‘Just go, Dee.’
Farlan was smiling, but there could be no mistaking the authority in his voice. Nia could almost picture him behind the camera on set, his all-seeing gaze directing every line, every glance.
‘You don’t need to worry.’
She tensed as his gaze flicked towards her face, his green eyes hardening.
‘I’ll take care of Lady Antonia.’
As the door closed behind them there was a beat of silence. Glancing at Nia’s face, Farlan thought she’d flinched. Then again, it might just have been the flicker of the candlelight, but a part of him would have liked to know that she was feeling even just a fraction of his pain. A pain that seeing her had resurrected with a speed and sharpness that alarmed him.
He tried to calm his mind. Only that was hard to do when she was so close. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in her light brown eyes and the pulse pushing frantically against the smooth, pale skin of her throat.
Maybe he’d be doing better with it if it hadn’t been so sudden. Not the ancestry stuff—Tom and Diane had been talking about that for ever—but coming here, to this particular house.
When Tom had first told him that they had rented Lamington Hall he had actually thought he’d misheard. That there was another Lamington Hall, a different one, that had nothing to do with the Elgin family.
Or more specifically with Nia.
Of course when finally he’d accepted that it was that Lamington, it had felt like a bad and not especially funny joke, and he had cursed himself for having not paid more attention to the Drummonds’ whole house-hunting business.
His breathing stalled in his throat, and suddenly he had that too-big feeling in his chest—the one that made him sometimes wake up with his nails biting into the palms of his hands.
Only what difference would knowing have made really?
Even without the memory of what had happened with Nia, Scotland was still such a raw wound.
Tom and Diane had helped open doors for him in the States, even as they’d opened their hearts to him, but he had held back so much from them about his life, his past.
Even now, after all these years, the thought of telling them everything made his stomach tense.
They had met by chance. Their car had broken down and he’d stopped to help. Of course Tom had noticed his Scottish accent right away and instantly invited him over for a drink.
Drinks had turned into dinner, and soon he had been dropping round all the time.
And then Diane had offered him a room.
Even though he’d turned her down, then spent months avoiding them, they had never faltered in their friendship. It was only after spending yet another night on their sofa he’d realised that he’d already crossed the line.
But there were still so many locked rooms inside his head. So many doors that needed to remain closed.
Including the one at Lamington.
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His shoulders tensed. It had simply never occurred to him that Nia would leave her home, much less rent it out to strangers. Clearly her father’s need for a warmer climate had forced her hand, made some unwanted but necessary changes.
He glanced over at her set, pale face. Nia hadn’t changed, though. She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Nothing—no amount of time—could change the delicate bone structure beneath the smooth, flawless skin or thin that full, soft pink mouth.
His eyes snagged on the curve of her lower lip, his body tightening without warning as he remembered the feel of her mouth on his, the way she had moved against him—
Blanking his mind to the Nia of seven years ago, he forced himself to look at the woman standing in front of him.
He was wrong. She had changed; she’d lost weight. A little too much, in fact, he thought critically, wanting, needing, to have that small victory. And it wasn’t just her weight. Her light brown eyes had lost their sparkle.
Aged nineteen, with her long dark blond hair falling in front of her face and that pale peach-soft skin, she had looked like a goddess or a princess in a fairy tale.