by Helen Brooks
‘Aunty Maggie bought them for me.’ Great dark eyes locked with silver. ‘And Father Christmas brought my slippers. He brought me lots and lots of presents.’
‘Lucky old you.’ Lucas made a funny face. ‘He didn’t bring me anything.’
Melody giggled conspiratorially. ‘That’s because you’re a grown-up, silly.’
‘Oh, is that what it was? I did wonder.’
Melody giggled some more, moving to stand close to his chair with one tiny hand on his knee. ‘You can have one of my chocolates if you like,’ she offered solemnly. ‘I had a big tin and Mummy only lets me have one every night because she wants me to have no fillings in my teeth.’
‘Wise Mummy.’
There were all manner of alarm bells going off in Kim’s mind but before she could say anything Lucas had bent down and lifted Melody onto his lap, his voice a stage whisper as he said, ‘What I would really like is for you to show me that snowman. Would that be okay with you?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Melody had wound one arm round his neck, her small face close to his as she whispered back, ‘His name is Mr Snow. I named him that.’
‘I can’t think of a better name.’
She didn’t like this. She didn’t like this at all. Kim had combed out her severe office braid and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt before going into the garden with Melody, and now she flicked back her heavy fall of hair, her voice sharp as she said, ‘Show Mr Kane the snowman and then it’s bedtime, sweetheart.’
‘Lucas.’ It was quiet and even but something in his tone set Kim’s heart hammering. ‘You can call me Lucas, Melody.’
‘But Mummy said…’
‘Yes?’ Melody had turned to look across at Kim confusedly. ‘What did Mummy say?’ Lucas asked softly.
‘She said I had to call you Mr Kane because it’s polite.’
‘And Mummy is right,’ Lucas said silkily. ‘But now I’ve said I want you to call me Lucas it’s polite to do that, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Melody wriggled happily, clearly captivated, and Kim silently ground her teeth in impotent rage. Who did he think he was, muscling in here, talking his way into a meal and then countermanding her instructions to her daughter? And then she remembered the reason for his call and the rage subsided as quickly as it had flared into life.
She had committed an unforgivable mistake and he would have had every right to storm in here tonight crying for blood. Instead he had been amazingly calm and reasonable. She didn’t know what he was going to say to her once they were alone, but she couldn’t fault his attitude in front of Melody. So…she owed him a little latitude.
She kept repeating that to herself when he stood to his feet in the next instant and wrapped Melody in his overcoat before the three of them paid brief homage to Mr Snow, Melody’s stringy arms tight round Lucas’s broad neck, but she drew the line at Melody’s request that Lucas read her a bedtime story.
‘No story tonight, sweetheart.’ She took Melody from Lucas at the bottom of the stairs once they were inside the cottage again, handing him his coat with a tight smile. ‘Mr Kane and I have some important work things to discuss, so you’ve got to promise Mummy you’ll be a good girl and go straight to sleep tonight.’
‘Aw…’ Melody pouted, peering at Kim from under her eyelashes, but when she saw her mother’s face was adamant she gave in with her usual good humour and Kim was downstairs again within two or three minutes.
She paused at the sitting room door before opening it, her stomach turning over, and then smoothed down her sweatshirt and wiped suddenly clammy hands on her jeans. If he was going to shout and scream he would have done so immediately, wouldn’t he? But it wasn’t just that possibility that was churning her insides and she knew it.
‘You have a charming daughter.’ Lucas was standing at the window as she entered the room and Kim’s heart took a mighty jump as he turned to face her. ‘She’s a credit to you.’
‘Thank you.’ Kim stood just inside the door, uncertain of whether to sit or continue standing. This was her home, her little castle, but she felt as though she were the guest, she told herself crossly. How did he make her feel like that?
‘Can she remember her father at all?’
It wasn’t what she had expected him to say and he read the knowledge in the darkening of her velvet brown eyes. Perhaps he shouldn’t bring the subject of her husband up again, Lucas acknowledged silently, but he needed to know much more about this reserved, honey-skinned, golden-haired woman and he had a distinct advantage tonight while she was feeling bad about the report. He felt no remorse in thinking this way; in the early days of his joining the family firm his father had taught him always to look for the weak spot in one’s opponent and capitalise on it, and he’d found he had a natural aptitude for such ruthlessness.
And Kim was an opponent. He didn’t know quite how it had happened but he knew instinctively it was the case. For some reason she saw him as the enemy and it was grating more and more with every day that passed.
‘Her father?’ Kim thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans, her face tense. ‘No, she can’t remember Graham.’
‘Come and sit down, Kim.’ Lucas indicated the sofa as he walked over to the chair he had vacated earlier, and again it was as if he were the host and she the guest.
She sat down on the very edge of the cushions but as he drew his chair at an angle to the sofa it brought him much too close and so she shifted back in the seat, moving slightly away as she did so. ‘I’m very sorry about the report, Lucas.’ Her voice was tight and formal. ‘If it’s in the wrong envelope I know what damage it might do, so the offer stands about my resignation.’
He stared at her for a moment, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, although he was careful not to touch her. The warm fragrance of her nearness invaded his air space and his senses were registering how much younger she looked with her hair loose about her shoulders, uninhibited even. But looks were deceptive. He could feel the tension in her like a live thing, keeping him at bay.
‘I joined Kane Electrical straight from university and I was as green as they come,’ Lucas said quietly, his deep, slightly husky voice with its trace of an accent causing her nerve endings to quiver. ‘But I was keen.’
He smiled at her, the silver-grey eyes wrinkling at the edges, and Kim forced herself to smile back although it was just a movement of her mouth. He had rolled up his sleeves while she had been out of the room and his muscled forearms were covered in a liberal dusting of black silky hair, and in the position in which he was sitting—with his dark head close to hers and the tanned jawline dark with a day’s growth of stubble—it was impossible to ignore his flagrant masculinity.
‘My father is a cautious Englishman and my mother a fiery and impetuous Colombian, so I’ve had to learn to temper my mother’s explosive genes and perhaps take more risks on the paternal side. It works…mostly.’
Kim nodded. So that was where the echo of an accent came from. His mother.
‘However…’ Lucas paused, aware he had her interest. ‘In my first year of working for my father, my mother’s genes were rampant. I prefer that as an excuse than the foolishness of crass youth. I took a risk, a big risk, off my own back. There was no real need for it, I guess, but perhaps I felt the need to prove myself. I don’t know. Anyway, it was a mistake, a huge one; it nearly broke us. It makes your slip-up very meagre in comparison. I never made that mistake again.’
He was looking at her very closely, his eyes intently searching her wide-eyed face. ‘You will never make the same mistake again, Kim,’ he said very softly, and somehow she got the impression he was talking about more than her blunder with the report.
Kim drew in a deep breath, fighting the sudden and unwelcome tears that were pricking at the back of her eyes. ‘It’s…it’s very good of you to look at it like that,’ she managed faintly, keeping strictly to the matter of the day and refusing to acknowledge any hidden connotations in what he was saying. ‘But I’m awa
re it could be very embarrassing for you.’
‘I’m not easily embarrassed.’ He smiled, an unconsciously sexy quirk to his hard firm mouth, and the breath caught in her throat.
The flickering glow from the fire, the strength and warmth and irresistible drawing power of his dark magnetism were too seductive, too dangerous, and Kim surprised them both when she leapt to her feet, her voice high as she said, ‘Coffee. I’ll fetch some coffee.’
‘Great.’ His voice was casual and relaxed as he too stood to his feet, and as he reached out and took her hand his face didn’t reveal the anger he felt as she stiffened against his touch. ‘Just put it down to experience, Kim,’ he said softly. ‘Learn from it, take the positive and leave the negative on the side of the plate and don’t let it cripple you.’
He was talking about more than work.
She hesitated and then raised her head to meet his eyes, her gaze wary. ‘That’s easier said than done.’
‘Possibly.’ He could feel her trembling slightly and it checked the crazy impulse he had to pull her into him and devour her mouth; the strength of his desire shocked him. He had never had any trouble in keeping work and play separate, in fact he would go so far as to say he had felt contempt in the past for any business associates who had been foolish enough to mix the two, but this was different. But perhaps that was what they all thought.
The heat from his fingers seemed to be flowing into her, trickling into every nerve and sinew and setting her body alive with a strange electric current. What would it be like to be kissed by a man like Lucas Kane? Kim gave up the fight to dismiss the thought that had been paramount for most of the evening. Thrilling, exciting, out of this world. He’d know how to kiss. Sexual expertise was there in his eyes, his body, even the way he walked and moved…
She jerked her hand free, disguising the gesture with a tight little laugh as she said, ‘This won’t get the coffee percolating.’
Damn the coffee. Lucas smiled blandly. ‘Can I help?’
The thought of him in the close confines of her little kitchen was overwhelming. ‘No, it’s fine. I won’t be a minute.’
Lucas’s thick black lashes swept down, hiding his expression from her, and his voice was easy and controlled as he resumed his seat, saying, ‘No hurry.’
No hurry? Once in the kitchen Kim leant her hot forehead against the cool impersonal surface of a cupboard and breathed deeply for several seconds. Her fingers were still tingling from his touch and her legs were actually shaking, she realised with a little dart of disbelief. It might be no hurry to him but she wanted him out of her house as soon as possible.
He was dangerous. She moved away from the cupboards and stared out of the window to where the snowman was still standing patiently in his white frozen world, and remembered how Melody had clung to Lucas as he had enthused over their handiwork.
Very, very dangerous. Kim’s eyes narrowed and she felt something very cold douse the heat inside her as she switched on the coffee machine.
If Graham hadn’t died when he had, she would have left him within weeks, if not days, anyway. The abuse when he was drunk had been becoming increasingly nasty, and the shopping incident had happened the day before his accident. She had known it was the end of the line for their marriage then; she wouldn’t risk putting Melody in danger.
She hadn’t loved him any more at that stage; she hadn’t loved him for months, even though she had stayed because of his threats of what he would do to Melody and to her if she left him.
But that morning when he had struck her had cut the last tentative threads holding her to the marriage. It had happened to be her in the firing line then; it could have been Melody another time and the thought of that was insupportable.
But she hadn’t had to leave. Graham had died, and in spite of all his death had uncovered she had felt a strengthening of her spirit, a determination that she would build a good life for her precious child. And a good life meant never putting Melody at risk again, never allowing a third party to come into their world. Friends were different, and Maggie had been wonderful, but a man…
She had made a terrible mistake in her choice of a partner and she couldn’t trust it wouldn’t happen again.
Melody liked Lucas. And perhaps he was only being friendly and supportive to her about the report incident, but she didn’t dare allow the kind of matey relationship to grow between them she wouldn’t have necessarily thought twice about with any other colleague.
She’d work her socks off for him, go the extra mile and beyond as far as her work was concerned—she owed him that at least—but she would keep him very firmly at arm’s length. It might make things a little awkward at times but she’d have to cross that bridge when it came to it.
She nodded sharply to the golden-haired reflection in the window, lowered the blind abruptly and set about preparing the coffee tray, her mouth set in a grim determined line that wasn’t at all like its normal soft self.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONTRARY to the fear which had gripped Kim when she’d watched the Aston Martin drive away that snowy night in January, Lucas didn’t ask one personal question or do more than briefly enquire after Melody in the following few weeks, keeping their relationship focused and pleasant.
The report was returned within a couple of days from a somewhat bewildered friend of Lucas’s to whom he had written regarding a forthcoming golf tournament, and was the best possible outcome Kim could have wished for.
February passed with more snow, rigid white frosts and a hectic time at the office as the Clarkson contract was finally settled to Lucas’s satisfaction. March was a kinder month weather-wise, but by the end of that month Kim found herself wondering if her relationship with her dynamic boss was quite so cool and controlled as she had thought it was.
He had managed to get under her skin somehow, and not just in the sexual sense—that was something she’d accepted she would have to battle with daily; he was just one exceptional man—but in a hundred other, more subtle ways.
Lucas had a wickedly dry sense of humour for a start and he wasn’t averse to laughing at himself, which was a revelation to Kim after Graham’s self-important, pontifical attitude to life. She found herself laughing umpteen times a day, and often when she least expected it.
He had the habit of scattering numerous little personal facts about himself and his family into even the most businesslike of their days, and by now Kim knew that his parents had retired to a villa in the sun; that the prolific amount of aunts, uncles and cousins on his mother’s side made for some crazy family parties when relations would fly the short journey from Colombia to his parents’ home in Florida; that like himself his father had been an only child and his English relations were few and far between, and many other details besides.
Kim was aware that Lucas’s large country residence situated well beyond the city limits was home to an elderly housekeeper as well as himself. Martha had been with the family since Lucas was a babe in arms, and besides the two human occupants the mansion housed an assortment of feline inhabitants—all belonging to Martha—and two Great Danes which were Lucas’s.
This last had caused Kim one of many disturbed nights in relation to her boss.
She hadn’t had him down as an animal-lover before he had mentioned his home situation, or the sort of man who could be altruistic to old ladies who hadn’t wanted to leave the country of their birth for warmer climes.
The comfortably cold and detached picture of a cool stainless-steel, remotely controlled bachelor pad with all mod cons and the biggest bed money could buy had taken a knock, and when she had made the mistake of revealing her surprise and preconceptions and Lucas had admitted—charmingly—that a few years before she would have been spot-on, it had been scant comfort.
She wanted—needed—to keep him in a neatly labelled box in her mind and, annoying man that he was, he seemed determined to break out of it.
Somehow, and she didn’t quite know how he had accomplished it, he
had managed to paint a picture on her mind that was quite different from the one she wanted to see when she looked at him. If he had met her head-on in direct challenge she would have been able to cope with it and refuse to take on board Lucas the man, rather than Lucas the ruthless tycoon, but he had trickled himself into her psyche with the steady drip-drip of relentless running water.
He was a brilliant and inexorable strategist. She had seen him in action too many times in business now to doubt it, and had marvelled more than once that his adversaries hadn’t seemed to be aware of what he was doing, not realising all the time he was applying an equally ruthless policy with her.
But perhaps she was imagining all this? Kim sat for a moment more in the BMW before squaring her shoulders and opening the car door. Whatever, she couldn’t let her guard down with Lucas Kane, not for a moment. That, if nothing else in the whole tangled situation, was crystal-clear.
The March day was damp and mild but very blowy, and in spite of the fact that her parking space was only a few yards away from the main doors of Kane Electrical, the wind had tugged several golden tendrils of hair loose from its customary tight knot at the back of her head by the time she entered the building.
Charlie, the caretaker, was standing in a quiet and empty Reception—it being too early for the rest of the staff yet—and addressed her immediately, saying, ‘Power cut, I’m afraid, Mrs Allen. All the lights are out and the lifts are down, but they assure me it won’t be too long before we’re back in operation.’
‘Thanks, Charlie. Looks like it’ll be Shanks’ pony and the stairs, then.’ Kim flashed the elderly man a grin before making for the stairs at the back of an unusually dark Reception and running up them lightly, her mind already grappling with the first few things she had to do that day.
She emerged from the fire door into the top floor corridor dimly lit by the emergency lighting, still concentrating on her imminent workload, and straight into the arms of her esteemed boss with enough force to send them both against the far wall.