Uncovering the Silveri Secret Read Free

like to press against him now that she was no longer that gauche, inexperienced, slightly inebriated teenager?
    ‘Say please,’ he said.
    She gritted her teeth. ‘Please.’
    He released her and she rubbed at her wrist, shooting him a livid glare. ‘You’ve made me all dirty, you bastard,’ she said.
    ‘It’s good clean dirt,’ he said. ‘The kind that washes off.’
    Bella looked at the cuff of her shirt below the sleeve of her jacket that now had a full set of his dusty fingerprints on it. She could still feel the pressure of his fingers as if he had indelibly branded her flesh. ‘This shirt cost me five-hundred pounds,’ she said. ‘And now you’ve completely ruined it.’
    ‘You’re a fool, paying that for a shirt,’ he said. ‘The colour doesn’t even suit you.’
    She stiffened her shoulders in outrage. ‘Since when did you become a personal stylist?’ she jeered. ‘You don’t know the first thing about fashion.’
    ‘I know what suits a woman and what doesn’t.’
    She scoffed. ‘I bet you do,’ she said. ‘The less clothes the better, right?’
    His eyes glinted as they did a lazy sweep of her form. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’
    Bella felt her skin tingle all over as if he had physically removed her clothes, button by button, zip by zip, piece by piece. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining how his work-roughened hands would feel on the softer smooth skin of her body. Would they catch and snare like a thorn on silk? Would they scratch or would they caress? Would they...?
    She pulled back from her wayward thoughts with a hard mental slap. ‘I’m going inside to say hello to Mrs Baker,’ she said and swished past him to go to the front door.
    ‘Mrs Baker is away on leave.’
    Bella stopped as if she had suddenly come up against an invisible wall. She turned around to look at him with a quizzical frown. ‘So who’s doing the cooking and cleaning?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m taking care of it.’
    Her frown deepened. ‘You?’
    ‘You have a problem with that?’ he asked.
    Bella blew out a little breath. She had a very big problem with it. Without Mrs Baker bustling about the place, she would be alone in the house with Edoardo. She hadn’t planned on being alone with him. It was a very big house, but still...
    In the past he had lived in the gamekeeper’s cottage. But, since her father had left him Haverton Manor, he had the perfect right to live inside the house. He managed her father’s investments and operated his own property-development business out of the study next to the library. Apart from the occasional business trip abroad, he lived and worked here.
    He slept here.
    In her house.
    ‘I hope you don’t expect me to take over the kitchen,’ Bella said, shooting him another glare. ‘I came to have a break.’
    ‘Your whole life is one long holiday,’ he said with a sneer that boiled her blood. ‘You wouldn’t know how to do a decent day’s work if you tried.’
    Bella gave her head a little toss. She wasn’t going to tell him about her plans to help Julian fund his mission work with a good chunk of her inheritance. Edoardo could jolly well go on thinking she was a flaky airhead just like everybody else. ‘Why would I need to work?’ she asked. ‘I have millions of pounds waiting for me to collect when I’m twenty-five.’
    The muscle near his tightly set mouth started hammering again and his eyes turned to blue-green granite. ‘Do you ever spare a thought for how hard your father had to work to make his money?’ he asked. ‘Or do you just spend it as fast as it’s dropped in your account?’
    Bella gave him another defiant look. ‘It’s my money to spend how I damn well like,’ she said. ‘You’re just jealous because you came from nothing. You got lucky with my father. If it hadn’t been for him, you’d be pacing a prison cell somewhere, not playing lord of the manor.’
    His eyes glittered with sparks of acrimony. ‘You’re just