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‘That’s good.’ Getting home tomorrow would still give her a day and a half to work, at the least.
‘Until then I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. So, in the meantime, I believe this is the part where we make small talk. What topic do you want? Politics? Religion?’
‘Tell me what you’ve been doing since university.’ He looked surprised, so she added, ‘I bored you about Nest last night. Now it’s your turn.’
She needed to know where he’d been, what he’d done, so she could understand who he was now. For some reason it seemed vitally important that she make sense of him before they headed back to the cottage and their separate beds. Luce very carefully ignored the small part of her brain that murmured, And if I understand him, if I know him, I’ll know if it’s safe to ask him to kiss me tonight.
But Ben just shrugged and said, ‘Pretty much as expected. Graduated and went to work for the family business...’
‘It seems to be doing well enough.’
His smile was a trifle smug. ‘Doubled the profits in my first five years. On track to triple them in the next two.’
That Ben was familiar. The one who thought money was the most important thing in the world. ‘Your father must be very proud,’ she said, thinking of the stern grey-haired man she’d met that one fateful day she’d spent in Ben’s world. She didn’t mean it to sound so dry, so sarcastic, but it came out that way regardless.
‘He died about a year ago.’ Ben’s eyes were on his glass rather than her as he spoke, and a sharp spike of sympathy pierced Luce’s chest.
‘I’m so sorry.’ She knew how that felt. That hole—the space where a person should be. Trying to find a way to live without someone who’d defined you all your life.
But Ben rolled his shoulders back and gave her a strange half-smile. ‘I wouldn’t be. To be honest, I’ve barely noticed the difference. Just means that now it’s my brother Seb checking up on my methods instead.’
There he was. The boy who’d had so little regard for the things that mattered—family, friends, responsibility, doing the right thing—had grown up exactly as she’d expected. Into a man who still had no respect for the things that mattered to her. A man she couldn’t consider sleeping with even if she was sure it would be magnificent. And a sure way to find that relaxation he promised.
Except there was something in his eyes. Something else. ‘You must miss him, though?’
‘He wasn’t really the sort of father you missed.’
She wanted to ask more, to try to understand how his father’s death could have had so little impact on him. But before she could find the right question the waitress brought their food and Ben had switched the conversation to pies and homemade chips.
In fact, Luce realised as she tucked into her truly delicious meal, he seemed almost too keen to keep the conversation light and inconsequential. As he started another story about a hotel somewhere in Scotland that had served compulsory haggis to its guests for breakfast every Sunday Luce smiled politely, nodded in the right places and tried to think of a way to get him to open up. He was hiding something, she was sure, and her incurable curiosity was determined to find out what it was before she had to return to Cardiff.
‘Let’s have another drink before we head home,’ she suggested, when he paused in regaling her with his tales.
Home. Oh, God, she’d just called the cottage ‘home’. If ever anything was guaranteed to send a man running in the opposite direction, laying claim to his house as your own before you’d even really been on a proper date was probably it. But Ben hadn’t flinched or reacted. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe Luce really could be that lucky.
‘Sure. But I warn you now: I’m not carrying you back in that snow.’
‘I think I can manage.’
Ben studied her carefully, as if he suspected an ulterior motive, but at least he didn’t seem terrified at her presumption. Luce tried not to shift under his gaze and pretended very hard that she’d said nothing of consequence at all.
‘Okay, then.’ Ben got to his feet. ‘You have a look at the pudding menu while I get the drinks.’
Now, that was a mission Luce could get stuck into. Then all she had to do was figure out a way to get Ben to open up to her.
* * *
Ben rested his weight against the bar, waiting for their drinks, and watched Luce from the corner of his eye. Not that she’d notice. She seemed completely absorbed by the dessert menu, and he wondered if she’d go for the chocolate mousse or the sticky toffee pudding. She didn’t seem like a fruit salad girl. It was one of the things he liked about her.
