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She could almost see the penny drop. She expected him to smile. But he didn’t. Instead she could almost feel the wave of sadness. His voice was quiet. “We bought the house in the late eighties when I was a child. It belonged to some ageing starlet who had moved into it in the nineteen-fifties and not redecorated since. My parents had plans to redecorate the whole house. But...things changed. We only stayed here a few weeks. My father’s business meant we had to go to Rome, then London for a while. When we came back to New York, we had a few other properties that were ready to move into as a family.”
He said the words as if something were squirming in his chest, and his bright green eyes only met her gaze for the most fleeting of seconds.
It wasn’t a lie. But it didn’t feel like the truth. Trust your instincts, the voice in her head said. She wasn’t getting the fight-or-flight feeling. There was more to this. But whatever it was—it wasn’t enough to walk away from her dream job. A chance to pay the medical bills and possibly make her mark on the Hamptons.
“You’ve moved around a lot. The family business—what kind of business are you in?”
The fleeting mob reference from her mother was momentarily playing on her mind.
“I’m Italian.” He raised his eyebrows. “We’re in the wine business.”
“You own vineyards?”
Matteo gave a tight smile “We own seventeen vineyards in Italy. Sixteen in Spain, fourteen in California, and several in Portugal.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of wine.” She rolled her eyes. “I guess I don’t need to worry about stocking the cellar, then.”
He gave a brief shake of his head. “Let me deal with that.”
She nodded. “Are you in a hurry to leave? I’d like to stay. I’d like to spend as much time as I can here, to get a feel for the place. I need to go over every room in detail, and I need to call contacts to check availability, and see what I can achieve over the next four weeks.”
She wanted him to know she was serious. She wanted him to know that this was important to her.
He glanced toward the limousine then shook his head. “Keep the car, it’s fine. I can arrange another form of transport.” His gaze actually met hers. This time there was something else. Something that made her heart swell a little. Respect?
She turned to go back to the house but his voice carried on the wind toward her.
“Ms. Gates? I trust you. I know you’ll do a good job.”
Her footsteps froze, but by the time she turned back around he already had the phone pressed against his ear again.
Had she imagined it?
Chapter Three
THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF how the house looked right now were printed. She’d spent the last two days sketching her new vision for the house. The avocado bathroom was already gone. Some things didn’t need to wait. She’d learned very quickly that Matteo really didn’t want to take her calls.
He’d given her a credit card that she hadn’t used yet. But working with contractors was different. She’d had to agree the price for a few jobs—and at this time of year—and for a house in the Hamptons—some of the prices quoted had been exorbitant. Any good interior designer would run those past her employer and that was all Phoebe was doing. Though Matteo wasn’t really interested in contractor prices. So far, he’d said yes to anything without so much as a blink.
Her biggest expense for the house was going to be fabric. She wanted new drapes for just about every room, and lots of the signature pieces reupholstered. And good quality fabric was not cheap. Which was why she standing in one of the most prestigious, well-stocked warehouses on the outskirts of New York.
But this place didn’t like to waste time. The assistant assigned to her held out her hand. “We’ll just put your credit card on file to ease things along.”
She got it. She did. The assistant didn’t want to spend the next four hours helping Phoebe find everything she wanted, only to have the credit card declined at the end.
Phoebe slipped the black card from her purse and handed it over. She had a long list of fabrics she wanted to find. A color palette already existed in her head, but would she find a match in this warehouse? That was always the danger of getting too carried away with one idea. Sometimes color trends and seasons just didn’t match. So, she’d prepared some sketches with one set of colors, and prepared some more as a backup plan.
The assistant walked back over and held out the credit card as if it had the plague. “I’m sorry. Your credit line doesn’t seem to be approved. Do you have another card you can use?”
Phoebe felt her cheeks flush. She did have another credit card. Unfortunately it was maxed out with her mother’s medical expenses, and the amount of money she’d likely spend in here today could never be covered by the small amount of money in her current account.
