by Rose, Louise
“Amber likes curry too?”
“She’s an absolute fiend for it!” I laughed. “She can’t get enough of the spicy stuff. But what I want to know is how you managed to get the entire restaurant to yourself when I have to pull strings to get just one table.”
“It’s like you said. It’s all about who you know,” came the enigmatic answer.
I looked pointedly at him.
“All right.” Lucas shrugged sheepishly. “I got my assistant to ring round everyone who had a booking tonight and buy their table from them. People were more than happy to make a couple of grand just to stay home and enjoy a takeaway.”
“So it’s who you know and a ton of cash,” I said.
“Exactly,” Lucas said. “Maybe it’s not the most ethical thing to have done, but I wanted to spend some quality time with you without having to deal with the noise of dozens of other people talking in the background. I heard this was the best curry house in town, so I did what I had to do so we could enjoy a night out together. I want to get to know you again, Milly, start from the beginning as if we were strangers.”
“We pretty much are strangers,” I pointed out. “When we were at school together, you were married to Ivy and aside from the occasional dance together, we didn’t exactly get to talk much. That night in the club… well. Talking was the last thing on either of our minds.”
“True, true.”
We’d finished our starters and Dave came to whisk our empty plates away, expertly laying out the things for our next course in record time. Soon, we were alone again.
“So, if you want to start from the beginning, why don’t you start by telling me what you’ve really been doing for the past few years?” I said. “I don’t believe you’ve been nothing but a teacher. You’re Lucas Donatello. Scheming is practically in your DNA.”
Lucas laughed. “I don’t blame you for being suspicious, but I promise you, I’ve been focused on my Academy. Most of the time.”
“And there it is.” I slapped the table, leaning back in my chair. “What have you been doing with the rest of the time?”
“Figuring out where I came from,” was the surprising reply. “I don’t know if Ivy told you, but I’m adopted. I’ve been trying to track down my birth mother to find out where I really come from.”
“Seriously?”
Lucas nodded.
“You’d think with all the money I have, it would be easy to find my family, but despite hiring the best detectives in the world, there’s been no trace of my mother.”
“Maybe there’s a reason for that.” I spoke gently, reaching out to put my hand on Lucas’s. “Has it occurred to you that she might be…”
“Dead?” Lucas shrugged. “Of course, it’s possible that’s why I haven’t found her. I mean, I know very little about her except that she was willing to give me away in exchange for money. Sometimes I wonder whether she spent it all on drugs and alcohol and wound up dead with a needle in her arm.”
“And how would you feel if that’s what happened but you could never know for sure?”
“I guess I’d just keep doing what I’ve always done – live with it.” Lucas took a sip of his wine. “But my gut tells me that’s not what happened to her. It wasn’t the only fantasy I had about her, you know. Sometimes I’d imagine that she used the money to get back on her feet, started a business, became a success in her own right and the only reason she didn’t come looking for me was because she didn’t want to ruin my supposedly perfect life.”
“Another poor little rich boy?” I arched an eyebrow, not wanting to let Lucas have an easy ride.
“Maybe that’s how it was for your brothers, but life really was hell with Penelope Donatello.” Lucas toyed with his cutlery, not meeting my gaze.
“Did the billionairess take parenting lessons from Joan Crawford?” I laughed, but it tailed off when I saw Lucas’s expression. “Wait. Did Penelope abuse you?”
“I don’t like to talk about it much,” Lucas said. “In fact, the first person I ever told was Ivy. It doesn’t help the Donatello brand for it to be common knowledge that I have a weakness.”
“It’s not a weakness to have been abused.”
“If people see you as a victim, it’s a weakness.” Lucas clenched his jaw, still not looking at me.
“Do you want to talk about it? It might help.”
Lucas said nothing for a while, but just when I was about to change the subject, he spoke up.
“Penelope adopted me when I was eight,” Lucas told me. “Everyone told me how I lucky it was that I was going to be living with someone so rich, but I knew things weren’t going to be as perfect as they seemed when the first thing Penelope said to me as we drove away from my foster home was that if anyone asked, I was her nephew who had moved in with her after the death of her sister in a car accident. If anyone found out the truth, she’d send me straight back to foster care – and make sure that I’d be somewhere far worse than the place I’d just left.
“Thanks to Penelope, I learned how to cry on cue, so if anyone asked me about my sister, I’d burst into tears so I wouldn’t have to say anything that might give away the truth about where I came from. Fortunately, there weren’t that many people around to ask. Penelope might have been rich but she wasn’t exactly popular and we were so busy traveling the world that we were rarely in any one place for long enough for people to get suspicious about who I really was.
“Maybe if we’d stayed in one place longer someone would have noticed that things weren’t quite right. I was always starting fights but Penelope just called it the typical Donatello spirit. I don’t know if you noticed the scars on my back when we slept together.”
I nodded, remembering the feeling of raised skin beneath my hands as I clung to him.
“Penelope gave those to me because I ‘only’ got a merit in my piano exam. She beat me so hard I had to sleep on my front for days because my back was so sore and she promised that she’d do the same again if I ever got anything less than top marks in an exam. She said I was the symbol of Donatello achievement and I was letting down the family name to be anything less than the best.
“I knew she meant what she said, and I never got less than an A after that. It’s why I graduated the Academy with straight As and why I’ve been able to bring out the best in my students. I know how to motivate people – without the scars.”
“I’m so sorry, Lucas.” I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.
“It is what it is.” Lucas leaned back in his chair, taking another sip of his wine. “Penelope’s been gone a long time now and I have the freedom to do whatever I want. For all her wealth, she couldn’t cheat death and I know how much she resented that in the last few months of her life. She got worse in the last year or so of her life. She resented me for my youth and the fact that I was going to take over the business she’d worked so hard to build and she would have absolutely no control over me. To be honest, I thought she would disinherit me in one final act of cruelty. When they read her will, I was expecting to hear that she’d left everything to an animal charity, but she made me sole heir – under the guidance of Solomon Archaic. He had control of my trust fund until I was 25, which is why I wound up marrying Ivy. Solomon manipulated me into believing an alliance with the Archaics was the best way to take the business forward. After his death, my trust fund was in the hands of the lawyers. They told me that they would make decisions in accordance to what they thought Penelope would have wanted, which was hilarious. They had no idea what a bitch she really was, so they didn’t realise that they were being way more generous than she ever would have been! Still, when I hit 25, it was a relief to be completely in control of my life and not have to run every little decision past a man in a suit.”
“So, you set up your Academy and started to look for your birth mum?”
“Exactly.” Lucas nodded. “I wanted to help kids who might be suffering the way I did and looking for my mum gave me hope that maybe there was someone out
there who would love me for me. I want to hear why she gave me away. If she did it because she thought I would have a better life with Penelope, I can’t blame her for that, even if she made a huge mistake in going to Penelope. Maybe I’ll have a connection with her, finally get the family I always wanted.”
“You already have a family,” I reminded him. “You’ve got Amber… and me.” I gave him a meaningful look.
Careful, Milly. Lucas could just be playing you.
I’d promised myself I’d keep Lucas at arm’s length until he’d proven that he was committed to being a proper father to Amber, but hearing his story melted my heart. If it was true – right, Milly. If it was true! – it explained a lot about why he was the way he was. He seemed genuine about wanting to help the students at the Academy and I knew from Ivy that he’d handled their arranged marriage with dignity and grace, never pushing her into doing something she didn’t want to do.
I’d always been attracted to Lucas and now maybe, just maybe, I had the chance to do something about it.
“Would you like to see the dessert menu?” Dave came back to clear away our empty plates.
“I think I’ll just have a coffee,” Lucas replied. “But you’re welcome to have something if you like, Mills?”
“Coffee’s fine for me,” I said.
“Coffee it is.” Dave smiled as he took away our dinner things. Soon after he was back with two freshly made coffees. He placed them in front of us, as well as a generous slice of chocolate cake and two forks. “I know you said no dessert, but Dinesh insisted you have a piece of her cake on the house. She made it today and I can tell you from personal experience, it is to die for!”
“Thanks, Dave.” I smiled. “And say thank you to Dinesh as well. I know how amazing her cakes are.”
As Dave backed away, I picked up a fork and broke off a piece of cake. Placing it in my mouth, I closed my eyes as the creamy chocolate melted over my tongue.
“It’s even better than Dave said it was,” I gasped. “You have to try this, Lucas!”
Without thinking, I put a piece of cake on my fork and reached across the table to feed it to Lucas. As he leaned forward to take it, I realised how flirtatious a gesture it was and my heart skipped a beat. I was really enjoying our date, but I still wasn’t sure whether I wanted to take things to the next level. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been out with a man and at the back of my mind, I thought about what it would be like for Amber if I started seeing her father only for it to not work out. It wasn’t fair on her to put her through that.
“You look very serious all of a sudden,” Lucas remarked. “I didn’t realise my opinion about the cake was so important to you. If it reassures you, yes, the cake is very good.”
I could feel my cheeks going red. “I was just thinking.”
“What about?”
I gulped and took a deep breath. “Us. Where… this is going.” I waved my hands around, making a circular ‘you and me’ gesture.
“Where do you want it to go?”
“Oh, Lucas. You always did know how to put a girl on the backfoot.” I laughed nervously. “Where do you want it to go?”
“Well, I don’t want to waste your time with a fling if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “I’m getting to an age where I don’t want to bother with a relationship if I don’t think it has a future. At the same time, you’re Milly Knight and I’m Lucas Donatello. We both have to tread carefully. I don’t enjoy seeing my love life splashed all over the tabloids, so if we’re going to move forward, I think we should take things slow, see how we both feel. Does that work for you?”
“Yeah. Sounds great.” I faked an enthusiasm I didn’t feel. I couldn’t help the little bit of disappointment that ran through me. Okay, maybe it was a bit much to expect for Lucas to profess his undying love for me on our first date, but I’d have thought he’d be a little more passionate and a little less calculating than this. I wanted him to be carried away with desire for me, willing to do something stupid because that’s how I made him feel. I wanted him to want to take risks for me, like the Lucas who’d taken me home that night.
Maybe I was better off putting an end to this before someone got hurt, because it was obvious that that someone would be me.
As we drove home, Lucas regaled me with stories about some of the students he’d had in his Academy. I laughed at the appropriate places and made sympathetic noises when necessary, but I wasn’t really fully engaged. I kept going over what Lucas had said about taking things slow. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that slow was the last thing I wanted. It had been too long. I needed a man in my life and I wanted Lucas now.
We pulled up outside my house.
“Thanks for a lovely evening, Lucas,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment, covering it up with a frosty tone. “We must do it again sometime.”
“Definitely.”
Lucas leaned in to kiss me, but I wasn’t in the mood and I turned my head, leading to an awkward kiss on my cheek.
“See you at work tomorrow.”
I scrambled out of the car and hurried into my house before Lucas could say anything in return. If he wanted to take things slow, I was going to show him just how slowly I could go.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Lucas
I slumped back in my seat, annoyed with how quickly an incredible night had gone south. What had I said wrong? I wanted to build a future with Milly so I’d been careful not to say anything to scare her away. Didn’t all women want to hear that a man wanted to take his time with her, get to know her, lay down solid foundations so a relationship could have a long-term future?
If only she knew that I’d spent the night wondering what she looked like under that sexy dress. Motherhood suited her, making an already amazing body even more curvaceous. I wanted to run my hands all over her, make her come so many times she lost count, until she was begging for me to stop.
But I couldn’t do that to her, not yet. I needed to prove to her that I meant it when I said I was in it for the long haul. Sleeping with her on our first date would undermine everything I was trying to achieve. We had a daughter together and I was determined to give her the family I never had and that could only happen if Milly and I got serious. I’d made too many mistakes in the past to risk messing this up.
So why had she acted so weird at the end of our date?
I shook my head. I didn’t think I’d ever understand Milly, no matter how long I knew her, and that’s what intrigued me about her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life learning all about her. She was the kind of woman a man would never get bored with.
“Take me home.” I pressed the button to switch off the intercom after giving the driver his instruction. Leaning back in the seat, I closed my eyes, wondering what my next move should be. I had one chance to get this right and I was determined not to blow it.
* * *
“You have a couple of visitors, Lucas.”
Liz, my secretary, buzzed through to my office where I was working on a report for the Board about how I was going to improve the Academy’s grades. For the past couple of years, exam performance had been disappointing and one of the reasons they’d hired me was because my own Academy had consistently excellent results, even with students who weren’t naturally academic. They wanted me to emulate that success and restore King Academy to its rightful place at the top of the league tables.
I frowned, bringing up my calendar. “I don’t have any meetings booked. Who is it?”
“Ivy Archaic and Archer Knight. They say it’s important.”
I sighed. This visit wasn’t any real surprise, but I’d thought I’d maybe get a bit more time before Ivy and her gundog came to see me. “Better show them in, Liz.”
I put on my most professional face as Liz ushered in Ivy and Archer. “Would you like any coffee?” she offered.
“No thanks.” Ivy shook her head. “This won’t take long.”
“Okay. You know where
I am if you need me.” Liz backed out of the room, gazing at me meaningfully. I knew she was trying to send me a psychic message that she could always call security if I needed, but that wasn’t going to happen. I’d changed since the last time I’d dealt with Archer. He wasn’t going to scare me away this time.
“I hear belated congratulations are in order,” I said. “I hear that Louis is a cute kid. If you were worried about getting him on the waiting list for our nursery, you really don’t need to be. It should be obvious that any child of yours automatically has a place with us.”
“Cut the shit, Lucas,” Archer snarled. “You know why we’re here.”
“Milly’s a big girl,” I said calmly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t thank you for interfering. Again. Did you ever tell her why I left?”
“You left because you knew full well you were playing her. All I did was make sure you didn’t have a chance to break her heart.”
Ivy reached out, putting a hand on Archer’s thigh to ground him. “That’s enough.” Her tone held an unmistakeable authority, a reminder of just whose daughter she was. She turned to me. “We didn’t come here to fight, did we, Archer?”