CHAPTER TWO
LILYCOULDN’TMOVE. She wanted to, but she felt winded and dizzy.
He was alive. He was alive.
She lifted her hand, wanting, needing to touch him, to prove that he was real, then pressed it against her throat, to where her pulse was pounding out of time.
‘How? When?’ Her voice was barely a breath. ‘I thought you were—’ Lost. Dead. Gone for ever. She couldn’t say the words out loud.
He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I got unavoidably delayed.’
When she didn’t respond, his forehead creased infinitesimally and he fished out his phone and swiped across the screen.
She stared down at the picture. Trip was striding up the steps in front of the Winslow Building just as if it were any other day. Words jumped out at her from the accompanying story. Captive. Cartel. Escape.
Her mind was a bumper car, jolting back and forth and side to side as questions slammed into each other. ‘Is this true?’ she managed finally.
‘It’s a version of the truth. The kind that sells papers.’
It was too much, him being here. The force of him, being so alive and real, his body filling the doorway, broad-chested and taller than in her memory, those arresting blue eyes and lips that she knew could send ripples of heat rolling through her like wildfire. The shock of him and the chaotic emotions provoked by his presence filled her head, her chest. That was why she couldn’t breathe, she told herself. Why her body felt as if it were coming apart at the seams, why she felt as if it belonged to someone else.
‘Why are you here?’ she said hoarsely.
‘I wanted to see you. To let you know that I was back, in person. I didn’t want you to hear it from the news.’
‘Well, now I’ve heard—’ Relief and other nameless feelings she couldn’t, wouldn’t acknowledge were swept away by an anger she had never felt before and she tried to shut the door but he wedged his foot in it as they did in old black and white films.
‘What are you doing?’ she snapped.
‘We need to talk.’
‘By “we” you mean you, because I have nothing to say to you.’ She frowned. ‘Oh, actually, yes, I do. It’s goodbye.’
She pushed against the door, but he held it open easily.
‘I’m happy to do the talking. Come on, Lily. I’ve just come back from the dead.’ The curl to his mouth made her feel off balance. ‘Surely you can give me five minutes.’
‘Fine. You have five minutes and then you will leave.’
She let go of the door and he shrugged away from the frame and strolled past her.
Her breath was running wild in her chest.
Her eyes glanced over his superbly tailored and no doubt paralyzingly expensive dark suit and white shirt, over the scratches and his slightly too long hair that gave him the untamed air of a Hollywood action hero.
The stupidity of their mismatched relationship made her stomach clench.
‘I must say you don’t seem very pleased to see me,’ he said, stopping in the middle of the sitting room and turning to face her.
Her heart lurched. Pleased didn’t exactly cover the vortex of emotions churning inside her.
‘I’m glad you’re safe.’ She spoke to a point slightly above his left shoulder but her peripheral vision was greedily filling in the details so that she knew he was staring at her with those intensely blue eyes, and that his glossy brown hair was falling across his face.
‘That’s it?’ He moved towards her and she had to dig her heels into the cream carpet to stop herself from stepping backwards. ‘It’s a little underwhelming, wouldn’t you say?’
There was a mocking note in his voice and quite suddenly she was furious again. How could he joke about any of this?
‘What were you expecting? A ticker-tape parade?’ She spoke briskly. Oh, why had she agreed to let him in? She had prayed for him to be alive but now that he was, now that he was here, it was making her head spin.
‘The mayor called on my way over here and offered, but I said no,’ he said in that casual drawl that tugged at each of her nerve endings separately. ‘I didn’t want any fuss made. Not from him, anyway. But you...’ He paused, his eyes locking with hers. ‘I was hoping you might be a little more expressive. I mean, we were going out—’
It was a trick, a hook, and he was taunting her to take the bait. She knew that and yet she still couldn’t stop her head from snapping round.
‘We never went out.’
His eyes were clear and intensely blue. ‘No, you’re right. We always stayed in.’
The trap slammed shut. A prickling heat skated across her skin and she felt her body tighten. Everywhere. Her heart was pounding as if she were running hard, and that was what she should be doing. Running as fast and as far as she could from this beautiful, dangerous man.
He made her want things, and she knew all too well how wanting could make you lose sight of what mattered. She had done so before with Cameron and there had been horrific, far-reaching consequences. But it had been different with Trip. They weren’t friends. They hadn’t talked or gone out on dates. There had been no promises made, no expectations, and she had liked that he wasn’t hers to lose. The fact that they had been using each other for sex was a kind of equality she’d found thrilling in some way.
And yet it had hurt more than it should when he’d ended things. And now that he was here, standing in front of her, it hurt to look at him, to remember what they’d had.
‘To be honest what happened between us was so brief it kind of slipped my mind,’ she said coolly.
He paused, just for a second. ‘Then maybe it’s time I jogged your memory.’
She felt suddenly unsteady on her feet, like a boxer on the ropes. Pressing her nails into her palms, she forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘I’m not a fan of retrospectives. Personally, I find it better to live in the present.’
He was facing the window and in the sunlight through the glass his pupils were almost invisible, so that she felt as though she were drowning in the blue of his irises.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ he said softly. ‘So here I am, ready to engage.’
She stared at him in confusion and felt a shiver of apprehension ripple down her spine. ‘With what? You came to tell me you were back, and you have, so what else is there?’
‘I told you. I want to talk.’ There was a split second of silence, and then he said softly, ‘About you and me. About us.’
The word reverberated around the room as she shook her head. ‘There is no us.’ There were just darkness and bodies and warm breath and damp skin.
The sudden force of her heartbeat made her reach out and grip the back of an armchair.
‘Not currently,’ he said after a moment. ‘But there could be. I want there to be.’
The bluntness of that statement made her feel hot inside, scalded almost. She felt her face grow warm and she knew that she was blushing.
‘And why would you want that?’ she said stiffly, hating him, but hating herself more for the shiver that ran over her skin.
He stared down at her, that mouth of his curving up. ‘Because we have a connection.’
That was one word for it. For a moment she saw herself on the bed upstairs, breathless with wanting him, arms stretched out above her head, wrists in his hand, her body arching to meet his, tilting her hips up, driving herself against him. And his face above her, eyes dark and bright with a heat that seemed to pour straight into her.
‘You’re unbelievable.’ She took an unsteady step backwards, anger blotting out the memory of their ‘connection’. ‘Seriously? Did you come all the way over here because you thought I might have sex with you? Because that isn’t going to happen.’ It shouldn’t have happened before.
She knew it then. Knew that she was playing with fire. Although truthfully it had felt more as if she were dancing around the mouth of an active volcano, because even when he wasn’t the focus of an international search and rescue, Trip made headlines. All those weeks playing hide and seek with the paparazzi had been part of the thrill of it, but if anyone had caught them, then what?
She shivered. And it would all be so much worse now.
Shaking her head, she met his gaze. ‘Look, what we had worked for a few months, but it ended and frankly I’m done sneaking around like some grounded teenager. Next time I decide to see someone it will be out in the open, public. Real.’
‘Real?’ He frowned. ‘You mean love?’
Did she? Like most people, she hoped love might happen one day. That someone would love and cherish and honour her. But given that the only time she’d imagined herself in love, she had been humiliated and deceived and made to feel like a fool, it was more an ideal right now than a likelihood.
It certainly wasn’t going to happen with Trip. There were just too many differences between them. She had ignored that with Cameron and her brother was still paying the price.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Not bitten...mauled, she thought, throat tightening as she heard Cameron’s voice. Why would any man settle for you?
Blanking her mind, she lifted her chin. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Unsurprisingly Trip looked baffled, but then it seemed unlikely that love, the true, everlasting kind, the sort that involved promises to be kept and commitments to be honoured, the ‘growing old and sick together’ variety, came high on his agenda.
‘Or something like it.’ She felt suddenly self-conscious. Why was she even talking about love with Trip Winslow? This was a man who had turned up on her doorstep hoping for an afternoon of sex without strings.
‘Something like it,’ he repeated slowly. ‘And what would it look like, that something?’
‘I don’t know.’ She glared at him. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It might. You see, in answer to your question, no, I didn’t come all the way over here because I thought you might have sex with me.’ He gave her a long, steady look, as if he was trying to see beneath her skin.
‘I came here to ask you to marry me.’
If he’d asked her to fly to the moon with him, she couldn’t have been more shocked. For a moment, she just stared at him, and then she gave a small, brittle laugh.
‘You think I’m joking?’ His eyes had narrowed.
‘Yes, of course. Obviously.’ Abruptly she sobered up. ‘Although it’s not a very funny joke.’
‘It’s not a joke at all. I want you to marry me.’
‘Have you lost your mind?’ She held up her hand as he opened his mouth to reply. ‘You don’t need to answer that. Clearly you have. Why else would you be asking me to be your wife?’
‘Because I have a problem,’ he said in that smooth way of his, all silk on the surface, but steel beneath. ‘I want it to go away and I think you can help make that happen. Just in the short term.’
‘By marrying you?’ She met his gaze. ‘Sorry to burst your bubble, but from where I’m standing that sounds more like a problem than a solution.’
For a moment he didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned forward and picked up the swatch of blue silk that she’d been considering for the curtains.
‘I like this colour,’ he said softly. It was almost an exact match for his eyes, and she felt her face grow warm as he rubbed it between his fingers. Remembering the urgent press of his hands on her and the dark hunger in his eyes, she felt a sharp heat shoot through her and, terrified that he would see it on her face, she snatched the swatch from his hand.
‘Well, I don’t. I prefer the green, and stop pretending you care about my curtains. Or me. All we did was have sex—’
‘We did.’ His gaze dropped to where she could feel her pulse beating in her throat.
Ignoring the shiver of something hot and liquid trembling across her skin, Lily glared at him. ‘Sex isn’t a reason to get married. Thank you, but no, I don’t want to marry you.’
There was a short silence and then he turned towards her, and she felt a current of awareness spill over her skin. She was over him in every way it was possible to be over a man. Unfortunately, her body didn’t appear to have received that memo.
‘I need this.’
His voice sounded taut. There was anger there but frustration too, and pain. ‘You see, Winslow is my business. It’s my name above the door. I’m the majority shareholder, but some of my shares are held in a trust and if the trustees think that the actions of the CEO are incompatible with or detrimental to the effective running of the business, then they can remove him or her.’
She gave a humourless laugh.
‘You mean for some baffling reason they would have preferred that the man in charge hadn’t got himself held prisoner by a drug cartel in an Ecuadorian rainforest?’ She shook her head. ‘How unreasonable of them.’
His gaze didn’t flicker but she saw a dangerous glint in his blue eyes. ‘I went to Ecuador to go white water rafting.’
A pulse of anger beat across her skin. ‘On some of the most dangerous rapids in the world, so you knew there was a possibility you might drown. You just hadn’t factored in getting shot at or being held captive or getting lost in a rainforest.’ She felt a stab of pain, imagining his beautiful eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky. How dared he risk his life for some stupid momentary thrill? Tears pricked behind her eyes, and she blinked them away, stonewalling the feeling as she watched his face harden.
‘I don’t have a death wish so, no, I wasn’t thinking I might drown. I like the challenge, the purpose. There’s a clarity in the moment—’
‘In the moment?’ She cut across him. ‘And what about the aftermath? Everyone thought you were dead. Half the Ecuadorian police force was looking for you.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s their job.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, I’m sure that’s why they signed up for public service. To search for stupid “thrillionaires” who get themselves abducted.’
His eyes didn’t leave hers as his jaw tightened, his expression hard and unforgiving and she saw the emotion smouldering there, the male pride and arrogance. ‘I’ve already had one lecture this morning. I didn’t come here for another.’
‘That’s a pity, because that’s all you’re getting from me,’ she said crisply. ‘But don’t worry, I’m sure there are queues of women who will be more than willing to accept your proposal,’ she said, keeping her eyes averted from the temptingly smooth, tanned skin of his arms. ‘I don’t even know why you asked me. You want a wife, and we barely managed a two-month one-night stand.’
His eyes rested on her face. ‘I don’t remember you complaining at the time. Moaning, gasping, crying out my name, sure...but not complaining.’
There was a hoarse softness in his voice that made her shiver, remembering the noises she’d made as she had come apart in his arms and against his mouth. It was suddenly difficult to breathe, much less speak.
She gritted her teeth. It wasn’t fair of him to talk about the two of them in those moments. But then what did he know of fairness? He took his looks and charm, and wealth, for granted, assuming that they were his by right. He had never looked in the mirror and felt like an imposter or a let-down. Had never been surrounded by his peers and felt out of his depth.
Meeting his gaze, she shrugged. ‘So I enjoyed having sex with you. That’s all it was. I’m not going to take part in some charade of a marriage to get you out of a hole you dug yourself.’
He made a noise that was a mix of irritation and impatience. ‘But it’s not just my hole any more. It’s our hole. Officially. In that it’s in the open, public. Real. As far as they’re concerned.’
They? The apprehension she had felt earlier was no longer a ripple but a huge, towering wave. ‘Did you tell someone that you were going to come here and ask me to marry you?’
He shook his head.
‘I didn’t, no. It wouldn’t have made sense. You see, I’d already told them we were engaged. That we were engaged before I left the States.’ Now, he was shrugging off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves just like some husband in a sitcom.
‘Look, believe me, I don’t want to get married either, but I’m not going to lose my business over one holiday from hell. I need to look as if I’m changing. That’s why I need a wife. The trustees my father appointed are his peers. They have his values. They see marriage as a stabilising influence. They were putting pressure on me and I needed a name. But it had to be to the right woman. You know, someone reliable, sensible, unadventurous.’
She lifted her chin. ‘And you thought of me? How flattering.’ Curling her fingers into her palms, she stared at him, humiliated that was the only reason he had chosen her. Did he think, because she wasn’t some leggy model type with bee-stung lips, that she didn’t have feelings?
‘And it did the trick. You should have seen their faces light up. They like you, Lily.’
He had it all worked out, she thought, wishing she had never opened the door and let him back into her home, into her life.
‘I’m sure they do. It’s you that’s the problem.’ Taking a jagged breath, she shook her head. ‘But you’re not my problem.’ He had never been her anything, nor did she want him to be. Twisting her wrist, she tapped her watch. ‘And you’ve had your five minutes. So I suggest you call up your trustees and tell them you made a mistake. That you spoke rashly. I’m sure they’ll have no trouble believing you. You can see yourself out, can’t you?’
Spinning away from him, she walked over to the far side of the room and flicked through one of the fabric books that Samantha had left behind. There was silence and she felt rather than saw him move. Her chest tightened with both relief and misery that he could find it so easy to walk away, but then he’d had practice.
She heard a rustling sound and, frowning, she turned and felt her stomach drop. Trip was lounging on the sofa, flicking through a magazine, his long legs stretched in front of him. Glancing up at her, he held it open.
‘There was a good turnout that night, wasn’t there? It’s a nice photo too.’
For a moment she didn’t respond, couldn’t respond. She was too fazed by the picture. It had been taken the night of the auction when she had opened her tablet only to find that she hadn’t uploaded her speech.
The same night that she and Trip had sex for the first time.
They were standing together, not touching, but she could remember how it had felt standing so close to him, his height, the curve of his muscles, the lightning snap of his eyes and that energy fizzing off his skin.
Her eyes fixed on the photograph. He looked like he always did. A masterclass in symmetry and flawless masculinity. Cool, confident, at ease with the cameras, whereas she...
Throat tightening, her gaze shifted to her own face.
She looked stiff and dazed. Partly because she was still reeling from the shock of Trip stepping up and giving a speech without any planning or preparation, but also because growing up with train-track braces had left her horribly self-conscious about smiling.
‘It’s just a photo.’
He was shaking his head. ‘It’s a story. The start of a fairy tale in New York.’ His eyes on hers were as soft and intimate as a caress. ‘A man and a woman who grew up in the same city, paths never quite crossing until, one day, fate pushes them together and they become lovers.’
Lovers. The word fizzed in her mouth and she felt heat break out on her skin. Trip wasn’t the first man she’d had sex with, but he was her first lover.
Before him, she had understood the mechanics of sex and it had always been pleasant enough, only she hadn’t been able to see why everyone made it into such a big deal.
Trip had made her see.
It had been revelatory. Sex with him had been wild, frantic. It had snatched her breath away. Left her reeling and hollowed out with a need she had never felt before. The more they’d touched and kissed and caressed, the more she’d wanted, and, like an addict, she’d lost touch with reality so that for the first time in her entire life she had felt beautiful, special.
But then he’d ended it.
Out of the blue. Just turned up, twitching with an anger she hadn’t understood, still didn’t understand, and he had ended it with her.
Folding her arms protectively in front of her body, she said coolly, ‘Have you forgotten which way the door is?’
He let the magazine drop open onto the coffee table. ‘Nice swerve, but I know you remember what we had. We could build on that.’ His voice was a lazy drawl that played havoc with her nerve endings.
She gave him an icy glare. ‘What I remember is you telling me that it had all gone on a little longer than you planned.’ She could hear the bitterness in her voice, but she didn’t care. All the pent-up confusion and anger and fear of the last few weeks seemed to have coalesced into one accusatory stream. ‘What I remember is you standing in this room, itching to be gone.’
‘And now I’m back.’
He got to his feet and she felt her body tense and soften at the same time as he walked towards her. She took a defensive step away from him, but he kept moving. Pressing the soles of her shoes into the rug, she held up a hand.
‘Don’t come any closer—’
‘Because you don’t trust yourself.’ His teasing, dangerously sensuous mouth pulled into a smile that made her breath go shallow.
‘Because you will regret it if you do,’ she said stiffly.
The gleam in his eyes got more intense, and he took an infinitesimal step towards her.
‘Why? Are you going to smother me with some swatches?’
He jerked the fabric in her hand and she should have just let go, but she didn’t and he pulled her closer, drawing her in so hard and fast she had to push her hand against his chest to stop him. It was like fireworks exploding, sparking out from that point of contact, making her skin burn and heat race through her and she wanted to jerk her hand away, only that would make obvious the effect he was having on her, and she would rather set fire to herself than do that.
‘Back off, Trip, or so help me I will call Security.’
‘You mean Carlos?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I saw him on the way in, enjoying a hot dog and a frankly unfeasibly large portion of fries. No judgement. Next time I come over I’ll give you a heads-up, that way he might have a chance of getting here before things get out of hand.’
A shiver spread down her spine. She knew exactly how out of hand things could get between her and Trip, and so did her body. Feeling her nipples harden, she let go of the swatch and took a step backwards, her heart racing.
‘There won’t be a next time,’ she snapped. ‘You can’t seriously think I want to see you again, let alone marry you. Why would I? I don’t need your money or your surname. In fact, I’m struggling to think of exactly what I would get out of your crackpot arrangement.’
She felt the ripple of that put-down spread outwards to the corners of the room, but Trip didn’t react. He just stared at her, his blue gaze bright and hot and intent in a way that made her feel as if she were an animal in a trap.
‘I suppose you’d get the same as you got before,’ he said slowly.
There was a tense, electric moment she could feel everywhere.
She knew from the streak of colour touching his incredible cheekbones what he was talking about. Her body did too, because the air changed then. Or maybe it was the light. Whatever it was, she felt it snap taut, that quivering, electric thing between them that she’d been telling herself wasn’t real.
Ignoring the heat flaring low in her pelvis, she stiffened her shoulders and met his gaze. ‘That was then. This is now. Like I said earlier, I don’t feel the same way as I did.’
She forced herself to hold his gaze as her lie ping-ponged round the room but all she was really aware of was the blue of his gaze washing over her like a wave, pulling her towards him and out into deeper, more dangerous water.
‘Are you sure about that?’
Her belly clenched as he lifted his hand and smoothed her cheek, and the feel of his hand against her skin was so familiar and so irresistible that she stared up at him, mute and paralysed, incapable of convincing herself to do what was sensible and right, which would be to tell him to leave, to tell him that she was sure, could not be any surer.
But instead she said nothing. Did nothing even as he moved closer so that they were a breath apart now. His blue gaze was jewel bright on hers, striking against her skin like a match and she couldn’t look away, couldn’t bear to think that he would never look at her like that again.
She wanted to savour it. To let it linger on her tongue one last time, breathe in its intoxicating scent and let it roll through her like wildfire.
Maybe that was why she did nothing when he bent his head and fused his mouth to hers.
And just like that she forgot her anger and her outrage. She forgot that she was anything but a woman with needs. And as he curved his arm around her waist to pull her closer, she leaned into him, curling her fingers into the fabric of his shirt.
Oh, how she had missed this, missed him. She could feel herself melting, body softening and stirring at the same time with that same yearning need that only Trip had ever satisfied, and she wanted him so much, wanted him here, now...
As if he could read her mind or, more likely, her body, she felt his hand slide beneath the thin fabric of her blouse to find hot bare skin and her lips parted against his as his fingers stroked the swell of her breast, the nipple hardening.
It was like being on a merry-go-round, everything blurring into a shivering streak of vivid colour and hot, bright light.
She moaned softly against his mouth, and it was that sound that penetrated her brain. Suddenly she could hear Trip’s voice inside her head.
‘I don’t remember you complaining at the time. Moaning, gasping, crying out my name, sure...but not complaining.’
And here she was again, moaning, lost in her desire and the muscle memory of those frantic, feverish months together as if he hadn’t opened her up and carved out her heart while it was still beating.
She jerked her mouth away, pushing at his broad chest, and he stepped back unsteadily, releasing his grip, his blue eyes blazing with both frustration and a barely concealed triumph.