“That’s right.”
She smiled brightly, looking for some sign that he didn’t believe her story. Shadows fell across his golden skin, highlighting his full lips. Raindrops glistened on his slightly rumpled hair. He sat back casually in his seat, loose-limbed and at ease. A man with the confidence to be in command of the world.
She wondered if there was a way to make a man like that fall in love with a woman who knew precious little about the world.
“So I’m on my own, you see. I should probably go home ... to ... Omaha.”
“It seems a shame to go without seeing some of the sights.”
“That’s precisely what I was thinking. Do you ... do you think I can manage it? On my own?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?”
“I think you need a guide. Someone who knows his way around.”
She longed to believe there was a hint of innuendo in what he said. She tried her best to find an easy, flirty tone. “Where would I find someone like that?”
“I’ll give it some thought while we eat,” he said with a faint smile.
They sat in the soft glow from the fireplace, ate foul-tasting shepherd’s pie and drank a little too much of the dark, bitter ale. He told her about his family back home in the States—a kindly grandfather and an ailing father. Without going into the boring details, he mentioned their investment business, which had brought him to London. And she made up a lovely family, in which she was the oldest of three children living in a large two-story house. Her brother, sister, mother and father looked remarkably like the family in Father Knows Best.
She didn’t make that comparison aloud.
She told him she was studying classical literature in graduate school, the only subject she’d managed to learn much about in the years she’d flitted from one convent school to the next. She confessed that she’d never driven a car before she remembered that revelation might label her as unusual in America.
And when he learned that she didn’t yet have a place to stay, he took her to the home of a friend who operated a bed-and-breakfast out of her home. Mrs. Wentwhistle was a silver-haired lady with a hitch in her walk, and her home was a narrow, three-story Victorian in Parsons Green. It was three flights up to the refurbished attic.
Ash insisted on carrying up her valise for her. “It’s a good thing you’re not staying,” she said as he ducked the sloping ceiling.
He placed her valise in the chair beside the narrow bed tucked beneath a dormer window. “Is it?”
He came back to stand beside her now. He seemed very close. The room was small and he was not.
“Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. “It’s sized for me, not you.”
“That’s true.”
He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face. She imagined that he knew all her secrets.
“I’ll join you for breakfast, if that’s okay.”
“That would be lovely.”
He stepped back. “Then, until morning ...”
He was leaving. She thought she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he left without touching her. “You really should kiss me good-night.”
“I should?”
“Oh, yes.”
He stepped in her direction. Their bodies brushed. She felt the heat, caught the scent of him—faintly evergreen, like the cypress trees that had dotted the landscape at her favorite convent the year she’d turned sixteen.
“What kind of kiss?” he asked softly.
“What kind?”
He touched her hair where it trickled against her cheek. “A peck-on-the-cheek kiss? A brush-of-the-lips kiss? A lingering, promise-her-anything kiss?”
She closed her eyes as he spoke, contemplated each alternative, mesmerized by his deep, velvet voice and the images he conjured. “Oh. Well. What about the blistering, ravaging, curl-her-toes kiss? You forgot about that one.”
He chuckled, deep in his chest. “I think, with Mrs. Wentwhistle waiting downstairs, I’d better play it safe.”
Then he drew her into his arms and brushed his lips against hers. His were soft and they tasted of ale. He didn’t let her go.
“That’s really quite unsatisfactory,” she said.
He took her face in both his hands. He whispered against her lips. “I know.”
“You could try the lingering variety.”
“Maybe I should.”
“Oh, yes.”
He pressed his lips to hers again, gentle but insistent. She felt all of him pressed to her, as well. He was lean and hard and his hands cupped her head as he tilted her face to deepen the kiss. His tongue touched hers lightly, the promise of more, just as he had said. Had he not been holding her, Melina felt certain she would have melted right into the floor.
“Will that do until morning?” he murmured.
“Not in the least.”
“Then it must have been satisfactory.”
“Quite.”
She hung over the railing and watched as he circled down the stairs to the attic door. “But I’m holding out for blistering.”
“Let me guess. You’ve never done blistering.”
She smiled. So did he. The air between them crackled.
“You know me too well, Ash Thorndyke.”
“Let me assure you, Melinda Summersby, as your guide to London, you won’t leave for Omaha without experiencing all the city has to offer...”
He had delivered on both his promises—both the spoken one and the one in his kiss. By day, he showed her everything that made London charming, unique and memorable. They toured the Tower, rode double-decker buses, marveled over an exhibit of Queen Victoria’s clothing, cried over Romeo and Juliet at the reconstructed Globe Theatre. The changing of the guard, the tolling of Big Ben, the swarming pigeons at Trafalgar Square.
London by day was a magical adventure.
London by night was every woman’s fantasy of how she should be introduced to the ways of love.
Ash became her first lover and, she had been certain at the time, would be her only lover. He was tender and passionate, considerate and thrilling. He taught her everything only guessed at or dreamed of by a girl raised in convents. Ash Thorndyke was the man she’d been hoping for all her life.
When he left her at Mrs. Wentwhistle’s on their fourteenth night, she perched on her knees and watched from the dormer window as he headed for the tube. She loved his loose, easy walk. She loved everything about him.
“I love you,” she whispered to his retreating figure.
The need to tell him so was becoming an impatient ache. But she knew she couldn’t tell him how she felt until she told him the truth about herself. She made up her mind as he turned the corner. She would tell him tomorrow. Then there would be nothing in the way of their love.
Except that he didn’t come the next day.
When she phoned his hotel, he was gone. Checked out. Only then did she realize she knew nothing about him, not the town he was from, not the name of his family business. Nothing.
Except that he was not the man she’d believed him to be.