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He came into the room wearing a sober black suit, an older man with a briefcase beside him. I’d never seen Ian in anything but jeans, and the sight of him was formidable. I immediately focused my gaze on his left shoulder—there was no way I could meet his eyes.
I could feel the damned color flood my skin. I shouldn’t even be thinking of last night, but something subconscious sprang to life, and there was no part of him I could look at without remembering. His mouth, everywhere. His clever, wicked hands.
“This is Mr. Fergell, Granda’s lawyer,” Ian announced to the room in general, and I knew he was avoiding looking at me as well. “We’ll be gathering for the reading of the will after lunch in the library. The service and reception will be in three days—that was the soonest we could manage. Any of you could always leave and come back. Or not,” he added, and I knew he meant me. For some reason, I wasn’t going to be allowed to escape, no matter how hard I tried.
Mary Alice immediately began to complain, but I tuned her out as I took a tentative glance at Ian when I was certain he wasn’t looking.
He was. Our eyes met, and his cool gaze was like a punch in the stomach. What had I expected—the tender lover he’d showed me last night? “We need to talk,” he said grimly. “I’ll get Mr. Fergell settled and you can meet me in the estate office.”
“Oh, don’t let us disturb you.” Mary Alice’s voice was thick with irony.
Even she quailed slightly beneath his withering glance. I ignored him. If he thought I was going to present myself to be yelled at, he was sadly mistaken. “I have things to do,” I said coolly.
“Show up,” he said. “Don’t make me come and find you.”
There was no missing the threat in his voice. I watched him go, considering my choices. I turned to Marcus, who had been watching all this in silence. “Will you drive me to the airport?” I demanded abruptly.
“Ian wants to see you,” he said uneasily.
“I don’t want to see him. I want to get out of here.”
“No one’s stopping you,” Mary Alice snapped.
“Everyone’s stopping me. Will you take me, Marcus?”
He shook his head. “Talk to Ian first, then we’ll see. I don’t think you really want to leave before we bury Granda.”
“He’s gone,” I said flatly. “It won’t make any difference whether I’m here or not.”
“Talk to Ian.”
That was the last thing I wanted to do. My earlier determination to tell him the truth had vanished in front of his cold glance. Clearly, he thought the most important night of my life was a big mistake, and I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to hear the will either—Granda was a fair man. He would leave enough for everyone, and when Bella showed up, she could claim her share and make her explanations. I didn’t want to see any of them again.
I was heading upstairs when he caught me, grabbing me by the wrist and stopping my forward flight. “I said we needed to talk.”
I yanked, but he held tight, and I considered kicking him in the shins. Instead, I waited for him to remember that touching me was the last thing he wanted to be doing, which didn’t take long.
“What about?” I said, resisting the impulse to run up the stairs. He’d probably come after me, and I didn’t want him to have an excuse to put his hands on me again. Not when a wicked part of me wanted it.
“About last night,” he snapped. “It was a mistake.”
I let out a long-suffering sigh. “I didn’t see you putting up a fight.”
“It meant nothing. Just a normal biological reaction to stress.”
“You pompous asshole,” I shot back. My wrist hurt from where he’d grabbed me, but his words were far more painful. “It was comfort.”
“It was lust,” he said flatly. “There’s no need to make a big deal out of it. It’s not as if we haven’t done it before.”
That was enough to shock me. Bella had slept with Ian, the man she insisted she hated? Bella had shared what I had last night? I wanted to throw up.
“Do you have to bring that up?” I said in my best Bella drawl, hoping my face didn’t show how stricken I was. “It’s ancient history.”
“I just wanted to make sure you know it didn’t mean anything.”
“Of course it didn’t. In fact, I don’t see any point in me staying here any longer. Surely there’s someone here who can drive me to the airport. I’m going to Paris.”
He let out a snort of disgust. “Not now, you’re not. We’ve got a grandfather to bury, and we need to present a united front.”
