Under the Millionaire's Mistletoe (12 page)

M
eg stepped back from Luke, the husband she didn't know, away from the warmth in his eyes. Warmth that had her thinking things she had no business thinking. She blamed the window. She'd come back from her walk with Caesar and looked up to see him standing at the wide picture window, wearing only boxers, his torso lean and sculpted, and a purely feminine thrill of appreciation had swept through her.

“I'm glad you found friends here, that you weren't alone,” he said after a pause so long that she'd thought he hadn't been going to answer.

His softly spoken words disconcerted her. She didn't want to like him. At least not in the softening, melting way she could feel herself liking him. That was far more dangerous than the physical pull of attraction that she—and most likely the majority of the female population who came within his sphere—felt for him.
She'd agreed to marry him because he'd believed—rightly—that his death was a real possibility and it had seemed imperative to him that Jason not be able to inherit. She'd been prepared to do anything to ease his agitation.

But he hadn't died.

He was very much alive.

And watching her.

“But hopefully they have the good sense to stay away now that I'm back. All I want is peace and quiet.”

Meg remembered the dinner. He might want peace and quiet but he wasn't going to get it. Not tonight, which was probably a good thing because Meg wasn't so sure she wanted to be alone with him.

“Show me round the house.”

“I haven't changed anything. You don't need me to show you round it.” Regardless of what he did or didn't need,
she
needed to put a little space between them. And she would—as soon as she'd told him about the dinner. Because the way they'd walked, with his arm around her, had felt so natural, and when he'd looked at her, he'd thought about kissing her and she'd wanted him to. It would feel so good, which would be all bad.

She was lonely. That was all. Her life had been on hold these last few months, but she was picking up the pieces again. She didn't need to lean on Luke.

Her work with the Maitland Foundation since she'd been back had been a welcome distraction.

“You've been having parties. That's a change.”

“Do you mean last night? That was a final committee meeting.”

“You put up Christmas decorations.” He continued, not taking her opening to ask what the committee meeting was for. “That's a change. A bigger one than you know.”
He flicked one of the red bows tied to the stair uprights. “I don't usually do Christmas.”

It seemed a sad thing to say. She couldn't imagine not marking Christmas in some way. “That's not changing as much as adding something temporary.” She was going to have to tell him about tonight.

The bow slipped and they both reached to catch it, hands tangling as they trapped the red velvet against the smooth wood of the post, halting its downward slide. For a second they stilled. His warm hand covered hers, pinning it with the bow beneath it.

He was close again. And again his proximity, his warmth and scent had her resolutions slipping. Meg slid her hand from beneath his, bringing the broad ribbon with it, and took a step back. With nerveless fingers she smoothed out the loops of the bow. From the kitchen she heard the strains of “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

“Do you remember our promise?”

She glanced up to see him watching her closely, desire kindling in the depths of his eyes. He couldn't mean the promise her thoughts had leaped to. He must have meant their vows. “To love and honor? And only those vows because there was no time to write our own. ‘In sickness and in health and to disinherit your brother and give me somewhere to live when I got back here.'”

A smile flickered and vanished. “That wasn't the promise I was talking about.”

Oh. That promise. The one she'd secretly cherished in her darkest hours, something full of the possibility of tenderness and passion and the affirmation of life, and the one she'd now hoped he'd forgotten. “I don't think anything we said or did back then applies to the here and now.”

“Some things transcend time and place,” he said evenly. “And a promise is a promise.”

Meg swallowed and tugged a little more at the bow.

“I sometimes think that promise was what I lived for,” he said, almost to himself, “what kept me hanging on when I should have died waiting for the antibiotics to reach me.”

She took another step back. His smile returned, knowing and tempting. “If it helped, then I'm glad of it.” The bow came completely undone in her unsteady fingers.

He reached for the loose end, so that it became a connection between the two of them. “Did you ever think of it? Or did you forget about me altogether?”

She avoided the first of his two questions. “I didn't forget about you.”

He pulled his end of the ribbon closer to him, bringing her hand with it. Then he lifted her hand, supported it with his own and with a sudden frown studied the ring that adorned her ring finger. “Our wedding ring?”

Meg shrugged, though with him cradling her fisted hand in his palm, nonchalance was the last thing she felt. “I had to have something. People were asking. I bought it over the internet so nobody would see me going to a jeweler's to get it.”

“And this convinced them?” With the forefinger of his free hand he touched the simple thin gold band. “I would have chosen something a little more…expensive.”

“Its importance is in what it symbolizes, not what it's worth. As I told your friends, this was all I wanted. Its simplicity and purity were the perfect representation of our relationship. Besides, I didn't want to spend a lot.”

He straightened her fingers and the velvet ribbon whispered to the floor between them. “You paid for it yourself?”

“Of course.” She tried to ease her hand free, but he held firm. “It wasn't much.”

“I can tell. And our engagement ring?” He looked from her hand to her face. “Where's that?”

She shook her head. “We weren't able to get a suitable engagement ring. It was hard enough getting the wedding band, which we had brought over from another island.” She filled him in on the details of the story she'd concocted for his friends. “You wanted us to choose the engagement ring once you came home, but I was going to argue against that. I like the band on its own.”

“What else were we going to do once I came home?”

She swallowed. “Well, there was…our honeymoon. People asked about that.” Which now that his return was real would be a divorce instead. Meg tugged at her hand and he allowed it to slide free.

Luke folded his arms across his chest and she could read nothing of his thoughts, how he felt about the stories she'd had to make up because she hadn't been able to tell people he married her out of desperation. It had seemed important that nobody, and especially the half brother he was so keen to disinherit, knew the true circumstances. “Do we know where we're going for that?”

“You wanted St. Moritz or Paris, but I wanted Easter Island.”

“So we compromised?”

Meg allowed a small smile. “Um…no. We settled on Easter Island because you've been to St. Moritz and Paris before, but neither of us has been to Easter Island. And besides, we both wanted to see the statues.” They had talked about the statues in one of their bedside conversations.

“I agreed they'd be amazing to see. Doesn't mean that's where I'd take my bride. I'd definitely go for a little
more luxury. A little more hotel time, something a little more romantic.”

“That's how people know how smitten you are with me.”

“Smitten?”

“Hey.” She smiled at his indignant expression. “It was my fantasy.”

“Was it not supposed to be reality-based?”

“You're saying it's beyond the realms of possibility?” Her smile faded. Of course someone like him, a multi-millionaire, consistently named in most-eligible-bachelor lists, wouldn't really ever be interested in her, Meg Elliot, nurse. “Your friends believed it,” she said in her defense, then frowned. “At least they said they did. They thought I was good for you.”

“That's not what I meant. I was talking about realistic honeymoon destinations, not the reality of you and me together.”

But Meg was on a roll. “They said I'm not like the women you've dated in the past—ones who don't challenge you emotionally, who let you shut yourself off from them. You must have finally realized what's important in life, must have trusted your ability to give and receive love.”

“All my friends said that, or just Sally, who thinks one psych paper in college makes her Carl Jung?”

Meg hesitated, then sighed. “Mainly Sally,” she finally admitted. But she'd so wanted to believe her, wife of one of Luke's friends, that she'd bought into her assessment.

Luke's sudden burst of laughter was the last thing she expected. “So, Easter Island, I can't wait to see those statues.”

“It's not funny.” He was still laughing at her. “I didn't
realize when I agreed to this pretence how complicated it would get. I thought I'd come here and, well…I guess I didn't really think about it at all. But there were people with questions and expectations and I had to tell them something.”

“I'm sure you did the best you could.”

“But you would have handled it better? What would you have told them?”

“To mind their own damn business.”

“You can't say that to people. And certainly not to your friends.”

“I can and I do. And friends are the ones who take it the best.”

“That's not my style.”

“I guess I might have told them we were going somewhere private where I could keep the island promise I made to my wife. That would have been almost as effective at getting them to stop asking questions. They know I don't make promises lightly.”

And just like that any trace of levity left his face, but he had to be joking still. Regardless, the sudden change threw her off balance, swept away any sense she'd had that she might be in control of their conversation.

To avoid the questioning intensity in his gaze and the confusion it stirred, she stooped and picked up the ribbon and began rolling it up. “That promise…” she said lightly, trying to inject a touch of dismissive humor into her voice “…it seems like it was a lifetime ago. Like we're not those same two people.” She had the ribbon half rolled up when he caught the end. She studied their hands, joined by a strip of red velvet. His large and tanned, hers smaller and pale but thankfully steady.

“Look at me, Meg. And let me look at you.” He still sounded far too serious for her peace of mind. She could
almost imagine a trace of need in his voice. “I held your face in my mind for so long. I can't quite get enough of the real thing.”

Which seemed the oddest thing to say about her. She had a talent for blending in and going unnoticed. She was the type of person people often forgot having met. Slowly, she looked up. He kept perfectly still as her gaze tracked over his torso, settling inevitably on his face, on the eyes that showed his wanting.

“I'm going to kiss you.”

An even bigger surprise. She swallowed and shook her head. “That would be a bad idea.” Because if he kissed her, she'd kiss him back, and then he'd know she wanted him. But while she knew she should just turn and walk away, she didn't. Her feet wouldn't listen to her head. He lifted the red velvet, drawing her hand up with it, and then he captured her wrist, raising her hand farther till he touched her fingertips to his jaw. A shiver passed through her and the velvet dropped again to the floor.

She used to touch his jaw like that when he was sick and weakened and feverish. But he was far from sick or weak now, and if anyone was feverish, it was her.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm. Warmth, heat, liquefied her bones. “I remembered your touch.”

She couldn't stop herself, she cupped her palm around his jaw. So smooth now, so strong. He framed her face with his hands and lowered his head toward hers.

She had time to back away.

She stayed precisely where he was.

He kissed with exquisite gentleness. His lips were soft and seeking as though he was savoring the taste of her in the same way she savored the taste and feel of him. He kissed, drew back a fraction, kissed again, brushing his
lips over hers. He angled his head, deepened the kiss, teased her teeth and tongue. Her mouth parted beneath his. His kiss was…beautiful. It was perfection. The way they fit so naturally together held an aching rightness. Made her feel that she'd been missing this, him, for so long.

She slid her arms around his waist and stepped into him. And still he kissed her, his fingers threading deeper into her hair.

Meg forgot all the reasons why this was a bad idea and lost herself in his kiss, in the simple joining. He gave of himself, made no demands, and because of that swept her away, a leaf delighting in the wind, flying for that brief time between tree and ground.

And for that brief time it was just him, just her, no past or future, just the now and this kiss, his lips against hers.

Too soon, but what had to be minutes later, he lifted his head, his hands still framed her face, his thumbs lazily stroked her cheeks.

“Remind me in what possible way that could have been a bad idea. I'm thinking it was one of the best, if not
the
best idea I've ever had.”

She opened her mouth to speak and waited for her brain to provide the words.

He slid his hands over her shoulders, down her arms, till he held both her hands in his. And Meg knew she was in deep, deep trouble because all she could think was that she wanted him to kiss her again and then she wanted more. Much, much more.

The chiming of the doorbell broke through the sensory spell he wove. Her first reaction was disappointment. Her second, as sanity returned, was relief. That kiss could only have led to places they couldn't go, not without horribly
complicating what was already a far-too-complicated situation, and not without threatening the safe cocoon she'd spun around her heart.