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Ben glanced at her again and she caught the gleam of something wry in his expression. ‘Did Ricardo stop gossiping long enough to answer your actual question?’
Lia frowned. ‘He said that he’d seen some of your work in Manhattan...’
‘Yes, and then he approached me with an offer to bid for the work on one of his hotels in Brazil. It was just when my company was starting to break even.’
‘How old were you?’ Lia asked.
Ben shrugged minutely. ‘About twenty-five.’
Lia held in her shock. Some achievement, indeed. Clearly he’d been very driven, and questions abounded in her head as to what had happened after his mother had died. She knew what everyone else knew, about the foster homes, but how had he crawled out of that to achieve such meteoric success?
Ben continued. ‘I went down to Bahia to see the site, and after a meeting Ricardo signed me up then and there. After completing the job I realised I’d come to love the place—it was like a breath of fresh air. Different, vibrant. Unstuffy. So I decided that I’d build a holiday home there. My family used to have a house in North Shore on Long Island. The community there, who had once been like family, completely ostracised us when my father lost everything. But as soon as I started to make a name for myself, some of my father’s old cronies came out of the woodwork, as if nothing had happened. The last place I wanted to be was back in that stuffy environment.’
Lia could hear the bitterness in Ben’s voice and read between the lines. Where had those ‘friends’ been when he’d been alone and defenceless?
Lia said lightly, ‘Sounds like you made the right decision.’
She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t want him to see the mix of emotions she was trying to hide. She’d felt off-kilter from the moment she’d laid eyes on this man, and now it was even worse.
When Ben drove through the gates leading to his villa a short while later, Lia realised she’d been engrossed in her own circling thoughts. Ben got out of the driver’s side and came around to help Lia out—the perfect gentleman. She only realised her feet were still bare when they hit the sharp gravel and she let out a squeak.
Before she knew what was happening she was being lifted into Ben’s arms and he was striding into the villa as if she weighed nothing.
‘You don’t have to carry me,’ she said, but it was too late. They were inside, and he was putting her down.
Her head was whirling. She couldn’t look at him, overwhelmed with some nameless emotion.
But Ben caught her chin with a finger and tipped her face up. He frowned. ‘What is it?’
The fact that she felt absurdly close to tears was horrifying. She bit her lip, and then said, ‘I don’t know... I’m just... I’m sorry for what you went through. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been.’
Ben’s expression became shuttered in an instant, and he let her go so fast that she almost lurched forward.
He backed away, his lip curling. ‘What? You’re feeling sorry for me now because the poor little rich boy lost everything and had to slum it? Suddenly everything’s more palatable now that you know I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth?’
Horror that he could think such a thing, and hurt, made Lia put out a hand. ‘No! I didn’t mean it like that at all—’
But he cut her off, saying harshly, ‘It was the best thing that could have happened to me. It woke me up to reality before I could get too cushioned by life. I knew not to take anything for granted, as my father had done. Not to grow complacent. I learnt the value of hard work and building something with your own hands—something that won’t collapse.’
‘I can understand that,’ Lia said quietly, hating it that he’d misunderstood her.
* * *
Ben looked at the woman in front of him, her hair tousled and that glorious dress falling to the floor where her bare feet peeped out. She was all slender curves and pale skin.
He knew he was wrong about her—that she wasn’t a snob. And he knew what he’d just said hadn’t been fair. But right now he was filled with something that was threatening to push him over the edge. He’d never revealed so much to anyone. Never spoken about his past like that. About his father’s drinking. His mother’s weakness.
Lia stepped forward, her hand out, her eyes wide and full of something Ben didn’t want to decipher.
‘Ben, I’m sorry, please let me explain—’
He tipped over that edge. ‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘You don’t need to explain anything because I’m not interested in talking any more. All I’m interested in is this...’
Before she could say another word Ben had closed the distance between them, taken her face in his hands and was kissing her. Kissing her the way he’d been aching to kiss her again. For a long second she was frozen in his arms, and then she was moving closer and reaching up. Pressing her body against his.
Everything was forgotten as she twined her arms around his neck. Their angry words were decimated in the heat of this passion. Their mouths fused for a long moment, as if the intensity was too much to break, and then subtly Ben coaxed her to open her mouth to him. When his tongue touched hers he was lost, drowning in a sea of sensation and growing lust as he demanded a response, which she gave willingly.
He moved his hands down her back and settled them on her hips, hauling her closer. Close enough so she could feel what she was doing to him, where he ached most of all. Lia gasped into his mouth but he didn’t let her break away. He never wanted to let her go again...
