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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Niall had thanked Liùsaidh, not Lucy, while the people who mattered most in his world were watching. With her arrival, a weight had lifted from his chest. Niall hadn’t planned to say her full name, a name he whispered when they made love, turning the word into a benediction. But he liked the sound of it in his head. Liked even more the way her mouth curved into the smile she reserved for him. It had taken her walking out of his life for the hammer to drop hard enough for him to realise he’d been falling in love with her since the day he’d first seen her.

He just hadn’t been prepared to admit it.

Didn’t think he had the right to burden her with promises other women had told him were worthless.

Standing in the centre of the warehouse, she was working her gran’s pearls with the speed of spinning reels at an Irish ceili. Probably worrying about her welcome, when he counted her presence tonight as his crowning achievement. As the minutes had become a half hour, then an hour, then two, he’d begun work on a Plan B, involving kidnapping and locking her in this exhibition space until they fought themselves to a standstill. Fighting with her was better than losing her. He took a step in her direction.

“Niall, a moment.” The Michael Portillo look-alike, whom Anna had identified as a major art critic, stood at his elbow. The lemon jumper slung across his shoulders was a direct steal from the train-travel aficionado’s wardrobe.

“Good of you to come.” Niall spotted Anna signalling him from across the room, her hand gesture threatening murder if he didn’t play nice with Mr. Crimson-slacks-and-purple-dress-shirt. He tracked Lucy moving in the direction of the makeshift bar positioned under a window.

“I nearly didn’t.” His blunt words caught Niall’s attention. “I don’t usually report on furniture, but your marketing manager was very persuasive.”

Marketing manager? “You mean Anna.” He flicked a glance toward his sister-in-law, who waggled her fingers at him.

“She hounded me”—the critic smiled, destroying the English upper-class gravitas he’d been channelling since his arrival—“in the nicest possible way. She supplied a full bio, plus photos of your major pieces. Your work’s even better than she promised. My review will be uploaded tonight, the digital version’s available after midnight. How about a shot to go with my text?” He held up his phone.

“Where do you want me?” Niall glanced around, a photo a small price for freedom.

“Where you are works. It’s an elegant sideboard, and the bowl of old-fashioned yellow roses accentuates it nicely.” He snapped a few shots. “Is Anna here?” he asked a little too innocently. “I’d like to put a face to the name for future reference.”

“She’s responsible for the roses.” Niall grinned. “Over my right shoulder. One o’clock. Black dress with a necklace of coloured beads.” The dress was demure, but Anna was luminescent tonight.

The man’s eyes widened. “She’syour marketing manager?”

“She’s outstanding at her job.” Niall kept his expression bland. Anna looked delicious, although his personal vice was a sedate antiques specialist wearing her gran’s pearls, sipping white wine, in one of her standard black business suits, and moving with elegant grace through the dwindling crowd. He needed to catch her before she disappeared. “If you’ve finished with me, there are some other people I need to catch up with.”

Please be finished with me.

The critic smiled and headed in Anna’s direction.

Lucy stood with her back to the room, in front of the gumnut mirror. Niall absorbed her scent as he drew closer, pausing to breathe in her presence before reaching her. He’d felt invincible in her bed. Who knew invincibility was having the woman you loved tucked against you during the night, her hand in yours? He missed the sensation.

“Thank you for coming,” he repeated the words she’d used at her gala.

“You came to my show,” she replied, colour flaring in her cheeks as if the memory was uncomfortable. “And I delivered you immediately into Peter’s determined clutches.”