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‘The Kingston,’ she said quickly.
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’ Samantha gave her an approving smile. ‘This room demands drama and a Kingston always adds that little va-va-voom. And what about the colour? Are you sure about switching from the blue to the green?’ she asked casually.
Lily gritted her teeth. Her mother loved neutrals, but Lily had wanted a change from creams and whites, and blue, the right, flattering, timeless shade of blue, was Laura’s compromise. But Lily liked the green and, for once, she was going to put her foot down.
‘Absolutely,’ she said firmly.
There was a quivering silence as Samantha held her gaze a moment too long and then the designer smiled stiffly and glanced down at her tablet. ‘Now, I know we haven’t discussed the bathroom blinds, but your mother did ask me to take a quick peek—’
It was another hour before Samantha left.
Flopping down on the sofa in a way that would have made her mother wince, Lily picked up one of the magazines from the coffee table and opened it at a random page, and then wished she hadn’t as she glanced down to find Trip’s out-of-this-world face staring up at her.
She felt a spasm of pain around her heart.
It had been weeks now since he’d gone missing. Five weeks and three days. There had been a lot of supposition about what had happened in Ecuador, but few facts had emerged from the rainforest. The one that had stuck in her mind was the discovery of the Jeep he’d been driving. Watching the news, she had stared at the bullet holes in the bonnet and doors, feeling devastated, then angry, then stricken with guilt.
The buzzer to her door sounded and she groaned softly. That would be her mother.
Laura Dempsey had been in charge of the original decor of the flat and Lily had fully expected her to be in charge of this revamp, but then her mother had called to say she had double-booked.
Lily had been slightly relieved, then felt guilty for feeling that way. Now she wondered why, because of course her mother would have ‘asked’ Samantha to call her the moment she left the apartment. No doubt the designer had let slip that Lily had chosen the green drapes, not the blue, and so here was Laura all ready to right the wrong—
Sighing, she made her way to the front door and jerked it open. ‘I know you’re better at all this than me, but I know what I w-want—’
She stuttered into silence. For a moment the apartment behind her seemed to fold in on itself as if some vast, invisible explosion had happened.
It wasn’t her mother. It was Trip. Lean, muscular and as shockingly beautiful as ever, he leaned against the door frame, one thick, dark eyebrow arched, his astonishing mouth curved into a shape that made her heart relocate to her throat.
‘Good to know,’ he said in that familiar, deep Transatlantic drawl. ‘Because so do I.’
CHAPTER TWO
LILY COULDN’T MOVE. She wanted to, but she felt winded and dizzy.
He was alive. He was alive.
She lifted her hand, wanting, needing to touch him, to prove that he was real, then pressed it against her throat, to where her pulse was pounding out of time.
‘How? When?’ Her voice was barely a breath. ‘I thought you were—’ Lost. Dead. Gone for ever. She couldn’t say the words out loud.
He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I got unavoidably delayed.’
When she didn’t respond, his forehead creased infinitesimally and he fished out his phone and swiped across the screen.
She stared down at the picture. Trip was striding up the steps in front of the Winslow Building just as if it were any other day. Words jumped out at her from the accompanying story. Captive. Cartel. Escape.
Her mind was a bumper car, jolting back and forth and side to side as questions slammed into each other. ‘Is this true?’ she managed finally.
‘It’s a version of the truth. The kind that sells papers.’
It was too much, him being here. The force of him, being so alive and real, his body filling the doorway, broad-chested and taller than in her memory, those arresting blue eyes and lips that she knew could send ripples of heat rolling through her like wildfire. The shock of him and the chaotic emotions provoked by his presence filled her head, her chest. That was why she couldn’t breathe, she told herself. Why her body felt as if it were coming apart at the seams, why she felt as if it belonged to someone else.
‘Why are you here?’ she said hoarsely.
‘I wanted to see you. To let you know that I was back, in person. I didn’t want you to hear it from the news.’
‘Well, now I’ve heard—’ Relief and other nameless feelings she couldn’t, wouldn’t acknowledge were swept away by an anger she had never felt before and she tried to shut the door but he wedged his foot in it as they did in old black and white films.
