The Beautiful Widow - By Helen Brooks Page 0,41
tired. I’ve got some ideas but I’d like your take on it.’
Toni nodded. She didn’t care what the inside was like; this house was the sort of place dreams were made of.
Once inside she could see what Steel meant, but she could also envisage the house as it could be if it was sympathetically restored and the layout reworked a little. Downstairs there were a number of rooms but the kitchen was indeed very small. Upstairs there were eight good-size bedrooms but only one bathroom. It was clear nothing had been done to the house for decades. The view from the ground at the back of the property was breathtaking. She hadn’t realised they were on a hill, but the lawns and flowerbeds and mature bushes and trees gently sloped down to the wood Steel had spoken of, and beyond that was rolling countryside for miles and miles.
‘Spectacular, eh?’
They were standing outside the French doors leading from the main reception room on a patio that had seen better days. The blue sky above, the white sparkling world beneath and, not least, Steel standing so close she was vitally aware of the height and breadth and faint delicious smell emanating from the big frame caused her voice to wobble slightly as she said, ‘Utterly.’
‘So, can you see me here, Toni?’ His voice was level, almost flat, and he didn’t look at her as he spoke, keeping his eyes on the countryside spread out in front of them like an enormous beautiful picture.
She didn’t reply immediately, considering exactly what to say. ‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘but—’
‘But?’ He gazed at her with hooded eyes. ‘Always a but.’
‘This is an enormous house for just one person. Wouldn’t it be better to consider either a smaller property or an apartment somewhere outside the city, if that’s what you want?’
He didn’t reply to this. ‘But you think I could suit this house?’
It was a strange way to put it. Normally one would ask if the house could suit them, but in this case he was absolutely right, Toni thought. This house was so special and so beautiful it shouldn’t have to fit in with anyone—the boot had to be on the other foot. And the fact he’d put it that way made her voice firm when she said, ‘Yes, I do. You’ve fallen in love with it, haven’t you?’
He was very still for a moment. ‘I’ve never been in love before but, yes, I think I am.’
Toni nodded. ‘Then all the work and changes will be worth it. You must go with your heart for once.’
‘My thoughts exactly.’ Steel’s silver-blue gaze followed a magpie that had just swooped over the trees onto the lawn carrying a morsel of something or other in its beak, which it now proceeded to eat. Six months and this woman had turned his life upside down and she was completely unaware of it. It had taken him weeks, probably a couple of months to adjust to the knowledge that Toni George was different.
Women abounded in London; beautiful, available and willing women, and he’d had his share until the day she had walked into his apartment and he’d looked into her eyes. Strange, but he couldn’t put his finger on what made her special. She was very lovely, intelligent and gutsy, but those attributes could be laid at the feet of several women he knew. Women who carried no baggage and who definitely didn’t have four-year-old twins in tow.
He’d sent the little girls a present each on their birthday—which he knew had taken Toni aback—and received in return two handmade cards of people with sticks for arms and legs and two scrawls at the bottom of the cards that were apparently their names. After that he had tried to take a big step backwards but it hadn’t worked; nothing had. The more he’d got to know her, the more he had wanted her, which was a first for him. Normally he slept with a woman and then got to know her, which finished with him not wanting her. And now he was faced with the prospect of loving someone who certainly didn’t love him back and who had no intention of letting a man into her life or anywhere near her family.
Steel smiled to himself. How many of his exes would take secret satisfaction in his predicament? The love-'em-and-leave-'em Steel Landry hoisted by his own petard. But he was damned if he was going to roll over and accept the situation.