A Dangerous Solace

‘I imagined—’ She broke off again, because telling him what had been going on in her head for seven years would be far too personal and revealing.

‘Ah, si, that imagination of yours.’

He reached out unexpectedly and took her hand. His thumb rubbed over her palm, sending sparks shooting up her arm.

‘What have you been imagining, Ava?’

‘Nothing,’ she said immediately. Everything. All those women! ‘I don’t have an imagination.’ What did he know about her imagination anyway? That had been a long time ago, when she was a little girl who didn’t know life was never going to live up to what was in her head.

So she’d faced reality—had to, really—until one day people had begun labelling her as humourless and dull. Always the new girl at school who never got the joke, never made friends, who wore the same unfashionable clothes day after day. It hadn’t mattered. She’d been too busy with part-time work, chasing up Josh over his homework and keeping a roof over their heads to worry much about her popularity as a teenager.

She snatched her hand back and he let her go.

‘How long were you in the Navy?’ she demanded.

‘Two years. I flew an Apache on three tours of Afghanistan.’

‘You flew in a war zone?’

‘Si, in a rescue squadron.’

Ava forgot all about her own discomfort. How had she not known this about him?

‘Why did you—?’

‘Join up? I like to fly,’ he said, with a shrug of those wide shoulders. ‘I like to challenge myself. The Navy has the best equipment in the world. I wanted to try it out.’

‘That’s the worst reason I’ve ever heard for joining the armed forces.’

‘There are worse reasons.’ He looked grim for a moment. ‘Besides, what would I know? I was just a dumb footballer.’

‘I doubt you were ever a dumb anything,’ she replied acerbically, ‘given what you’ve achieved. And you’re not yet thirty-one!’

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t a lucky dumb footballer.’

Ava tried not to stare at him. ‘So you joined your father’s business after all?’

He shot another look at her. ‘You do remember a great deal, for a woman who wants to forget, cara.’

She could feel herself colouring—and she never blushed.

‘I didn’t join anything,’ he continued blandly. ‘By the time I got out of the Navy the Benedetti private banking firm was defunct.’

‘But you had connections?’ she persevered.

He laughed, but it sounded flat, and Ava felt obscurely guilty for bringing up the subject.

‘I came out with nothing but a Maserati, which I sold. I invested in a friend’s boat-building business...moved on up from there. Venture capital is high-risk, and most people don’t have the stomach for it.’

She knew that. She was one of those people.

‘I take it you do?’ Ava’s mouth was dry as paper.

‘What do you think?’

Her eyes were glued to his hard-jawed profile. Suddenly so much made sense about him—the big, physically tough body that didn’t fit a man who wheeled and dealed on the money markets, the flintiness she sensed at his core.

He had been to war, and it seemed things hadn’t quite worked out the way she had imagined. He wasn’t just some spoiled boy who had been handed his life on a platter.

Ava didn’t quite know what to say. She settled on a very weak, ‘You have been busy.’

He chuckled.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Your expression. It’s getting hard, isn’t it, cara?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Finding reasons to dislike me.’

‘I haven’t said I dislike you.’ It was supposed to come out as a statement, but it sounded far too uncertain for her liking.

‘We should look at doing something together.’

Still sorting through her feelings, she found a highly intimate recollection of the things they had done together flash unexpectedly to mind. Ava felt her face heating.

‘Do something?’ she repeated airlessly.

He gave her a smile, as if he knew where her thoughts had gone.

‘Si. You’re clearly very talented.’

‘I am?’ Oh, good grief, he’s not talking about sex, Ava!

‘The Lord Trust Company—a full-service brokerage firm, founded four years ago.’ He grinned and her stomach flip-flopped. ‘You’ve got some loyal clients.’

Business. He’s talking about your business, she reminded herself. She frowned. ‘You’ve researched me?’

‘I’m always looking for new companies to add to my portfolio. If you want to expand.’