It Was Only a Kiss

‘Okay—what?’

‘You work on the campaign. No passing it off to your flunkies.’

‘Understood. I had no intention of doing that anyway.’

‘And I want St Sylve to have your undivided attention. You move to St Sylve for however long it takes to get this wrapped up. Get out of your comfort zone.’

He saw the look of shock that flicked across her face. ‘That’s not practical, Luke. I have a business to run.’

‘Skype, e-mail and phone. We live in the twenty-first century, Jess. Besides, Ally looks competent enough to take the reins.’

‘She is, but—’

‘And you also organise the networking. I don’t have the time or the inclination and I have even less enthusiasm. And you accompany me to all these functions. If I have to do it, then so do you,’ Luke told her.

‘So, are you saying I’ve got the job?’

‘Yep.’

Of course she had the job—was she mad? Hers was above and beyond the most exciting presentation of them all, and while the others wouldn’t need his time, presence or input, they wouldn’t have the effect Jess’s would.

‘Uh...good,’ Jess said in a strangled voice. ‘But I don’t know if I’m going to manage living in Franschoek. I have a life, apart from my business, in Sandton.’

Luke shook his head. No, she didn’t. She was as much a workaholic as him. ‘Stop hedging. And you’re not staying in Franschoek—you’re staying at St Sylve.’

Jess thrust out her stubborn chin. ‘I won’t feel comfortable staying with you, in your house.’

‘Why not?’

Jess rolled her eyes. ‘Are you really going to be all coy and not acknowledge the...’

Luke lifted his eyebrows when she stuttered to a stop. ‘Lust? Heat? Passion?’ he suggested.

‘Heat...stick to heat,’ Jess suggested, her eyes everywhere but meeting his.

Luke grinned internally; it amazed him that she could be so businesslike about—well, business, but get so flustered when talking about their mutual attraction.

‘Now who’s being coy?’ Luke muttered. ‘Okay, you can stay in any one of the six bedrooms at the manor house.’

Luke stepped closer—so close he could almost feel her breasts against his chest, smell the citrus in her hair. Those amazingly long lashes fluttered and lifted and he felt the zing of attraction arc between them. In that age-old subconscious display of attraction her mouth opened, and he nearly lost control when he saw the tip of her pink tongue flicker at the corner of her mouth. Stuff the marketing strategy and St Sylve. Stuff the world...Jess was here and he wanted her.

Her body, not her mind...

Luke jerked his head up and quietly cursed. And what was he doing? Acting on what was happening in his pants. Catch a clue, Savage. He wasn’t fifteen any more, or even twenty, but he was still listening to his libido. He’d realised a while back that it was a very bad judge of character, time and situation, and it had the ability to lead him into deep trouble.

Luke stepped away from Jess, but couldn’t resist tucking a long, straight strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Don’t disappoint me, Jess.’

‘I don’t intend to,’ she replied in her husky, take-me-to-bed voice.

Jess finally looked him in the eye and he couldn’t help himself; his thumb drifted across her bottom lip. ‘You have the most kissable mouth I’ve ever seen.’

He saw sense and sensibility flow back into Jess’s eyes—her mental retreat. A cool, polite mask dropped into place.

‘Not a good idea, Luke. Any physical intimacy could blow up in our faces.’

‘We should be smart enough to separate the two.’

Her shoulders came up and her spine stiffened at his challenge. ‘Theoretically I’m smart enough—anybody is smart enough—to solve string theory, but that doesn’t mean I can. Or will.’

‘We have unfinished business, Jessica. You know it and I know it; we both want to finish what we started eight years ago.’ Luke moved the backs of his fingers down her cheek.

Jess’s eyes remained passionate even as she nudged his hand away. ‘Luke, let me make it very clear that I don’t do casual sex—especially not with colleagues, competitors or clients.’

He loved the snap he heard in her voice, the passion that slumbered in her eyes. The contradiction of the two had his heart in his throat and his groin twitching. This was going to be interesting, he thought, amused and still very turned on. She might be flustered but she wasn’t intimidated, and she didn’t back down.

He wondered who’d taught her that.

* * *

The day before Jess was due to arrive at St Sylve, Luke sat on the end of the antique double bed in the largest guest suite in the manor house and looked around the room. Angel, his part-time housekeeper, had worked her magic in the room he’d allocated Jess. The yellow wood headboard had been oiled, there was white linen on the bed and fresh flowers on the nightstand. Luke glanced through the large bay window opposite the bed which enabled the guest to wake to a stunning view of the mountains. Luke had never understood why this room, with its large en-suite bathroom, had never been used as the master bedroom instead of the smaller, pokier bedroom at the front of the house, overlooking the driveway.

Easier to see who was coming up the road, Luke decided. Friend, foe, tax collector... In his father’s case, lover. There had been many, Luke knew. He remembered lots of women wafting around the house when he was a child... Some had paid far too much attention to him; others had paid him absolutely no attention at all.

They’d all left eventually. By the age of seven he’d learned to protect himself against getting emotionally attached to any of his father’s girlfriends. That way he hadn’t been affected when they’d dropped out of his life. Apart from the blip that had been his marriage, it was his standard operating procedure when it came to women.

Being a reasonably astute guy, he hadn’t needed therapy to work out that he’d learnt to protect himself against emotional entanglements, and he’d honed his ability to keep his distance from people at a young age. Between his mother’s death, his father’s dictator tendencies and his girlfriends wafting in and then storming out, it had become easier not to care whether people left or not.

His ex-wife and his marriage had been the exception to that rule. While he now called her a crazoid, with the ability to incinerate money, he had to accept that his own issues had also contributed to the train wreck. He hadn’t loved her, but he’d been monstrously in love with the idea of her: a wife, a family, normality. When he’d got it he hadn’t known what to do with it...

Saying goodbye to his lifelong dream of being part of something bigger than himself had stung like a shark bite, and because Fate had thought that wasn’t punishment enough, his father had died and he’d been yanked back to St Sylve.

He was still trying to come to terms with his legacy, and frequently wasn’t sure how he felt about the estate. Some days he loved it. Then resentment got the better of him, and on other days, when the memories of his father bubbled close to the surface, he actively hated the place.