Tycoon's Forbidden Cinderella

She gave a lip shrug. ‘My mother finds it amusing that you and I hate each other so much.’

Lucien frowned. ‘I don’t hate you.’

She lifted her neat brows like twin question marks. ‘Don’t you?’

‘No.’ He hated the way she made him feel. Hated the way his body had a wicked mind of its own when she was around. Hated how he couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her and touching her and seeing if her body was as delectable as it looked under the conservative clothes she always seemed to wear.

But he wasn’t a man driven by his hormones. That was his father’s way of doing things. Lucien had will power and discipline and he was determined to use them. He would not be reduced to base animal desires just because a pretty, curvy woman got under his skin.

And Audrey Merrington was so far under his skin he could feel his organs shifting inside to make room.

‘Good to know, since we’re going to be related again,’ she said with a deadpan expression.

‘Not if I can help it.’ Lucien was not going to rest until he’d prevented this third disastrous marriage. His father had almost drunk himself into oblivion the last time. There was no way he was going to stand by and watch that happen again. He was sick of picking up the pieces. Sick of trying to put his father back together again like a puzzle with most of the bits damaged or missing.

He picked up his keys. ‘Come on. We’d best get on the road before nightfall. I’ll organise someone to collect your car when we get back to London.’

She stood up from the arm of the sofa so quickly her feet thudded against the floor like punctuation marks. ‘But I don’t want to go with—’

‘Will you damn well just do what you’re told?’ Lucien was having trouble controlling his panic at how much time they were wasting. His father could be halfway through his honeymoon at this rate. Not to mention his bank balance. ‘You don’t have a car, so therefore you come with me. Understood?’

She pursed her lips for a moment as if deciding whether or not to defy him. But then she stalked over to where she had left her overnight bag and her tote, and, picking them up, threw him a mutinous look that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the deck of The Bounty. ‘You can take me back to my flat in London. I’m not going anywhere else with you.’

‘Fine.’ He opened the front door of the cottage so she could walk out ahead of him. ‘Go and sit in the car while I lock up.’

* * *

Audrey went to his car, sat inside and pulled the seat belt into place with a savage click. Why did he have to be so cavemanish about getting her to go with him? She could have had a hire car delivered or got a friend to collect her. Even a taxi would be worth the expense rather than suffering a couple of hours in Lucien’s disturbing and far too tempting company. The last thing she wanted to do was to make a fool of herself again. She wasn’t eighteen now. She wasn’t twenty-one. She was twenty-five and mature enough—she hoped—to put this silly crush to bed once and for all.

Okay, so that wasn’t the best choice of words.

She would nix her crush on Lucien. It was just a physical thing. It wasn’t a cerebral or emotional thing. It was lust. Good old-fashioned lust and it would burn out sooner or later as long as she didn’t feed it. Which meant absolutely no fantasising about his mouth. She wouldn’t even look at it. She wouldn’t daydream about it coming down on hers and his tongue gliding through the seam of her lips and—

Audrey pinched herself on the arm like someone flicking an elastic band around their wrist to stop themselves from smoking. This was like any other addiction and she had to stop it. She had to stop it right now. She would be strong. She would conquer this.

Besides, according to Rosie and her gossip magazine source, Lucien was in a committed relationship. It was weird how edgy it made her feel to think of him in a long-term relationship. Why should she care if he was practically engaged? Was he in love with Viviana Prestonward? Funny, but Audrey couldn’t imagine him falling in love. He was nowhere near the playboy his father was between marriages, but neither was he a plaster saint. He dated women for a month or two and then moved on.