Chapter 1 #3
Resting, it was a beautiful shape, with a full lower lip and a slight downturn at the corners that was definitely designed to discourage unwanted intrusion into his space.
But then he smiled at Larry, his lips curving slowly, reluctantly like petals unfolding for a winter sun and she wanted to drink in his smile, swallow it whole because it would taste like an old-fashioned, that perfect balance of sweet and spicy and smooth.
His kisses would taste like that too.
His kisses? What the—?
She breathed in sharply, swallowing Buck’s fizz at the same time, and had to cover her mouth to stifle her choking.
‘Having fun?’
She turned, her cheeks burning. It was Chloe, the associate who had shown her around the office on her first day. Willa had expected, been told, that the English were reserved. Chloe had taken that a step further and been wary and aloof. Now, though, she seemed to have thawed a little.
‘Yes, it’s a great party.’
Chloe held her gaze. ‘There’s an after-party too. Although, I don’t know if the partners and the VIPs will go to that.’
Willa nodded, but she wouldn’t be attending the after-party.
She was here because she had been invited.
Because not going would have meant having to come up with an excuse she didn’t have and because nonattendance might mark her out, and as the only green-eyed brunette in a family of blue-eyed blonds, she had spent enough of her life already being marked out as different. Other.
But then, she was both those things.
Around her, the noise of the room receded like a tide pulling back from the shoreline.
Worse. She was a cuckoo in the nest. An impostor and an unwanted burden.
A baby snuck into the home without permission to be incubated and nurtured and nourished.
She’d always felt that there was something different about her.
Right up until five months ago she’d assumed that it was because Amber wasn’t her real mother.
Not once had she thought Robert wasn’t her real father.
Finding out the truth, the whole sorry truth about her parentage had been like standing on a fault-line as the earth cracked open. Sometimes she felt it would have been better if that had happened. At least then she could have slipped into the fissure and disappeared.
Instead, she was a living, breathing reminder of her mother’s betrayal. A secret too awful to share with anyone. Except her father, Robert, who it turned out wasn’t her father.
Her heart was thudding against her ribs heavily like someone pounding a door with their fist, and she took a sip of her drink, then another.
But thinking about that now was not an option.
Otherwise, what was the point of being here?
Not just at this party but here, in England.
It had taken a lot of hard work to get this job.
Becoming an associate at Milner’s meant a new life in London.
More importantly it had put an ocean between herself and the pain of the past.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fun either way,’ Willa said diplomatically. ‘Everyone seems very friendly.’ Chloe blinked and then, as one, their gazes flicked across the room to where her unnamed nemesis stood, straight-backed and unsmiling again.
‘Well, almost everyone,’ she added, after a moment. ‘I’m not sure if fun is part of his vocabulary.’ She had a sudden, vivid memory of their showdown outside the hotel and of his face so dizzyingly close to hers.
Chloe shifted back on her heel, her gaze curious, perhaps even a little jealous. ‘You spoke to him?’
‘Briefly.’ Willa revisited her encounter with the unnamed man. ‘He’s not my type.’
Chloe’s gaze collided with hers, and then they both smiled, suddenly on common ground. The man on the other side of the room was every woman’s type.
‘Does he work here?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘No, he’s a friend of the boss.’
Great. That was just fabulous.
‘I think they were at Harvard together.’
Willa let her gaze drift back to the talk dark-haired man. He was a lawyer. That scanned. Perhaps he’d rowed while he was at college, she thought. That would explain the shoulder and back muscles.
‘So who is he?’ she began, but Chloe’s eyes had snapped to her phone screen.
‘Sorry, I’m going to have to go. I told the doormen to let me know when Nina Klein arrived. You know, the actress. We did her prenup, and her divorce. She’s just out of rehab, so Larry asked me to babysit her.’
It was better that she didn’t know his name, Willa thought as Chloe pocketed her phone. The less she knew, the looser the details, the easier it would be to forget him.
‘It’s fine. Go. I can mingle.’
Growing up as a Hamilton on the Californian island of Santa Catalina, mingling was second nature. The Hamiltons owned the only hotel on the island, and their festive events were a big deal to a small community.
But she had no intention of mingling now. Currently, her sole goal was to exit the ballroom without bumping into Larry’s Harvard chum.
Which was easier than she thought because, for some reason she couldn’t explain, even though she wasn’t looking at him, she was aware of his place in the room at all times just as if they were connected by a thread.
Avoiding him was like performing a complicated dance designed to keep her partner at arm’s length, but finally, when her eyes were aching with the effort of not looking in his direction, she reached the door and made a casual, discreet exit from the room.
* * *
The woman had vanished. Again.
Ares let his gaze flicker around the room, but he knew she was no longer there. And he should be relieved. Her presence had been like a stone in his shoe, but now that she was gone, he felt…thwarted.
Not that he’d had any serious intention of—
Of what?
It wasn’t as if he was into hooking up with random strangers. And besides, he was here to protect Ariana, to protect his family, and for that to happen, he needed to be razor-sharp and focused, not distracted by a pair of green eyes and some dazzlingly long legs.
Larry tried hard to persuade him to go out to dinner, but his stomach was still on New York time. And after six years of feeling people’s furtive glances as he walked through a restaurant, of having to leave via the trade entrance to avoid the paparazzi, he still found it hard to eat in public.
As he walked back through the foyer, he heard the soft clink of ice on glass, and maybe it was the jet lag playing havoc with his head but quite suddenly he wanted a drink, and the Clarendon was exactly the kind of hotel that would have a top-notch selection of whiskies.
The bar was empty aside from a cluster of city boys with Windsor-knotted striped ties and an elderly couple who were sharing a bottle of champagne.
A special occasion? he wondered and felt a pang as he remembered that if they were alive, his parents would be celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary this year.
‘Which Macallan’s do you have?’ he asked the bartender.
‘We have a thirty-year-old, a forty-year-old and a 1964.’
‘Which would you suggest? Be honest,’ he added, because that was what mattered most to him, always.
‘The forty. The ’64 is for people with more money than taste,’ his eyes flickered down the bar to the brokers. ‘The forty has a beautiful burn.’
‘Then, that’s what I’ll have.’
‘Do you have a room number, sir?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m just visiting.’ Sliding onto one of the velvet-covered stools, he rested his elbows on the polished wood counter.
Drinking in bars wasn’t something he did often, but there was something oddly reassuring about watching the barman move back and forth in front of the glinting bottles and the huge mirror.
His brain blanked for a split second, and then he blinked, refocused.
Because she was here. The woman in white.
He didn’t turn to look at her. There was no need.
He could see her reflection perfectly in the mirror.
And he wasn’t the only one looking at her.
The young men in their striped suits were throwing furtive glances in her direction, curious no doubt to see a woman like her on her own.
A beautiful woman. He could imagine their thought process.
Was she waiting for someone? Had she been stood up?
He knew because he was asking himself the same questions.
But the weird thing was he knew the answers.
His body tensed as, along with every other man in the bar, he watched her reflection slide off the stool with a feline grace that made everything in the room fade to a blur.
Keeping his expression neutral, he watched her walk towards him.
It was almost unbearable. And then suddenly she stopped.
‘You owe me a drink.’
He gestured towards the bar. ‘Take your pick.’
She hesitated, on purpose, he realised a moment later. Playing with him like a cat. Imagining all the ways they could play together made the planet tilt sharply.
‘Do you have any plans for the rest of the night?’ she said then, her question as direct as her gaze, and he felt it snap tight between them, the thread that had made it easy for him all evening to know where she was in a room full of people.
‘Why are you asking?’
She didn’t answer. Instead, she slid her hand into his jacket and pulled out a pen from the inside pocket. His pulse twitched as she took hold of his hand and wrote something across the palm. ‘In case you feel like watching the sunset.’
Ares stared down at his hand. She’d written a number. A phone number? Her room number? He looked up, intending to ask her, but she had vanished. Again.
The thought of her room, her bed, her on the bed made every hair on his body stand to attention, and he leaned forward, turning over his hand as the bartender approached.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Is there anywhere in the hotel I could watch the sun set?’
‘Yes, sir, the roof terrace. But unfortunately, it’s already closed for the night. Can I get you another drink, sir?’
Ares shook his head. ‘Just the bill.’
He took the lift to the top floor. Stepping out into the foyer, he spotted the door to the rooftop immediately. It had a keypad. Turning over his hand, he stared down at the number. He was suddenly unbearably conscious of the hammering of his heart.
This was insane. He didn’t even know her name. And then he remembered the directness of her question. Her cactus-green gaze out in the street as she’d fronted up to him.
She was beautiful. Sexy. Honest. He liked that. Picturing her face as she’d asked him about his plans, he tapped in the number. There was a soft click, and he pushed the door, half expecting it to set off an alarm. But no bells rang. No lights flashed.
In the air-conditioned interior of the hotel, he’d forgotten the heatwave and now the warm air hit him like a wall.
There was a fat crescent of sun still visible behind the London skyline, like an orange segment in a cocktail and there were lights, low-level ones that cast a soft glow across the roof terrace and the pool.
His blood thudded in his neck. And a similar glow across the woman in the pool.
Her hair was smooth against her skull, and he felt the shock of her beauty again as if they’d only just met.
‘According to the bartender this terrace is closed.’
She didn’t smile. ‘That explains why it’s so quiet.’
‘But not how you got the security code.’
He felt his breath catch as she leaned back a fraction, her eyes glittering. ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’
‘I thought you wanted to watch the sun set. I didn’t know you wanted to go for a swim.’
She watched him steadily as he walked towards the pool. ‘It’s still so hot, and the water’s cool.’
He bent down and let his fingers trail through the water. ‘It is. But I don’t have anything to wear in the pool.’
There was a pause, and he watched, his pulse beating jerkily as she started to swim, moving gracefully into the shallow end of the pool. ‘That’s okay,’ she said, and then he felt his body turn to stone as she rose up out of the water. ‘I don’t have anything either.’