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Space would be good right now.
The sound of the Lamborghini’s engine faded away as she went about taking inventory on the lower floor. Apparently most, if not all, of the original furnishings remained, as evidenced by their arrangement. Bella had been in enough wealthy households to recognize when a place had been artfully decorated and this one definitely had. The pieces had been placed just so by a feminine hand, or at least she imagined it that way. That’s when it hit her that this farmhouse had probably once belonged to an ancestor of hers. Someone of her blood.
A long gone Montoro, forgotten for ages once the coup deposed the royal family. She’d never felt very connected to the monarchy, not even at the palace in Del Sol where some of the original riches of the royal estate were housed. But the quieter treasures of the farmhouse struck her differently.
She picked up a filthy urn resting on a side table. White, or at least it was under the grime. She rubbed at it ineffectually with her palm and managed to get a small bit of the white showing. The eggshell-like surface was pretty.
Maybe it wasn’t priceless like the Qing Dynasty porcelain vase sitting in an art niche at the Coral Gables house. But worth something. Maybe it was actually worth more than the million-dollar piece of pottery back in Miami because it had been used by someone.
She’d never thought about worth being tied to something’s usefulness. But she liked the idea of having a purpose. She’d had one in Miami—wildlife conservation. What had happened to that passion? It was as if she’d come to Alma and forgotten how great it made her feel to do something worthwhile.
With renewed fervor, she dove into cleaning what she could with the meager supplies at hand, and revised her earlier thoughts. It would be fun to put some elbow grease of her own into this house. Whom else could she trust with her family’s property?
When the purr of James’s car finally reverberated through the open door, she glanced at her dirty arms and her lip curled. Some princess she looked like. A Cinderella in reverse—she’d gone from the royal palace to being a slave to the dust. A shower sounded like heaven about now.
The look in James’s eye when he walked in holding a bag stenciled with the logo of the only chain restaurant in Alma had her laughing. “There is no way you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. I’m filthy.”
“Yes, way.” He hummed in approval. “I’ve never seen a sexier woman than you, Bella Montoro. Layer of dirt or not.”
There he went again making her insides all melty and that much more raw. She always got the distinct feeling he saw the real her, past all the outside stuff and into her core. The outside, inconsequential stuff was invisible to him. Coupled with the hard twist of pure lust she got pretty much any time she laid eyes on him, she could hardly think around it.
She shook it off. This fierce attraction was nothing more than the product of their secret love affair. Anticipation of the moment they’d finally connect, laced with a hint of the forbidden. It had colored everything and she refused to fall prey to manufactured expectations about what was happening between them.
Get a grip. “Smells like ham and biscuits,” she said brightly.
He handed her the bag. “I hope you like them. I had to drive two towns over to find them.”
The first bite of biscuit hit her tongue and she moaned. “I would have paid three hundred euros for this.”
He laughed. “On the house. You can pay next time.”
“Oh?” She arched a brow, relieved they’d settled back into the teasing, fun vibe she’d liked about them from the beginning. “Are you under some mistaken impression that I’m a liberated woman who insists on opening her own doors and paying her own way? ’Cause that is so not happening.”
“My mistake,” he allowed smoothly with a nod and munched on his own biscuit. “You want a manly bloke to treat you like a delicate hothouse flower. I get it. I’d be chuffed to climb all the ladders around here and wield the power tools in order to create a luxury hideaway, as ordered. You know what that means I get at the end of the day in return, right?”
“A full body massage,” she guessed, already planning exactly how such a reward might play out. “And then some inventive foreplay afterward.”
That was even more fun to imagine than the massage part of the evening’s agenda.
“Oh, no, sweetheart.” He leaned in and tipped her chin up to capture her gaze, and the wicked intent written all over his face made her shiver. “It means I get the loo first.”
