Love, respect, anger—they all collide. I flex my fists, breathing through it. I always knew tonight would be hard, but there’s so much I didn’t bank on.
And right up there is this rush of feeling for her. An emotion I thought well and truly dead.
Seems she is my weakness after all.
She pecks her father on his cheek and I can almost sense his need to say something. I know him, and I know he’s not going to let this go, but whatever he says she shakes her head at it and gestures for them to get in their waiting car.
I know she has an exclusive apartment around the corner—one of many homes owned by her family—and I’m banking on her heading back there tonight.
Just as I’m banking on getting what I came for…
I’m wired by the time I say goodbye to Mum and Dad. I could blame it on the amazing party—the culmination of my hard work. But it’s not. It runs a whole lot deeper.
Loving Lucas had been as natural as breathing in my teens. And just as impossible to prevent. He’d always been a part of our lives, his mother constantly using mine as a sitter so she could go on date after date, never finding anyone permanent.
I don’t know whether she was picky or desperate, but it had made me mad. Mad at how she could neglect Lucas, not care about him. The day he got his exam results I remember her delivering a swift ‘well done, honey’ before planting a kiss on his forehead and leaving for the night. There was no celebration—no nothing.
It had been my parents who had cheered him on, congratulating him, spoiling both him and Nate because they’d done well.
We’d even taken him away with us on family holidays. It had been inevitable, really.
He’d been gorgeous, athletic and toned, intelligent, a rebel, but never taking it too far—not like Nate, who never knew when to quit. It was always Lucas reining him in, looking out for him.
He’d looked out for me too, and my heart had revelled in it. Loving the way he didn’t disregard my opinion, unlike Dad and Nate, who saw me as just a girl. Lucas made me feel special.
But when his mother had died suddenly things changed. We truly became his family, gave him a home, and as much as Nate was his best friend, and my father a man he respected and could call on for advice, my mother the one to feed, water and look after him, I was Lucas’s ear. It was my turn to be there for him.
I was the one he talked to about how he felt, about his grief which was tainted with guilt at not having been the closest of sons to his mother. But his remorse only succeeded in making me more angry, more protective, as I tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault. She should’ve been a better mother. She should’ve been there for him more.
Like I had been.
Until my eighteenth birthday, that is. Until I pushed him too far.
I was naïve to think he would consider me worth the risk. Naïve to think he could have loved me enough.
I take a shaky breath and duck my head against the bitter cold wind. I know better now. I won’t go there again.
I teeter down the pavement towards home and I shiver. The champagne topped up with wine had been doing a fine job of warding off the chill until now.
How could things have gone so wrong five years ago?
Ten years ago I messed up and he broke my heart.
But five years ago, he and Nate and their business… I just don’t get it.
My parents loved Lucas—Nate loved him. I can’t believe he just bailed on the company, as my father and Nate claim. They hate him for it, but the Lucas I know—I knew—wouldn’t do that. And the anger, the resentment—it’s there on both sides.
If we’re to work together I need to get the full story. I need to know I can trust him. Which means I need Lucas to tell me his side of it. And that means dragging up the past.
I wanted to press Dad at dinner, to be honest and tell him that I suspect Nate of playing a greater role in what went down five years ago. But I didn’t. Instead, Lucas just became the elephant in the room.
A rather sexy, irresistible, fuck-me-now elephant.
I remember how he looked on his knees, his head buried between my legs, and the chill evaporates with a lick of heat. I wonder whether his trunk would be just as impressive as the oversized animal’s…
A surprised laugh erupts over my crazed thoughts.
‘You know, talking to oneself is the first sign of madness.’
Lucas. Oh, God.
I misstep and quickly correct it. Straightening my spine I turn to face him, praying that the low light hides the excitement rising beneath my shock. ‘Technically, I was laughing, and that is a sign of good character…not that you’d know much about that.’
His brow lifts over eyes that flicker and I wonder if my words sting. Guilt fires inside me—it’s a low blow—but I bury it.
‘What are you doing here, Lucas?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious.’
I take a shaky breath and remind myself of the trillion reasons why this needs to stop. ‘I thought I made it clear earlier that we’re even.’
He steps towards me and heat flares with his proximity. My lungs drag in air that is tainted with his cologne.
‘And I told you,’ he murmurs, ‘we’re not…not even close.’
I hear the desire ring in his voice, feel it echo in my blood, and I force myself to turn away, to walk. ‘It’s close enough, Lucas.’
‘That’s not what your eyes were telling me earlier, Evangeline.’
He follows close behind me and I ignore the shiver of delight, wrapping my arms around my middle, hugging my faux fur coat tight.
I can’t tell him that I’m scared of falling for him again. But I can tell him that my family hating him makes this a very bad idea.
But part of me suspects he is doing this because of my family and their vendetta.
I know my product is good enough to warrant his attention, but this—this has nothing to do with my product and everything to do with me.
‘Are you denying that you want me?’
I can hear the disbelief in his voice and it annoys me. Like my father—like my brother, even—he assumes he knows what I want. Is he going to start dictating what’s best for me too?
‘No, I think you know that well enough,’ I admit. There’s no point in lying about the obvious. ‘You knew it ten years ago and you know it all over again now. But here’s the thing, Lucas…’
I turn to face him. My apartment is a building away now. Sanctuary is close. I just need to hold it together a few more moments.
‘I’m not the kid I was then. I won’t jeopardise my work for some…’ I struggle for the right phrase and settle for the easiest, most innocent. ‘Some silly distraction.’
His laugh is low, seductive, and he takes advantage of my stationary state to close the distance between us, reaching out his hand to cup my jaw. I want to move away, to stop the frisson at his touch, but I can’t make my body obey.
His thumb is soft, warm as he brushes it over my cheekbone, and my eyes are lost in the darkness of his, so close I can just make out the rim of brown, the flecks of gold that dance in the snow-white lights adorning the trees that line the street.
‘There’s