Awakening The Ravensdale Heiress

‘It’s beautiful,’ Miranda said with a sigh.

‘Yeah, well, I’m going cross-eyed with all these crystals,’ Jaz said. ‘I’ve got to get it done so I can start on Holly’s. She’s awfully nice, isn’t she?’

‘Gorgeous,’ Miranda said. ‘It’s amazing, seeing Julius so happy. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure he was ever going to fall in love. They’re total opposites and yet they’re so perfect for each other.’

Jaz looked at her with her head on one side, that teasing glint back in her gaze. ‘Is that a note of wistfulness I can hear?’

Miranda rearranged her features. ‘I’d better get going.’ She grabbed her tote bag, slung it over her shoulder and leaned in to kiss Jaz on the cheek. ‘See you when I get back.’

* * *

When Miranda landed in Nice she saw Leandro waiting for her in the terminal. He was dressed more casually this time but if anything it made him look even more heart-stoppingly attractive. The dark blue denim jeans clung to his leanly muscled legs. The rolled back sleeves of his light blue shirt highlighted his deep tan and emphasised the masculinity of the dark hair liberally sprinkled over his strong forearms. He was cleanly shaven but she could see where he had nicked himself on the left side of his jaw. For some reason, it humanised him. He was always so well put together, so in control. Was being back in his childhood home unsettling for him? Upsetting? What emotions were going on behind the dark screen of his eyes?

As he caught her eye a flutter of awareness rippled deep and low in her belly. Would he kiss her in greeting? She couldn’t remember him ever touching her. Not even by accident. Even when he’d walked her back to the gallery last week he had kept his distance. There had been no shoulder brushing. Not that she even reached his shoulders. She was five-foot-five to his six-foot-three.

Miranda smiled shyly as he came towards her. ‘Hi.’

‘Hello.’ Was it her imagination or was his voice deeper and huskier than normal? The sound of it moved over her skin as if he had reached out and stroked her. But he kept a polite distance, although she couldn’t help noticing his gaze slipped to her mouth for the briefest moment. ‘How was your flight?’ he said.

‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t have to put me in first class. I was happy to fly coach.’

He took her carry-on bag from her, somehow without touching her fingers as he did so. ‘I didn’t want anyone bothering you,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing worse than being a captive audience to someone’s life story.’

Miranda gave a light laugh. ‘True.’

She followed him out to the car park where he opened the door of the hire car for her. She couldn’t fault his manners, but then, he had always been a gentleman. She had never known him to be anything but polite and considerate. She wondered if this was difficult for him, coming back to France to his early childhood home. What memories did it stir for him? Did it make him wish he had been closer to his father? Did it stir up regrets that now it was too late?

She glanced at him as they left the car park and joined the traffic on the Promenade des Anglais that followed the brilliant blue of the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. He was frowning as usual; even his hands on the steering wheel were clenched. She could see the tanned flesh straining over his knuckles. The line of his jaw was grim. Everything about him was tense, wound up like a spring. It looked like he was in physical pain.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

He looked at her briefly, moving his lips in a grimace-like smile that didn’t reveal his teeth. ‘I’m fine.’

Miranda didn’t buy it for a second. ‘Have you got one of your headaches?’ She had seen him once at Ravensdene when he had come down with a migraine. He was always so strong and fit that to see him rendered helpless with such pain and sickness had been an awful shock. The doctor had had to be called to give him a strong painkiller injection. Jake had driven him back to London the next day, as he had still been too ill to drive himself.

‘Just a tension headache,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

‘When did you arrive?’

‘Yesterday,’ he said. ‘I had a job to finish in Stockholm.’

‘I expect it must be difficult coming back,’ Miranda said, still watching him. ‘Emotional for you, I mean. Did you ever come back after your parents divorced?’

‘No.’

She frowned. ‘Not even to visit your father?’

His hands tightened another notch on the steering wheel. ‘We didn’t have that sort of relationship.’

Miranda wondered how his father could have been so cold and distant. How could a man turn his back on his son—his only child—just because his marriage had broken up? Surely the bond of parenthood was much stronger than that? Her parents had gone through a bitter divorce before she’d been born and, while they hadn’t been around much due to their theatre commitments, as far as she could tell Julius and Jake had never doubted they were loved.

‘Your father doesn’t sound like a very nice person,’ she said. ‘Was he always a drinker? I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it. It’s just, Julius told me you didn’t like it when your father came to London to see you. He said your dad embarrassed you by getting horribly drunk.’

Leandro’s gaze was focussed on the clogging traffic ahead but she could see the way his jaw was locked down, as if tightened by a clamp. ‘He didn’t always drink that heavily.’

‘What made him start? The divorce?’

He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘It certainly didn’t help.’

Miranda wondered about the dynamics of his parents’ relationship and how each of them had handled the breakdown of their marriage. Some men found the loss of a relationship far more devastating than others. Some sank into depression, others quickly re-partnered to avoid being alone. The news was regularly full of horrid stories of men getting back at their ex-wives after a broken relationship—cruel and vindictive attempts to get revenge, sometimes involving the children, with tragic results. ‘Did he ever remarry?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Did he have other partners?’

‘Occasionally, but not for long,’ Leandro said. ‘He was difficult to live with. There were few women who would put up with him.’

‘So it was his fault your mother left him?’ Miranda asked. ‘Because he was so difficult to live with?’

He didn’t answer for so long she thought he hadn’t heard her over the noise of the traffic outside. ‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘That was my fault.’

Miranda looked at him in shock. ‘You? Why would you think that? That’s ridiculous. You were only eight years old. Why on earth would you blame yourself?’

He gave her an unreadable glance before he took a left turn. ‘My father’s place is a few blocks up here. Have you ever been to Nice before?’

‘A couple of years ago—but don’t try and change the subject,’ she said. ‘Why do you blame yourself for your parents’ divorce?’

‘Don’t all kids blame themselves?’

Miranda thought about it for a moment. Her mother had said a number of times how having twins had put pressure on her relationship with her father. But then, Elisabetta wasn’t a naturally maternal type. She was happiest when the attention was on her, not on her children. Miranda had felt that keenly as she’d been growing up. All of her friends—apart from Jaz—were envious of her having a glamorous showbiz mother. And Elisabetta could act like a wonderful mother when it suited her.

It was the times when she didn’t that hurt Miranda the most.

But why did Leandro think he was responsible for his parents’ break-up? Had they told him that? Had they made him feel guilty? What sort of parents had they been to do something so reprehensible? How could they make a young child feel responsible for the breakdown of a marriage? That was the adults’ responsibility, not a child’s, and certainly not a young child’s.

But she didn’t pursue the conversation for at that point Leandro pulled into the driveway of a rundown-looking villa in the Belle Epoqué style. At first she thought he must have made a mistake, pulled into the wrong driveway or something. The place was like something out of a gothic noir film. The outside of the three-storey-high building was charcoal-grey with the stain of years of carbon monoxide pollution. The windows with the ragged curtains drawn were like closed eyes.

The villa was like a faded Hollywood star. Miranda could see the golden era of glamour in its lead-roofed cupolas on the corners and the ornamental ironwork and flamboyance of the stucco decorations that resembled a wedding cake.

But it had been sadly neglected. She knew many of the grand villas of the Belle Époque era along the Promenade des Anglais had not survived urban redevelopment. But the extravagance of the period was still apparent in this old beauty.

It made Miranda’s blood tick in her veins. What a gorgeous old place for Leandro to inherit. It was a piece of history. A relic from an enchanted time when the aristocracy had flaunted their wealth by hiring architects to design opulent villas with every imaginable embellishment: faux stonework, figureheads, frescos, friezes, decorative ironwork, ornamental stucco work, cupolas, painted effects, garlands and grotesques. The aristocracy had indulged their taste for the exotic, with Italian and Classic influences as well as Gothic, Eastern and Moorish.

And he was packing it up and selling it?

Miranda looked up at him as he opened her car door for her. ‘Leandro, it’s amazing! What a glorious building. It’s like a time capsule from the Art Nouveau period. This was your childhood home? Really?’

He clearly didn’t share her excitement for the building. His expression had that closed-off look about it, as shuttered as the windows of the villa they were about to enter. ‘It’s very run-down,’ he said.