she was attracted to. She couldn’t walk past him without wanting to touch him. She couldn’t be in the same room—the same country—without wanting him.
What was wrong with her?
She didn’t even like him as a person. He was too formal and stiff. He rarely smiled. He thought she was silly and irresponsible like her mother. Not that her two tipsy episodes had helped in that regard, but still. She had always hated her mother’s weddings ever since she’d gone to the first one as a four-year-old.
By the time Sibella married Lucien’s father for the first time, Audrey was eighteen. A couple of glasses of champagne—well, it might have been three or four, but she couldn’t remember—had helped her cope reasonably well with the torture of watching her mother marry yet another unsuitable man. Audrey would be the one to pick up the pieces when it all came to a messy and excruciatingly public end.
Why couldn’t she get through a simple wedding reception or two or three without lusting over Lucien?
Another boom of thunder sounded so close by it made the whole cottage shudder. Audrey winced. ‘Gosh. That was close.’
Lucien looked down at her. ‘You’re not scared of storms?’
‘No. I love them. I particularly love watching them down here, coming across the fields.’
He twitched one of the curtains aside. ‘Where did you park your car? I didn’t see it when I drove in.’
‘Under the biggest oak tree,’ Audrey said. ‘I didn’t want it to be easy to see in case the press followed me.’
‘Did you see anyone following you?’
‘No, but there were recent tyre tracks on the driveway—I thought they were Mum and Harlan’s.’
‘The caretaker’s, perhaps?’
Audrey lifted her eyebrows. ‘Does this place look like it’s been taken care of recently?’
‘Good point.’
Another flash of lightning split the sky, closely followed by a boom of thunder and then the unmistakable sound of a tree crashing down and limbs and branches splintering on metal.
‘Which tree did you say you parked under?’ Lucien asked.
Audrey’s stomach lurched like a limousine on loose gravel. ‘No. No. No. Noooooo!’
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