Georgie drew breath, looked up and two things happened at once.
The man by the window slowly turned around and she, in turn, glanced in his direction, eyes drawn to him because he towered over everyone else in the room.
The Prince.
His bloodline was stamped in the regal arrogance of his bearing and the cool, controlled command in those deep, dark eyes.
He was so tall and so ridiculously striking—his face chiselled perfection and forbiddingly beautiful.
So sinfully good-looking and so terrifyinglyfamiliar.
Georgie blinked and knew that while one part of her brain was telling her that he just couldn’t be the guy she thought he was, there was another part of her brain pointing out that his was a face that, once seen, could never be forgotten. Yet how could this be the same man? How?Buyinga hotel? Notworkingin one?How?
She knew that everyone had stopped talking and she could feel eyes boring into her. Duncan nervously said something but it was just white noise because the only thing she was aware of was that man by the window, staring at her in silence.
Disbelief, incredulity and shock roared through her with the force of a freight train and, like a computer suddenly overloading on too much information, her brain made up its mind to stop functioning altogether. Her breathing became shallow and panicked as she began to hyperventilate and, with a gasp, she felt herself doing something she had never done in her life before.
She fainted.
When Georgie came to, she was on a sofa and surfacing to consciousness like a patient emerging from a coma. Where was she?What was going on?
Her brain was foggy. It seemed, from what she could see through half-closed, still-dazed eyes, that she was in one of the hotel bedrooms with its familiar décor reminiscent of an old Penguin classic novel. Cream walls with burnt umber dado and picture rails displayed framed classics by Virginia Woolf. The sofa on which she now found herself was the same burnt umber as the woodwork.
She vaguely knew that, by registering what was familiar, she was putting off acknowledging what made no sense.
‘Here, drink this.’
If Georgie had been in any doubt about the identity of the guy who had caused her to black out, then his voice killed all those doubts stone dead. She would have recognised that distinctive drawl in the middle of a crowded bar. It was deep and dark, with just the merest hint of something smoky and exotic.
It was a voice that had haunted her dreams for so long. In her head, she had played and replayed so many scenarios where she would hear that voice, turn around and walk towards it as unerringly as she once had.
She would be in charge—calm—not lying on a sofa with her skirt hitched up one thigh and struggling to get her thoughts in order.
She wriggled into a semi-sitting position and breathed raggedly as her wide and still disbelieving eyes collided with his.
‘You!’ She fought back the prickle of tears. ‘It can’t be. What areyoudoing here?’
Everything was in freefall.
Time slowed. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his and, in a sickening rush, she was not just seeing into a past that had come and gone years ago but into a future that was irrevocably breaking down in front of her.
A unit.Herunit. Tilly and her. A team of two, because that was what happened when you had a child and the dad was nowhere to be found. When the dad had disappeared without leaving a trace of himself behind.
Except here he was. Tilly’s dad. Gone from the scene for years. Back now...anda prince. She stifled her terrified whimper but there was a rushing in her head and in her veins and she felt dizzy and nauseous.
Memories broke their banks and came at her in a surging flood. And to her horror, not all those memories were toxic. Intermingled were other dangerously unsettling ones of languorous nights spent together, their naked bodies merging into one with a sense of belonging that had felt so very right at the time. But ithadn’tbeen right. It had beenall wrongand she had lived with the devastating consequences of misreading a situation, had dealt with them, made peace with them. And now...
Now everything was in freefall.
‘You know what I’m doing here.’ He sounded as shocked as she felt. ‘I’m buying this hotel.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening.’
‘Believe it or not, nor can I.’
Abe had regained his self-control at speed but for a few seconds, as he had turned round and seen her, the shock had surely equalled hers. Never had recall been so vivid. The breath had left his body and the walls of the room had closed in until there were just two of them in a confined space, the only other intruders his memories of a past now gone.
He had seen the horrified incredulity in her eyes and it had mirrored his, but he was a man for whom emotion was always rigidly disciplined. He had broken eye contact, begun moving smoothly towards her, powered by some sixth sense he never knew he possessed, somehow instinctively predicting that she would faint and already knowing that he would make sure the room was vacated so that there were no witnesses to the conversation that would take place when she awoke.
