockets. They were safer there. He needed a physical barrier to stop from reaching for her and reinstating the sweetness they’d been sharing a moment earlier. “I build things,” he said simply.

“What kinds of things?”

“High rises mostly.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know that.”

“Why would you?”

“I guess if I had my phone I could have googled you.”

Icy panic dredged through him. If she had her phone and googled him she would have very quickly seen that his father had been incarcerated for murder and from there, a few clicks would have shown that her father had been the presiding judge.

He blinked his eyes closed and thanked the heavens for whatever stroke of luck had led to her forgetting her phone.

“Don’t google me,” he said, his voice thick. “I will answer any question you ask. I would prefer you to speak to me rather than read about me.”

She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Why? Would I see something on the internet you wouldn’t like?”

“Anyone in my position has things on the internet about them that are simply not true.” He took a step forward, moving them nearer to the tangle of rose bushes. They were a mess. “My mother loved the rose garden; or so my father said. He used to take a tremendous amount of pride in maintaining it for her.” He sighed roughly. “He would hate to know it was like this.”

“Why don’t you hire someone to maintain the house and garden?” She asked, following his gaze into the garden. Her heart was beating fast; her head was spinning. Had they just been arguing? And if so, what about?

“It never occurred to me,” he said after a beat had passed. “I should though. You’re right.”

His quick agreement pleased her. She wrapped the words up and clutched them to her soul.

“You said last night that you haven’t been with anyone in a long time. Why not?” He asked, linking his fingers to hers and pulling her gently towards him. He pressed a kiss against her soft hair and he felt the answering thudding in her heart.

She closed her eyes and breathed in every detail of his nearness. “I haven’t been bought before.” Her words were an attempt at lightness. They didn’t succeed.

“That has no bearing on why you slept with me.”

“No,” she agreed. “If I hadn’t wanted you too I would have slapped you right across that gorgeous face for even suggesting such a thing.”

“You are a very sensual woman. I find it hard to believe you suppressed that side of yourself.”

“You’re the first man to ever think so,” she said, wondering at the kernel of shame that rolled through her. “Until I met you, I honestly thought I was some kind of prude.”

“You must be kidding,” he remarked, pulling back so that he could stare down into her eyes. It was a mistake. They were his eyes. Benedetto pulled her roughly against his chest, pressing his chin lightly against the top of her head.

“No,” she stroked his back. “My first time was …” she cleared her throat. “Is this weird to talk about?”

“Not at all,” he assured her, though he instinctively hated the thought of her having slept with others before him.

“My first time was with my boyfriend. I was eighteen. It was the most uncomfortable and simultaneously boring experience of my life. I remember lying there thinking: is this all sex is? Is that what all the fuss is about? I found out about a year ago that he’s gay. I guess that explains the lack of chemistry, maybe.” Her smile was wistful.

“That’s it?” He had no choice now but to look down on her.

She shrugged. “No. There was another guy.” Something like fear whispered across her features once more. “I liked him.” Jealousy, unmistakable, barbed in his gut. “He worked for my dad, so I’d known him for years.” She cleared her throat. “It should never have happened. I knew it would be … I knew my dad … it should never have happened.”

Benedetto processed the information she had given him, and the information she hadn’t known she was giving him. “Your father didn’t approve.”

She shook her head, as she remembered the expression on Augstine’s face when she’d revealed she was in a relationship with Connor.

“You will end it, or you will be sorry.”

“I don’t want to end it. I like him, and he likes me.”

“You will end it, Katherine.”

“No.”

She shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. It had been foolhardy and futile from the beginning to hope she could change his mind. She’d had to wear jackets for three weeks, despite the heat of the summer, to cover the bruises on her arms.

“He did not approve, no.”

“So what? Your daddy said he didn’t like the guy and you ended it?”

She swallowed. Her throat hurt. Were they tears, cloying to be shed?

“My father didn’t just say things. He made sure he was understood, loud and clear.”

Benedetto heard the words but there was a disconnect between what he’d understood and what she’d meant, surely. After all, she couldn’t have been implying that Augustine Beauchamp had resorted to physical means to get his daughter to obey him.

“What did this man do to your father?” He prompted, wondering if this ex-lover of Kate’s might in fact be able to help him with the proof he needed.

“He was his research assistant. Connor made sure dad’s cases were on point. He checked facts. That kind of thing. He was incredibly bright. I have no idea what he’s doing now.”

“You really ended it just because your father didn’t approve?”

“Yep.” She straightened away from him on the guise of studying the roses. “I didn’t even think twice.” She exhaled a long, slow breath to wipe the thoughts from her mind. “He’d love you, though.”

Benedetto felt nauseated. “Why do you say that?” His words sounded casual but inside he was screaming with rage.

“You’re just the kind of guy he’d want me to marry one day.” She laughed unsteadily. “I’m only twenty-two,” she hastened to add on.

Twenty-two. He froze. He had known that. Somewhere in the thick dossier of information he’d collected on Augustine Beauchamp he had all kinds of facts on Kate, including her age.

She was a baby. Far too young for what he’d done to her. Far too young for how he’d used her. Far, far too inexperienced for the game he’d pulled her into.

“You’re twenty-two,” he repeated, his face showing his surprise.

“So marriage is so completely not on my radar.” She laughed again, and now she seemed so young. Her innocence and naivety were byproducts of her age.

Guilt was slamming through him. Staring at the rose garden his father had tended for his mother, years after her death, he felt disgusted at his actions. What he had done to avenge the incarceration and death of his father should never have led to this.

He had taken a beautiful young woman and he had turned her into a weapon. Nothing more. He looked down at her and everything seemed completely off-balance. He thought of his phone, sitting switched off, in his bedroom and he wondered if there was any chance the message hadn’t actually sent.

Only he’d seen it go. He’d seen the little tick that indicated it had arrived at its source.

“Kate …”

“Don’t look like that,” she cut him off, hating to see him withdrawing from her. She didn’t want him to look cold and distant. She wanted him to stare down at her as though she held all the answers to the universe’s mysteries. “Please don’t look like that.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed his lips slowly, breathing passion back into his soul, pushing out any doubts he had been harbouring.

“You’re twenty-two,” he groaned against her mouth, wrapping his hands into her hair and holding her tight to his body. “I shouldn’t want you like this.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m twenty-two! I’m a fully grown woman! What are you talking about?”

“I’m thirty-four. Do you know that?”

She shrugged. “So?”

He shook his head. It wasn’t the age difference that was bothering him, so much as the fact he’d taken someone innocent and sweet and used her in a way that was so far from what she deserved.

“You’re okay sleeping with me knowing that it has no future?” He demanded. “Knowing that I have a lot of sex, just like this, with a lot of women, just like you?”

The pain was extraordinary. She’d never known anything like it — at least, not emotionally. “This is because I made a joke about marriage?” She said, keeping her mouth close to his.

“No.” He pulled the old t-shirt of his she wore from the waistband of her pants. His hands connected with her skin and he felt a rush of grateful desire. “It’s because, by your own admission, you have limited experience. And this is great sex. Really great sex. But that’s all it is. It would be easy for someone like you to think it was more.”

“I don’t,” she assured him so fast that surely it was true. “I told you yesterday: you have me for two days. So make the most of me.”

He would hate himself afterwards, but he was not strong enough to resist her invitation.

He growled as he ripped her shirt over her head and threw it to the grassed ground at their feet. They knelt as one, hands running over bodies, mouths tasting and tormenting, fingers teasing.

When he was naked, and his arousal was before her, she cupped it with her fingers and stared up at him nervously. “I want to … I’ve never … but I want to …”

“Yes?” He asked, his eyes narrowing as she lowered her mouth and took him within. He swore under his breath as she flicked his length with her tongue and sucked him until he could hardly stand it. She pushed at his shoulders, so that he was lying down on the grass and she was able to take more of him into her warm, moist mouth.

He swore louder, his fingers tangling in her hair and holding her where he needed her. He felt himself beginning to lose control and he pulled her away, lifting her higher so that he could see her face. Her pupils were dilated, her cheeks were pink and her lips were so delightfully swollen. He stared into her eyes and he no longer saw Augustine. He saw Kate, and he saw his own soul too. Here, on the brink of the rose garden, where the spell of his parents’ love was perhaps at its strongest, he realised that he was the one in danger.

He had never loved a woman.

And yet he knew he could easily come to love Kate.

“I don’t want to stop,” she complained, dropping her lips to his chest and running kisses across his flesh.

“Nor do I, but believe me cara, things were about to come to an abrupt end if you’d kept going.”

Her smile was beautiful. The evening sun bathed her in a golden glow and he lifted his hands to her breasts. He traced circles around her nipples, and sighed at the splendour of that moment. She ran her tongue from his chest, lower still, back to his erection.

“We have all night, don’t we?” She murmured, and once more she took him deep into her mouth. The sight of her fair head moving as she teased his shaft was too much.

“Kate,” he groaned, trying once more to ease her away. But she caught his hands in hers, tangling their fingers together, so that she could hold them to the side.

He was losing every single hint of control. He was powerless to resist her seduction. For the first time in his life, Benedetto lost command completely and he discovered he loved it. As the sun finally dropped over the last hill, taking its warmth with it, they shared something that was new and different for both of them.

It was the beginning of the change that must, surely, have led to the end.

 

* * *

 

The tomatoes were perfect. She squeezed them one by one, feeling for the best, but they were each a testament to this country’s ability to produce fantastic fruit. She settled on a couple of large orbs with a mottled red and purple flesh and smiled at the vendor.

“Just these,” she slipped easily into Italian as she passed the two pieces over to him. He weighed them then wrapped each one in brown paper before placing them into a paper bag.

The markets were busier than the previous day. She handed some money over to him and angled her head to look along the collection of tents. They were all different colours, some selling fruit, others selling cheap trinkets, some with leather jackets and many with wine.

She stopped three shop fronts down and chose a sourdough baguette and a couple of almond croissants, then walked diagonally across to select four perfect dark chocolate truffles. Finally, she purchased a bottle of Prosecco, her lips ghosting into a smile as she remembered the way they’d met.

You will learn to like doing what I say. A shiver ran down her spine now at the arrogant assertion. And yet he’d been right. Kate would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

The basket of the bicycle was overflowing but she made one more stop before turning it back towards the villa.

It was still early. The sun was up, but it was cold. Too cold to be wearing a flimsy shirt and the jeans he’d been wearing the day before. She must have looked like a street urchin, she thought with a grin, pushing her fair hair out of her eyes as the bike began to pick up speed. The ride was not an easy one, for the villa was perched high on a hill and the path wound for several miles at its base before veering steeply up hill. But at each hairpin turn she had an exquisite vantage point of the countryside below, and the little town quickly took on fairy village proportions. Even the markets looked a little like an elaborate toy she might have played with as a child.

Her smile was etched onto her face. She could have burst into spontaneous song.

They’d slept in the hammock overnight, quite by accident. The stars were so clear out in the Tuscan countryside, and the evening though cold was crisp and dry. With the thick feather duvet from his bed, they’d lain together to look up at the heavens. Only Kate was exhausted and she’d drifted off to sleep, her head on his chest. She’d slept better than she had done in years.

Something about his proximity made her feel safe and at ease. She hopped off the bike at the start of the driveway, opting to walk it along the path instead. If he were still asleep she rather liked the idea of surprising him. She propped the bike and the basket of goodies against a thick oak tree trunk and tiptoed to the hammock. But she saw from a distance away that it was empty. With a frown of disappointment, she put her hands on her hips and looked towards the house.

He was stepping through the front doors at that exact moment and she saw him before he noticed her.

Her heart skipped a beat.

He was wearing the tuxedo again; his hair was wet and brushed back from his face. His expression was completely unreadable — but she knew he was lost in serious thought, and that the thoughts were not pleasant. She moved back to the bike and began to ride it up towards the house. She had almost reached him when finally he looked up.

His smile was perfunctory and did not reach his eyes.

“Good morning,” she put the brake down and stepped off the bike. Though she smiled, anxiety was beginning to brick a wall in her tummy. “You’re up.”

He nodded and ran a hand over his chin. It was stubbled after two days without much in the way of amenity. “I thought we should head off early to beat the traffic.”

“The traffic? It’s a Sunday…”

“No sense in sitting around here.”

“Oh.” She fought the disappointment. “Well, actually, I have a surprise for you.”

“Do you?” Was that impatience in his words? Worry gnawed at her gut.

“Uh huh,” she ploughed on, telling herself she was imagining the coldness. “I got the most perfect tomatoes and bread; I’m going to make us bruschetta. And champagne. And also,” she reached into the basket and pulled out a gold packet. “Really, really good coffee. I could see you weren’t happy with the instant yesterday.”

He refused to let the kind gesture touch him. Though it was kind. It was thoughtful. But it all spoke of an attachment that was impossible to indulge. “That will all keep. I have packed up the house. It’s time to go.”

At her look of obvious disappointment he strengthened his resolve. “It’s time to get back to reality.”

Kate nodded, but in her mind she was screaming, This is reality! It’s the only reality I’ve ever wanted.

“And what is reality?” She said, doing her best to sound unemotional. But inside, her heart was cracking into tiny pieces.

“The lives we had before this,” he responded as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

She nodded, and handed the bag of groceries to him with more force than was necessary. Her eyes didn’t meet his. “I just have to go and get my …”

“Your dress and shoes are in the car.”

“Oh, right.” She swallowed. “You’ve thought of everything.”

“I need to get back to Roma, cara,” he responded tautly. The word, cara, sat like a heavy indictment between them. She was not his dear one. She was not his sweetness. She was nothing to him.

He opened the front passenger door for her. She paused in the apex he’d created. Her eyes sought his, searching for any sign of the man she’d fallen completely and totally under a spell of.

But he was gone. In his place was the most deliciously handsome stranger she’d ever known, but a stranger nonetheless.

 

* * *

 

Augustine was getting too old for this. He jammed his phone into his pocket with a sense of fury that he was finding increasingly difficult to curb. The closer he got to his bitch of a daughter, the more it became a ground swell, threatening to engulf him.

So she’d fallen into bed – literally – with Arnaud. Did she know that he was using her?

Was she trying to hurt him, too?

His fist clenched involuntarily by his side.

He had looked for her for years. He had searched and he had waited, certain that one day she would use her credit card or otherwise stumble.

How she had evaded him he could not have said. But she would not evade him for much longer. The doors to the airport swished open automatically as he approached and he scanned the row of uniformed drivers waiting to meet their human cargo. His own name was emblazoned on a board. He moved towards it with purpose.

His long wait was about to be rewarded.