blinked. ‘Pardon?’
His mouth twisted self-deprecatingly. ‘Am I that out of practice?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I haven’t asked anyone to stay to dinner in a while,’ he said. ‘I like to keep myself to myself once I get home. But since you’re here you might as well stay and share a meal with me. That is if you’ve got nothing better to do.’
‘You’re not worried what people will think about us socialising out of hours?’ she asked.
‘Who’s going to know?’ he said. ‘My private life is private.’
Molly felt tempted to stay, more than tempted. She told herself it was to make sure Mittens was settled in, but if she was honest, it had far more to do with her craving a little more of Lucas’s company. It wasn’t just that he was from back home either. She felt drawn to his aloofness; his don’t-come-too-close-I-might-bite aura was strangely attractive. His accidental touch earlier had awoken her senses. She could still feel the tingling of her skin where his fingers had brushed against hers.
‘I haven’t got anything planned,’ she said. ‘Simon’s going to the theatre with his friend. There wasn’t a spare ticket.’ She saw his brows lift cynically and hastily added, ‘I didn’t want to see it anyway.’
Lucas moved across the room to open the French doors that led out to the garden. He turned on the outside light, which cast a glow over the neatly clipped hedges that made up the formal part of the garden. A fountain trickled in the middle of a pebbled area and a wrought-iron French provincial setting was against one wall where a row of espaliered ornamental trees was growing. Mittens bumped his way over and went out to explore his new domain. He stopped to play with a moth that had fluttered around the light Lucas had switched on.
‘It’s a lovely garden,’ Molly said. ‘Was it like that when you bought it?’
‘It had been a bit neglected,’ he said. ‘I’ve done a bit of work on the house too.’
‘You always were good with your hands,’ she said, and then blushed. ‘I mean, with doing things about the farm.’
His lips gave a vague sort of movement that could not on anyone’s terms be described as a smile. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ he asked.
‘Sure, why not?’ Molly said. Anything to make her relax and stop making a fool of herself, she thought.
He placed a glass of white wine in front of her. ‘I have red if you prefer.’
‘No, white is fine,’ she said. ‘Red always gives me a headache.’
Lucas went about preparing the meal. Molly watched as he deftly chopped vegetables and meat for the stir-fry he was making. He worked as if on autopilot but she could see he was frowning slightly. Was he regretting asking her to stay for dinner? He wasn’t exactly full of conversation. But, then, she was feeling a little tongue-tied herself.
‘So why an intensivist?’ he asked after a long silence. ‘I thought you always wanted to be a teacher.’
‘My teacher stage only lasted until I was ten,’ Molly said. ‘I’ve wanted to be lots of things since then. I decided on medicine in my final year at school. And I chose intensive care because I liked the idea of helping to save lives.’
‘Yeah, well, it sure beats the hell out of destroying them.’
Molly met his gaze over the island bench. ‘How long are you going to keep punishing yourself? It’s not going to bring him back.’
His eyes hardened. ‘You think I don’t know that?’
Molly watched him slice some celery as if it was a mortal enemy. His jaw was pulsing with tension as he worked. She let out an uneven sigh and put her wine down. ‘Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for me to stay and have dinner,’ she said as she slid off the stool she had perched on. ‘You don’t seem in the mood for company. I’ll see myself out.’
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
