Olivia Gates - One Night In…

She stamped her foot and followed him up the path. ‘I wouldn’t stoop to celebrity name-dropping,’ she said scornfully. ‘I couldn’t care less who this house belongs to, it doesn’t alter the fact that what you’re planning to do at Château Belle-Eden is wrong!’

Smiling to himself, Angelo resisted the temptation to turn round and look at her.

Perhaps it wasn’t fair to tease her, but he couldn’t help it. She was so quick to rise to the bait and so funny when she was angry. And she was such a bloody cliché, with her tired old environmental platitudes.

He frowned.

A cliché, but a mystery too. He still wasn’t entirely sure who she was. His PA in London was right now trying to find information on Anna Field, but when he’d spoken to her just before setting out had come up with nothing. It was possible that she was a runaway, of no fixed address, which would explain why she had fallen in with those appalling campaigners. They probably had some sort of group squat.

The thought horrified him.

Reaching the front door of the villa, he stopped and waited for her. She was a little way behind him and he watched her trail slowly up the path, between the artfully planted ‘wildflower’ borders which his celebrity client had commissioned at a cost of thousands from Italy’s top garden designer. The shadows played across her glistening amber-coloured skin, the sunlight glinting off the diamond in her navel. A bumblebee, heavy and clumsy with pollen, blundered through the flowers and came to land on her arm. She stopped, her tongue darting out between moist pink lips as, with an expression of rapt concentration, she carefully scooped it into her hand and placed it on a leaf. It was the first time he’d seen her give in to the softness he sensed beneath that rebellious veneer, and he felt an unexpected twist in his gut.

Anna looked up at the building in front of her. It was solid and square, a cloistered walkway running the length of the ground floor and providing a sheltered position for olive and citrus trees in huge terracotta pots. The golden stone was mellow with age, and the overall impression was of timeless peace and spirituality.

The front door was open, Angelo having gone in ahead of her. She walked into the centre of the hallway and turned slowly around, taking in the acres of polished wooden floor and the galleried landing above, from which were suspended vast modern canvases depicting images that reminded Anna of photographs in her biology textbook at school.

‘It’s …’ She hesitated, gazing up at the massive twisted metal chandelier that hung above them, which on closer inspection seemed to be constructed from used car parts. The contrast of the stark interior with the gracious exterior of the building was like a slap in the face.

‘It’s utterly hideous.’

She’d intended to hurt him, she realized, but she was completely unsuccessful. He smiled and, with his hands in his pockets, walked casually across the hallway. ‘I’m inclined to agree. However, that’s not the point.’

‘Not the point? How can you say that? This was a convent—an ancient place of worship and contemplation and devoutness—and you’ve made it look like some soulless New York loft apartment. It’s totally disgusting!’

He’d reached one of the doorways that opened off the hall and paused, leaning nonchalantly against it. ‘There you go again.’

‘What?’

‘Making assumptions.’ His voice was very quiet. ‘Firstly, I didn’t make it look like anything. My brief stopped with the building itself. The interior was entirely the work of the client and her team of lifestyle gurus, interior designers, feng shui experts and spiritual analysts. Secondly, you’re assuming I don’t agree with you. And, thirdly, don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that convents are all places of devoutness.’

There was a savagery in his tone that made her look at him sharply. But his face gave nothing away. ‘I thought you’d be thrilled that the floor is reclaimed hardwood, that all the artwork was commissioned from a local women’s co-operative and shows magnified images of the plant-life on the estate, and the chandelier was made out of recycled industrial parts.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Come up and I’ll show you the rest.’

He was almost at the top of the stairs now and she had to choose between following him or remaining alone in the hallway. Mutinously she stared up at him, her arms crossed.

‘No, thanks. I think I’ve seen enough.’

‘Suit yourself. But, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a couple of things to attend to. I may be a while, so make yourself comfortable.’

‘I think that’s pretty unlikely in this—’ she said contemptuously, but was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile phone.

He answered impassively, striding away from her along the corridor, out of earshot. Left alone, Anna shivered, hugging her arms around her all too exposed flesh.

She was just about to leave the house and wait for him outside when, with a flash of defiant insight, she realised that by doing so she would be playing right into his hands. The call was obviously one he didn’t want her to overhear, and was maybe information about the château or something to do with Grafton-Tarrant.

She was wasting a golden opportunity with her immaturity and her pathetic inability to rise above his physical attributes. It was stupid and embarrassing. He was beautiful, but he was also the person who was about to rob her of the only place that tied her to a happier past.

Swiftly she made for the stairs and took them two at a time. Up on the galleried landing she paused, listening intently, but there was no sound. The silence played on her senses, making her both nervous and full of anticipation as she strained to hear the deep rumble of his voice.

All she could hear was her own heartbeat.

Fast.

Excited.

Rows of closed doors stretched away from her. Tentatively approaching one, she pressed her ear to the wood—reclaimed, no doubt—not that she could have cared less—and listened.

Nothing.

She slid along to the next door and listened again.

Silence.

In frustration she opened the door and looked inside. It was a bedroom, dominated by the biggest bed she’d ever seen. Sulkily she wandered in, her bare feet practically disappearing into the thick white carpet. It was decorated in the same aggressively modernist style, the huge canvases on the walls depicting unintelligible blobs and shapes which looked vaguely erotic. Anna stopped in front of one that seemed to show the curve of a woman’s breast against the sweep of a male buttock.

Or was she imagining that?

She tried to imagine it hanging in the château, and felt a shiver of distaste ripple down her spine.

Of course it was distaste.

She tore her gaze away abruptly and pushed open the door into an en suite bathroom. Or shower room, she mentally amended, looking round the spartan cell derisively. There was nothing so luxurious and water-wasteful as a bath tub in there. In fact, maybe it wasn’t finished, she thought, taking a step forward. The room was lined in tiny glowing green glass tiles like the scales on a mermaid’s tail, but apart from that it was empty.

Suddenly jets of water exploded on to her bare skin from all sides, soaking her. She screamed and tried to dart out of the way, but the whole room was filled with tiny water outlets and she had moved directly into the firing line for freezing cold jets.

She screamed again. Louder.

Just as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had begun, the water stopped. Dripping, shivering, incoherent with shock and fury, she pushed back her streaming hair from her face and looked up to find Angelo lounging in the doorway.