realised that she had been fantasising about this man since they had stepped foot on the yacht, but those fantasies had been vague and hazy compared to the force of the graphic images filling her head as she looked away with a tight, determined expression.
It was his body, she thought. Seeing him like that, in nothing but a pair of black trunks, was like fodder for her already fevered imagination.
Under normal circumstances, she might have looked at him and appreciated him for the drop-dead, gorgeous guy that he was, but actually she wouldn’t have turned that very natural appreciation into a full-on mental sexual striptease that had him parading naked in her head.
But these weren’t normal circumstances and that was why her pragmatic, easy-going and level-headed approach to the opposite sex had suddenly deserted her.
‘Tell me about the deal.’ She launched weakly into the first topic of conversation that came into her head, and Lucas flung himself back into the deck chair and stared up at a faultlessly blue, cloudless sky.
He was usually more than happy to discuss work-related issues, except right now and right here that was the last thing he wanted to do. ‘Persuade me that you give a damn about it.’ He slanted a sideways look at her and then kept looking as delicate colour tinged her cheeks.
‘Of course I do.’ Katy cleared her throat. ‘I’m here because of it, aren’t I?’
‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ He folded his arms behind his head and stared at her. ‘You’re only here because of the deal but, now that you are here, are you having a good time?’
Katy opened her mouth to ask him what kind of question that was, because how on earth could she be having a good time when life as she knew it had been turned upside down? Except she blinked and thought that she was having a good time. ‘I’ve never been anywhere like this before,’ she told him. ‘When I was a kid, holidays were a week in a freezing-cold British seaside town. Don’t get me wrong, I adored my holidays, but this is...out of this world.’
She looked around her and breathed in the warm breeze, rich with the salty smell of the sea. ‘It’s a different kind of life having a father who’s the local parish priest,’ she confided honestly. ‘On the one hand, it was brilliant, because I never lacked love and support from both my parents, especially as I was an only child. They wanted more but couldn’t have them. My mum once told me that she had to restrain herself from lavishing gifts on me, but of course there was always a limit to what they could afford. And besides, as I’ve told you, they always made sure to tell me that money wasn’t the be-all and end-all.’ She looked at Lucas and smiled, somewhat surprised that she was telling him all this, not that any of it was a secret.
Never one to encourage confidences from women, Lucas was oddly touched by her confession because she was usually so outspoken in a tomboyish, challenging way.
‘Hence your entrenched disregard for money,’ he suggested drily. ‘Tell me about the down sides of life in a vicarage. I’ll be honest with you, you’re the first daughter of a man of the cloth I’ve ever met.’
The image of the happy family stuck in his mind and, in a rare bout of introspection, he thought back to his own troubled youth after his mother had died. His father had had the love, but he had just not quite known how to deliver it and, caught up in his own grief and his never-ending quest to find a substitute for the loss of his wife, he had left a young Lucas to find his own way. The independence Lucas was now so proud of, the mastery over his own emotions and his talent for self-control, suddenly seemed a little tarnished at the edges, too hard-won to be of any real value.
He dismissed the worrying train of thought and encouraged her to keep talking. She had a very melodic voice and he enjoyed the sound of it as much as he enjoyed the animation that lit up her ravishingly pretty, heart-shaped face.
‘Down sides... Well, now, let me have a think...!’ She smiled and lay down on the deck chair so that they were now both side by side, faces upturned to the brilliant blue sky above. She glanced across at him, expecting to see amusement and polite interest, just a couple of people chatting about nothing in particular. Certainly nothing that would hold the interest of a man like Lucas Cipriani. But his dark, fathomless eyes were strangely serious as he caught her gaze and held it for a few seconds, and she shivered, mouth going dry, ensnared by the gravity of his expression.
‘So?’ Lucas murmured, closing his eyes and enjoying the warmth and the rarity of not doing anything.
‘So...you end up always knowing that you have to set a good example because your parents are pillars of the community. I could never afford to be a rebel.’
Even when she had gone to university her background had followed her. She’d been able to have a good time, and stay out late and drink with the best of them, but she had never slept around or even come close to it. Maybe if she hadn’t had so many morals drilled into her from an early age she would have just got sex out of the way and then would have been relaxed when it came to finding relationships. Maybe she would have accepted that not all relationships were serious, that some were destined to fall by the wayside, but that didn’t mean they weren’t worthwhile.
It was a new way of thinking for Katy and she gave it some thought because she had always assumed, post-Duncan, that she would hang on to her virginity, would have learned her lesson, would be better equipped to make the right judgement calls.
Thinking that she could deviate from that path gave her a little frisson of excitement.
‘Not that I was ever tempted,’ she hurriedly expanded. ‘I had too much experience of seeing where drugs and drink and casual sex could lead a person. My dad is very active in the community and does a lot outside the village for down-and-outs. A lot of them ended up where they did because of poor choices along the way.’
‘I feel like I’m talking to someone from another planet.’
‘Why?’
‘Because your life is so vastly different from anything I’ve come across.’
Katy laughed. Lying side by side made it easier to talk to him. If they’d been sitting opposite one another at the table in the kitchen, with the yacht rocking softly as they ate, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to open up like this. She could spar with him and provoke him until she could see him gritting his teeth in frustration—in fact, she got a kick out of that—but this was different.
She couldn’t even remember having a conversation like this with Duncan, who had split his time talking about himself and flirting relentlessly with her.
‘What do you come across?’ she asked lightly, dropping her hands to either side of the deck chair and tracing little circles on the wooden decking.
‘Tough career women who don’t make a habit of getting too close to down-and-outs,’ Lucas told her wryly. ‘Unless, in the case of at least a couple of them who were top barristers, a crime had been committed and they happened to be confronted with one of those down-and-outs in a court of law.’
‘I remember you telling me,’ Katy murmured, ‘About those tough career women who never wanted more than you were prepared to give them and were always soothing and agreeable.’
Lucas laughed. That had been when he’d been warning her off him, just in case she got ideas into her head. On cue, he inclined his head slightly and looked at her. She was staring up at the sky, eyes closed. Her long, dark lashes cast shadows on her cheeks and
