Wanderlust: A Holiday Story (A Heroes and Heartbreakers Original) (2 page)

Settle. Let people love him. And then leave before his roots could get any purchase on the ground beneath them.

Ruby was the one he’d left behind in England. Had he left other women behind in Thailand and Barcelona and California? He was one of life’s true sailors, a woman in every port. And so he was coming to drop anchor temporarily back on English shores. Would he expect to find her waiting for him?
Was
she waiting for him? She’d dated over the years, gotten serious a couple of times even, but no one had come anywhere near to that one goodbye kiss. He was a hard act to follow.

Everybody loved Ford. It was one of those things, like everyone loved warm summer mornings and cherry pie with ice cream. Everybody loved him, with his big easy smile and his killer dark curls, and those pink apples in his tanned cheeks that made him seem almost wholesome.
Almost.
Until you looked into those sea-foam green eyes and saw sex, sex, and a whole heap more sex on the side just in case you missed it the first time around.

Ruby glanced up at the clock, mentally working out how many hours it might be until he arrived. They weren’t fresh-out-of-school kids anymore. She was all grown up, and determined not to let him break her heart for a second time.

*   *   *

Ford slung his holdall into the trunk of his rental car at the airport and jumped into the driving seat to get out of the wind.

England
. Christ, it was freezing. The weather back home in Barbados had been a balmy thirty degrees Celsius when he’d left it, and the harsh wind here stung his skin. He hadn’t thought to bring too much in the way of winter protection, so he whacked the heating up to full as he found his way off the airport complex and followed his nose towards the motorway.

He turned the radio on for company, and then turned it off again when “White Christmas” started to wheeze out of the speakers. His Christmases over the last few years had been sun-drenched affairs; it was distinctly odd to be back in the deep freeze for the festive season. At least he’d missed Christmas day. He’d nearly not come at all; he’d left it far too long to waltz back in and expect a warm welcome. But once that invitation had arrived offering him a reason to go home, the idea had embedded itself and wouldn’t let go. Even though he’d officially declined, he’d found himself checking out flights to get to Niall and Emma’s wedding. To Ruby.

Ruby would almost certainly be there; she and Emma had been as thick as thieves at university. Ford scrubbed his hand over his chin. Would she still look the same? Would her hazelnut eyes still sparkle with barely contained laughter and her dark waves still dance untamed around her shoulders? She’d always been so quick to laugh, full to the brim with it. Did she still warm a room just by being in it?

Leaving Ruby had turned out to be the hardest thing he’d ever done. He should never have kissed her, because knowing how she tasted had set him up for a lifetime of disappointment. No other woman’s mouth had tasted so honey sweet, and Ford had tasted many, many women over the intervening years.

He’d tried to write to her so many times, a whole heap of postcards that he’d never mailed. It had become his therapy and his ritual; pick up a lighthearted card somewhere, write it out. Hell, sometimes he’d even buy a stamp. But he never mailed them, because to mail them would be to prolong Ruby’s pain. He’d seen it in her eyes, he’d tasted it in her kiss, and he’d known in that moment that he had to walk away. He couldn’t stay, and Ruby couldn’t leave. She probably hated him by now—if she ever thought of him at all.

It was better to believe that she’d stopped wasting any energy on him, even though the idea of her happy with someone else made him angry enough to thump the dashboard.

Christ. Would she be married with a brood of beautiful kids? He flicked the wipers on as snow started to fall lightly, coating the roads and cars around him as they all crawled along in the same sluggish fashion.

He squinted at the luminescent clock on the dash. Barely three in the afternoon, yet already the evening seemed to be drawing close, probably prematurely dark due to the snow-heavy skies overhead. He just hoped that the hotel Niall and Emma were getting married at had a comfortable bed and a decent masseuse. His body ached from being cooped up in the plane and now the car, and by his reckoning he had less than twenty-four hours until he came face to face with Ruby again.

Chapter Three

Ruby looked up from the reception desk every time the doors opened, her heart in her mouth at the thought that it might be Ford walking through them. Or
blowing
through them, given the fact that every time anyone opened the door a chilling gust of snowy wind blew through and gave her goose-bumps.

She didn’t generally work reception, but Sheila had offered no resistance when offered the chance to leave early because of the impending snowstorm. Ruby was glad to have a genuine reason to send the older woman home, because knowing that Ford was on his way left her with no option but to be there waiting for him. She couldn’t sit in her office knowing that he was potentially in the same building. Or the same country, for that matter.

The doors opened again a little after half past four, and this time it wasn’t the snow that gave Ruby goose bumps.

It was
him.

Tanned, tall, beautiful Ford. Snowflakes in his hair, his holdall slung over his shoulder.

He approached the reception desk without looking directly at her, his eyes scanning the room. Ever the hotel manager, Ruby’s eyes followed his anxiously, hoping that everything in the former coaching inn met his approval. The building’s mellow stone walls and deep mullioned windows framed the tasteful reception room, a huge stone fireplace its glowing, warm centerpiece. Butter-soft leather couches invited weary guests to relax alongside the glittering Christmas tree, understated luxury that rightly allowed the architecture to be the star of the show.

Proud as Ruby was, she was well aware that it was a far cry from Ford’s beachfront Barbadian property. “Elegantly ramshackle” had been the phrase used by a prominent newspaper reviewer, and it was a term that seemed apt.

Ruby held her breath as Ford approached the desk. He dropped his bag at his feet, and it felt like at least three hours before he slowly lifted his head and finally looked at her.

It was almost comical.

His expression cycled from politely bland, through disconcerted, to shocked disbelief to genuine joy.

“Fuck … Ruby!”

He half-laughed, his eyes scanning the desk for a way to get to her, and when he didn’t find one he hoisted himself over it and landed on his feet in front of her.

Neither of them hesitated for even a second. They were in each other’s arms, a welcome-home hug of epic proportions.

Jesus, he was warm for a man who’d just walked out of a snowstorm. He had her hauled hard against him, her thin blouse pressed against the softness of his T-shirt beneath his coat. The thought that only Ford would wear a T-shirt in the middle of winter ran through her mind, but then he’d never been one to let anyone or anything dictate how he lived, not even the weather.

One warm hand rested on the small of her back, the other cupped the back of her skull against his chest.
Ford
. She breathed him in, his scent familiar and new all at the same time—he smelled of sunshine, and fresh cotton, and something so uniquely, undeniably
him
that memories of their one and only kiss bubbled straight to the surface. Finally he let her go, holding her out at arm’s length to study her face.

“Look at you,” he murmured. “Just exactly the same.”

“Look at you,” she laughed softly. “Unsuitably dressed and unsuitably tanned.”

He glanced down at his well-washed and all too well-fitted T-shirt and faded jeans with an unapologetic shrug, that trademark smile of his still in permanent residence on his face.

“So, what … you work here, Rubes?”

She nodded, watching him as he digested her presence. “I’ve been the manager for the last four years.”

“Wow,” Ford nodded slowly, his gaze unreadable. Was he impressed, or did he think her boring for having settled for this? She couldn’t tell.

“I guess you’d better check me in then, boss lady.”

I’m not done checking you out yet, sir.
The words somehow stayed inside Ruby’s head, a mercy for which she was grateful. This was Ford. The guy whose shoulder she’d slept on, the one whose hangovers she’d nursed, the one whose girlfriends she’d comforted when he’d inevitably drifted to another girl. The one whose kiss had set a seal on her heart and whose absence had almost broken it.

Ruby glanced down and tapped the keyboard, not needing to check which room he was in because she’d already allocated the attic suite to Ford, her favorite room in the place. She’d reserved it originally for Emma and Niall, but they’d had a last-minute change that morning when Niall had fallen for the double Jacuzzi in the first-floor honeymoon suite and Emma had given in graciously.

The attic suite rambled across the top of the building, housing a huge brass bed and a cute sitting room beneath the eves. Lovely as those features were, it was the roll-top bath at the end of the bed that stole the show. The height of decadence and a feat of plumbing mastery in a building of the hotel’s age, the attic suite was the one featured most in magazine articles about the hotel.

Ruby looked up again, suddenly awkward and unsure of what to say now that the initial euphoria of seeing each other had dimmed. Ford’s smile was still in place, but the unfettered joy in his eyes had slipped into something a little more guarded.

“You’re right at the top,” Ruby said, handing him his room key. “We don’t have any lifts, but it’s only three flights up.”

Ford accepted the proffered key. “You’re not going to show me to my room?”

Ruby needed Ford to leave reception, to give her time to breathe and work out how to handle having him near again for a few days. Spending time with him was easy; it was the letting go of him again afterwards that might kill her.

“I’m sure you’ll find your way.”

Ford tipped his head to the side and arranged his face into a forlorn expression. “Take pity on a jet-lagged old friend, Ruby red. Show me the way.”

He didn’t need to beg; her resolve was paper-thin. She glanced at her watch pointedly, aware that Robert, her evening replacement for reception, had arrived and was hovering interested in the back office doorway. It wasn’t every day that the manager staffed reception, and it certainly wasn’t every day that she allowed handsome strangers to vault reception and bear hug her. She smiled at Ford, a professional smile for the benefit of Robert, and lifted the old hatch-style counter.

“This way, sir,” she said as she inclined her head and walked off towards the stairs, leaving Ford to pick up his bag and follow in her wake.

Ford followed Ruby, not trying very hard to look away from the gentle undulation of her hips as she led him up through the building. It really was a gorgeous old place, all exposed rafters and natural stone. Ford loved his Barbadian paradise, but he could see why Ruby had fallen for the charms of the inn.

He’d been wrong with his earlier assertion that Ruby hadn’t changed at all. She had. At twenty-one she’d been exuberant, a bright light. At twenty-nine, she was subtly different. More womanly. More mature. Sexier.
Jesus, she was sexy.

He’d never completely understood his feelings for Ruby. He’d accepted the role of older brother back in university; protecting her, enjoying her company, sharing her life. Then he’d cracked and kissed her in the most un-brotherly fashion possible.

And then he’d left her.

There was nothing brotherly about his thoughts anymore, either. The intervening years of separation had driven a wedge between them, taking away that easy closeness and leaving behind a burning ache of attraction that had him halfway to hard as he followed her up the final narrow flight of stairs to the heavy, planked wooden door of the Attic Suite.

He couldn’t miss the way her dress wrapped itself around her curves, and he couldn’t deny that he’d like to unwrap her like a belated Christmas gift.

She cleared her throat as she turned the key and opened the attic door, stepping aside for him to go in ahead of her. He ducked beneath the low doorway and found himself inside an enchanting den, an intimate space clearly designed for lovers.

He inspected it in silence, aware that Ruby was waiting for his professional verdict.

“It’s pretty fucking amazing, Rubes. Did you design it?”

She nodded, almost shy. “Most of it.”

His eyes dropped to the tub at the end of the bed.

“Was that your idea?”

Ruby dropped her gaze to the antique tub too, her cheeks pink. “Yes.”

“I like it.”

“Thank you. Me too.”

“Have you ever used it?”

“No … no!” She looked completely flustered. “Of course not.”

“Well, I will.”

Ruby looked away and smoothed her hands on her skirt. “It’s great to see you, Ford. It really is.” She was about to leave. He could sense her withdrawal, both from him and from the room.

“Have dinner with me tonight.” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop to think, and he didn’t miss the wary shadows that filled her eyes. Was she with someone else now? He suddenly wished he hadn’t made such a thorough job of not keeping in touch. It had seemed the best way to handle things, but standing here knowing so little about the woman in front of him made him question the wisdom of his choices. His eyes dropped belatedly to her fingers in search of rings.
Bare.
Thank God.
“Please?”

He watched her hesitate, and he understood, because even
he
wasn’t sure it was a good idea. It had taken a long time for his life to feel complete without Ruby in it, and neither of them needed that kind of mess in their lives again. Yet still he wanted her to say yes just about more than he’d wanted anything else before.

“Okay.” She nodded, and her beautiful smile lit up the room far brighter than the glowing lamps dotted around the attics could hope to. “I’ll see you downstairs around seven.”