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There was no escaping the fact that his timing was disastrously out. Her focus was solely on Emily Rose and rightly so. Ben was pretty sure, considering he’d made no secret of the fact that he thought marriage was for mugs, that any proposal he made that included the word love would be treated with intense suspicion—she’d laugh him out of the room.
His jaw firmed as he turned and walked out of the room. He needed to think about the long game; he needed to prove that he could be the man she wanted, the man she needed. And not just in her bed—though that, he admitted to himself, was not such a bad place to start, though obviously not now when she was so emotionally vulnerable.
The house had a panelled study. Of all the rooms it showed the most sign of the removal of personal items. The bookshelves that lined one wall from floor to ceiling were empty except for a row of ancient encyclopaedias and a few dog-eared paperbacks. The wall over the heavy desk had several paler patches where paintings or maybe photos had been removed.
He opened his laptop on the desk and tried out the chair as a file popped onto his screen. For once it was a struggle to empty his head and focus, but in the end he managed an hour’s work before he took a break. He must have dozed in the chair because the sun was no longer shining through the leaded French doors when he jolted awake with a start, the force of which made him surge out of his chair.
The high-pitched keening sound was nothing short of feral; it made the hairs on his neck stand on end. For a second he froze and then, as the second peal of screams rang out, he hit the ground running. Heart thudding, arms pumping, he flew up the stairs. The door hit the wall with a dull thud that made pictures on the opposite wall shudder.
The shadowed room was silent and empty but for the figure who was sitting bolt upright on the bed. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, staring straight ahead.
After all the nightmare images that had flickered horror-movie style through his head, the relief to find her in one piece and not lying in a pool of blood or something equally dire made him feel light-headed.
He was across the room in seconds, kneeling on the bed beside her. He caught her arms; her skin was cool and damp with a layer of perspiration.
‘What is it?’ She looked at him with a total lack of recognition. He could feel the fine tremors running through her body. ‘Lily, talk to me,’ he roughed out huskily. ‘What’s wrong, baby?’
Her response was slow. A pucker appeared between her brows as she frowned at him and blinked like an owl.
‘What’s wrong, Lily? Say something.’
‘I... I was asleep...was I...? Ben...what are you doing here?’ And where was here? She felt slightly confused but not alarmed. His shirt was partly unbuttoned and his hair mussed as though he’d just tumbled out of bed, but he was still wearing jeans—Ben did things for denim that ought to carry a health warning. The erotic thought was only half formed when Lily stiffened. ‘Emmy!’
Even before he had made suitably soothing noises and reassured her that Emmy was fine and would be fine, her brain had got there and the fear receded.
‘You screamed.’ He closed his eyes momentarily, trying to blank out the replay of the sound in his head; the surface of his skin was still raised with goose bumps.
She frowned. ‘Did I?’
He stroked down her bare arms with his hands, pushing her gently back down. ‘Go to sleep, angel. You were dreaming.’
Her nose wrinkled in confusion. ‘I don’t remember.’
He huffed out a laugh. He would not forget—the sound would stay with him for ever.
‘That’s all right, and normal with night terrors,’ he was able to explain with confidence. It was years since he’d thought of the boy at school who used to have them regularly and he never remembered anything. He pressed a light kiss to her forehead, whispering softly, ‘Go to sleep.’
Like a fairy-tale princess woken by a kiss, the fog cleared from her mind. Ben had begun to lever himself from the bed when she grabbed his arm.
He paused and covered the hand on his arm with his own. ‘It’s all right. You had a bad dream. Close your eyes. You’re still asleep.’
She shook her head and, still holding his arm, her fingers digging hard into the muscles, she pulled herself upright again. Her eyes were burning, not with confusion, but a smouldering determination.
‘You’re not going to remember a thing about this tomorrow.’
Her green eyes wide and languid, she stroked his cheek, her fingers trailing slowly over the skin of his jaw. His jaw clenched as his self-control trembled, but stayed by some miracle intact.
