‘I expect Phillip would find another buyer.’
‘Really? Has he had much interest so far?’
‘I don’t know.’ Laura stared down at him with her arms protectively folded across her chest. He could see that she was braced for another attack and he resisted the urge to oblige. He would have her, but to have her he would have to gain her trust. She was right. He was not behaving like a civilised adult. Having prided himself over the years on his ability to remain aloof, to detach himself to a position from which he could dispassionately control his surroundings, he was now acting like an adolescent suffering from a severe bout of pique. He drained the remainder of his tea and stood up. ‘Shall we look around the rest of the house now?’ It was impossible not to be aware of him as they walked up the winding staircase that led to the lust floor. Instead of following her, which would have been bad enough, he walked alongside her and the flanks of his muscular thighs were only inches away from brushing against hers.
Had he simply been a good-looking man, Laura was sure that she would have been immune to his predatorial charm. But she had once known and touched every inch of that powerful body, and the memory of it waged a silent and savage war inside her against the reality of the situation. He had come back into her life a hostile and aggressive stranger and she could not afford to allow nostalgia for the past destroy her sense of perspective.
Although the land around the house was extensive, Oakridge House itself was relatively small. Five bedrooms, all with individual fireplaces, two bathrooms and a nest of smaller rooms on the ground floor, the largest of which was the formal drawing room, which had not now been used for years.
Laura started with the guest rooms and she maintained a nervous silence as he slowly inspected each one in turn
Then the bedroom that had once been shared by her parents.
‘This house must have seemed very big when your mother died,’ Gabriel commented, gazing around him at the floral curtains and matching bedspread, and the dressing table, which, though cleared of everything, still looked as though it were waiting for someone to sit at the stool and peer into the angled mirror. ‘Did it not occur to your father that he should sell the place and retire on the generous profit he would have made? Instead of remaining here and squandering the lot?’
‘I suggested it to him.’ Laura remained by the door, rigid with tension. ‘But he said that he couldn’t bear to leave the memories behind.’
‘Ah. So he did the next best thing by running the place into the ground.’ He walked towards her, noticing the way she shrank away from him and it took a superhuman effort not to allow his surge of rage at that to cross his face. ‘And how do you feel about living here now?’ he quizzed as he walked towards her bedroom.
‘I have no choice, as it happens.’ Laura watched as he pushed open the door to her bedroom and stepped inside. This felt like the deepest invasion of her privacy, but even so she felt a betraying wave of emotion rush through her at the sight of him looking around him, looking at the bed she still slept on. ‘I ...no one is really interested in buying the house with all the stabling...’ she found herself chattering on witlessly, just to stop her eyes from flicking towards the bed and imagining him lying there, naked, with her next to him. ‘It ...Phillip says that it’s too isolated to appeal to families, who like ...like being surrounded by other houses ...the whole package seems to put them off...’ Her voice trailed off as he walked towards her, impossibly sexy, his eyes fixed on her softly parted mouth.
Her eyes slid sideways, avoiding him, and she licked her lips nervously.#p#分页标题#e#
‘So why not just cut up whatever land you have left and sell it to a building company? I am sure someone, somewhere, would love to erect thousands of little starter houses here.’ He was now within touching distance of her and he could sense the tension oozing out of her. Was it sexual tension? he wondered. He leaned against the doorframe, Ho that he was now impossibly close to her.
‘It’s ...it’s green-belt land ...and besides, Dad expressed the wish in his will that the place be sold lock, stock and barrel as riding stables.’
‘How considerate of him, lumbering his only offspring with the burden of trying to find the buyer in a million. You seem a little edgy. Am I making you nervous?’ It would have given him a kick of satisfaction to know that he was the reason for her shallow breathing and fluttering eyelids, but, frustratingly, he realised that he was no longer the young man he once was, sure of her responses to him. For all he knew, she could be itching to escape his presence for completely different reasons. Trapped by the man she had once rejected and loathing the sight of him because he held her future in his hands. His lips thinned to a forbidding line.