The golden eyes gleamed in silent challenge.
‘Won’t you sit down, Darian?’ said Lara’s mother mildly, as if men who looked like Hollywood film stars suddenly appeared in her dining room every day of the week. ‘And have some tea? Or I could probably rustle you up some lunch if you haven’t already eaten.’
He smiled at her, and Lara watched her mother melt. ‘I’d like that very much, Mrs. Black, but I wonder if first I could have a few words with Lara? In private?’
‘Of course.’ She looked at her daughter. ‘Lara?’
Lara rose to her feet on legs which felt as if they had suddenly been transformed into jelly. ‘Let’s go into the sitting room,’ she said unsteadily.
The fire was blazing and there was a photo album lying open on one of the sofas. An empty champagne bottle was upended in the bin and there was crumpled wrapping paper from the anniversary presents lying waiting to be hurled on the fire. It looked messy and warm and homely.
Outside the window, the scene was startlingly white and beautiful, and Darian released a slow sigh as he turned to look at Lara properly, dressed in palest cream, her hair all loose around her shoulders, looking like a winter wonder herself. ‘Lara,’ he said softly.
Her heart was beating very fast. ‘How the hell did you find me?’
‘Jake told me where you were.’
‘He did?’
‘Eventually.’ It had been like trying to extract blood from a stone, Darian remembered with a kind of grim admiration. ‘He didn’t want to. Gave me a great long lecture on how wonderful you were and how he wasn’t going to stand by and see you hurt—but in the end I asked him whether you would be happier to see me than not, and then he told me where you were.’ His eyes were very clear—clear and golden. ‘So are you, Lara? Happy to see me?’
‘I’m not sure how I feel,’ she answered truthfully, because she didn’t yet know why it was he had come.
He looked at the way her dark lashes were half lowered. ‘You look very beautiful,’ he observed softly.
‘Thank you.’ She let the lashes flutter up, cautious and wary. She felt as if she was skating on ice, without knowing how thin it was.
‘But you’ve lost weight!’ he accused softly.
She ran her eyes over the shadows and angles of his gorgeous face. ‘Well, so have you!’
‘I’ve been in the saddle every morning, riding through inaccessible parts of Maraban—what’s your excuse?’
She didn’t answer that. She didn’t have to. She wasn’t going to tell him that she had missed him and been pining for him, because that way she risked too much. Too much hurt if he told her, as she suspected he was about to, that he was going to stay in Maraban. That his life was there.
But if that was the case…
‘Why are you here, Darian?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
Oh, but guessing was a dangerous game. She knew what she hoped, but she dared not risk saying it. What if her dreams were way off mark? Would that not just put him in the awful position—for him and for her—of having to reject her? But he’s here, a little voice reminded her. He is here. ‘I’m not a mind-reader.’
‘Aren’t you?’ The last time he had made love to her he had thought she could see into his very soul. And he hers. God, it seemed like a lifetime ago now, and in a way maybe it was. ‘Come over here, Lara,’ he said, in a low, soft voice. ‘You’re a long way away from me.’
It was only a few steps, but it felt like a million, and Lara’s feet took her slowly towards him like a child learning to walk for the first time. That was exactly how she felt. Unsure and uncertain and a tiny bit afraid.
He put his hand up and touched her cheek, saw her eyelashes briefly flutter down to shield her eyes, and when she opened them again they were bright. And wary.
‘Why have you come here?’ she whispered again.
‘Because…’ He searched for the right words, and wondered why they were so hard to find. Maybe because he wasn’t used to saying what was really on his mind. And in his heart. ‘I’ve…missed you.’
‘Have you?’ Her heart leapt in her chest. It wasn’t the biggest declaration in the world, but maybe because of that it felt more real, more solid. For Darian was not a man to use words he did not mean.
He nodded. Tell her how much. ‘Very much.’
It had been an entirely new sensation, one that he had tried at first to deny and then to rationalise his way out of—until he had realised that there was no way out, that for the first time in his adult life there was no template to follow. This was all very new to him, and exciting, and kind of scary.