The Bad Boy Wants Me(100)

I took a sip of my drink. ‘Good day at the office?’ I asked.

His eyebrows arched in surprise. He seemed to hesitate. ‘I didn’t go in today.’

I suddenly thought of Chloe. About how ‘restless’ she had been last night. ‘Ah, the pleasures of being one’s own boss,’ I said. It had been my intention to sound light and sophisticated, but it sounded like sarcasm.

The silence stretched and I glanced at my hands. I could feel his gaze on me and, as much as I did not want to admit it, I was starting to get really nervous. I felt as if he was studying me, looking right into me. Interminable seconds passed. Finally, I looked up, my eyes defiant.

‘What did you do today?’ he asked.

I didn’t miss the commanding tone in his voice. This was a man used to giving an order and having it obeyed. I looked into my drink. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t do much today,’ I murmured.

In fact, I had spent my morning in Robert’s room. It had brought me to tears because I walked in there expecting it to look like it always did and I found that the housekeeper had ordered the servants to strip the bed and remove the mattress. It had been taken away to be aired, but seeing the bed in that way shocked me and made his death real in a way that seeing him still and wasted inside the coffin had not.

I looked up and found him gazing at me expressionlessly. ‘You must get so bored here.’

I met his look levelly. ‘No.’

He seemed genuinely surprised and I felt a thrill of joy that I had caught him off guard. ‘So you will carry on living here?’

‘For the foreseeable future.’

He frowned. ‘You don’t plan on moving to London?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? You are a very rich woman now and London is very exciting when you are rich, beautiful and young.’

I felt myself blush. He thought I was beautiful. ‘I will go to London when necessary, but I won’t be moving there.’

‘Do you go up to London often?’

‘Well, I haven’t used the London flat in nearly six months. I didn’t like leaving Robert here on his own so I used to make sure that I finished whatever business I had and returned in time for dinner.’

James came in with a tray. Ivan thanked him and took his drink.

He raised it slightly. ‘To you,’ he said softly.

I looked at him warily.

‘Well, what will you do now that Robert’s gone?’

‘I’ll do what he wanted me to do.’

He stared at me with blankly. ‘What was that?’

‘For the last three years Robert bought islands with the intention of turning them into turtle sanctuaries.’

Ivan looked at me from narrowed, openly skeptical eyes. ‘Robert was setting up turtle sanctuaries?’

I nodded. ‘You seem very surprised.’

‘I am,’ he admitted. He leaned forward and the light from the candles seemed to flicker and shimmer in his extraordinary eyes. His eyes became alive and … hauntingly beautiful. I blinked at the amazing transformation. With the shadows thrown under his cheeks he was … suddenly … wickedly hot! So hot that a strange urge from somewhere unknown dared me to reach forward and lick those curving, sensuous lips. I stared at him, my mind burning with the thought. He leaned back abruptly. ‘What?’ he asked looking at me suspiciously.

‘I shook my head. ‘Nothing. Er … you were saying,’ I croaked.

He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. ‘I was saying Robert was like a father to me for ten years, but in all the time I knew him he never once showed himself to have an altruistic bone in his body.’

‘He didn’t want anyone to know.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. It was like his redemption or something. If he had told everyone about it, it might have morphed into something else.’

A thought occurred to him. ‘Did you ask him to?’

‘No, he once went to Asia and someone took him to watch turtles laying eggs. He saw a giant leatherback turtle heave itself up the beach well past the high tide mark, dig an eighteen-inch hole in the sand, lay about a hundred eggs in it and cover it. To his horror, he then saw the locals not only torment the exhausted creature by shining torchlights at it, kicking sand into its face, picking up its flippers and riding it, they also immediately dug up its nest and stole every single egg from it. He said it hurt him to see her cry. At that time, he didn’t know then that her tears were actually a jelly-like mucous that she excreted to keep the sand out of her eyes, so he was much moved by her plight.’

He shook his head in wonder. ‘Fancy that. The old boy was moved by a big reptile.’