Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition (12 page)

Should he risk it? Could he? But then he thought about how much he wanted her. Of how defenceless his child
would be if he didn’t at least give it his name. And he knew he didn’t have much of a choice.

Her fingers touched the bare skin of his forearm and his gaze jerked back to hers.

‘Is it really so hard to talk about yourself?’ she murmured, the note of sympathy disturbing him more.

Her fingers fell away as he shoved his hand in his pocket. ‘Of course not,’ he lied. ‘If it’s that big a deal I don’t mind answering your questions.’ All he had to do was ensure he didn’t tell her too much. ‘In fact, I’ve got a few of my own.’

Information was power, and it was becoming blindingly obvious he didn’t know enough about her either, or he wouldn’t have underestimated her so drastically again. Why not turn this little heart-to-heart of hers to his advantage?

His confidence finally returning, he mustered a smile. ‘I’ll make some coffee, and we’ll talk out on the terrace,’ he said, reconciled to keeping his libido under control for one more night. ‘But I want to make one thing clear.’ He ran the pad of his thumb down her cheek and felt her tremble as she nodded. His confidence got another satisfying boost. ‘Once we’ve had our little chat there’ll be no more evasions. You can have tonight, but after that the gloves are off. Understood?’

She grinned. ‘Perfectly,’ she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. She lifted up on tiptoe and gave him a quick kiss. ‘As long as there are no kinky perversions involved, I’m sure I’ll be amenable.’ She shot him a coquettish look. ‘Very amenable.’

He took her wrist as she turned away. ‘Define kinky.’

‘Hmm.’ She pressed her index finger to her lips. ‘Well, spanking for one,’ she said, but then paused to rake her teeth over that tempting bottom lip. ‘Actually, no—
spanking’s probably okay.’ She tapped his nose. ‘As long as I can spank you back.’

‘You cheeky little…’

Luke went to grab her, but missed as she shot out through the terrace doors, her mischievous giggle trailing behind her.

‘Spanking’s the least of your worries, madam,’ he shouted after her. But he had to concede she’d won the round.

‘B
ERWICK
was my father.’ Luke took a sip of his coffee. ‘That’s how I inherited this place—the title,’ he said as he put his cup down on the terrace table.

A slight breeze ruffled Louisa’s hair as she stared dumbly at Luke. She could taste the sweet fragrance of the flower gardens on the air. The scent cast a potent spell in the amber glow of the sinking sun, but it wasn’t nearly potent enough to distract Louisa from her racing heartbeat. She crossed her legs and tried to even out her breathing.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said.

She didn’t know what else to say. His candour had stunned her. She hadn’t really expected him to tell her something so personal. But then, from the indifferent look on his face, she wasn’t sure he considered it to be all that personal.

So that was why he had been so upset about her magazine article. He was illegitimate and he didn’t want anyone to know about it. But why had he been so determined to keep it a secret? Why did he consider it such a stigma?

‘Oh, is right,’ he said on a sharp note of bitterness. ‘I wasn’t too happy when I found out.’

‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I know it must have been a bit of a shock when you heard his will and everything.
But…’ She looked round at the gardens, the beauty of the house behind them. ‘This place is so incredible. Surely you must have been a little bit pleased that he’d left it to you, and that he’d acknowledged you by giving you the title?’

She stumbled to a halt. His jaw had gone rigid. She’d offended him somehow. ‘I’m sorry. Obviously this is a sore point. I didn’t mean to—’

‘On the contrary,’ he interrupted her. ‘It’s not a sore point at all. So there’s no need to apologise,’ he said nonchalantly, but his jaw was still as hard as granite. Clearly his relationship with his father was a very sore point indeed. ‘But I didn’t want Havensmere or the title,’ he continued. ‘I took them in the end because the place was a wreck and restoring it seemed like a good business investment,’ he said carefully—so carefully it sounded as if he were trying to convince himself instead of her. ‘And I didn’t find out Berwick was my father after his death,’ he said flatly. ‘I found out when my mother died.’

‘How old were you?’ she asked, afraid to hear the answer.

‘Seven,’ he said.

The rush of sympathy, of understanding, made tears well in her eyes. ‘Luke, I’m so sorry.’ She reached across the table and grasped his hand, squeezed. ‘I know how awful it is to lose someone you love when you’re still a child.’

How telling, she thought, that they should have something so painful in common. But then she noticed he didn’t look sad. He looked indifferent.

‘How do you know what it feels like?’ he asked.

‘My mother died, too, when I was in my teens.’

‘That’s tough.’ He reached across, brushed the tears from her cheeks. ‘But you don’t have to cry for me,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Luckily I was younger. I don’t remember my mother all that well.’

What a strange thing to say. Surely not being able to remember his mother would make the loss harder to bear, not easier?

‘How did you find out Berwick was your father?’ she asked, as it began to dawn on her why he wanted to save his own child from illegitimacy. How dreadful it must have been for him—a motherless little boy with a father who didn’t want him.

Luke could see the compassion in her eyes. Something loosened deep inside him and he stiffened. He didn’t want her concern, her understanding. He had to put a stop to this little pity party—and quickly. He’d revealed far too much already.

‘She had a will. She named him as my father,’ he said abruptly. ‘Berwick ordered blood tests to confirm it.’

‘But he didn’t claim you?’

Luke shrugged, but the movement felt stiff. Just thinking about Berwick made him feel exposed and needy in a way he hadn’t since he was a child. ‘Berwick brought me to the UK, paid for a respected boarding school. I did okay.’

She didn’t need to know he’d hated the place on sight.

The draughty corridors and stodgy food; the endless rain; the scorn of the other boys because he was a bastard and knew nothing about cricket or rugby; the pitying glances of the housemaster and his wife when he had to stay in school during the holidays, because he had nowhere else to go; the desperate, grinding loneliness.

He’d survived it. In fact he’d triumphed over it. In a funny way, now he thought about it, Berwick had done him a favour. Berwick’s rejection had made Luke the man he was today. Emotionally self-sufficient, he didn’t need anyone and no one needed him. He liked it that way.

‘I got a good education,’ he said. ‘Everything worked out fine.’

‘But who looked after you, Luke? Who took care of your emotional needs?’

What emotional needs? he wanted to say, but didn’t. This was all getting way too deep, and way too intimate. He’d given her enough—more than enough.

‘You’ve had your questions,’ he said. He picked up her hand, brought her fingers to his lips. ‘Now I’ve got one for you.’

‘But I—’

He held up his finger to silence her. ‘Uh-uh. Fair’s fair. You had your turn.’

She huffed out a breath, and he could see she wanted to object but thought better of it. ‘All right—fine. I guess a deal’s a deal,’ she said reluctantly. ‘What do you want to know about me?’

‘I want to know why you’ve got such a problem with male authority figures.’

She scowled. ‘Like you, you mean?’

‘Just answer the question,’ he said, toying with her fingers and enjoying her irritation. She really did look ridiculously cute when she was annoyed.

‘Well, for starters I don’t consider it a problem.’

‘You’re still not answering the question,’ he said. She wasn’t getting off the hook that easily.

Her eyes flashed hot, but he could see the flush of awareness too—and felt an answering tug of lust. Okay, maybe it was a little perverse—he’d certainly never felt this way about any other woman—but arguing with her definitely got him hot.

‘It’s no big secret,’ she said. ‘My father’s a traditional Italian
papà.
I love him to bits, but he thinks it’s his God
given right to stick his nose into my business and tell me what to do—just because he’s a man and he’s my dad. We had what you might call a difficult relationship after my mother died because of it. But we’re mostly over it now.’

‘Ah-ha,’ he said, as if he were Isaac Newton under the apple tree. ‘So that explains that huge chip you’ve got on your shoulder about women’s rights.’

‘What chip?’ She tried to pull her hand out of his. He held fast. ‘Let go. I refuse to hold hands with a male chauvinist pig.’

He stood up and hauled her out of her chair. ‘What makes you think you have a choice?’

‘I most certainly do…’

He wrapped his arms around her, cuffing her wrists behind her back. Trussed like that, her breasts thrust against his chest and the juncture of her thighs cradled his hardness.

‘What are you doing?’ she gasped, in equal parts outrage and arousal.

‘Shut up, Louisa,’ he said gently, and silenced her next tirade with his mouth.

She struggled for a moment as he feasted on her lips. But as soon as he felt her melt, felt that killer body moulding to his, he drew back. He bit lightly into that pouty bottom lip, and loved the little shiver she gave. The feel of her, soft and pliant in his arms, was almost more than he could stand. But he had a point to make, and he intended to make it. So he forced himself to let her go and plastered a condescending smile on his face.

‘You’d better go to bed, Louisa. You’re going to need your sleep—I intend to keep you very busy tomorrow.’

Instead of the defiance he had expected, her lips curved and her eyes sparked with mischief.

‘Good point, Devereaux,’ she said, her eyes drifting down his frame. ‘You best do the same. I don’t want to tire you out too soon.’

He might have guessed she wouldn’t let him get the last word in.

He chuckled as she left him standing alone on the terrace, the adrenalin coursing through him at the thought of what tomorrow would bring.

Who knew defiance would be such a turn-on?

L
OUISA
scowled at the shadows under her eyes in the bathroom mirror.

‘Luke Devereaux, I’m going to murder you,’ she muttered.

She’d been awake most of the night, after being plagued by a string of luridly erotic dreams with the gloriously naked Luke Devereaux the star performer in all of them. She was a pregnant lady. She needed her sleep. What had he been thinking of last night stirring her up to the point of insanity?

But then she smiled at her reflection. After the games they’d been playing he couldn’t have slept any better than she had. The thought made her feel considerably better.

Walking into the bedroom, she pulled open the drapes, looked out across the gardens and debated her next course of action. As soon as she and Luke saw each other again they would end up tearing each other’s clothes off. Not that she minded that. There was only so much torture a woman could take in the cause of sexual equality. But last night had given her a few other things to think about besides her raging hormones, which meant she wasn’t quite ready to confront him yet. She decided a long, leisurely walk in the mansion’s grounds would give her the time she needed
before her hormones completely obliterated all coherent thought.

And the biggest topic for consideration was Luke’s revelation last night about his parentage. As she had lain awake in the long hours before dawn, she’d begun to wonder about the child he’d been and the man he’d become. What would it have been like to spend most of your childhood alone, without anyone who really cared about you?

She’d thought of her own childhood. While it had been marred by the tearing pain of her mother’s death and her father’s over-protectiveness, there had always been the bedrock of love. Strong, consistent, unstinting and totally unconditional.

What must it have been like for Luke to grow up without that support?

Maybe his emotional detachment, his need to be in charge all the time, was actually a defence—a way of coping on his own.

She sighed. Well, he wasn’t on his own any more. He was going to be a father in six months’ time—and that meant he would have to relinquish some of that cast-iron control and learn how to share his feelings.

She gave a rueful smile as she rummaged around in the wardrobe, where her clothes had appeared yesterday evening as if by magic. On the basis of her experience with Luke so far, she could see it was going to be a sharp learning curve for him—but she was more than woman enough for the job.

She found a pair of low-heeled sandals, and a simple summer dress printed with large rosebuds which clashed spectacularly with the wallpaper.

She put the outfit on, checked her appearance in the
room’s cheval mirror and blinked in shock. The dress’s bodice, held up by two spindly shoulder straps, was a lot snugger than she remembered it. The linen and Lycra mix strained against her ever-increasing bosom. Pretty soon she’d be giving Dolly Parton a run for her money!

Louisa went back to the wardrobe and rooted out a thin cotton cardigan. It was going to be another scorcher outside, with the sun beating down only a few hours after dawn, but she put the cardigan on anyway. Bumping into Luke with her boobs on display would send out entirely the wrong message.

After having breakfast in her room, Louisa snuck out of the house and set out across the gardens at a healthy pace. Mrs Roberts had given her a bottle of mineral water and a hand-drawn map with directions to an old water mill which bordered a lake. The housekeeper had estimated it would take her about two hours to get there and back, which suited Louisa’s purposes perfectly. She didn’t want Luke thinking she was his for the taking—even if she was.

Ten minutes into the woods, Louisa stopped to see how far she’d come. Her heart lifted as she noticed the astonishing picture Havensmere made behind her, framed against the forest shadows. The flowers planted out front blended together in a rainbow of colours that softened the austere stonework.

Luke really had done an incredible job with the garden design. She made a humming sound of consideration in her throat, which echoed against the ancient woods. How funny that he’d convinced himself he hated Havensmere when it seemed obvious that the opposite was true.

She turned back to the path to trudge on—and stopped dead. Oh, my goodness. She shot round again, stared at the house. Of course—it was so obvious. She felt like Donald Duck with a cartoon lightbulb beaming over her head.

Luke was making a home here—and he didn’t even know it. The thought was tantalising, and yet so sweet her heart swelled.

As she walked on, hearing the hum of insects, feeling the sun beating warm against her skin and smelling the fresh, earthy country air, she couldn’t force the silly grin off her face. She spotted the lake across an overgrown meadow and struck out towards it, feeling like a child skipping off to the sweetshop. As the long grasses brushed her calves, and sweat trickled down between her breasts, wonderful pictures projected like a rose-tinted home movie in her mind. Luke and her and their beautiful toddler—its wavy brown hair falling in front of clear grey eyes—playing on the lawn, or swimming in the pool, or picking wildflowers together in the shadow of the magnificent house that had made its final transformation into a warm and loving home.

She paused, tried to get a grip—after all, Luke had a long way to go before he was going to be ideal husband and father material—but the daydreams were irresistible. On such a bright, beautiful day, positively brimming with promise, it wasn’t hard to believe that their relationship might be at a new and exciting crossroads. She’d certainly enjoyed his company last night—and she’d discovered that there was much more to him than she ever would have expected.

At last she approached the comforting shadows of the abandoned water mill. The derelict building stood stately and silent in the still summer air, its crumbling drystone walls overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. She recognised poppies and bullrushes and a rambling rosebush. The thought that if Luke were with her he could probably tell her the names of the other flowers had her heart giving another little leap.

Peeling off the cardigan now clinging to her skin, she tied it round her waist and reached down to pluck one of the poppies—and she caught the sound of splashing coming from behind the mill.

Someone was swimming in the lake.

As the rhythmic strokes got louder, she edged closer to the mill wall and crouched down. She would look ridiculous if anyone caught her hiding, but she didn’t feel like having to explain her presence to one of Luke’s groundsmen, or gamekeepers, or whoever it was.

The splashes stopped, and Louisa let out a careful breath. She eased off her knees and shook out her legs. The blood coursed back into her numb ankles, making her wince.

She froze as a dark head appeared out of the water fifteen feet away. Strong hands gripped the worm-eaten wood of the old dock on the opposite bank. The misshapen planks creaked as the swimmer surged out of the water in one smooth, fluid manoeuvre. Louisa had to slap a hand over her mouth to contain the gasp as he stood on the dock, his back to her, all sleek, tanned flesh and muscled sinews, water glistening on his naked skin. She would have recognised that upright, arrogant stance anywhere—even though Luke Devereaux didn’t have a stitch on.

He walked with an easy predatory grace, his footfalls silent, and bent to pick up the towel beside a pile of clothes. Louisa’s eyes dropped to the paler skin of his backside. Firm, beautifully shaped buttocks flexed at the top of long, lean flanks sprinkled with dark hair. She swallowed heavily. No question about it. Her dreams last night had not done that butt justice.

Louisa sucked in a breath as he rubbed the towel across his torso and over his head. What on earth was she supposed to do now? He’d hear her if she tried to leave,
and anyway she was fast becoming transfixed. He turned slightly and she got a glimpse of his profile before he began to dry his legs in rough, cursory strokes. He looked magnificent. Like the statue of a Greek god. Her eyes followed his movements as he casually rubbed the towel over his private parts. She blinked, stared, her mouth dropping open. Okay, Louisa would hazard a guess no Greek sculptor had ever used Luke Devereaux in the buff as a model. The proportions were all wrong. Her heart pounded so hard she was astonished he couldn’t hear the thud.

He wrapped the towel around his hips, hiding his spectacular assets from view, and a strangled groan of protest escaped before she could stop it. His head whipped round, and magnetic silver-grey eyes locked on her face.

Every single part of her began to pulse in time with her deafening heartbeat.

A tantalisingly slow smile lifted one corner of his mouth. The potent mix of amusement and arousal heating his gaze detonated a nuclear reaction in her nerve endings.

‘Hello, Louisa,’ he said, as if he were at a church social and she hadn’t just been ogling every naked inch of him.

The dam of sensations broke inside her, and surged through her body.

‘You were swimming naked,’ she blurted out, and felt like an idiot.

He stepped off the dock. She stumbled back, her retreat halted by the rough stone of the mill. Erotic fantasies were one thing. Having them come true was quite another, she discovered.

Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.

‘I was cooling off after my jog,’ he said. He stopped in
front of her, so close her eyes were level with the wisps of wet hair flattened against his chest. ‘Or rather I was until you got here.’

Her eyes inched down the arrow of hair which led past the ridged muscles of his abdomen and dwindled to a fine line to bisect his belly button. She gulped, trying to ease the dryness in her throat, as her eyes darted back to his.

God, he was more gorgeous naked than she could possibly have imagined.

His lips quirked. ‘Look all you want, Louisa.’ He tilted his head to one side, his gaze drifting down to her breasts. ‘But in the interests of fair play…’ His eyes moved back to her face, the steely-grey challenging her. ‘I say we even things out.’

She coughed, gave a half-laugh, scouring her mind for a pithy retort. ‘Who says I want to play fair,’ she croaked, the thin bodice of her dress so confining it might as well have been a whalebone corset.

‘Well, then, I guess I’m going to have to persuade you,’ he said, bracing one hand above her head. He lifted the other and trailed his thumb under her chin. The soft pad traced down her neck, leaving a trail of fire in its wake, then pressed against the hammer thuds of her pulse.

‘You look hot,’ he said.

She swallowed.
You don’t say.

‘And the water’s incredibly…’ His lips lifted in a devilish smile. ‘Stimulating.’

She quivered, her nipples pebbling into hard points. ‘Stimulating is good,’ she said.

His hand spanned her collarbone, his index finger easing under the strap of her dress. Her breath hitched.

‘But if I’m going to get naked,’ she rasped, ‘I can think of something I’d rather do than go swimming.’

‘Can you really?’ His eyes sharpened as his cool fingers continued to tease the swell of her cleavage where swollen flesh strained.

Her breath panted out as he cupped the underside of her breast and lifted, as if testing its new weight. His thumb rubbed the peak, backwards and forwards. Shock waves of sensation shimmered through her and a staggered groan escaped.

He leaned close, drops of water from his hair dampening the stretched fabric of her bodice. ‘Just so you know,’ he murmured as he angled his head and his breath feathered across her cheek, ‘once we start, I’m not going to stop. So you’d better be ready this time.’

His lips felt deliciously cool but far from soothing as he kissed her neck, licked at the pulse-point.

‘Luke,’ she groaned, her head falling back to give him better access, her fingers clutching the smooth velvet flesh of his waist. ‘Just so
you
know.’ She slid her thumbs under the towel, felt him shudder. ‘If you start and then stop I’ll have to murder you in your sleep.’

He chuckled, pushing the straps of the dress off her shoulders. ‘Sounds like we’ve finally found something we can agree on.’

She drew back, holding up the drooping bodice as she clung to a final thin thread of sanity. ‘Except we can’t stay here.’ She choked out the words. ‘What if someone sees us?’

He took her wrists, pulled her arms down to her sides as his lips continued to torment the soft skin of her neck. ‘There’s no one here but the two of us, I promise,’ he whispered.

His lips teased the corner of her mouth, then his tongue demanded entry. All thoughts of propriety were obliterated in a blast of pure animal lust as she sank into the kiss.
Having wild, uninhibited open-air sex with this man in a meadow full of wildflowers might be impossibly reckless, but it felt absolutely right.

She shuddered as his palm swept up her leg, bunching the fabric of her dress. He found the gusset of her knickers and she pressed herself wantonly into his palm.

‘You’ve got too many clothes on,’ he muttered, pulling her arms from around his neck so he could push the bodice of her dress down.

She helped him, struggling out of the confining garment, not caring any more if the whole world could see them. She wanted his hands on her. She wanted to explore every glorious inch of him.

He yanked the damp towel off and laid it on the grass. She stared down at him. He was already fully erect—and the sight was both magnificent and intimidating. She felt the throbbing at her core. He lay on the towel, dragged her down, cocooning their bodies in the tall spray of meadow flowers.

‘You’re still overdressed,’ he murmured, stripping off her knickers.

The matching bra followed moments later, her breath heaving out as her breasts were freed from the restricting lace. The light summer breeze tickled her naked flesh.

His fingers traced the red marks where her bra cups had dug in. ‘You need a bigger size,’ he said, his eyes turbulent with emotion as they met hers. ‘Let’s kiss it better.’

Oh, yes, please.