Snowbound Seduction: A Night of No Return / To Claim His Heir by Christmas / I'll Be Yours for Christmas

She couldn’t think of anything worse than losing the job she had with Lucas but nor could she imagine anything more uncomfortable than spending the next few days in his company after what had happened.

What she really needed was space to sort her head out.

She needed to persuade him to let her go. How was she going to do that? What was the one thing that would make Lucas Jackson send a woman as far away from him as possible? The answer came to her almost immediately and Emma gave a tiny smile. Yes, she thought. That.

CHAPTER SIX

EMMA went in search of Lucas, trying to shake off the guilt that shadowed almost every conversation with her sister. She found him downstairs in a kitchen that looked like something that would have featured in a magazine shoot for a perfect country home. In fact the whole place would make the most incredible family home, she thought, as she looked around her. It should have been filled with happy children and noisy dogs.

Had he originally bought it for that purpose?

Her mind buzzed with questions but they were all too personal and she was trying to make their relationship less personal, so she didn’t voice them. And anyway, she knew he wouldn’t have answered them. That one devastating revelation of the night before had been dragged from him purely because she’d held precious evidence in her hand.

As she walked into the room he glanced towards her and she saw in an instant that everything about his body language was guarded.

Exploiting that, she leaned against the doorframe and gave him a soppy look. ‘While I was upstairs I was thinking a lot about last night.’ Watching, she saw the tension ripple through him like a current ready to repel intruders.

‘What about last night?’

‘I know you don’t want to hear this but—I think I love you, Lucas.’ She blurted the words out, wondering if she’d injected just a little too much Scarlet O’Hara into her tone. ‘Completely, totally, with my whole heart. For ever. I was saving myself for my perfect man and now I realise that man is you.’ Intercepting his appalled glance she almost laughed. ‘I know you don’t want to hear it. It’s awful that I feel this way and the truth is that I feel more strongly about you with every minute that passes. I don’t know what to do! The longer I stay here, the more in love with you I am. Goodness knows what I’ll be like by Tuesday. I suspect I won’t be able to get through an hour without hugging and kissing you at every opportunity. I may even have to burst into a really important meeting just to get my Lucas fix. I’m so glad you’re taking me with you.’

His eyes narrowed to two dangerous slits and then the tension left him. ‘Nice try, but I still want you with me in Zubran.’

‘But I love you. Madly. Passionately.’

‘It doesn’t matter how much you “love me”,’ he drawled. ‘I won’t be sending you home until the job is done.’

Emma slumped onto the nearest chair. ‘You know you’re unreasonable, don’t you?’

‘Demanding, yes. Unreasonable, no.’

Demanding.

He’d been demanding when he’d virtually dropped her onto the rug and stripped her naked.

He’d been demanding when he’d helped himself to her body.

She shivered and tried desperately hard not to think about that. ‘Do you realise that when a woman says “I love you” you go white and then look as if you’re about to go for dental surgery? Apart from hearing that the Dow-Jones has plunged a million points, I’m guessing that the worst words you can hear are “I love you” so I’m going to be saying it every five minutes until I drive you so mad you’ll leave me at home.’

‘You have a warped sense of humour.’ The sleeves of his sweater were pushed back and her gaze lingered on those strong arms, remembering the way he’d held her as the passion had ripped through both of them.

Emma squeezed her eyes shut.

This was impossible. Totally impossible.

‘Coffee?’

She opened her eyes and stared into his. Blue now, but they’d appeared almost black last night in the firelight as he’d kissed her. ‘Thanks.’ Taking the mug from him she wondered whether she was going to be thinking about sex every second of every day for the rest of her life.

‘So what did your sister say?’

‘Oh, she was totally thrilled that I won’t be able to make it home for the holiday—’ Emma sipped her coffee, still feeling a bit sick at the thought of the conversation. ‘She said something along the lines of, “Super, I didn’t really want to go out and have fun anyway, so you just have a great time and don’t worry about me”.’

A wry smile touched his mouth. ‘So she didn’t take it well then.’

Emma tried not to look at that mouth. ‘No. But I’ve messed up her weekend so I don’t really blame her. She relies on me to take over from Friday night.’

‘So she heaped on the guilt and you took it. Surely there are other options. Other relatives? Babysitters?’

‘No relatives, just us. And we’ve never really used babysitters. I only see Jamie at weekends so I don’t want to arrive home only to go out again.’

‘Are those your words or hers?’

Emma put her mug down slowly, thinking that he was remarkably astute for someone who claimed not to care about people. ‘Hers. But I think she’s right.’ Angie had Jamie all week. It would have felt wrong to go home and then announce she was going out on a Saturday night, wouldn’t it? ‘She was supposed to be going to a party tonight so I’ve texted my friend to see if she can look after Jamie but it’s not something I’ve done before and it does make me feel bad.’

‘So during the week you run around after me and at weekends you run around after Jamie and your sister. What about your own needs?’

Emma stared at him. ‘I love my family.’ Truthfully she didn’t feel comfortable talking about her sister. The whole conversation was still too raw and her guilt too fresh and it felt disloyal to talk about her family to someone who couldn’t possibly understand. She knew he was judging Angie and she didn’t want that because she knew the whole thing had been harder for her sister than it had been for her.

‘Does your sister always make you feel guilty?’

‘It isn’t her fault. Family stuff is always complicated—you know how that is.’ It was a casual comment. The sort of comment that might invite an understanding laugh from another person. But not him. And her own smile faded because she realised she had no idea whether this man even had a family. She knew so little about him. Just that he’d had a daughter. The photo had been of two people—a little girl and her daddy. No third person. Which didn’t mean anything, of course, because the third person could easily have been behind the camera, but she found herself wondering who had taken the picture. Someone he loved? A passing stranger?

Suddenly cold, Emma stood up and walked towards the big range cooker that dominated the kitchen. If she’d been asked to design her perfect kitchen, this would have been it. Perhaps she would have added some soft touches, some cut flowers in the bright blue jug that sat on the windowsill, and a stack of shiny fresh fruit to the large bowl that graced the centre of that table, but they were just small things. She could imagine Jamie doing his homework on the scrubbed kitchen table while she rolled out pastry and made a pie for supper. She could imagine lighting candles for a romantic dinner.

She could imagine Lucas, dark and dangerous, sprawled in a chair while he told her about his day.

‘Do you like it? My kitchen?’ His tone was rough and she glanced up at him, shaken by her own thoughts.

‘Just planning what I’ll do when I move in.’ Walking back to the table, she shifted the conversation away from the dangerous topic of family and onto something lighter. ‘Add a few feminine touches here and there—flowers, china covered in pink hearts. And of course I’ll tell you I love you every other minute until you get used to it.’ The coffee was delicious. And strong. As she sat down, she felt the caffeine kick her brain into gear. ‘So do you always look like you’re about to have root canal work when someone says “I love you”?’

‘I’ve no idea. No one has said it to me before.’

‘What, never?’ Genuinely shocked, Emma thumped her coffee down on the table. ‘All the women you’ve been out with and not one of them has ever said it? Why?’

‘Because I would have dumped them instantly. I don’t pick the “I love you” type.’

So what about his daughter? Had she not come from love? The questions rolled around in her head but she stayed silent and sipped her coffee, grateful for the warmth and the fact that sliding her hands around the mug gave her something to do apart from try desperately hard not to look at him. She wasn’t used to having indecent thoughts about her boss.

Emma lowered the mug slowly, knowing that she wasn’t being entirely honest with herself.

Was she really going to pretend that she hadn’t always found him attractive? Because that wouldn’t be true, would it? Right from the beginning she’d found him scarily attractive, but the fact that she worked for him had put him off-limits. That and the fact that not once in the two years she’d worked for him had he given the slightest hint that the attraction might be mutual.

But that had all changed, hadn’t it? And it was the shift to the personal that made it so awkward to be around him. Maybe it would have been different had there been other people here, but alone it felt—intimate. And yet they were still strangers. Intimate strangers.

She couldn’t undo what had been done. She knew things now that she hadn’t known before and there was no way of unknowing them. She knew he’d had a daughter and that he’d loved her. She knew he blamed himself. She knew he was hurting.

He said that he didn’t have a heart but she knew that wasn’t true. He had a heart, but that heart had been badly damaged. He was obviously suffering deeply but even without hearing the details, she was sure that he was wrong in his belief that he was somehow responsible for his daughter’s death. That couldn’t be the case.

‘Emma?’

She gave a start. ‘Sorry?’

‘I asked if you were hungry.’ Apparently suffering none of her emotional agonies, he pulled open the door of a large modern fridge and she found herself staring at his shoulders, watching the flex of male muscle under the black sweater. His body was strong and athletic and she felt the heat spread through her body, the flare of attraction so fierce that she almost caught her breath.

‘Hungry would be an understatement,’ she murmured. ‘I’m starving. Right now I could eat ten camels. Which I suppose I might have to if you insist on making me go with you to Zubran.’

‘I was thinking of omelette.’ He turned his head and their eyes met. Tension throbbed between them, a living breathing force, and she stood up on legs that shook and threatened to let her down.

‘I love omelette. Where will I find a bowl?’

‘You think I need your help to cook a few eggs?’

‘Sorry. Instinct.’ She sat down again, relieved to take the weight off legs that seemed to have forgotten their purpose. ‘I usually do the cooking when I’m home. I’m teaching Jamie to cook—it’s one of the things we do together. Every Saturday we make pancakes for breakfast, it gives us time to talk. And then we pick a different dish. Last week we did pizza. Today we were going to make Christmas cake—’ She knew she was talking too much but she couldn’t help it. She talked to fill the silence because otherwise she found it too disturbing. ‘Of course, because of you, we won’t be making Christmas cake but you don’t need to feel guilty about that.’

‘I won’t.’ He pulled a box of eggs out of the fridge while she watched.

He’d showered but he hadn’t shaved and his jaw was darkened by stubble that made him look more bandit than businessman. She remembered the roughness of it against her skin, the heat of his mouth, the touch of his fingers—

She remembered all of it.

She closed her eyes. This was not working. Forget love—all she wanted was to be able to be in the same room as him and not feel this almost unbearable sizzle. She wanted to be able to listen to what he was saying without thinking of everything else that he could do with his mouth.

She wanted to be able to look at him without thinking of sex.

She wasn’t sure whether the fact that he clearly wasn’t suffering the same degree of torment made it worse or better.

Better, she told herself firmly. Definitely better. At least one of them was still sane.

And then she caught his eye briefly, caught a glimpse of darkness and heat, and knew that she was wrong. He was feeling everything she was feeling. He was fighting everything she was fighting.

The knowledge made her limbs shake and she clutched her mug, her heart banging against her ribs. ‘So tell me about this place. It’s not somewhere I would have expected you to own. You’re all about glass and cutting-edge design and this must have been built by Henry the Eighth.’ She was chattering frantically to cover up the way she was feeling but of course he knew exactly what was going on in her head.

And he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

His self-discipline in all things was legendary.

Except for last night.

Last night, he’d lost control.

But there was no sign of that now as he glanced at the walls of the kitchen. ‘Slightly earlier than Henry the Eighth, with later additions. And it’s true that if I’m designing a new building then I like to make use of modern techniques and materials, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love old buildings. The history of this place is fascinating. And I don’t own it by myself.’ He broke eggs into a bowl and whisked them expertly. ‘When it came onto the market, Mal, Cristiano and I bought it. It’s owned by a company we set up together.’

‘Mal, the Prince? And Cristiano Ferrara who owns the hotel group?’

‘That’s right.’ He poured eggs into the skillet and they sizzled in the heat. ‘The plan is that once I’ve finished the restoration, we turn it into an exclusive hotel that will probably be rented as a whole. We’re planning to hold traditional British house parties.’

‘I love that idea.’ She’d known he had powerful friends but it wasn’t until today that she’d realised just how powerful. ‘I didn’t even know this sort of place ever came up for sale. How did you find out about it?’

He tilted the pan. ‘I’d had my eye on it for a while.’

‘Who owned it before? It must have been awful to have to sell something like this.’

The change in him was visible and immediate. That beautiful mouth hardened into a thin, dangerous line that made her immediately conscious that she’d somehow said the wrong thing.

‘It was built by a wealthy merchant in the thirteen-hundreds,’ he said evenly, ‘and stayed in the family until the last member gambled away all his money.’

‘Gambled? Horses?’

‘Much more twenty-first century than horses.’ Lucas tilted the pan slightly. ‘Online poker.’

‘Oh. How awful.’ She glanced round the kitchen and tried to imagine owning something like this and then losing it. ‘Imagine losing something that had been in your family for centuries. Poor man.’

‘That “poor man” was a selfish, miserable excuse for a human being who took great pleasure in using his wealth and status to bully others, so don’t waste your pity on him because he certainly doesn’t deserve it. More coffee?’

Emma was so astonished she couldn’t answer. It was the first time she’d ever heard him make an emotional comment about a business deal. ‘You work with plenty of wealthy, selfish human beings. Who was this guy?’

Lucas slid the omelette onto her plate, his expression blank. ‘He was my father. You didn’t give me an answer about the coffee so I’ll just top it up anyway, shall I?’

Had he really just said what she’d thought he said? ‘Your father?’

‘That’s right. My mother was his archivist. She left university and found her dream job here, working with the collection that had been pretty much neglected. She worked here for fifteen years and they had an affair. But he wanted to marry someone with the right heritage and apparently that wasn’t my mother—’ his tone was flat ‘—so she lost a job that she adored, her home and the man she loved. Not that she should have worried too much about the last bit. I think that could have been considered her lucky break, but obviously that’s just my personal opinion. Unfortunately, she didn’t see it that way.’

It was the most he’d ever told her about himself. The first really personal exchange they’d had. ‘So she basically had an affair with the boss.’ Emma felt her mouth dry and he looked at her with that keen, perceptive gaze she found so unsettling.

‘If you’re making the connection you appear to be making then I can assure you there are no similarities at all. This was a lengthy relationship which was supposedly based on love and trust—’ his tone was threaded with cynicism ‘—whereas—’

‘You don’t need to finish that sentence.’ She interrupted him hastily. ‘We’ve been over this a thousand times already. I know what last night was.’

‘Do you?’ He was unnervingly direct and she knew that there was no way she could confess that she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Still less could she admit that it wasn’t just the sex she was thinking about; it was him. The more she discovered about him, the more her vision of him shifted. He was no longer her cold, detached boss. He was a man with a past.

‘I love my job. I’d never do anything to jeopardize that. To be honest I can’t afford to let anything jeopardize that. And I’m not in a position to have a relationship with anyone right now. There isn’t room in my life. And then there’s the fact that you’re far too bitter and twisted for me.’

He frowned slightly, those dark brows pulled together in silent contemplation as if he wanted to say something else. And she didn’t want him to say it. She wanted him to stop talking because every time he spoke he revealed something else and the more he revealed the more personal it became.

‘So your mum discovered that she was pregnant, and then what?’ Colour touched her cheeks as she remembered a small detail from the night before. The man had been half out of his mind with drink and grief, but he hadn’t forgotten the condom, as if some part of him was programmed to remember. And she was relieved about that, of course, because the situation was already complicated enough without adding to it, but still, it made her wonder.

‘He duly announced he was getting married to another woman. Perhaps if she hadn’t made that fatal mistake, he might have let her stay. He was perfectly happy to have a lover on the scene, but a child would have made the whole thing vastly inconvenient and not at all British, so that changed things.’ The words flowed from him and it was so unusual to hear him talk like this that she sat still and just listened. She wondered if he even realised how much he was telling her.

‘So your mother resigned?’

‘No. My mother never would have resigned so he had to find another way of getting rid of her.’ He sat down across from her and picked up his fork. ‘He accused her of theft. So not only did he humiliate her and ruin her chances of getting another job, but he made her hate him. And it made her hate me too, because I was inadvertently the reason for all that.’

The lump in her throat came from nowhere. ‘Couldn’t she have taken him to court or something? Got some help?’

‘I don’t know what went through her head. Maybe she did talk to a lawyer. I don’t know, but certainly nothing came of it—’ he sliced his omelette in two ‘—all I know is that it was a struggle. We lived in the smallest room you have ever seen. It had just one window and it never let in enough light.’ He frowned. ‘I couldn’t work out why anyone would have designed a window that didn’t do the job it was intended to do. That was when I started to dream about buildings. Buildings with space that let in the light. I drew myself a house and promised myself that one day I was going to build it and live in it.’

It was easy to imagine him as the child, drawing his dream. Especially when you saw the man he’d become. ‘Did he never acknowledge you?’

‘No. And the irony was, he never had any more children. I was his only child. Now isn’t that poetic justice? He wanted a family. The tragedy was that he actually had one, but he never acknowledged it. You’re not eating. Is there something wrong with your omelette?’

She’d been so lost in his story she hadn’t taken a single mouthful of her food. ‘Did you meet him?’

‘When she found out that he had no living heir, my mother was determined that I should have the recognition that she felt was my right.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Or maybe she was hoping that he’d take me on so that she could have her life back.’

‘You went to see him?’

‘Yes, but not because I wanted him to suddenly play “Dad”. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. And his response was that it didn’t matter what she did, he would never give me Chigworth Castle. I was thirteen years old and so angry with him that I punched him, then I told him he didn’t need to give it to me because I was going to just take it from him when I was ready. It gave him quite a laugh, this skinny kid without a penny to his name trying to give him a black eye and then threatening to take his castle.’ He gave a cool smile. ‘He wasn’t laughing on the day I took ownership. Cristiano Ferrara fronted the deal so he had no idea who was buying it until it was sold. Not that it would have made any difference. He’d spent all his money so he wasn’t in a position to negotiate or withdraw. But I wouldn’t have put it past him to burn the place to the ground rather than stop me owning it.’

There was a dull ache behind her ribs. ‘When was this?’

‘Eight years ago. I was twenty-six, my career was on the rise and I’d landed a few huge commissions that proved to be life-changing.’

‘The art gallery in Rome.’

He lifted an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been reading my biography?’

‘I work for you,’ she reminded him. ‘I send your biography to the media and prospective clients on a daily basis.’ And with that single unthinking sentence she reminded him of the true nature of their relationship. The atmosphere shifted instantly.

‘Of course you do,’ he said smoothly, ‘and that is why I want you with me in Zubran. Because you know all these things.’ Once again he was cool and distant as he pulled out his phone and checked an email. ‘I’ve been waiting to hear from Dan.’

Dan was his pilot and Emma often spoke to him about Lucas’s travel arrangements. ‘Is the airport even open?’

‘Yes. They’ve cleared the runway and there is no more snow forecast so we shouldn’t have any trouble with our flight.’ He scrolled down, checking his other emails. ‘The helicopter will pick us up from here in an hour. I assume you have your passport with you?’

The shift from personal to professional was startling but she went along with it. What was surprising was not that he’d suddenly stopped telling her about his past, but that he’d ever told her in the first place. He’d given her another glimpse of a private, secret part of himself. And she was gradually building up a picture of a very different man from the one the public saw.

She knew so much more about him than she had yesterday. And she suspected he would rather that wasn’t the case.

She was going to forget it, she vowed, and just get on with the job. That would be best for everyone.

‘I have my passport, of course.’ There had been many occasions when she’d flown with him on short business trips to Europe and a few times to the US. She’d enjoyed the variety and as long as the trip hadn’t eaten into her precious weekends, she’d never objected. ‘The one thing I don’t have is clothes. And I assume there isn’t time for me to go home and pack.’

‘No. We have to leave immediately and anyway, the roads are impassable. You’re fine for the journey.’ His eyes lingered on her sweater then lifted to her face. ‘You can travel in what you’re wearing and you can go shopping tomorrow before the meeting.’