to slow the shallow, rapid character of her breathing.
Knuckles pressed to the slight indent in his chin, Luc pretended to consider the matter. ‘Yes.’ Eyes that seemed scarily knowing zeroed in on her face.
Now she wasn’t just panting as if she’d been running a marathon, she was sweating too. Did everybody find his mouth as fascinating as she did? Megan wondered as she watched one corner drop in a cynical smirk.
‘Few things in life are constant, but sex is,’ he contended in a throaty purr that ought in a fair world to have been preceded by a ‘there are flashing lights in this film’ type warning for the susceptible.
Megan was definitely susceptible! The moisture between her aching thighs was ample evidence of that.
‘It doesn’t really matter what decade or, for that matter, what century; it doesn’t change. Scratch the surface of the most sophisticated male and you’ll find a man who is thinking about sex. Take me, for instance…’
This smooth suggestion wrenched an instinctive croak of protest from Megan’s throat. He angled a questioning brow at her flushed, uncomfortable face.
‘I don’t think I will, if it’s all the same to you. You may be right about men, they probably haven’t evolved beyond the Neanderthal, but women—of course, I can only speak personally—can rise above their hormones. We’ve learnt how to work the system like men have been doing for years. A man doesn’t date a woman with the primary intention of settling down and starting a family. Why should it be different for a woman?’
‘So you’re telling me that any sexual needs you have are satisfied by no-strings one-night stands.’
Megan wasn’t, she had been blustering, but she was quite prepared to take the credit for this idea. In reality the idea of emotionless sex was not something she warmed to, but he didn’t need to know that.
‘You have a problem with that?’ she gritted belligerently.
‘Men and women are driven by very different biological needs. A man has the basic urge to impregnate a woman, to nurture.’
‘That’s remarkably sexist…’ But sadly probably essentially true…is that me talking or my conditioning? In the end does it really matter? I am, and I don’t do casual sex.
‘No, that’s a biological fact,’ he stated bluntly. ‘I’d say if you try to act like a man you stand every chance of being badly hurt.’
‘On the contrary it’s women who fall in love with men and idolise them who get hurt when they…’ Aware that her comment had awakened a speculative gleam in his eyes she checked her emotional flow abruptly and began to examine her linked fingers.
‘Who did you idolise?’
‘We were all young and stupid once.’
The silence between them lengthened.
‘What’s through there?’
Relieved that he had dropped the subject, she turned and saw him lifting the latch on a tall wrought-iron gate half hidden in the ivy-covered wall.
‘It’s an entrance to the workshops,’ she replied absently, ‘but this isn’t the way back to the house. Where are you going now?’
‘What’s the hurry?’ he asked, skimming her a questioning look before pushing the gate open to reveal a courtyard.
CHAPTER SIX
MEGAN followed Luc into the attractive flower-bedecked courtyard, her heels clicking loudly on the wet cobbled surface. ‘It used to be the old stables.’
‘And now it’s…?’
‘A bit of a tourist attraction.’ She saw him lift his hand to his eyes to peer into the darkened window of the forge. ‘That’s Sam’s studio.’
‘Sam…?’
‘He was a bus driver, now he makes terrific wrought-iron stuff to order.’
A local potter had approached her father ten years earlier with a view to him renting her workspace. The idea had snowballed…
‘And the others…?’ Luc’s expansive gesture took in the rest of the quadrangle.
‘There are about ten workshops here now all used by local artists and craftsmen,’ she told him proudly. ‘They double as workspace and a shop front. There’s a really marvellous community feel about the place. People can come and watch them work and, if they like it, buy what they see. There are also occasional workshops where you can learn to throw a pot, that sort of thing. Local schools frequently come. It’s proved rather successful.’
So much so that the planning authorities were considering an application to extend the operation into the adjoining granary providing tearooms and an art gallery.
‘Very enterprising.’
‘It’s a non-profit-making operation,’ she added defensively. Wanting to gain his approval just a little too much. ‘We charge a nominal rent and—’
‘Hold up,’ he interrupted. ‘I may think the aristocracy is an anachronism in this day and age, but that doesn’t mean I assume that they are all out to subjugate the masses.
‘That’s remarkably open-minded of you, L…’
‘Luc,’ he prompted, watching with a glimmer of a smile in his deep-set eyes as she bit her lip. ‘It is my name.’
‘You don’t have to live the role you—’ She broke off and gave a grimace as a stab of pain shot through her right ankle.
‘Are you all right?’
Megan waved aside his concern and flexed her right foot. ‘Fine, just turned my ankle, that’s all.’ She frowned at the heel that had got jammed in a crevice in the uneven cobbled surface. She pulled but it didn’t budge. She swore softly under her breath. ‘These things are lethal,’ she complained.
‘But very sexy.’ His lashes lifted and the glitter she saw reflected in the platinum depths of his eyes made her heart thud.
Flushing, Megan lowered her gaze and let the skirt she was holding, gathered bunched in her hand, fall with a damp, silken slither to the ground.
‘I’m not prepared to cripple myself in the pursuit of wolf-whistles…normally,’ she added drily.
Megan had no self-esteem issue, she knew that some men found her attractive, but even while she had been carefully selecting her outfit earlier she had been aware that, no matter what she wore, it wasn’t going to make her look drop-dead gorgeous. It was a fact of life that men who looked like Luc were not generally seen with women who looked the way she did, so tonight she had made an effort.
‘I haven’t inherited my mother’s fashion sense or, for that matter, her figure.’ Forgetting for a split second whom she was talking to, she pressed her hands flat to her nicely formed but not impressive bosom.
Luc’s
