why, now, couldn’t she shake him off?
Because this place was insidious. It had a way of drawing people in with its luxury and its easy living and never letting them go. She felt her back teeth grinding and had to click her jaw open wide in order not to let it bother her.
Damien wrapped his arms around his bride and herded her towards the photographer, who was standing by a massive ice sculpture of a mobile phone. Ava felt a twinge of remorse that she had no idea what circumstances had led to what must have been some kind of crazy in joke in her brother’s life.
Damien and Chelsea began to kiss, and didn’t let up. It was so sweet. So romantic. Her stomach twisted. She had to look away.
A pair of hazel eyes snagged hers. Caleb again.
Guests’ heads bobbed between them cutting off her view, but every few seconds that hot hazel gaze sliced through the air, unreadable at that distance, yet aimed directly at her.
She hadn’t needed his earlier warning to take heed where he was concerned. It had taken no more than a second in his company to see that, just as she’d changed over the years, the boy she’d known, in all his varied incarnations, was no more.
There was apathy in his overly relaxed stance, arrogance in the angle of his chin, and the glimmer of barely restrained sensuality radiating from those disarming hazel eyes.
And despite the distance, despite the string quartet playing the perfectly respectable ‘Clair de Lune’, and despite the two-hundred-odd elegant party guests chatting up a storm between them, under his watch she began to feel warm and restless all at once.
She ought to have looked away. To have let her eyes slide past his as though she hadn’t even noticed.
But after the month she’d had, having a man who looked like Caleb Gilchrist looking at her as if she were some kind of exotic dish he’d once tasted, and now was deciding if he wanted to go back for seconds, was like an elixir. Like a balm to the great gaping wound in her own self-worth she was trying her best to conquer.
She cocked her head in question. A leisurely smile lit his eyes. The heat of it leapt across the marquee and burned her cheeks.
She hadn’t heard from him in nearly ten years. Yet she’d often wondered if he thought of that night fondly or with regret, or if he thought of it at all. Right then her question was answered; her old friend was not reminiscing about pulling her plaits.
Her heart responded, thumping hard and steady against her ribs, making her feel soft and breathless and interesting, not the great big loser with bad judgement in her past and big trouble in her future who’d jumped on the plane in Boston because spending time with her unhinged family had felt like the lesser of two evils compared with the situation awaiting her back at Harvard.
He made her feel as if her blood were so much lemonade. Always had. And it was the exact kind of feeling she needed right now.
She licked her suddenly dry lips and Caleb’s smile grew until she could see a pair of pointy incisors. It was the slow, easy, sure smile of a predator who knew exactly what his prey was thinking. Ava was almost glad somebody did as right then she had no idea.
The hand holding the champagne glass shook ever so slightly. Enough so she sought out a table and placed the half-empty flute out of reach.
She turned away, ran her damp palms down the sides of her dress, spotted a gap in the crowd and went for it.
She hit the edge of the lavish white marquee and kept on walking, as fast as her low heels would carry her through the lush grass. She lifted her skirt, jogged up the steps at the rear of her parents’ house and slipped inside.
And while everything outside had steadily made her feel as if she’d stepped into the Twilight Zone, inside the house was like déjà vu.
The walls were still panelled white below, pale striped wallpaper above, the floor still shiny blonde wood. Moonlight spilled in from discreetly angled skylights in the three-storey-high ceiling.
Memories swarmed over her, good and bad. But at least at last, for the first time since she’d left American soil the day before, she felt as if she was able to breathe again.
Coming home, even if only for a few days before she had to return to Harvard to front the Academic Review Committee, was the right decision.
Home was surely the only place to come to sort out her head, and her mess of a life, because this was where it had been all screwed up in the first place. It hadn’t occurred to her that Caleb Gilchrist might play a starring role in the sorting. But if that’s the way the fates wanted to play it, then who was she to argue?
CHAPTER THREE
CALEB glanced towards the big house. He’d last seen Ava heading that way. And any kind of conversation with her would be preferable to the one he was having right now.
Damien, Chelsea, Kensey and her husband Greg were talking about window treatments. Seriously, fifteen straight minutes of Caleb’s life had been spent listening to the advantages of curtains versus wooden blinds.
Enough was enough. If he didn’t get out of there and soon he might develop a tic. He’d already twitched every time the word ‘shrinkage’ had been uttered.
He clapped a hand on Damien’s shoulder. And he bit down hard.
Damien ducked out of his grasp and turned with a frown. ‘Whoa, buddy, you aiming to lame me just before my honeymoon?’
Caleb said, ‘Did I mention I just ran into your sister?’
Damien had the good grace to look sheepish. ‘You’ve seen Ava.’
‘Unless you have another sister I didn’t know about. Of course I’ve seen Ava! I know you have just had the biggest wedding this town has ever seen, but it was still pretty likely I’d notice your long-lost sister had made an appearance. It didn’t occur to you to give me some kind of heads up?’
Damien slid Chelsea’s champagne from her grasp, took a gulp, then his nose screwed up as the bubbles tickled his throat. He slid the glass back into her grip and she just kept on talking to her sister without noticing a thing. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’
‘I do. You’re avoiding the topic at hand.’
‘Which was…?’
‘The prodigal daughter has returned.’
‘Right. Well, the truth is I wasn’t sure if she was coming.’
Caleb left a big gaping hole of silent disbelief between them.
‘It’s true,’ Damien said. ‘She wasn’t sure she could get away from school. She’s smack bang in the middle of her doctorate, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ Caleb said. ‘So I heard.’
‘Well, then, what’s the big deal? You had to assume she’d been invited.’
‘Not good enough,’ Caleb said, still finding it hard to simmer down. Especially after that long hot look he and the woman of the
