A Night of No Return

‘Her birthday.’ He watched as her lips parted in astonishment. Soft lips, he noticed. Unpainted. She was wearing the same plain grey skirt she’d worn to work that day with a white shirt and a maroon sweater under her extremely damp coat. She looked sober and sensible. But then Emma always dressed soberly. Her hair was always smooth and neat, secured away from her face with a large clip that never failed her. She was the consummate professional in every way.

‘She threw a surprise party for her own birthday?’

‘I’d already told her this wasn’t a good night for me. Tara isn’t good at hearing no.’

‘Why?’

Lucas gave a sardonic smile. ‘Because she’s a woman?’

‘No—’ her frown was impatient ‘—I mean, why isn’t this a good night for you? I want to know why you’re insistent on being on your own and why you’re drinking your way through the entire contents of your cellar. Is it work? Has something gone wrong with the Zubran contract that I don’t know about?’

‘Why would you think it has anything to do with work?’

‘Because work is the only thing that matters to you.’

Lucas stared at her for a long moment. Then he turned and threw the log he was holding onto the fire. The flames licked at it greedily, consuming it and delivering a sudden flare of heat.

He couldn’t blame her for thinking that, could he?

She had no idea.

And that was a good thing. The last thing he was looking for was sympathy or understanding.

‘You shouldn’t be here, Emma.’

‘But I am here. And I might be able to help.’ She stood, straight and tall. Honest. Straightforward. A woman with a heart, innocent of how dark the world could be.

He made a point of avoiding women like her. Innocence had no place in his life. He was not a good guardian of innocence. Even thinking about it made his palms begin to sweat. ‘You can’t help.’ Their relationship had always been strictly professional. For Lucas, business and pleasure didn’t mix. He’d thought she felt the same way.

‘Are you upset about Tara? Is that what’s wrong? This isn’t like you. In all the time I’ve worked for you I’ve never seen you remotely emotional about a woman. I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re no more than an accessory to you. A bit like your cufflinks. You wear different ones, depending on the occasion.’

It was such a perceptive comment that had he not been struggling with his black mood, he might have laughed. He certainly would have been impressed. As it was, he just wanted her gone and if she was going to ignore his request for her to leave then it was time to employ other methods.

‘Maybe it is like me. Maybe you don’t know what I’m like. Maybe you don’t know me at all.’ Lucas prowled over to her, watching as she registered the threat in his tone. And because he was watching, because he was experienced, he sensed she was struggling not to step back.

‘Don’t intimidate me. I’m trying to help, Lucas.’

‘And I don’t want help. Not yours. Not anyone’s.’ If nothing else would work, then this would. Telling himself that he was doing her a favour, he flattened her back against the exposed brick of the wall. Her shallow breathing was the only sound in the room apart from the occasional crackle from the blazing fire. Next to them a window looked down at moonlit snow but his attention was on the soft curve of her mouth. Her hair smelled of flowers and wood smoke.

His body stirred, his response to her primitive, powerful and entirely inappropriate.

Her eyes were fixed on him, wide and shocked.

And he couldn’t blame her for that. He was shocked too. Shocked by the concentrated rush of raw desire that ripped through him, shocked by the degree of control he had to exert over himself to prevent himself from doing what he was suddenly burning to do.

In a few brief seconds the nature of their relationship had shifted. Here, outside the glass walls of his office, the barrier had lowered.

Not boss and employee.

Man and woman.

He hadn’t expected that. He certainly didn’t want it. Not tonight and not with this woman.

It was the drink, he thought. Damn the drink, because he didn’t want that barrier lowered. Not just because that was a line he never crossed with someone who worked for him, but because he knew that what he had to give wasn’t what she would want.

Not trusting himself to be this close to her, he was about to step back when she pushed at his chest and escaped from his grasp. ‘I’ll leave you to sober up.’

She seemed as brisk and efficient as ever, but Lucas knew that she wasn’t. He heard the shake in her voice and saw the way her hands clutched at her wet coat as if she were trying to hold herself together.

He’d unsettled her.

Maybe he’d even scared her a little.

And that had been his intention, hadn’t it? He’d wanted her to walk away.

So why, in those few tense seconds as she stalked towards the door, did he find himself noticing things he hadn’t noticed before? Like the fact that her hair was the same rich glossy brown as the wood panelling in the tower bedroom and that she was one of the only women he knew who was still capable of blushing.

He found himself wondering about Jamie, the man she was rushing home to.

All he knew about the guy was that she’d been with him for the whole time she’d worked for him. Two years. And that confirmed everything he already knew about her.

Emma believed in love.

And with that thought he reached for another bottle of champagne.

For the second time that evening, Emma stomped down the stairs into the main hallway. The only difference was that this time she was shaking. Her knees shook, her fingers shook. Even her stomach shook.

From the first day she’d taken the job, she’d tried not to think of Lucas Jackson as a man. He was her boss. Her employer. Someone who paid her salary. Of course she couldn’t help but be aware of his appeal to women because she fielded his calls—and she fielded a lot—but somehow she’d managed to view his sex appeal in a detached way, a bit like admiring a valuable painting in a gallery that you knew you’d never be able to hang on your own wall.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, had come this rush of sexual awareness that she absolutely didn’t want to feel. She was happy with her life. Happy doing her job and going home to Jamie. She didn’t want to jeopardize any of that. She couldn’t afford to jeopardize any of that. Especially not for a rude, totally selfish human being like Lucas Jackson.

Sexy eyes, a great body and a brilliant mind didn’t make up for serious deficiencies in his personality. He didn’t care about anyone. And that, she told herself firmly, was not an attractive trait.

And she was well aware that the incident back in the cosy turret bedroom had been about control, not chemistry.

He’d been trying to unsettle her. Trying to get her to back off. Well, that was fine. She’d backed off, hadn’t she?

But she wasn’t leaving. There was no way she could leave another human being in that state.

Trying to forget the way he’d looked at her as he’d pinned her to the wall, Emma reached the bottom of the stairs and stared at the decorations, so tacky and out of place in the elegant hallway. Something about the surprise party had upset him. Or maybe he’d been upset before he’d arrived home. Whichever, it was the first time she’d ever seen him drunk.

Deciding that the decorations were presumably as unwelcome as the party, she set about removing them. As she liberated a streamer that had been twisted around the ornate frame of a painting, a memory came at her from nowhere.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him drunk, was it? It was the second time. And the first time would have been—when? Trying to remember, she twisted the streamer between her fingers. There had been snow on the ground then too. It would have been around the same time of year as this.

Last year.

She’d worked late and assumed she was on her own in the building apart from Security, but when she’d walked into his office Lucas had been there, sprawled on the sofa with an empty bottle of whisky next to him.