The Billionaire's Convenient Bride. Liz Fielding

her like a boy. She was never girly, didn’t care about getting dirty, tearing her clothes. But then one summer she’d come home from school and everything was different. She still came to the woods but her hair was no longer an untidy tangle; it was a dark skein of silk that he wanted to touch. And under the baggy T-shirts and jeans there was no hiding the fact that she was a girl.

      He was older, but she was suddenly the grown-up and he felt awkward around her. Worse than awkward. Looking at her mouth made him feel weird, then interested, and he didn’t know what to do.

      His mother noticed—she noticed everything—and warned him to keep his distance. Agnès was growing up and Sir Hugo wouldn’t want his granddaughter being touched by the likes of him.

      Except she didn’t stay away. He closed his fist at the memory of the river water running off her skin, gleaming pale in the moonlight. His hand running over the sleek softness...

      For a moment their eyes met across the distance. Was she remembering that moment? That one forbidden touch?

      For a moment it was as if they were frozen in that look but then, as Dora barked, setting up a flurry of collared doves, she turned away and melted into the shade. And he was the one holding his breath. Responding to the memory like a green boy.

      He’d wanted to look her in the face as he took everything from her, but he should have left it to his lawyer. It wasn’t too late. This could wait. He could cancel the appointment with the architect he’d asked to meet him here and be gone before she returned from her walk.

      He shut the window and, phone in his hand, took one last glance around the room, the patch of damp beneath the window, the darker rectangles on the walls where he’d stuck up posters...

      He found the number but then hesitated.

      There were things he wanted to see, plans he needed to make, and he still wanted to look Agnès Prideaux in the eye when he told her that he would have her castle, one way or another. But he wouldn’t be indulging a need for pay-back by offering her the cottage.

      He’d thought he had what had happened slotted away tidily in the part of his brain labelled ‘The Past’. This was now, and he was the one in control.

      He should have remembered that the first casualty in any campaign was the plan. He’d planned to be cold, clinical, detached. Instead he’d been swamped by the rush of memories of a time when they had been friends, allies, accomplices; of that first explosion of sexual awareness.

      Agnès might not have a title but while she stayed here people would always think of her, treat her, as a lady. She might look worn down by the financial struggle she faced, broke, but that was the gentry for you.

      He paid his bills on time, but until he gave the estate a new purpose, new meaning, to the locals she would still be Miss Prideaux, while he would be the boy whose father had disappeared one day, without a word, leaving his mother to scrub the floors at Priddy Castle.