minute you’ll start lecturing me about not facing reality and being a hopeless romantic and burying my head in the sand...’
Lucas narrowed his eyes on her. ‘You didn’t share a bedroom with the guy?’ he asked, honing in on the truth with deadly accuracy. He watched the way she guiltily glazed over and licked her lips. He knew that he shouldn’t pursue the topic because, frankly, there was no point. This wasn’t a ‘getting to know you’ exercise, after all, although stable doors and horses sprang to mind, resuscitating that unease he had earlier felt. They knew each other... Like it or not, weird though it seemed...
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ Milly said haughtily. ‘And I think I’ll have that shower you mentioned...’
‘Course it’s my business,’ he told her with just the sort of slow smile that implied that shrewd mind of his was leaping to all sorts of correct conclusions about her relationship with Robbie. ‘We’re in love. Isn’t that what star-struck lovers do—share everything?’
‘You...you’re...’ She spluttered furiously at him and he grinned.
‘You’re like a little spitting cat.’
‘If your mother was a fly on the wall, she’d get a pretty good picture of how not star-struck lovers we are!’ She could all but get the words out. The man was infuriating! There wasn’t a human being on the planet who could work her up so fast and so effortlessly.
‘Or...’ Lucas held her gaze but he was still grinning ‘...she might decide that a little volatility is good when it comes to...being in love and star-struck...’
‘Well, she’d be wrong,’ Milly hissed, making a beeline for her case and rummaging until she had located some clothes. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a bath.’
Sure you don’t want me to join you? The instinctive riposte was on the tip of his tongue but then the thought of actually doing that, of actually sliding into the warm water with her, soaping her, feeling her curves pressed against him, slammed into him with the force of a runaway train and his mouth tightened.
‘I have work to do,’ he said abruptly. ‘Take your time. Dinner’s usually served around seven-thirty. Early by Spanish standards but my mother’s schedule is no longer what it was. I’ll either come and get you, take you down to the dining room, or I’ll dispatch one of the maids to show you the way.’
Running a bath, door firmly locked, Milly figured that this was how it must feel like to be a toy at the whim of an unpredictable owner. He had managed to rile her, provoke her and then, when it felt as though she actually needed to have some sort of full-blown argument with him, needed to wipe that annoying, laid-back grin from his face, he changed, just like that, for no particular reason.
Boredom.
She eased herself into the bath and closed her eyes. He had suddenly become bored. He enjoyed provoking her and he knew he could. It amused him. But, like a kid with the attention span of a flea, his amusement had a very short sell-by date because, however different he might find her, she just didn’t have what it took to hold his attention for longer than five seconds. Thank goodness this was all just a fabrication! Because if it wasn’t then she would never be good enough for him, would she? Being different didn’t count. Being a novelty didn’t count.
* * *
She mentioned that over dinner. A fabulous dinner served by a different maid. A typically Spanish meal of paella rich with seafood with lots of salad. Just a casual little remark when there was a lull in the conversation, a little throwaway observation about her sheer amazement that she and Lucas had become involved, because they were just so different, because she was just the sort of girl he would find boring...
Antonia had smiled and talked about opposites attracting and then, sensing something intense in Milly’s expression, had kindly listed all the ways that relationships worked when two people complemented each other by bringing different personality traits to the union.
Lucas had failed to take the bait with the opening. Was he still of the opinion that his mother should have a honeymoon period before the cracks began showing?
When Milly thought of that bedroom, waiting for them to share it, she was of the opinion that the cracks should surface sooner rather than later.
She thought so even more when, over coffee in the sitting room, yet another room new to her, he draped his arm over her shoulders, sitting next to her with the indolent casualness of a man with his woman. His low, sexy voice was warm and teasing. He absently played with her hair. When she spoke, she could feel his breath warm on her cheek as he looked at her.
Antonia was taking in everything, eyes shrewd, and if he didn’t see that then Milly certainly did and it was the very first thing she said to him when Antonia excused herself for the night, leaving the two of them alone in the sitting room.
‘You could have helped me out when I began listing all the reasons why we didn’t make sense as a couple.’ She sprang to her feet and plonked herself down on a chair far away from him although, even though there was now distance between them, she could still feel the weight of his arm around her and the warmth of his thigh pressed against hers.
‘Did you see your mother? She thought it was cute that I was pointing out all our differences!’
Lucas shrugged and Milly gritted her pearly-white teeth in pure frustration.
He hadn’t seen his mother this happy in a while. How long had she been secretly harbouring hopes that he would meet the woman of his dreams and bring her home? She had dropped hints in the past but she had really only begun pressing him after her illness. But had she been fretting long before then?
‘The time isn’t right for a two-pronged attack.’
‘There’s no question of an attack.’ Why did he have to be so dramatic? she wondered. Why did he have to make her out as the bad guy in this when she was only here because of him and only gently laying the foundations for their break-up because that was what she had been primed to do?
‘And,’ she continued, ‘I’d rather you didn’t sit so close to me...’
‘Sit so close to you?’
‘I just think that your mother might find such public displays of affection a little embarrassing, that’s all.’
‘We’re sharing a bedroom. Somehow I don’t think she’s going to swoon because I stroke your thigh now and again. Did she look embarrassed?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘The point is, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not going to retreat to the furthest corner of the room. That would be unnatural. Furthermore, I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.’
‘The big deal,’ Milly said with a ferocious whisper, because how could he be so cool when she was all over the place? ‘Is that I’m still in the process of getting over something pretty big and pretty horrible and maybe I need just a little more physical space than you’re giving me. Lord knows what your mother must secretly think of me.’ A sudden thought occurred to her. ‘What if she thinks I’m a gold-digger? After all, one minute I’m engaged to one guy and the next minute I’m going out with a billionaire.’
