Earlier she had wanted the evening to be over as quickly as possible. Now she wanted the floor to open and swallow her whole.
Frozen to the spot, she watched Farlan Wilder walk across the room, her pulse slamming in her throat.
It was seven years since he had left Scotland. Seven years of doubt and loneliness. And regret.
She had never expected to see him again.
But n
ow he was back, and how things had changed.
When they’d met, outside a pub at the Edinburgh Festival, she had been out with friends, enjoying a gap year before taking up a place at Oxford to study history.
Seeing him that first time had made her shake inside. He’d been cool, cocky, outrageously flirty and heart-stoppingly beautiful. An art school dropout and wannabe filmmaker with nothing to his name. No money, no family and no belongings. Just raw, untried talent, an unshakable self-belief and plans and promises aplenty.
Her throat tightened. Plans that had worked out just as he had promised.
Not only was he a bona fide film director now, he had already won multiple awards, and his latest movie had been the blockbuster of last summer.
And it showed, she thought, in the casual confidence of his walk.
The cockiness of youth had shifted into an unmistakable authority that came along with crossing an ocean in economy class and returning on a private jet.
She watched, her smile pasted to her face, as he grabbed a tulip-shaped glass of champagne and kissed Diane on the cheek.
‘She certainly is quite something,’ he said coolly.
He shifted his weight and, expecting him to lean forward and kiss her too, she braced herself. But instead he held out his hand, the dull metal of his expensive Swiss watch glinting in the firelight.
At the touch of his fingers his eyes met hers and a burst of quicksilver darted through her veins.
She had thought about this moment so many times—dreamed about it, conjured up almost this exact same scenario.
She would turn to face him, and he would be angry, but not with the ice-cold fury of that last conversation.
In her imagination, his anger was hot and spilling over with the passion of so many wasted years apart so that within seconds they were both crying and he was pulling her close and she was kissing him—
As she stared at him, for a few half-seconds she actually thought she might still be asleep and it was all just a dream.
But then he lifted his chin and, gazing into his narrowed green eyes, she knew with breath-crushing certainty both that she was awake and that nothing had changed.
Farlan hated her.
Nia couldn’t move. Her body, her limbs, seemed to have stopped working, and her ribs seemed suddenly to have shrunk.
She had thought herself prepared for this.
But too late she realised that nothing could have prepared her for this tumultuous rush of feelings, none of which she could reveal as her eyes met his.
He might have become a big shot in Hollywood, but he hadn’t changed much physically—or if he had it was for the better.
Seven years ago he had been a beautiful boy, with a scruffy mohawk and a heart-splitting smile. Now he was a wildly attractive man.
Yes, he was, she thought, her stomach clenching in a sharp, unbidden response.
He wasn’t wearing a kilt, or even a hint of tartan. Instead he had chosen to wear a snow-white shirt and dark grey trousers, and yet his conventional clothing only seemed to emphasise his extraordinary bewitching beauty.
The leanness of youth had matured into broad shoulders, and the dark mohawk had been replaced by a buzzcut and a shadow of stubble that showed off the perfectly contoured planes of his cheekbones and jaw.