Rumours: The Ruthless Ravensdales

Her mouth took on a mutinous pout. ‘Why? So you can train me like a pet monkey?’ She put her hands on her hips, deepened her voice and did a surprisingly credible imitation of his British accent. ‘Don’t hold your knife like a dagger. That’s the wrong fork. Don’t cut your bread. Break it. No, don’t call it a serviette, call it a napkin.’

Julius couldn’t stop his mouth from twitching. She had definitely missed her calling. She could tread the boards as well as anyone. ‘I promise not to criticise you.’

She narrowed her gaze in scepticism. ‘Promise?’

He didn’t know which Holly he preferred—the snarky challenger or the hot little seductress. Both, he realised with a jolt of surprise, were vastly entertaining. ‘Promise.’

She made a little huffing noise. ‘Fine.’

He seated her then came around to his own chair and took his place. He spread his napkin out across his lap and watched as Holly expertly served the vegetable dish with silver-service expertise. Then she served the herbed chicken galantine with the same level of competence. She sent him a look from beneath half-mast lashes that made him realise how much he had underestimated her. How much he had misjudged her. She might come across as a bad girl from the wrong side of the tracks but underneath that don’t-mess-with-me attitude was a young woman with surprising dignity and class. And pride.

During the course of their meal he made desultory conversation: stuff about the weather, movies and the state of the economy but she didn’t seem inclined to talk. The questions he asked her were greeted with monosyllabic responses. He tried using open-ended questions but she just shrugged in a bored manner and mumbled something noncommittal in reply. She didn’t eat much, either. She just moved the food around her plate, only taking the occasional mouthful. Was she doing it to punish him? To make him regret his all-too-quick summation of her character and seeming lack of abilities? She was more than capable of holding her own in sophisticated company. Why had she let him believe otherwise? Or was she just contrary for the heck of it? Thumbing her nose up at anyone who judged her without getting to know her?

‘Are you not feeling well?’ Julius asked.

‘I’m fine.’

He studied her for a beat or two. ‘You’re sweating.’

She gave him a haughty look. ‘Ladies don’t sweat. They perspire.’

He felt another smile tug at his mouth at the way she so expertly parodied his accent. ‘Take off your cardigan if you’re hot.’

Her eyes skittered away from his. ‘I’m not hot.’

He watched as she made another attempt at her meal but every now and again she would shift in her seat or wriggle her neck and shoulders as if her clothing was making her itchy.

‘Holly.’

‘What?’

‘Take it off. You’re clearly uncomfortable.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Would you like me to adjust the air-conditioning?’

‘I told you, I’m fine.’

He shook his head at her in disbelief. ‘This afternoon you were parading around half-naked and now you’re acting like a nun. What is it with you? Take it off, for God’s sake, or I’ll take it off for you.’

Her eyes were narrowed as thin as twin hairpins. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Wouldn’t I?’

She shot up from the table and spun around to leave but Julius was too quick and intercepted her. He caught her by the back of her cardigan but when she pulled away from him it peeled off her like sloughed skin.

His heart came to a scudding stop when he saw what was on her upper arms before her hands tried to cover it. The cardigan he was holding slipped out of his hand and fell to the floor. His mouth went completely dry. His stomach dropped as if it had been booted from the top of a skyscraper.

‘Did I do that?’ His voice came out rusty, shocked. He was ashamed. Mortified.

‘It’s nothing. I can’t even feel it.’

His stomach churned in disgust. ‘I hurt you.’

‘I bruise easily, that’s all.’

Julius scraped a distracted hand through his hair. Dragged the same hand over his face. How could he have done this? How could he have been so...so brutish to mark her flesh? For what? To prove a point? What point was worth proving if a woman was hurt in the process? It was against everything he believed in. It was against everything that defined him as a man—as a civilised human being. Real men did not use violence. It was the lowest of the low to inflict physical hurt on another person, particularly a woman or a child. How could he have lost control of his emotions to such a point that he would do something like that? He had grabbed her on impulse. He had been so het up about her goading behaviour it had overridden all that was decent and respectful in him.

‘Don’t make excuses for me,’ he said. ‘I’m appalled I did that to you. I can only say I’m deeply, unreservedly sorry and assure you it will never, ever happen again.’

‘Apology accepted.’ Her chin came up again, her gaze as hard and brittle as shellac. ‘Now, may I get on with serving the rest of the meal?’

Julius had never felt less like eating. His stomach was a roiling pit of anguish. Shame and self-loathing were curdling the contents like acid. He’d thought his father’s scandal was bad. This was even worse. He was worse. His behaviour was reprehensible. He had hurt Holly like a thug. ‘I think I’ll give dessert a miss. Thanks all the same.’

‘Fine.’ She made a move towards the table. ‘I’ll just clear these plates.’

‘No. Let me,’ he said, but stopped short of putting a hand on her arm to stop her. He curled his fingers into his palms. Put his hands stiffly by his sides. ‘You see to Sophia. I’ll clear away.’

Her eyebrows rose ever so slightly as if she found the thought of him doing anything remotely domestic in nature totally incongruous to her opinion of his personality and station. ‘As you wish.’

Julius bent down, picked up her cardigan from the floor and handed it to her. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So you said.’

‘Do you believe me?’ It was so terribly important she believed him. He could think of nothing more important. He couldn’t bear it if she didn’t believe him—if she didn’t trust him. If she didn’t feel safe with him. Sure, they could flirt and banter with each other, try to outwit each other with smart come-backs, but there was no way he could bear it if she didn’t feel physically safe under his roof—under his protection.

She held his gaze for a long beat, searching his features as if peeling back the skin to the heart of the man he was inside.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I do. You don’t strike me as the sort of man to take his frustration out on a woman.’

‘You have experience of those who do?’

Her eyes fell away from his to focus on his top shirt button. ‘None I care to recall in any detail.’

Julius wanted to push her chin up so she had to meet his gaze but he was wary of touching her. He longed to touch her. To hold her. To reassure her. To remove the stain of his careless fingerprints with a caress as soft as a feather. To press his mouth to her and kiss away those horrible marks; to make her feel secure and safe under his protection.

But instead he stood silently, woodenly, feeling strangely, achingly hollow as she turned and walked out of the room.

* * *

Holly had finished seeing to Sophia and tidying up the kitchen. Not that she’d had to do much, as Julius had loaded the dishwasher and washed up by hand the baking dish she’d cooked the chicken in. It surprised her he knew how to do such mundane stuff. He was from such a wealthy, privileged background. He’d had servants waiting on him all of his life. He wouldn’t have had to lift a finger before some servant would have come running and seen to his needs and that of his siblings. And yet he had left the kitchen and the dining room absolutely spotless. The uneaten food was packaged away with cling film in the fridge. The benches had been wiped. The lights were turned down. The blinds were drawn.

Holly was too restless to go to bed. She thought about going for another swim but didn’t want to encounter Julius. Well, that was only partly true. She could face him when he was stern and headmaster-ish but, when he got all caring and concerned and...protective, it did strange things to her insides. She had never had anyone to protect her. Not since her father had died. No one had ever stood up for her. Everyone was so quick to judge her. They never waited to get to know her, to try and understand the dynamics of her personality and what had formed it. Tragedy, abuse, maltreatment and neglect did not a happy person make. She knew she should try harder to be nicer to people. She knew she should learn to trust people because not everyone was an exploitative creep.

The news of his father’s love child was clearly a terrible shock to Julius. Finding out he had a half-sister would have rocked him to the core. He hadn’t wanted to discuss it, which she could understand, given his personality. He didn’t like surprises. He liked time to think things over. She suspected he would eventually come round to wanting to meet his half-sister. He was too principled simply to pretend she didn’t exist.

But the news of the existence of a love child certainly did raise the chance of the press hounding him. He was obviously worried Holly would exploit the situation—dish the dirt on him or make things look salacious between him and her. She might like to rattle his chain for a bit of fun but there was no way she would take her games into the public sphere. She didn’t want her stepfather to know where she was. If she drew attention to herself by speaking to the press, who knew what would happen.

Holly wandered along the corridor past the library on her way to her room. The door was slightly ajar and the room was in darkness except for the moonlight shining through the waist-high window. One of the windows must have been mistakenly left open for she could see one of the sheer curtains fluttering on the light breeze coming from outside. She considered leaving it but then remembered Sophia was tucked up in bed upstairs. It would be a shame if it rained overnight and some of those precious books nearest the window were damaged.

Holly moved over to the window without bothering to turn on the light, as the moonlight was like a silver beam across the floor. She closed the window and straightened the breeze-ruffled curtain. She stood there for a long moment looking out at the moonlit gardens and fields beyond. It was such a beautiful property. So peaceful and isolated. There wasn’t a neighbour for miles. No wonder Julius loved working and living here. She had spent most of her life in cramped flats in multi-storey buildings with the roar of traffic below and the sound of neighbours packed in on every side. But here it was so serene and peaceful she could hear frogs croaking and owls hooting. It was like listening to a night orchestra. The moonlight cast everything in an opalescent glow that gave the gardens a magical, storybook quality.

It was only when Holly turned around to leave that she saw the silent, seated figure behind the large mahogany leather-topped desk. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, somehow managing to smother her startled gasp. ‘I didn’t see you there. The light wasn’t on so I thought someone must’ve left the window open. It looks like we could get a storm so I thought I’d better shut it since Sophia’s gone to bed.’ Shut up. You’re gabbling.

Julius’s leather chair creaked in protest as he rose from behind the desk. ‘I’m sorry for giving you a fright.’

‘You didn’t,’ Holly said then, seeing the wry lift of one of his eyebrows added, ‘well, maybe a little. Why didn’t you say something? Why are you sitting here in the dark?’

‘I was thinking.’

‘About your family...um...situation?’

‘I was thinking about you, actually.’

Her heart gave a stumble. ‘Me?’ His eyes went to her arms. ‘Oh. Well, you said sorry, so it’s all good.’

His frowning gaze meshed with hers. ‘How can you be so casual about something so serious? I hurt you, Holly. I physically hurt you.’

‘You didn’t mean to,’ Holly said. ‘Anyway, it was probably my fault for stirring you up.’

‘That’s no excuse,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t matter how much provocation a man receives. No man should ever use physical force. I can never forgive myself for that. I’m disgusted with myself. Truly disgusted.’

Holly rolled her lips together for a moment. ‘I’ve not been the easiest house guest.’

A host of emotions flickered over his face. Emotions she suspected he wasn’t used to feeling. It was there in the dark blue of his eyes. It was in the thinned-out line of his sculptured mouth. ‘You don’t have to be anything but yourself,’ he said in a husky tone. ‘You’re fine just the way you are.’

No one had ever accepted her for who she was. Why would they? She wasn’t the sort of person people found acceptable. If it wasn’t her background, then it was her behaviour. She rubbed people up the wrong way. How could he say she was fine the way she was? She wasn’t fine with the way she was.

‘So, how are things with your family?’ Holly said to fill the heavy silence.

He turned away as he pushed a hand through his hair. ‘I haven’t been able to contact my sister. The legitimate one, I mean.’

‘You’re worried about her?’

‘A little.’

Holly couldn’t help feeling a little envious of Miranda Ravensdale. How wonderful to have a big brother to watch out for you. Two, in fact. Not that she knew if Julius’s twin brother, Jake, had the same protective qualities as Julius. She got the impression Jake was a bit of a lad about town.

‘Maybe her phone is flat, or she’s turned it off or something,’ she said.

‘Maybe.’

Another silence ticked past.

‘Oh, well, then,’ Holly said, making a step towards the door. ‘I’d better let you get on with it.’

‘Holly.’

She turned and looked at him. ‘Would you like me to get you a coffee? A night cap or something? Since Sophia’s off-duty you’ll have to put up with me doing the housekeeper stuff.’

His dark eyes moved over her face, centred on her mouth and then came back to her gaze. ‘Only if you’ll have one with me.’

Holly chewed the inside of her mouth. She didn’t trust herself around him. He was dangerous in this gentle and reflective mood. Keeping her game face on was easy when he was being sarcastic and cynical towards her. But this was different. ‘It’s a bit late at night for me to drink coffee, and since I don’t drink alcohol I’d be pretty boring company...’

His mouth twisted ruefully. ‘I suppose I deserve that brush off, don’t I?’

‘I’m not brushing you off. If I were brushing you off then you’d know about it, let me tell you,’ she said. ‘I’m not the sort of person to hand out a parachute for anyone’s ego.’

He gave a soft laugh, the low, deep sound doing something odd and ticklish to the base of Holly’s spine. ‘That I can believe.’

There was another beat of silence.

‘What would you do if you found out you had a half-sibling?’ he asked.

Holly shifted her lips from side to side as she thought about it. ‘I would definitely want to meet him or her. I’ve always wanted a sister or brother. It would’ve come in handy to have someone to stick up for me.’

He studied her for a long moment. The low light didn’t take anything away from his handsome features. If anything, it highlighted them. The aristocratic landscape of his face reminded her of a hero out of a nineteenth-century novel. Dark and brooding; aloof and unknowable.

‘Things were pretty tough for you as a kid, weren’t they?’

Holly moved her gaze out of reach of his. ‘I don’t like talking about it.’

‘Talking sometimes helps people to understand you a little better.’

‘Yeah, well, if people don’t like me at “hello” then how is telling them all about my messed-up childhood going to change their opinion?’

‘Perhaps if you worked on your first impressions you might win a few friends on your side.’

Holly thought of how she’d stomped into his office that morning—had it really only been a day?—with her verbal artillery blazing. She’d put him on the back foot at the outset. But she’d been angry and churned up over everything. Her forthrightness had been automatic. She liked to get in first before people took advantage. ‘I could’ve come in and been polite as anything but you’d already made up your mind about me. You’d heard about my criminal behaviour. Nothing I could’ve said or done would’ve changed your opinion.’

Julius took a step that brought him close to where she was standing. Holly held her breath as he sent a fingertip down the length of her arm, from the top of her shoulder to her wrist. The nerves fluttered like moths beneath her skin. Her heart skipped a beat. Her stomach tilted. ‘Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?’ His voice was low, a deep burr of sound that made the base of her spine fizz.

‘I’m sure.’

He sent the same fingertip down the curve of her cheek, outlining her face from just behind her ear to the base of her chin. ‘I think underneath that brash exterior is a very frightened little girl.’

Holly quickly disguised a knotty swallow. ‘Keep your day job, Julius. You’d make a rubbish therapist.’

His eyes held hers for another long moment. ‘I’ll see to the rest of the windows,’ he said. ‘You go on up to bed. Sleep well.’

Like that’s going to happen, Holly thought as she turned and slipped out of the room.

* * *

Holly didn’t see Julius for over a week. He hadn’t informed her he was leaving at all. She heard it from Sophia, who told her he was working on some important software and had to attend meetings in Buenos Aires, as well as flying to Santiago in Chile. It annoyed Holly he hadn’t bothered to tell her what his schedule was. He could have done so that night in the library, especially as she’d heard him leave the very next morning. But then, she reminded herself, she was just a temporary hindrance for him. The more time away from the villa—away from her—the better. The bruises on her arms had faded but the bruise to her ego had not. Why couldn’t he have talked to her in person? Told her his plans?

The fact was, it was dead boring without him. Sophia was kind and sweet and did her best to make sure Holly had plenty to do without exploiting her. But spending hours with a middle-aged woman who reminded her too much of the mother she no longer had was not Holly’s idea of fun. The more time she spent with the gentle and kind housekeeper, the more she ached for what she had lost. Sophia had a tendency to mother her, to treat her like a surrogate daughter. Holly appreciated the gesture on one level but on another it made her feel unutterably sad.

Which was all the more reason she missed the verbal sparring she’d done with Julius. She missed his tall figure striding down the corridors with a dark frown on his handsome face. She missed the sound of his cultured accent in that mellifluous baritone that did such strange things to her spine. She missed the excitement in her body, the buzzing, thrilling sensation of female desire he triggered every time he looked at her. Her body felt flat and listless without him around to charge it up with energy.

The days dragged with an interminable slowness that made Holly’s restlessness close to unbearable. Although she enjoyed the tasks Sophia set her, as the villa was beautiful and full of exquisite works of art and priceless collector’s pieces, it just wasn’t the same without Julius there. The nights were even worse. Sophia usually went to bed early, which meant there was no one to talk to. The rest of the villa staff—the gardener and the man who looked after the horses on the property—lived in accommodation separate from the villa. There was only so much television Holly could watch and, even though she enjoyed reading, the evenings were particularly tiresome.

The one thing Julius had done for her since he’d gone away, however, was have some clothes delivered to the villa for her. They were mostly smart-casual separates, as well as a couple of dresses, including a long, slinky formal one made of navy blue silk. There were shoes and underwear the likes of which she had never seen before: cobweb-fine lace, some with fancy little bows and embroidered rosebuds or daisies. There were bathing suits as well, a one-piece black one and a fuchsia-pink bikini.

Make-up and perfume arrived in neat little packages. A hairdresser arrived at the villa and worked on Holly’s hair until she barely recognised herself in the mirror. Gone were the pink streaks and split ends. Her wild curls were toned, tamed and cut in a shoulder-length style that could be worn up or down, depending on her mood or the occasion.

But for all the finery Holly felt dissatisfied. What was the point of all these gorgeous clothes if she had no one to see her in them? She didn’t even have anywhere to go because she wasn’t allowed to leave the premises unless Julius accompanied her as her official guardian. It was part of the diversionary programme’s fine print.

Late on Sunday, well after Sophia had retired for the night, Holly turned off the show she had been only half-watching on television and made her way to her room. But on the way past Julius’s suite she stopped. She had been in a couple of days ago with Sophia to do a light clean. His suite had a balcony but the doors had been closed and Holly had kept her back to it. She had worked briskly and efficiently with the minimum of talk, desperate to stave off a panic attack if Sophia asked her to dust or sweep out there. If Sophia had sensed anything was amiss, she hadn’t said, although Holly suspected there was not much that would escape the housekeeper’s attention.

Before Holly could change her mind she turned the handle on the door of the suite and stepped inside. The balcony doors were closed and locked, the gauzy curtains pulled across the windows. Even though the room had been empty for days, Holly could still smell the lemon and lime notes of Julius’s aftershave. She turned on one of the bedside lamps rather than the top light in case Sophia saw the spill of light from her room on the top floor.

The forbidden nature of what Holly was doing made a frisson of excitement shiver over her flesh. This was where Julius slept. This was where Julius made love with his occasional lovers. The lovers Sophia stalwartly, stubbornly, refused to comment on or reveal any information about. Holly had looked on the internet on the library’s computer for any press items on him but there was virtually nothing about his private life. There was stuff about Julius’s work in astrophysics and about his software company that had come about after he had designed a special computer programme used on the space telescopes in the Atacama Desert and which had turned him into a multi-millionaire overnight.

There was plenty of stuff about his father’s love-child scandal. Every newsfeed was running with it. There was also plenty of information on Julius’s twin, Jake. Jake was the epitome of the ‘love them and leave them’ playboy: the ‘Prince of Pickups’ as one article described him. It was uncanny seeing the likeness to Julius. They were mirror images of each other. She wondered if she met them together if she would be able to tell them apart. The only slight difference she could see was in every photo Jake was smiling as if that was his default position. Julius, on the other hand, was not one to smile so readily. He was serious in demeanour and nature. He was conservative where, from what some of the photos suggested, his twin was a boundary-pusher—a born risk-taker.

Holly wandered about Julius’s suite, stopping to check out a photo of his younger sister on his dressing table. Miranda was pretty in a pixyish, girl-next-door sort of way. She was petite with porcelain-white skin and auburn hair. Nothing like her extraordinarily beautiful mother, Elisabetta Albertini, Holly duly noted. She put the photo down and stepped over to the walk-in wardrobe, hesitating for a nanosecond before she slid the door back and walked inside.