life.
What good would it do to say any of that now? She had her life mapped out and to tell her how he felt would only make her feel worse. Better that she should despise him than feel sorry for him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘For everything.’
She turned away, a faint blush of pink staining her cheeks as, no doubt, like him, she was reliving a moment that had fired not just the body, but something deeper-the mindless heat of two people so lost to sense that nothing could have stopped them.
Or maybe he was just hoping it was that. It was, in all likelihood, plain guilt.
The fact that just six months later she was visibly pregnant with another man’s child demonstrated that as nothing else could and he’d done his level best to forget her.
From the first moment he’d set eyes on her he’d done his best to put her out of his mind.
That he’d felt such an immediate, powerful attraction to this woman at their first meeting when Candy, the woman he was about to marry, was standing next to him, had been bad enough and he’d kept his distance, had avoided anything to do with the wedding plans. Had buried himself in work and done his best to avoid thinking about her at all.
He’d made a fair fist of it until she’d waved her presence in front of him with that damned invoice.
If she hadn’t added that handwritten ‘Personal’ to the envelope-no doubt in an attempt to save him embarrassment-his PA would have opened it, dealt with it, would have put through the payment without even troubling him.
Instead, it had been left on his desk to catch him on the raw when he’d opened it. Raw, angry, he had been determined to look her in the eye and challenge her. Challenge himself.
Well, he’d won. And lost.
Twice. Because, face to face with her now, he knew that she was the one. The One.
Then, because that was the last thing he wanted to think about, he said, ‘What did you want Pam for?’
She stared at him for a moment, then raised a hand, swiping at the air as if to clear away something he couldn’t see, then crossed distractedly to the desk as if she might find her.
‘I just wanted to ask her if I could go up into the attics to look for something that belonged to my great- grandmother. To borrow for a little while.’
‘Your great-grandmother?’ he repeated, grateful for the distraction. ‘How long has it been there?’
‘Since I put there. Before I left.’ She turned back to face him. ‘Unless you’ve already started to clear things?’ She made it sound as if he was destroying something beyond price.
Maybe, for her, he was.
‘Apart from instructing Mark Hilliard to put in an application for outline planning, I’ve done nothing,’ he assured her, ‘and, as far as I can tell from my tour of the place with Mark this morning, nothing appears to have been touched.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s hopeful.’
She’d begun to soften as they’d talked about her family and for a moment he’d forgotten the barrier between them as, apparently, had she. It was back in place now and it wasn’t that edgy barrier with which she’d fought the attraction between them but something colder. Angrier.
‘Was this the great-grandmother who married the boy in the photograph?’ he asked, using what he’d learned about her. That people, her family, were more important than possessions. Hoping, against all reality, to draw her back to him.
‘James. Yes. The other lot, the Smiths, were a soldiering clan so they were constantly on the move and by comparison travelled light.’
She said it dismissively, clearly not a big fan of the Smiths. She hadn’t wanted her father at her wedding, at least not walking her down the aisle, he remembered. What was that about?
‘From the clutter upstairs, I’d say that’s probably a good thing,’ he said, making no comment. Then, as if he didn’t have another thing in the world to occupy him, ‘Do you want to take a look up there now?’
‘It is a bit urgent,’ she said and glanced, a touch helplessly, at Pam’s desk. ‘Will Pam be back soon?’
‘Not in time to be of any help to you.’ For a moment he waited, his intention to make her ask for his help, to need him just once, but his curiosity got the better of him and, more interested in her urgent desire to examine the contents of an old trunk than in scoring points, he stood back and, inviting her to lead the way, said, ‘Shall we go?’
Neither of them moved, both remembering the last time he’d said those words.
Then, abruptly, Sylvie said, ‘There’s really no need to bother yourself.’ Which did nothing to allay his curiosity. ‘Honestly. I know the way.’
‘I’m sure you do, Sylvie, but it’s no bother,’ he assured her. ‘I’m going to have to clear the attics very shortly and it will be useful to have someone who can tell me what, exactly, is up there before it gets tossed into a skip.’
‘You wouldn’t!’ she declared, her eyes widening in a flash of anger. So Miss Sylvie Duchamp Smith wasn’t quite as detached about her family’s belongings-even the ones left to rot in the attics-as she would have him believe.
‘I might,’ he said carelessly. ‘One family’s treasures are another man’s junk.’
‘No doubt,’ she said, that quick flash of fire back under control.
‘Unless you can prove me wrong.’
‘It’s your junk. You must do with it as you wish.’
‘True.’ But having her acknowledge that fact gave him rather less pleasure than he’d anticipated which was, perhaps, why he said, ‘I should warn you that it’s pretty dusty up there so you might want to change your shoes. It would be a pity to spoil them.’
‘What?’ She looked down, let slip a word that somehow didn’t sound quite as shocking when spoken in those crisp consonants, perfectly rounded vowels.
‘Is there a problem?’ he enquired.
‘Yes!’ Then she wiggled her toes and, with an unexpected smile that turned the silvery-blue to the colour of a summer sky, she looked up and added, ‘And, then again, no. It just means that, having worn them most of the morning, I’m going to have to buy them.’
‘Is that a problem?’ he asked, recalling Pam’s earlier comments on the subject. ‘I understood shoe-buying was the antidote to all feminine ills.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything that Candy told you,’ she snapped. ‘And I’m not here for recreational shopping.’
‘No?’ Obviously wedding planning was her livelihood but, even so, he’d have thought she’d have been a little less matter-of-fact about it. ‘I thought that was what weddings were invented for.’
‘If you believe that, Tom, I suggest you familiarise yourself with the words of the marriage service,’ Sylvie said, regarding him with a long cool look that made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut. Then, with an unexpected blush, she shook her head and said, ‘The truth is that this wedding is more about recreational borrowing. But once you’ve worn the shoes, they’re yours.’
‘You’ll never regret it,’ he said, finding it easier to look at her feet than her face.
‘I will if I don’t change them. Why don’t you go on and I’ll catch you up?’ she suggested, losing the tigerish protectiveness she’d shown when she’d thought he was prepared to throw the contents of all those trunks away. That touch of hauteur when she’d chastised him for his lack of respect for the marriage service. Instead, snapping back into a defensive attitude as she turned and walked quickly away, not waiting for him to answer her.
He did anyway, murmuring, ‘No hurry,’ as, for the second time that morning, he watched her retreat as fast as her pretty purple shoes would carry her. ‘I might get lost.’
Too late. He already was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SYLVIE took a few moments to splash water on her face. Regain her
