‘Is there a problem?’ Her imagination went into overdrive, producing any number of disaster scenarios that would bring about this man knowing her name, seeking her out.
Did they send someone in a captain’s uniform to inform you when your family home had burnt down or your mum was lying in hospital after a head-on collision with a bus?
He shook his head and flashed her a reassuring smile. ‘Not at all. No problem, just a message.’
She touched a hand to her chest. ‘For me?’
Her worried frown vanished as logic kicked in. There could be no message for her because nobody knew she was here. She hadn’t explained her travel arrangements to Mark and nobody back home knew she was catching an early flight.
It was obviously a case of mistaken identity.
‘I think you’ve got the wrong person.’ And since when did men in pilots’ uniforms act as messengers?
‘No,’ he said, looking at her hair. ‘If you’d like to follow me...?’
When she thought about it later, Lara put her uncharacteristic docility down to a combination of the uniforms and airports, which were not the sort of places where anyone these days wanted to make a scene.
Airports! How she hated them! Though up to this point the worst thing that had happened to her was lost luggage.
‘I hope this won’t take long, my flight—’
‘Thanks, Justin, I owe you. Give my best to AJ.’
Raoul placed a hand on Lara’s arm before leaning forward, hand extended to the other man. Lara stood there, too stunned to protest the possessive gesture as she watched the two men shake hands like old friends.
‘Any time, Raoul.’ Justin flashed a sheepish apologetic look towards Lara before setting his cap on his head and walking away.
It was a set-up.
As she turned her head to look at the man who remained the life returned to her stiff limbs. Snatching her arm free, she took an angry step away from him.
‘Is he even a pilot?’ she asked bitterly.
‘Yes, he’s a pilot. I called him when I got snarled in the traffic.’ When Raoul had dropped her off and driven back to his place it hadn’t been too bad, but by the time he’d reversed back out it had been straight into rush-hour traffic.
In the interim he’d not actually got out of the car.
The automatic gates closing behind him had seemed to act like a trigger. Without warning the dark thoughts that he had escaped for a few hours last night had come rushing into his head, carrying with them a sense of searing desolation and loss. Unable to fight the downward spiral, he’d sunk deeper and deeper, struggling like a drowning man. Just as his lungs had felt as though they would burst, he had caught a whiff of the perfume that lingered in the confined space, and he had focused on that elusive fragrance, letting it carry him clear.
Over in seconds, minutes or an hour, he had no idea as he sat there feeling as though he’d just run a hard set of sprints, sweat trickling down his back. He leaned back in the seat, pushing his head into the leather rest. The face that belonged to the scent materialised, and he let it form and solidify, allowing the image to push away the feelings of moments before. Sex had always been that for him, an escape, and now the echo of it was doing the same thing.
It was just a shame he hadn’t realised sex had nothing to do with emotions before Lucy. Now he enjoyed it for what it was, which was a better stress-releaser than track work and as good as—though a lot more fun than—solo climbing.
Last night—even for someone who enjoyed sex as much as he did—had been...incredible. He focused on the lips of the face in his head and released a sigh of regret. If what she did for him came in legal prescription form, the next few months would be a hell of a lot easier to get through!
And then it hit him. Like a jigsaw the pieces suddenly slotted together, and he ignored the fact that some of the pieces needed forcing, and thought... Why not?
And then the rest just became clear. He would make the gloriously sexy Lara Gray realise that this was a business arrangement she could not turn down.
Even when she’d been sparking up at him with antagonism he could see that she had been as aware of the crackle of tension between them as he was, just less experienced at hiding the fact. She would come to see that not sleeping with her boss this weekend had been a great career move.
It was also his winning card.
The information he’d requested had come during the airport traffic jam. Owning a law firm with access to first-class investigators could be useful, and these days—as in post-Lucy—he backed up his hunches and gut instincts with hard, researched fact.
The file he’d scrolled through had been thin. It turned out that she didn’t have a criminal record or any skeletons in her closet. She did have a driving licence and a couple of parking tickets, but no fall-back position if she lost her job, and pretty much no qualifications. Lara Gray needed a pay cheque, and her boss was the CEO’s nephew.
Raoul was brought back to the present. ‘Luckily your flight was delayed.’ Raoul had had his jet put on standby to cover that eventuality.
He’d had no trouble rationalising what might on the surface appear an extreme course of action. He never committed to any course of action unless he was willing to follow it through; half-hearted measures were not his style.
Not that his heart had been involved, in this or any other decision he made. It was impossible to remove the risk factor completely, but it could always be minimised.
‘Lucky!’ Lara echoed bitterly as she continued to rub her arm where his hand had lain.
She couldn’t brush away the invisible mark of contact any more than she could brush away the memory of the previous night. It seemed laughable now that she’d spent the bus journey to the airport convincing herself that in time the face that was etched so clearly in her mind would fade, the details would blur. There would come a time when she wouldn’t remember his voice.
She had found the thought soothing because, though she wanted to remember her first, she also wanted to move past it and him. She knew how special last night had been and recognised the danger of souring future relationships by subjecting them to death by comparison. The idea of becoming the dating equivalent of a soccer-team star, who got to be thirty and still considered the winning goal he scored in high school the pinnacle of his life, filled her with horror.
And now he was standing there and the lie was cruelly exposed. Her protection was stripped away and the truth was looking at her through his eyes, his beautiful eyes.
Time was not a factor. His simply wasn’t a face you forgot. Each angle and plane of his face, the subtle shading of his deep voice, the scent of his skin...it was imprinted, indelibly imprinted.
‘Very few people can carry off the open-mouthed look.’
Lara closed her mouth with an audible snap.
‘I didn’t say you were not one of them.’ To his mind Lara Gray could not
