The Billionaire's Convenient Bride. Liz Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ said than done when the warmth of his palm, the touch of his fingers was sending shock waves through her body.

      ‘Yes...sorry... I didn’t expect... I wasn’t thinking...’ She made an effort to pull herself together. She should remove her arm. Touching was... ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said, not wanting to think about what touching him had done.

      A long time but eyes never changed. She had dreamed about those eyes. Dreamed about his hand taking hers. Wanting so much. Seeing that same want echoed back at her even as he stepped back, turned and walked away.

      With an effort of will she removed her elbow from his hand and straightened, but as he took a step back she had to stop herself from reaching out, grabbing a handful of jacket to keep him close.

      It was ridiculous. It had been years ago. She had been a teenager with a crush. But in all those years, the hideous school proms with a ‘suitable’ date, the marriage market debutant parties, no one had ever come close to that moment when he’d reached out a hand...

      She swallowed, mouth dry, unable to think of anything appropriate to say.

      How unexpected.

      How wonderful to see him after all this time.

      How disturbing to still feel the same knee-weakening desire...

      That he’d reached out now meant nothing. It had been an automatic response when he’d thought she was going to fall. Nothing in his expression, in his manner suggested that this was a happy homecoming, that he was here to catch up with old friends. To catch up with her.

      His smile had been fleeting, ironic rather than warm, his voice cool. And why wouldn’t it be? She was the reason he and his mother had been banished from the castle, from their home. Which begged the question—why had he come back?

      ‘How is your mother?’ she asked, when the silence had stretched to breaking point. Desperately falling back on the conventional. Sounding like her grandmother talking to the youth who worked in the garden.

      ‘It’s a little late to be asking about my mother’s health,’ he said, giving her nothing back. Nothing to work with.

      ‘She’s—?’ She left the question unasked. ‘Grandfather...’ Kam’s face darkened. ‘He died last year.’

      ‘I heard.’

      He didn’t say he was sorry and his face was shadowed in the windowless little room. Unreadable. Not like the last time she’d seen him.

      She’d raced to the quay desperate to tell him how sorry she was, to tell him that she’d begged her grandfather to change his mind, but she had been too late.

      She’d tried to shout his name as his mother drove the van onto the ferry. The raw anger in the look he’d given her had dried the words in her mouth and she’d just stood there, a painful lump in her throat, helpless, hopeless, too miserable even to cry.

      He’d learned to hide his feelings, but he had not forgotten.

      Reminding herself that she was running a hotel, that he was a guest, she gathered a breath and dug deep for her professional smile.

      ‘Well, it’s lovely to see you after all this time. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.’

      ‘I know I will. With or without hot water.’

      There was a certainty in his reply, a suggestion that it had not been a passing fancy to stay at the castle.

      ‘It will be sorted by this evening,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘Suzanna should be back at her desk by now. Would you like coffee? Tea? A sandwich,’ she added a little desperately, when he didn’t reply.

      ‘Bacon?’ he suggested, his mouth twisting in a parody of a smile as he reminded her of all the times she’d brought him her breakfast bacon in a sandwich. ‘You offered the heating engineer lunch.’

      She swallowed. He wanted lunch? With her? She didn’t believe it for a minute and banished the butterflies.

      ‘Jimmy is a lot more than a heating engineer, he’s a boiler whisperer and I was asking him to surrender his lunch hour.’ Clearly he’d heard every word and there was no point in pretending. ‘Of course, if you know anything about boiler maintenance...?’

      ‘I’ll pay for my own lunch but reserve a table for two in the Orangery, Agnès, and I’ll tell you exactly what I know.’

      There was no upward inflection, no warmth to suggest this would be a cosy catch-up with an old friend but then Kam had never been cosy. He’d been a dangerous lad; she’d adored him on sight. As a three-year-old she couldn’t do more than watch as he’d climbed trees where he could barely reach the branches.

      She’d followed him relentlessly as a five-year-old, trying to copy him, wanting to catch fish and swim in the river, spend the night out in the hides he’d built to watch owls and badgers. Wanting to be a boy like him. Taking no notice when he told her to clear off.

      At six she’d cracked it with the bacon sandwich.

      By the time she was fourteen she didn’t want to be a boy but knew that if she went all girly on him he wouldn’t want her around. But when she’d come home from school for the summer just before she’d turned sixteen, it hadn’t just been her. The tension had been palpable. She’d expected him to be waiting for her that evening in the hide, but he hadn’t been there, hadn’t come. He’d looked and his eyes had said yes, but he’d kept his distance and she’d thought that because of who he was, who she was, she had to make the first move...

      She’d got it so wrong. Even now, the thought of what had happened brought a hot flush to her cheek.

      He had been dangerous then and he was dangerous now, to her peace of mind if nothing else. Every cell in her body warned her that he wasn’t here on some sentimental pilgrimage. To relive his boyhood memories, the good ones before everything had gone splat. Whatever he wanted, she was pretty sure it wasn’t a trip down memory lane.

      Before she could make an excuse, tell him that she had meetings, Suzanna arrived at his shoulder and, making an apologetic face from behind his back, said, ‘Mr Faulkner? I’m so sorry I wasn’t in Reception when you arrived.’ As he half turned to see who was talking to him, Agnès spotted the small bedraggled dog she was holding at arm’s length to keep the mud from her uniform. ‘I’m afraid Dora has been down by the lake.’

      Down by the lake and rolling in duck poo from the smell.

      ‘I’ll take her while you show Mr Faulkner to his room,’ Agnès said, tucking the dog firmly under her arm, glad of an excuse to escape, catch her breath.

      ‘Would you like coffee, Mr Faulkner?’ Suzanna asked.

      ‘No. Thank you,’ he replied, his voice noticeably warmer as he spoke to the receptionist, but he still hadn’t moved, hadn’t taken his eyes off her. ‘One o’clock, Agnès,’ he repeated.

      Kam and his mother had been treated shamefully by her grandfather and he clearly had things he needed to get off his chest. Telling him that she was sorry would be meaningless but maybe hearing him out would help him draw a line under the past СКАЧАТЬ