Chapter Fourteen #2
‘Rob’s family had owned the place since the seventeenth century and he’d inherited the title. He was a baronet: Sir Robert, to give him his full title, and I promise you he liked to use it. I was only allowed to call him Rob when we were on our own. Not in front of the staff or visitors.’
Flynn snorted in contempt. ‘He sounds like a right tit.’
‘He did turn out to be a bit of a tit. I wouldn’t say we were going out officially, because he didn’t want to go public, but we were very close.’
It had meant sleeping together and going out for dinner or lunch from time to time when they could both get away and Rob thought no one would see them. That had seemed romantic at the time. Clandestine, a thrill … Lara was in love with him.
‘After a while I began to get fed up with having to creep around as if our relationship was shameful. I couldn’t see why Rob wouldn’t go public about us. He said enough of the right things in private to make me believe he was serious about me.’
In fact, he’d as good as proposed. He’d told her he’d love to spend the rest of his life with her. He’d even joked about walking her up the aisle at the family chapel and whether his dog – a golden retriever, obviously – could be a bridesmaid.
Flynn cut gently into her thoughts. ‘This doesn’t end well, does it?’
‘It depends on what you define by an ending,’ she said.
‘I certainly didn’t get the kind of happy ending I’d expected.
Perhaps that was my big mistake: expecting anything of Rob.
I’d been there two years, and we’d been seeing each other for eighteen months, and he kept saying we’d be a great partnership – which I took to mean as a couple, as …
life partners.’ She stopped and took a breath.
‘Then he went away for four weeks to manage some business interests in Dubai.’
‘Business interests?’ Flynn echoed. ‘They sound dodgy.’
‘They were – kind of. The day he came back, he called me into his study and said he had something important to say. I thought – well, let’s not dwell on what I thought. What he wanted to tell me was that he was engaged to the daughter of a business acquaintance.’
It was the same day that Lara had also planned to share some news with him. It was news she never got to tell him, but perhaps, in the end, that had been a good thing. He might not have believed her anyway. Time had helped her realise that.
‘Engaged? And he’d never mentioned this other woman before?’
‘It turned out I was the other woman – not her,’ Lara said.
‘Rob told me they’d been university friends and they’d dated before I started working at the manor, but they’d split up when she’d moved to Dubai.
’ She halted because telling Flynn was like probing at a freshly healed wound: the shock and disbelief of that conversation, standing in front of his desk while he sat behind it, barely able to meet her eye.
All the time bearing her own secret. ‘He said that while they’d been together in Dubai, they’d realised they should never have broken up and they’d decided to get married. ’
‘Tit is too good a word for him! How did he have the balls? Actually, it sounds like he had no balls.’
Despite the painful memories, Lara managed a smile at Flynn’s attempt at sympathy.
Rob may have had noble ancestors, and Flynn humble ones, but, ironically, it was Flynn who was the true gentleman.
‘He said that one of the reasons he’d never got round to asking me to “formalise” things was that he was worried he was still on the rebound from his ex.
He thought it was a good thing we’d never made things public, because it would have made things so much harder for me. ’
‘People make up any excuse to justify their actions when it suits them. What a tosser.’
‘I’ve come to realise that now, but, for a long time, it hurt.
’ She’d shed so many tears lying in her bed in her cottage on the estate, knowing that Rob was with her – his fiancée.
‘What really hurt, though, was when he told me it might be less painful for me if I were to look for a new opportunity elsewhere.’
‘The bastard.’ Flynn snorted in contempt.
‘Yes. I felt I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book or that I was living in some cheesy historical saga where the hired help falls for the lord of the manor and he lets her down. Except fortunately these days we have a thing called education.’
‘He still forced you to move jobs, though,’ Flynn said.
‘He did. And, at the time, I was absolutely heartbroken, but now …’ She paused. ‘I should thank him, because without him being such a shit, I probably wouldn’t be here.’
It was also a role that Lara might never have dared to apply for while she was blinded by the stars in her eyes, working for Rob.
She’d hoped – expected – to be running the manor as his partner, a prospect that now filled her with horror.
She was more angry with herself for being duped and for somehow allowing her hopes, career and her future to rest in the hands of one person.
Rob had never considered her as a priority in his life – she’d come way down the list after the estate, his title and being seen to make a suitable marriage. Was it selfish to want to be the most important – or at least one of the most important – priorities in a future partner’s life?
‘For what it’s worth, Lara …’ At the use of her name in his soft Cornish accent, a frisson of desire rippled through her. ‘I’m glad you left Rancid Rob’s poxy little manor. If you hadn’t come to Ravendale, I’m not sure I’d be here either.’
Flynn abandoned his radio on the floor of the lift and moved closer. The warmth in the lift and his physical proximity made her flush with desire. She was a heartbeat away from flinging herself into his arms, yet she had to hold back.
‘You didn’t come here just for me …’ It was a statement and question in one.
‘You’re wrong. I did. I only booked in to the Halloween night because I’d heard about the possible job on the grapevine and I wanted to see it.
The castle is great, the job is interesting, but I don’t think they would have been enough to change my mind without you being here … you tipped the balance.’
‘No.’ Trembling inside, she forced herself to laugh off the comment. ‘You can’t make a decision like that based on someone you knew for less than a day.’
‘I’m just saying that sometimes life throws up these forks in the road. You have a plan and then bam – you decide to take a risk.’
‘But I don’t take risks any more,’ Lara said. ‘I can’t afford to.’
‘Rancid Rob has done that. Whoa …’
The lift juddered sharply and, with a cry of shock, Lara grabbed his arm to steady herself. She quickly removed her hand, but Flynn took it in his and pulled her closer to him.
She could have backed away, should have backed away, yet the adrenaline and desire surging through her made it impossible to act in any rational way.
Instinct kicked in, and she tilted her chin up and met his mouth; his soft, warm, delicious mouth.
It was her holding him around the waist and pressing even closer against his body.
Her loving the sensation of his fingers brushing at the nape of her neck and tangling in her hair.
Her loving what their proximity was doing to his body.
It was Lara who kissed him harder and started to pull his shirt out of his work trousers.
‘Wow …’ he murmured, then started to kiss her back and unzip her fleece.
Rules and resolve didn’t exist while they were cocooned inside that capsule, suspended in space where no one could see them or what they were doing. But Lara’s thoughts were interrupted by the radio crackling from the corner. ‘Flynn. Come in. Over. Flynn, are you OK? Over.’
‘No. Not now …’ Flynn murmured against her mouth in exasperation.
Lara opened her eyes before reluctantly pulling away from him. Flynn let out a groan. ‘Sorry, I have to answer it in case they think something’s happened in here.’
Something has happened in here.
He scooped up the radio while Lara leaned against the lift wall, trying to steady her breathing and tame the fire that still burned inside her.
Flynn was nodding, saying ‘yes’ and ‘OK’ and ending with ‘Thanks, Carlos.’
Lara was coming down, slowly, reluctantly, when a familiar voice calling over the radio jolted her out of her post-kiss trance. It was Fiona.
‘Are you OK? This is awful. Don’t worry, we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy!’
Lara snapped to attention. ‘We’re fine. Don’t worry!’
‘We’re OK,’ Flynn reiterated.
The moment he’d turned off the radio, Lara said, ‘This can’t happen again.’
He frowned. ‘What? Ever? Or only until after Christmas?’
‘I – I don’t know, but I can’t do this. Not so soon, so fast. Not when I’m on my way again. I can’t lose everything again. I can’t get involved with another man again, not another colleague. Not someone I’d have to work with when it all goes … Please, respect that.’
‘I do respect it. I will respect it. But you can’t ask me to stop having feelings for you. Ask me to stop hoping to bump into you, fantasising about ways to bunk off work to see you.’
‘We hardly know each other,’ Lara scoffed, in an effort to hide the fact she had very similar fantasies about him.
He raised his eyebrows and smirked. ‘You could have fooled me after that kiss.’
‘Shh. I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that,’ Lara said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like … a wolf scenting – a fluffy bunny!’
He laughed loud. ‘No one would ever describe you as fluffy, Lara. Now, fierce like a mother bear is a different matter …’
‘Flynn, stop it!’
‘Hello! Are you two OK?’
A sliver of face appeared through the crack between the floor and the bottom of the lift. It was Carlos. She could hear Fiona behind him, asking him to be as quick as he possibly could.
‘Fine. We’re fine,’ she called down, before glaring at Flynn. ‘Just a bit bored.’
Carlos scoffed. ‘I bet you are.’
‘Bored?’ Flynn mouthed with a mock-hurt expression.
‘Hold on,’ Carlos muttered.
There were more voices and the lift inched down until there was a space large enough for them to crawl out. Lara slid back the metal grating and refused to look at him.
Carlos crouched by the opening, grinning. He was clearly loving every moment of the drama. ‘There you go. You should be able to get out now. We won’t move the lift again so you can get out.’
‘Thank you,’ Lara said, as she got up again to find Flynn leaning against the lift wall, looking fed up.
‘We’d better go,’ she said.
‘Pity,’ he murmured, peeling himself off the wall and leaning close to her ear. ‘Your hair has come down,’ he whispered, before holding out his arm. ‘After you.’
Still feeling his breath against her earlobe and the glow in her body, Lara dropped to her hands and knees again.
Her dishevelled appearance was the least of her worries.
She was desperate to escape from another few minutes in close proximity to a man who made fireworks explode in her stomach when he looked at her – and threatened to blow all her resolve and careful plans sky high.
She crawled out and Flynn followed, finding the space a tighter squeeze. He stood up, brushing dust off his jeans.
Carlos and Fiona were waiting, Carlos with a knowing smirk on his face. Did he suspect that anything unprofessional had gone on between her and Flynn?
Fiona was all aflutter. ‘Have you been all right in that horrible thing? I’m so sorry it took so long to get you out. I told Henry that antiquated contraption was a liability!’
‘We’ve been absolutely fine,’ Flynn said before Lara could answer. ‘Lara’s made me aware that some things at the castle can’t be rushed.’