time had been slower, more luxurious, but no less intense. A surge of emotion made her throat tight. She wasn’t frigid. At all. In fact the woman revealed under Ben’s expert tutelage was sensual and voracious...and he had shown her that. As easily as flicking a switch to let light into a dark room.
Lia sucked in a breath. That was exactly what he’d done. He’d shone light into the dark corners of her soul, where she’d felt closed-off. Deficient.
His expert dismantling of her defences had started yesterday. By the time they’d gone to his friends’ party they’d already been crumbling, thanks to their idyllic day spent walking around one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with surely one of its most charismatic and charming guides...
A voice mocked her: who was she kidding? Her defences had been crumbling from the moment she’d bumped into him outside the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
And then something cold flickered down Lia’s spine as she registered the full magnitude of just how easily and completely she’d capitulated. It really hadn’t taken much at all, in the end. She’d proved no less susceptible than any other woman to this man. Finding out about his troubled past had only added another layer of depth to a man who was fast becoming far too complex and fascinating.
And now there was this—the ultimate intimate exposure. She’d slept with him because he’d made love to her mind as much as to her body. He’d delved deep and she’d let him in, far more than anyone else.
Emotions she’d never felt before rushed around her in a sickening mix...fear, exultation, hope.
It was the hope that brought her back to earth with a bang. Hope...for what? The kind of thing she’d always told herself didn’t exist? Hope that she wouldn’t face the excruciating lash of rejection if she opened herself up to someone?
As Ben had said himself the previous evening: ‘I’m under no illusions about the myth of a romantic ideal.’ And neither was she, she assured herself, but for a dizzying moment there she’d felt hope—and that was dangerous.
The thought of Ben waking, and of herself trying to act blasé when she had no idea how to navigate this kind of situation, made her go cold all over. She had nowhere left to hide.
Her mother’s abandonment had not only devastated her father—it had devastated Lia. The knowledge that she hadn’t been lovable enough to make her stay had been indelibly inked into her skin from a young age, and Lia knew now that that was at the heart of why she’d avoided intimacy for so long, and why she’d agreed to a marriage of convenience.
She’d found it easy to dissociate, not to engage, because no one had ever broken down the walls she’d erected...until now. The galling reality that she could be as susceptible to heartbreak as her father after years of avoiding it made her feel nauseous.
Ben would see through her in an instant—see all her weaknesses. And, worse, possibly even see that flicker of hope. The part of her that wasn’t half as cool and collected as she’d always thought she was. Impervious to fickle emotions.
Lia slid out of the bed, making not a sound. Ben moved minutely, frowning in his sleep, but then he relaxed again, and her heart pounded with a mixture of panic and desperation.
Benjamin Carter had somehow managed to slide under her skin enough to make her realise that all the foundations she’d worked so hard to build up were far shakier than she liked to admit. And that was enough to drive Lia as far away from this man as she could go.
* * *
The following morning Ben padded through the villa in a pair of hastily pulled on shorts with an uncomfortable feeling of foreboding prickling along his skin. He’d woken shortly before to find the space beside him in bed empty. And Lia hadn’t been in the bathroom.
When he’d woken, at first he’d registered a deeper feeling of satisfaction than he’d ever felt before. A memory had surfaced: after they’d made love again last night Lia had been draped over his body, her head in the crook between his head and neck, her body a deliciously curved and pliant weight on his.
He’d stroked his hand up and down her back and said gruffly, ‘See? I told you... It’s nothing to do with experience. We fit.’
She’d made a huffing noise into his skin, clearly too exhausted to speak. And Ben had smiled...before falling asleep and waking to find her gone.
Ben didn’t usually wake with the expectation of finding a woman in his bed—he preferred to keep that boundary firmly intact—but it hadn’t even entered his head with Lia.
He frowned now, when he saw she wasn’t in the main living area, but still wasn’t unduly concerned. She had to be here somewhere.
For the first time in days, since he’d first laid eyes on her, Ben’s head was feeling clear again. He’d known he wanted her, but he hadn’t expected their chemistry to be so explosive. And when he found her he was going to convince her to stay another day... He was going to woo her and persuade her to consider marriage—because if she’d considered it once before she’d have to be open to the option again—in spite of the way it had turned out. Clearly it meant a lot to her father, and he obviously meant a lot to her.
Lia Ford was not the one-dimensional person he had believed her to be at the very start. She was bright, sharp, compassionate, passionate.
He thought about how he’d felt claustrophobic when the idea of taking a wife had first been mentioned to him...how he’d felt when he’d sat down to discuss it with the Sheikh and the others. But now the prospect of making Lia Ford his wife appealed to Ben in a way that he hadn’t ever thought it would.
He realised that he’d seriously underestimated how much a woman like Lia could contribute to his life. They had ideals and goals in common. The more he thought about it, the less he felt inclined to take a wife who would just be meek and biddable. He wanted someone with fire, and Lia had that in spades. She was spirited and unafraid to stand up to him, and he liked that.
And for the first time he even found himself thinking of children. Of what it would be like to have a son or a daughter. Something in Ben’s chest grew tight at the thought of a small dark-haired child with sparkling blue eyes running around.
He’d never allowed himself to contemplate it before, because his own experience of watching his parents crumble so catastrophically under the strain of their lives self-destructing had scarred him enough to never want to risk subjecting any child of his to that.
But now he felt he could consider it for the first time. A woman like Lia would never crumble. She would get up and start again. Their marriage would be nothing like his parents’—falling apart like a flimsy structure at the first inkling of trouble.
Ben was in the kitchen now, but that too was empty. He ignored his growing unease and the fact that the villa was too quiet. As much as he admired Lia’s independence, and the fact that she obviously wasn’t one of those women who liked to cling like an octopus the morning after, he just wanted to find her now.
A sense of relief hit him when he thought of the beach—of course she’d be there. But when he walked out onto the pristine sand, he saw that his stretch of private beach was empty. No supple pale body was lying out under an umbrella.
He heard a sound and whirled around, but it was just Esmé, carrying flowers into the villa. She called out sunnily, ‘Morning, Boss. You slept late—not like you at all.’
Ben felt like scowling at the reminder that last night had made its mark, but he forced a smile, following Esmé back into the villa. ‘Have you seen Lia?’
She whirled around, frowning. ‘You don’t know?’
Ben was seriously struggling to hold his irritation in. ‘Know what?’
Esmé put the exotic blooms carefully on a table, her face a picture of quizzical innocence. ‘She left early this morning. When Joao dropped me off, she got a lift with him back into Salvador. She said she had to take the first flight to New York today, then get back to the