“Only if you want it to be. I still need a PA, Sophie, and you’re shaping up to be pretty good at it.”

“I’ve barely done any work,” she pointed out softly.

“On the contrary. You’ve exceeded my expectations by quite some way.” Lucien’s eyes glinted with amusement at her as he uncorked the champagne and poured it.

“Was this always your plan?” she asked. “Did you employ me because you saw me as a bored wife ready to stray?”

He laughed low in his throat and laid his head back on the ledge of the jacuzzi, his eyes on the moving skies.

“No. I employed you because you kiss envelopes before you mail them, and because you surprised me.” He paused and closed his eyes. “I like people who surprise me.”

Sophie frowned at his profile, aware that she knew practically nothing about this enigmatic man. With his eyes hidden and his head tipped back, he looked thoroughly relaxed, at one with his surroundings. But then again, that wasn’t all that surprising if her hunch about him was right.

“Why Norway, Lucien?” Her fingertips trailed over the defined curve of his shoulder as she sipped her champagne.

“Why not here? I like the privacy.” The imperceptible tightening of his jaw belied the lightness of his tone.

“It is gorgeous,” Sophie murmured. “But is there more to it than that?”

“What are you asking, Sophie?” Lucien opened his eyes and met her direct gaze.

“Is this place home for you? I mean… did you grow up here?”

Lucien took a long drink from his champagne flute then placed it down with deliberate care.

“I left Norway on my eighteenth birthday. London is my home now.”

Sophie wished he’d look at her, but his eyes were trained on the scrolling skies. She’d already sensed that this place, this country - both were integral to the man he was, but she couldn’t work out his feelings for it. He had this beautiful home here, so surely he had to be fond of it, yet there was a toughness to his stance and a steel to the set of his jaw that suggested otherwise.

“Do you miss it when you’re in the UK?” Sophie assumed he must. It was way too beautiful not to.

Lucien reached for the champagne bottle. “I didn’t, not for a long time.”

“So what changed?”

“I did, I suppose.” He shrugged non-committally. “I grew up.”

“So I guess you must have family here? Parents, brothers and sisters…will you visit them while you’re here?” She trailed off uncertainly, aware that she was pushing him for information he wasn’t necessarily willing to share.

“No. This visit was only ever about fucking you.”

Sophie shook her head and laughed lightly, despite the fact that he was blatantly trying to throw the conversation off course.

“We could have done that back home.”

“Yes, but here you can’t escape me.”

“Who said I’d want to?”

“I do. You’re still that good girl deep down, Sophie. Home would have pulled you back to it every moment. Here you’re free to be the person you want to be, the amazing woman you can be.”

Sophie nodded slowly. His reasoning was sound. Being here had severed her attachments to home - at least for the present - and absence had not made her heart grow fonder.

“It’s all still there waiting for me though.” She sighed heavily. “What am I going to do about everything, Lucien?”

“What do you want to do?”

Sophie exhaled slowly and shook her head, her mind far away in the UK.

“I don’t know. I have to talk to Dan I guess, about his affair, and now about my affair.”

Lucien’s mouth twisted to one side. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you are the same as he is, Sophie. If he’d been a real husband, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because you’re soft, and kind, and good. All the things he isn’t.”

Sophie registered each compliment, but she didn’t feel any of those things. She was an adulterous cheat, every bit as much as Dan.

“You don’t know him, Lucien… he’s not a bad person.”

Lucien shrugged. “I don’t need to know him to understand him.”

Sophie reached for her glass and swallowed a big gulp of champagne, but the sparkling wine and dazzling views couldn’t calm the swirl of emotions inside her.

Lucien looked at Sophie’s profile, at the dejected set of her mouth, and that same dull, haunted expression in her eyes that he’d seen the first time he’d met her.

Just talking about her husband had been enough to instantly paint shadows on her face.

What was seeing him again going to do?

What was hearing his confession of an affair spanning more than two years going to do?

The only thing he wanted to do right at that moment was put the sparkle back in her eyes.

He reached out and topped up her glass, then slipped under the bubbling water and resurfaced on his knees face to face with her.

“I think it’s time I removed that acorn for you.”

Unshed tears still glittered on her eyelashes, but a trembling laugh bubbled from her throat at the broken tension. He could see her turmoil, and he could feel her fear, and he just wanted to make her stronger, tougher and ready to fight. If it was up to him, he’d have had her husband taken care of, one way or another, and be done with it – and he could have made it happen - but he knew that that wasn’t the type of resolution Sophie wanted.

Her nipples bobbed rosy and pert in front of him, and he dipped his head to take one into his mouth. Christ, she was sexy. He rolled his tongue around the pink nub, enjoying her gratified moan when he closed his lips over it and sucked. His cock stiffened as her nipple turned to rock in his mouth, taut and straining for more attention from his flickering tongue.

When he glanced up, he found her eyes closed, damp tears on her cheeks and her lower lip snagged behind her teeth. She looked trapped somewhere between rapture and despair, and he needed to tip the scales in the right direction.

He moved up her body and covered her mouth with his own, a slow kiss designed to chase the lingering demons from her mind. From the way her tongue responded to his and her hands crept into his hair, he knew he’d succeeded. She arched into him now, her breasts against his chest, his cock between her legs.

It was all about her. About making her feel wanted, about making her eyes shine with satisfaction instead of tears.