by Abby Green
He held out his hand across the table, over their fragrant starters. ‘Truce?’
Lia reluctantly held out her own hand. ‘Truce.’
His hand enveloped hers and she had a flashback to seeing him on the roof, skin gleaming with exertion, those muscles bunching and moving. She tried to pull her hand back but his fingers tightened and an unmistakable fire in his eyes mesmerised her.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Lia,’ he said. ‘I look forward to getting to know you better.’
* * *
Ben didn’t fool himself for a second that Lia’s apparent acquiescence had anything to do with him, per se. Oh, she wanted him—that was obvious. But she was still determined to fight it. Still, after he’d declared that truce, and resisted the urge to pull her over the table towards him so he could kiss her, they’d actually had a cordial meal and conversed. Albeit about completely superficial subjects.
On one level it infuriated Ben, because he knew now that he’d underestimated her hugely, and yet she seemed to be determined to close him off, not let him see beneath the surface. And he only had himself to blame. For a man not used to failure—in anything—it was disconcerting.
They’d finished dinner now, and she’d joined him back in the living area for coffee. She was walking around the room, looking at pictures and books, cradling her coffee cup in her hand.
Without that direct blue gaze assessing his every movement, Ben could look his fill. The dress she wore was lovely, but it comprehensively covered her body. He guessed she’d chosen it for that very reason, and once again he found her reluctance to give in to the chemistry between them slightly mystifying.
He didn’t think that any of her reluctance to come with him had been feigned, so he knew she wasn’t the kind of woman who would play hard to get. And yet he’d never expend this much effort on a woman who didn’t want him, so it made him wonder about her, about her experience. Maybe he’d underestimated her in more ways than one?
He asked carefully, ‘So, in light of the fact that you’d signed up with Leviathan Solutions, I’m a little curious as to why you seemed so eager to leave it after your first date?’
He saw how her whole body stiffened at that question. She turned around slowly, after putting the book she’d been looking at back on the shelf. He saw her clear reluctance to speak on her face and it fascinated him—he was used to women who had injected so much filler that they couldn’t emote more than a tense smile.
After a long moment when he thought she was going to deflect his question, she said tightly, ‘The truth is that I had no desire to join a dating agency. Someone decided to do it on my behalf.’
Ben’s curiosity shot up, but he schooled his expression. ‘Who would do such a thing?’
She sighed and came and sat down. Every move she made exuded that effortless casual elegance, even when she was tense.
She put her cup down and looked at Ben. ‘It was my father’s idea. He’s old-fashioned, and he’s determined to see me settled.’
She shut her mouth, as if she’d said too much. Ben could see that she was tempted to fold her arms, shut him out completely. It suddenly occurred to him as he took in her vaguely tortured expression...and when he recalled her reaction to, and subsequent tension during the charity auction...that she might actually be shy.
He leant forward. ‘I know you’re not gay—not after that kiss we shared... So what is it, Lia? Why don’t you want to date?’
She stood up again, agitated, and moved back over to the shelves, turning to face him. ‘Is it so hard to believe that a woman might not want her life to revolve around a man? That she might have ambitions of her own? In case you hadn’t heard, a revolution was fought and won a long time ago.’
Ben sat back, more and more intrigued by these buttons he was pushing. He drawled, ‘I’m no misogynist, Lia, and some would say there’s still a fight to be fought. But people—women in particular—can multitask, dating and working at the same time.’
Now she flushed. ‘I know that.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I just... My father shouldn’t have done that. Not after—’
She broke off abruptly and Ben sat forward again. ‘After what?’
She glanced away, her jaw tight. When she looked at him again after a moment, she said, ‘Well, it’s not as if you couldn’t find out easily enough.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I was engaged briefly. A year ago.’
‘Who was he?’ Ben asked sharply, hackles rising.
Lia came back around the couch and sat down, picking up her coffee again. ‘I met him at one of my father’s parties. He was a solicitor with a firm that my father’s legal team uses sometimes to take on extra work.’
Ben felt a surge of that same possessiveness he’d experienced when he’d seen Lia standing on that dais in front of everyone. ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as the wife of a mere lackey.’
Lia’s eyes sparked. ‘No? That just shows how much you don’t know about me, doesn’t it?’
Ben shrugged a shoulder. ‘I hardly know you, Lia, but I know you’re more than just corporate wife material. He would have stifled you to death.’ It surprised him that he did know this. And it made him wonder what on earth kind of marriage of convenience he had in mind, if not corporate.
He noticed then how she’d gone still. ‘That’s some leap to make when you hardly know me...’
Ben grimaced. ‘I owe you an apology. I was wrong about you. You’re not a princess, Lia. If you were you’d have been screaming and begging to get back to civilisation hours ago, and yet you’ve been perfectly happy here all day, looking after yourself. Esmé told me you made your lunch and cleaned up after yourself.’
She responded with a touch of wry defensiveness. ‘Making lunch and cleaning up hardly merits special congratulations. I’ve still had a more privileged upbringing than most people ever see in their lifetimes.’
‘But you’re not spoilt. Far from it.’
For a long time she said nothing, biting her lip. And then, finally, ‘No, not as you might have imagined at first. It’s been just my father and I since my parents divorced. I became his hostess from a young age and...and I think he overcompensated to make up for the separation. But I was never really comfortable with lavish gifts or things like that. Once he was happy, I was happy.’
Ben absorbed this nugget, acknowledging uncomfortably that he’d misjudged her again. He’d known Louis Ford was divorced, but not the particulars. He asked, ‘Where’s your mother now?’
Lia shrugged minutely and her face was carefully expressionless. Ben recognised it because he used that defence mechanism himself when someone asked too many questions about his past.
‘I think she’s in a Swiss château with husband number four. It’s hard to pin Estella down. I don’t see her often. When I was a teenager she would summon me periodically to whatever luxurious resort she was residing in at the time, usually when she was between husbands and in need of distraction.’
Ben felt a surge of irritation at this faceless woman, but he said lightly, ‘She sounds charming.’
Lia blinked at Ben and then put down her cup and stood up abruptly, taking him by surprise. He’d not even noticed that they’d got into a personal discussion, and he usually did his utmost to avoid straying into such territory with women.
He stood up too, just as she said, ‘It’s been a long day. I think I’ll go to bed.’
‘Of course.’ His gaze tracked her as she turned to leave the room, and then he made a split-second decision and said, ‘I thought that perhaps tomorrow I could give you a tour of Salvador. It’s a stunning city, and I’d like to make it up to you for leaving you to your own devices today.’
She stopped, and the lines of her body were tense. For a moment Ben had a premonition that she was going to turn around and say enough was enough, that she wanted to go home tomorrow... And in all conscience he realised that he couldn’t really say no if she wanted to. Even as everything in him rejected the thought.
&nbs
p; But she turned quickly and just said, ‘Okay—fine.’
And then she was disappearing from view and Ben let out a long breath, more relieved by that small concession than anything he could recall in a long time.
* * *
As soon as Lia made it back to her room she closed the door and leant back against it, breathing deeply to calm her racing heart. What the hell had just happened down there? She’d been moments away from curling up on the couch and spilling her entire guts to Benjamin Carter, as if he was some kind of confidant she could trust.
It had only been when he’d responded to what she’d revealed about her mother, and she’d had the distinct impression that he was angry on her behalf, that she’d snapped back to reality. First of all, she never spoke about her mother to anyone—the old wound of rejection still smarted, and she usually avoided being drawn into any discussion about it. Usually.
And what about telling him that she wasn’t interested in dating? And letting him provoke her into talking about her failed engagement?
Lia groaned and kicked off her shoes, walking over to the French doors that led out to the balcony.
The air was still deliciously warm and balmy, caressing her bare skin. She couldn’t see anything in the inky darkness but she could hear the gentle lap of waves against the shore and it soothed her jittery nerves a little, and her sense of exposure.
She thought of his apologising for calling her a princess, and his observation that she was more than corporate wife material, and something inside her felt weak. And yet hadn’t she almost settled for that? Because after yet another stroke, her concern for her father’s health had been so great that she’d given in to his plea that she give Simon Barnes—the nice but dull solicitor—a chance.
When she’d started dating him and they’d had a frank discussion he’d admitted that he’d pursued her to get into her father’s good graces, thus potentially securing a job on his legal team. Simon had then assured her that he would not stand in the way of her ambitions, and so—foolishly, maybe—Lia had seen a way to keep her father happy, and also to forge a life for herself within a marriage that wouldn’t confine her.
After all, she’d never entertained romantic notions of a happy-ever-after marriage—not after witnessing her own parents’ disastrous marriage and her father’s subsequent heartbreak. Lia had vowed from an early age never to be so destroyed by giving someone else that control over her.
But then her chest grew tight when she recalled that oh, so vivid image of her fiancé’s head buried between his secretary’s legs, and the humiliation washed over her again. It hadn’t been his infidelity that had hurt her—after all, they hadn’t been in love—it had been the stark knowledge of the fact that she hadn’t been able to rouse that passion in him.
Lia curled her hands around the balcony railings as if that would centre her again. The truth was that as much as she wished she could find it easy to dismiss Benjamin Carter...she couldn’t.
Something about this place, about him, was making her loosen up. Dangerously so. She’d all but accused him of being boorish and she had outright accused him of being crass. But this beautiful house didn’t belong to a crass man, and a boorish man didn’t climb up to hammer slates into a roof with his housekeeper’s husband. And, an overly arrogant man who had made no bones about the fact that he wanted to take her to bed wouldn’t exercise such restraint that he’d actually let her go to bed. Alone.
Lia hadn’t mistaken the heat in his eyes... It was one of the reasons, apart from her over-sharing, that she’d practically run from the room.
She had to remind herself that the man was a consummate playboy; he knew exactly what he was doing. He was like a big jungle cat playing with a tiny helpless mouse—letting it believe that it could get away when all he had to do was bring down a big paw and that would be that. Game over.
She’d been here less than twenty-four hours and the man was already playing her like a fiddle. Lia was very tempted to go back downstairs and demand that he take her home immediately.
Funnily enough, she suspected that if she insisted he would let her go. But, perversely, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, or let him suspect for a second that she was perturbed by all that she’d revealed to him. One more day in his company... She could keep her mouth zipped and keep him at a distance. She could. She had to.
* * *
Lia sat beside Ben in the open-top Jeep as they drove down the main route to Salvador from his villa. Her dark hair was pulled back into a practical ponytail and the warm breeze made it look like skeins of silk behind her head. He was finding it hard to maintain some semblance of control. It was as if he’d never seen a woman dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts before. But he’d never seen this woman dressed like that before, and it was all he could do not to stop and ogle her slender pale limbs.
She seemed ethereal and delicate beside him. Even though he knew he shouldn’t be thinking of her as delicate at all. When she’d arrived in the kitchen earlier she’d had a determined look on her face and had kept up a general patter of inane conversation. No doubt signalling to Ben that the little confidences of the previous evening wouldn’t be happening again.
And that the sooner this weekend was over the better.
In fact—and his jaw clenched when he thought of it now—she seemed to be determined to treat him as if he was just a hired tour guide. Bestowing bright smiles upon him and sticking to annoyingly trite and inconsequential conversation.
Determined to crack through that cheerfully icy veneer, Ben asked, ‘So, did you sleep well?’
The dark glasses she wore hid her eyes, and when Ben glanced at her she was smiling brightly. ‘I slept like a log, thank you. All this fresh sea air makes such a change from muggy city pollution.’
His jaw clenched again. Time to ruffle her feathers a little. ‘Aren’t you going to ask how I slept?’
She looked at him, and he could sense the glare behind those protective shades. ‘I hadn’t planned on it, no.’
‘Well, if you must know,’ he said, ‘I didn’t sleep well at all. Lots of tossing and turning.’ He grimaced. ‘And I had to take a shower during the night.’
Because every time he’d closed his eyes all he’d been able to envisage was an image of her, standing in her long red evening dress, looking crumpled but sexily dishevelled, and he’d wondered what it would have been like to go and pick her up and bring her into his bedroom—
‘Well,’ she said stiffly now, her faux brightness gone, ‘we didn’t have to do this today. You know, if you’re too tired, you can always drop me off at the airport and I can get a flight home. That way you can get as much rest as you need.’
His mouth quirked. ‘Not a chance. And I didn’t say I was tired. I don’t sleep much, as a general rule.’
She was practically bristling beside him now.
He continued, ‘So, tell me about these ambitions of yours...the ones you mentioned last night when you were assuring me that a woman’s life doesn’t have to revolve around a man.’
She crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. ‘I don’t think that’s any business of yours.’
‘Maybe not,’ he agreed, glancing across at her, his eye instantly caught by the lush curve of her mouth. ‘But humour me?’
* * *
Damn the man, Lia thought churlishly. She’d bet money he was just trying to rile her. And her sense of complacency had gone out of the window as soon as he’d revealed that he’d taken a shower during the night.
It had been hard enough to maintain a cool front as soon as she’d walked into the kitchen and seen him sprawled in a chair, wearing faded worn jeans and a dark polo shirt, with bare feet.
His hair had still been wet and he’d looked at her over his coffee cup and said, ‘You should have joined me for a swim in the sea this morning. It was magnificent.’
Instantly Lia had been bombarded with an image of their wet bodies entwined as waves crashed around them.
Until now she’d kept up her valiant façade.
‘Tell me about these ambitions of yours...’
Lia thought about his question for a long moment. This was exactly what she’d reassured herself she’d do last night—keep him at a distance. Get on a plane and go home. And yet...there was something inside her that felt as if it wanted to break free.
It might be the sun-drenched exotic surroundings and the sense of being out of her comfort zone, thanks to having been literally transported to another country. Or it might be the effort it was taking to resist this man’s natural charm. Or, more dangerously, it might be the desire to reveal herself. Somehow along the way his opinion had come to matter to her—just a tiny bit.
She sighed volubly and Ben said cajolingly from beside her, ‘It’s another thirty minutes to Salvador...’
Treacherously, she felt resistance give way inside her. Angry with herself for giving in she said almost accusingly, ‘If you must know, I studied Architectural Engineering at university.’
It was almost worth saying that to see the way his head snapped around.
Lia smiled sweetly. ‘Didn’t expect that, did you?’
Ben had the grace to look slightly sheepish and he said, ‘When I met with your father at your house a few years ago he said you were on a skiing trip...’
Lia rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve never skied in my life. I was in college. My father never liked to admit to anyone—or himself—that his daughter had ambitions and wanted a career. He preferred people to think I was a harmless socialite.’
Ben’s jaw clenched and Lia saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel.
‘I have to confess that I did assume you were part of a certain social set...’
Something tightened in Lia’s chest. ‘I guess that’s understandable. Most people aren’t interested in my qualifications.’
