Stranded with the Tycoon. Sophie Pembroke

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СКАЧАТЬ she was taking the whole relaxing thing seriously. He should have remembered earlier how his ex-girlfriend had complained about Luce disappearing into the bathroom with her history texts and using up all the hot water on ridiculously indulgent baths. At the time he’d just found it comforting to know that the woman had some weaknesses. Now it was seriously holding up his evening.

      But at least it gave him the opportunity to do some research. Unlocking the safe, he pulled out Luce’s organiser again and sank into the armchair by the window to read. Really, the woman was the epitome of over-scheduled. And almost none of the things written into the tiny diary spaces in neat block capitals seemed like things she’d be doing for herself. Christmas dinners—plural—for family, attending lectures for colleagues, looking after someone else’s cat... And then, on a Sunday near the end of January, the words ‘BOOK DRAFT DEADLINE’ in red capitals. Interesting. Definitely something to talk about over dinner.

      She baffled him. That was why he wanted to know more. On the one hand, he was pretty sure he could predict her entire life story leading from university to here. On the other, however...there was something else there. Something he hadn’t seen or noticed when they were younger. Something that hooked him in even if he wasn’t ready to admit why. Yes, she was attractive. That on its own was nothing new. But this self-sacrificing mentality—was it a martyr complex? A bullying mother? Luce hadn’t ever seemed weak, so why was she doing everything for other people?

      Particularly her family, it seemed. Flicking through the pages, Ben tried to remember if he’d ever met them at university, but if he had they hadn’t made much of an impression. Now he thought about it, he did remember Luce disappearing home to Cardiff every few weeks to visit them.

      Obviously a sign of things to come.

      Leaning back in his chair, Ben closed the organiser and tried to resist the memories pressing against his brain. But they were too strong. Another dark-haired woman, just as tired, just as self-sacrificing—until the day she broke.

      ‘I’m sorry, Benji,’ she’d said. ‘Mummy has to go.’

      And it didn’t matter that he’d tried everything, done anything he could think of to be good enough to make her stay. He hadn’t been able to fix things for her.

      Maybe he could for Luce.

      Laughing at himself, he sat up, shaking the memories away. Luce wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t tied by marriage or children. She could make her own choices far more freely. And what could he do in one night, anyway? Other than help her relax. Maybe that would be enough. Maybe all she needed was to realise that she had needs, too. And Ben was very good at assessing women’s needs.

      A repetitive beeping noise interrupted his thoughts, and it took him a moment to register it as a ringtone. As he looked up, his gaze caught on Luce’s rich purple coat, slung across the sofa on the other side of the glass coffee table. She’d taken her suitcase and handbag into the bathroom with her—obvious paranoia in Ben’s view—but he’d seen her drop her phone into her coat pocket before they left the bar.

      Interesting.

      He should feel guilty, he supposed, but really it was all for the woman’s own good. She needed saving from herself. She needed his help.

      The noise had stopped before he could retrieve the phone from the pocket of her coat, and Ben stared at the flashing screen for a moment, wondering how one woman could have so many people needing to contact her. In addition to a missed call from her mother, her notifications screen told him straight off that she had three texts from a guy called Tom, an e-mail from a man named Dennis and another missed call from an improbably named ‘Dolly’. All in the hour since they’d left the bar.

      Scanning over the snippets on the screen told him all he really needed to know—every person who’d contacted her wanted something from her. Dropping the phone back into her pocket, Ben considered the evening ahead.

      His plan, ill thought out to start with, had been to have a fun evening and hopefully a fun night. To show Luce a good time, then remind her who he was so they could have a laugh about it. Or he could, anyway. But now...he was invested.

      Who was Lucinda Myles these days?

      The last time he’d seen her must have been the night of his spectacularly disastrous twenty-first birthday party. He remembered spotting her sloping out of the hotel ballroom towards one of the drawing rooms, but after that far too much champagne had blurred the evening until the following morning and a headbangingly loud lecture from his father about appropriate behaviour and responsibility to the family reputation. Friends had helpfully filled him in on the more humorous of his antics that night, but no one had mentioned Luce.

      Then the ex had broken up with him for humiliating her and ‘possibly ruining her future’, whatever that meant, and he’d had no reason to see Luce again. Who knew how much she’d changed in the intervening years?

      Ben paused in his thoughts. She couldn’t have changed that much, given what he’d seen so far that day. In which case...

      Grabbing the phone from the table next to him, he called down to Reception.

      ‘Daisy? Can you cancel my booking at The Edge tonight?’ Trendy, stainless-steel, cutting-edge fusion restaurants just weren’t Luce’s style, no matter who the concierge had needed to bribe to get him a table there that night. ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll sort out an alternative myself.’

      Something more Luce. More fun too, probably.

      One more quick phone call ascertained that the restaurant he was thinking of still existed. Perfect. Hanging up, Ben glanced at the bathroom door and then at his watch again. He’d given Luce long enough. Time to move on to the next stage of their evening.

      Pausing first to replace the diary in the safe, he gave the bathroom door a quick rap with his knuckles and then said, loud enough to be sure he could be heard through it, ‘You’ve got five more minutes in there before I start trying to guess the pass code for your phone.’

      To his surprise, the lock turned and the door opened almost instantly. Eyebrows raised, Luce stared at him and said, ‘Threats aren’t traditionally very relaxing, you know.’

      But baths clearly were. Especially for Dr Lucinda Myles.

      She’d changed out of those clothes he’d been longing to run his hands over, but since she’d replaced them with a slippery, silky purple dress he really wasn’t complaining. Her hair was pinned up off her neck, with a few damp tendrils curling behind her ears and across her forehead. She smiled at him, her deep red lips curving in amusement. ‘I didn’t think you were the sort of man to do speechless. I like it.’

      A rush of lavender hit his lungs as she swept past him, reminding him of the château in summer, and he realised he still hadn’t spoken. ‘If I’d known you were using your time so well I’d have been much more patient,’ he said, finding his voice at last.

      Luce slipped her arms into her coat, her fingers reaching into the pocket for her phone. Time for another distraction. Ben offered her his arm and she took it, forestalling her return to the world of technology and messages from people who wanted far less fun things from her than he did. ‘Now, if you’re ready, won’t you let me escort you to dinner?’

      She still looked suspicious as she nodded, but she left the room beside him, steady on higher heels than he’d have expected her to be comfortable wearing. Ben smiled. This was going to be a good evening. He was sure of it. The hotel СКАЧАТЬ