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They were both dressed in funereal black but there the similarity stopped. Despite the fact he had presumably been sitting on the floor, there was not a crease or a speck of dust on him.
Her suit was creased and some of the crisps that Sara had sprayed on her when she’d laughed had stuck to her jacket, she hadn’t looked at her updo since eight a.m., so she was assuming it could use some work, and her lipstick was long gone.
He wasn’t wearing lipstick...his mouth... She swallowed and suddenly wanted to throw herself at him.
She controlled the impulse.
‘I said what are you doing here?’
Now she noticed he didn’t look so hot—not creases, but there were very dark shadows under his eyes and he’d lost weight, which had sharpened his features. Haggard was going too far but he did not look the picture of health.
‘What are you doing here?’ she repeated again.
‘I came for you.’
Her brain said caution, her heart said... She was not going to be misled by her heart any more.
‘You’d better come in, but I’m warning you it’s a mess.’
‘Fine.’ He stepped over a packing case before she thought to warn him about it.
Outside he looked bad, inside he looked awful, in a gorgeous way, of course. ‘You look terrible. When did you last sleep?’
‘I came to apologise.’
‘What for? You were right. My grandpa was an evil monster.’ An evil monster that she had just put into the ground.
He watched her beautiful lips quiver and brutally quashed the urge to put his arms around her. It was a privilege he had lost, but one he had every intention of winning back. ‘You got to see him before he...died?’
‘I went straight to the clinic after I got off the flight,’ she recalled. ‘They’d been trying to contact me all day. He’d already slipped into a coma. Were you there...at the funeral?’
‘You saw me?’
‘No, my friend, Sara, she described you. So, Soren,’ she said, feeling quite proud of how civilised she was being, ‘what does bring you here?’
‘I have already said. I came for you.’
She shook her head, unable to stop her traitorous heartbeat quickening. ‘Me as in...?’
‘Just you.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘If it will win me any brownie points, definitely, I’m certifiable. But if not, I’m not mad, just desperate and willing to...Dio, Anna, I am so, so sorry,’ he groaned. ‘What happened was all my fault. You were right in everything you said about me except one. I never wanted to hurt you. I only ever wanted to protect you.’
‘But you were right. My grandpa was a crook. He was responsible for your father’s death and others too,’ she admitted heavily. ‘I think I must have known at some level, Ishouldhave known, but he was always so good to me.’
‘No one is all black. There are shades of grey.’
Not according to the police, who, once they had established to their satisfaction that she was not involved, had been willing to show her the proof of her grandfather’s guilt.
His death had meant, they had explained, that she was not obliged to back any financial recompense to those he had cheated. Legally she could keep the house, which, it transpired, her grandfather had transferred to her name.
Anna hadn’t wanted any of it. It was all sold, the proceeds going to his victims, except for the stuff in the boxes that no one wanted.
‘I said some terrible things to you and I don’t expect you to forgive me,’ she said.
‘There is nothing to forgive. I should not have let you find out that way—I was a coward,’ he declared, drawing a startled look from Anna. ‘I knew what you would think if I told you, and I could not bear the idea of you seeing I was no hero. The guilt every time you said thank you and—’
