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That boy wasn’t St George’s.
That boy was his.
* * *
Matilda held Simon tightly as Henry murmured to him, her heart beating so fast and so loud she couldn’t hear anything else.
She’d made a mistake. She’d made a terrible mistake.
She’d thought she’d been so clever, making sure she’d avoided him the whole weekend—going on a couple of day trips and then in the evenings keeping both Simon and herself to the upper levels of the house away from the guests.
There had only been tonight to get through and she’d been congratulating herself on how well that had worked out, Simon in bed early and herself curled up in bed too, watching a movie and eating ice-cream.
Forgetting all about the one guest she must avoid at all costs.
And then Simon had woken up and, because he liked people very much, the sounds coming from the drawing room had been irresistible.
Too concerned with finding her son, Matilda hadn’t noticed the man in the corner at first. She’d given the room a quick scan, spotted nothing and had taken a step further into it before she’d recognised the crackle of electricity that had suddenly hummed over her skin.
A horribly familiar electricity.
So she’d stopped. And she’d looked. And there he’d been, standing near the sofa. So impossible to miss, she wondered how she hadn’t seen him the first time.
Impossibly tall, impossibly broad. Radiating the same fierce, kinetic energy she remembered from years ago, all impatience, restlessness and heat.
He was dressed in a perfectly tailored suit of dark charcoal and his ink-black hair was cut ruthlessly short, highlighting those aristocratic cheekbones and the strong, sharp line of his jaw, the long blade of his nose and the carved sensuality of his mouth. A beautiful face, intensely compelling. Predatory, fierce and utterly unforgettable.
But it was his eyes that had caught her, held her. Making her freeze in place right where she’d stood.
Bright, burning gold. Like the tropical sun on an island years ago and full of the same searing heat.
r /> Now a shudder coursed through her, a fire inside her that had long been cold suddenly bursting into flame. And, helplessly, she found herself glancing at him again, just to be sure it was actually him. As if the instant response of her body hadn’t been enough.
But his attention wasn’t on her this time. He was looking at Simon. And she had one second to think that perhaps he wouldn’t notice the colour of her son’s eyes, then his gaze lifted to hers once more.
And the weight of his fury descended on her.
He knows.
Henry was still talking but Matilda had long since ceased to listen. The fight or flight response had kicked in and all she could think about was getting out of the drawing room and away from the man she could still feel staring at her.
The man with whom she’d spent two intoxicating days.
The man from whom she’d run without even a goodbye.
The man who’d fathered the boy she held in her arms.
She felt strangely hot and cold at the same time, a bit sick too, and it was all she could do not to jerk away from Henry and run from the room there and then. But he wasn’t one for public fusses so she stayed until he’d soothed Simon. Then, before he could do anything else, such as introduce her to his guests, she took her son and fled.
Back upstairs, Matilda tried to calm her frantically beating heart and attempted not to think about the man and the fury in his golden eyes. About how he’d taken a step towards her and how he’d stopped dead as Simon had run to her.
And most especially she tried not to think about that flare of heat deep inside her the moment his gaze had met hers, or the ache that had gripped her, an ache she’d tried all these years to forget in an attempt to put it behind her.
A futile attempt, as it turned out.
She put Simon back into his bed and tucked him in, singing him one of the lullabies he used to like as a baby. Then she stroked his back until he drifted off.
After making sure he was definitely asleep this time, Matilda moved out of his room and shut the door gently. Then she leaned her back against the wall in the hallway outside, put her shaking hands over her face and quietly allowed herself to freak out.
