One Night with Her Ex (3 page)

‘Great,’ he said, sounding as if he thought it anything but.

Snapping his gaze from hers, he glanced down at the glasses that were on the coffee table and frowned. ‘Are those ours?’

The crystal champagne flutes had once upon a time indeed been theirs, although now, technically, they were hers. They’d been a wedding present, and until tonight had spent the last five years encased in bubble wrap and stashed in her attic.

Lily wasn’t entirely sure why she’d brought them down and unwrapped them this evening, but she had, and that had been a mistake because every time she’d lifted hers to her mouth she’d been hit by a string of bittersweet memories of drinking champagne with Kit.

‘I have no idea,’ she said with a dismissive shrug because there was no way she was going to confess to any of
that.

‘Looks like they are.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It does if you’re drinking out of them with another man. I think I might be offended.’

She fought the urge to bristle and channelled her inner calm instead. ‘Well, you could have had them, so you should have thought about that when you displayed so little interest in how our things were divided up.’

He nodded and rubbed a hand along his jaw before shooting her a rueful smile. ‘I probably should have. Although from what I remember I was too devastated by the realisation that we were over to be worrying about who got what.’

Lily stared at him in astonishment, all pretence of cool detachment gone. ‘You were devastated?’

‘Of course I was.’ He said it as if she should have been able to tell, but by that point he’d been so cold, so distant, so damn unreadable that she hadn’t been able to work out what he’d been thinking. ‘Weren’t you?’

‘Oh, well, yes, I was in bits.’ Which she’d clearly done a pretty good job of hiding too, if he’d had to ask. ‘Although I do remember, above all, an overwhelming sense of relief.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, there was that too.’

Silence fell then, and all she could hear as they continued to look at each other was the ticking of the antique mahogany clock on the mantelpiece. And all she could suddenly—and irrationally—think was, had he really been as devastated as she’d been? Had they been too quick to divorce? Should they have tried harder? Should they have given it another shot?

The clock struck a quarter to one and she came to with a jolt.

No. They could have given their marriage a million different shots but it wouldn’t have made any difference because before divorce had ever been mentioned, before Kit’s one-night stand even, they’d totally lost the ability to communicate and their relationship had gone way beyond the point of no return.

With her throat beginning to ache with regret Lily quickly reined in her thoughts and pulled herself together. She swallowed hard and perched her bottom on the ledge of the built-in cupboard to the left of the fireplace.

Maybe they’d be better off focusing on the present and why Kit was here. And come to think of it...

‘How did you know where I lived?’ she asked, curious and now a bit suspicious because she’d moved a couple of times before buying this place, and the forwarding address of the flat she’d rented after their divorce had been out of date for years.

He blinked and gave his head a quick shake as if he too had been lost in thought. ‘I have for a while.’

‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘Have you been checking up on me?’

‘From time to time.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Lily didn’t know what to make of that. ‘Am I supposed to be flattered?’

‘Not remotely.’

‘Good.’ Because she wasn’t. Not even a little bit. Truly. ‘Then why didn’t you just call?’ Presumably if he had her address he also had her phone number.

‘It’s late.’

‘Or email?’

‘Couldn’t wait.’

‘Sounds like you were desperate.’

‘You have no idea,’ he muttered.

‘You’re right. I don’t,’ she said loftily, as if she was way above desperation when it came to him.

At her tone, a small smile played at his mouth. ‘This is a nice place.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’ve done well.’

She’d done more than well. Following their split she’d jacked in her marketing job and set up her own business, asking her sister—practically the only person she’d been able to trust—to run it with her.

At the time it had saved her. Been something of her own, something that had belonged to her and she to it, and she’d desperately needed it. That the two of them had been so successful had been unexpected, although of course greatly welcome.

‘I think so. So have you.’

Kit’s smile faded and he tilted his head as he fixed her with a look designed to make her feel uncomfortable. Which it did. ‘In spite of your best efforts to sabotage me.’

Lily inwardly cringed. When Kit had broken down and confessed to having a one-night stand she’d cut up his suits and scratched his car and then fired off an email to every one of the institutions he’d been planning to seek financial investment from, telling them in no uncertain terms exactly the sort of man they’d be backing. It must have made things difficult for a while to say the least.

‘Are you here for an apology?’ she asked, because although it seemed unlikely it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, she supposed.

‘If I were would I get one?’

She bit her lip and nodded. ‘You might.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Seriously?’

She gave a nonchalant shrug as if she hadn’t been racked with guilt for months afterwards. ‘Well, like you said it has been five years and maybe with hindsight I’ve realised that what I did was unforgivable.’

He held her gaze steadily and to her dismay she felt the beginnings of a blush. ‘I guess you did have some justification,’ he said. Then, ‘It was what I did that was the truly unforgivable thing.’

For several long moments, there was utter silence and the air began to thicken with a tension that Lily really didn’t want to explore.

It would be so easy to slip into a painful post-mortem of their marriage but what good would that do? While time had healed the wounds no amount of talk would wipe out the scars, and picking over the bones of their relationship was the last thing she wanted to do when she was feeling so out of sorts. Or ever, for that matter, because she’d done plenty of it at the time. She certainly wasn’t about to launch into a full confessional about how she’d come to acknowledge her role in the breakdown of their marriage.

Besides, presumably Kit was here for a reason, and one that in all likelihood didn’t involve raking up the past.

‘So why now, Kit?’ she asked. ‘After all this time? Why the urgency? Why are you here at nearly one in the morning on New Year’s Day?’

He rubbed a hand over his jaw and began to pace and she got the impression he was nervous, which was odd because nervousness wasn’t a state of mind she’d ever associated with him. Even when they’d waited for the results of the endless pregnancy tests she’d taken, when she’d been a bag of nerves, gnawing on her nails and practically quaking with hope and dread, he’d sat there stonily tense, looking more impatient than anything.

‘Could I get a drink?’ he said, suddenly stopping mid-pace and whipping round.

Lily snapped out of it and stood. ‘Sure. Sorry. What would you like?’

‘Whatever you’ve got. Something strong.’

She went to the drinks cabinet, took out a bottle of brandy and filled a glass. Then she handed it to him, watched as he knocked it back in one swallow and felt a flicker of alarm.

‘That bad, huh?’ she said with a small frown, her resolve to stay strong and aloof wobbling a bit at the realisation Kit wasn’t quite as in control of himself as she’d thought.

‘Pretty bad.’

‘Are you ill?’ she asked, and braced herself.

‘Not exactly,’ he muttered.

‘What does that mean?’

She held up the bottle in case he wanted another but he shook his head and set the glass down on the table. Then he straightened, shoved his hands through his hair and frowned down at a spot on the floor. ‘It’s complicated,’ he muttered.

Lily stashed the bottle back in the cupboard and stifled a sigh. It always was complicated with Kit, but then she wasn’t exactly Miss Simplicity herself. Together, not talking, not listening, not really knowing each other all that well, they hadn’t stood a chance.

‘OK, Kit,’ she said, moving to the sofa and hoping that this wasn’t going to be too traumatic and that she wasn’t going to regret not standing her ground and sending him away when she had the chance. ‘If you want to talk, then talk.’

THREE

If Kit
had had any doubt that his troubles were bound up with his ex-wife, it vanished the second Lily sat down on the sofa.

On the drive over he’d told himself that he was wasting his time because why would going to see her work when everything else had failed? What exactly was he after? Forgiveness? Understanding? What made him think she’d grant him either now when she’d been so unforgiving and so
un-
understanding at the time?

She probably wouldn’t even be in, he’d thought. The Lily he’d known had been a party animal and tonight, after all, was one of the greatest party nights of the year.

But the soft golden light shining through a gap in the curtains drawn across the window at the front of the house had suggested she was at home. And that was when Kit had sent his driver home because, even though he was most definitely not looking forward to it, having come this far he wasn’t about to back out.

It was that thought, along with the strong sense that he was nearing the end of his tether, that had kept him standing there on her doorstep when every defensive bristling inch of her was telling him to go.

It was that thought that had made him ignore her initial reluctance to engage with him, her subsequent spikiness, the occasional flash of temper he caught in her eyes and his strong yet totally irrational and unfathomable dislike of the fact that she was in a relationship.

Everything that had been said or hinted at as well as the simmering undercurrent of tension that had been running beneath the conversation of the last half an hour had taken a back seat to the need to get her to listen and the hope that his ‘problem’ might be about to be solved.

Now, though, his brain was clearing of that too because Lily was sitting down and settling back and crossing her legs, a move that made her dress ride up and exposed a length of thigh.

And suddenly, the memory of how soft her skin felt beneath his hands and his mouth, how tightly she used to wrap her legs around his waist whenever they made love, flashed into his head and, without warning, a wave of lust crashed over him so hard and fast it made his entire body shudder.

Before he had time to recover from the shock of that he was then hit by a whole load of other things that up until that point he’d been too distracted to notice. Such as the way her dress was so tight that it looked as if not a square millimetre of it could bear not touching her. Such as the glorious sheen of her hair, the mesmerising green shimmer of her eyes, the heavenly curves of her body.

He ran his gaze over her and he jolted as if he’d just been plugged into the national grid. Nerve endings that had been dead for so long tingled and quivered and his head pounded with such need he could barely remember his name let alone what she’d just said.

Clearly expecting him to fill the stretching silence, Lily arched an eyebrow and folded her arms beneath her breasts, pushing them together and up and making them swell over the bodice of her dress.

Kit was mesmerised by the movement. His mouth watered, his pulse raced and the sudden urgent desire to haul her into his arms and tussle her to the floor nearly wiped out his knees.

Just as had happened the first time they’d met.

Lily had been on a skiing holiday with friends and so had he. She’d been whooshing down the mountain like a pro, and he’d found himself watching her from the bottom of the slope in admiration. Until towards the bottom she’d lost control, crashed straight into him and together they’d pitched headlong into a snowdrift.

Winded and stunned, for a second they’d just lain there, struggling for breath, their hearts thumping against each other. After a moment, still sprawled on top of him, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed, Lily had started to apologise, but then her gaze had met his and the apology had died on her lips.

It had been the epitome of madness, but despite the cold snow surrounding them chemistry had taken over, heat and lust had flared between them and within seconds they’d been kissing. Devouring each other. Rolling over so that he was pinning her to the ground, while she wrapped herself around him and nearly made him forget that they were in public.

Now he was remembering how wild she’d been in bed, how responsive, how hot and explosive they’d been together before everything had started to go wrong. And as the memories began to come hard and fast all his blood shot south, and within seconds he was sporting an erection harder than granite.

Great, thought Kit, beginning to sweat as the throbbing in his body strengthened. No proper action in that department for five long, dry, frustrating years, and yet one glimpse of Lily’s thigh, a hint of soft, luscious cleavage and there it was. His libido, back with ferocious force.

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets as much to stop them from reaching out to strip that dress from her body and touch her as to disguise the very visible effect she was having on him.

‘Well?’ she said expectantly, and he stared at her mouth, desperate to find out if she still tasted the same, felt the same.

Which he couldn’t do, he realised as common sense made a timely and most welcome appearance. For about a billion reasons. She was his ex. He hadn’t thought about her like that for years. She probably still hated him. He didn’t think he particularly liked her. They had more history than the Egyptians. She had a boyfriend. He wasn’t thinking rationally. Or with his head.

In fact, he should probably get out of here. Now. Before he lost control and did something he’d regret. Which was all too possible given the length of his abstinence and the strength of the assault his body and mind were under.

‘I should go,’ he said, his voice sounding scratchy and rough.

Lily stared up at him in baffled astonishment. ‘What? Go? Why?’

‘You were right—we don’t have anything to talk about.’

So much for all that nonsense about being able to behave like rational, sensible, civil adults, thought Kit grimly. Right now he was feeling anything but.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

She frowned. ‘Are you all right, Kit? You seem kind of upset all of a sudden.’

The effort of keeping himself under control what with everything that was raging inside him was making his jaw ache. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look fine.’

‘Leave it, Lily.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ she said. ‘You really don’t seem well.’

‘I’ll survive.’

Once he was out of here and out of her head-wrecking orbit and once he had time and space to work out what was going on he’d be absolutely fine.

Probably.

Galvanising into action, Kit grabbed his coat and began to shrug it on.

‘Wait,’ she said urgently. ‘Was it something I said?’

The concern in her voice only made him feel even more confused. ‘No.’

‘Something I did, then?’

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her frown and bite her lip and he gritted his teeth against the urge to throw himself on top of her and kiss the life out of her.

This was horrendous. Why her? Why now? he wondered, his head pounding. He’d met dozens of women over the last few years. Beautiful, intelligent, fun women. Many just as attractive as Lily. Some even more so. So what the hell was happening here?

‘It
was
something I did,’ she said, leaping to her feet and taking a step towards him, potentially so close that he violently recoiled before she could touch him.

‘Don’t,’ he snapped.

Lily froze. She paled. Frowned. Then said a bit shakily, ‘What’s going on, Kit?’

‘Nothing.’ Why wouldn’t she shut up and let him get on with the business of leaving?

‘Rubbish.’

Kit ignored her. She could be as sceptical as she liked. He didn’t care. He was off.

Not bothering with buttons, he whirled round and made for the way he’d come in, but before he could stride down the hall, through the front door and out into the safety of the dark, cold night Lily had whipped past him and planted herself between him and escape.

He stopped in his tracks while she stuck her hands on her hips and set her jaw, a stance he’d never seen before but suggested she wasn’t going to let him go without an explanation. Which he was damned if he was going to give, so if she didn’t budge he’d just have to lift her out of the way.

‘Move, Lily.’

‘No,’ she said, her chin up and her eyes glinting in the soft, low light of the hall. ‘You show up in the early hours of New Year’s Day, make a big deal about wanting to talk and then suddenly you don’t want to talk? You’re making me worried and I won’t let you leave when you’re in this sort of state. So come on, what gives?’

Now, clearly, was the time to march forwards, physically lift her aside and make his escape, thought Kit with the one brain cell that was still functioning rationally.

But that would mean being near her, laying his hands on her, he reasoned with the part of his brain that was addled with lust, and once that happened he wouldn’t be lifting her out of the way, but pulling her close, backing her up against the door and divesting her of her clothing.

Shoving his hands through his hair, he cursed whatever madness had made him think that seeking Lily out had been a good idea.

And then, beneath his breath, he cursed
her
because why the hell was she making such a big deal about this? Why wasn’t she just letting him leave? Why did she care what was going on inside his head?

Come to think of it, why was
he
making such a big deal about this? Why was he getting so wound up by what was happening to him?

He ought to be glad his problem seemed to be solved, that he was ‘cured’. He ought to be thanking her and heading to the nearest bar in search of someone with whom he could make up for lost time. Or calling Carla, perhaps.

And so what if he was still attracted to Lily? There was nothing surprising about that. The chemistry that had existed between the two of them had always been instant, fiery and intense. Even towards the end of their relationship when they’d been too battered by what had happened between them to want to act on it, it had still been there, simmering away in the background.

But what if what he was feeling towards Lily now was more than mere sexual chemistry? Something deeper?

Kit froze as the idea of this stormed into his mind and opened up a whole labyrinth of other possible truths.

What if the problem he’d had sleeping with other women in the last five years didn’t have anything to do with guilt or regret or self-recrimination? What if it was down to the fact that he was still hung up on his ex-wife?

He’d assumed he’d got over Lily years ago. But from the moment they’d met she’d got under his skin and been in his blood, like some kind of fever, the sort that was quick, fierce and lethal. And incurable. So maybe she was still there. In his blood. Under his skin. Tucked away in some long-forgotten corner of his heart.

Maybe that was why he’d kept vague tabs on her. Maybe that was why the idea of her having a boyfriend bothered him so much. Why he’d wanted to remind her of the good times they’d had together and had deliberately if obliquely brought up that afternoon in the woods.

Maybe she still felt something too, he thought, his heart hammering while his mind churned. Hadn’t she flinched when she’d let him in? Hadn’t her eyes darkened and her cheeks reddened when he’d alluded to the al fresco sex?

Despite the cool-as-a-cucumber air she was exuding now, despite the defiant stance, he could hear a slight shallowness to her breathing and he could just about make out a familiar faint flush to the skin of her upper chest. There was also a flicker of heat in her eyes that he didn’t think was solely down to her wish to know why he was here.

So maybe, as chemistry didn’t seem to have a time limit any more than it had anything to do with liking and trust, she was still as attracted to him as he was to her. Maybe it was something more for her too, despite the existence of a boyfriend.

Maybe he ought to think about finding out.

With his common sense spinning off into the distance and his head swimming with need, Kit abandoned what little remained of his self-control and took two steps towards her.

He stopped half a foot in front of her, so close he could smell her scent, could feel her heat, could feel himself helplessly begin to respond to the magnetism that had always pulled at them.

‘Is whoever he is really your boyfriend?’ he asked, looking down into her eyes, his mouth dry and his body wound so tightly it was in danger of shattering.

Lily blinked, clearly taken aback. ‘Nick?’ she said, her breath catching and a pulse hammering at the base of her neck.

‘Yes.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Is that what this is about, Kit? Do you suddenly have a problem with me moving on or something?’

‘Possibly,’ he muttered because, as disconcerting and unexpected as it might be, he suspected he did.

And then her eyes narrowed and filled with indignation, and she pulled her shoulders back and glared up at him. ‘Well, that’s just tough because you don’t get to have a say in what I do any more. You don’t get to have an opinion. And you certainly don’t get to comment on my boyfriends.’

‘I know that,’ he said roughly, trying but failing to ignore the implication that there’d been a few.

‘Anyway, would it be so hard to believe if he was?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Good.’

‘Disappointing as hell though.’

She arched an eyebrow and tilted her head in challenge. ‘Oh, really? Why?’

The provocative stance, the energy emanating from her and the flurry of memories that were now shooting round his head killed off the last remnant of his self-control, and Kit felt himself begin to unravel.

‘Because even though I know it would be mad,’ he said, his voice hoarse with the effort of restraining himself, ‘even though I know we haven’t seen each other for five years and have enough baggage to sink a liner, I’m this close—’ he held his thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart ‘—to dragging you into my arms and hauling you off to bed. The only thing that’s stopping me is this boyfriend of yours and even he’s now beginning not to bother me. So if you have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever, if you don’t feel the same way, then I suggest you step aside and let me leave. Now.’