Tempting Lucas

“You’d have remained upstairs.” He offered the merest suggestion of a shrug. “I could say the same thing but it would be pointless, wouldn’t it? You’re here, I’m here, and it seems that whether we like it or not we’re destined to acknowledge each other.”

She wished he hadn’t moved his shoulders in that sinuous way that drew attention less to their width, which had always been impressive, than to the fact that his shirt was unbuttoned and hanging loose at the waist of his blue jeans. Her gaze dropped from his mouth to the expanse of flesh that his gesture had uncovered.

The musculature of his chest was more defined than when she’d run her hands over its planes that other summer, the skin even more deeply tanned. His stomach, though, was the same: flat and hard, just as it had been then. Except for his mouth and his hands, he had been hard all over that night. . .

“I was going to say I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” she said, corralling her thoughts before they got her into more trouble than she could possibly cope with. “We’ve put you to enough trouble already, getting you out of bed to rush to our rescue.”

“I’m a night owl. I’m seldom asleep before one or two in the morning.”

You were the night I came sneaking in, she thought. You were out cold, lying with nothing but a sheet covering you, and it took me no time at all to whisk it aside and confirm every last delicious fantasy I’d ever harbored about you.

Her sharply drawn breath escaped before she could suppress it. Face flaming, she swung back to the Thermos of cocoa and hoped her hands wouldn’t betray her by shaking too visibly as she filled the lone cup.

The worst was over, surely? They’d come face to face, exchanged the barest civilities and both survived the ordeal. Now all she had to do was beat a not too obvious retreat before her unruly memory betrayed her more than it already had.

“How have you been, Emily?”

Instead of being fielded from across the kitchen, his question flowed over her shoulder, and she realized that he’d moved to stand close behind her. Much too close. Agitated, she sought refuge around the other side of the table. “Very well, thank you.”

“And your husband?”

“Husband?”

A smile settled fleetingly on his mouth, a glimmer of cool white amusement against the bronze of his skin. “The man you married.”

“I—he’s well, too.” Even had this been the time and place to divulge that her marriage was a thing of the past, Lucas Flynn was not the one to burden with the disclosure. It wasn’t as if he gave a damn; he was merely going through the socially correct motions, as was she when she said, “I was sorry to hear about your wife.”

He lifted his shoulders in another dismissive shrug. “These things happen,” he said, so dispassionately that Emily couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ousted Sydney from his life as easily as he’d evicted her.

“You make it sound as if her death was more inconvenient than tragic,” she heard herself remark acidly.

Annoyance thinned his lips, his amusement dispelled so thoroughly that, if memory hadn’t served her better, she’d have thought him incapable of smiling. “I hardly feel I have to justify to you how I choose to deal with personal tragedy, Emily Jane.”

“You never felt you had to justify anything to me!” The last thing she’d wanted was to be the one to resurrect the past. Even less did she want to come across as the woman wronged, particularly since she’d been the aggressor in their encounter, but the words were out before she could stop them, full of accusation and reproach.

He expelled a brief sigh. “I had hoped you’d forgotten,” he said. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to hang onto the memory.”

Of course he couldn’t, because he hadn’t been the one to offer his heart and have it tossed back without a word of appreciation or thanks. He’d walked away untouched, whereas she’d been permanently scarred by her botched attempt to make him love her as she’d loved him.

He had no idea, no idea at all, of the ultimate cost to her of the night she’d seduced him. Blissfully ignorant, he’d gone forward, married the woman of his choice, and left Emily to carry the burden of her guilt and sorrow alone. Knowing he hadn’t been to blame for that didn’t prevent her from resenting him for it.

“I don’t,” she replied stonily. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t thought about you in years until today.”

“Then you’ve been happy?”

“What do you care?” Oh, Emily, shut up! she told herself angrily.

His sigh this time was fraught with exasperation, as if he found having to explain such obvious and simple facts exceedingly tedious. “We were friends for a long time, Emily. Closer than friends, even. More like brother and sister. One night of ... indiscretion doesn’t negate all the good times. Of course I care.”

About as much as he cared about the weather! But he wasn’t her brother, she didn’t want his diluted affection, and she couldn’t bear his bold references to a time she’d truly tried to bury in the past where it belonged. She wanted to escape and shut herself in her room, to be alone before she faced the fact that he still had the power to affect her more deeply than any other man she’d ever met.

“Then, to answer your question, I am very happy, very successful, and very tired,” she said, stepping around him and heading for the door. “Thank you again for coming to our rescue tonight. Under the circumstances, it was very decent of you.”

“Decent?” Although she couldn’t see it this time, she heard the amusement in his voice. “What else could I have done? Left you to burn?”

“You might have, if you’d known I was visiting my grandmother.”

“Hardly,” he scoffed. “I took a professional oath a long time ago to preserve and honor human life.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask, Even mine? but she bit back the words and said instead, “Of course. Well, don’t worry that we’ll make a habit of calling on you to bail us out of trouble. We pride ourselves on being very self-sufficient.”

Like every other assertion she’d made in the last little while, however, that last one of Emily’s turned out to be erroneous. By the following morning, Monique’s left knee was badly swollen. “I remember twisting it when I slipped,” she admitted to Lucas when, at Beatrice’s insistence, he came to take a look.

“If you had gone to the hospital to be checked over as I suggested, this could have been taken care of last night,” he pointed out.

“With everything else that was happening at the time, it didn’t seem worth mentioning. In any case, you’re supposed to be a doctor so you can take care of it now.”

“I’m not leaving myself open to your suing me for negligence, Mrs. Lamartine,” he informed her. “For a start, I have no malpractice insurance, and second, I don’t need the aggravation. Whether you like it or not, you’re going into town for X-rays. And consider yourself lucky you didn’t break a hip.”

“If this is an example of your bedside manner, it’s no wonder you had to give up practicing medicine,” Monique retorted.

Earlier, Emily had gone over to Belvoir to meet the fire marshall and hear his report on last night’s disaster. Although he’d allowed her to collect a few clothes and other basic necessities, he’d been adamant that the house was not safe in its present condition.

The drawing room, sadly, was destroyed, its furnishings blackened and soaked in water, and there had been structural damage to a supporting wall. Not surprisingly, the whole house also reeked of smoke. It would be weeks before they could go home again—news which Emily knew would not be well received.

In her view, all this was trouble enough for one day. She certainly didn’t need to run interference when Monique decided to bait Lucas—which was every chance she got. She had enough to do holding her own emotions in check where he was concerned.

“I’ll get you to the hospital,” she offered, hoping to distract her grandmother. “They phoned this morning to let us know that Consuela is ready to come home, so I have to drop by anyway, with a change of clothes for her and to collect her. Then, once you’re taken care of, we’ll go over to the hotel and take a suite there until we decide what to do next.”

“Whatever for?” Beatrice exclaimed, coming into the room just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation. “There’s plenty of room here for all of you without us falling over one another.”

“You’re very kind,” Monique said grandly, “but it would be an imposition and so quite out of the question.”

“Don’t be so quick to turn me down,” Beatrice said. “We’re heading into summer and the tourists are pouring into the area already. Suppose they can’t take you at the hotel? Where’ll you go then, Monique Lamartine, since you’re so dead set against burdening your family with your ill-tempered presence? Somehow, I don’t see you camping in a tent until your poor house is fit to live in again.”

“Phone for a taxi, Emily Jane,” Monique said, with lofty disdain for such pitiful reasoning. “We have business to which we must attend and I would like it concluded as speedily as possible.”

Beatrice opened her mouth to object to that idea too, but Lucas forestalled her with weary resignation. “I’ll drive you into town.”

“Thank you, but no,” Emily said. “That really is asking too much.”

“Not at all. I’ve got a number of errands to attend to.” He finished the last of his coffee and checked his watch. “If you could be ready to leave in half an hour?”

For all that he phrased them so politely, the words were a command, not a request, and underlined what he’d made patently clear the night before: their presence, particularly Emily’s, was an imposition of the highest order.

When they arrived at the hospital just after eleven, the first person they spoke to was Monique’s doctor, whose opinion, when he heard about the previous night’s events, coincided entirely with Lucas’s. Rapping out orders, he whisked his patient into a wheelchair and off for a complete physical, including an X-ray of her knee.

“Barring any unusual findings, you should be able to pick her up in about three hours,” he told Emily over his shoulder as he pushed aside the swinging doors through which her grandmother had already disappeared.

Lucas, who’d accompanied them inside the building, spoke for the first time. “That’ll give me plenty of time to take care of my business, so unless there’s something else I can do for you I’ll take off now and meet you back here around two.”

Without waiting for a reply, he did precisely that, disappearing with what Emily perceived to be enormous relief at being rid of them. She, however, was alarmed at the length of time her grandmother was to be detained.

“Does it normally take three hours to run a few tests?” she asked the nurse who’d assisted with Monique’s preliminary examination. “Or is the doctor concerned that my grandmother might have had another stroke, do you think?”

“Well, he’ll want to make sure that hasn’t happened, of course, but it’s more a precautionary measure. Also, things slow down a bit over the lunch hour so we don’t always get test results back as quickly as we’d like.” The nurse smiled reassuringly. “Hanging around the emergency unit’s enough to give anyone the willies and the food in the cafeteria is lousy. Why don’t you treat yourself to lunch in town? It’s a much pleasanter way to pass the time.”

But not the most efficient, Emily decided, particularly with the question of where they were all going to live for the next little while still unresolved.

It turned out not to be a problem for Consuela. “No hotel for me, Miss Emily,” she declared, accepting the clothes Emily had brought for her to wear. “My sister in-law’s been asking me to pay a visit for months, so now I will. When madame’s ready for me to come back to work, she can phone. I’m just across town and can be out to Belvoir in no time at all.”

“Well, at least let me see you off in a taxi,” Emily said.

“It was the cigarettes, you know,” Consuela confided some twenty minutes later, while they waited for the elevator. “Madame won’t admit it but it’s a miracle she hasn’t brought the house down about our ears before last night. She falls asleep while she’s smoking, you see.”

Her account confirmed what the fire marshall had stated in his report. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with the worry of it all by yourself, Consuela,” Emily said. “What you’re telling me now merely reinforces what I’ve already decided. We’re going to have to look at a better arrangement once Belvoir is fit to live in again. Meantime, we’ll be at the hotel if you need us for anything.”

But Beatrice appeared to have been blessed with divine foresight, because the April Water Hotel—the only hotel in town—could give them a room for two nights only. After that, the place was pretty well booked for the remainder of the season. Any hope of securing long-term residence was out of the question. Nor were any of the quaint bed-and-breakfast houses able to help. They didn’t cater for full-time guests.

It seemed that avoiding Lucas wasn’t going to pan out quite as neatly or quickly as Emily had hoped. Unless a miracle occurred within the next hour or two, she and Monique might have no choice but to accept Beatrice’s hospitality until Belvoir was habitable again.

The thought of having to face Lucas across the dining room table three times a day, not to mention running into him at other times in between, and of sleeping down the hall from him, left her dizzy with dismay.

CHAPTER THREE

IT SEEMED prophetic that the first person Emily ran into on the street after she’d seen Consuela off was Lucas. He’d just crossed the road from the post office, which was situated opposite the entrance to the hospital, and was so busy thumbing through the mail he’d picked up that he quite literally cannoned into her. “Sorry,” he muttered absently, reaching out a hand to steady her, then did a double-take when he realized who it was he’d almost knocked down.

For just a second, she was reminded of the day she’d fallen in love with him. He’d almost stumbled over her then, too, and a whole sequence of events had been set in motion. One kiss had led to another and she’d read “for ever” in them. Sadly, she’d been the only one to do so. She’d also been pathologically naive in those days.

“Good thing it wasn’t your grandmother,” he said now, the ghost of his old self emerging briefly. “She’d be threatening lawsuits for sure. So, did you get fixed up at the hotel?”

“No,” Emily said, dry-mouthed all over again at the sheer male magnificence of him.

He had no right to be so beautiful. He was too muscular in the chest and shoulders for a doctor, as if he’d spent the last eleven years in some work more physically strenuous than she could envision medicine being. He should have been stooped and the African sun should have left his skin all wizened. His eyes should have faded, been half-buried in wrinkles from squinting in the bright, tropical light; they should have peered out myopically through thick lenses. Instead, he was spellbinding, his lean-hipped, rangy grace lending elegance even to the blue jeans that seemed to be his preferred mode of dress these days.

“No?” He did have squint lines around his eyes when he glanced at her quizzically like that, but they were an asset, enhancing his good looks rather than detracting from them.

She shook her head. “Your grandmother was right. Except for a couple of days here and there, the hotel’s booked up right through September.”

If he was dismayed to hear that, he hid it well. “From Monique’s standpoint that might not be such a bad thing, you know. It’s my guess she’s damaged the ligaments in her knee and that she’ll be off her feet for the next week or so. Being confined to a hotel room would be no picnic for anyone, especially not someone of her. . . ah... temperament.”

“I’m afraid,” Emily said, wondering how many times she was going to have to apologize to him for one thing or another, “that she’s behaving very ungraciously toward you and your grandmother, and I’m sorry. I think it’s just that she’s afraid of change, of not being in control of the events shaping her life. What with her failing health and now this latest problem, she sees her independence seeping away, and it terrifies her, but she’s too proud to admit it.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Growing old can be hell, Emily, and some people react just as your grandmother does, fighting it every step of the way.”

“Still, that’s no reason for you to have to put up with her ill humor.”

When he laughed, the years melted away from his face, leaving only the threads of silver in his hair to betray his true age. “I might as well get used to it. It looks as if we’re all stuck with each other—at least for the next little while.”

“Stuck with each other? Oh, I don’t think so!”

“You have some other solution up your sleeve?”

“Well, I...no, not exactly—not yet. How could I, when I only just found out the hotel can’t take us? But I’ll come up with something.”

“I can’t imagine what. Your grandmother made it plain enough last night that she’s not budging far from home. And quite frankly, even if the idea of moving in with relatives did sit well with her, I doubt her doctor wants to see her traveling any great distance right now. She’s a lot frailer than she might seem, you know.”

“So what are you saying? That the only other choice is... ?” She lapsed into silence, still unwilling to accept the solution staring her in the face.

Entertaining no such uncertainty, Lucas finished the question for her. “Roscommon? Afraid so.” Another of those brief smiles illuminated his face. “Don’t look so horrified, Emily. We don’t have rats in the pantry or bugs in the beds, and, although it might not be her home, realistically it’s probably the best place for Monique to be right now. She’ll be on relatively familiar territory, able to keep an eye on repairs to Belvoir, voice her disapproval of everything the workmen do—which will keep her happy even if it does run them ragged!—and at the same time give my grandmother someone else to bully besides me.”

His summation was right on target: sensible, practical, convenient. But Emily was too dismayed to acknowledge any of those supremely sane responses—so dismayed, in fact, that she blurted out her true thoughts without taking time to edit them first or consider how they might be interpreted. “Lucas, I couldn’t possibly stay another night under the same roof as you!”

She hadn’t meant to sound so insulting but he allowed her no time to rephrase her objection. His eyes narrowed, their brilliant blue stripped of any amusement. “Why not?” he drawled. “Forewarned is forearmed. I have a lock on my bedroom door and I’ll make a point of using it.”

She had thought he could never hurt her again, that nothing could come close to the pure agony of having him reject her and turn to another woman for all those things she had been willing to give him. But his softly uttered contempt seared her more thoroughly than anything he’d flung at her the night she’d conceived his child. Devastated, she spun away from him, stepping blindly off the edge of the sidewalk and out into the road.

A horn blared, brakes shrieked. The bright red fender of a car reared up and seemed to hover perilously close as she stumbled to regain her balance.

I’m going to be killed, she thought in mild surprise, and wondered who’d come in her place to take care of Monique.

And then Lucas’s hand shot out, grabbing her urgently by the scruff of the neck and yanking her back to safety. Or increased danger, depending on one’s perspective. Because finding herself pressed up against him, pressed so close that they were imprinted on each other from knee to breast, was just as life-threatening in a different kind of way.

For the first time since they’d met again, his eyes neither avoided hers nor skittered past her as if the sight of her was too repugnant to be endured. Instead, his gaze burned into her, ablaze with impassioned horror. To the people passing by, they might have appeared to be lovers locked in wordless conflict, so furiously did he clutch her to him.

But they weren’t lovers. And the fact that, even knowing that, she still wanted to lean into him, to bury her face in his neck and inhale the warm, well remembered scent of him, enraged her.

So she shrugged him off and flicked at her hair to restore it to some sort of order. “Do you mind?” she said, too discombobulated to care that, considering he’d just spared her serious injury and possibly even saved her life, the question was downright ridiculous.

Lucas passed a trembling hand over his face. “Damned right,” he said hoarsely. “Jeez, Emily, if you want to teach me to think before I speak in future, a smack in the mouth will suffice, OK? You don’t have to lay your life on the line to make your point.”

She allowed him a small smile, then looked away. Just as well. It would never have done for her to see how shaken up he was, how close to losing it, and all because of her. How could he have explained such a reaction when he didn’t understand it himself?

It wasn’t as if the car had actually touched her. In fact, it had squealed to a halt a good six feet away. It was those seconds in between that had left him such a mess. One minute she’d been standing there, perfect in pale green linen and straw accessories, clearly repelled by the thought of living in the same house with him, breathing the same air, and the next he’d retaliated with a blow so low it was unforgivable, and the damage was done.

She’d blanched with shock. Her eyes had seemed to fill her face, huge brown wells of pain, and her mouth had opened in a perfect, soundless pink O, leaving him feeling as if he’d just kicked a puppy in the teeth. Then, before he could begin to form an apology, she’d swung around in a graceful arc and floated out of his reach and practically under the wheels of the passing car.

“Lucas?” She was looking at him again and rubbing absently at the back of her neck where he’d grabbed hold of her.

“What? Did I hurt you?”

She lifted one elegant shoulder in a ghost of a shrug. “Not really. But this other business—about us living at Roscommon until Belvoir’s been repaired—how can it possibly work, Lucas, with things the way they are between us?”

“What say I buy you lunch and we’ll talk about it? We’ve still got a couple of hours to kill before we collect Grandma.”

“I’m not very hungry.”

She looked a bit pale and more than a little apprehensive, as though the potential pitfalls of such a living arrangement were more than she could face. “Then you can watch me eat while we deal with all the history between us,” he said, “because the way things are shaping up we aren’t going to be able to avoid each other for the next little while. And although I can’t speak for you, Emily Jane, I don’t mind admitting that it’s going to be rough going for me unless we clear the air a bit.”

“All right, whatever you say,” she muttered.

He took her to a restaurant overlooking the April river. From the front it was nothing but a narrow, brick-faced building with a canopied entrance and a wrought iron railing, but inside it opened onto a long courtyard with a fountain in the middle and a profusion of flowering plants spilling down the walls and over the edges of ceramic containers.

They were shown to a table on the south side, shaded by a tilted sun umbrella. Disregarding what she’d said about not being hungry, Lucas ordered for both of them—fish chowder with sourdough bread, and iced tea. “So,” he began, immediately the waiter left, “do you want to start the ball rolling, or shall I?”

“You,” she said unhesitatingly.

“OK.” He took a swig of iced tea. “The way I see it, you and I got off track the last summer we spent here.”

“No.” She shook her head. “It happened long before that, Lucas. It all began the summer I turned fifteen and you kissed me for the first time. Or are you going to pretend you’ve forgotten about that?”