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That alone made the suite pay for itself, because in the end, Lydia got on the private elevator with Ian and headed to the fortieth floor where they could be alone.
* * *
Lydia, you have lost your mind.
She’d been so distracted by the gracious service as she entered the famous hotel that she’d somehow ended up speeding her way toward Ian McNeill’s private penthouse suite. She wished it was as simple as the designer in her taking a professional interest in a world-class luxury space, the way Ian had suggested. But she feared that it was more complex than that. Ian had swept her right back into his world today, imposing his will on her work environment, and then staking a claim on her private time, too.
Yes, she’d wanted to speak to him privately. But damn it, that didn’t necessitate a trip to a hotel suite with a one-night price tag as high—higher—than what many people paid for an automobile.
“Ian.” She took a deep breath before turning to face him.
Just then, the elevator doors swished open, revealing the most gorgeous, Asian-inspired decor imaginable, framed by views of the sparkling sapphire Atlantic out of window after window.
“Wow.” Her words dried up.
As a student of architectural design, she did indeed find a lot to savor about the rooms, the layout and the exquisite care taken to render every surface beautiful. She’d read about this suite before in an effort to keep up-to-date on the world’s premiere properties, so she’d seen photos of the Steinway in the foyer and—oddly—recalled reading about the absolute black granite in the shower. She guessed the penthouse was close to ten thousand square feet with the double living rooms, a full dining room for ten people and multiple bedrooms. As she walked around the space in admiring silence, her eyes lit on the private terrace overlooking the beach below.
Ian had gotten ahead of her somehow. No doubt she’d been lost in her own thoughts as she’d circled the living areas of the penthouse. But she spotted him in the lounge area of the terrace, speaking to waitstaff who’d set up silver trays in a serving area under a small cabana. White silk had been woven and draped through a pergola, creating a wide swath of shade over the seating.
In all of this exotic, breathtaking space, Ian himself still seemed to be the most appealing focal point. In his crisp blue suit custom-tailored to his athletic frame, he drew the eye like nothing else. His whole family was far too attractive, truth be told. She’d seen photos of his Brazilian mother, who’d left Ian’s daredevil father long ago. They’d made a glamorous couple together. Liam McNeill had the dark hair and striking blue eyes of his Scots roots, resulting in three sons who all followed a Gerard Butler mold, although Ian had a darker complexion than the others.
If the gene pool hadn’t been kind enough there, Ian was also relentlessly athletic. He’d sailed, surfed and swum regularly while they worked on the hotel property in French Polynesia, and the results of his efforts were obvious even when he was wearing a suit. When he was naked...
Blinking away that thought, she forced her feet forward, refocusing her gaze on the glass half wall surrounding the huge terrace forty stories up. She breathed in the salty scent of the sea that wafted on the breeze while Ian excused the servers.
Soon, she felt his presence beside her more than she heard him. He moved quietly, a man in tune with his surroundings and comfortable enough in his own skin that he never needed to make a noisy entrance. Damn, but she didn’t want to remember things that she’d liked about him.
“You were right,” she admitted, relaxing slightly as she stared out at the limitless blue of the ocean. “In bringing me here, I mean. It’s stunning. Although calling this space a penthouse hardly does justice to how special it is.”
“I enjoyed seeing your reaction to it.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ian’s posture ease. One elbow came up beside hers on the half wall as he joined her at the railing. “Being on the design end of so many projects—and experiencing all the headaches that entails—makes it easy to forget why we enjoy what we do. Then, you see a place like this where they got everything right. It’s a reminder that not every project is about a bottom line.”
She hesitated. “Yes. Except how many people will ever get to enjoy it?”
“Not enough,” he agreed easily. “But if we’re inspired, we’ll do a better job with properties like Foxfire. And that’s an attainable vacation for a lot of people.” Turning from the view, he gestured toward the cabana where the food trays waited.
A few minutes later, she had settled herself on a long, U-shaped couch that wrapped around a granite coffee table under the shade of white silk, a plate of fresh fruit and cheese balanced on one knee. Ian poured them each a glass of prosecco even though she’d already helped herself to a bottle of water.
She’d forgotten how extravagantly he lived. While her father had been extremely wealthy, her mother hadn’t always been. After suing Lydia’s father’s estate, she’d eventually taken great joy in overspending once her settlement came through, but by then, Lydia had moved on to her own life. Her father had left her a small amount that she had put toward the purchase of her Manhattan apartment, but his legally recognized children had inherited his true wealth. Besides, Lydia had spent her childhood perpetually worried that her mother would squander their every last cent on frivolous things, so Lydia maintained a practical outlook on finances, careful never to live above her means.
Still, who wouldn’t enjoy a day like this?
“You mentioned you wanted to speak to me privately after today’s meeting,” Ian reminded her as he handed her the sparkling prosecco in a cut crystal glass. A single strawberry rested at the bottom. “Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She sipped at the bubbles and set the drink aside. “Ian, I can’t work with you on this project.”
He’d removed his jacket to expose the gray silk shirt beneath. His muscles stretched the fabric as he moved, reminding her of the honed body beneath.
“You’re a professional. I’m a professional. I think we can put aside personal differences for the sake of the project.” His expression gave away nothing.
Old hurts threatened to rise to the surface, but she kept a tight rein on those feelings.
“Don’t you think you’re diminishing what we once meant to each other to call our breakup a ‘personal difference’?” Her chest squeezed at all that she’d lost afterward.
One eyebrow lifted as he met her gaze. “No more than you diminished what we meant to one another by playing matchmaker for me afterward, Mallory West.”
Three (#ua790a28e-2042-517b-bd75-6206af3abb56)
He knew.
Lydia felt her skin chill despite the bright South Beach sun warming the thin canopy of silk overhead. For a long moment, she only heard the swoosh of waves far below the rooftop terrace, the cry of a few circling gulls and her own pounding heart.
“That’s what this is about?” she managed finally, shoving off the deep couch cushions to pace the lounge area near the hot tub. “You found a way to play a role in the same design project as me so you could confront me with this?”
“You don’t deny it then?”
“I played a childish game of revenge after we broke up, Ian. You caught me. But it hardly did any damage when you never actually went on a date with any of those women.” She’d started her matchmaking career out of spite. She wasn’t proud of it, but she had been in a very dark place emotionally.
“No. But I also didn’t post my profile on that matchmaking site, as I tried to tell you from the start. My grandfather’s assistant ran the photo and the profile after Grandad twisted my arm about marriage.” Ian unfolded himself from his place on the couch to stand, though he did not approach her. “So my grandfather personally reviewed your suggestions that I date...those women.” His jaw flexed with annoyance.
She’d sent ridiculous dating suggestions to the manager of Ian’s profile. She’d been furious to discover he had an active profile on a popular dating website while she’d been falling in love with him. And his refusal to understand why she was upset, his infuriatingly calm insistence that it meant nothing, had shredded her.
She’d been tired and overly emotional at the time, but she’d credited it to her broken heart and deep feelings for him. Only a week later, she’d discovered she was pregnant.
“I was hurt by your cavalier dismissal of my concerns.” She moved toward the glass half wall, taking comfort from the sight of the ocean and the relentless roll of incoming waves. “It was petty of me.”
“My grandfather was the one who was disappointed.” Ian stalked closer, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the water. “But your temporary anger with me doesn’t explain why you deceived my younger brother into thinking he was meeting a potential bride, only to have the woman turn out to be completely unaware of his existence.” Cool fire flashed in Ian’s eyes as he studied her. “It’s one thing to lash out at me. But my family?” He shook his head slowly. “No.”
“That was an accident.” Her temples throbbed with the start of a tension headache as this meeting quickly spiraled out of control. “A genuine accident. Although it didn’t help that Cameron signed a waiver saying he didn’t care if the matches had been vetted—”
“He clicked a button online to agree to that. Hardly the same as signing something.”
“But my assistant explained to him—”
“An assistant who impersonated you, by the way.”
Which was something Lydia regretted tremendously. But she’d handed off Cameron McNeill as a client because she hadn’t been ready to face Ian’s brother with her emotions still raw where Ian was concerned. By the time she’d realized the error in Cameron’s match, it was too late to fix it. Jumping in to deal with the aftermath would have meant facing Ian in person—and she hadn’t been ready for that at a time when she’d only just started to recover emotionally from the miscarriage.
“I am sorry about that.” She pivoted to face him head-on. “I really weighed the options for getting involved after I realized what had happened. But would you really have wanted me to step in when Quinn and Sofia had already announced an engagement? I didn’t want to undermine whatever was happening between them by drawing even more attention to the mismatch with Cameron.” She’d followed the courtship of Sofia Koslov and Quinn McNeill closely and it had been obvious to her from the photos of them together that they were crazy about each other. “And yes, I was trying to protect my identity. My work had become very important to me by then.”
“Very important or very lucrative?”
“Both.” She refused to be cowed by him. Straightening to her full height she narrowed her gaze. “I put one hundred percent of the profits after expenses from matchmaking toward a very worthy cause.”
“Moms’ Connection.”
His quick reply unsettled her. How much did he know about her life in the past year? Her shoulders tensed even tighter.
“How did you know that?”
He rested an elbow on the railing, relaxing his posture.
“That’s actually one of your less well-guarded secrets. I hired a friend to learn the identity of Mallory West in the hope of sparing Cameron any further embarrassment.” Ian shrugged a shoulder. “And to spare Sophia Koslov further embarrassment, since Cameron’s potential bride turned out to be the love of Quinn’s life.”
“I read about that. I’m glad that some good came out of the situation.” She hesitated a moment before deciding to press on. “You hired someone to find me?”
What else did he know about the last year of her life? Worry knotted her gut, but she had to hope that the confidentiality of her medical records had withstood his investigation.
“I wasn’t expecting to find you, Lydia. I hired someone to track Mallory West.” His words were clipped. “I can’t begin to describe my surprise at discovering you’d had a hand in my affairs ever since you broke things off with me last summer.”
“You gave me no choice,” she reminded him, remembering the sting of seeing his smiling, handsome face on a friend’s page of potential matches on the Mates International dating site. “You not only betrayed me, you did so publicly. If we’d been dating in Manhattan instead of Rangiroa, I can only imagine the fallout.” She needed to leave now. To escape whatever dark plans he had in mind by following her to South Beach and insinuating himself back into her life. “But thankfully, that wasn’t the case and the rumors of our affair died quickly enough.”
Pivoting on her heel, she retrieved her tote bag, prepared to request an Uber.
“I just have one question.” Ian followed her across the private terrace, his arms folded over his broad chest as he walked.
“I’m listening.” She found her phone and clutched it in one hand.
“Why do all the profits go to a charity benefiting single mothers?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to lie. To tell him that it was a way to help women like her mother, who’d allowed being a single parent to turn her into a bitter person.
But she knew that he wouldn’t believe her. He knew her better than that, understood the complex and difficult relationship she had with her mom.
“I met a few women who worked with the group.” That was true. Still, her mouth went dry and the heat was beginning to get to her. This whole day was getting to her.
No. Ian McNeill was getting to her.
Those intensely blue eyes seemed to probe all her secrets, seeing right through her.
“How? Where?” he pressed, even as he gestured her toward a seat on the couch again.
He lowered himself to sit beside her as she wondered how much he already knew. She didn’t want to equivocate if his personal investigation had already revealed the truth.
“At a support group for single mothers.” Her eyes met his. Held. “I attended a few meetings in the weeks after our affair.” She had been so touched by those women. So helped by their unwavering support. She took a deep breath. “That was before I lost the pregnancy and...our child.”
* * *
Ian felt like he’d stepped into the elevator shaft and fallen straight down all forty stories.
“What?” He thought he’d been shocked to discover Lydia was the woman behind Mallory West. Yet the blow he’d felt then was nothing compared to this. “You were pregnant when you ended things between us?”
She’d been so fierce and definite. So unwilling to listen to any explanation even though Ian hadn’t done a damn thing to post that stupid profile. And all the time she’d been carrying his child? A new anger surged—putting all the other frustrations on the back burner.
How could she hide that from him?
“I didn’t realize it at the time. But yes.” Lydia unclenched her hand where she’d been holding her cell phone. Setting it carefully aside on the table beside their untouched lunch, she shifted her tote to the outdoor carpet at her feet. She seemed unsure where to look, her eyes darting around the terrace without landing on any one thing. “I realized later that the pregnancy hormones were probably part of the reason why I reacted so strongly to finding your profile online. But it never crossed my mind that I could be pregnant for another week, and then—”
“We were so careful.” His mind went back to those long, sultry nights with her. Lydia all wrapped around him in that villa with no walls where they could look straight out into the Pacific Ocean, the sea breezes cooling their damp bodies after their lovemaking. “Every time we were careful.”
“There were a couple of nights we went in the water,” she reminded him, nibbling on her lower lip. “The hot tub once. And the ocean...remember?”
Her green eyes brought him right back to one of those moments when he’d been looking into them as a rainfall shower sprayed over them in the outdoor Jacuzzi. Her delicate hands had smoothed over his shoulders, nails biting gently into his skin as he moved deeper inside her.
“Yes.” His voice was hoarse with how damn well he remembered. “I recall.”
She pursed her lips. “Maybe one of those times. I don’t know. But I can tell you that I tested positive when it occurred to me I might be pregnant and then—”
“I had a right to know.” That part was only just beginning to really take hold in his brain, firing him up even more. “When you first found out, you should have told me.”
“Because things had ended so happily between us?” she retorted, her brow furrowed. “Ian, you didn’t even deny that you were going to date other people. You said your family wanted you to find a wife.”
“That could have been you.” He articulated the words clearly, restraining himself when he wanted to roar them for all of South Beach to hear. “And I didn’t deny your ludicrous accusation about dating other people because I had no intention of dating anyone but you.”
Hell, he’d fallen in love with her. He’d been ready to propose, thought they knew everything about each other there could be to know. And it had insulted him in the very fiber of his being that a woman he cared about so much could think so poorly of him that he would advertise himself for dates with other women. Clearly, they hadn’t known each other as well as he thought. He’d been too damn impulsive and mistook intense—very intense—passion for love.
Later, he’d forgotten about his grandfather’s plan, pure and simple, because he’d been caught up in his work and in Lydia. Plus, they’d been a million miles from home and the pressure of the McNeill world.
She went so quiet that he wondered what she was thinking. Instead of asking, he helped himself to a swig of the prosecco they’d left out on the table, trying to settle his own thoughts.
“As I said, I was probably operating under the influence of pregnancy hormones. I’ve spoken to a lot of other mothers since then, and they say it’s a powerful chemical change.” She surprised him with her practical admission, especially after the matchmaking games she’d played last summer.
Maybe time had softened her initial anger with him. Or showed her that he might not be fully to blame for his grandfather’s matchmaking transgression.
“Setting aside the fact that you never informed me about our child—” he took a deep breath as he willed himself to set it aside, too “—can you tell me what happened? Why do the doctors think you miscarried?”
He had a million other questions. How far along had she been? Had she ever considered reaching out to him before she’d lost the baby? What if the pregnancy had gone to full term? Would she have ever contacted him?
That last question, and the possibility that the answer was no, burned right through him.
“The cause was undetermined. My doctor assured me miscarriages happen in ten to twenty-five percent of pregnancies for women in their child-bearing years, so it’s not that unusual.” She laid a hand across her abdomen as she spoke. An unconscious gesture? “The most common cause is a chromosome abnormality, but there’s no reason to believe it would happen to me again.”
Hearing the vulnerability in her voice, seeing it for himself in her eyes, made some of the resentment ease away.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you.” He reached to take her hand resting beside him on the couch.
Her skin felt cool to the touch despite the heat. She stared down at his fingers clasping hers, but didn’t move away from the connection.
“I didn’t handle it well.” She retrieved her bottle of water and took a long drink. “It might have been hormones, but the sadness was overwhelming. But I spent a lot of time with the mothers’ group I told you about. Being with them helped me to heal.”
A row of misters clicked on nearby to provide water to the exotic flowers tucked in a planter by the doors to his suite. The cool spray glanced over their skin before the water evaporated in the Miami sun glinting off white stone walls all around the rooftop terrace.
“That’s why you support this group now—Moms’ Connection.” He tried to fit the pieces together in his mind to figure out what she’d been through in the past year.
“Yes. I met some incredibly strong women who inspired me. Seeing their efforts to help other single mothers made me realize how petty it was for me to meddle in the matches that were being sent to you.” She hesitated. “I started to put more effort into really matching up people and I discovered I was good at it.”
Sliding her hand from his grip, she smoothed it along the hem of her dress, straightening the fabric.
“So you kept at it and used the funds to help the group that helped you.” His vision of her shifted slightly, coming into sharper focus. “And what happened with Sofia Koslov and my brother was, as you say, a genuine accident.”
