Luke watched her obsessively, though he was doing his best not to, and wondered just why he had allowed a situation such as the one he now found himself in to develop. Was he merely being protective towards her? Or was he arrogant enough to imagine himself immune to that colt-like beauty of hers?
Holly felt that she ought to say something formal. Something which would remind her that, however kind he was, and however friendly, he remained her landlord—and that he had never shown the remotest sign of wishing to change that relationship. And from today that relationship would change irrevocably, whether she wanted it to or not. Because she would no longer be living with him and that would automatically create a distance between them.
She cleared her throat. ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Luke. I mean that. Today was a big success—I hope!—and I could never have pulled it off if I’d had to handle everything on my own. I probably wouldn’t have opened until late summer—and spent most of my capital beforehand. So thanks.’
‘It was my pleasure—and I mean that.’ There was a pause while he considered the wisdom of his next words, but something more powerful than reason made him say them anyway. ‘I’m going to miss you, Holly.’
‘Will you?’ She turned to him with pleasure and surprise.
‘Of course I will. You’re very good company.’
Holly gave a slightly woozy smile. ‘So are you. And I’ll miss you, too.’
‘Do you suppose we’re what’s known as a mutual admiration society?’ He laughed, and his blue eyes crinkled at the corners.
‘I suppose we are,’ said Holly breathlessly. He was looking at her in a way that made her heart patter erratically, her skin prickle with heat and excitement. It was as though her body had shifted into a gear she didn’t recognise.
He lifted up the bottle. ‘Here—have some more champagne.’
‘Do you really think I should?’
‘Oh, I really do,’ he teased, remorselessly slamming the door shut on his doubts.
‘Okay, then.’ She held her glass out languidly while he topped it up in a cascade of creamy foam, shifting her legs comfortably as she sipped it. Though the oddest thing about champagne was that the more you drank, the thirstier you got. Holly put her head back and sighed dreamily. Everything was too good to be true. Her shop was going to be a success—she just knew it was—and sitting opposite her was the most gorgeous man she had ever met. She was floating on a sea of happiness and champagne bubbles.
Luke wished that she wouldn’t sit like that. Well, part of him did. The other part of him wanted to replay every movement she had made in slow motion. The tiny cream overskirt had ridden right the way up her legs, and it was proving an extremely distracting sight. He cast around for a safe topic, something which would lead his thoughts away from the milky-white heaven of her thighs. ‘So does this feel like home yet?’ he asked.
The words were blurted out before she could stop them. ‘It does with you here.’
Luke’s eyes glinted dangerously. Wasn’t she aware that when she said something as silkily as that, with those big green eyes widening up at him like a cat’s, he wanted to capture that rosebud mouth of hers and to spend the rest of the night kissing it?
Go, said a voice in his head. Go, now. Before something happens. Before it’s too late.
But, for the first time since his teens, desire took precedence over wisdom. His throat felt as though it had been constricted by a vice. Every word a victory. ‘Oh?’ he asked unsteadily.
Holly shrugged, drained her glass and put it down on the fireplace. ‘I’ve kind of got used to having you around, I suppose. And these last few days...’ She hesitated, aware that, if she was totally honest with him, she might come over as weak. And pathetic.
‘These last few days....what?’ he prompted.
‘Well, they’ve been easy. Relaxed. Civilised.’
‘Civilised?’ he laughed.
‘Sure.’ She nodded passionately, too tempted by the clear blue light in his eyes not to lay her feelings bare. ‘When I was a student I lived in houses which were too cold and too crowded,’ and when I was a child I lived in lots of different houses Houses where I was a stranger—tolerated simply because whoever owned the house really only wanted my mother. I never felt I fitted in—not anywhere. I used to have dreams about proper houses with proper fires, where people made proper meals and ate them sitting at proper tables. Storybook houses that I never really believed in. Except...‘ and her voice went very quiet ’...that yours was exactly like that.’
There was silence while he thought about the import of what she had just told him. Did she not realise just how potent was the power of her vulnerability? The enormous compliment she had just paid him? She was an enigma—with the face and the body of a sorceress and the trusting vulnerability of a little girl. So which was the real Holly Lovelace?
Had he been weak to come up here, or merely foolish Luke wondered if she could see the tussle on his face. Wondered whether she was deliberately tucking her legs up beneath her like that, so that the movement not only emphasised their length, but also drew attention to the pert thrust of her breasts. His hands felt shaky, his mouth as dry as tinder and, all the while, there was the slow, painful build-up of desire.
He diverted his thoughts by focussing on her words instead of her body. ‘Then yours is an upbringing I can identify with,’ he told her. ‘Only mine was the more institutionalised version of solitary confinement.’
Her hand stilled over the peanuts. ‘Tell me.’
The women he had known had not wanted to hear sad stories about dispossessed little boys—they’d wanted hard, strong bodies and hands that knew exactly how best to please them. He shook his head, aware of the dangers m baring a soul which necessity had clothed in secrecy many years before.
‘Everyone knows what British boarding-schools are like,’ he said dismissively.
‘Not unless they’ve been to one, they don’t. And I haven’t. So I don’t. Tell me, Luke!’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a system which works well on many levels,’ he conceded levelly. ‘So it isn’t necessarily bad—just different.’
Holly smiled. ‘It’s okay—you don’t have to defend the status quo to me, you know.’
She was chipping away with her persistence, each soft word exposing the hard, cold core of pain he had hidden away for so long.
‘So which particular aspect would you like me to reveal to you?’ he demanded. ‘The isolation? The lack of physical warmth? The total lack of time to just sit and think? The disgusting food? The freezing dormitories? The even more freezing early-morning showers which followed the equally freezing cross-country runs?’
‘You must have been pretty fit,’ she observed slowly, and cast him a long look from beneath lashes which could not quite obscure the glittering of her eyes.
Luke started. Of all the things she could have said... He had expected and been dreading the kind of cloying sympathy which most women seemed so comfortable with. Not a light, teasing kind of comment delivered with a little glint in her eye which made the slow pulsing of his desire escalate into an insistent pounding.
This was a game he was familiar with...
He bent his legs, just in case his exquisite hardness would be revealed to damn him. He needed to get out of here fast, but first he needed to kill that desire stone dead. And the only way he could think of doing that was by getting Holly and her long, long legs out of his line of vision.
‘How about some coffee?’ he suggested throatily, as his vocal cords joined in with his body’s conspiracy by telling her how much he wanted her.