sensuality that was clearly reserved for the future Mr. Cole on ice. She had not mentioned Lucas. “Why not take Lilah with you?”
Lucas seemed inordinately interested in selecting a second strawberry. “It’s a gray area.”
Realization dawned. Lilah had not been subtle about her quest of finding a husband. He had just never seen Lucas as a candidate for an arranged marriage. “This is a first date.”
A trace of emotion flickered in Lucas’s gaze. “I needed someone on short notice. As it happens, after running a background check, I think Lilah is perfect for me. She’s talented, attractive, she’s got a good business head on her shoulders, she’s even a—”
“What about Carla?”
Lucas dropped the ripe berry as if it had seared his fingertips.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Zane realized what the odd look in Lucas’s eyes had been just moments ago: desperation. Hot outrage surged through him. “You’re still involved with Carla.”
“How did you know? No, don’t tell me. Elena.” Lucas put the bowl of strawberries back in the fridge and closed the door. “Carla and I are over.”
But only just.
Suddenly the instant relationship with Lilah made sense. When Sienna married Constantine, Carla would practically be family. If it came out that Lucas had been sleeping with Carla, intense pressure would be applied. Under the tough exterior, when it came to women, Lucas was vulnerable.
He was using Lilah as a buffer, insurance that Carla, who had a reputation for flamboyant scenes, would not try to publicly force him to formalize their secret affair with a marriage proposal.
That meant that love did not come into the equation.
If Lucas genuinely wanted Lilah, Zane would walk away, however that was not the case. Lucas, who had once been in the untenable position of having a girlfriend die in a car crash after they had argued about the secret abortion she’d had, was using her to avert an unpleasant situation. As calculating as Lilah was with relationships, she did not deserve to be caught in the middle of a showdown between Lucas and Carla.
Relief eased some of his fierce tension. He didn’t think Lilah had had time to sleep with Lucas yet. Somehow that fact was very important. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Lucas looked relieved. “You won’t regret it.”
Zane wasn’t so sure.
He wondered if Lucas had any inkling that he had just placed a temptation Zane had doggedly resisted for over two years directly in his path.
Two
Heart pounding at the step she was taking, her first bona fide risk in twelve years of carefully managed, featureless and fruitless dating, Lilah Cole boarded the sleek private jet that belonged to Ambrosi Pearls’s new owner, The Atraeus Group.
The nervy anticipation that had buoyed her as she had made her way through passport control ebbed as the pretty blonde stewardess, Jasmine, seated her.
Placing the soft white leather tote bag that went with her white jeans and comfy, oversized white shirt on the floor, Lilah dug out the discreet, white leather-bound folder she had bought with her. She had been braced for another stress-filled encounter with the dark and edgily dangerous Zane Atraeus, the youngest and wildest of the Atraeus brothers, but she was the sole occupant of the luxurious cabin.
Fifteen minutes later, with the noise from the jet engines reaching a crescendo and a curtain of gray rain blotting out much of the view from her tiny window, Lilah was still the only passenger.
She squashed the ridiculous idea that she was in any way disappointed as she fastened her seat belt with fingers that were not entirely steady.
Flying was not her favorite pastime; she was not a natural risk taker. Like her approach to relationships, she preferred to keep her feet on the ground. A stubborn part of her brain couldn’t ignore the concept of all that space between the aircraft and the earth’s surface. To compound the problem, the weather forecast was for violent thunder and lightning.
As the jet taxied through the sweeping rain, Lilah ignored the in-flight safety video and concentrated on the one thing she could control. Flipping open the folder, she studied the profiles she had compiled.
Cole women had a notorious record for falling victim to the coup de foudre—the clap of thunder—for falling passionately and disastrously for the wrong man then literally being left holding the baby. Aware that she possessed the same creative, passionate streak that ran through both her artistic and bohemian mother and grandmother, Lilah had developed a system for avoiding The Mistake.
It was a blueprint for long-term happiness, a wedding plan. She had found that writing down the steps she needed to take to achieve the relationship she wanted somehow demystified the whole process, making it seem not such a leap in the dark.
When she did eventually give herself to a man, she was confident it would be in a committed relationship, not some wild fling. She wanted marriage, babies, the stable, controlled environment she had craved as a child.
She was determined that any children she had would have two loving parents, not one stressed and strained beyond her limits.
Over the last three years, despite interviewing an exhaustive number of candidates, she had not managed to find a man who met her marriage criteria and appealed to her on the all-important physical level. Scent in particular had proved to be a formidable barrier to identifying someone with whom she could have an intimate relationship. It was not that the men she had interviewed had smelled bad, just that in some subtle way they had not smelled right. However, things were finally taking a positive turn.
Lilah studied the notes she had made on her new boss, Lucas Atraeus, and a small number of other men, and the points system she had developed based on a matchmaking website’s recommendations. She spent an enjoyable few minutes reviewing Lucas’s good points.
On paper he was the most perfect man she had ever met. He was electrifyingly good-looking and used a light cologne that she didn’t mind. He possessed the kind of dark, dangerous features that had proved to be an unfortunate weakness of hers and yet, in terms of a future husband, he ticked every box of her list.
For the first time she had found a man who was her type and yet he was safe, steady, reliable. The situation was a definite win-win.
She should be thrilled that he had asked her to a family wedding. This date, despite its risky nature, was the most positive she’d had in years and, at the age of twenty-nine, her biological clock was ticking.
She didn’t know Lucas well. They had only met in the context of work over the past few days, with a “business” lunch at a nearby cafe tossed in, during which he had told her that not only did he need an escort for his brother’s wedding, but that he was looking for a relationship with a view to marriage.
Like her, she didn’t think Lucas had succumbed to any kind of intense physical attraction. He preferred to take a more measured approach.
If it were possible to control her emotions and fall in love with Lucas, she had already decided she would do it.
She checked her watch and
