The air left her lungs. “You… you bought my life?”
“Rio—”
That stung more than cruelty.
“She has your stubbornness,” Lily shot back.
She froze. “How do you know that?”
She’d been eighteen. He’d been a struggling law student, not the heir to a shipping empire. They’d made love in her father’s greenhouse, and Rio had said, “One day, I’ll build you a garden by the sea.”
The silence was absolute.
“The flower shop. The cottage in Cornwall. Even this miserable flat.” He held up a sheaf of legal papers. “All of it was collateral for a loan I gave him five years ago. The same week I left you.”
“She has your temper,” Rio said.
Lily’s spine stiffened. Dad had been a gambler, a charmer, and a liar. She’d spent her twenties cleaning up his messes. “I don’t owe you anything, Rio.”
Lily Hart stood in the doorway of her tiny, rain-streaked flat, clutching a wilting bouquet of peonies she’d been trying to revive for a wedding order. The man in front of her hadn’t aged a day in five years. Same sculpted cheekbones. Same eyes the color of a stormy Aegean Sea. Same mouth that had once whispered forever against her throat before he’d vanished without a trace. lynne graham books