His mouth tightened. Oh, I recognised that all right. The same shape it had made when he’d said to me three years ago, ‘This was a huge mistake’and I’d quickly agreed for fear he might see that I hadn’t been so sure at all that it had been a mistake. And because the rejection of what we’d shared over the previous forty-eight hours had been like a physical blow to my solar plexus and a valuable lesson in never leaving myself vulnerable to hurt again.
He took off his jacket and handed it to me, ‘Put this on and get into my car, I’ll get your stuff. We need to get out of this.’
I didn’t need encouragement, I pulled on the coat which was deliciously warm and grabbed my handbag not even caring how ridiculous I must look. I was too cold.
I climbed into the Land Rover and was greeted by a wet nose and a curious tongue in my ear. I looked around to find myself eyeball to eyeball with a dog. Big and gold and shaggy. My heart melted, ‘Hi there, who are you?’
Jamie left the hazards flashing on the rental car, put my stuff into the back of this vehicle and then got back behind the wheel. I avoided looking at him. He smelled of pine and cold and something spicy.
He said, ‘That’s George.’ I noticed he whacked the heat up before he started driving again, slowly. We went through the gates and I noticed a sign:Kinlay Castle. I didn’t have time to really register it, too busy dealing with the fact that I was not a welcome surprise visitor.
But not even that could stop my insides fizzing and jumping. I snuck him a look and took in the defined lines of his face and the dark blond scruff around his jaw and mouth. His hair was peeking out from under the hat clamped onto his head. Dark blond. Thick, curling. He had dark brown eyes. Almost black. Long lashes.
He looked the same but a bit older. Grimmer. He’d be around twenty-nine now to my twenty-eight. Over the last three years I’d somehow told myself that he couldn’t possibly be asmuchas I remembered. But he was. His shoulders really were taking up an indecent amount of space in the vehicle, his muscles honed from his work as a nature and wildlife cameraman. He worked all over the world on documentaries and TV series with some of the biggest names in the natural world.
I diverted my gaze to his hands on the wheel thinking that might be safer but it wasn’t.
They were beautiful hands. Big and square and masculine. Not soft, hard. Long fingers. Blunt nails. I remembered how his hands had felt on me, clamping tight on my hips as he’d thrust up and so deep inside me I couldn’t breathe.
Jamie flicked me a glance, ‘What were you doing in Edinburgh?’
Godammit but his voice went straight to my clit like a heat-seeking missile. I squeezed my thighs together. ‘I was working. A couple who’d been at a wedding I’d done earlier this year in Ireland had had problems and called me in last minute to take over. I run my own company now.’ I couldn’t keep the pride out of my voice.
He didn’t react. Brightly I said, ‘So when your solicitor sent that letter to say you wanted to meet and I saw that your address was a couple of hours drive away I thought why bother wasting time, I’ll just come to you.’
His jaw tightened slightly. ‘It couldn’t have waited? I would have come to Dublin.’
Confirmation as if I’d needed it that he wassonot happy to have me here. Well tough. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I was just coming to deliver the divorce papers in person. My solicitor sent them over to a partner firm in Edinburgh. I presumed that’s why your solicitor was in touch.’
I noticed his hands tighten on the wheel at that. He said tightly, ‘You could have dropped them off at my solicitor’s office.’
He wasn’t denying it. I felt that like a blow. Wow. He really, really didn’t want me here. And I was cursing myself for being so impetuous. ‘Does that really matter? We do need to deal with this situation...the divorce, because it’s long overdue.’
That word hung in the air like a little toxic cloud. For three years we’d both managed to ignore it.
Oh, did I forget to mention that pertinent fact? That, I, Lucy Collins - the up-and-coming wedding planner who everyonewanted to curate their perfect Happy Ever After – have been harbouring a dirty little secret?
Specifically, a husband-of-three-years-shaped secret. Married in a quickie, slightly inebriated ceremony in a Las Vegas wedding chapel. A husband I haven’t seen since the morning after our wedding night.
Admittedly, up to now, I’d preferred to bury my head in the sand, but no more. I could feel the bulge of the papers in my bag. I welcomed the chance to finally get some closure. It was time for new beginnings.
‘That’s why you came all the way up here,’ Jamie said now. Why did that sound like a question? I was about to replyyes of course, why else?but then we came around a tree-lined corner and my jaw dropped.
CHAPTER 2
Jamie
Lucy said, ‘Oh my god, it’s an actual castle... And it’s beautiful.’
Jamie couldn’t blame her shocked reaction. This first view of Kinlay Casle always got him too. Rising up on the edge of a promontory, overlooking a loch, it was simply breathtaking. Hundreds of years old, it was a formidable stone building, on three levels. Battlements ran along the roof level and on either end there were towers with turrets on top.
Against the backdrop of the falling snow itwastruly magical. But the idyllic fairytale exterior hid not so fairytale memories.
Lucy asked, ‘This is where you grew up?’
‘Here, and in London.’
Jamie marvelled that he was talking and making sense. Even though he still wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t having a snow-induced hallucination.
