by Lucy King
‘Josh knows who you are,’ he said with quiet conviction.
‘That’s what the doctors told me. It’s taken a while to believe it myself. And to believe that I will be, that I am, OK.’
‘Are you?’
‘I think so,’ she said, casting him a small smile. ‘But I’ve been here before. A relapse isn’t out of the question. And I worry about getting depression. I’ve been warned that women who’ve had post-partum psychosis can end up with bipolar disorder.’
‘If any of that happens, I’ll be there to catch you. I’ll keep you safe.’
He would, wouldn’t he? ‘Thank you.’
‘I should be the one thanking you,’ he said gruffly. ‘But in all honesty I really don’t know what to say.’
‘Then why don’t you kiss me instead?’
‘That I can do.’
He reached out and wrapped a hand around the back of her neck as she moved towards him, and captured her mouth in a soft, soul-stealing kiss that slowly swept away the memories and the anguish and replaced them with a rush of heat and want.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured when they broke for breath.
‘What for?’
‘Not being there for you.’
‘You couldn’t have known.’
‘The morning after the night we met, just before you left, I was going to suggest we exchange numbers.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Were you?’
‘I thought about asking you to dinner.’
‘Did you? Why?’
‘I liked you.’
‘It was just sex.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
She had to agree, and when she fleetingly thought about what could have been if only she’d had his number her heart squeezed with regret. ‘Hindsight is pointless,’ she said quietly. ‘That me doesn’t exist anymore.’
‘Yes, she does.’
‘She’s battered and bruised.’
‘She’s brave and resilient and stronger than anyone I’ve ever met.’
God, someone should bottle him. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ he murmured. ‘And in any case, there hasn’t been anyone else since I first met you a year and a half ago.’
For a moment she just stared at him. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Why would I lie?’
A good point. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s been a turbulent time.’
‘Your father’s illness?’
He hesitated and sympathy tugged at her heart.
‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
‘I would if I could,’ he said, looking utterly, hopelessly tortured.
‘But you can’t so you shan’t?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Too raw?’
He nodded and his eyes filled with bleakness. ‘Shattering. In so many ways.’
Overwhelmed with the need to comfort him, to ease his torment in any way she could, Georgie shifted and rolled him onto his back, sliding her hand down the hard planes of his body and watching as the distress in his expression slowly disappeared.
‘What happened to needing to know that Josh is OK?’ he said, his voice thick with growing desire.
‘We’ll definitely call,’ she said, giving him a slow smile. ‘But later.’
It was quite a bit later when they finally made that call. Shortly afterwards, with great reluctance, Finn dragged himself out of bed and headed off for a meeting with the hotel management, which he had a feeling was going to be a challenge, when all he could think of was Georgie and how she continued to blow his mind.
She might not know who she was, but he did, and he was in awe. He’d never met anyone so insanely tough yet so unbelievably soft. So doggedly determined yet at times so achingly vulnerable. So generous and giving and fearless. Not of the struggles she’d had—those merited every bit of fear she’d felt—but of facing up to them. The way she was able to work through hugely difficult, personal, emotional topics and talk about them was staggering.
How did she do that? he wondered as he stepped into the lift and hit the ground floor button. Where did she find the strength to acknowledge her problems and confront them, her shoulders back and head high? He’d never figured out how to achieve any of that. Give him a complex strategic issue and he was all over it. Impossible deals and intransigent planning departments, no problem. A massive upheaval to his personal life, however, with all the tumultuous emotions that came with it, and he fell apart. After everything Georgie had told him about her experiences in hospital, he couldn’t even talk about how he felt about Jim’s death. He didn’t know where to start.
Maybe he ought to ask her for tips. Maybe he ought to open up to her. A little. Because he might as well admit it, he thought, striding through Reception and walking into the meeting room, where a dozen of his staff shot to their feet, it wasn’t just sex that had made his life less tense and stressful and somehow better over the last couple of weeks. It was her.
CHAPTER TEN
GEORGIE WHILED AWAY the hours Finn was out mostly by wafting around the suite and reflecting on her Parisian adventure so far, starting with the sex, which had surpassed her wildest expectations, and she’d had a fair few. The night they’d met had been scorching, but now... Well, now, in addition to the red-hot physical chemistry, there was knowing and feeling and, dare she say it, liking.
What would have happened if he had taken her number that morning? she wondered as she lathered up in the shower and tingled at the memory of Finn’s hands on her body. Would they have dated? Would he have somehow noticed what she’d failed to? Could her pregnancy have been as it should have been? It was a pointless exercise if ever there was one, but that didn’t stop her imagination playing out the various scenarios or her heart squeezing in response.
Conversely, what if she hadn’t found him the evening she’d gone looking for him? She liked to think that she’d have muddled through somehow and that she and Josh would have been all right, but life was so much richer, so much brighter for having Finn in it.
Reliving the harrowing details of her stay in hospital had been agonisingly difficult, but ultimately she was glad she’d told him everything. She had no secrets left now and nothing more to hide, and, while she’d taken a massive risk and made herself incredibly vulnerable, she had no doubt that he’d take care of what she’d given him. Not only was he the sexiest man she’d ever met, he was also the most patient and the most understanding.
And then there were the glimpses of his soul that she caught through the tiny cracks that appeared in his armour from time to time. Beneath his brusque and aloof exterior lay a seething mass of emotion, she was sure. The issues he clearly had surrounding the death of his father made her heart wrench every time she recalled how desolate and devastated he’d looked, lying there next to her.
He was everything she could possibly ask for in a co-parent or a lover yet the things she found most attractive about him had nothing to do with Josh or his devastating looks and wicked bedroom skills and everything about who he fundamentally was. He took his responsibilities seriously. His support was steadfast. She had no doubt she would always be able to depend on him.
Little wonder, then, that she was beginning to fall for him.
And, as if all that wasn’t enough to make her heart melt like butter over heat, Finn was now feeding her. When he’d returned from his meeting he’d announced that he was taking her out to lunch and told her to hop to it.
It was a glorious spring day so they’d walked, taking in the gardens and the parks and lingering in the Jardin des Tuileries, before being seated on the terrace of the fanciest restaurant she’d ever been to. While a string quartet nearby played something light and uplifting Finn tucked into a plate of seabass and she tried not to devour her deli
cious seared tuna too greedily.
The weekend was turning out to be as wonderful and romantic as Georgie had imagined, maybe even more so, and she was so overwhelmed by it that she thought she’d best stick to business before she did something unwise like tell him how she was beginning to feel about him.
‘So, was the launch considered to be a success?’ she asked, putting her fork down on her empty plate and taking a sip of crisp chilled Chablis in an effort to appear cool and collected.
‘Yes.’
‘Is anything you do not a success?’
He flashed her a quick smile that set off fireworks in the pit of her stomach. ‘Rarely.’
‘And again, I envy you,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Why?’
‘It feels like a long time since anything I did was successful.’
‘Not from where I’m sitting,’ he said, giving a nod of thanks to the waiter who cleared their table, then sitting back and eyeing her thoughtfully. ‘You know, we’re very similar, you and I.’
She felt her eyebrows shoot up. Seriously? Finn was a put-together billionaire who knew exactly who he was and where he was going. She was still a bit of a mess who knew next to nothing about anything. She could see no similarity whatsoever. ‘Are we?’ she said sceptically. ‘How?’
‘We’re both survivors.’
‘I suppose,’ she said, although she still didn’t really know enough about him to judge.
‘But that’s not all. We’re both determined. Both ambitious. We’ve both come a long way and done it with little outside support.’
Hmm. ‘Well, I might have been all that once upon a time,’ she conceded, wondering whether that might be why she felt such a strong sense of recognition whenever she looked at him. ‘But I’m not sure about now.’
‘You will be again.’
‘Not in the field of law,’ she said, nevertheless warmed by his belief in her. ‘My career in that is pretty much over, I suspect. I was sectioned. I haven’t looked into it but it wouldn’t surprise me if that didn’t disqualify me from practising. And I doubt I’d get a glowing reference from my last company anyway.’
‘Want me to take them on?’
‘Why not?’ she said with a grin.
‘I mean it.’
Her grin faltered and her heart gave a great thump. ‘Would you do that?’
‘All you have to do is say the word and they’re history.’
As if she needed a reminder of his power and influence or another reason to fall a little bit more in love with him. ‘Thank you, but no.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shame.’
‘I’ll figure something out workwise,’ she said, forcing herself to focus on something other than how giddy she felt at having someone on her side for possibly the first time in her life, at being part of a team. ‘Maybe I’ll retrain and do something to help people who are going through what I did. I had amazing care. I’d like to give something back. Maybe I could fundraise or something.’
‘Let me know what I can do to help.’
He already had, more than he could possibly know. ‘I will,’ she said with a smile.
His gaze dropped to her mouth then, his eyes darkening in a way that never failed to render her hot and breathless. ‘Let’s have dessert back at the hotel,’ he said, and called for the bill.
Quite some time later, as Georgie lay sprawled across the bed, unable to move for lazy lethargy, it occurred to her that the thing that had been bubbling away inside her all day, filling her with light and hope, was happiness. She was happy. Actually happy. Her confidence and self-esteem were soaring and it felt as though her demons were finally in retreat, which only went to show how very good for her Finn was.
She’d had the best day, and now, as she listened to the sound of the shower and contemplated joining him in it, she couldn’t help wondering if there was anything stopping them from turning this relationship that had started for the benefit of Josh into one that also benefited them. Because not only was she happy, but Finn too seemed remarkably content with the way things were. He was certainly less stressed and more relaxed than he’d been a month or so ago.
They appeared to be on the same wavelength and there was lust and there was trust and possibly even the beginnings of love, so who knew? Their relationship could go anywhere, and she cautiously examined the heart-thumping idea that the tight, stable, supportive family unit she’d always longed for might actually be within her grasp for the first time in her life.
Closing her eyes, she tried envisaging it, and it wasn’t that hard because her common sense was no match for the allure of that which she craved deep inside. Within minutes she had herself and Finn and Josh living in a gorgeous house in the country filled with laughter and lust and love in a place where it was perpetual summer and the birds didn’t stop singing.
It was a heady, if utterly unreal, bubble and one that kept expanding preposterously until it abruptly burst when Finn’s phone started buzzing its way across the bedside table. The phone fell to the floor before she could reach it, but she leaned down to pick it up anyway, and as she did so, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the caller.
Osborne Investigations.
The name sparked something in the dusty recesses of her memory.
What was it?
Hmm...
Oh, yes.
The night he’d scooped her and Josh up and whisked them to his hotel. The night she’d been left with no option but to tell him where she’d been and what she’d been doing because if she hadn’t he’d have had an investigating agency on to it so fast it would make her head spin.
That was it.
But what could Finn possibly need investigating? she wondered, replacing his phone on the bedside table and lying back against the pillows. Was it something to do with work? A person? A company? Or something else entirely? It was none of her business, of course, yet she couldn’t help but be curious. She was curious about everything to do with him.
‘Why do you have an investigation agency working for you?’ she asked when he emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam and a fluffy white towel wrapped around his hips, a sight she didn’t think she’d ever tire of.
He visibly tensed, and all the little hairs at the back of her neck stood up in response to the conclusion that she was on to something interesting. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Your phone vibrated and then fell on the floor, so I picked it up. Their name was on the screen.’
He went even stiller and seemed to pale. ‘Did you answer it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘When did they ring?’
‘About a minute ago.’
‘Right.’ He tossed the towel onto the bed and, to her disappointment, since it clearly meant that some more of that lovely, headboard-banging sex was temporarily off the agenda, spun away to don a pair of jeans and a shirt.
‘Well?’ she prompted.
‘Excuse me,’ he muttered distractedly as he strode to the bedside table and grabbed his phone. ‘I need to return that call.’
With the last twenty-four hot, intense and strangely perturbing hours instantly wiped from his mind, Finn stalked out of the bedroom, across the hall, and into the sitting room. He closed the door behind him with deliberate control, his gut churning and his pulse racing. Alexandra Osborne called him once a week, same time, same day, regardless of whether she’d made progress, and Sunday evening at six—or five p.m. back home—was neither that day nor that time.
Beginning to pace up and down, he located the missed call and returned it, and when she answered said, ‘What do you have for me?’
‘You might want to sit down,’ she replied without preamble.
He drew to an abrupt halt and dropped into the nearest available chair. ‘Go ahead.’
‘In what way?’
‘It’s been established that your adoptive parents visited Argentina six months after you were born. They went on their own and returned with you.’
The world skidded to a standstill and his heart gave a great lurch. Argentina? What the hell?
‘My contact managed to trace their movements while they were there,’ Alex continued while Finn grappled for calm and forced himself to focus, ‘and placed them in La Posada.’
‘Which is what?’
‘A small, abandoned village near the border with Bolivia. It consists mainly of a derelict orphanage and a handful of ruined houses. While most of it was looted years ago, the office of the orphanage had barely been touched, quite probably because the filing cabinets had been bolted to the walls. In amongst the papers they contained he found a number of birth certificates. We believe one of them to be yours.’
His lungs tightened. A punch of adrenaline kicked him in the chest and his pulse raced. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘The recorded date of birth is a match.’
‘Does it have the names of the parents?’
‘Yes. Juan Rodriguez and Maria Gonzalez. I’ll email you a copy of everything we have. I apologise for it taking so long. The trail has been extremely well buried. We’re still working on why that would be the case.’ Alex paused, while Finn reeled, then said, ‘There’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘Are you still sitting down?’
‘Yes.’