‘Well, I just think we should lay down some boundary lines.’
‘Agreed.’ He held up both hands with a wicked grin that seem to utterly contradict what he had just said. ‘Shall we have a spot of breakfast and then put our skiing skills to the test? The weather looks perfect. We could save the boundary line conversation for a little later.’ He watched her hesitate, wondering whether to carry on the argument, maybe add to the ‘boundary line’ suggestion, but in the end the thought of taking to the slopes proved too much of a temptation and she smiled, her good humour restored.
Inexperienced.
Vulnerable.
He should be laying down more than just a few boundaries himself. He should be the one warning her off. He had the instincts of a born predator when it came to women and, however much she amused him, the last thing he wanted was for her somehow to get it into her head that he might be a worthwhile replacement for the vanishing ex-fiancé. The guy was obviously a complete loser, and she was well rid of him, but transference was a dangerous possibility and a complication he could do without.
As are women who have romantic notions of love and marriage, a little voice added. A complication he could do without...
* * *
Milly’s face was flushed with happiness when, several hours later, they returned to the lodge.
The day’s skiing had been exhausting, exhilarating, wonderful. It had been over a year since she had last taken to the slopes. The real slopes. She had managed to keep her hand in by going as often as she could to the nearest dry slopes, but nothing could come close to the feeling of euphoria when, poised at the very top of the mountain, you looked down to the naked, white beauty of snow-covered slopes. It was the closest you could get to your mind being empty, with just you and the infinite snowy space around you, your whole body yearning for the thrill of speed.
They had raced. She was good but he’d made her look like an amateur. He knew where to go to avoid all crowds. He would, she supposed. He would know these ranges like the back of his hand.
Dressed completely in black, including a black woolly hat and dark sunglasses, he was unbearably sexy, and she’d found her gaze drifting back to him repeatedly.
He moved as though he had been born to ski. He was skilled, fast, at times disappearing to reappear like a speeding bullet far ahead of her on the slopes.
They’d broken off for lunch at a tiny café nowhere near the hubbub of the town centre. This café was in the opposite direction, and there wasn’t a single designer shop in sight—unlike the town centre, which heaved with rich and famous people spending money in the expensive shops that had sprung up to cater for their exclusive clientele.
Milly had loved it. She had never felt more relaxed as she’d sipped hot coffee and told him all about her childhood, her love of sports, the football team she supported. She’d told him about being brought up by her grandmother, the way it made you feel vulnerable to being left by the people you love.
It was weird but she knew that if she had met him under more normal circumstances there was no way she would ever have approached him. But here, things were different. She was recuperating from the humiliation of a broken heart, and he was the objective listening ear who didn’t know her and so was not interested in tea and sympathy. In fact, he made no mention of Robbie except, when he could sense her drifting off, to tell her that the guy was a loser and she was better off without losers in her life.
‘Tough times make you stronger,’ had been his bracing observation when she had mentioned the uphill struggle of having to return to London to find work so that she could pay the rent on a house she couldn’t really afford unless she found another lodger pronto.
Everything about him was as sexy as hell and by the end of the day she had stopped trying to pretend that she didn’t want to just keep looking at him. She had stopped trying to figure out how it was that she could be broken-hearted and yet still open to his incredible, mind-blowing, raw animal magnetism...
Their joint love of skiing had banished her nerves. When she was moving on the snow, she was no longer the small, round red-haired girl who couldn’t hold a candle to the tall glamorous models men found attractive. No, when she was skiing, she was at the top of her game and bursting with self-confidence.
* * *
Lucas had planned to stay no more than two nights at the ski lodge.
It was all the time he could spare. His high-octane life did not leave room for impromptu holidays. The impulse to go to the ski lodge where the isolation and privacy would recharge his batteries had been a good one.
The unexpected presence of Milly, her freshness and openness, had turned out to be even better for recharging his batteries.
By the second day, he had already made up his mind to take a couple more days off.
What was the point in having highly paid executives in place if you needed to hold their hand every time a decision had to be made? They could all do without him for a few days. Some of them could definitely do with an injection of backbone.
The truth was that he was enjoying himself. He was even enjoying his self-imposed rule of looking but not touching. He liked the way she coloured when he occasionally flirted with her. He liked the challenge of restraint when, the more he saw of her, the more he wanted to see. He liked her openness and he liked the way she confided, her pretty face pink and open and earnest.
The joy of restraint, however, was the certain knowledge that it could be broken at any given moment in time.
She fancied him. He had picked that up with finely tuned antennae: the way she sneaked sultry, stolen glances at him; the way she stilled whenever he got within a certain radius, as though ordering her body not to betray what she was feeling.
Her attempts to keep her distance were like constant gauntlets being thrown down. His libido, jaded after a diet of the same type of woman, was being tested to its absolute limit.
It was invigorating.
It made him think that he had not faced up to any sort of challenge for a very long time. He had flatlined. He made money, more than he could ever hope to spend in a lifetime. He owned things and occasionally even enjoyed some of his possessions. And he had women. However many he wanted and whatever variety he chose.
He was keeping his hands to himself but his determination to keep in mind that she didn’t play by his rules, that she had been hurt once and he didn’t want to be responsible for adding to the tally, was beginning to fray round the edges.
Right now, she was downstairs cooking something. It would be good. She would be moving around the kitchen in clothes that showed off a body she seemed to have downgraded to the lowest possible rating, despite the fact there wasn’t a red-blooded man on this earth who wouldn’t have appreciated those generous breasts, that tiny waist and those womanly hips.
Wouldn’t it do her good to have a man—a real man, not a wimp like the vanishing ex—tell her how sexy she was?
Wouldn’t it do her self-confidence a power of good for her to know what it felt like to be desired? From what he had read between the lines, the ex had been a waste of space from day one. They had met, gone to the movies, gone on walks, enjoyed meals out. From where he was standing, it had been a courtship that had shrieked ‘boring’—and most women with a little more about them would have picked that up and moved on after deadly date number four.
But Milly hadn’t and, now that fate had seen fit to bring them together for a few days, wouldn’t he be doing her a favour if he showed her that she was a desirable woman? If he conclusively proved to her that she was well rid of the man, that she could have any guy she wanted...?
With the logical, clear-minded and concise brain any lawyer would kill for, Lucas made a mental list of all the many reasons why he could be justified in sleeping with her.
At the very end, he tacked