Stranded with the Tycoon. Sophie Pembroke
are more of his business associates here than my friends.’
‘And yet you invited me?’
He’d laughed at that. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’
‘Not really.’ They’d had nothing in common besides proximity to Mandy until that moment, right then, when Luce had felt his gaze meeting hers, connecting them—until she’d realised she was leaning forward, into him, waiting for his answer.
‘We could be.’
He’d inched closer too, leaning over the arm of his chair until Luce had been able to smell the champagne on his breath.
‘You’re a hell of a lot of a nicer person than Mandy.’
‘Mandy’s my friend,’ Luce had said, trying to find the energy to defend her. But all she’d been able to see was Ben’s eyes, pupils black and wide. ‘Your girlfriend.’ She couldn’t think with him so close.
‘Mandy’s out there flirting with a forty-something businessman she knows will never leave his wife but might buy her some nice jewellery.’
Luce had winced. He was probably right. For a moment she’d felt her first ever pang of sympathy for Ben Hampton.
But then he’d leant in further, his hand coming up to rest against her cheek, and Luce had known she should pull away, run away, get away from Ben Hampton for good.
His lips had been soft, gentle against hers, she remembered. But only for a brief moment. One insane lapse in judgement. Before she jerked back, leaving him bent over the space where she’d been. She’d upped and run—just as she should have done the moment she’d arrived at the party and seen how much she didn’t fit in.
Luce sighed and let the memory go. Much more pleasant to focus on the hot water and scented bubbles of her bath than on Ben’s face as she’d turned back at the doorway. Or the humiliation she’d felt, her cheeks burning, as she’d run out, his laughter echoing in her ears, and dragged Mandy away from her businessman and back to that flea-ridden hotel.
He probably didn’t remember. He’d been drunk and young and stupid. He’d certainly never have done it sober. Why else would he have laughed? The whole incident was ridiculous. Luce was a grown woman now, with bigger concerns than what Ben Hampton thought of her.
Except he was waiting outside the bathroom door, ready to take her out for dinner. And afterwards...
Luce shut her eyes and dunked her head under the water.
* * *
What the hell was she doing in there?
Ben checked his watch, then poured himself another glass of champagne. It was coming up to three quarters of an hour since he’d heard the lock turn, and since then there had been only the occasional splash. Apparently she was taking the whole relaxing thing seriously. He should have remembered earlier how his ex-girlfriend had complained about Luce disappearing into the bathroom with her history texts and using up all the hot water on ridiculously indulgent baths. At the time he’d just found it comforting to know that the woman had some weaknesses. Now it was seriously holding up his evening.
But at least it gave him the opportunity to do some research. Unlocking the safe, he pulled out Luce’s organiser again and sank into the armchair by the window to read. Really, the woman was the epitome of over-scheduled. And almost none of the things written into the tiny diary spaces in neat block capitals seemed like things she’d be doing for herself. Christmas dinners—plural—for family, attending lectures for colleagues, looking after someone else’s cat... And then, on a Sunday near the end of January, the words ‘BOOK DRAFT DEADLINE’ in red capitals. Interesting. Definitely something to talk about over dinner.
She baffled him. That was why he wanted to know more. On the one hand, he was pretty sure he could predict her entire life story leading from university to here. On the other, however...there was something else there. Something he hadn’t seen or noticed when they were younger. Something that hooked him in even if he wasn’t ready to admit why. Yes, she was attractive. That on its own was nothing new. But this self-sacrificing mentality—was it a martyr complex? A bullying mother? Luce hadn’t ever seemed weak, so why was she doing everything for other people?
Particularly her family, it seemed. Flicking through the pages, Ben tried to remember if he’d ever met them at university, but if he had they hadn’t made much of an impression. Now he thought about it, he did remember Luce disappearing home to Cardiff every few weeks to visit them.
Obviously a sign of things to come.
Leaning back in his chair, Ben closed the organiser and tried to resist the memories pressing against his brain. But they were too strong. Another dark-haired woman, just as tired, just as self-sacrificing—until the day she broke.
‘I’m sorry, Benji,’ she’d said. ‘Mummy has to go.’
And it didn’t matter that he’d tried everything, done anything he could think of to be good enough to make her stay. He hadn’t been able to fix things for her.
Maybe he could for Luce.
Laughing at himself, he sat up, shaking the memories away. Luce wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t tied by marriage or children. She could make her own choices far more freely. And what could he do in one night, anyway? Other than help her relax. Maybe that would be enough. Maybe all she needed was to realise that she had needs, too. And Ben was very good at assessing women’s needs.
A repetitive beeping noise interrupted his thoughts, and it took him a moment to register it as a ringtone. As he looked up, his gaze caught on Luce’s rich purple coat, slung across the sofa on the other side of the glass coffee table. She’d taken her suitcase and handbag into the bathroom with her—obvious paranoia in Ben’s view—but he’d seen her drop her phone into her coat pocket before they left the bar.
Interesting.
He should feel guilty, he supposed, but really it was all for the woman’s own good. She needed saving from herself. She needed his help.
The noise had stopped before he could retrieve the phone from the pocket of her coat, and Ben stared at the flashing screen for a moment, wondering how one woman could have so many people needing to contact her. In addition to a missed call from her mother, her notifications screen told him straight off that she had three texts from a guy called Tom, an e-mail from a man named Dennis and another missed call from an improbably named ‘Dolly’. All in the hour since they’d left the bar.
Scanning over the snippets on the screen told him all he really needed to know—every person who’d contacted her wanted something from her. Dropping the phone back into her pocket, Ben considered the evening ahead.
His plan, ill thought out to start with, had been to have a fun evening and hopefully a fun night. To show Luce a good time, then remind her who he was so they could have a laugh about it. Or he could, anyway. But now...he was invested.
Who was Lucinda Myles these days?
The last time he’d seen her must have been the night of his spectacularly disastrous twenty-first birthday party. He remembered spotting her sloping out of the hotel ballroom towards one of the drawing rooms, but after that far too much champagne had blurred the evening until the following morning and a headbangingly loud lecture from his father about appropriate behaviour and responsibility to the family reputation. Friends had helpfully filled him in on the more humorous of his antics that night, but no one had mentioned Luce.
Then the ex had broken up with him for humiliating her and ‘possibly ruining her future’, whatever that meant, and he’d had no reason to see Luce again. Who knew how much she’d changed in the intervening years?
Ben paused in his thoughts. She couldn’t have changed that much, given what he’d seen so far that day. In which case...
Grabbing the phone from the table next to him, he called down to Reception.
‘Daisy? Can you cancel my booking at The Edge