Tempting Lucas

Everything conspired against her. Her clothes hung in one half of the vast armoire, her lingerie in the lined mahogany drawers of the other half, leaving her nothing with which to distract herself. Velvet-napped towels lay draped over the edge of the huge claw-footed tub in the attached bathroom. The covers were turned back on the bed, a Thermos of hot chocolate sat on the nightstand.

On the surface, nothing had changed. The delicate painted panelling, the carved four-poster with its embroidered tester, the cheval glass looked exactly as they always had, as though to say there was no rewriting history. But, most of all, the smells were what peeled back the years: gardenia bath essence and starched cotton sheets dried in the warm Californian sun; patchouli and the musty gentility of antique silk draperies. They overlapped her senses and sent her swimming back to that other time.

The curved windows in the turret wall stood open to the sweet night air, luring her deeper into the time tunnel. The sheen of moonlight illuminated the bend in the river beyond which she knew rose Roscommon House. When she had been nineteen and in love with Lucas Flynn, she had kept vigil at this window and known the second he had gone to his room because his light would shine through the night, and she, foolish romantic that she’d been, had thought of it as a beacon lighting a path from her heart to his.

She had been wrong.

If she had known he was here again, she would not have come back. But she had not known, and now it was too late.

She stepped closer to the windows to pull down the blinds. Involuntarily, her gaze stole to the right and with an accuracy undulled by time found the break in the trees which, during the day, revealed the steeply pitched roof of Roscommon and the gable which housed Lucas’s room.

As if she’d activated a secret switch, a beam of light from his window suddenly pierced the darkness, as bright and golden as her hopes had been over eleven summers before.

She wanted to turn away. Even more, she wanted to stare at the sight and not care, not remember. But she was able to do neither. Remembrance flowed over her, merciless as a rogue wave sweeping its victim out to sea.

A breeze riffled past the gauzy white drapes and touched her skin. With a shudder, Emily pulled down the shades and shut out the sight of that light streaming through the darkness. Shut out the memories it brought with it.

She had been young then, barely out of school. Full of immature fantasies, no doubt, the way young women often were, but she’d grown up quickly, thanks to Lucas Flynn.

It didn’t matter where he was living now. He could move into the room next door to hers for all she cared. Parade up and down in front of her, showing off his big, male body, and doing his best to reduce her to drooling lust. But he wouldn’t succeed.

She’d never again give him the opportunity to flick her off as if she were just another summer insect buzzing around and annoying him. Nor would she allow him to spoil this special time with her beloved Grand-mère.

The mistakes had piled up, each more disastrous than its predecessor, that other summer. But she’d paid for them once, and dearly. She wasn’t going to let him make her pay again.

He shut down the computer just after midnight, knowing it was futile trying to annotate scientific data from his latest experiments when his thoughts repeatedly strayed to events from much earlier times, before medicine had become his ruling passion.

As a doctor, he’d accepted long ago the human mind’s amazing ability to connect telepathically with another, regardless of the time or distance separating them. Sydney, thoroughly rooted in reality as she was, had scoffed at the idea, claiming it was the learned response that came of being a doctor, but he’d seen it as an instinct that couldn’t be taught.

Either way, it all came down to the same thing now: when his grandmother had mentioned in passing that a member of Mrs. Lamartine’s family had come to take care of her he’d known with absolute if unsubstantiated certainty that the visitor at Belvoir was Emily Jane. And once he’d allowed the knowledge to take hold there’d been no going back to his work.

Instead, he stood at the window of his room and stared out. It was one of those perfect nights midway between winter and spring—cool and still.

In the garden below, the magnolia tree had shed its petals, which lay like abandoned saucers on the grass. The scent of heliotrope filtered up, a sweet, heady perfume that he’d dreamed about when he was in Africa where the smell of death had permeated everything. Overhead, the sky was dappled with moonlight, a sprinkling of stars hung so low that he could almost have reached up and grasped a handful.

He had made the right decision in coming back here. It was home, and as different from Africa as heaven was from hell. It defined his boyhood, his youth, and his emergence as a man, and held none of the misery of that godforsaken country on the other side of the world.

Tired suddenly, of himself and the memories that threatened to swamp him, Lucas rolled his head around to relieve the stiffness in his neck and shoulders. Four months ago he’d turned thirty-six. He was disillusioned about many things, saddened by others, but, damn it all and despite everything, in charge of what his life had become. He was under no obligation to relive the mistakes of his youth, particularly not as they related to Emily. The days when they had been friends were long gone and there was no reason for their lives to interweave again now, no reason for the even tenor of his life to be disturbed—if, indeed, she was the one visiting Belvoir.

The thought brought him a measure of peace. Before turning from the window, he inhaled deeply one last time, filling his lungs with the scents of heliotrope and spring. But something else had crept in to spoil the purity of the night, something faintly acrid floating on the air and leaving it not quite as sweet as it had been moments before.

Suddenly alert, he snapped off the bedside lamp and leaned further out, eyes scanning, searching for he knew not what. Below, the river continued to flow softly. Above, the moon rode high above the trees that marked the boundary between Beatrice’s property and the Lamartines’. God appeared to be in His heaven, and all right with the world, so who was Lucas Flynn to question otherwise?

He was about to turn away when a flicker of light through the trees, so brief he almost missed it, caught his eye, followed within seconds by a burst of orange.

Precious moments ticked by, moments of paralysed disbelief when he should have been responding to the emergency he wanted so badly to pretend wasn’t taking place. And then he was sprinting for the door, calling out through the quiet house for Beatrice to wake up, to phone for help.

Ignoring Emily wasn’t going to be quite as easy as he’d hoped. Because the Lamartine house was on fire.

CHAPTER TWO

EMILY surfaced from sleep slowly, reluctantly, the smell of the Alaska smoked cod Consuela had served for dinner connecting her vividly to the dream. Except that they’d had poached salmon for dinner and instead of fading, as dreams were supposed to, the odor winding in long, sinuous threads under her door was growing stronger, accompanied by a thin wail of distress from somewhere else in the house.

Suddenly wide awake, she bolted upright in the bed, her senses screaming a warning. Streaking across the room, she wrenched open the door, and found her worst fears confirmed by the blue haze of smoke rising in the stairwell.

“Grand-mère!” she cried, her voice echoing faintly, a whisper of dread. “Consuela!”

She raced into her grandmother’s room. It was empty, the covers thrown back from the bed, and the sight terrified her. Belvoir was huge; it had eight bedrooms, all with connecting baths, and five reception rooms, in addition to the kitchen and breakfast room, then the entire third storey, which once had housed a fleet of servants but which Consuela now had to herself. Where did a person begin to search?

Was that her own pitiful little voice, whimpering with fear, that she could hear as she turned toward the upper floor? Was that really her, rooted to the spot and doing nothing to help Consuela as she tottered down the narrow upper stairs with her nightgown flapping around her feet and threatening to pitch her head-first onto the main landing?

“Dear Lord, she’s done it again,” Consuela said hoarsely, clutching her chest and fighting to draw breath.

It was enough to jolt Emily into full awareness. The crackle of flames had joined that poisonous column of smoke to underline the danger closing in on two infirm and helpless old women trapped in a house ablaze. If she was to get them and herself out safely, she had to take charge and fast. “My grandmother isn’t in her room, Consuela. Do you know where she might—?”

Before she could complete the question, that wail of distress rose up from somewhere below on the main floor. Consuela heard it, too, and sighed with dull resignation. “Madame wanders...” she wheezed “... all over the place... when she can’t sleep—”

“Never mind!” With uncivilized disregard for Consuela’s age and lack of agility, Emily piloted her down the main staircase, driven by the knowledge that Monique was somewhere below, that she might be trapped by the flames or, worse yet, on fire herself. The possible outcome inherent in the situation didn’t bear thinking about.

It was a nightmare journey. The smoke, thicker now, filled the stairwell, making their eyes smart, obscuring their vision, tormenting their lungs. Once, Consuela tripped on her long, flowing nightgown and almost tumbled both of them head over heels the rest of the way. But by some miracle she regained her balance and finally they rounded the last curve of the staircase. Emily knew because the arched entrance to the drawing room lay to the left, and the flames crawling up the draperies at the window within were turned to dazzling Catherine wheels of color by the smoke-induced tears stinging her eyes.

Directly ahead lay the front door and beyond it the sweet sanity of fresh air that her tortured lungs craved. “Almost there,” she choked. “Just a couple more stairs, Consuela.”

Blinded by smoke, she felt the newel post of the banister under her hand and knew she’d reached the bottom stair; knew that her next step would bring her to the solid floor of the entrance hall. She stretched out her foot, expecting to touch the smooth Italian marble tiles. And instead made contact with the crumpled heap that was her grandmother.

Did she open her mouth to scream? Was that what caused her lungs to rebel at the overload of smoke and leave her gagging as well as blinded? Was the noise that filled her ears the sound of her own panicked blood roaring through her veins—or the double front doors smashing open and urgent male voices shouting to each other?

It didn’t matter. All that signified was the cool, firm grasp of another’s hand, of the arm at her waist shepherding her out to where the blessedly pure night air waited to restore her breathing. Collapsing on the lawn, she watched through bleary, flooded eyes as the tall figure that had rescued her returned to Belvoir, and a moment later reappeared with her grandmother in his arms.

If she had thought that they might one day meet again, Emily had not expected that it would be like this, with them avoiding each other’s eyes over Monique’s prostrate figure. She had not thought she would owe him gratitude or thanks. Nor did he seem to expect it. Satisfied that her grandmother was breathing, Lucas Flynn turned back to help the other man, a stranger, who was bringing Consuela out through the door.

“Over here,” he said, his voice full of quiet authority. “They’re far enough away to be safe here for now.” His gaze came to rest on Emily and just briefly, in the midst of the panic and fear, a spark of awareness more dangerous than the fire within the house flared between them. And then it was gone, doused by the blank indifference in his blue eyes. “Is there anyone else inside?” he asked.

She shook her head and held a hand to her painful throat. “No.”

“No pets or anything?”

How could she have forgotten her grandmother’s beloved, bad-tempered Robespierre? “There’s the cat—”

“He goes hunting,” Consuela wheezed, “every night. There is no one left inside.”

The other man, the stranger, spoke kindly. “Where’s your garden hose? The blaze seems confined to one room so perhaps I can put it out or at least contain it.”

“Don’t try going in there again,” Lucas said shortly. “Acting the hero isn’t going to help if you end up another casualty. That’s the last thing we need.”

“I’ll break the window and work from the outside.” The stranger’s manner was quietly confident, the hand he rested on Emily’s shoulder sympathetic. “We can’t stand by watching family treasures go up in smoke without doing something about it, now can we?”

“Suit yourself,” Lucas muttered, squatting beside Monique and checking her pulse.

After a moment, he sat back on his heels and blew out a breath. Without thinking, Emily reached out and touched his arm. If she’d grasped a live wire, the jolt could not have shocked her more. Snatching back her hand, she said, “How is she?”

“Better than either of you, it seems,” he replied, jerking a nod at Consuela who lay like a sack of flour, panting audibly.

His impersonal tone and the way he refused to look at her left Emily feeling like an interloper. Annoyed, she said as sharply as her beleaguered lungs would allow, “How can that be? She was passed out on the floor.”

“Exactly,” he replied loftily, as if only a complete fool would fail to figure it out for herself, “and smoke rises. She’s suffered almost no harmful inhalation.”

Monique chose that moment to assert herself. “I did not pass out,” she announced in distinct tones that left no one in any doubt about her umbrage at being treated as if she weren’t quite all there. “I slipped and fell.”

“Did you?” he said impassively. “And how are you feeling now?”

“Like hell, Lucas Flynn, and if you were any sort of doctor you’d know that without having to ask.”

Unperturbed, he began to examine her, probing gently along her neck and down her arms. “Want to tell me how you came to fall?”

“I was trying to alert my household to the fact that my home was on fire.”

“How do you think it started?”

“I have no idea,” she returned frostily.

“It was the same as before,” Consuela said. “Madame—”

“Be quiet!” Monique snapped. “How could you possibly know anything when you were upstairs snoring so loudly that I couldn’t sleep?”

Just then Beatrice Flynn, Lucas’s grandmother, came traipsing through the trees, clad in a brocade dressing gown and with her hair hanging down her back in a long gray braid. “Praise the Lord Lucas got you out alive!” she cried, the beam of the flashlight she carried swinging in a wide arc over them where they huddled on the lawn. “You could all have fried in your beds!”

“You must be terribly disappointed,” Monique retorted with a malevolent glare.

“That’s a wicked thing to say, Monique Lamartine. I wouldn’t wish anyone dead, not even you.”

Perhaps it was as well that the sound of sirens split the night just then, signaling the arrival of emergency vehicles and thus preventing another round in the yearsold feud between the two dowagers.

“Three casualties, none too serious,” Lucas informed the ambulance attendants, while the fire marshall organized his crew. “This one had a stroke recently, the other two suffered some smoke inhalation. A night in the hospital won’t hurt any of them.”

“I do not require hospitalization,” Monique declared, struggling to sit up, “but by all means take Consuela. She’s wheezing like a locomotive.”

“This hasn’t been easy on you either, Mrs. Lamartine,” he said as the paramedics loaded Consuela onto a stretcher. “You need rest and a thorough check-up, too.”

“You’re supposed to be a doctor and you’ve just given me a check-up. How many more do I need?”

“You’ll be better cared for in a properly equipped medical center.”

“No,” she said, waving aside his concern. “This is my home and here I intend to remain.”

“That’s impossible, as I’m sure you know,” Lucas replied, with thinly veiled impatience. “If you refuse to follow my advice then you’ll have to find some other place to stay because there’s no way you’ll be allowed back into your house tonight, nor, I suspect, for some time to come.”

“You’re quite right,” Emily said. “Grand-mère, we’ll phone for a taxi and take a room at the hotel, then in the morning I’ll contact the family and make temporary arrangements for you to stay with—”

“You will do no such thing, Emily Jane! Furthermore, if you attempt to use this unfortunate incident to convince me that my children are correct in thinking I’m unable to care for myself without their help, then not only are you a dreadful disappointment to me, are you also no longer welcome in my home.”

“Well, she’s welcome in mine,” Beatrice put in. “And so, come to that, are you, Monique Lamartine, though why I should put myself out for you I don’t know. It’s a miserable old woman you’ve become, and I pray I don’t turn out the same when I’m your age.”

“You’re already my age and then some!”

Beatrice did an about-turn and prepared to march back the way she’d come. “I’ll not waste breath arguing with you. If my house isn’t good enough, you can sleep under the stars for all I care. Emily Jane, if you decide to take me up on my offer, you know where I live.”

She was almost at the boundary of the two properties when Monique called out grudgingly, “I never said your house wasn’t good enough, you silly woman.”

Beatrice spun around in her tracks. “Are you saying you’d like me to prepare a room for you, then?” she inquired, exacting a full measure of revenge in the way she pointedly waited for a reply.

Emily could have sworn she saw her grandmother swallow the huge chunk of pride threatening to choke her before she managed, “Under these very unusual circumstances, I find that an acceptable alternative, yes.”

“In that case,” Beatrice said, “I’ll ask you, Lucas, to fetch the car round so that poor, feeble Mrs. Lamartine doesn’t have to trek through the woods at such an ungodly hour and her in nothing but a sootstained nightie.”

Even outdoors, with people and space between them, Emily felt his presence too acutely. The idea of finding herself confined with him in the close quarters of a car, even for the short time it would take him to drive them next door, filled her with dismay.

Apparently, Lucas felt likewise. “Of course,” he said, politely enough, his eyes resting on Emily, but then his gaze flicked away from her as if she were nothing but the unpleasant figment of someone else’s imagination.

Beatrice assigned her to the second guest suite, a big square room with a sitting alcove at one end and an en suite bathroom at the other. She had laid out a long cotton gown which, while it was certainly several sizes too large, was infinitely preferable to Emily’s own grassstained, smoke-drenched nightshirt. That and the deep tub lured her to delay the pleasure of crawling between the sweet-smelling sheets until she’d shampooed her hair and soaped her skin clean of the fire’s residue.

She had just emerged from the bathroom with her hair turbaned in a towel when a tap came at the bedroom door. “Emily Jane, darling, are you in bed yet?” Beatrice called softly.

“Not quite,” Emily said. “Come in, Mrs. Flynn.”

“I’ll not disturb you,” Beatrice said, popping her head around the door. “I just want to make sure you have everything you need. Also, I’ve made cocoa, and if you’re ready for it I’ll bring it up to you.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Emily said, walking over to the door and opening it wider. “It might be over ten years since I was last here, but I haven’t forgotten where the kitchen is and you’ve been disturbed enough for one night. Go to bed, please, or before you know it it’ll be time to get up again.”

“Well, I will, then, if it’s all the same to you.” Beatrice took Emily’s hands affectionately. “It’s a lovely woman you’ve grown into, Emily Jane, and I’ve missed you. Don’t let another ten years go by before you come to stay again.”

Was it being assailed by yet another shock, the after-effects of smoke or plain and simple fatigue that had Emily’s eyes threatening to fill with tears? “You were always so kind to us, Mrs. Flynn, despite...”

Beatrice knew what she meant. The ill-will between the grandmothers had been as much a part of everyday life as the river flowing past the bottom of their gardens. “And why would I not be? Two silly old women feuding over the Lord knows what have no business putting innocent children in the way of their bickering.”

Emily experienced a flash of guilt at that. How innocent had she been the night she’d tried to bring her romantic dreams to fruition? But if her grandmother held Lucas responsible for the outcome it was obvious from Beatrice’s attitude that she either remained ignorant of the true order of events or else chose not to assign blame.

“Make yourself at home and sleep as long as you like in the morning, darling,” she said, planting a kiss on Emily’s cheek. “There’s no rush to be up and about. We’ll look after your grandma for you; never doubt that.”

When Emily stole downstairs fifteen minutes later, the air was filled with the hush of a house at rest and nothing but the quiet tick of clocks to mark the passing hours. Except for a ray of light spilling out of the kitchen into the downstairs hall, the rooms lay in darkness.

Despite the addition of two built-in convection wall ovens and a dishwasher, the kitchen hadn’t changed much over the years. The same scrubbed pine table still occupied the middle of the red tiled floor, the copper pots still hung from a circular rack above it, and if the geraniums flowering on the windowsill above the sink weren’t the ones that had flourished in her childhood Emily couldn’t have told the difference.

She ought to have considered that he might also be in the room. Even if the theory of feminine intuition was based on nothing but a lot of wishful thinking, sheer common sense should have warned her, when she saw the tray containing a Thermos and two saucers but only one cup, that she was not alone.

But it was the shiny chrome surface of the Thermos that alerted her to his presence, mirroring his reflection as he stirred from his spot by the big, old-fashioned fireplace. And by then it was too late to pretend she hadn’t seen him, too late to worry that she looked ridiculous in the voluminous nightgown that had been in fashion at least fifty years before and whose hem she held hiked up around her knees, and much too late to rehearse this first private meeting with him since the night she’d slithered, uninvited, between the sheets of his bed and seduced him.

For a while it appeared that neither of them was willing to break the silence unspooling between them. Instead, they simply stared at each other, he remotely, like the stranger he undoubtedly wished he were, and she—ye gods, her gaze clung to him shamelessly, devouring his every feature with the rapacity of a woman on the brink of starvation.

In the more revealing light of the kitchen, she could see what had not been so apparent in the gloom of Belvoir’s garden. He had aged, but so graciously that he was even more beautiful than he’d been at twenty five. His hair lay as thick and unruly as ever, the only difference being that now it was lightly shot with silver.

As for his mouth. . . ! Oh, despite the hardships he might have known, his mouth was as she’d always remembered it, so blatantly sexy that her lips parted in mute supplication to know its touch again.

Just once more, her wayward heart cried. Just once and it’ll be enough. I’ll never ask again.

Appalled, she said primly, “If I’d realized you were down here—”