The Man From her Wayward Past

They started talking polo again, but Lucia had taken up residence in Luke’s head. Both their mothers were Cornish, which was how the two families had met each year, holidaying together at the same quaint guest house on the rugged Cornish coast. The Sundowner had excellent stables and immediate access to the beach, which had given it the edge over the rest of the local accommodation where Luke’s parents were concerned. The Sundowner Guest House was intimate and private, plus the owner’s quirky take on hospitality, treating every family as her own, meant it offered something money couldn’t buy.

Luke loved Cornwall. He was glad to be back here doing business. It was the one place he felt free. Maybe he hadn’t realised it as a boy, but when he’d galloped across the beach with Lucia’s brothers he’d been true to himself. Now he was successful in his own right he wanted to recapture those feelings of elation and freedom.

‘Let me know as soon as you hear something, Luke,’ Nacho pressed him, adding, ‘I envy you being back in St Oswalds. Do you remember tearing up the beach on those wild ponies?’

‘How could I forget?’ He liked that Nacho felt the same. ‘Would you come back if I reinstated polo on the beach?’

‘You bet I would,’ Nacho assured him.

With one of the top polo players in the world on board, his plan was already starting to take shape, but as Nacho applied more pressure for him to bring polo back to Cornwall Luke was still thinking about Lucia.

He and Lucia were so different. Luke was an only child, brought up preppy and obedient, and when he was a boy the Acostas had seemed an exotic bunch to him, with their dark flashing eyes and outstanding horsemanship. He had made a point of riding on the beach at the same time as the brothers, wanting them to see his own skill on a horse. Nacho had taught him how to stand on a horse’s back while it galloped, nearly killing him in the process, while Lucia had merely tossed her glorious black hair in his face and turned a dismissive back.

Remember those eyes when Lucia flashed a challenge? Those dark, mischievous eyes …

Damn those eyes! Lucia was more trouble than she was worth. ‘I’ll be in touch when I’ve got something to tell you, Nacho.’

‘That’s good enough for me, Luke.’

He exchanged the usual pleasantries and ended the call with Lucia firmly fixed in his mind.

He was still thinking about her later that day, remembering the last time he’d seen her at an Acosta family wedding. Expecting a temperamental teen, he had found a woman who was all grown up. And hot. The way she had sashayed up to him, only to veer away at the very last moment on the pretext of seeking out one of her brothers, had left him with an ache in his groin and sweet revenge on his mind.

Forget Lucia, Luke told himself sternly as he waged the endless razor war on stubble that refused to surrender. Tonight he was meeting an attractive blonde who ran an events company, which dovetailed nicely with his plan to start investigating the possibility of reinstating the annual Polo on the Beach event, which had been started way back by Lucia’s father. His conversation with Nacho had crystallised his plans, and though it was a setback to find St Oswalds so run down, construction was one of the main planks of his business, so it made perfect sense for him to regenerate the village and bring the world back to its door.

And Lucia? What part would she play?

So much for forgetting about Lucia, Luke concluded, studying his freshly shaved face in the mirror. Shaving was a necessary habit rather than a purposeful exercise. Stubble was already shading his face, making him look more piratical than ever. His East Coast American father liked to protest that he could never understand where Luke’s looks came from. ‘All that thick, dark hair and the swarthy complexion … and those muscles! So vulgar.’ That was his father’s verdict. At which point he would cast an accusing glance at Luke’s mother and tell her that it must be her side of the family to blame.

That was the link between him and Lucia. They were both outsiders. Lucia was the girl yearning for independence in a household dominated by four alpha males, while he was the musclebound son of Princeton. Quite how that would help him combine a business dinner with a blonde with a hunt for a wild child on the loose remained to be seen.

Lucia’s body had just gone into meltdown. Luke Forster was in the club. It wasn’t possible …

Unless there were two formidable warrior-type men who stood head and shoulders above every other man in the place, with the looks to make any pretty-boy film star pack up his bags and go home, it was a rock-hard certainty. No two men on earth looked as good as that.

So what was Luke Forster doing here?

Rooted to the spot, with a tray of drinks balanced precariously in her shaking hands, Lucia was hiding in the shadows by the bar, oblivious to the barman yelling, ‘Get a move on, Anita. There’s another order waiting. You know we’re shorthanded tonight, babe.’

‘Move it, Anita!’

She leapt into action at the sound of Van Rickter’s voice. Why couldn’t the manager keep his voice down? Her name-change wouldn’t fool Luke for a second. To make matters worse, Luke had a woman on his arm—a very glamorous woman. Lucia could just imagine them both laughing when Luke explained in his husky, mocking tone that Lucia was running away again, and this time with a name that reflected her interest in music and coffee.

‘Thanks, darling,’ the barman said as he passed another loaded tray across the bar. ‘You’re the best.’

She zipped away, taking the long route round to her table of customers to avoid Luke. She didn’t want him to see her like this … Not just working here at the club. She would defend her right to work to the bitter end. But Luke knew her too well. He would sense how she’d changed. Dirty … Defiled … Ashamed and afraid …

But she was fighting back in her own time, and on her own terms.

Stamping down on the recent past, Lucia returned her thoughts to Luke. She had tried everything to eject Luke from her head, but nothing worked. The more she tried the more she wanted him, and everything had changed since the last time they had met when she had flirted so outrageously with him. She had invited trouble by living up to her wild-child image and now she had to pay the price. The woman on his arm was more Luke’s type. Smart, sharp, businesslike and neatly packaged. Lucia doubted Luke’s girlfriend would get herself into any awkward position outside a yoga class. Her only consolation was that the girl’s improbably whitened teeth attracted the club’s ultraviolet light in a way no one would want unless they suffered chronic delusions of being a torch.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Lucia froze at the sound of Van Rickter’s voice. She had dumped the tray of empty glasses and had been hoping to make it to the stockroom before Luke spotted her. Rubbing her arms energetically, she said, ‘Don’t you think it’s cold in here? I thought I’d turn the heating up.’

‘Put some more clothes on while you’re at it,’ Van sneered. ‘The new uniform was designed with slimmer girls than you in mind. There should be some of the old shapeless ones in the back.’

‘That’s where I’m heading,’ she said brightly. Sloughing off Van’s insults, she glanced anxiously over her shoulder. Thankfully Luke was still in deep conversation with the blonde. Luke wasn’t just her brothers’ closest friend, he was a fully paid-up member of their over-protective, pain-in-the-ass, let’s-keep-Lucia-at-ten-years-old-for-ever gang. He certainly wasn’t someone she wanted to see her dressed in too-tight silver hot pants and an X-rated top.

‘Wait!’ Van Rickter barked in a way she was certain must draw Luke’s attention. ‘If you’re off the floor longer than five minutes, you’re fired. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Crystal,’ Lucia said, backing towards the stockroom.

‘Find the biggest uniform you can’ was Van’s parting shot.

‘Thank you. I will.’

She disappeared behind the door with a gust of relief. She couldn’t care less what Van Rickter thought about her. Ever since London she had wanted to be thought a sexless amoeba without cheekbones, breasts or a waist. Seeing Luke had only reinforced that desperate wish. Far from wanting to flirt with him, she would happily turn her back on all men with the greatest relief. And whatever sort of mess her life was in, she would sort it out. Not her brothers. And definitely not Luke.

Last year’s uniform wasn’t much better on her than this year’s, but at least it had a skirt. Well, almost. Wriggling into it, she plucked the matching satin shirt from its hanger and slipped it on, tying it beneath her ample breasts. She hesitated over the grubby plastic camellia blossom she was supposed to pin behind her ear. There were limits.

She walked out of the stockroom straight into Luke. Just her luck—he was at the bar buying drinks. Now she couldn’t breathe, let alone pull something out of the bag to defuse the shocked look in his eyes. ‘Luke!’ she said, feigning surprise as her heart threatened to explode. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I might ask you the same question.’ he said, taking a step back to eye her up and down.

Telling herself she was used to alpha males, having grown up with four of them, she lifted her chin. ‘This is where we always go,’ she said, gesturing around as if she was at the club with a huge gang of friends. This only succeeded in causing Luke’s eyes to narrow with disbelief.

With shock crackling between them as Luke scoffed disbelievingly, she drank him in. Luke was the essence of male. Bigger and more powerful than the other men in the club, he was infinitely better looking. Luke had always been able to melt her with a glance—though at the moment that glance was doing its best to incinerate her, which for once rested more comfortably with Lucia than the smouldering, sexy look Luke was so good at. He was even bigger than she remembered—harder, tougher—though, as always, immaculately groomed, with shoulders wide enough to hoist an ox and hard-muscled legs that went on and on to … to a point from which she quickly averted her eyes.

While she had not only let herself go, but was wearing last year’s shabby club uniform, with her hair scraped back and her face glowing red and shiny beneath the lights. Perfect.

‘Lucia?’ Luke rapped sternly, staring down at her with knife-sharp eyes. ‘Are you working here?’

Of course she should have said, What’s it to you? But a row might draw attention and she couldn’t afford to lose this job. ‘No, of course I’m not working here,’ she protested with a laugh, glancing around to make sure no one had heard Luke calling her by her real name. ‘I come here so often they let me hang my coat in the stockroom.’

‘Really?’ Luke drawled, with an even more contemptuous expression in his brooding amber gaze.

‘Okay, from time to time,’ she admitted, brushing it off as she continued to stare at a face that was mesmerising in its harsh masculine beauty. If you wanted hard there was no better hard to be had than Luke Forster—as her yearning and thoroughly confused body would now attest. But Van was prowling, Lucia noticed. ‘Gin and orange for your friend?’ she suggested as the blonde, having exited the restroom, made a beeline for them.

‘I have ordered our drinks, thank you,’ Luke said coolly. ‘Vanessa,’ he murmured, in what Lucia considered an unnecessarily indulgent tone, ‘I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine.’

‘Not so much of the old,’ Lucia joked weakly, feeling awkward and ridiculously exposed when she compared herself to Luke’s neatly styled friend. The blonde was even prettier close up, and was hanging on to Luke’s arm as if her life depended on it.

‘Do you work here?’ Vanessa enquired, visibly relaxing once she had assessed Lucia and found her lacking in—well, practically everything.

‘I help out here occasionally,’ Lucia said carefully.

‘How nice to have such a … sociable job.’ The blonde looked at Luke for approval of her assessment, but Luke was too busy studying Lucia.