He caught her at the door. His long, strong fingers met around her wrist, sending sparks of awareness right up to her armpit and beyond. She looked into his eyes and felt her heart slip sideways. Pain was etched in those green and brown depths—pain and something else that made her blood kick-start in her veins like a shot of pure adrenalin. ‘Don’t go,’ he said in a low, gruff tone.
Molly’s gaze drifted to his mouth. She felt her insides shift, a little clench of longing that was slowly but surely moving through her body.
His body was closer than it had ever been. She felt the warmth of it, the bone-melting temptation of it. She sensed the stirring of his response to her. She couldn’t feel it but she could see it in his eyes as they held hers. It sent an arrow of lust through her. She wanted to feel him against her, to feel his blood surging in response to her closeness. She took a half a step to close the gap between their bodies but he dropped her wrist as if it had suddenly caught fire.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, raking that same hand through his thick hair, leaving crooked finger-width pathways in its wake.
‘It’s fine,’ Molly said, aiming for light and airy but falling miserably short. ‘No harm done.’
‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Molly,’ he said, frowning heavily. ‘Any … connection between us is inadvisable.’
‘Because you don’t mix work with play?’
His eyes were hard and intractable as they clashed with hers. ‘Because I don’t mix emotion with sex.’
‘Who said anything about sex?’ Molly asked.
His worldly look said it all.
‘Right, well … I’m not very good at this, as you can probably tell,’ she said, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. ‘I try to be sophisticated and modern about it all but I guess deep down inside I’m just an old-fashioned girl who wants the fairy-tale.’
‘You’re no different from most women—and most men, for that matter,’ he said. ‘It’s not wrong to want to be happy.’
‘Are you happy, Lucas?’ Molly asked, searching his tightly set features.
His eyes moved away from hers as he moved back to the kitchen. ‘I need to put on the rice,’ he said. ‘You’d better keep an eye on your cat.’
Molly went outside to find Mittens. He wasn’t too happy about being brought back inside, but she lured him back in with a thread she found hanging off her coat. She closed the door once he was inside and went back to where Lucas was washing the rice for the rice cooker. ‘What can I do to help?’ she said. ‘Shall I set the table in the dining room?’
‘I don’t use the dining room,’ he said. ‘I usually eat in here.’
‘Seems a shame to have such a lovely dining room and never use it,’ Molly said. ‘Don’t you ever have friends over for dinner parties?’
He gave a shrug and pressed the start button on the cooker. ‘Not my scene, I’m afraid.’
‘Do you have a housekeeper?’
‘A woman comes once a week to clean,’ he said. ‘I don’t make much mess, or at least I try not to. I wouldn’t have bothered getting anyone but Gina needed the work. Her husband left her to bring up a couple of kids on her own. She’s reliable and trustworthy.’
Molly cradled her wine in her hands. ‘Do you have a current girlfriend?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘I’m between appointments, so to speak.’
She angled her head at him. ‘What sort of women do you usually date?’
His eyes collided with hers. ‘Why do you ask?’
Molly gave a little shrug. ‘Just wondering.’
‘I’m not a prize date, by any means,’ he said after another long moment. ‘I hate socialising. I hate parties. I don’t drink more than one glass of alcohol.’
‘Not every woman wants to party hard,’ she pointed out.
He studied her unwaveringly for a moment. ‘Not very many women just want to have sex and leave it at that.’
Molly felt a wave of heat rise up in her body. ‘Is that all you want from a partner?’ she asked. ‘Just sex and nothing else?’
Had she imagined his eyes looking hungrily at her mouth for a microsecond? Desire clenched tight in her core as his gaze tethered hers in a sensually charged lock. ‘It’s a primal need like food and shelter,’ he said. ‘It’s programmed into our genes.’
Molly was more aware of her primal needs than she had ever been. Her body was screaming with them, and had been from the moment she had laid eyes on him on the street the other day. It still was a shock to her that she was reacting so intensely to him. She had never thought herself a particularly passionate person. But when she was around him she felt stirrings and longings that were so fervent they felt like they would override any other consideration.
‘We’re surely far more evolved and civilised than to respond solely to our basest needs?’ she said.
His eyes grazed her mouth. ‘Some of us, perhaps.’
The atmosphere tightened another notch.
‘So how do you get your primal needs met?’ Molly asked with a brazen daring she could hardly believe she possessed. ‘Do you drag women back here by the hair and have your wicked way with them?’
This time his gaze went to her hair. She felt every strand of it lift away from her scalp like a Mexican wave. Hot tingles of longing raced along her backbone. She felt a stirring in her breasts; a subtle tightening that made her aware of the lace that supported them. Her heart picked up its pace, a tippity-tap-tap beat that reverberated in her feminine core.
His eyes came back to hers, holding them, searing them, penetrating them. ‘I’m not going to have my wicked way with you, Molly,’ he said.
‘But you want to.’ Oh, dear God, had she really just said that? Molly thought.
‘I’d have to be comatose not to want you,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to act on it. Not in this lifetime.’
Molly felt an acute sense of disappointment but tried to cover it by playing it light. ‘Glad we got that out of the way,’ she said, and picked up her wine. ‘You’re not really my type in any case.’
A short silence passed.
‘Aren’t you going to ask what my type is?’ she asked. ‘Oh, no, wait. I remember. You already have an opinion on that, don’t you?’
‘You want someone strong and dependable, loyal and faithful,’ he said. ‘Someone who’ll stick by you no matter what. Someone who’ll want kids and has good moral values in order to raise them.’
Molly raised her brows in mock surprise. ‘Not such a bad guess. I didn’t know you knew me so well.’
‘You’re like an open book, Molly.’
She dropped her gaze from his. He was seeing far too much as it was. ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.
‘The guest bathroom is just along from the library.’
As Molly came back from the bathroom she took a quick peek at the library. It was a reader’s dream of a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stacked with old editions of the classics with a good selection of modern titles. The scent of books and furniture polish gave the room a homely, comfortable feel. She ran her fingers along the