was the one thing that would make Lucas Jackson send a woman as far away from him as possible? The answer came to her almost immediately and Emma gave a tiny smile. Yes, she thought. That.
EMMA went in search of Lucas, trying to shake off the guilt that shadowed almost every conversation with her sister. She found him downstairs in a kitchen that looked like something that would have featured in a magazine shoot for a perfect country home. In fact the whole place would make the most incredible family home, she thought, as she looked around her. It should have been filled with happy children and noisy dogs.
Had he originally bought it for that purpose?
Her mind buzzed with questions but they were all too personal and she was trying to make their relationship less personal, so she didn’t voice them. And anyway, she knew he wouldn’t have answered them. That one devastating revelation of the night before had been dragged from him purely because she’d held precious evidence in her hand.
As she walked into the room he glanced towards her and she saw in an instant that everything about his body language was guarded.
Exploiting that, she leaned against the doorframe and gave him a soppy look. ‘While I was upstairs I was thinking a lot about last night.’ Watching, she saw the tension ripple through him like a current ready to repel intruders.
‘What about last night?’
‘I know you don’t want to hear this but—I think I love you, Lucas.’ She blurted the words out, wondering if she’d injected just a little too much Scarlet O’Hara into her tone. ‘Completely, totally, with my whole heart. For ever. I was saving myself for my perfect man and now I realise that man is you.’ Intercepting his appalled glance she almost laughed. ‘I know you don’t want to hear it. It’s awful that I feel this way and the truth is that I feel more strongly about you with every minute that passes. I don’t know what to do! The longer I stay here, the more in love with you I am. Goodness knows what I’ll be like by Tuesday. I suspect I won’t be able to get through an hour without hugging and kissing you at every opportunity. I may even have to burst into a really important meeting just to get my Lucas fix. I’m so glad you’re taking me with you.’
His eyes narrowed to two dangerous slits and then the tension left him. ‘Nice try, but I still want you with me in Zubran.’
‘But I love you. Madly. Passionately.’
‘It doesn’t matter how much you “love me”,’ he drawled. ‘I won’t be sending you home until the job is done.’
Emma slumped onto the nearest chair. ‘You know you’re unreasonable, don’t you?’
‘Demanding, yes. Unreasonable, no.’
Demanding.
He’d been demanding when he’d virtually dropped her onto the rug and stripped her naked.
He’d been demanding when he’d helped himself to her body.
She shivered and tried desperately hard not to think about that. ‘Do you realise that when a woman says “I love you” you go white and then look as if you’re about to go for dental surgery? Apart from hearing that the Dow-Jones has plunged a million points, I’m guessing that the worst words you can hear are “I love you” so I’m going to be saying it every five minutes until I drive you so mad you’ll leave me at home.’
‘You have a warped sense of humour.’ The sleeves of his sweater were pushed back and her gaze lingered on those strong arms, remembering the way he’d held her as the passion had ripped through both of them.
Emma squeezed her eyes shut.
This was impossible. Totally impossible.
‘Coffee?’
She opened her eyes and stared into his. Blue now, but they’d appeared almost black last night in the firelight as he’d kissed her. ‘Thanks.’ Taking the mug from him she wondered whether she was going to be thinking about sex every second of every day for the rest of her life.
‘So what did your sister say?’
‘Oh, she was totally thrilled that I won’t be able to make it home for the holiday—’ Emma sipped her coffee, still feeling a bit sick at the thought of the conversation. ‘She said something along the lines of, “Super, I didn’t really want to go out and have fun anyway, so you just have a great time and don’t worry about me”.’
A wry smile touched his mouth. ‘So she didn’t take it well then.’
Emma tried not to look at that mouth. ‘No. But I’ve messed up her weekend so I don’t really blame her. She relies on me to take over from Friday night.’
‘So she heaped on the guilt and you took it. Surely there are other options. Other relatives? Babysitters?’
‘No relatives, just us. And we’ve never really used babysitters. I only see Jamie at weekends so I don’t want to arrive home only to go out again.’
‘Are those your words or hers?’
Emma put her mug down slowly, thinking that he was remarkably astute for someone who claimed not to care about people. ‘Hers. But I think she’s right.’ Angie had Jamie all week. It would have felt wrong to go home and then announce she was going out on a Saturday night, wouldn’t it? ‘She was supposed to be going to a party tonight so I’ve texted my friend to see if she can look after Jamie but it’s not something I’ve done before and it does make me feel bad.’
‘So during the week you run around after me and at weekends you run around after Jamie and your sister. What about your own needs?’
Emma stared at him. ‘I love my family.’ Truthfully she didn’t feel comfortable talking about her sister. The whole conversation was still too raw and her guilt too fresh and it felt disloyal to talk about her family to someone who couldn’t possibly understand. She knew he was judging Angie and she didn’t want that because she knew the whole thing had been harder for her sister than it had been for her.
‘Does your sister always make you feel guilty?’
‘It isn’t her fault. Family stuff is always complicated—you know how that is.’ It was a casual comment. The sort of comment that might invite an understanding laugh from another person. But not him. And her own smile faded because she realised she had no idea whether this man even had a family. She knew so little about him. Just that he’d had a daughter. The photo had been of two people—a little girl and her daddy. No third person. Which didn’t mean anything, of course, because the third person could easily have been behind the camera, but she found herself wondering who had taken the picture. Someone he loved? A passing stranger?
Suddenly cold, Emma stood up and walked towards the big range cooker that dominated the kitchen. If she’d been asked to design her perfect kitchen, this would have been it. Perhaps she would have added some soft touches, some cut flowers in the bright blue jug that sat on the windowsill, and a stack of shiny fresh fruit to the large bowl that graced the centre of that table, but they were just small things. She could imagine Jamie doing his homework on the scrubbed kitchen table while she rolled out pastry and made a pie for supper. She could imagine
