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‘What are you doing?’ she snapped.
‘We need to talk.’
‘By “we” you mean you, because I have nothing to say to you.’ She frowned. ‘Oh, actually, yes, I do. It’s goodbye.’
She pushed against the door, but he held it open easily.
‘I’m happy to do the talking. Come on, Lily. I’ve just come back from the dead.’ The curl to his mouth made her feel off balance. ‘Surely you can give me five minutes.’
‘Fine. You have five minutes and then you will leave.’
She let go of the door and he shrugged away from the frame and strolled past her.
Her breath was running wild in her chest.
Her eyes glanced over his superbly tailored and no doubt paralyzingly expensive dark suit and white shirt, over the scratches and his slightly too long hair that gave him the untamed air of a Hollywood action hero.
The stupidity of their mismatched relationship made her stomach clench.
‘I must say you don’t seem very pleased to see me,’ he said, stopping in the middle of the sitting room and turning to face her.
Her heart lurched. Pleased didn’t exactly cover the vortex of emotions churning inside her.
‘I’m glad you’re safe.’ She spoke to a point slightly above his left shoulder but her peripheral vision was greedily filling in the details so that she knew he was staring at her with those intensely blue eyes, and that his glossy brown hair was falling across his face.
‘That’s it?’ He moved towards her and she had to dig her heels into the cream carpet to stop herself from stepping backwards. ‘It’s a little underwhelming, wouldn’t you say?’
There was a mocking note in his voice and quite suddenly she was furious again. How could he joke about any of this?
‘What were you expecting? A ticker-tape parade?’ She spoke briskly. Oh, why had she agreed to let him in? She had prayed for him to be alive but now that he was, now that he was here, it was making her head spin.
‘The mayor called on my way over here and offered, but I said no,’ he said in that casual drawl that tugged at each of her nerve endings separately. ‘I didn’t want any fuss made. Not from him, anyway. But you...’ He paused, his eyes locking with hers. ‘I was hoping you might be a little more expressive. I mean, we were going out—’
It was a trick, a hook, and he was taunting her to take the bait. She knew that and yet she still couldn’t stop her head from snapping round.
‘We never went out.’
His eyes were clear and intensely blue. ‘No, you’re right. We always stayed in.’
The trap slammed shut. A prickling heat skated across her skin and she felt her body tighten. Everywhere. Her heart was pounding as if she were running hard, and that was what she should be doing. Running as fast and as far as she could from this beautiful, dangerous man.
He made her want things, and she knew all too well how wanting could make you lose sight of what mattered. She had done so before with Cameron and there had been horrific, far-reaching consequences. But it had been different with Trip. They weren’t friends. They hadn’t talked or gone out on dates. There had been no promises made, no expectations, and she had liked that he wasn’t hers to lose. The fact that they had been using each other for sex was a kind of equality she’d found thrilling in some way.
And yet it had hurt more than it should when he’d ended things. And now that he was here, standing in front of her, it hurt to look at him, to remember what they’d had.
‘To be honest what happened between us was so brief it kind of slipped my mind,’ she said coolly.
He paused, just for a second. ‘Then maybe it’s time I jogged your memory.’
She felt suddenly unsteady on her feet, like a boxer on the ropes. Pressing her nails into her palms, she forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘I’m not a fan of retrospectives. Personally, I find it better to live in the present.’
He was facing the window and in the sunlight through the glass his pupils were almost invisible, so that she felt as though she were drowning in the blue of his irises.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ he said softly. ‘So here I am, ready to engage.’
She stared at him in confusion and felt a shiver of apprehension ripple down her spine. ‘With what? You came to tell me you were back, and you have, so what else is there?’
‘I told you. I want to talk.’ There was a split second of silence, and then he said softly, ‘About you and me. About us.’
