The Billionaire Affair. Diana Hamilton

She selected the one at the top of the bundle and began to read. A few lines were enough to tell her that they’d been deeply in love with each other, a few more told her that the young Reginald Harvey had adored and worshipped his beautiful bride-to-be.

      She slipped the letter back in its envelope and bound it back with the others, her fingers shaking. This was personal and private and showed her a side of her father she had never known existed. He had been capable of a love so strong and enduring it practically sang from the faded pages.

      Clutching the letters, she got to her feet, her eyes blurred with sudden tears. And saw him. She couldn’t breathe.

      She hadn’t given Ben Dexter a single thought for the last couple of hours but now he was standing in the open attic doorway, watching her. And he filled her head, the whole drowsy, dusty space. The atmosphere was charged with his presence.

      If she’d explained to her father—the thought came fleetingly—just how deeply she’d been in love with Ben Dexter instead of stubbornly remaining mute, her eyes defiant, then perhaps he would have understood. He had known the type of love that could enthral, that could bind one person to another with a special kind of magic.

      Just as swiftly that thought was replaced by something much more cynical: it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. Even if her father could have been persuaded to approve of her relationship with the village wild boy instead of threatening fire and brimstone there wouldn’t have been a happy ending. The black-eyed, half tamed, young Dexter had never loved her. Had just lied about it because he’d wanted sex with her, happy enough to go find it elsewhere when he’d had a fistful of her father’s money as a pay-off.

      Now the downward sweep of his eyes, the curl of his long, hard mouth told her that he’d noted her weird appearance and had fastened on what was obvious: the clear outline of her svelte body showing through the ghastly overall, modesty secured, but only just, by the tiny black bra and briefs.

      Quelling the impulse to run right out of here, she lifted her chin a fraction higher and coolly asked, ‘You wanted something?’

      ‘You.’

      Eyes like molten jet swept up and locked with hers and for a moment she thought he meant it. Meant just that. Her bones trembled, heat fizzing through her veins, her breath lodging in her throat. Until a deep cleft slashed between his dark brows, the lazy, taunting smile wiped away as he moved closer.

      Of course he hadn’t meant he wanted her the way he once had. Wildly, passionately, possessively. He just wanted to check the hired help was actually working, not sitting somewhere with her feet up, painting her nails.

      Which was just as well because she didn’t want him, most certainly she didn’t. Until he touched her, the merest brush of the backs of his fingers as he stroked the heavy fall of midnight hair away from her face and everything inside her melted in the shattering conflagration of present desire and remembered ecstasy.