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

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?’