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His hair was a little longer than when she’d seen him last. She would have guessed that he hadn’t had it cut since that morning. It curled a little at the starched collar of his suit, and her fingers tingled with a physical urge to reach out and touch it.
“Aurora Jones, is it possible you get more and more beautiful each time I see you?” Lucien asked with a beaming smile, holding his hands out for Aurora to take. She smiled self-consciously but placed her fingers in his palms and stood up to place a dutiful kiss on either cheek. “Too skinny though. Just as well we’ve come for breakfast. Some beans and black pud ought to sort you out in no time.” He winked, releasing her hands and turning his attention to Beatrice.
Aurora went to sit down but Leonardo’s hand on her arm forestalled her. As Beatrice, Lucien and Rita engaged in a brief ritual of greeting, Aurora was completely enslaved by the man she’d once loved.
“Aurora,” he greeted with a nod of his head. “No kiss for me?”
She shot him a look of pure derision, but didn’t dare say the choice phrases that were firing into her mind, lest Beatrice realise that Aurora hated him with all her passion.
“Oh, I think I can stomach a brief kiss,” she murmured with a noncommittal shrug. The moment she pressed her cheek to his, her bravado evaporated in a wave of nothingness. The fragrance. The touch. The feel. He was intoxicating. Just being in his presence was akin to sculling a bottle of Grey Goose.
He put a hand on the small of her back and kept her pinned to his side, when she would otherwise have broken their contact.
“Have you missed me?” He wondered aloud, whispering in her cheek.
She stiffened in his arms. “Believe me, I have not missed you for a moment,” she lied valiantly.
His laugh showed his disbelief. “You realise you’re shaking?”
She stepped back, chastened and afraid. The attraction between them was like a live wire that she had no protection against. She sat down in the booth seat, and realised her mistake a moment later, when Leonardo took up the empty spot right beside her. Beneath the table, their thighs brushed, and she sucked in a quick breath of air.
“I didn’t realise you’d be here today,” he said quietly, signalling for a waiter’s attention. Instantly, a woman appeared, as though Leonardo’s wish was all she had been born to obey.
“Obviously neither did I. Realise that you’d be here, I mean.” She said through gritted teeth, clasping her hands together beneath the table.
“Or you wouldn’t have come?” He queried, turning his attention to the blonde with a distracted smile. “Short black.”
Aurora rolled her eyes. “You could say ‘please’ once in a while.”
“Or you wouldn’t have come, please?” He mocked, his eyes lingering on the full pout of her lips.
“No.” She nodded, sipping her champagne. “I wouldn’t have come.”
His eyes flared with some unknown emotion, and Aurora felt an answering response low in her abdomen.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough champagne for a lifetime?”
She eyed him over the rim of the glass and finished the entire thing, feeling the bubbles fizzing all the way to her stomach.
His smile was without humour as he dipped his head forward. On the pretence of wiping his mouth with a napkin, he said, “If you are attempting to get a reaction from me, you should realise that you’re out of your depth.”
Her smile was saccharine as she met his gaze unflinchingly. “I think I know how to handle you.”
Nonetheless, when the waiter returned a moment later with Leonardo’s coffee, Aurora ordered a peppermint tea.
She caught the look of satisfaction on Leonardo’s face and levelled him with a barbed glare. “Believe it or not, I don’t drink very much these days.”
He lifted his brows in obvious derision and turned away from her, catching the threads of the conversation Beatrice was having with her parents.
“Farnley would be beautiful,” she was saying, flicking through some photographs her parents had taken that morning. “The Marquee could go on the East lawn. We could have some floating lanterns in the fountain – very Midsummer Night’s Dream.” She frowned. “Catering could be a problem.”
“We’ll find someone wonderful, darling. And as for accommodation, the house has thirty functional bedrooms; and the Clevedon town has that new abomination. That Holiday Inn?”
“It’s not a Holiday Inn,” Lucien said with a shake of his head. “Something like it though.” He pulled a face. “Three star hotel.”
Aurora had to hide her smile behind her hand. “I dare say it will be sufficient for one or two nights.”
“Not for you,” Beatrice said, shaking her head. “You’ll be at the house with me. I want you by my side the whole time!” She put a finger on the side of her mouth in an exaggerated gesture of contemplation. “Unless, of course, you and Alec want to stay in a romantic room with a view of the lavender garden.”
