‘Where is Duncan? Where’s everyone gone? How did I get here?’
‘You should drink that water, although I can always get you something stronger. You’ve had a shock.’
‘You haven’t answered my question! And I don’t need water! I need... I need...’
I need to find out what is going on.
The guy who had vanished into thin air four years ago hadn’t been a prince. He’d been an ordinary guy, a guy she’d fallen head over heels in love with, justan ordinary guy. Her mind grappled desperately to fit pieces together that just made no sense and underneath the chaos and confusion was the blistering realisation that life as she knew it was over. They shared a daughter. This wasn’t a bad dream and nothing was going to be the same, if only he knew.
‘How can you bea prince?’ she whispered. ‘It’s not possible!’
‘This is a long conversation to have here,’ Abe said tautly. ‘I never thought I’d see you again but now that our paths have once more crossed, I should tell you that I am not the person you probably thought I was.’
‘Oh, you’ve gotthatright.’ She swung her legs over the sofa and was assailed by a sudden attack of giddiness. Everything in Georgie raged against being here.
Hatred, bitterness and the sour taste of all of her shattered illusions ripped into her with such ferocity that the four years since they had last seen one another could have been four minutes.
He’d gone. Left her. Walked away without a backward glance and with no forwarding address. No telephone number. No point of contact. Just disappeared into thin air, leaving her to struggle with a love she hadn’t asked for but one that had swept her away with the force of a tsunami. Leaving her pregnant and alone.
She’d been a notch on his bedpost.
Through her devastation, that simple truth had been unavoidable. He’d used her and then, when he’d grown tired of her, he’d walked away and he’d left no clues behind so that she could trace him—and, oh, how she’d tried.
‘You haven’t changed,’ Abe said on a rough breath, only the slight deepening of his tone advertising the fact that he was as shaken as she was.
‘I don’t want to be here.’
‘There are people waiting outside. I have given them orders not to enter but they will be wondering what’s going on.’
‘I have to go.’ She pushed herself up and brushed aside his hand when he moved to help her to her feet.
More than that, she had to think.
‘You can barely walk in a straight line.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and brought the laser intensity of his focus back to her ashen face. ‘Where do you live? Allow me to get you back to your place.’
‘No!’
Abe was startled by her vehemence but then how could she be anythingbutangry with him? Bitter?
Unwittingly, his dark eyes roved over her face. She really hadn’t changed at all. She still had thatsomethingthat had once fired him up against all odds and held him captive. She was so slight with a slender, boyish frame and short, dark hair that framed an intensely pretty, heart-shaped face. Her eyes were a curious shade of light brown with flecks of green and her lips were full, the perfect Cupid’s bow.
Even with those huge, almond-shaped eyes pinned resentfully on him and her mouth downturned with simmering antagonism, Abe could still feel the unwelcome intrusion of a libido that had been all too dormant for way too long.
He gritted his teeth, vaulted upright and sauntered to the window, from which he stared down at wet, dark bustling pavements and street lamps fuzzy against the steady rainfall.
He was here on business.
He wasn’t going to complicate anything by trying to recapture what was in the past. That door had been firmly shut and he wasn’t going to reopen it. He couldn’t.
Even though she was still the biggest test to his resistance that he had ever had. It wasn’t just the way she looked, so different from the women he had always dated in the past. It was who she had been.Irreverent, outspoken in her own special, reserved way. Intelligent and challenging. Strangely shy and yet not afraid of holding her ground. So she hadn’t known who he was back then, hadn’t felt the need to be subservient, but even now she knew he sensed that in that respect she had changed very little.
She had burned a hole in his life. So different from any other woman...
They had shared a scorching affair and his last truly liberating one before his father had fallen ill and the course of his life had changed for ever.
‘Wait here,’ he said on impulse.
‘Why?’
