The Irresistible Tycoon (16 page)

‘Listen to me, Kim.' He lifted her chin so that she had to look into his face, and she saw fierce anger was battling
with a tenderness that made her want to howl like a baby. ‘I can't deny I want him to suffer the torments of the damned for what he's put you through, and if he were alive I'd find him and teach him a lesson that would mark him until his dying day. That's the way I'm made, I'm afraid. But you've got to put that maniac behind you. He's history, dead, gone—and I don't mean in just the physical sense.'

She was dazed and shaking, as much by their intimacy as the terror she had relived.

‘If you let him shape your future he's really won, don't you see that?' Lucas urged huskily. ‘And you're worth more than the dregs he's left you, and so is Melody.'

‘Melody is one reason I don't want a relationship with anyone, ever,' Kim said tightly, afraid the pull of his magnetism was going to convince her black was white. ‘We're safe as we are, Melody and I, and that's all I ask of the future, Lucas. To be safe.'

‘The hell it is.' It was a growl, and immediately he added, ‘I'm sorry. Don't look like that; I'm not going to hurt you, for crying out loud. But, like I said before, I'm not anyone, and what's between us is something outside the normal realm of things. Of course you want to be safe, but there's more to life than just that, my love. Don't throw all your hopes and dreams and aspirations on the funeral pyre of that rat. I can make you alive in a way you've never dreamt of.'

My love. Kim couldn't speak at all, she could only look at him, but her eyes were huge with distrust and fear and he read the panic and denial in her face with deep and silent frustration.

‘I want you, Kim, but not for a night or a week or a month,' he said very softly.

‘No.' Before he could say any more she jerked herself away from him, sliding to her feet and shaking uncontrol
lably as she said, ‘You have to understand, Lucas, please. I can't… I don't want commitment.'

How many times had he said exactly that to some beauty or other he was inviting into his bed? Lucas's thoughts were self-derisory and caustic. And now he was being hoist with his own petard. But he was damned if he was going to let her go. She was his, in her heart. He just had to convince her of it. But she had had enough brute force and manipulation to last her a lifetime and he wasn't about to indulge in more of the same. If he took her she would capitulate in seconds; he had no doubt about that. But he wanted more than her body and a momentary acceptance in her emotions. Much more.

‘Okay.' He stood up slowly to face her, thrusting his hands into his pockets to remind himself not to touch her. How he wanted to touch her…

‘Okay?' The tears were still sparkling on her white cheeks and Kim took a shaky breath. ‘What do you mean okay?'

‘I accept your proviso that we're just friends,' Lucas said evenly, ‘and I appreciate that you trusted me enough to tell me about your past. That's the first requisite of friends, trust.'

Kim stared at him, feeling she was entering an Alice in Wonderland experience. She hadn't mentioned anything about being friends, had she? she asked herself bewilderedly. And where had he got this idea about her trusting him?

‘So, we'll go on from here with no bad blood between us, yes?' Lucas's tone was soothing. He had noted the brittle stance of her body, her chalk-white face and agonised eyes, and it had warned him she was at the limit of her endurance for one day. He also knew he wanted her more than ever.

‘I…I don't know,' Kim stammered defensively, suddenly unsure of exactly what was being said.

‘Kim, you've told me you need to work to pay off Graham's debts,' Lucas said calmly, ‘and surely you want to provide Melody with the best standard of living in the meantime? That taken as read, you working as my secretary is a good deal for both of us. I get someone who is completely trustworthy and willing to give the job her all; you get an excellent salary with no strings attached.'

‘But…but what you said…'

‘About loving you, wanting you?' Lucas expelled a quite breath. ‘That still stands, I'm afraid, but I'm no callow youth in the grip of adolescent urgings he can't control. And life goes on, even in the midst of my bruised ego. I'm a businessman first and foremost, Kim. You should know everything comes second to that.' And the funny thing was, he would have meant that last sentence at one time, Lucas admitted with bitter self-mockery.

‘The last few months have been somewhat…strained at times, haven't they?' Lucas raised dark sardonic eyebrows, and at Kim's faint nod inclined his own head in agreement. ‘But now we both know exactly where we stand and with no hard feelings. Okay?'

‘Okay.'

He smiled as she spoke but Kim was beyond smiling back. Her eyes opened wide as he placed his hands on her slender shoulders but she stood quietly before him, forcing herself not to shrink away. And when the dark head bent and he lightly brushed the top of her head with his lips she still remained motionless, wondering—with a bewilderment that was stronger than anything she'd felt before—why she felt her heart was breaking.

K
IM
didn't go into work that day although Lucas left immediately after their ‘clearing of the air', as he referred to their talk.

He had ordered her to go back to bed and get some sleep before she had to collect Melody again, but she found sleep was the last thing on her mind in the hours that followed. After an hour or so of tossing and turning she threw back the covers irritably and got dressed again, giving the house an impromptu spring-clean that took all the rest of the day and most of the evening.

The hard physical work helped; at least she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow that night, and her dreams—if she had any—must have been non-threatening because she couldn't remember them in the morning, which was a Saturday.

She found her heart was beating so hard it was suffocating the first time she met Lucas after the morning at the cottage, but he had retreated into the hard, attractive, distant tycoon of earlier days and within an hour or two—amazingly to Kim—she found herself relaxing, and by the end of Monday she was sufficiently loosened up to laugh at one of his wickedly amusing observations on life.

The next morning she experienced the same hot shivers and thudding of the heart as the day before, but when Lucas made no attempt to be close or anything but her boss, their old working relationship gradually settled into place.

The silver-grey eyes still pinned her on occasion but that was Lucas, she assured herself each time she caught him looking at her in a certain way. And the habit he had of
almost reading her mind was peculiar to him too. It didn't make her comfortable, but cosiness or serenity had never been an option around Lucas anyway.

Kim found she was missing Maggie more than she would have thought possible as the days and weeks crept by, especially after one of her friend's phone calls or letters which were all determinedly cheerful and which never mentioned Pete.

She had mentioned Maggie's situation to Lucas whilst assuring him she would make alternative arrangements for Melody, should the need arise, but it was four weeks before this happened and then the late meeting just necessitated Janie—the mother of Melody's schoolfriend—walking across the road to the school and keeping Melody until seven, when Kim collected her.

By the time the May blossom had fallen and June had arrived, and Melody was well underway with her herb and vegetable patch, Kim was forced to acknowledge to herself that she was lonely. She adored Melody, worshipped her, but the lack of adult stimulation was getting to her, she told herself crossly one Saturday morning after a particularly vivid and erotic dream concerning Lucas.

She missed Maggie's easy, funny companionship, that was all it was. She narrowed her eyes against the hot June sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window. But it wasn't, was it? her innate honesty forced her to recognise in the next moment.

It wasn't so much that she was lonely as lonely for Lucas, and there was a subtle difference there. Since she had accepted that she loved him there was barely a minute or two that ticked by that he wasn't on her mind. It wasn't so bad when she was at work—at least she could see him there, hear him talk, laugh at his jokes and exist on the perimeter of his busy life.

Sad girl. The thought was immediate and extremely an
noying, but truthful. She hunched her shoulders against it and frowned at the sunlight.

And all the long work lunches they shared didn't help. She was forced to see him in a different light when he took her to one of the little restaurants he favoured, or to the pub, and although he assured her he'd treated June exactly the same and it was the way he liked to relate to his secretaries, it nevertheless caused Kim untold painful heart-searchings.

As had the couple of times she had found herself at his home. She'd met Martha, his housekeeper, and the animal occupants of the beautiful mansion. Again, good reasons for her being there—the first time he had called in on his way back to the office after lunch for a file he'd forgotten, and the next he had asked her to bring some papers to him one morning when he had been working at home, but each time Martha had insisted Kim partake of coffee and home-made shortbread before she had left, and treated her as—what, exactly? Kim asked herself silently. A buddy, a friend? Certainly not as one of Lucas's employees.

And Lucas's relationship with his housekeeper she'd found particularly unsettling. His gentle teasing of the little old grey-haired woman, the warmth and tenderness in Lucas's voice, and the blatant devotion in Martha's when she spoke of the man she called ‘my wee lad' had all been disconcerting. Unnerving even.

Not that Lucas had stepped out of line for a minute. Oh, no, not ice-man. ‘Oh, stop it.' Kim acknowledged she was being spectacularly unfair. It was just that she hadn't expected her ‘just friends' decision to be quite so hard, or so apparently easy for him! Sour grapes. Kim nodded to the accusation. Probably. Which made her really mean.

Enough. Get your mind off Lucas and on to something else, she told herself sternly, and with that in mind she walked out of the kitchen door into the spangled sunlight
of the garden. ‘Fancy the paddling pool out, sweetheart?' she called to Melody, who was busily engaged in looking for weeds in her little plot of ground.

A whoop of delight was the answer, and within half an hour the paddling pool was full and they were both in their bikinis, Melody splashing about in the tepid water and Kim sitting in a deckchair under the shade of a copper beech with a mug of coffee in her hand.

An abundance of wisteria had gracefully draped itself over the adjoining garden wall during May, and this was now giving way to a cascade of rambling roses, their delicious scent wafting gently on the still air.

It was a world away from the nightmare of the little bedsit they had endured for two long years. Hot tears pricked at Kim's eyes—which was ridiculous, she told herself firmly, when she ought to be smiling if anything. But Lucas had made all this possible—given her back her independence, her chance of carving a good life for herself and Melody, of living somewhere like this. And she was grateful, incredibly so, but she'd never really told him.

She blinked very hard. And sooner or later some woman, a little more beautiful or talented or charismatic than the rest, would snare him. She wasn't aware he was dating again but he could be, for all she knew, and she couldn't blame him if he was. As he'd said, celibacy wasn't his style.

And it would be her fault. Her fault she had missed a chance of heaven. But… Kim stared straight ahead but the garden had vanished into the black abyss of her thoughts. If she had her chance over again she would do exactly the same. She might be throwing away her chance of heaven but the hell she had endured with Graham precluded stepping into a relationship again. With Graham she'd had the excuse she hadn't known what she was doing, but there
would be no justification for willingly putting herself and Melody at risk again.

The same old arguments and counter-arguments she had mentally indulged in for the last two months raged in her mind, and when Melody tapped her arm impatiently, saying, ‘Mummy,
Mummy.
I said I can hear the doorbell,' it took Kim a few seconds to bring herself back to the real world.

‘I'm sorry, sweetheart. Mummy was daydreaming.' Kim smiled into the little face frowning up at her, hastily reaching for the cloudy blue sarong that matched the bikini as she rose.

She wrapped the delicately patterned cloth round her waist as she entered the house and padded through the hall to the front door, and it was only as she opened it she realised she hadn't given a thought to who might be calling at ten o'clock on a sunny June morning.

‘Lucas!' For a moment she stared blankly at the tall, lean figure in front of her dressed casually in a charcoal shirt and black jeans, but as the silver eyes narrowed slightly and showed their appreciation of her clothes—or lack of them—reality surged in in an overwhelmingly hot flood that started at her toes and worked upwards.

Kim resisted the impulse to cross her arms over her breasts and said instead, her voice as cool as she could make it, considering she was giving a first-rate impression of a furnace at full tilt, ‘What's the matter? Is anything wrong?'

‘Plenty,' he drawled lazily, ‘the first thing being that I'm kicking myself for not calling round before, this summer.'

She tried for a smile, which was a mistake because it turned into more of a nervous twitch, and then, as she heard Melody's excited voice just behind her calling Lucas's name, Kim groaned inwardly. If she knew anything about her hospitable little daughter, Lucas was going to be invited
to come and see Melody's new paddling pool, which of course was fine, great—or would have been if her mother wasn't half-naked!

‘Lucas!' Melody skidded along the hall on small bare wet feet and with an abandonment Kim envied, and as Lucas bent down and held out his arms Melody jumped right into them. ‘I kept asking Mummy when you'd come and she said she didn't know,' Melody told him as she put small hands on his shoulders and looked into the dark rugged face. ‘She said you were busy.'

‘Not too busy to call and see you,' Lucas said easily, straightening with Melody still perched in his arms and standing to look at Kim. Two pairs of eyes, one glittering metallic silver and the other deep liquid brown, surveyed her unblinkingly, and Kim sighed her acquiescence to the unspoken request.

‘You'd better come in,' she said a touch ungraciously to Lucas. She couldn't fight them both.

‘Thank you,' he said with mocking gratefulness, and the colour which had just begun to die down returned with new ferocity.

Irritating, impossible man! All the warmer feelings she'd indulged in earlier went right out of the window.

‘Coffee?' She led the way down the hall, painfully aware of the transparency of the sarong and the revealing nature of the bikini. The purchase of the bikini had been in the nature of a statement one Saturday a few weeks before.

Lucas had taken her out to lunch the previous day, and as they'd been leaving the restaurant there had been a low and discreet call from a table across the room, and a woman had made her way to their side. An exquisitely dressed and equally exquisitely beautiful woman.

Lucas had introduced them, and Kim had been very conscious of a pair of green feline eyes looking her over from head to toe. Perfectly painted, glossy lips had managed a
half-smile before the woman had gone on to ask if Lucas was coming to some party or other that weekend. ‘It will be such fun, darling,' the carefully modulated voice had urged seductively. ‘Clarice's little get-togethers always are. Remember the last time when we finished up in the pool and I lost my bikini top? A designer one, too, darling,' she added in an aside to Kim. ‘Although Lucas found it for me.'

She just bet Lucas had. Kim's face must have spoken volumes because she remembered Lucas's mockingly cynical smile as he had made their goodbyes, and led her out of the restaurant with a light hand at her elbow.

‘An old friend?' She'd resisted asking until they were nearly back at the office.

Lucas had shrugged easily. ‘In a manner of speaking.'

‘The party sounded as though it was a bit wild,' Kim had said brightly, hating him.

‘Not really.' Amused eyes had rested on her flushed face for a moment. ‘Felicity could make a wake sound like a riot. Clarice and her husband recently spent a fortune on an indoor pool that could house the Olympics, so now every invitation comes in an evening dress and swimwear form. Clarice just likes to be different.'

‘Evening dress
and
designer swimwear,' Kim had said tartly. ‘The competition must be fierce.'

‘I wouldn't know.' They'd arrived back at Kane Electrical and Lucas had driven smoothly into his parking space before turning to her, resting his arm casually on the back of her seat. ‘I prefer
au naturel
, myself, but if I have to wear something a pair of old jeans will do.'

The mental pictures that had flashed on to the screen of her mind had taken some working through, but by the time Kim had left the building later that day she'd managed to get her errant thoughts under control. Just.

However, the image of a green-eyed, red-haired beauty
had stayed with her, along with the uncomfortable knowledge that the only item of swimwear
she
possessed was a very functional one-piece that had seen better days. She had bought the bikini and matching sarong the next day.

‘If you go out into the garden with Melody I'll bring the coffee in a minute,' Kim offered coolly once they were in the kitchen and Lucas was standing by the open back door.

He looked very dark and masculine in her little limed-oak kitchen and every bit as disturbing as the most erotic of her dreams.

‘No hurry.' Melody had nestled herself comfortably in his arms, half-turned so that her fair head was resting against his collarbone and her face was turned towards Kim. ‘We're fine.'

He was making no secret of the fact that he was enjoying looking at her, and Kim was distinctly conscious of the briefness of the bikini and the deep V between her tingling breasts. And of Melody next to his heart. The pose was relaxed and Lucas looked natural, like a father. It sent such whirling panic through her she almost dropped the coffee pot.

Once in the garden Lucas refused Kim's offer of the deck-chair and lay sprawled out at her feet after insisting she be seated. It caused her equilibrium untold problems to see his dark head at a level with her thighs, his long, lean muscled body propped on one elbow as he surveyed Melody splashing in the sunlit water.

‘A water baby.' His deep voice was lazy and amused and Kim bitterly resented his imperturbability when she hardly knew where to put herself.

‘She's always loved the water.' It was tight and stiff but the best she could do. She paused a moment, trying to make her voice normal before she asked, ‘Why are you here, Lucas?'