LUCY was drowning in raw sensation. Lying in the arms of a total stranger, drowning in the quicksilver heat of his eyes, his touch, parting her lips to gasp in air, struggling to breathe as she went under for the third time.
What was she thinking? What was she doing?
For a moment her brain, its buffer overloaded with more information, more emotion, more of just about everything than a body was built to handle, had backed up, was refusing to compute.
On some distant level she knew she had to move, run, but here, now, only the most primitive sensations were getting through. Touch, warmth, confusion…
‘The bedroom department is on the fifth floor,’ someone said with a chuckle as she passed and Nat felt, rather than saw the sudden realisation hit her.
The sheer madness of it. But her reaction was not the same dazed feeling that had him staring at her like an idiot. Not even an embarrassed laugh.
Instead she emitted a little squeak of alarm and squirmed away from him, using her hands and feet to scrabble backwards up the steps before she got far enough away to turn, push herself to her feet and run.
‘No!’
It wasn’t a command, it was the cry of a man bereft.
‘Stop!’
But the urgency of his words spurred her on, giving her feet wings as she bolted, dodging through slower moving shoppers, taking the stairs two at a time, fear driving her escape.
Leaving him shaking, frozen to the spot while visitors to the store flowed around him. Not surprise, or pleasure, or even amusement at an unexpectedly close encounter with a stranger. Raw fear that dredged up the memory of another woman who’d run from his arms. Who, just for a moment, he’d forgotten.
Fear, and the bruise darkening her temple.
Someone tutted irritably at him for blocking the stairs and he forced himself to move, pick up the shoe that had tumbled, unnoticed, from her bag.
He turned it in his hand.
It bore an expensive high-end designer label at odds with the damp edge around the platform sole, splashes of pavement dirt on the slender and very high stiletto heel. This was not a shoe for walking in the rain. It had been made to ride in limousines, walk along red carpets, to be worn by the consort of a very rich man. The kind who employed bodyguards.
Could she be the one the two men on the ground floor were seeking? That might explain her fear, because she hadn’t run from his touch. On the contrary, she’d been equally lost, wrapped up in a sizzling moment of discovery until a crass comment had jolted her back to reality.
He didn’t know who she was or why they were looking for her, only that she was afraid, running perhaps for her life, and the last thing he wanted was to draw more attention to her. No one hunted a frightened woman in his store, not even him, and he clamped down on the swamping need to race after her, reassure her, know her.
Not that there was any need to hunt.
If she was looking for a hiding place, common sense suggested that she was heading for the nearest Ladies cloakroom, looking for somewhere to clean up, hide out for a while.
But why?
His jaw tightened as he continued up the stairs with rather more speed, fighting to hold back the memories of another frightened woman. Vowing to himself that, whoever she was, she’d find sanctuary within his walls. That history wouldn’t repeat itself.
He’d ask one of the senior floor managers to check on her, return her shoe, offer whatever assistance she felt appropriate. A new pair of tights with the compliments of the store. A discreet exit. A car, if necessary, to take her wherever she needed to go.
But his hand was shaking as he called Security again, wanting to know where the two men were now.
Before he could speak, he was practically knocked off his feet by one of them, racing up the stairs, heedless of the safety of the women and children in his way, running through, rather than around them, scattering bags, toys.
His first reaction was to go after him, toss him bodily out of the store, but a child was crying and he had no choice but to stop and ensure that no one was hurt, pick up scattered belongings and summon one of his staff to offer the courtesy of afternoon tea in the Garden Restaurant. Deal with the complaints before they were voiced. It was a point of honour that no one left Hastings & Hart unhappy.
But, all the time he was doing that, the questions were pounding at his brain.
Whose bodyguards? Who was her husband, lover? More to the point, who was she?
And why was she so scared?
While her face-what had been visible over the big, enveloping collar-had seemed vaguely familiar, she wasn’t some instantly recognizable celebrity or minor royal. If she had been, her bodyguards wouldn’t have wasted time scouring the store for her but would have gone straight to his security staff to enlist their help using CCTV. Keeping it low-key. No drama.
There was something very wrong about this and, moving with considerably more urgency now, he ordered Security to find and remove the two men from the store. He didn’t care who they worked for, or who they’d lost, they had worn out their welcome.
‘Hold the lift!’ Lucy, trembling more now than when she’d run from the press conference, heart pounding beyond anything she’d ever experienced, sprinted for the closing doors. ‘Thanks,’ she gasped as someone held them and she dived in, squeezing into a corner, her back to the door where she wouldn’t be instantly visible when they opened again. Her brain working logically on one level, while everything else was saying, no… Go back…
She snapped out of the mental dream state in which she was floating above the stairs, her whole world contained in a stranger’s eyes.
The recorded announcement listed the departments as, despairing, she was carried back down to the ground floor.
As the doors slid open, she risked a glance, then froze as she caught sight of one of Rupert’s bodyguards scanning the surge of passengers making a beeline for the exit.
She pressed herself back into the corner of the lift, keeping her head down, drawing a curious glance from a child who looked up at her as the lift rapidly filled. Holding her breath until the doors finally closed, aware that it wasn’t just the people she recognized who would be searching for her.
She’d got used to the front page-she’d been booked for a photoshoot this afternoon just to show off her new haircut, for heaven’s sake-but this was different.
She’d announced to the world that she had the goods on Rupert Henshawe and it wouldn’t be just the gossip magazines who’d want to know where she was.
Within hours there would be a press-orchestrated manhunt. It was probably already underway. And there was the risk that any minute now someone was going to say Excuse me, but aren’t you, Lucy B?
It had happened before when she’d been shopping and the result tended to be mayhem. It was as if everyone wanted to touch her, capture a little of the magic.
Rupert’s marketing men had got that right, but it was the last thing she wanted now so she kept her head tucked well down, desperate not to catch anyone’s eye.
Not all eyes were over five feet from the ground, however, and she found herself being scrutinised by the little girl, who continued to stare at her as the recorded announcement said,
The rest was drowned out by whoops of excitement.
‘Are you going to see Santa?’ the child asked her as the doors closed.
Santa?
Well, that explained why the North Pole had been relocated to a department store basement.
‘We’re going on a sleigh ride to see him at the North Pole,’ she confided.
‘Well, golly… What a treat.’
