Page 46 of Engaged to London's Wildest Billionaire

So she’d said yes. And George had smiled and practically skipped on his way. Which had led her here, to the gallery of Lance’s ancestors, trying to figure him out.

She strolled down the line of paintings to his portrait. Each one sent a message, but his... If she didn’t know better, she’d say it screamed a kind of warning. His picture made no pretence of dignity. The man in the portrait lounged, dissolute, almost indecent, as if a lover had just left him. Shirt half open, a lazy gleam in his eye, a smirk on his lips. Looking louche and untrustworthy, bent on destroying everything formal, right and proper. It was an exquisite picture that had her standing in front of it far too long and too often. Because it was all irony, a joke on everyone who looked at it and only saw what they wanted to see.

She knew he wasn’t the man in the painting, but someone else entirely. A man who cared for those who couldn’t care for themselves. Someone serious, who hid his true self behind a veneer of humour and carelessness that he wore like a layer of ice over a lake, leaving everyone unaware of the depths beneath.

A man she craved to learn with every atom of her being.

‘You spend too much time here.’

She whipped round. She hadn’t heard him come in behind her because she was too absorbed by the picture. Lance leaned against a wall, arms crossed, jaw hard and somehow disapproving. Seeing him in the flesh eclipsed the picture. He was life, a force of nature that made everything else pale to sepia. But catching her out like this embarrassed her in a way she couldn’t explain. How many times had he witnessed her here, staring, trying to figure him out because the real man confused her?

‘Why do you say that?’

‘My ancestors could corrupt by their pictures alone.’

‘You are not the man in that painting.’

‘Yes, I am. I’m exactly that man, and you’d be wise to remember it.’

Sara shook her head. She wouldn’t be cowed. Never again.

‘You like to pretend not to care. The problem is you caredeeply. About the village, the estate... Your sister.’

Me.She hoped he cared about her.

‘Angel, I’m good at pretending to have an interest when I don’t, in anything much other than myself.’ His voice sounded like a sneer, and she hated that he used the wordangellike a weapon rather than a term of endearment. ‘However, I don’t wish to pretend any longer.’

‘What do you mean?’ She didn’t understand any of this, but the look on his face terrified her. It was detached, cool. Not the heated way his eyes usually flared when they looked at each other.

‘I’ll be travelling to look at some horses, then I’m off to Switzerland.’

None of this had been scheduled in the obsessive diary he kept, the one he’d shared with her. This had to be new.

‘Does this have anything to do with Victoria?’

His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then settled back into the lazy, bored charm he always fooled others with. Never her. Until now.

She didn’t like it.

‘George, I presume?’ He raised a supercilious eyebrow.

Yes, George had told her in cautious tones that Victoria had called. As if she’d need to repair the damage after the conversation was done. But nothing appeared irreparably broken. Yet.

‘He really oversteps the line,’ Lance said. ‘This has nothing to do with my sister, and everything to do with the future.’

Her heart rate spiked. ‘Did he overstep in asking me about the nursery?’

Lance’s brow furrowed to a frown, before smoothing again.

‘He did say you suggested he talk to me,’ she said.

Lance shrugged, a lazy nonchalance tainting him. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

She wouldn’t let that stand. She’d spent so much of her life accepting what was handed to her. Now she wasn’t afraid to fight for what she wanted. If she didn’t, who would?

‘What if it matters to me? What if I told him yes, that the nursery should be refurbished?’

She held her breath as Lance’s face shuttered, entirely devoid of emotion.

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