Page 14 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas
“Your rooms will have everything you need, I’m sure,” Leonor said with a certain serene confidence as they walked down yet another hallway. “You are welcome to enjoy the rest of the guest wing as well. It has its own small library and a media room, should the private one in your rooms prove insufficient. Down at that end—” she nodded off toward what looked like nothing but a great wash of light down the length of the hall “—there is a patio that leads to a small pool that you may use exclusively while you are here. There is also a well-equipped gym, if that is your preference. If you wish to ride, you need only ring the stables to let them know you’re coming, so that they might be prepared for you. And, naturally, you are welcome to walk wherever you please on the property.”
Lillie could hardly take all that in. So she simply nodded, as if she spent every day of her life being offered such luxuries so offhandedly and stopped when the older woman did, just outside the first room along the hall.
Leonor flung open the doors and strode inside, leaving Lillie to trail after her. She saw quickly that she hadn’t misheard. The housekeeper had saidrooms, plural. There was a vast yet comfortable lounge with enough seating to fit an army, then what looked like a bit of an office space, complete with a computer and some other corporate-looking appliances. Another sort of sitting room a bit farther along opened up into a whole walk-in closetcomplexcomprising three separate rooms, a sprawling en suite bathroom with a separate area for a bath with a view, and then, at the very end, the bedroom.
Which was, not to put too fine a point on it, much bigger than the entire ground floor of her house in Aberdeen, complete with the shared lounge and kitchen.
The room had a fireplace on one end, its own sitting area, and the most over-the-top four-poster bed she’d ever seen.
“I hope this will suffice,” Leonor intoned.
“Yes,” Lillie said, somehow managing not to laugh out loud at the notion there might be anyone alive who would find thisinsufficient. She tried to look posh. “It should do.”
And when the other woman left her there, saying something about leaving her to settle in, Lillie finally broke. She burst into a helpless sort of laughter. She laughed and laughed, clinging to the nearest post at the foot of the bed until she felt weak and tears were streaming down her face. Then, gingerly—a bit as if she expected armed guards to burst in and carry her away—she crawled up onto the bed, and began laughing all over again. Because the mattress was soft as a feather and she had never felt anything like it. It was tempting to believe they slept onactual cloudshere.
It wassosoft, and so clearly elegant, and smelled ever so faintly like lavender and far fancier herbs besides, that Lillie doubted very much that she’d be able to actually drift off to sleep surrounded by such class—
And so was surprised to find herself blinking awake some time later.
The position of the light and shadows in the room suggested she’d slept a good while. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, frowning and cranky, the way she always was after a nap. Her cheeks felt flushed too hot and she had to shove her damp curls back out of her face, quite certain that she’d slept hard the way she always did. As if felled by a huntsman’s ax.
She heard faint sounds from somewhere outside this room and everything inside her leaped a bit, with his name inside her like its own dancing bit of flame.
Tiago.
And as she swung her feet off the side of the bed, not at all surprised to find she’d slept with her boots still on, the rest of the day came flooding back to her. Tiago himself. Seeing him again in his office in London. That ridiculously fancy plane. This house that was its own city, it was so large.
The way everything had sparked between them again in the car—though Lillie wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was happy that she hadn’t made the whole thing up, the way she’d tried so hard to convince herself she had all these months. Or if it actually only hurt more, because now she knew it was real.
But she alsoknew that it was real. Without question.
And she also knew where he was.
Though as she got to her feet, rubbing her palms over her face and heading toward that soft noise she’d heard, she had to question that, too.Didshe know where he was? This was a very large house in what appeared to be its very own countryside, for one thing. Not to mention, he also had his own plane. He could be anywhere.
But she found she couldn’t follow that up the way she wanted to, because when she emerged into that sitting room she’d seen when she first walked into her rooms, Leonor was standing there overseeing the staff as they laid out a meal for her.
And it turned out that she was ravenously hungry.
“I hope you enjoy what the cook has prepared,” the housekeeper said, standing to the side of the table near the window, looking...assessing, yet again. “Some local delicacies have been prepared alongside what we consider more typical fare for you.”
“A bit of haggis, then?” Lillie asked with a laugh and then regretted it, because the other woman only gazed back at her.
“Please make yourself at home in this wing,” she said in that excessively calm manner of hers. “Relax however you see fit, refresh yourself after your journey, and I will come to you in the morning.”
It was not until after Lillie had polished off enough food to feed a football team or two that she realized that Leonor had obliquely suggested that she stay put. That she confine herself to this wing, in fact.
But Lillie...had not agreed to that, had she?
She went and availed herself of that glorious bathroom, rinsing off the travel and the nap and her feast. Unable to help herself, she went and peeked into the wardrobe, and found that Tiago—or his staff, it was almost certainly hisstaff—really had thought of everything. And more, that every single item of clothing that hung in all three rooms of that walk-in closetcomplexwas exactly the sort of thing that Lillie would have chosen for herself.
If, that was, she had ever had unlimited funds at her disposal.
And though she had considered herself practical and frugal the whole of her life, it turned out that all it took was two good meals and a well-stocked closet and Lillie was nothing but a silly little madam after all, more than happy to play dress-up.
But when she finished with that, and was wearing the kind of outfit that once would have made her laugh because it was so out of her usual reach, she set off out of her rooms. Plural. She looked down the hall toward the bit that led to all the parts of the great, big house that weren’t a part of the guest wing, and decided that what she really wanted to do on her first night in Portugal was a spot of exploring.
“It has nothing to do with Tiago,” she told herself virtuously. And loud enough to bounce back at her from the quiet, likely reproachful walls. “I just want to get a sense of the place.”