His stylish greatcoat hung from shoulders that were broader and heavier than she recalled, but she’d last seen him when he’d been twenty-two. He was a touch taller, too, and there was a hardness in him that hadn’t been there before, investing the austere planes of his face, his chiseled features, the rock-hard body that had nearly sent her flying.

Had sent her flying, more than physically.

His face was as she remembered it, yet not; gone was any hint of civilized guise. Broad forehead above striking slashes of black brows that tilted faintly, diabolically, upward at the outer ends, a blade of a nose, thin mobile lips guaranteed to dangerously fascinate any female, and well-set eyes of such a deep dark brown they were usually unreadable. The long black lashes that fringed those eyes had always made her envious.

His hair was still solidly sable, the thick locks fashionably cropped to fall in waves about his well-shaped head. His clothes, too, were fashionably elegant, restrained, understated, and expensive. Even though he’d been traveling hard, all but racing for two days, his cravat was a subtle work of art, and beneath the dust, his Hessians gleamed.

Regardless, no amount of fashion could screen his innate masculinity, could dim the dangerous aura any female with eyes could detect. The passing years had honed and polished him, revealing rather than concealing the sleekly powerful, infinitely predatory male he was.

If anything, that reality seemed enhanced.

He continued to stand twenty feet away, frowning as he studied her, making no move to come closer, giving her witless, swooning, drooling senses even more time to slaver over him.

She’d thought she’d outgrown her infatuation with him. Sixteen years of separation should surely have seen it dead.

Apparently not.

Her mission, as she viewed it, had just become immeasurably more complicated. If he learned of her ridiculous susceptibility-perhaps excusable in a girl of thirteen, but hideously embarrassing in a mature lady of twenty-nine-he’d use the knowledge, ruthlessly, to stop her from pressuring him into doing anything he didn’t wish to do. At that moment, the only positive aspect to the situation was that she’d been able to disguise her reaction to him as understandable surprise.