The Irresistible Tycoon (15 page)

‘And do people stay and cook breakfast too?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘I
like
Lucas.' It was defiant and hopeful and bewildered all in one, and Kim's heart went out to the small scrap of humanity at the side of her.

‘And he likes you too, darling,' she assured Melody quickly.

‘But not enough to be my new daddy?'

This child of her heart had a way of going straight for the kernel in the nut. Kim glanced at her helplessly. ‘There's more to being a daddy than that,' she managed softly. ‘Adult things, and very complicated. But Lucas likes you every bit as much as you like him, I promise you.'

She could feel Melody gazing at her and prepared herself for what might come next, but in the mercurial way of children Melody suddenly tired of that avenue of thought and said instead, ‘I got all my letters right yesterday, Mummy. Even the hard ones.'

‘Well done, darling.'

‘Kerry didn't. And she can't hop, either.'

So a new daddy didn't provide the answer to everything. Kim's hand reached out and squeezed one of Melody's for a moment. They would get through this. Somehow.

On the way back to the house Kim found she was shaking, and she stopped the car in a quiet lay-by for a few minutes to give herself the chance to calm down and prepare for what lay ahead.

Somehow, and she still wasn't quite sure how or when the situation had escalated so alarmingly, she was going to have to convince Lucas she wasn't in the market for an affair, albeit a potentially serious one from his comment
about loving her. Did he? Did he love her? Kim considered the possibility with tightly shut eyes, her hands resting limply on the steering wheel.

How could you want something and yet fear it so much it made you nauseous at the same time? she asked herself silently, dragging in the air through lips that trembled.

Love meant disappointment and betrayal and bitter hurt. She knew that; she
knew
it. It meant a transference of power from one person to another with terrifying consequences. It meant subjugation and a bondage that was worse than anything in the physical realm because it involved the heart, the emotions, the very essence of who you were.

She couldn't really remember her parents beyond a deep male voice mixed with the faint odour of cigar smoke, and the feel of her mother's softness enveloping her in a warm, secure, satisfying embrace in the middle of the night when—presumably—she had woken from some bad dream or other. But she could remember her Aunt Mabel. Remember the promises that she was safe now, that everything would be all right, that she would be loved and looked after like Mummy and Daddy would have wanted.

And then her aunt had gone, and she had found herself in an alien environment. She had cried and screamed, she could recall that as though it were yesterday, and someone—a trained child counsellor, probably—had explained everything to her.

It hadn't been until much later that she had realised her Aunt Mabel, who for two years had been her security and base, hadn't made any provision for her. Had left her at the mercy of those relatives who had descended like vultures on her aunt's estate.

Kim opened her eyes wide and stared straight ahead. And then there had been Graham… Her face set in rigid control and she turned the ignition key with a sharp movement of her hand.

Lucas was waiting for her when she drew up outside the cottage. He looked tough, remote, but she now knew that remoteness of his was a devastating weapon which he used with expert finesse, lulling one into a false security that was deadly.

‘The coffee's ready.' His voice was gentle—deliberately so, Kim warned herself silently.

‘Lucas, this is pointless, us talking like this,' Kim nerved herself to say quickly.

‘I disagree.' He smiled blandly.

Kim tried a different approach. ‘The Marsden contract is hanging on a thread,' she reminded him evenly. ‘You were supposed to call Miles Marsden at nine this morning.'

Lucas suggested somewhere that Miles Marsden could go before narrowing his eyes and staring at her fixedly. She stared back for a moment before the silver gaze became unbearable.

‘Coffee,' he reaffirmed smoothly, his voice firm but expressionless. ‘I've got used to my daily quota and I can't do without it, or perhaps I should say I don't intend to do without it.'

They weren't talking about coffee. Kim walked past him into the hall as he waved her over the threshold of the house, and again she had the feeling that she was the guest and Lucas the host. It rankled but she welcomed the shot of adrenalin; she would take any Dutch courage she could get to see her through the next little while.

Kim continued through to the kitchen and she saw immediately that Lucas had restored the place to its usual gleaming brightness. The only hint of their earlier breakfast was the faint smell of bacon.

‘You shouldn't have cleared up,' she said stiffly. ‘There was no need.'

He ignored the comment as though she hadn't spoken, following her into the limited space and leaning against the
wall, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets and his eyes broodingly intent.

He had shaved whilst she'd been gone. Kim found her gaze drawn to the hard square jaw and her heart gave a little kick. And showered too by the look of his still-damp hair.

Kim found she was moving jerkily as she poured the two cups of coffee; the liquid steel gaze was far too intense to be comfortable. She swallowed hard as she handed Lucas his coffee, keeping her gaze fixed on a spot over his left shoulder.

‘Thanks.' He straightened as he took the cup and she felt her senses respond with humiliating swiftness. ‘So…' He made no effort to stand aside and unless she literally barged past him she was effectively trapped in her little part of the kitchen. ‘I told you I loved you and you reacted by telling me to get the hell out. Care to explain why?' he asked with a cool lack of expression.

‘Would you listen if I said no, I wouldn't?' Kim responded painfully. ‘No.'

‘I thought not.'

Where could she start? She took a hefty gulp of the scalding hot coffee and then winced as it burnt her throat, her eyes smarting. ‘Do you want me to resign?' she asked quietly, knowing she was prevaricating. ‘No, Kim, I do not want you to resign,' Lucas said with formidable control. ‘I want you to talk to me.'

He was asking for the hardest thing in the world, as though it was as easy as falling off a log. She stared at him, her face tight with tension, and then looked down into the rich warmth of the fragrant coffee as she said very softly, ‘It's a long story and it won't change anything.'

‘I'll be the judge of that.'

She looked up at him then, searching her mind for an
escape route, but there wasn't one. She had known all along there wouldn't be. He had made up his mind he wanted the ‘t's crossed and the ‘i's dotted and, Lucas being Lucas, that was exactly what he would get. Never mind about her pain, her humiliation, her excruciating shame…

She took a deep breath and began talking. It wasn't so bad at first; she began with the agony of her aunt dying and the way she had been whisked into care, detailing the fight to rise above the loneliness and isolation she had felt in a steady quiet voice. And then she paused, her voice very low as she said, ‘And then I went to university and met Graham.'

‘Did you love him?' Lucas asked softly.

‘I thought I did.' She smiled bitterly. ‘It was so amazing to have someone need me so badly, to want to be with me every minute, to love me so much. I'd never had that before and it quite literally bowled me off my feet.
Graham
bowled me off my feet. And then we got married.' She stopped abruptly, feeling horribly trapped and moving restlessly in the tiny space. ‘Can we go through to the sitting room?'

‘Sure.' He gently touched her cheek with one large hand before standing aside to let her pass. His fingers were cool, steady, and the tingling sensation in her flesh made her suddenly short of breath. It made her scurry through to the sitting room with more haste than dignity, and as she turned to face him again he raised his eyebrows at her.

‘I wasn't going to ravish you on the kitchen floor.'

‘I know that.'

‘You don't lie very well, Kim,' said Lucas matter-of-factly. ‘Continue with the story. You're now married.'

It sounded simple when it was said like that.

‘Graham didn't love me,' Kim said mechanically, forcing herself to go into automatic to get through the next minutes. ‘I don't actually think he was capable of the emotion. He'd
put on a good show at university and we always seemed to be with a load of people there, the life was so gregarious. His drinking didn't stand out there, either; everyone in Graham's set drank too much.'

Lucas nodded. ‘I too was young once,' he said drily.

‘His parents financed a little business for him and he was pleased with that at first, acting the big I am among his friends and cronies. But the drinking was getting worse. I tried to help him but he'd turn everything round on me, saying he had to drink because I was a useless wife, hopeless in bed, that sort of thing.'

She had tried to continue in the flat even tone but the pain of Graham's rejection, the incredibly cruel things he had used to throw at her, was still a raw wound.

‘We'd been married eighteen months when he suggested…' Kim sat down on one of the easy chairs, her head lowered and her hair covering her face like a veil. She had felt too weary that morning to fiddle with it before taking Melody to school, but she was glad now of the slight protection it gave from those piercing eyes.

‘What did he suggest, Kim?' Lucas said tensely.

‘He asked…he wanted me to sleep with one of his prospective clients,' Kim said numbly. ‘He'd been furious when I got pregnant with Melody so quickly after we'd got married, and when I wouldn't have an abortion like he wanted he blamed that—the added responsibility of a family—on the business failing. He said I owed him.'

Lucas swore softly but the sound was none the less ugly for its quietness. He knew this slimeball's type; unfortunately there were several spawned in each generation. Men without conscience, men who would use vulnerability and gentleness in another person to bring them under their domination. Kim had been a sitting target for him with her background, and with her looks he must have thought he'd won the jackpot.

‘Melody was five months old,' Kim continued quietly, ‘and right up to that point I'd tried to convince myself that I could turn the marriage around, for our child's sake if nothing else. I'd done everything I could to make him love me, tried to please him in every way I knew how.' She stopped again, the memory of her abasement from those days horribly vivid. How often, in the weeks and months following Graham's vile request, had she told herself she must have been mad, insane, not to see what he was really like? But she hadn't. She just hadn't.

‘But that day I went berserk.' Her voice was shaking now in spite of her efforts to control it. ‘Really berserk. I flew at him, hitting him, punching him, and he struck me back so hard I lost consciousness for a time.'

‘Hell, Kim.' He knew she probably didn't want to be touched, not in view of what she was reliving, but Lucas couldn't see her sitting there, so small and slender and broken, and not hold her. He lifted her up to him, and as she stiffened, her body tensing, he said softly, ‘It's all right, it's all right; I just want to hold you as one human being comforting another, that's all. Nothing more, Kim. I swear it.'

He would have given the world for five minutes alone with Graham Allen if the dirty swine hadn't been dead. And he would have made him suffer. An artery pumping out his life blood had been too quick an end for the so-and-so.

‘When I came to he was sitting in front of me with Melody on his knee,' Kim whispered against his shirt, her head still hanging limply. ‘He told me if I ever confided in a living soul, told them anything of what had gone on, he would kill her, and then me. I believed him, Lucas. He was actually capable of that when the mood took him. He said it was important for the business he was seen as an estab
lished family man and that if I tried to leave him he would find us. He did promise he'd never hit me again, though.'

‘You should have left him. There are places—'

‘No. He'd have found us.' Kim raised desolate eyes, her lashes starred with tears. ‘But from that day I moved into Melody's room on a camp bed. I couldn't bear for him to touch me. Something died for ever that day, Lucas. I know it. I could never trust any man again.'

‘I'm not any man,' he said grimly, seating himself on the sofa with Kim on his knee and holding her when she would have struggled away.

‘Things got worse and worse,' Kim continued, her body tight and rigid. ‘He…he became like a devil. And then, the night after the shopping incident, when he'd broken his word and hit me again, he found me looking at flats in the paper. He attacked me, said I was withholding his conjugal rights so he'd take what was rightfully his by force if he had to. But I fought back, hit him over the head with a saucepan in the end and locked myself in Melody's room. I thought he might try to break the door down but in the event he went off on a drinking binge, and the rest you know.'

She took a deep breath. ‘Except that he left debts, huge debts—for me, that is—and I was stupid enough to have signed documents that made me as responsible as Graham.'

‘Hence you jumping at the job at Kane Electrical,' Lucas said softly, his voice shaking a little with what he was feeling. ‘And here was me thinking you had fallen for my irresistible charm.'

He was trying to lighten things, Kim knew that, but his closeness was too much to cope with. ‘Please let me go, Lucas,' she said tremblingly. ‘And don't feel sorry for me. I didn't tell you about Graham for that.'