The Real Romero(59)

                ‘When did all this explaining take place?’ Milly asked in frank bemusement.

                ‘When you were soaking in the bath for two hours,’ Lucas said drily. She thinks you’re impossibly brave. As I do...

                ‘And she believed you?’ Milly aimed for an incredulous laugh. ‘I know you could sell ice to Eskimos, Lucas, but women are very intuitive when it comes to stuff like that; when it comes to matters of the heart...’

                ‘Which is why she knows it’s the truth,’ Lucas told her with silky assurance. ‘She’s met you, talked to you and she knows—like we both do, Milly—that whatever you had with your ex-fiancé wasn’t love. You may be the jilted girlfriend, and that’s not a great place to be, but you’re not the heartbroken jilted girlfriend. So your little speech about feeling uncomfortable sitting too close to me because you’re nursing a broken heart is, frankly, a load of rubbish. Maybe you’re scared of being too close to me because you think I’m going to make a move on you...’

                And hadn’t the thought crossed his head more than once? Good job he had iron self-discipline and was smart enough to spot danger before it spotted him.

                ‘Not going to happen. Or maybe,’ he mused thoughtfully, ‘you’re scared because you think you might make a move on me...’

                Milly could feel herself burning up as he shoved his version of reality down her throat. There was nothing he said that had not occurred to her before, even if only in passing.

                And that included the shameful fact that she found the man physically attractive, that she had flirted with silly fantasies...

                ‘In your dreams,’ she told him tartly. But she heard the faint wobble in her voice. She wasn’t accustomed to playing these sorts of games. She was straightforward; she had never found herself in this kind of situation. She was walking in unchartered territory and it was only her survivor’s instinct that told her that, whatever she did, she should not show him that he was right. That maybe, just maybe, that bed held unspoken terrors for her because she could picture, far too easily, what it might be like to have him in it next to her...





                                      CHAPTER EIGHT

                MILLY GAZED AT her reflection in the mirror but she wasn’t really focusing on the face staring back at her. She was thinking of the past week and a half.

                Behind her, the king-size bed that had filled her with horror was just...a king-sized bed. Her fears had been unjustified. At least, unjustified except in the deepest, darkest corners of her mind where fantasies of Lucas still swirled around with dangerous strength, powerful riptides lying in wait for the appropriate moment to suck her under, or so it felt.

                They barely shared this private space. Antonia always retired before ten, at which point Milly would head upstairs, leaving Lucas downstairs, where he would work until the early hours of the morning. She neither heard nor saw him when he finally made it to the bedroom because she was always sound asleep. The only evidence he left that he occupied the room at all was the barely discernible imprint on the sofa where he had slept, because he was always up and moving by eight in the morning.

                The man hardly needed any sleep at all. She, on the other hand, had always been able to sleep for England.

                The linen he used for the sofa was always shoved neatly in the wardrobe.

                Twice she had woken needing the bathroom and her heart had been pounding as she had tiptoed her way past where he had lain sprawled and asleep, half-naked, the thin duvet barely covering him.