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Absurdly, she felt her throat grow tight as the pathetic reality sank in. And through it all Ben just watched her with those bright blue eyes, seeing all the way through to where she was most vulnerable.
Lia fought to regain her composure and swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Well, if you’re sure he won’t mind...’
‘He won’t.’
Ben smiled, and it knocked the breath from Lia’s chest.
‘You’ll see how things work here—it’s much more relaxed. It’s not just Luis, it’s his husband, Ricardo, too. They love being surrounded by beauty—including beautiful women, so I’ll soon be relegated to the sidelines.’
Something inside her contracted at his easy mention of these friends. And the truth was that she wanted to know more about Ben Carter—she couldn’t deny it, much as she might want to.
She pointed vaguely at her attire, dusty and wrinkled after the long day, and said ruefully, ‘I’m hardly dressed for polite company.’
‘I know a place that’ll look after us.’
Ben held out his hand. Lia looked at it for a long moment, and then an overwhelming sense of rightness made her put her hand in his. He held it as they left the square behind and walked back to the car. And Lia tried to ignore the sensation that she’d just turned a corner and she’d never find her way back.
But she couldn’t. It sat in her belly like a fizzing time bomb.
* * *
Ben had taken Lia to a friend’s boutique after she’d put her hand in his and let him lead her back to the car. Her agreement to go to the party with him had left him buoyant. Crazy how each tiny concession from this woman felt like a ridiculous triumph.
When they’d got to the boutique Ben had tensed, waiting for Lia to turn up her nose at the discreet name over the door, but she’d gone in, oblivious to his tension, showing him yet another facet of her personality—she obviously wasn’t defined by designer labels.
Within minutes he’d explained what they needed to Gaby, Esmé’s cousin and the shop’s owner, and she’d handed Ben some clothes and whisked Lia out of sight behind a swathe of velvet material. Ben waited now, having changed into smart black trousers and a shirt.
When he heard a noise behind him he turned around and for a second his brain froze. Lia stood before him in bare feet, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. And her dress...her dress took his breath away.
It was a long silk wraparound dress in a deep royal blue colour that made her eyes pop like two gems. He could see a tantalising slit in the material that revealed one long shapely leg. He could see even from where he stood that in the space of two days her skin had taken on a faint golden glow, and he knew that there was already a spread of light freckles across her nose.
He felt robbed of breath. As if someone had punched him.
The vee neckline of the dress was a tantalising enticement to pull the material aside. It would be so easy to expose a lush breast and then cup its weight—
Lia started to turn away, saying, ‘I knew it. It’s too—’
Her voice cut through the haze in his brain. ‘No!’ His voice sounded too harsh to his ears.
She turned around again, slowly. Amazingly, she looked unsure.
‘It’s perfect,’ he managed to say, sounding only half coherent.
Gaby appeared then, and caught the end of their conversation. ‘Ben’s right! It’s just perfect for one of Ricardo and Luis’s parties. And on you, my darling, it is perfeito. Come, let’s find you some shoes to wear.’
Ben was glad of a moment alone to gather his wits again. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d seen plenty of women in far less clothing and it had never made him feel as if he was teetering on the brink of some kind
of meltdown. And usually seeing women in clothes he’d bought them came after he’d slept with them.
So far his relationship with Lia was the most chaste he’d ever indulged in. He wasn’t necessarily proud to admit that, for him, relationships with women were less about really getting to know them and more about slaking the desire he felt for them, which was usually fleeting.
He had a sense that where Lia was concerned his lust wouldn’t be so easily slaked.
For the first time he had to wonder if he’d done the right thing, bringing her here... But then she emerged again, wearing strappy silver sandals, and that last thought was blasted apart by another surge of desire.
He instructed Gaby to put all the items on his tab and took the bag she gave him containing the clothes they’d been wearing earlier. Outside, Ben opened the car door for Lia to get in. He could see her biting her lip, looking concerned.
She stopped with her hand on the door and looked at him. ‘I’ll pay you back for the clothes.’
