The belated recognition hit her as she struggled to focus. Her entire body felt as though she’d just run a marathon—not that she ever had or in all probability ever would. But last night...last night!
Her green eyes snapped wide open as the memory of the night before hit her like a bolt of lightning. At least that explained the aches in places she hadn’t known she had.
She pressed a hand to her left breast where her heart was trying to batter its way through her ribcage. The rush of blood in her ears was a deafening roar as she turned her head slowly...very, very slowly. What if she’d been dreaming? She gritted her teeth, prepared for an anticlimax that never came.
A fractured sigh left her parted lips... It was real, not a dream; he wasn’t a dream.
She blinked, bringing the face on the pillow next to hers into focus. A stab of sizzling longing lanced through Lily’s body as she greedily absorbed the details of his symmetrical features, committing each plane and angle to memory. Not that she would ever forget him or last night!
He had a face that inspired a second glance and inevitably a third. The sleeping man’s chiselled bone structure was dramatic, a broad intelligent forehead, high carved cheekbones, square chin with a sexy cleft, thick darkly defined brows, an aquiline nose and wide, expressive mouth. If pushed to select an individual feature that set him apart, Lily decided it would have been his eyes.
Beneath heavy lids and framed by lashes that were as dark as his hair and crazily long, his eyes were the deepest, most electrifying blue she had ever seen.
Looking at his sleeping face now, there was something different about him. It took her a few seconds to work out that the subtle difference was something that wasn’t there. It was an absence of the restless energy that hung about him like an invisible force field when he was awake.
It would have been an overstatement to say it made him look vulnerable, but it did make him look younger. Even with the dusting of stubble in the hollows of his cheeks and across his jaw there were enough reminders of his younger self to make Lily’s thoughts slip back. Memories that were now tinged with a rose-tinted nostalgia that had been absent that first time she’d seen him.
She’d known about him, of course. The estate, where her father was the head gardener, and the village had been buzzing with gossip about Benedict, the boy born with the silver spoon, the boy doted on by his proud grandfather. While everyone else had got excited about the fact that he had just moved into the big house, Lily had nursed a quiet and growing resentment.
Warren Court, one of the most important houses still in private hands in the country, was just five hundred yards from the estate cottage where Lily lived. She had known, even then, that in all other ways it was a planet, a whole universe, away. She had been totally prepared—actually determined—to dislike the rich boy.
And then her dad had died and she’d forgotten about Benedict, not even seeing him standing beside his grandfather at the funeral. She had thought no one had seen her slip away when she’d escaped from the churchyard and headed for the pond where her dad had skipped stones from one side to the other.
Something he’d never do any more.
She’d picked up a big stone, weighing it in her hand before launching it into the air. Her heart had felt like the stone as she’d watched it sink, then another and another until her arm had ached and her face had been wet with the tears she’d ignored. But she hadn’t been able to ignore the voice or the crunch of leaves as someone had come to stand behind her.
‘No, not like that, you need a flat one and it’s all in the wrist action. See...’ She’d watched the stone skip lightly across the water.
‘I can’t do it.’
‘Yes, you can. It’s easy.’
‘I can’t!’ Fists clenched, she had rounded angrily on him, tilting her head because he was so tall. She’d vented her grief and frustration at the intruder, screaming, ‘My dad is dead and I hate you!’
That was when she’d seen his eyes. So blue, so filled with sympathy as he’d nodded and said simply, ‘I know, it stinks.’ Then he’d handed her another stone and she could still remember how it had felt smooth and cold on her hand. ‘Try this one,’ he’d said.
By the time they’d left, she had made a stone skip three times and she had decided she was in love.
It had been inevitable really. Lily had craved romance and the boy who was almost a man had seemed like the amalgam of all the heroes in the novels she devoured. Not only had he lived in a castle, but to her youthful self he had seemed like the embodiment of a dark and brooding hero. Mature—he was five years older than her—sporty, sophisticated. Lily had woven an intricate web of wildly unrealistic fantasies around him. Fantasies she’d dreamed would come true. Until the night of the ball...
* * *
She had been waiting for weeks for the annual estate workers’ Christmas party, hosted by Benedict’s grandfather in the massive Elizabethan hall of Warren Court, where her mother was now the housekeeper. She knew that Benedict, who had graduated from Oxford that summer and was doing something important in the City, according to his grandfather, would be there.
Lily had spent hours getting ready. Persuaded Lara, who had much better fashion sense and many more clothes thanks to the tips she got at the hotel where she waitressed on Saturdays, to lend her a dress. Then finally Benedict had arrived and the first thing she’d noticed was how different he’d looked, remote somehow in his sleek dark suit. Before she’d had time to absorb all the details, she’d seen that he wasn’t alone.
‘I am so-o-o bored, darling.’ The tall designer-dressed blonde, who had spent the night sneering, hadn’t even bothered lowering her upper-crust voice with its tortured vowels as she’d drawled, ‘When can we leave? You didn’t tell me the place would be full of the local yokels.’
Followed by Lara never missing an opportunity to tease Lily about her ill-disguised crush. ‘Drooling, Lil? So not a good look, sweetie. If you want him, go get him.’
Lily had finally snapped. ‘I don’t want him. I don’t even like him! He’s boring and totally up himself!’ she’d declared before she’d turned and seen Benedict standing behind her.
Since that embarrassing moment she hadn’t seen him or thought about him, not for years. Obviously his high profile meant that she saw his name sometimes, though not often—the financial pages were not really her thing and she didn’t have a clue what an investment tycoon was.
What she hadn’t expected was to bump into him coming out of a bookshop.
She didn’t believe in fate but...well, what else explained it? She had walked out of the door and at the exact same moment he had been walking by. Blinded by a strand of hair whipped across her face by a gust of wind, she had walked into him. Not any of the other people walking by—Benedict.
Coming out of her reverie, she clenched her hands tight as she fought the compulsion to touch his cheek. His deeply tanned skin was dusted with stubble that was the same ebony shade as the thick hair he wore cropped short. He was sleeping so peacefully and, though sleep had ironed out the lines of strain that ran from his nose to his mouth, the dark shadows under his eyes remained. Tired looked sexy on him, she decided as her fascinated gaze lingered on the shadow cast by his long spiky eyelashes against sharp cheekbones.
She released the breath trapped in her tight chest in a slow sibilant sigh. He was beautiful. Yesterday she’d had to bite her tongue to stop herself saying it, then she hadn’t. She’d said it over and over, she’d said it in between kisses and while she’d kissed her way across his chest.
They were lovers.
Her first... She hugged the knowledge to herself, a dreamy expression drifting into her eyes as her thoughts slid back to yesterday and the moment that had changed her life. It had changed her; she felt like