Ran could still remember how bitterly, furiously angry he had been, how humiliated he had felt... He had made sure that he kept his distance from Sylvie after that, even if Sylvie herself had not made that particularly easy. He had been twenty-seven then, ten years older than Sylvie. A man, whilst she was still only a child.
A child... A child who had told him passionately that she loved and wanted him; a child who had demanded even more passionately that he love her back, that he make love to her...with her...that he show her...teach her...take her...
He could have wrung her pretty little neck for that...wrung it or— He could still remember how she had defied him, flinging herself into his arms, wrapping them round him, pressing her soft lips against him...
Then, he had managed to resist her...just...that time...
She had always been so passionately intense. It was perhaps no wonder that the love she had professed to feel for him had ultimately turned to loathing and hatred.
And now she was coming back. Not just to England but here, to Haverton, into his home...his life...
What would she be like? Beautiful, of course; that went without saying... Her mother had told him as much when he had bumped into her—not that he needed telling; it had been blindingly obvious even when she was a child that ultimately she would be an extraordinarily beautiful woman.
‘You’ll know, of course, that Sylvie is working in New York...for a billionaire...’ Belinda had cooed happily at him, smiling with satisfaction.
‘He’s totally besotted with her of course,’ she had added, and though it hadn’t been put into as many words Ran had gained the distinct impression from Sylvie’s mother that the relationship between Sylvie and Lloyd was rather more than that of merely employer and employee...
It had come as something of a shock to him later, when he met Lloyd, to recognise how much older than Sylvie he actually was, but he had told himself that if Sylvie chose to have as her lover a man who was plainly so much older than her then that was her business and no one else’s.