'This better be good,' I mumbled, taking a step towards him.
'It is,' he said, and smiled as I drew up alongside him.
He took me around the block to where his car was parked. Oh. My. God. Of course, he would have to be one of those guys who spent all their money on a car. It was a mean looking black Lamborghini with red leather seats. The car doors lifted up.
'They say men who buy these kinds of cars are compensating for a lack of size or performance elsewhere,' I said airily.
'Have you ever noticed how haters are never as successful, as clever, or as good looking as the people they're hating?' he asked, and slipped into the car.
I got in, the wings came down, and he turned the ignition on.
'Where're we going?' I shouted over the fantastic roar.
'Buckinghamshire,' he said shortly.
For crying out loud! 'Why are we going there?'
'Let's just call it a surprise,' he said casually and switched on the stereo. He pressed a few buttons and Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire came on. 'It's a long ride. Lie back and enjoy the music.'
I crossed my arms huffily. Fine by me. If he imagined he was insulting me by playing country music, he could think again. I loved country music and I was proud of where I came from. Besides it would mean he would quit his belly achin'.
We drove without exchanging a single word for almost an hour. Eventually he turned off the motorway and drove down a dual carriageway for another ten minutes before we got on to quieter country lanes.
A brown road sign indicated that Chiltern House was nearby. I had heard of it. It was meant to be very beautiful. I saw a picture of it in a magazine once at the dentist's office.
To my surprise he turned into the road that lead to Chiltern House.
'Are we going to Chiltern House?'
'Yup.'
I turned in my seat to face him curiously. 'Why are we going there?'
He glanced at me briefly before turning his eyes back to the road because we had reached a gated entry manned by a man in a uniform.
The man smiled and respectfully called, 'Morning m'Lord.'
Then the gates swung open.
CHAPTER 17
Tawny Maxwell
He nodded and we drove through with my brain racing in overdrive. The road climbed a hill. On either side was beautiful rolling countryside. My gaze was drawn to a herd of deer resting under a massive, old oak tree. The car came to a halt at the crest of the hill and from our vantage point, Foxgrove Hall sprawled out in the stately grandeur of a time past. I took a deep breath. Well, knock me down and steal my teeth!
'All this belongs to you, doesn't it?' I breathed.
His response was a shrug.
Well, shut my mouth. There I was thinking he wanted me for my money and the man had enough to burn a wet mule. No wonder he was drinking a bottle of champagne worth thousands of pounds for no good reason. Now I understood why Robert had entrusted my entire inheritance to him.
I felt a great sense of relief: he didn't want to marry me for my money. He genuinely wanted to help me. I gazed in wonder at the splendid building. I had never seen anything so grand in my life. It was at least five times larger than Barrington Manor.
'How big is this place?'
'It's set on seven hundred and fifty acres.'
I whistled.
'You're wishing you hadn't insisted on that pre-nup now, aren't you?' he teased with an irrepressible grin.
'No,' I said slowly, 'but I am very embarrassed. Turns out you're waaaaay richer than me. Why didn't you correct me?'
'I'm correcting you now,' he murmured.
'You live in London. So who lives here?'
He started the car. 'Me sometimes.'
'Jeez! What a waste!'
'I guess I'll use it more when I have a wife and kids.'
I felt a strange hollow feeling in my stomach. I knew he was not referring to our pretend marriage. One day, after he divorced me, he would fall in love and marry someone for real.
'My mother lives here for certain parts of the year,' he said.
I filled my lungs with air. 'Is she here now?'
'No, you'll never catch her in England in the winter.'
As we drove closer to the house I saw just how tall and imposing the thick front columns were.
'So you inherited all this, huh?'
'The house has been in the family since the eighteenth century, but almost the entire west wing and its contents were destroyed in a fire in 1995. There was no money to rebuild it so it remained that way until I inherited it. I was seventeen when it became mine and I remember coming here that first time and not only the west wing was a burnt shell, but the whole place was in a terrible state of disrepair.'
He shook his head with the memory.
'I was advised to turn it into a trust building, but I refused. It took me ten years to return it to its former glory. You are looking at the only classical Greek revival stately home in all of Buckinghamshire,' he said with quiet pride.
'If your father couldn't afford to rebuild it, where did you get the money from?' I asked curiously.
'Well, I took a big risk. I knew there were billions to be made in the emerging property market in China, so I mortgaged everything I had and invested every penny I had. I could have lost everything.'
'But you didn't.'
'No, I didn't. You know all those images of ghost cities that are on the net?'
'Yeah?'
'I helped build some of them.'
I frowned. 'How did you make money building those? Aren't they supposed to be failures? Years later and nobody is living in them.'
He smiled and shook his head slowly. 'No. They are the opposite of ghost cities. A ghost town is one that is abandoned when the town's fortunes decline and the people move away. These are the opposite. The people have not come in to occupy them yet. The Chinese are long-term planners. They can defer pleasure for years in the pursuit of a cherished goal.'
'So you must be a real catch. What are you, like Britain's most eligible millionaire or something?' I clapped my hands over my mouth.
'Billionaire,' he corrected.
'Sometimes you need a billion dollars,' I quipped.
'That's truer than you realize,' he said. 'There's almost nothing to beat the feeling of being so completely and utterly financially solvent.'
I looked at him and for the first time I felt as if I was seeing the real him. I felt a sense of peace spring up between us and I felt connected to him. We didn't have much in common but we had this. We didn't try to pretend that money was not important. We both knew it was. Without it this world was a cruel place indeed.
I knew what it was to have nothing, not even a roof over my head, and it was the scariest, most horrible feeling in the world. I will never be able to scratch from my mind the sensation that felt as if my stomach was slowly digesting itself, and how that hunger robbed my spirit. I don't care what anybody says: hunger butchers love.
When Robert took me under his wing and said, 'From now on until the day you die you'll be able to afford anything you want,' I cried with relief.
I looked into Ivan's crazy-assed, silver eyes and that nameless thing between us started crackling again. If I had carried on looking at him the atmosphere in the car would have changed. The peace would have dissipated. Electricity and an aching longing would have taken over and I would be under his spell again, boneless, unable to do anything but what his body demanded of mine. I didn't want that. Not now when I just found a real connection to him.
'Oh my God!' I cried in a mock-horrified voice. 'The tabloids will have a field day. I can just see the headlines now.' I zipped my hand in the air to punctuate every word that followed. 'Greedy American Widow Steals Britain's Most Eligible Billionaire.'
'No, they'll say, "Lucky bastard marries breathlessly beautiful, leggy blonde."
I swallowed. If only it could always be like this between us. 'No they won't,' I croaked. 'They'll hate me. I don't have the right accent.'
He opened his mouth to speak but I interrupted him.
'But don't you worry about nothin'. I'll be darling at being a billionaire's bride.'
He threw his head back and laughed, the first real laugh since I knew him, and that made me smile. Sometimes, I decided, I really liked Ivan de Greystoke.
Ivan parked the car on the vast gravel car park and we got out. A white delivery van drove in after us and drove around the back. We were walking towards the imposing frontage when a man in a cream sweater and white slacks ran out, his face wreathed in a large smile. He might have been gay. He flapped his hands expressively.
'Good morning, my Lord. How wonderful to see you again. Will your Lordship be staying? Should I get your room ready?'
'No, I'm not staying, Lee. Just wanted to give my fiancée a tour.'
Lee's eyebrows shot into his hairline.
'Why, my Lord, I had no idea. Congratulations are in order.' He turned his face towards me, his expressive brown eyes zig-zagging down my body and lingering one second longer on my cowboy boots. Yes, definitely gay. 'Welcome to Foxgrove Hall, Mrs. Maxwell.'
I raised my eyebrows, surprised that he knew who I was, but I guess I was talk of the town.
'Thank you, Lee,' I said politely.
He smiled and turned towards Ivan. 'Well, I can serve brunch or lunch if you prefer anytime you feel like it.'