His blue eyes really were incredibly blue, she thought weakly. But Georgina had been wrong. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, his eyes were fixed on his daughter. For a few half-seconds, maybe more, he gazed at Sóley, his face expressionless and unmoving, and then slowly he turned his head towards her.
‘Hello, Lottie.’
She stared at him silence, her heartbeat filling her chest, her grip tightening around her daughter’s body. In the café there had been so much noise, but here in the near museum-level quiet of the gallery his voice was making her body quiver like a violin being tuned.
It was completely illogical and inappropriate, but that didn’t stop it being true.
‘Hello, Ragnar,’ she said stiffly. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you.’
She wasn’t sure what kind of a response he would make to her remark, but maybe he felt the same way because he didn’t reply.
‘So you two know one another, then?’ Georgina said brightly.
‘Yes.’
‘No!’
They both spoke as one—him quietly, her more loudly.
Lottie felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘We met once a couple of years back,’ she said quickly.
‘Just shy of two years.’
Ragnar’s blue eyes felt like lasers.
There was a short, strained silence and then Georgina cleared her throat. ‘Well, I’ll let you catch up on old times.’
Clearly dazzled by Ragnar’s beauty, she smiled at him sweetly and, blind to Lottie’s pleading expression, sashayed towards an immaculately dressed couple on the other side of the room.
‘How did you find me?’ she said stiffly. Her heart bumped unsteadily against her ribs. She was still processing the fact that he had come here.
He held her gaze. ‘Oh, I was just passing.’
Remembering the lie she’d told, she glared at him. ‘Did you have me followed?’
Something flickered across the blue of his pupils. ‘Not followed, no—but I did ask my head of security to locate the exhibition you mentioned.’
A pulse was beating in her head. His being here was just so unexpected. Almost as unexpected as the feeling of happiness that was fluttering in time to her heart.
‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’
For a moment she gazed at Ragnar in confusion. Was he talking about Georgina? A mixture of disbelief and jealousy twisted her breathing. Was he really using this moment to hit on another woman?
‘Her name’s Georgina. She’s—’
‘Not her.’
She heard the tension in his voice before she noticed it in the rigidity of his jaw.
‘My daughter.’
Her heart shrank inside her ribs.
In the twenty-four hours since she’d left Ragnar, and his unsolicited offer of financial help, she’d tried hard to arrange her emotions into some kind of order. They hadn’t responded. Instead she had kept struggling with the same anger and disappointment she’d felt after meeting her father. But at least she had been able to understand if not excuse Alistair’s reluctance to get involved. Meeting an adult daughter he hadn’t even known existed was never going to be easy, but Sóley wasn’t even one yet.
Okay, at first maybe she would have been a little cautious around him—although remembering her daughter’s transfixed gaze when Ragnar had come on the television screen maybe not. But even if she had been understandably hesitant it would have passed, and he could have become a father to her.
Only he’d immediately turned their relationship into a balance sheet. Or that was what she’d thought he’d done. But if that was the case then what was he doing here, asking to be introduced to his daughter?