too acutely. The idea of finding herself confined with him in the close quarters of a car, even for the short time it would take him to drive them next door, filled her with dismay.
Apparently, Lucas felt likewise. “Of course,” he said, politely enough, his eyes resting on Emily, but then his gaze flicked away from her as if she were nothing but the unpleasant figment of someone else’s imagination.
Beatrice assigned her to the second guest suite, a big square room with a sitting alcove at one end and an en suite bathroom at the other. She had laid out a long cotton gown which, while it was certainly several sizes too large, was infinitely preferable to Emily’s own grassstained, smoke-drenched nightshirt. That and the deep tub lured her to delay the pleasure of crawling between the sweet-smelling sheets until she’d shampooed her hair and soaped her skin clean of the fire’s residue.
She had just emerged from the bathroom with her hair turbaned in a towel when a tap came at the bedroom door. “Emily Jane, darling, are you in bed yet?” Beatrice called softly.
“Not quite,” Emily said. “Come in, Mrs. Flynn.”
“I’ll not disturb you,” Beatrice said, popping her head around the door. “I just want to make sure you have everything you need. Also, I’ve made cocoa, and if you’re ready for it I’ll bring it up to you.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Emily said, walking over to the door and opening it wider. “It might be over ten years since I was last here, but I haven’t forgotten where the kitchen is and you’ve been disturbed enough for one night. Go to bed, please, or before you know it it’ll be time to get up again.”
“Well, I will, then, if it’s all the same to you.” Beatrice took Emily’s hands affectionately. “It’s a lovely woman you’ve grown into, Emily Jane, and I’ve missed you. Don’t let another ten years go by before you come to stay again.”
Was it being assailed by yet another shock, the after-effects of smoke or plain and simple fatigue that had Emily’s eyes threatening to fill with tears? “You were always so kind to us, Mrs. Flynn, despite...”
Beatrice knew what she meant. The ill-will between the grandmothers had been as much a part of everyday life as the river flowing past the bottom of their gardens. “And why would I not be? Two silly old women feuding over the Lord knows what have no business putting innocent children in the way of their bickering.”
Emily experienced a flash of guilt at that. How innocent had she been the night she’d tried to bring her romantic dreams to fruition? But if her grandmother held Lucas responsible for the outcome it was obvious from Beatrice’s attitude that she either remained ignorant of the true order of events or else chose not to assign blame.
“Make yourself at home and sleep as long as you like in the morning, darling,” she said, planting a kiss on Emily’s cheek. “There’s no rush to be up and about. We’ll look after your grandma for you; never doubt that.”
When Emily stole downstairs fifteen minutes later, the air was filled with the hush of a house at rest and nothing but the quiet tick of clocks to mark the passing hours. Except for a ray of light spilling out of the kitchen into the downstairs hall, the rooms lay in darkness.
Despite the addition of two built-in convection wall ovens and a dishwasher, the kitchen hadn’t changed much over the years. The same scrubbed pine table still occupied the middle of the red tiled floor, the copper pots still hung from a circular rack above it, and if the geraniums flowering on the windowsill above the sink weren’t the ones that had flourished in her childhood Emily couldn’t have told the difference.
She ought to have considered that he might also be in the room. Even if the theory of feminine intuition was based on nothing but a lot of wishful thinking, sheer common sense should have warned her, when she saw the tray containing a Thermos and two saucers but only one cup, that she was not alone.
But it was the shiny chrome surface of the Thermos that alerted her to his presence, mirroring his reflection as he stirred from his spot by the big, old-fashioned fireplace. And by then it was too late to pretend she hadn’t seen him, too late to worry that she looked ridiculous in the voluminous nightgown that had been in fashion at least fifty years before and whose hem she held hiked up around her knees, and much too late to rehearse this first private meeting with him since the night she’d slithered, uninvited, between the sheets of his bed and seduced him.
For a while it appeared that neither of them was willing to break the silence unspooling between them. Instead, they simply stared at each other, he remotely, like the stranger he undoubtedly wished he were, and she—ye gods, her gaze clung to him shamelessly, devouring his every feature with the rapacity of a woman on the brink of starvation.
In the more revealing light of the kitchen, she could see what had not been so apparent in the gloom of Belvoir’s garden. He had aged, but so graciously that he was even more beautiful than he’d been at twenty five. His hair lay as thick and unruly as ever, the only difference being that now it was lightly shot with silver.
As for his mouth. . . ! Oh, despite the hardships he might have known, his mouth was as she’d always remembered it, so blatantly sexy that her lips parted in mute supplication to know its touch again.
Just once more, her wayward heart cried. Just once and it’ll be enough. I’ll never ask again.
Appalled, she said primly, “If I’d realized you were down here—”
“You’d have remained upstairs.” He offered the merest suggestion of a shrug. “I could say the same thing but it would be pointless, wouldn’t it? You’re here, I’m here, and it seems that whether we like it or not we’re destined to acknowledge each other.”
She wished he hadn’t moved his shoulders in that sinuous way that drew attention less to their width, which had always been impressive, than to the fact that his shirt was unbuttoned and hanging loose at the waist of his blue jeans. Her gaze dropped from his mouth to the expanse of flesh that his gesture had uncovered.
The musculature of his chest was more defined than when she’d run her hands over its planes that other summer, the skin even more deeply tanned. His stomach, though, was the same: flat and hard, just as it had been then. Except for his mouth and his hands, he had been hard all over that night. . .
“I was going to say I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” she said, corralling her thoughts before they got her into more trouble than she could possibly cope with. “We’ve put you to enough trouble already, getting you out of bed to rush to our rescue.”
“I’m a night owl. I’m seldom asleep before one or two in the morning.”
You were the night I came sneaking in, she thought. You were out cold, lying with nothing but a sheet covering you, and it took me no time at all to whisk it aside and confirm every last delicious fantasy I’d ever harbored about you.
Her sharply drawn breath escaped before she could suppress it. Face flaming, she swung back to the Thermos of cocoa and hoped her hands wouldn’t betray her by shaking too visibly as she filled the lone cup.
The worst was over, surely? They’d come face to face, exchanged the barest civilities and both survived the ordeal. Now all she had to do was beat a not too obvious retreat before her unruly memory betrayed her more than it already had.
“How have you been, Emily?”
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