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Scanning over the snippets on the screen told him all he really needed to know—every person who’d contacted her wanted something from her. Dropping the phone back into her pocket, Ben considered the evening ahead.
His plan, ill thought out to start with, had been to have a fun evening and hopefully a fun night. To show Luce a good time, then remind her who he was so they could have a laugh about it. Or he could, anyway. But now...he was invested.
Who was Lucinda Myles these days?
The last time he’d seen her must have been the night of his spectacularly disastrous twenty-first birthday party. He remembered spotting her sloping out of the hotel ballroom towards one of the drawing rooms, but after that far too much champagne had blurred the evening until the following morning and a headbangingly loud lecture from his father about appropriate behaviour and responsibility to the family reputation. Friends had helpfully filled him in on the more humorous of his antics that night, but no one had mentioned Luce.
Then the ex had broken up with him for humiliating her and ‘possibly ruining her future’, whatever that meant, and he’d had no reason to see Luce again. Who knew how much she’d changed in the intervening years?
Ben paused in his thoughts. She couldn’t have changed that much, given what he’d seen so far that day. In which case...
Grabbing the phone from the table next to him, he called down to Reception.
‘Daisy? Can you cancel my booking at The Edge tonight?’ Trendy, stainless-steel, cutting-edge fusion restaurants just weren’t Luce’s style, no matter who the concierge had needed to bribe to get him a table there that night. ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll sort out an alternative myself.’
Something more Luce. More fun too, probably.
One more quick phone call ascertained that the restaurant he was thinking of still existed. Perfect. Hanging up, Ben glanced at the bathroom door and then at his watch again. He’d given Luce long enough. Time to move on to the next stage of their evening.
Pausing first to replace the diary in the safe, he gave the bathroom door a quick rap with his knuckles and then said, loud enough to be sure he could be heard through it, ‘You’ve got five more minutes in there before I start trying to guess the pass code for your phone.’
To his surprise, the lock turned and the door opened almost instantly. Eyebrows raised, Luce stared at him and said, ‘Threats aren’t traditionally very relaxing, you know.’
But baths clearly were. Especially for Dr Lucinda Myles.
She’d changed out of those clothes he’d been longing to run his hands over, but since she’d replaced them with a slippery, silky purple dress he really wasn’t complaining. Her hair was pinned up off her neck, with a few damp tendrils curling behind her ears and across her forehead. She smiled at him, her deep red lips curving in amusement. ‘I didn’t think you were the sort of man to do speechless. I like it.’
A rush of lavender hit his lungs as she swept past him, reminding him of the château in summer, and he realised he still hadn’t spoken. ‘If I’d known you were using your time so well I’d have been much more patient,’ he said, finding his voice at last.
Luce slipped her arms into her coat, her fingers reaching into the pocket for her phone. Time for another distraction. Ben offered her his arm and she took it, forestalling her return to the world of technology and messages from people who wanted far less fun things from her than he did. ‘Now, if you’re ready, won’t you let me escort you to dinner?’
She still looked suspicious as she nodded, but she left the room beside him, steady on higher heels than he’d have expected her to be comfortable wearing. Ben smiled. This was going to be a good evening. He was sure of it. The hotel and the business were fine, and he had the company of a beautiful and intriguing woman for the night—one he might be able to help a little. And then he’d get to decamp to the cottage for the rest of the week, feeling good about himself.
Life was great.
* * *
There should be laws against men looking quite that good in a suit. Men she was determined to resist, anyway. If Dennis had ever looked even half as good maybe they would have managed more than a few coffees and the occasional fake date when he needed a partner for a university dinner or she needed someone for a family event.
Actually, no, they wouldn’t. Quite aside from the fact that Dennis became intensely irritating after more than a couple of hours in his company, she’d never felt that...spark—that connection she needed to take the risk of building an actual relationship. To her surprise, Ben Hampton had a spark. Not a relationship one, of course, but maybe something more intense. Something that definitely hadn’t been there the last time they met. Which was just as well, as he’d been dating her roommate at the time. But there was definitely something.
