“Lucan?”
Even the sound of Becca’s voice, husky from sleep, made his cock throb. So much so, he had no idea what they had been talking about before his mind drifted off into the fantasy of having Becca lying naked in bed beside him.
“We’re in the south of England,” he supplied unhelpfully.
Becca frowned. “But… If that’s correct, then it shouldn’t have taken us this long to get here.”
He nodded. “I drove around for the first few hours, to make sure we weren’t being followed.”
She didn’t comment on his paranoia, but instead glanced outside into the darkness as he drove the SUV over something metal. “Was that a cattle grid we just drove over? South of England… Are we in the New Forest?” she demanded excitedly.
Lucan scowled his frustration. “You know the New Forest?”
“I’ve been here dozens of times,” she confirmed. “My foster parents, Joan and David, own a cottage in Lyndhurst. We came here all the time at weekends to go hiking when I was still living with them.”
Fuck his life right now!
He’d had zero intel on Becca’s day-to-day life the past eight years, just the basic facts of her living with her foster parents, attending university, and then her job at the museum. The security guards at Steele Plaza had told him of her movements the past nine months. During that time, her life seemed to revolve around her work and apartment. Knowing there was no boyfriend to become concerned by her disappearance was a definite plus, especially so in view of Lucan’s physical reaction to her.
But he knew very little about Becca’s life in England before nine months ago.
Which was why he had ended up bringing Becca to the one place she had visited repeatedly while living with her foster parents.
He knew from Hailey that she and her sister had inherited half of their mother’s vast fortune once they reached the age of eighteen, which was why, as a lowly historian in an art museum, Becca was able to live in one of the luxury apartments at Steele Plaza.
He sighed. “Okay, I’m too tired to drive anywhere else tonight, so you’re going to have to leave me with the illusion you have no idea where we are,” he bit out determinedly. “Does that sound okay to you?”
She grinned at him in the semidarkness. “Admit it, you’re starting to like me.”
Starting to like her? Lucan liked Becca so much, he needed to wear a size bigger jeans just to accommodate his constant arousal.
“I don’t need to like you to protect you,” he dismissed coldly, and then felt like shit when he saw the brief flicker of hurt in her expression before she quickly masked it. “But it helps, yes,” he added gently and was rewarded with a slight lessening of the tension in Becca’s shoulders.
She brightened. “So where in the forest are we going?”
“Wherever it is, we’re there.” Lucan made a sharp turn off the rutted track, driving the SUV down an even narrower and more uneven terrain, before parking the car next to a barely visible thatch-roofed cottage amongst the trees.
“Wow,” Becca managed to observe before Lucan turned off the headlights and they were thrown into complete darkness. Even the stars in the sky weren’t visible through the thick clouds overhead. “I hope you have— Ah, you do,” she murmured as Lucan switched on a torch.
She felt a slight shiver down the length of her spine, not due to the brisk evening air, once she had climbed out of the SUV.
No, the shiver was completely because she had just realized she was completely alone here with a man she had met only a matter of hours ago. A man who admitted to being suspicious and untrusting until proven otherwise.
But also a man who almost kissed me while pressing his aroused cock against my pussy.
That really wasn’t reassuring.
Especially once Becca admitted how much she, and her pussy, had wished he had kissed her.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?” she prompted as she followed Lucan over to where he was unlocking the tiny front door.
“As long as it takes,” he came back unhelpfully as he pushed the door open and shone the torch inside for her to enter.
Becca scowled at him. “You are seriously starting to piss me off.”
He grinned. “So not starting to like me back, then?”
“No!”
He shrugged. “That’s what usually happens when people get to know me better.”
“No need to sound so damned proud of yourself,” she muttered. “Can you turn on the lights, or are we going to keep stumbling about in the dark until morning?” she snapped impatiently as she almost fell over a piece of furniture, a small sofa, it felt like.
“I just need to check the blackout blinds are all in place before we turn on any lights.”
Becca was left alone and in complete darkness as Lucan stepped away and took the only light with him.
Chapter Six
“How long have you owned this place?” Becca prompted fifteen minutes later when Lucan returned from going outside to collect and bring in several bags from the SUV.
In those fifteen minutes, Lucan had checked the blackout blinds, upstairs as well as downstairs, switched on the generator outside, and returned to turn on the lights downstairs. He had also started a fire in the small grate in the sitting room area of the completely open-plan downstairs of the cottage.
Becca had thought of asking him if the smoke from the fire wouldn’t give away their presence here, but she was too cold to want to risk him deciding she was right and putting it out again.
“What makes you think I own it?” He sounded guarded.
She shrugged. “It looks as if it belongs to you. Very minimalistic,” she added when he continued to frown.
“It’s been mine for a while,” he confirmed as he carried several of the bags into the kitchen area and began to unpack the food from inside them. “I don’t like closed-in spaces,” he reminded, explaining the lack of walls downstairs.
Becca nodded. “I remember.”
“I have a feeling there’s very little you forget,” he muttered.
“True. What do you have in these other bags?” she asked to change the subject.
He shrugged as he began to put some of the food into the fridge. “Clothes and toiletries for both of us. And don’t worry.” He turned to mock. “There are two bedrooms upstairs, one for you and one for me.”
“I wasn’t in the least worried,” she assured him dryly. “If there was only one bedroom, then I’m sure you could have made yourself comfortable on the couch.”
Lucan stared at her for several seconds, and then his expression changed from harsh derision to humor as he let out a distinctly rusty-sounding laugh.
Becca’s heart pounded as that laughter transformed his face from its normal coldness and, she now knew, mainly defensive arrogance, to a warm pleasure. It was a relaxed look that made him appear years younger.
Dear God, was it still too early for her to have developed Stockholm Syndrome? Because her heart really didn’t feel as if it was going to settle down into a steady rhythm any time soon.
Becca turned away to start looking in the bags left in the sitting area. The first one seemed to have several items of male clothing in it, presumably meant for Lucan. Her jaw dropped when she looked in the second bag and saw several new jumpers and another pair of jeans, all in her size. Plus a couple of lacy bras and half a dozen pairs of panties, again in her size. There was also a blue satin nightgown. Toiletries such as shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, and a shower gel. All in the same brands she had in her apartment.
Her gaze returned to the satin nightgown, lacy bras, and panties. “How did you know what size I am?”
“By looking, of course,” he dismissed distractedly, all humor gone as he now studied the contents of the food he had unpacked into the fridge. “Are you hungry? I can cook us both a steak and baked potato for dinner, if you are.”
Becca didn’t know what she was right now.
Considerin
g she’d had no lunch and it was now eight o’clock at night Becca accepted she probably was hungry. But the strangeness of this situation made her too jittery to think about eating. She was alone, in a particularly rugged and uninhabited part of the New Forest, with a man who freely admitted to being paranoid but had also gone shopping for toiletries and clothes for her. The former all her normal brands and the latter including several pretty lace bras and matching panties.
It was surreal.
“Looking?” she repeated woodenly.
Lucan gave her a glance. “You’re obviously a UK size eight, and wear a thirty-two D-cup bra.”
Becca opened her mouth and then closed it again when she realized she had no answer, because both those measurements were correct.
She cleared her throat before speaking. “And how did you know to buy my normal toiletries?”
“Lucky guess?”
“Like hell.” She dismissed his too-innocent expression. “You’ve been in my apartment, haven’t you?” she accused. “If your brother let you in, do you know how many tenant violations that is? I could have both of you—”
“I went through your trash.” Lucan’s gaze was challenging.
Becca stared at him. “You. Went. Through. My. Trash?”
He nodded. “You can tell a lot about a person from their trash.”
“And what did you learn about me?”
“That you’re very good at recycling,” he stated evenly. “There was also a receipt in one of the bags from your last visit to the supermarket. Obviously, it was replace-your-toiletries week,” he derided. “Although you really shouldn’t throw away receipts with part of your credit card number on them,” he reproved.
Was it possible to feel violated because someone—Lucan—had gone through her trash?
Becca decided it was. “I’ll take your advice under consideration,” she snapped. “Now, where and when did you buy these things if, as you say, you’ve only known about protecting me since yesterday evening?”
He closed the fridge door before turning to face her. “Once you were safely locked away in your apartment last night, I checked the trash and then went to the same supermarket which, it turns out, is more like a superstore. They pretty much sold everything, so I was able to buy us both some changes of clothes and toiletries, as well as the food.”
Becca still felt completely unsettled, both by this man having gone through her trash and by his ability to be spot on in regard to what size clothing she wore. It was too…intimate. Somehow felt as if he had invaded her personal space in a way she really wasn’t comfortable with.
She lifted her chin and met his dark gaze head-on. “You know what? I think I would prefer to just go up to bed than eat. It’s been a long day.”
Lucan bit back his frustration. He had no idea what he’d done to cause this sudden shutdown inside Becca after she had minutes ago shown such understanding of his feelings of claustrophobia in confined spaces that most people completely overlooked.
Damn it, he really was no good at this conversation thing.
He stepped out of the kitchen area to walk toward her in slow and measured steps. He felt like a predator attempting not to startle or frighten a skittish deer. “What did I do or say wrong?” he prompted softly once he was standing in front of her.
“Kidnapping me and bringing me here, and refusing to tell me all the details as to why you have, isn’t enough reason for me to want to be alone for a while to just think?” she scorned.
He considered for a moment. “No, because we pretty much discussed that earlier and moved on. Something I did or said in the past few minutes is the reason you now want to shut yourself away from me rather than eat dinner, even though you must be as hungry as I am.”
Becca frowned. “You’re very astute for a kidnapper.”
Lucan drew in a long, steadying breath. “I haven’t kidnapped you.”
“Did I leave the museum with you willingly?”
“You wisely decided not to fight me on it.”
“Did I agree to come to the New Forest with you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Can I leave when I want to?”
“For your own safety, it would be better—”
“Ding, three strikes and you’re out,” she taunted.
“Fucking hell!” Lucan bit out his annoyance. “You have to be the most frustrating woman I’ve ever met!”
“Back atcha, Sunshine.”
“You— Sunshine?”
“It’s called irony,” she mocked. “If you don’t know what that means, I suggest you look it up in a dictionary.”
Lucan’s eyes narrowed. “I know what it means. I may not have gone to university full-time for four years like you did, but I did study and get a degree while I was in the army.”
“In?”
“War Studies.”
Becca nodded. “Figures.”
He shrugged. “I took the course that was most useful to me. Then and now,” he challenged. “And, believe it or not, I’ve smiled and laughed more in the past eight hours I’ve spent with you than I normally would in a week.”
“At me or with me?” she scorned.
“With you.”
“It’s pretty sad you don’t laugh or smile more often, because when you do you look really…” Becca broke off when she realized she had been about to tell him how much his smile transformed his face—from merely handsome to devastatingly so. No, really not going there!
He shrugged. “It’s just the way it is.”
“And always has been?”
“No,” he acknowledged heavily.
She could guess exactly when things had changed for this quietly brooding man. A man who had lived in his own silence and filth for six months interspersed with tormenting jibes and torture. No wonder he’d had a problem relaxing enough to genuinely smile and laugh since.
He drew in a deep breath. “Becca, I’m doing the best that I can with what I have to work with, okay?”
“But you still won’t tell me who hired you.”
“I told you, I was asked to protect you, not being paid to do so. And no, I can’t reveal by whom right now.”
She shook her head. “Then I’m afraid I still can’t trust you either.”
He drew in a sharp breath before nodding. “As long as I have your word you won’t try to leave here without me, I’ll live with that lack of trust.”
She stared up at him searchingly for several long seconds before she sighed deeply, all the fight seeming to drain out of her. “You have my word.”
After all, what choice did she have but to accept what this man was telling her. There was no denying Ernesto Silva had been released from prison, and it wasn’t exactly hard to believe he intended to hunt her down now that Cassie was no longer here for him to punish for his twin’s death.
“I’m sorry.” She smiled wanly. “But I’m really not good company right now.”
Lucan lifted his hands to cradle her cheeks as he tilted her face up to his so he could look deeply into her eyes. He saw confusion and something else. Something he couldn’t put a name to. “Tell me what I did wrong,” he encouraged gruffly.
Her gaze now avoided meeting his. “It’s silly, after everything else that’s happened today, but it totally freaked me out knowing you went through my trash so you could buy my favorite toiletries and then picked out new clothes for me.”
Lucan considered that Becca hadn’t even known of his existence when he went shopping for those clothes and toiletries for her.
Creepy.
How would he have felt if the roles had been reversed?
She had already thrown out the trash, so he couldn’t see that being the problem.
It was the clothes, then.
He might have been okay with her choosing new jeans and tops for him, but if Becca had bought new boxers for him, he might feel a bit weirded out about that too.
Or so aroused, knowing she must have imagined me wearing them, I might not ha
ve been able to get them on over my erection.
“The underwear was just one step too far, hmm?” he prompted gently.
“It shouldn’t be.”
“But it is?”
“Yes.”
Lucan nodded. “I’ll take you shopping in the nearest town tomorrow, and you can choose your own stuff, okay?”
Becca looked at him, not sure if he was just humoring her. All she could see in his expression was apology and a sincerity to appease. “Is it safe for us to do that if Silva is looking for me?”
“Hopefully, yes. Silva himself is on his way to Scotland right now. I took the precaution of driving around for a while in case he’d hired anyone to watch you, but I saw no evidence of us being followed.”
And if this cautious man hadn’t seen anyone following them, then Becca was inclined to believe no one had. “What false lead is Silva following?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Becca had seen a shutter come down over the expression in Lucan’s eyes when he answered her. Meaning he had just lied to her? But how could Silva be following anything else but a false lead when Becca was here?
“Lucan—”
“I really would feel better if you had something to eat before going to bed,” he stated briskly. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen area and help me prepare the food? I’m okay at the basic stuff, like steak, but I bet you would make a nicer-looking salad than me.”
Becca eyed him scathingly. “Why do I have the feeling you’re indulging me?”
He snorted. “I have no idea, because my brothers would tell you it isn’t a trait I’m known for either.”
Becca took the makings for the salad out of the fridge and began to wash it while Lucan prepared the baked potatoes to go in the microwave and started to cook the steak. “Will I ever get to meet the other five Steele brothers, do you think?”
“Do you want to meet them?” Lucan hedged, knowing full well, when Haydn and Hailey were married—and, knowing his brother, it was when, not if—Becca would become a permanent part of their lives too. Once that happened, Becca would have a problem keeping them all out of her life.
Lucan (Steele Protectors 6) Page 5