Beautifully Broken (The Montebellos Book 6)

looking at her with the full force of his attention. It was what she’d thought, a moment ago, that she wanted, but now that he was probing her eyes with his own silvery grey pair, she felt like a bug under a microscope.
“Then what will you do?”
She gaped, floundering as she sought for an alternative. “I – guess I’ll go – somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else, for many miles. The nearest town is an hour’s drive away – in good weather. The roads are – as you’ve discovered, quite unpassable at present.”
“So you’re saying I’m stuck here?”
He nodded slowly. “Believe me, if there was any alternative, I would take it.”
She quelled the familiar feeling of being unwanted. It wasn’t like she wanted to be here either. “There must be somewhere…”
“There isn’t. But don’t worry. It’s a big house. We don’t need to have anything to do with one another. In fact, it would be for the best if you keep out of my way.”
“Charming,” she muttered under her breath. Even though she knew she should be grateful he was allowing her to shelter here at all, she still bristled at his tone and manner. It wasn’t as though she’d intentionally got herself stranded in the shadow of his castle, for goodness sake.
“I am not charming,” he responded with a gruff tone to his voice. “I am not nice. I am not kind. And I have no interest in playing the genial host just because you were careless enough to go for a leisurely drive during a once-in-a-century blizzard. Eat, drink, sleep, but stay the hell away from me.”

3
IT DIDN’T MATTER THAT the woman was doing precisely as he’d suggested. He still knew she was around, in his house, invading his privacy, an intruder he didn’t want and didn’t welcome. He came to Il Nido to be alone. Completely alone. Not left alone, but actually, truly, absolutely on his own, right here at the edge of the earth.
He ground his teeth, focussing on the spreadsheet in front of him, running the back tip of the pen over the screen to help him keep track of the numbers. He’d been reading the same spreadsheet for an hour. It was useless. He stood up, restless and annoyed, and prowled to the windows. There was no sign of the storm clearing. Ordinarily, he would have welcomed this. Being snowed in at Il Nido would have been all his dreams come true, but with another occupant of the house, he was impatient for the weather to clear so he could get rid of her.
That wasn’t likely to be for some time, though. Likely several days, if the forecasts were to be believed. Which meant he had to find out how the hell to tolerate her existence in the house.
Eyeing his empty coffee cup, he snatched it off his desk and strode out of his office, down the deserted hallway into the blessedly silent stairwell, thankful that at least she was capable of following directions.
There was no sight, nor sound of her. Good.
But as he pushed into the kitchen, his luck ran out in spectacular fashion.
Not only was the intruder ensconced here, she had completely taken over the space. Neatly – and orderly – but nonetheless, almost every surface was covered. Bowls, pots, pans, chopping boards, and various food items, were scattered over the counter. And it smelled…wonderful.
His stomach gave a low grumble of recognition, but he refused to be mollified by the fact she had clearly concocted something delicious, when he hadn’t eaten all day. He wanted a damned coffee and she was standing between him and his machine. In an apron, no less. Damn it, where had she even found such a thing in his home?
“What the hell are you doing?”
She startled out of the note she was making, lifting a hand and self-consciously pushing her hair back from her cheek, unwittingly smudging polenta there.
She’d wondered if she should ask him to use the kitchen, but he’d been quite emphatic about not disturbing him, and it wasn’t as though she was depleting his resources. A quick investigation of the larder attached to the kitchen showed that he was well-stocked enough to last out a decades-long blizzard. Bags of polenta, flour, pasta, rice and legumes stood beside wicker baskets overflowing with produce – onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, apples, pumpkins. There were cartons of long life milk, cream, milk solids, spices galore. It was a cook’s dream come true, and yet she suspected this man rarely made use of the stock.
“Cooking,” she responded simply, wondering if that would annoy him further or placate him.
“I can see that,” he clamped his lips together, crossing his arms over his chest as he had the night before. He was mercifully dressed now, wearing a grey sweater with a pair of dark jeans. “Why?”
“Well, what else was I supposed to do?”
He frowned as though that hadn’t occurred to him.
“I don’t know,” he admitted finally, moving his coffee cup from one hand to the other.
Realising it was empty, and guessing at his reason for coming into the kitchen, she extended her hand for it. “Top up?”
He stared at her as though she’d started speaking Swahili.
“Coffee. Would you like one?”
If anything, his scowl grew deeper. “That was my intention.”
“Then let me make it. How do you take it?”
More confusion. He looked at her with a beetled brow before extending the mug as if for lack of other options.
“Black? White? Sugar?”
“Black.”
“Of course, like a proud Italian male,” she couldn’t help teasing. He was, clearly, not receptive to the comment. Her smile dropped a little but she did her best not to show how unnerving she found him.
“I was just about to make one for myself,” she said after a charged silence. “This is a beautiful machine.”
Rather than an ordinary domestic coffee maker, he had a café style cappuccino machine installed, and it had been left on when she’d come in that morning. Pulling a milk from the fridge and pouring it