He left her at the door of the room that was on the first floor, which was just as well because she was virtually asleep on her feet.
Lily barely registered the room as she headed for the bed, a modern limed-oak four-poster. With a sigh she closed her eyes and fell headlong onto it.
Bliss, she was asleep in seconds.
Coming to check on her fifteen minutes later, Ben tapped on the door that was still half open. When there was no reply he pushed it gently inwards; he could hear the sound of her soft breathing.
He crossed the room and, keeping one watchful eye on the sleeping figure, carefully lowered the Roman blinds on the window. The light dimmed but not significantly; the blinds were unlined. The heavy drapes would have provided a blackout, but, suspended by brass rings on a pole of the same material, would have made one hell of a racket so he left them alone.
As he passed the bed she sighed.
He had reached the door when he found himself walking back. He stood for a moment looking down at her. She lay on her stomach, one arm curved above her head, the other dangling over the edge of the bed. Her face half hidden by the pillow and her mane of glorious hair lightly flushed, she looked like a sleeping angel.
He unfolded a tartan throw that was neatly folded at the bottom of the bed and spread it carefully over her before easing off one calf-length boot and then the other.
‘Marry her!’ his grandfather had said, and of course, being the man he was, he had made it sound like an order, not a suggestion.
He had listened—not because the idea was anything less than ludicrous but because he knew that the old man, misguided and terminally old-fashioned as he was, had his best interests at heart.
‘Compromise is not a dirty word. Life doesn’t have to be a head-on collision.’
As he’d listened Ben had reluctantly acknowledged that his grandfather was not saying much he hadn’t secretly thought himself.
He had not planned a family, but now he had one wouldn’t it make sense to formalise things? The idea took hold and grew. He’d thought of it as a marriage of convenience because he’d been too much of a coward to face the truth. Today had changed that; he had been given a glimpse of what it would feel like to lose someone he loved.
How much worse would it feel to lose someone you loved and know you’d never had the guts to admit even to yourself that you loved her?
Not that anything was going to happen to Lily, his beautiful, marvellous Lily, not on his watch. He wanted to wake her up now and tell her; it took all his willpower not to.
There was no escaping the fact that his timing was disastrously out. Her focus was solely on Emily Rose and rightly so. Ben was pretty sure, considering he’d made no secret of the fact that he thought marriage was for mugs, that any proposal he made that included the word love would be treated with intense suspicion—she’d laugh him out of the room.
His jaw firmed as he turned and walked out of the room. He needed to think about the long game; he needed to prove that he could be the man she wanted, the man she needed. And not just in her bed—though that, he admitted to himself, was not such a bad place to start, though obviously not now when she was so emotionally vulnerable.
The house had a panelled study. Of all the rooms it showed the most sign of the removal of personal items. The bookshelves that lined one wall from floor to ceiling were empty except for a row of ancient encyclopaedias and a few dog-eared paperbacks. The wall over the heavy desk had several paler patches where paintings or maybe photos had been removed.
He opened his laptop on the desk and tried out the chair as a file popped onto his screen. For once it was a struggle to empty his head and focus, but in the end he managed an hour’s work before he took a break. He must have dozed in the chair because the sun was no longer shining through the leaded French doors when he jolted awake with a start, the force of which made him surge out of his chair.
The high-pitched keening sound was nothing short of feral; it made the hairs on his neck stand on end. For a second he froze and then, as the second peal of screams rang out, he hit the ground running. Heart thudding, arms pumping, he flew up the stairs. The door hit the wall with a dull thud that made pictures on the opposite wall shudder.
The shadowed room was silent and empty but for the figure who was sitting bolt upright on the bed. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, staring straight ahead.
After all the nightmare images that had flickered horror-movie style through his head, the relief to find her in one piece and not lying in a pool of blood or something equally dire made him feel light-headed.
He was across the room in seconds, kneeling on the bed beside her. He caught her arms; her skin was cool and damp with a layer of perspiration.
‘What is it?’ She looked at him with a total lack of recognition. He could feel the fine tremors running through her body. ‘Lily, talk to me,’ he roughed out huskily. ‘What’s wrong, baby?’
Her response was slow. A pucker appeared between her brows as she frowned at him and blinked like an owl.
‘What’s wrong, Lily? Say something.’
‘I... I was asleep...was I...? Ben...what are you doing here?’ And where was here? She felt slightly confused but not alarmed. His shirt was partly unbuttoned and his hair mussed as though he’d just tumbled out of bed, but he was still wearing jeans—Ben did things for denim that ought to carry a health warning. The erotic thought was only half formed when Lily stiffened. ‘Emmy!’
Even before he had made suitably soothing noises and reassured her that Emmy was fine and would be fine, her brain had got there and the fear receded.
‘You screamed.’ He closed his eyes momentarily, trying to blank out the replay of the sound in his head; the surface of his skin was still raised with goose bumps.
She frowned. ‘Did I?’
He stroked down her bare arms with his hands, pushing her gently back down. ‘Go to sleep, angel. You were dreaming.’
Her nose wrinkled in confusion. ‘I don’t remember.’
He huffed out a laugh. He would not forget—the sound would stay with him for ever.
‘That’s all right, and normal with night terrors,’ he was able to explain with confidence. It was years since he’d thought of the boy at school who used to have them regularly and he never remembered anything. He pressed a light kiss to her forehead, whispering softly, ‘Go to sleep.’
Like a fairy-tale princess woken by a kiss, the fog cleared from her mind. Ben had begun to lever himself from the bed when she grabbed his arm.
He paused and covered the hand on his arm with his own. ‘It’s all right. You had a bad dream. Close your eyes. You’re still asleep.’
She shook her head and, still holding his arm, her fingers digging hard into the muscles, she pulled herself upright again. Her eyes were burning, not with confusion, but a smouldering determination.
‘You’re not going to remember a thing about this tomorrow.’
Her green eyes wide and languid, she stroked his cheek, her fingers trailing slowly over the skin of his jaw. His jaw clenched as his self-control trembled, but stayed by some miracle intact.
‘You’re—’
She pressed a finger to his lips. ‘I’m not asleep or sleepwalking. I’m totally lucid, see.’ She directed a finger towards her own face. ‘Awake.’
‘I see,’ he said thickly, looking into the beautiful heart-shaped face turned up to his. The dark shadows under her incredible eyes and her bare, natural face didn’t alter the fact she was the most incredible-looking woman and he loved