‘Dad! Is everything okay?’
He’d been instructed to work from home this past week, to help his rehabilitation, but Lia knew he’d been impatient to get back into his office in town, where she worked too. Thankfully he’d never mentioned the tabloid splash about her and Ben, so he couldn’t have seen it.
They chatted for a few minutes and then he said, ‘Actually, I had a visitor this morning.’
Lia asked idly, ‘You did? Who?’
Her father cleared his throat and said, ‘Benjamin Carter, the American construction mogul...’
Lia went very still. She could feel her hand tightening on the phone and her blood draining south.
Her father was still talking, and she interrupted him in shock. ‘He did what?’
‘He asked for your hand in marriage. And we spoke about a possible merger... He’s right, you know, Lia. I’m not getting any younger or healthier. You have your own ambitions. I need to be practical...’
Lia sat down heavily in a chair, as shocked to hear him mention her ambitions as to hear about his visitor. ‘I’m so sorry, Dad. It’s all my fault... We met in New York and he pursued me... But he only ever wanted me because of your company, and he needs a wife, and—’ Lia closed her mouth abruptly before she said too much. She could feel the shock wearing off, to be replaced by hot, molten emotion. Ben had gone behind her back and done what she’d expressly asked him not to.
‘I see...’ said her father. ‘And how do you feel about him?’
‘I hate him,’ Lia said quickly, even as a voice said, Liar, liar, pants on fire.
‘Lia, look, I don’t think you really understand—’
‘No, Dad.’ She cut him off. ‘Listen, this is all my fault. I’m going to take care of it.’
She cut the connection before her father could say anything else. Then reached for her office phone and asked her PA to get her Ben’s UK office address.
No way was Ben Carter going to get away with this. The fact that she felt butterflies at the thought of seeing him again was as irritating as hell, but she ignored it.
* * *
Lia wasn’t quite prepared to see Ben striding towards her in the lobby of his very modern steel office building in central London. He looked fierce and intent, but stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw her.
‘Lia.’
For a bizarre second he looked at her as if she was a ghost. But then he blinked and said, ‘I was just coming to see you.’
She folded her arms over her chest and tried to ignore the pounding of her heart. ‘Well, I’ve saved you a trip. Did you seriously think I’d let this go?’
Ben frowned, and Lia noticed for the first time that he looked a little more unkempt than usual. And tired. Lines she hadn’t noticed before had appeared around his mouth.
Churlishly she figured it must be hard work, vetting a new wife. Even if he wasn’t in Bahia right now. A skewer pierced deep to remind her of how easy she’d been to seduce.
‘What did your father tell you?’
‘All I needed to know—which is that you came to him talking about mergers and acquisitions. And that you asked for my hand in marriage.’
Anger and renewed betrayal boiled over when she thought of revealing to him how much her father wanted her to settle down.
She stepped closer and hissed at him. ‘How could you? You deliberately took a confidence I shared with you and used it to your advantage.’
She only realised she was too close when his distinctive scent reached her nostrils, impacting on her starved hormones. But she wouldn’t back away now and show him that he affected her at all. She lifted her chin, challenging him.
‘I take it that you didn’t let your father explain everything I said, then?’
Now Lia blinked. Her father had been saying something when she’d cut him off. She ignored the dart of doubt. ‘I heard all I needed to. What possible other explanation could there be for your presence here in England?’
Ben’s eyes glittered. ‘What, indeed?’