AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The house was beautiful. He stood outside the Tudor-style mansion with its elaborate garden boasting old fashioned roses on either side of the path, wisteria tumbling over the side, and frowned. It was, indeed, a grand home, but as he looked closer he saw signs of weathering. Peeling paint on the skirting boards, a window that was cracked and taped together, a roof that had seen better days. The garden was beautiful, but it was overgrown, and there were weeds sprouting opportunistically across the lawn.
He moved up the path, bracing himself for the inevitability of seeing Adeline once more. He wasn’t sure what to expect. But he knew he had to at least uphold his end of the bargain. She’d done her job spectacularly. She’d earned every penny of the seventy-five thousand pounds. She should have the money in her account.
He pressed the buzzer but it didn’t ring, so he lifted his hand and knocked firmly, three times. He could hear a scuffling inside. He waited, impatience zipping through him.
He lifted his hand to knock once more right as Adeline answered. He had, at least, b
een able to mentally prepare for the fact he was about to see her. But shock was writ large across her pretty face. Her eyes were enormous, saucer-like, and her lips parted on a small, strangled noise. She had a grey smudge on her forehead and her hair had been pulled into a messy bun that was now in a state of disarray. She wore low-slung jeans and a black sweater, but almost an inch of her midriff was exposed.
He forced himself to keep his focus on her face, rather than the slow, possessive inspection of her body he was aching to perform.
It took her barely a moment to control her response. With a visible effort, she was Adeline again. But not his Adeline. She was different, completely closed-off to him in a way that made his gut ache for it was such a stunning contrast to the open way she’d loved him before. To the way she’d poured sunshine and warmth through him so generously, her smile always quick at hand.
“Guillem.” Though he loved the sound of his name on her lips, it was said with such rejection than he ached for her now to call him Guy, as she always had. “What are you doing here?”
He’d been angry when he’d arrived in England. Angry at what he’d seen as another ploy by Adeline, to have him chase her. For surely this was just another Machiavellian trick in her arsenal? Only seeing the surprise in her face, the stark dismissal, he knew that wasn’t why she’d returned the cheque. She hadn’t been hoping it would bring him to her door.
She hadn’t wanted him to come.
The realisations detonated violently in his chest, wrong-footing him mentally.
“Addie? Dear? What about the old pictures?”
She paled, and clutched the door tighter, throwing a look over her shoulder. “Just a moment, mum.”
Guy’s eyes moved beyond Adeline, seeking a visual on the older woman. But Addie made a small noise, like a wild tiger protecting its prey, and she pushed the door half-shut, so that he could only see a slither of her.
“May I come in?”
“No.” A hiss. A furious, enraged hiss, like a mother tiger defending its cub from a violent predator.
But her rejection filled him with something like determination.
“You have to leave.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Not until we’ve spoken.”
“We don’t have anything to speak about.” Adeline’s response was stiff, but he saw the fluttering of her pulse at the base of her neck; he felt her panic.
His gut twisted. Who was this woman? Not the woman he’d loved in London, who had been so full of life. Who had laughed with him and made his soul sing. Nor was she the woman he’d been with in Spain. The woman who had spent an entire week putting up with his coldness, trying to talk to him, to tell him she loved him, to explain. A guttural oath ricocheted through his body, but he didn’t express any of those thoughts. Instead, with a businesslike tone, he murmured, “There is the matter of your payment.”
It was the wrong thing to say. He hadn’t even meant it. He wished he could pull the words back as soon as he’d thrown them at her, but they were out there, compounding all his behavior in Spain, and every hurt he’d inflicted on her then. He saw her wounds open, saw the way fresh pain spread over her.
“Addie? Who’s at the door?”
Worry lanced her features as the door was pulled wide, and a beautiful woman, perhaps only twenty years’ Adeline’s senior, stood on the inside, her smile curious.
“Hello,” the woman said. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Are you a friend of my daughter’s?”
“No,” Adeline demurred quickly, with a firm shake of her head, her fingers trembling as she lifted them nervously to her cheek. “He’s just someone I used to know.”
The dismissal cut through Guy, like a sharp blade running over his gut.
“Oh.” The older woman’s smile dropped. “You never bring friends over. You never bring anyone over,” she said wistfully, then turned her attention back to Guy’s large frame. “Would you like a tea?”
“Si.”
His response was emphatic, at the same moment Adeline answered, “No!”
