It was so comfortable here, Holly thought. She leaned back in her chair and looked at him, trying to sound as though she minded the delay. ‘And heaven knows how long it will take to get the shop looking habitable!’
‘Two weeks, I’ve been told,’ he offered drily. ‘And that’s going to be cutting it fine.’
‘But I can’t stay here for two weeks!’
Luke sipped his coffee, the cloud of steam obscuring the expression in his eyes. ‘Have a problem with that, do you, Holly?’
‘I’ll get in your way—’
‘No, you won’t. I won’t let you. I have a lock on my study door,’ he grinned wolfishly.
Holly shrugged, the idea appealing more by the minute. ‘It just seems a long time for me to impose on your hospitality—but if you’re happy—’
‘I don’t know whether happy is the adjective I would have selected,’ he observed drily. ‘I had planned to spend the next couple of weeks sorting out my uncle’s affairs—not entertaining a house guest.’ Especially such a nubile house guest.
‘Oh, but I won’t need any entertaining!’ she assured him. ‘I’ve got masses to do myself. Paperwork and sewing and finding a florist I can work with. I’ll keep out of your way. I promise.’ It was no idle threat, either. Luke was an unsettling man, tempting and disturbing—and Holly needed that kind of distraction like a hole in the head right now.
He hoped she meant it. Lending her that bathrobe had been a bad idea. In fact, even thinking about that bathrobe was a bad idea. ‘I’ve been on the phone to Doug again this morning. Who assured me that the structural repairs can be done inside forty-eight hours.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Someone will be seeing to that roof right now.’
‘Thank God for that!’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed blandly. ‘Which just leaves decor. If you let me know your colour choices, I’ll make sure that it gets done.’
Holly put her fork down and stared at him. ‘But I thought that I’d be expected to decorate?’
Luke was keen not to come over as a completely soft touch. He told himself that he would behave in exactly the same way if the tenant happened to be a man. ‘And so you would, if the condition of the place wasn’t so disgusting—if it was just a question of cosmetics. But, since it needs more than a face-lift, I’ll agree to decorate it to your specifications. How about fresh white paint everywhere? Sound okay?’
There was a pause. Holly pulled a face. ‘Well, no. Now you come to mention it—not really.’
Denim-blue eyes narrowed. ‘Oh?’
She pushed her plate aside, and leaned across the table towards him. ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, or anything, Luke—but what I envisaged as a colour scheme was something much more dramatic than that. Everyone else is doing white walls and big green plants in pots. But this is going to be the kind of bridal shop that no one will ever forget.’
He didn’t react. ‘Go on.’
‘I wanted a deep, peacock-green wall.’
Luke noted her use of the singular. ‘That’s only one wall,’ he commented.
Sharp of him. She drew in a deep breath, determined that he would be able to visualise the vibrant combinations of colours she had in mind. ‘That’s right—three walls and one window. I’d like another painted in that very rich, intense, almost royal purple—you know the shade.’
‘And the final wall?’ he queried, deadpan. ‘What plans did you have for that—sky—blue pink?’
‘Gold.’ The same glossy gold which touched the tips of his hair.
‘Gold?’
‘Mmm.’ Holly nodded her head enthusiastically. ‘It’s the perfect wedding colour—it symbolises the ring and it suggests pageantry and ceremony. And I want this shop to really stand out!’
He fleetingly wished that she wouldn’t move with such a refreshing lack of inhibition when she got carried away like that. If only she’d wear a bra. Didn’t she realise how ripe and how luscious such sudden movements could make her breasts appear? The hint of their succulent swell against the simple shirt she wore seemed positively indecent.
He swallowed down the erotic fantasies which were beginning to burgeon into life again. ‘Stand out?’ he quizzed mockingly, reflecting that it was a poor choice of phrase, given the circumstances. ‘It will certainly do that!’ He frowned. ‘Though won’t using specialist paints delay your opening—since I imagine that you’ll have to buy the more unusual materials in London?’
Holly shook her head with a smile ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong! There’s a specialist paint shop right in Winchester—we need look no further than there!’
We.
Her easy use of the word caused Luke a moment of chilly disquiet, until he silently chided himself for his out-and-out arrogance. Was he now worried that Holly was getting possessive, or passionate, about him? When there had been nothing in his behaviour—not a word nor a gesture—which she could have interpreted or misinterpreted as some kind of come-on.
Holly saw the way his shoulders stiffened, and she could sense immediately what he was thinking. Her fingers crept up to cover her mouth apologetically. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.’
He shook his head. ‘You weren’t being presumptuous. And we’ll both go into Winchester to choose your paint.’ After all, he was the one who was paying for them’
‘But aren’t you...?’ She found that her words were tripping over themselves, as though they couldn’t quite decide in what order to leave her mouth. ‘Wouldn’t you...?’
He looked into her widened green eyes with something approaching amusement. ‘Wouldn’t I what, Holly?’
‘Wouldn’t you rather be doing something else?’
He most certainly would.
Her words created such a shockingly graphic image in his mind that Luke briefly closed his eyes in despair. It was simply sexual attraction, he told himself over and over again, as if repetition would make it more believable. Nothing more than that—a combustive hormonal reaction which she had provoked in him, and which would fade as inevitably as the sunlight would fade from the afternoon sky. Was she aware of it, too? he wondered. Did it pulse and hum around her, too—the feeling almost palpable?
His mistake had been to take her into his house in the first place. To rush in playing the Good Samaritan, trying to fool himself into minimising the potency of the attraction he felt towards her—as if, by rationalising it, it would go away of its own accord.
Because it wasn’t conveniently disappearing, and he somehow doubted that it would—unless you took sexual attraction through to its natural conclusion, which he had no intention of doing. For how could it disappear, if she continued to haunt him with those emerald eyes and that pale skin, and the careless cascade of coppery curls?
Maybe she was destined to always be one of those ‘if only’ women—if only he’d met her when he’d been in that sowing wild oats stage of his life. Holly Lovelace was enchantingly beautiful with her wild, artistic looks—great for a tempestuous affair, but...
The sooner she was set up in her newly decorated shop and out of his life, the better—and, just in case he was forgetting, he wasn’t in the market for a lover.
‘There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing,’ he lied. ‘And besides, Margaret is coming in to clean the house this morning, so we’ll leave for Winchester just as soon as you’re ready.’
Winchester was crowded.
Luke