Chapter 2
Jamie
Lucy said, ‘Oh my god, it’s an actual castle... And it’s beautiful.’
Jamie couldn’t blame her shocked reaction.
This first view of Kinlay Casle always got him too.
Rising up on the edge of a promontory, overlooking a loch, it was simply breathtaking.
Hundreds of years old, it was a formidable stone building, on three levels.
Battlements ran along the roof level and on either end there were towers with turrets on top.
Against the backdrop of the falling snow it was truly magical. But the idyllic fairytale exterior hid not so fairytale memories.
Lucy asked, ‘This is where you grew up?’
‘Here, and in London.’
Jamie marvelled that he was talking and making sense. Even though he still wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t having a snow-induced hallucination.
Was the woman he’d married in a moment of mostly lust (and some alcohol) induced madness really here on his family estate?
Yes. He could smell that distinctive scent he remembered. Something light and flowery but with earthy undertones. Like her.
Wearing a silk shirt that had turned practically transparent in the snow, giving him an eyeful of perfectly formed breasts encased in lace that had haunted him for three years.
And just thinking of that, his dick started to stiffen.
Mere minutes with this woman again and Jamie’s libido was surging back to hot life after laying dormant for a long time.
Since her. Well, that answered the variations on a question he’d put to himself on more occasions than he’d like to admit.
Would she still affect him? And, surely it had just been an aberration?
Apparently not.
He didn’t have to look at her to know the exact shade of green her eyes were.
Soft and mossy but they could also be fiery and.
...full of an emotion he didn’t want to see, like they had been on that last morning he’d seen her.
No. Not going there. They’d both agreed to walk away. That it had been a mistake.
‘I thought I’d be coming to a house. You never mentioned that you had a castle on a lough.’ She sounded slightly accusing.
Hence the reason he had got in contact with her now. He just hadn’t expected to see her within days of that letter being sent.
‘We didn’t do a whole lot of talking as far as I recall.’ His dick twitched again at that memory.
Unable to help himself, Jamie slid her a quick glance and she was facing forward, cheeks pink, mouth clamped shut.
Maybe she was remembering the same thing.
Her nose was straight and her mouth – when not clamped shut – was plump.
A firm little chin. Eyebrows a little darker than her hair that had a thousand shades of blonde and darker blonde.
She also had freckles across her nose and cheeks. She looked sweet and blonde and preppy but there was also something about her that had drawn him in the first moment he’d seen her. A kind of knowingness. A cynicism that he’d recognised.
It wasn’t that he’d never expected to see her again, but just not here. Right now. He’d thought he would see her on her turf. Neutral turf. This was way too close to home. Literally. It was an onslaught on the senses he hadn’t prepared for.
He told himself to get a grip. She’d actually done them a favour by coming here - they did have overdue business to attend to, which he had initiated.