He was waiting for her answer, and she was tempted to laugh it off, but then she found herself admitting, ‘I was shy as a child. Cripplingly so. I had a stammer. And I used to blush all the time.’ She desisted from revealing her mother’s intolerance of that.
‘But you got over it,’ Ben said, and she heard the admiration in his voice.
Lia shrugged. ‘I had to. I couldn’t let it blight me.’
Their main courses arrived, and Lia seized the opportunity to divert his far too perceptive gaze from her, saying, ‘You still haven’t told me how you got to college.’
He gave her a look that told her explicitly that he didn’t normally accept this level of grilling from anyone, but she just raised her brow again. He’d grilled her, and he’d comprehensively upended her life—this was the least she deserved.
Eventually he sighed and said, ‘It started with a cop—an Irish/American called Clancy. He picked a bunch of us up one day. By the age of sixteen I was in a gang. We were on our way to becoming serious delinquents—cutting school, shoplifting. I hadn’t come on his radar before, so he looked into my background. When he found out where I’d come from he took me aside and laid it on the line. He told me that I’d already had more of a chance than any of those other kids, and that I was squandering the legacy my parents had given me.’
Ben shook his head.
‘I was hard work by then—seriously angry and bitter with the world. He almost didn’t get through to me...but he persuaded me to take part in a mentoring programme where local businessmen took on kids for internships. I ended up working as an intern for a local construction guy, and that was the start of it. I got out of the gang...stayed out of trouble as much as I could. It helped that I’d got moved to a more stable foster family. When I graduated from high school my mentor helped me get a scholarship to college and I did my basic degree. From that moment on I spent every minute either waiting tables or working on construction sites all over New York, and as soon as I got an opportunity I took it and didn’t look back.’
Lia absorbed this and tried not to let herself picture the young angry teen at war with the world around him and grieving for so much. She knew instinctively that Ben wouldn’t appreciate it. So instead she forked up a piece of her carpaccio and said lightly, ‘Is that all?’
Ben just looked at her—and then he threw back his head and let out a sharp laugh. When he looked back at her there was something like grudging respect in his eyes and her chest expanded with a rush of emotion. Dangerous.
He shook his head. ‘You never fail to surprise me, Miss Ford.’
She smiled back, even though the realisation of how happy it made her to make him laugh scared the life out of her. ‘I try.’
His eyes narrowed on her then, and he said, ‘So, why do you protect your father so much?’
Lia put down her fork, immediately feeling defensive. ‘It’s always been just the two of us...’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘After my mother left he never really recovered. For years he’s suffered ill health, and I’ve always suspected it’s mental as much as physical.’
‘You can’t take up the slack for him for ever.’
‘I know that,’ Lia said, the habitual weight of her father’s expectations resting on her shoulders.
Ben was looking at her, and for a second she allowed herself a very illicit daydream of what it would be like to lean on someone else... But she ruthlessly shut it down.
The waiter appeared beside them, breaking the tension, and without looking at the man Ben said, ‘We’ll take the cheque, please.’
Lia felt relieved that Ben wasn’t going to say any more about her father. Emotions she never usually allowed room to breathe were rising inside her, and when Ben held his hand out for hers, after leaving money on the table, she gave it without hesitation.
The cold air outside the restaurant didn’t help with restoring her sense of equilibrium. It was as if Ben had unlocked a box and now everything was spilling out—everything she’d kept locked up for years. For ever.
He turned to her, his face lean and beautifully stark in the early-evening light. ‘Lia—’
She reached up and put her hand over his mouth. His breath was warm against her palm. ‘Just kiss me, Ben.’
She was afraid that if she said any more she would want more than he
was offering. He put his hand over hers and pressed a kiss to her palm, and then he pulled her in close, right into his body, and kissed her deeply and thoroughly. It was as effective a way as any to block out the thoughts and feelings she wasn’t prepared to inspect. Yet.
Ben seemed perfectly happy to avoid talking too, bundling her into a taxi before things got too heated in the middle of the busy street. The atmosphere in the back of the taxi was thick with sexual tension, and by the time they eventually reached the hotel suite again they couldn’t even make it to the bedroom, stopping at the first soft surface, their urgency so frantic that when it was over Lia realised that they were both still partially dressed.
By the time they did make it to the bedroom, and Ben took off the rest of her clothes as reverently as if she was made of china, Lia knew that she was in serious trouble. No amount of distracting sex was going to keep the emotions and thoughts bubbling just under the surface at bay.
* * *
Lia was luxuriating in a hot bath early the following morning, while Ben was taking some calls on his phone, dressed fetchingly in nothing but a towel. She could get used to this decadent lifestyle, she thought to herself, as long as the Pandora’s Box of emotions she’d been avoiding dealing with since the previous evening stayed locked away.
But it was too late for that.
Lia wanted to submerge herself under the water, block everything out, make it muffled. But she couldn’t. Despite the warm water and luxurious oils she was tense, and her belly was tight.