CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘SEE YOU TOMORROW.’

      Ava winced. Flynn had left her so casually.

      Indignation welled, as it had all night. She avoided the mirror, knowing what she’d see. Anger, but disappointment too, and a flush that felt disturbingly like arousal. All night she’d been troubled by dreams that left her achy and longing.

      Her lips pursed. What had she done wrong? Surely she hadn’t misinterpreted his eagerness.

      She shook her head. She was doing it again: rehashing last night’s mortifying scene where he’d all but had to prise her hands off him.

      As for his tight-lipped look as he’d said, ‘Not here, not now...’ It was naïve to think he’d been put off by their surroundings. Flynn might wear hand-made shoes and exquisitely tailored clothes, but he came from a working class family. She’d seen their modest cottage on the estate. There’d been nothing pretentious about the Marshalls.

      Whatever made him leave last night it wasn’t her room. That only left her.

      Pride told her it was ridiculous to think she was so unattractive she’d scared him off. He hadn’t found her unattractive when he’d kissed her.

      Unless he hadn’t really wanted to.

      She’d invited him to her room.

      She’d initiated the kiss.

      Could she have got it wrong?

      A knock at the door ended her circling thoughts.

      Flynn? Her pulse thudded and she knew a cowardly desire to pretend she hadn’t heard. Angry with herself, she put her shoulders back and marched to the door.

      The man standing there was a foot shorter than Flynn and twice as wide. He held a boxed arrangement of exquisite peonies and camellias.

      ‘Miss Cavendish?’

      At her dazed nod he smiled and thrust the arrangement into her arms. Then with a half-bow he turned and headed downstairs before she had time to recover.

      Cradling the flowers, Ava backed into her room. They were so perfect they didn’t look real. But as she stroked a finger across one petal she was rewarded with a rich silken texture no man-made process could duplicate.

      With unsteady hands she put them on the table. At once her small room morphed from economy class to luxurious and exotically enticing.

      She plopped onto the bed.

      In twenty-four years she’d never been given flowers. How pathetic was that? Men she’d dated had wanted to buy her drinks or meals, but never anything as romantic as flowers. These weren’t just romantic, they were flagrantly, unashamedly so.

      An image surfaced of blood-red long-stemmed roses in an expensive florist’s box. Ava shuddered and thrust the memory away. Those hadn’t been a gift. They’d been a statement of possession.

      She wrapped her arms around herself to dispel an inner chill and stared at the blooms—lush, sensual and gorgeous. She plucked the card from them.

       They reminded me of you.

      No signature, but they had to be from Flynn.

      Ava blinked. They reminded him of her? She looked at the voluptuous splendour of the peonies, full-bloomed and extravagant, yet with their soft pink tint so delicate and feminine. And the camellias—pure white and elegant.

      She frowned. Lush and voluptuous or neat and virginal?

      How did Flynn view her?

      Her figure was feminine, but hardly voluptuous. As for virginal—heat rose in her cheeks. Flynn couldn’t know that.

      The trouble was she didn’t know where she stood with him.

      She’d lost her habit of keeping men at a distance the minute Flynn had smiled at her in Paris. With his charm and their shared history he’d broached every defence she’d built against glib, grasping men. The speed of their romance had stirred anxiety. But until last night she’d overridden it, too delighted and excited to care.

      She’d thought she knew him. Till he’d left her so abruptly.

      What was she going to do about him?

      More, what could she do about her feelings for him? They tied her in knots and turned her well-ordered life and everything she knew about herself on their head.

      * * *

      Ava slipped on her sunglasses as she left the hotel and stepped onto the quiet cobblestoned street. She’d taken three paces when a tall shadow peeled away from the pastel-washed building opposite.

      Flynn. Her heart beat a tattoo up high near her throat, robbing her of air.

      ‘Forgive me?’

      Eyes of black velvet snared her.

      ‘What for? Sending flowers?’

      ‘For walking out on you.’

      Despite the glow in his eyes there were harsh lines bracketing his mouth, as if from tension or regret. Or maybe she was reading things that weren’t there.

      Ava shrugged airily and donned the polite society mask she’d perfected in her teens.

      ‘Of course you’re angry.’

      Ava’s brows rose. No one except Rupert had ever penetrated what she thought of as her armoured look—but then Rupe had grown up in the same family, suffering like her. He knew poise and surface charm didn’t tell the whole story.

      ‘I’m sorry.’ Flynn’s voice was a soft, deep rumble.

      Instantly her nipples beaded and heat melted between her thighs, as if she were ready to continue where they’d left off last night. Her lips firmed at her body’s betrayal. How could she? No man had ever made her weak like this.

      ‘If it’s any consolation it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, walking away last night.’

      His eyes mesmerised, willing her to believe him.

      ‘Then why did you?’

      His mouth kicked up at the corner in a rueful half-smile that infuriatingly made her body hum.

      ‘You deserved better.’

      ‘Better than you?’ In her besotted state Ava couldn’t imagine anyone better than Flynn. That only fuelled her anger.

      Slowly he shook his head, his gaze so intense she felt it like a wave of warmth, engulfing her from her head to her soles.

      ‘Never that. The thought of you with another man...’ Heat flickered in his eyes and Ava’s breath hitched as his expression turned possessive. ‘No. I couldn’t stand it.’

      Some primitive part of her psyche revelled in his discomfort, his possessiveness, even as she reminded herself that no man had the right to control her.

      ‘I meant you deserved better than a cramped bed with the neighbours listening to every gasp and cry, hearing you in ecstasy and imagining exactly what we were doing with each creak of the mattress springs.’

      The