Lola was no stranger to childhood pain, and she winced in distress as she tried to imagine his anguish at being left an orphan at such a tender age. ‘Oh, Geraint,’ she said softly. ‘How on earth did you manage?’
She saw the sudden deep lines of pain that scored his face, but they were gone again almost immediately—as though over many years he had schooled his expression so as never to betray them.
‘My sister brought me up,’ he told her, smiling for the first time, but the smile was laced with something bitter which Lola could not, for the life of her, work out. ‘She sacrificed her place at university in order to give me mine, years later—and for that I shall forever be in her debt.’ He turned to catch the eye of a waiter, and in profile his proud, craggy features might have been hewn from stone.
But by the time a bottle of mineral water had been placed on the table he seemed to have recovered his usual self-assurance and a frosty light which glittered in the depths of his grey eyes warned Lola that he would not tolerate her sympathy—however well-intentioned.
‘So you’ve heard all my secrets, Lola,’ he told her silkily. ‘Now I think it’s your turn, don’t you?’
Lola felt squirmingly uncomfortable at the way he was looking at her. Because it was no longer desire that she read in his grey eyes, nor even a benign interest. Instead, there was an air of detachment about him, a sudden air of almost icy curiosity which made Lola’s throat clam up nervously, and it took several mouthfuls of the gin and tonic he had ordered for her before the courage of her convictions returned, and she was able to face him with a resolute air.
‘What do you want to hear?’ she asked quietly.
‘Oh, the usual stuff.’
His voice was so brittle, Lola thought. It was almost as if he had decided that, having confided in her, he now needed to step back, become a cold and untouchable stranger. Was he always so unpredictable? she wondered. ‘How jaded you sound!’ she told him honestly.
‘Do I?’
‘But then I suppose you have women pouring their hearts out to you all the time.’
He gave an odd smile. ‘I’m not giving any secrets away, sweetheart—if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Did that mean he was discreet?
Lola wondered sightly hysterically just how many other women had paraded their upbringing in front of him like this, on request. Had some of them perhaps embellished their early years, in order to impress him—moulded them to a degree, by means of oversight or exaggeration, so as to measure up to what they thought he wanted of them?
Well, not Lola! Hers had been an unremarkable, isolated and often lonely childhood, but she had always refused to sentimentalise it.
‘I spent my early life in a small village called Taverton, in Cornwall,’ she told him starkly. ‘My mother still lives there.’
‘And your father?’
‘He died when I was eleven.’ Lola took a quick gulp of her drink and then regretted it as the tonic fizzed its way uncomfortably down her throat.
‘That’s something we have in common, then,’ he said quietly. His voice sounded strained—as though the fact was a shock to him, and an unwelcome one at that.
‘Yes.’ Lola looked up as once again the understanding flowed between them like a warm current, as it had done last night at the tennis club, and she suddenly realised how easy it would be to fall for him. To really fall for him.
He narrowed his grey eyes consideringly. ‘So you haven’t lived at home for—how long?’
‘Seven years. I’m twenty-five.’ She tried to inject a little enthusiasm into her voice, to act as if this was a gentle getting-to-know-you chat, instead of an interrogation by a master inquisitor—which was how it felt!
He put his glass down on the table and smiled, as if he had resolved to lighten the mood by changing the subject. ‘And have you always wanted to fly?’ he asked, his eyes never leaving her face.
Lola nodded. Flying had been her whole life, really—and her enthusiasm for it had never waned. ‘Always!’ she told him. ‘I had never even been on an aeroplane before—and yet I knew that I wanted to be an air stewardess right from the word go. I got the job with Atalanta at eighteen, and I’ve been with them ever since.’
He leaned back in his chair and watched as the waiter placed a plate of tossed green salad in front of her.
‘So what is life like,’ he asked casually, ‘as an air stewardess?’
Lola plunged her fork into a buttery wedge of avocado and scowled. ‘You don’t have to go through the motions of asking me these questions, you know,’ she told him defensively. ‘I mean, you must have dated stewardesses before—I’d hate to think that I was forcing you to sit through yet another rendition of “what I love about my job”!’
‘Now who’s being the cynic?’ he responded coolly. Some indefinable emotion hardened the gorgeous mouth. ‘I can assure you, Lola, that I have never been forced to do anything in my life.’
No, she couldn’t really imagine anyone having the strength of character to be able to browbeat Geraint Howell-Williams into doing something he didn’t want to!
She started on the predictably delicious wine he had ordered for her and allowed herself the luxury of looking directly into the black-fringed, stormy eyes. ‘Life as a stewardess is terrific,’ she told him. ‘I would recommend it to anyone for all the obvious reasons—namely the opportunity to see the world and meet lots of people.’
‘And in the long term?’
Lola blinked. ‘The long term?’ forty?’
‘Is it a job you can see yourself doing at forty?’
Lola looked at him blankly, trying to imagine herself trundling the drinks trolley up the aisle fifteen years on, and shuddered. ‘Well, no. Not really.’
‘So what do you see yourself doing at forty?’
Lola clammed up. For some reason it would be acutely embarrassing to tell him that at forty she would have hoped to have settled down with some wonderful man she had yet to meet, and be rearing lots of children! ‘I—er—haven’t given it a lot of thought,’ she answered weakly.
He threw her a hard, disbelieving look. ‘Really? Not planning to be safely tucked up in the marital bed by then? Don’t you want to be married, Lola?’
The fact that he had so accurately echoed her thoughts threw Lola completely. ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted proudly, refusing to be cowed by his rather patronising attitude. He was managing to make a desire to settle down and get married sound as bizarre as a wish to fly to the moon in a hot-air balloon! ‘Why not?’
‘Why not indeed?’ he responded faintly. ‘But so far no one has been able to tempt you away from your single, exciting, globe-trotting life?’ he probed.
‘No so far, no.’
‘But I imagine that there must have been some candidates along the way,’ he drawled suggestively.
It was not quite an insult, but it was as near as dammit, and Lola glared at him, her narrowed eyes sparking hot blue fire as she dared him to continue.
‘Candidates for what?’ she questioned slowly.
‘Marriage. Relationships. You must have known a good few men over the years—isn’t that one of the perks of the job?’
Lola put her wineglass down with a thud. ‘Are you trying to offend me, Geraint?’
‘By asking about your men-friends?’ He regarded her levelly,