Louise Fuller – Proof Of Their One-Night Passion (страница 3)

She had been aiming for offhand, but her voice sounded thin and breathless.

Thankfully, though, Lucas was too distracted to notice.

‘Ragnar Stone. He owns that dating app. Apparently he’s launching a VIP version.’

‘Dating app?’ she said woodenly. It felt as if she had stopped breathing.

She was about to ask which one, but there was no point. She already knew the answer. Only she’d thought he was like her—someone using the app to meet people. She hadn’t known that he owned it—in fact, thinking about it, she was certain that he hadn’t mentioned that to her.

‘You know—ice/breakr?’

Lucas glanced up at her, and she watched his face still as his brain caught up with his mouth.

‘Course you do…’ he said quietly.

It had been Lucas who had signed her up to the app. Lucas who had coaxed her into replying to the ‘ice breaker’ question. It could be on any topic from politics to holidays. Not all of the questions were profound, but they were designed to spark an instinctive response that apparently helped match couples more accurately than a photo and a list of likes and dislikes. She knew he felt responsible for everything that had happened, but she was too stunned and angry to dismiss his obvious guilt.

Ragnar Stone!

So he’d even lied about his name.

And he hadn’t just been using the app—he owned it.

She breathed out unsteadily, trying to absorb this new version of the facts as she’d known them, grateful that her brother’s attention was still fixed on the TV and not on her face. Grateful, too, that she hadn’t shown him Ragnar’s profile at the time.

Her skin was trembling.

‘Is he in London?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, for the launch. He’s got an office here.’ Lucas wiped Sóley’s mouth with the hem of his shirt and met her gaze. ‘One of those converted warehouses in Docklands. You know Nick?’

She nodded. Nick was one of Lucas’s cohorts. He played drums in their band, but in his day job he was a graffiti artist.

‘He did this huge old-school design the whole length of Ragnar Stone’s building. He showed me some pictures and it looks really sick.’ He nodded his head approvingly.

Lottie cleared her throat. ‘Did he meet him?’

Lucas frowned. ‘Nah. Best you can hope with a guy like Stone is that you catch a ride on his slipstream.’

She blinked. Yes, she supposed it was. That was basically what had happened twenty months ago in her hotel room. If she hadn’t understood that before, her brother’s words made it clear now that she and Sóley were not permanent features of that ride.

‘So what time do you want me to drop you off?’

Taking a shallow breath, she looked over at her brother, but her eyes never reached his face. Instead she felt her gaze stretch past him to the TV screen, like a compass point seeking the magnetic north. She stared at Ragnar’s face, the artist in her responding to the clean symmetry of his features and the woman in her remembering the pressure of his mouth. He was so beautiful, and so very like his blonde, blue-eyed daughter in every way—except the dimples in her cheeks, which were entirely her own.

She felt something twist inside her. What if it was more than just looks? Growing up not knowing where half her DNA came from had been hard when her mother and brother were so alike in character. It had made her feel incomplete and unfinished, and even finally meeting her father hadn’t changed that. It had been too late for them to form a bond and get to know one another.

But would it have been different if he’d found out about her when she was a baby? And, more importantly, could she consciously deny her own child the chance of having what she had so desperately wanted for herself?

The seconds ticked by as she wondered what to do. He would have a PA for sure—only she couldn’t tell them why she was ringing. But would they put her through to him without a reason? She bit her lip. More importantly, could she honestly go through with it? Tell him over the phone that he was a father?

She cleared her throat. ‘Actually, Lucas, could you have Sóley for me after all?’ she said, glancing over at her daughter. ‘There’s something I need to do. In person.’

Being interviewed was probably his least favourite part of being a CEO, Ragnar Stone decided, as he stood up and shook hands with the earnest-faced young man in front of him. It was so repetitive, and most of the answers could easily have been given by even the most junior member of his PR department. But, as his head of media Madeline Thomas had told him that morning, people were ‘in thrall to the personality behind the brand’, so he had dutifully worked his way through twenty-two interviews with just a half-hour break for lunch.

And now he was done.

Shrugging off his jacket, he loosened his tie and pulled a black hoodie over his head as his PA Adam came into the room.

‘What time is the car coming to pick me up in the morning?’ he asked, reaching down to pick up a slim laptop from his desk.

‘Six-thirty. You have a meeting with James Milner at seven, you’re seeing the graphics team at eight, and then breakfast with Caroline Woodward.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Ragnar smiled briefly at his PA. ‘And thanks for keeping it moving today, Adam.’

Stepping into the lift, he ran his hand over his face. Only one more week and then, once this final round of publicity was over and the new app went live, he was going to take some time away from all this.

He knew he’d left it too long. His annual two-week recharge ritual had dwindled to a couple of snatched days, but since launching ice/breakr two years ago life had been insane.

Working long hours, eating and sleeping on the move in a series of hotel rooms, and of course in the background his gorgeous, crazy, messy family, acting out their own modern-day Norse saga of betrayal and blackmail.

Glancing down at his phone, he grimaced. Three missed calls from his half-sister Marta, four from his mother, six texts from his stepmother Anna, and twelve from his stepbrother Gunnar.

Stretching his neck and shoulders, he slipped his phone into the pocket of his hoodie. None of it would be urgent. It never was. But, like all drama queens, his family loved an audience.

For once they could wait. Right now he wanted to hit the gym and then crash out.

The lift doors opened and he flipped his hood up over his head, nodding at the receptionists as he walked past their desk and out into the dark night air.

He didn’t hear their polite murmurs of goodnight, but he heard the woman’s voice so clearly that it seemed to come from inside his head.

‘Ragnar.’

In the moment that followed he realised two things. One, he recognised the voice, and two, his heart was beating hard and fast like a hailstorm against his ribs.

As he turned he got an impression of slightness, coupled with tension, and then his eyes focused on the woman standing in front of him.

Her light brown hair was longer, her pale face more wary, but she looked just as she had twenty-odd months ago. And yet she seemed different in a way he couldn’t pin down. Younger, maybe? Or perhaps she just looked younger because most of the women in his circles routinely wore make-up, whereas she was bare-faced.

‘I was just passing. I’ve got an exhibition up the road…’ She waved vaguely towards the window. ‘I saw you coming out.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know if you remember me…?’

‘I remember.’

He cut across her, but only because hearing her voice was messing with his head. It was a voice he had never forgotten—a voice that had called out his name under very different circumstances in a hotel room less than a mile away from where they were standing.

He watched her pupils dilate, and knew that she was thinking the same thing.

For a second they stared at one another, the memory of the night they shared quivering between them, and then, leaning forward, he gave her a quick, neutral hug.

Or it was meant to be neutral, but as his cheek brushed against hers the warm, floral scent of her skin made his whole body hum like a power cable.

Stepping back, he gave her a small, taut smile and something pulsed between them, a flicker of corresponding heat that made his skin grow tight.

‘Of course I remember. It’s Lottie—Lottie Dawson.’

‘Yes, that’s my name.’

Seeing the accusation in her eyes, he felt his chest tighten, remembering the lies he’d told her. It wasn’t hard to remember. Growing up in the truth-shifting environment of his family had left him averse to lying, but that night had been an exception—a necessary and understandable exception. He’d met her through a dating app, but as the app’s creator and owner, anonymity had seemed like a sensible precaution.

But his lies hadn’t all been about concealing his identity. His family’s chaotic and theatrical affairs had left him wary of even the hint of a relationship, so when he’d woken to find himself planning the day ahead with Lottie he’d got up quietly and left—because planning a day with a woman was not on his agenda.

Ever.

His life was already complicated enough. He had parents and step-parents, and seven whole and half-and step siblings scattered around the world, and not one of them had made a relationship last for any length of time. Not only that, their frequent and overlapping affairs and break-ups, and the inevitable pain and misery they caused, seemed to be an unavoidable accompaniment to any kind of commitment.