was no big deal, she tried to tell herself. It was just the former love of her life, the father of her son—suddenly back after a year’s absence. And apparently hiring her for a job. A flash of anger gave her strength. If he was back, why hadn’t he just called her? Why did he have to hire her?
Unless...he hadn’t come back for her.
He’d left without her, after all, jetting off to Europe. That’d been as much information as Leona had been able to get out of Byron’s twin sister, Frances. Europe—as far away from Leona as he could get without leaving the planet. Or so it had felt.
And now he was back and hiring her. For a job she desperately needed. This was not him sweeping back into her life and making everything right. This was not him needing her.
So she did not flinch as he looked her up and down as if he expected her to fall into his arms and tell him how damned much she’d missed him. She would not give him the satisfaction. Yes, the past year had been the hardest year of her life. But she wasn’t the same silly little girl who believed love would somehow conquer all. The past year had shown her how tough she could be. It was time for Byron to realize the same thing.
But it was difficult to keep her head up as his gaze traveled over her. He’d always done that—looked at her as though she was the most beautiful woman on the planet. Even when they’d worked together at that restaurant and the cream of the high-society crop had come into the restaurant every single night—even when other women had thrown themselves at his Beaumont name—Byron had always had eyes only for her.
She shivered at the memory of the way he used to look at her—at the way he was looking at her right now.
“You cut your hair,” he noted.
Her mouth opened, the truth on the tip of her tongue—she’d cut it because Percy liked to yank it while he was nursing. She clamped down on that impulse. The words sat in the back of her throat, a lead weight that held her tongue still. She would give him absolutely nothing to use against her. She would not let him hurt her again.
“I like it,” he hurried to add when she couldn’t think of a single reasonable thing to say in response.
She blushed at the compliment. Her fingers itched to tuck the short bob behind her ears, but she held fast to the straps of her bag. She was not here for Byron, just like he hadn’t been there for her. She was here to do a job and that was final. “Do you really need an interior designer or did you call me away from my job just to note I’ve changed my style?” Since you left.
She didn’t say those last words out loud, but they seemed to hang in between them anyway.
Byron took another step toward her. He reached up. Leona held her breath as he trailed the very tips of his fingers over her cheek. It was almost as if he couldn’t believe she was really here, either.
Then he reached down and picked up her left hand. His thumb rubbed over her ring finger—her bare ring finger. “Leona...” he murmured, his voice husky with what she recognized as need. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Everything about her body tightened at the sound of her name from his mouth, his lips on her hand—tightened so much that she had to close her eyes because if she looked into the depths of Byron’s beautiful blue eyes for one second longer, she’d be lost all over again.
It’d always been this way. There’d been something about Byron Beaumont that had pulled her in from the very beginning—something that should have sent her running the other way.
After all, her father had been drumming his hatred of all things Beaumont into her head for as long as she could remember. She knew all about Hardwick Beaumont, her father’s nemesis, and his heirs. How the Beaumonts were dangerous, how they seduced young and innocent women and then cast them aside as if they were nothing.
Just as Leona had been seduced and cast aside.
So she did not give. She ignored her body’s reaction to Byron, ignored the old memories that the mere touch of his lips brought rushing back to her. She kept her eyes closed and her focus on the job.
The job she needed because she was raising Byron’s son on her own. A son he did not know about.
She needed to tell him.
But she couldn’t. Not yet. Not until she figured out what he was doing here. Not until she knew where she stood with him. She was no longer young and innocent and she was not someone who would forget a year’s worth of heartache and loneliness with the whisper of her name, thank you very much.
God, what a mess.
A tense second passed between them and then Byron dropped her hand. She felt him step away from her and only then did she open her eyes.
He now stood several feet away, looking at her differently—harder, meaner almost.
Another flash of panic hit her—did he already know about Percy? Or was he just mad that she wasn’t falling at her feet in gratitude for being acknowledged?
“I need a designer,” he said quietly. He didn’t sound angry, which was at direct odds with the way he was looking at her. “I’m going to be opening up my own restaurant.”
“Here?”
“Here,” he agreed, sounding resigned to it. “It’s a massive job and I—” she saw him swallow “—I wanted to see if it was the kind of thing you were still interested it.”
“You’re going to stay in Denver?” The question came out with more of an edge than she meant it to, but that was the thing she needed to know. If he were going to stay in Denver, then...
Then he’d have to know about Percy. They’d have to figure something out, something involving child support and visitation and...
Well, not their relationship. There was no relationship. That part of her life was over now.
And if he were opening up his own restaurant—her mind spun around the facts. Her father, Leon Harper, would find out that Byron had come home.
Oh, God. Her father would get out his old axes and grind them all over again. Her father would shove his way back into her life, ignoring all the ways she had tried to extricate herself from her parents. Her father would do everything he could to destroy Byron—again.
Her father would do everything to punish her again.
“Yes,” Byron said, turning away from her and looking up at the old buildings. “I’ve come home.”
Byron walked into the darkened room that, somehow, would become a restaurant. Somehow. “Here we are. The dungeon.”
Behind him, he heard Leona cough lightly. “Is that the theme you’re working with?”
“No.”
What the hell was he doing? Touching her face? Kissing her hand? That was not part of his plan. His plan was to hire her, get his restaurant going and kick her right back out of his life—this time, on his terms. She hadn’t needed him. He didn’t need her. Except for design purposes.
