piece of information. ‘My mother...’ he said slowly.
‘Strangely,’ Milly all but shrieked down the end of the line, ‘she seems to be under the impression that we’re still an item!’
‘Where are you?’
‘Where do you think I am, Lucas?’
‘How would I know?’ he answered with silky smoothness. ‘It’s after seven on a Friday evening and you’re a single woman...’
‘I’m at home.’ How could he think that she would physically be able to go clubbing when she was in love with him? Or was he just judging her the way he judged himself? He would have no problem doing that. If he possessed a heart instead of a lump of cold where a heart should be...
‘I’m on my way.’
Milly fought the temptation to get a little more dolled up than she was. Maybe swop the baggy jogging bottoms, which she knew he loathed, for something a little more attractive. He could take her as he found her, she decided. He could explain why his mother was still in the dark and then he could be on his way.
She was as cool as a cucumber until the doorbell went half an hour later and there he was. All dark, tall and broodingly, sinfully gorgeous. Just the right side of dishevelled with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled to the elbows and his jacket slung over one shoulder. A sight for sore eyes and she just wanted to stand there and stare.
‘So...’ She pulled open the door and stepped away from him, not trusting herself. ‘Mind explaining...?’
Lucas couldn’t peel his eyes away from her. She was wearing just the sort of outfit he had always teased that she needed to wean herself away from. It hid every delectable curve, and yet she was still so enticing, still so damned sexy.
He’d missed her. It was as simple as that. He hadn’t been able to focus, had lost interest in deals that should have netted all of his undivided attention, could not even be bothered to rifle through his little black book for other women. And he had told his mother nothing because...
‘I need a drink. Something stronger than a cup of tea.’
‘You need a drink? This isn’t a social call, Lucas.’ Milly finally looked at him and her treacherous eyes skittered away. She clasped her arms around her body, hugging herself.
‘No. It’s not.’ He headed straight for the kitchen, directly to the cupboard where he knew she kept a practically full bottle of whisky, and he poured himself a hefty glass, keenly aware that she had padded in behind him. He imagined her arms were still folded and her full mouth would be pursed in a moue of frustration.
She loved him. She had loved him. Did she still?
‘I intended to tell her...’
‘But somehow you didn’t manage to get round to it? Even though you speak to her every other day? That titbit just managed to get lost amidst the chit chat?’
‘No.’
‘Okay...’ She looked at him hesitantly, picking up vibes which, for once, he wasn’t bothering to hide. He had sat down at the kitchen table and was nursing his drink, not looking at her—again, a little weird, because it smacked of the sort of indecision not associated with him. She felt in need of a stiff drink as well but instead made do with a glass of juice from the fridge before sitting opposite him at the chrome-and-glass table.
‘I could have told her but...I needed time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘Time to come to terms with the fact that we were really no longer an item.’ He looked at her with serious intent and swallowed a mouthful of the whisky, not taking his eyes from her flushed face. ‘I thought...when you told me that you loved me...’
‘I don’t want to go there.’
‘We don’t have a choice.’
‘We do!’ she cried. ‘I said what I said and there’s no point going over it!’
‘I’ve never believed in love.’
‘I told you—I get that.’
‘You don’t. You don’t because, as you said, I let one crappy experience dictate my future where you, my optimistic Milly, would never have allowed that to happen. So, no, you didn’t understand. Not really.’
He shot her a crooked, hesitant smile.
‘Do you know that you were the first person I ever told about Betina and my youthful error of judgement? And I knew that every time you raised the subject, which was often, you were trying to come to terms with the way I thought, because it was so unlike the way you would think. I should have been enraged at having that one confidence thrown back in my face time and again. I wasn’t.’
He looked at his glass, circled the rim with his finger.
‘We’re all creatures of habit to some extent. My habit lay in the way I thought, the way I conditioned myself to think. For me, marriage would be about something that made sense because love made no sense. My head told me that you made no sense. You were just so damned young, you wore your heart on your sleeve, you were looking for the same happy-ever-after ending my mother believed in—the same happy ever ending I had no time for. I had built my box and I had no intention of stepping out of it, even though I knew you wanted me to. Am I losing you?’
He shot her the ghost of a fleeting smile that made her world tilt on its axis.
‘I’m following you and you’re right—I didn’t understand, not really. Plus I was, well, I’ve never been that secure about my looks and I was...’
‘Jealous?’
‘No. Yes. Maybe.’
‘Just maybe? Because I’ve been eaten up with jealousy thinking about all those men you might have been seeing behind my back in the last week or two.’
Milly’s heart soared. She wondered whether she was hearing correctly. She half-leaned forward just in case she missed something and that devastating smile broadened as he read her mind.
‘You can’t let go, and I’m sorry about that, but...but you don’t have to explain.’
‘I do, my Milly, because I find that I let go a long time ago. I never realised it because I was just waiting in a holding bay for the right woman to come along and mess with my heart.’
The silence stretched between them. When she finally extended her hand along the table and he linked his fingers through hers, she experienced a rush of so many emotions, all vying for prominence, that she felt faint.
‘I ran scared when you told me how you felt. I didn’t know how to deal with it, Milly. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mother that it was over between us. I had the strangest feeling that if I said it out loud, if I vocalised it, then I would find myself in a place of no return. I couldn’t face the thought of losing you but I didn’t know how to make it right between us. My head was still waging war with my heart. The fact is, I love you. I was falling in love and I didn’t even recognise the symptoms because I was so
