Читать книгу Love Islands: Red-Hot Sunsets - Кэтти Уильямс, Jane Porter, Cathy Williams - Страница 14
ОглавлениеLUCAS’S CABIN WAS different from hers insofar as it was twice the size and unnervingly masculine: dark-grey silky throw on the bed, dark-grey pillows, built-in furniture in rich walnut that matched the wooden flooring. He laid her on the bed and she immediately wriggled into a sitting position, wishing that she had something to tug down to cover herself, but instead having to make do with arranging herself into the most modest position possible, back upright, legs rammed close together and hands primly folded on her lap.
Sick with tension, she watched him disappear into an adjoining bathroom, that made hers look like a shower cubicle, to return a minute later with a first-aid kit.
‘This really isn’t necessary...er... Lucas.’
‘You managed the first name. Congratulations. I wondered whether you would.’
‘I have a few grazes, that’s all.’
He was kneeling in front of her and he began to feel her ankle with surprisingly gently fingers. ‘Tell me if anything hurts.’
‘Nothing,’ Katy stated firmly. She gave a trial tug of her leg so that Lucas could get the hint that this was all pretty ridiculous and overblown but he wasn’t having it.
Relax, she told herself sternly; relax and it’ll be over and done with in a second and you can bolt back to your cabin. But how could she even begin to relax when those fingers were doing all sorts of things to her body?
The feathery delicacy of his touch was stirring her up, making her breathing quicken and sending tingling, delicious sensations racing through her body like little lightning sparks. She looked at his down-bent head, the raven-black hair, and had to stop herself from reaching out and touching it just to see what it felt like between her fingers.
Then she thought of the bulge of his arousal and felt faint all over again.
‘I’m surprised you have a first-aid kit to hand,’ she said breathlessly, tearing her fascinated gaze away from him and focusing hard on trying to normalise the situation with pointless conversation.
‘Why?’ Lucas glanced up briefly before continuing with his exceedingly slow exploration of her foot.
‘Because you don’t seem to be the type to do this sort of thing,’ Katy said honestly.
‘It’s essential to have a first-aid kit on board a sailing vessel. In fact, this is just one of many. There’s a comprehensive supply of medical equipment in a store room on the middle deck. You would be surprised at the sort of unexpected accidents that can happen when you’re out at sea, and there’s no ambulance available to make a five-minute dash to collect and take you to the nearest hospital.’ He was working his way gently up her calf, which was smooth, slender and sprinkled with golden hair. Her skin was like satin and still warm from the sun.
‘And you know how to deal with all those unexpected accidents?’ Lucas’s long, clever fingers were getting higher and, with each encroaching inch, her body lit up like a Christmas tree just a tiny bit more. Any higher and she would go up in flames.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Lucas drawled. ‘Your knees are in a pretty terrible state, but after I’ve cleaned them up you should be fine. You’ll be pleased to know that nothing’s been broken.’
‘I told you that,’ Katy reminded him. ‘Why would I be surprised?’
He was now gently swabbing her raw, torn skin and she winced as he patted the area with some oversized alcohol wipes, making sure to get rid of every last bit of dirt.
‘Because,’ Lucas said wryly, not looking at her, ‘I get the feeling you’ve pigeonholed me as the sort of money-hungry, ambitious businessman who hasn’t got time for anything other than getting richer and richer and richer, probably at the expense of everyone around him. Am I right?’
‘I never said that,’ Katy told him faintly.
‘It’s hard not to join the dots when your opening words to me were to accuse me of being capable of kidnapping you.’
‘You were kidnapping me, in a manner of speaking!’
‘Tell me how it feels to be a kidnap victim.’ His voice was light and teasing as he continued to tend to her knee, now applying some kind of transparent ointment, before laboriously bandaging it and then turning his attention to foot number two. ‘I always wanted to be a doctor,’ he surprised her and himself by saying.
‘What happened?’ For the first time since she had been deposited on his bed, Katy felt herself begin to relax, the nervous tension temporarily driven away by a piercing curiosity. Lucas could be many things, as she had discovered over the past few days. He could be witty, amusing, arrogant and always, always wildly, extravagantly intelligent. But confiding? No.
‘My father’s various wives happened,’ Lucas said drily. ‘One after each other. They looked alike and they certainly were all cut from the same cloth. They had their eyes on the main prize and, when their tenure ran out, my father’s fortune was vastly diminished. By the time I hit sixteen, I realised that, left to his own devices, he would end up with nothing to live on. It would have killed my father to have seen the empire his grandfather had built dwindle away in a series of lawsuits and maintenance payments to greedy ex-wives.
‘I knew my father had planned on my inheriting the business and taking over, and I had always thought that I’d talk to him about that change of plan when the time was right; but, as it turned out, the time never became right because without me the company would have ended up subdivided amongst a string of gold-diggers and that would have been that.’
‘So you gave up your hopes and dreams?’
‘Don’t get too heavy on the pity card.’ Lucas laughed, sitting back on his heels to inspect his work, head tilted to one side. He looked at her and her mouth went dry as their eyes tangled. ‘I enjoy my life.’
‘But it’s a far cry from being a doctor.’ She had never imagined him having anything to do with the caring profession and something else was added to the swirling mix of complex responses she was stockpiling towards him. She thought that the medical profession had lost something pretty big when he had decided to pursue a career in finance because, knowing the determination and drive he brought to his chosen field of work, he surely would have brought tenfold to the field of medicine.
‘So it is,’ Lucas concurred. ‘Hence the fact that I actually enjoy being hands-on when it comes to dealing with situations like this.’
‘And have you had to deal with many of them?’ She thought of him touching another woman, one of the skinny, leggy ones to whom those thong swimsuits forgotten on the yacht belonged, carefully stored just in case someone like her might come along and need to borrow one of them.
‘No.’ He stood up. ‘Like I said, my time on this yacht is limited, and no one to date has obliged me by requiring mouth-to-mouth resuscitation whilst out to sea.’ He disappeared back into the bathroom with the kit and, instead of taking the opportunity to stand up and prepare herself for a speedy exit, Katy remained on the bed, gently flexing both her legs and getting accustomed to the stiffness where the bandages had been applied expertly over her wounds.
‘So I’m your first patient?’
Lucas remained by the door to the bathroom, lounging against the doorframe.
Katy was riveted at the sight. He was still wearing his bathing trunks although, without her even noticing when he had done it, he had slung on his tee-shirt. He was barefoot and he exuded a raw, animal sexiness that took her breath away.
‘Cuts and grazes don’t honestly count.’ Lucas grinned and strolled towards her, holding her spellbound with his easy, graceful strides across the room. He moved to stand by the window which, as did hers, looked out on the blue of an ocean that was as placid as the deepest of lakes. His quarters were air-conditioned, as were hers, but you could almost feel the heat outside because the sun was so bright and the sky was so blue and cloudless.
‘I’m sorry if I ruined your down time.’
‘You never told me why you leapt off your deckchair and raced for the pool as though the hounds of hell were after you,’ Lucas murmured.
She was in his bedroom and touching her had ignited a fire inside him, the same fire that had been burning steadily ever since they had been on his yacht. He knew why she had leapt off that deck chair. He had enough experience of the opposite sex to register when a woman wanted him, and it tickled him to think that she wasn’t doing what every other woman would have done and flirting with him. Was that because she worked for him? Was that holding her back? Maybe she thought that he would sack her if she was too obvious. Or maybe she had paid attention to the speech he had given her at the start when he had told her not to get any crazy ideas about a relationship developing between them.
He almost wished that he hadn’t bothered with that speech because it turned him on to imagine her making a pass at him.
Lucas enjoyed a couple of seconds wondering what it would feel like to have her begin to touch him, blushing and awkward, but then his innate pragmatism kicked in and he knew that she was probably playing hard to get, which was the oldest game in the world when it came to women. She had revealed all sorts of sides to her that he hadn’t expected, but the reality was that she had had an affair with a married man. She’d denied that she’d known about the wife and kiddies, and maybe she hadn’t. Certainly there was an honesty about her that he found quite charming but, even so, he wasn’t going to be putting any money on her so-called innocence any time soon.
‘It was very hot out there,’ Katy muttered awkwardly, heating up as she recalled the pivotal moment when raging, uncontrolled desire had taken her over like a fast-moving virus and she had just had to escape. ‘I just fancied a dip in the pool and unfortunately I didn’t really look where I was going. I should head back to my room now. I think I’ll give my legs a rest just while I have these bandages on—and, by the way, thank you very much for sorting it out. There was no need, but thanks anyway.’
‘How long do you think we should carry on pretending that there’s nothing happening between us?’ Which, frankly, was a question Lucas had never had to address to any other women because other women had never needed persuading into his bed. Actually, it was a question he had not envisaged having to ask her, considering the circumstances that had brought them together. But he wanted her and there was no point having a mental tussle over the whys and wherefores or asking himself whether it made sense or not.
On this occasion, self-denial probably made sense, but Lucas knew himself and he knew that, given the option of going down the route of what made sense or the less sensible route of scratching an itch, then the less sensible route was going to win the day hands down every time.
He also knew that he wasn’t a man who was into breaking down barriers and jumping obstacles in order to get any woman between the sheets—and why would he do that anyway? This wasn’t a game of courtship that was going anywhere. It was a case of two adults who fancied one another marooned on a yacht for a couple of weeks..
In receipt of this blunt question, presented to her without the benefit of any pretty packaging, Katy’s eyes opened wide and her mouth fell open.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’ve seen the way you look at me,’ Lucas murmured, moving to sit on the bed right next to her, and depressing the mattress with his weight so that Katy had to shift to adjust her body and stop herself from sliding against him.
She should have bolted. His lazy, dark eyes on her were like lasers burning a hole right through the good, old-fashioned, grounded common sense that had dictated her behaviour all through her life—with the exception of those few disastrous months when she had fallen for Duncan.
The slow burning heat that had been coursing through her, the exciting tingle between her legs and the tender pinching of her sensitive nipples—all responses activated by being in his presence and feeling his cool fingers on her—were fast disappearing under a tidal wave of building anger.
‘The way I look at you?’
‘Don’t be embarrassed. Believe me, it isn’t usually my style to force anyone’s hand, but we’re here and there’s a sexual chemistry between us. Are you going to dispute that? It’s in the air like an invisible electric charge.’ He laughed with some incredulity. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but it’s something I can’t remember feeling in a very long time, if ever.’
‘And you think I should be flattered?’
Lucas frowned because this wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting. ‘Frankly, yes,’ he told her with complete honesty.
Katy gaped, even though she knew very well why a woman would be flattered to be the object of attention from Lucas Cipriani. He was drop-dead gorgeous and a billionaire to boot. If he made a pass at a woman, then what woman was going to stalk off in the opposite direction and slam the door in his face? He probably had a queue of them waiting to be picked.
Her lips tightened because what he saw as a flattering, complimentary approach was, to her, downright insulting.
At least the creep Duncan had had the wit to approach her a little less like a bull stampeding through a china shop.
But then, Katy concluded sourly, time wasn’t on Lucas’s side. They were here for a limited duration, so why waste any precious time trying to seduce her into bed the old-fashioned way?
‘That’s the most egotistical, arrogant thing I have ever heard in my entire life!’
‘Because I’ve been honest?’ But Lucas flushed darkly. ‘I thought you were all in favour of the honest approach?’
‘Who do you think I am?’
‘I have no idea where you’re going with this.’
‘You think that you just have to snap your fingers and someone like me will dump all her principles and come running, don’t you?’
‘Someone like you?’ But she had scored a direct hit, and he was guiltily aware that he had indeed compartmentalised her, however much he had seen evidence to the contrary.
‘The sort of person,’ Katy informed him with scathing distaste, ‘Who needs a good, long lecture on making sure her little head doesn’t get turned by being on a big, expensive boat—oh, sorry, super-yacht—with the great Lucas Cipriani! The sort of person,’ she added for good measure, ‘Who comes with a dubious reputation as someone who thinks it’s okay to hop into bed with a married guy!’ It made her even madder to think that she had fallen into the trap of forgetting who he really was, won over by his charm and the random confidences he had thrown her way which she had sucked up with lamentable enthusiasm.
And what made her even madder still was the fact that he had managed to read her so correctly! She thought she’d been the model of politeness, but he’d seen right through that and homed in laser-like on the fevered core of her that was attracted to him.
‘You’re over-analysing.’ Lucas raked his fingers through his hair and sprang to his feet to pace the cabin before standing by the window to look at her.
‘I am not over-analysing,’ Katy told him fiercely. ‘I know what you think of me.’
‘You don’t.’ Unaccustomed to apologising for anything he said or did, Lucas now felt...like a cad. He couldn’t credit how she had taken his interest in her and transformed it into an insult, yet he had to admit to himself that his approach had hardly been handled with finesse. He’d been clumsy, and in no one’s wildest imagination could it have passed for honesty.
‘I know exactly what you think of me! And you’ve got a damned cheek to imagine that I would be so easy that I’d just fall into bed with you because you happened to extend the invite.’
‘I... I apologise,’ Lucas said heavily, and that apology was so unexpected that Katy could only stare at him with her mouth open. He looked at her with a roughened sincerity and she fought against relenting.
Glaring, she stood up. Her good intentions of sweeping out of his cabin with her head held high, now that she had roundly given him a piece of her mind, were undermined by the fact that she was wearing next to nothing and had to hobble a bit because the grazes on her knees were killing her.
‘Katy,’ he murmured huskily, stopping her in her tracks. He reached out to stay her and the pressure on her arm where his fingers circled her skin was as powerful as a branding iron. She had to try not to flinch. Awareness shot through her, rooting her to the spot. ‘I don’t, actually, think that you’re easy and I certainly don’t take it for granted that you’re going to fall into bed with me because that’s the kind of person you are. And,’ he continued with grudging sincerity, ‘If there’s a part of me that is still wary, it’s because it’s my nature to be suspicious. The bottom line is that I want you, and I might be wrong but I think it’s mutual. So tell me...is it?’
He took half a step closer to her, looked down and suppressed a groan at the delicious sight of her delicate breasts encased in stretchy fabric. ‘If I’ve misread the signals,’ he told her, ‘Then tell me now and I’ll back off. You have my word. Nor will I let it affect whatever lies down the line in terms of your position in my company. Say no, and this is never mentioned again. It will never have happened.’
Katy hesitated. She so badly wanted to tell him that, no, she most certainly was not interested in him that way, but then she thought of him backing away and leaving her alone and she realised with a jolt how much she enjoyed spending time in his company when they were tossing ideas around and sparring with one another. She also now realised that underneath that sparring had been the very thread of sexual attraction which he had picked up with his highly developed antennae.
‘That’s not the point,’ she dodged feebly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean...’ Katy muttered sotto voce, red-faced and uncomfortable, ‘It doesn’t matter whether we’re attracted to one another or not. It would be mad for us to do anything about it. Not that I would,’ she continued at speed, face as red as a beetroot. ‘After Duncan, I swore to myself that I would never make the mistake of throwing myself into anything with someone unless I really felt that they were perfect for me.’
‘I’ve never heard such nonsense in my entire life,’ Lucas said bluntly, and, feathers ruffled, Katy tensed and bristled.
‘What’s wrong with wanting the best?’ she demanded, folding her arms, neither leaving the room nor returning to the bed, instead just standing in the middle as awkward as anything. He, on the other hand, looked totally at ease even though he was as scantily clad as she was. But then, he obviously wasn’t the sort who gave a jot if his body was on display.
‘Nothing’s wrong with wanting the best,’ Lucas concurred. ‘But tell me, how do you intend to find it? Are you going to present each and every candidate with a questionnaire which they will be obliged to fill out before proceeding? I’m going to take a leap of faith here and assume that you didn’t know about Powell’s marital status. You went out with the man and presumably you believed that he was the right one for you.’
‘I made a mistake,’ Katy said defensively.
‘And mistakes happen. Even if you’re not being deliberately misled by a guy, you could both go out in good faith, thinking that it will go somewhere, only to discover that you hit obstacles along the way that make it impossible for you both to consider a life together.’
‘And you’re an expert because...?’ Katy asked sarcastically.
‘People are fond of self-deception,’ Lucas delivered with all-knowing cool. ‘I should know because I witnessed it first-hand with my father. You want something badly enough and you try and make it work and, if it all makes sense on paper, then you try all the harder to make it work. In a worst case scenario, you might actually walk up the aisle and then into a maternity ward, still kidding yourself that you’ve got the real deal, only to be forced to concede defeat, then cutting the ties is a thousand times more complicated.’
‘You’re so cynical...about everything.’ She harked back to the lack of trust that had made him think that the only solution to saving his deal was to isolate her just in case.
‘There’s no such thing as the perfect man, Katy. With Powell, you got someone who deliberately set out to deceive you.’ He shrugged. ‘You might think I’m cynical but I’m also honest. I have never in my life set out to deceive anyone. I’ve never promised a bed of roses or a walk up the aisle.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You had a crap time with some guy who strung you along...’
‘Which is why you should have believed me when I told you that I’d rather have walked on a bed of hot coals than have anything to do with him in my life again.’
‘That’s beside the point. At the time, I looked at the facts and evaluated them accordingly. What I’m trying to tell you is this: the world is full of men who will do whatever it takes to get a woman into bed, and that includes making promises they have no intention of keeping. With me, what you see is what you get. We’re here, we’re attracted to one another and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Sex for the sake of sex.’ That was something she had never considered and surely would never consider. It contravened pretty much everything she had been taught to believe in. Didn’t it? It was what Duncan had been after and that had repulsed her. Sex and love were entwined and to disentangle them was to reduce the value of both.
Lucas laughed at the disapproving, tight-lipped expression on her face. ‘It could be worse,’ he drawled. ‘It could be sex for the sake of a happy-ever-after that is never going to be delivered.’
The air sizzled between them. Katy was mesmerised by the dark glitter in his eyes and could feel herself being seduced by opinions that were so far removed from her own. Yet he made them sound so plausible. Instead of giving her the freedom to enjoy a healthy and varied sex life, to take her time finding the right man for her, her experience with Duncan had propelled her ever further into a mind-set that rigidly refused to countenance anything but the guy who ticked all the boxes.
Wasn’t Lucas right in many ways? How could you ever be sure of finding Mr Right unless you were prepared to bravely face down the probability that you might have to risk some Mr Wrongs first?
And who was to say that all Mr Wrongs were going to be creeps like Duncan? Some Mr Wrongs might actually be fun. Not marriage material, but fun.
Like Lucas Cipriani. He had Mr Wrong stamped all over him and yet...wouldn’t he be fun?
For the first time in her life, Katy wondered when and how she had become so protective of her emotions and so incapable of enjoying herself in the way all other girls of her age would. Her parents had never laid down any hard and fast rules but she suspected now, looking back down the years, that she had picked things up in overheard conversations about some of the young women in distress they had helped. She had seen how unwanted pregnancies and careless emotional choices could destroy lives and she had consigned those lessons to the back of her mind, little knowing how much they would influence her later decisions.
Lucas could see the range of conflicting emotions shadowing her expression.
The man had really done a number on her, he thought, and along with that thought came another, which was that the first thing he would do, provided the deal went through, was to sling Powell out on his backside.
Whatever experiences she had had before the guy, he had clearly been the one she had set her sights on for a permanent relationship, and throwing herself into something only to find it was built on lies and deceit would have hit her hard.
For all her feisty, strong-willed, argumentative personality, she was a romantic at heart and that probably stemmed from her background. Sure she would have enjoyed herself as a girl, would have had the usual sexual experiences, but she would have kept her heart intact for the man she hoped to spend the rest of her life with, and it was unfortunate that that man happened to have been a married guy with a penchant for playing away.
‘You may think that I don’t have the sort of high moral code that you look for,’ Lucas told her seriously. ‘But I have my own code. It’s based on honesty. I’m not in search of involvement and I don’t pretend to be. You were hurt by Powell but you could never be hurt by me because emotions wouldn’t enter the equation.’
Katy looked at him dubiously. She was surprised that she was even bothering to listen but a Pandora’s box had been opened and all sorts of doubts and misgivings about that high moral code he had mentioned were flying around like angry, buzzing wasps.
‘I’m not the type you would ever go for.’ Lucas had never thought he’d see the day he actually uttered those words to a woman. ‘And quite honestly, I second that, because I would be no good for you. This isn’t a relationship where two people are exploring one another in the hope of taking things to the next level. This is about sex.’
‘You’re confusing me.’
‘I’m taking you out of your comfort zone,’ Lucas murmured, yearning to touch her, only just managing to keep his hands under lock and key. ‘I’m giving you food for thought. That can’t be a bad thing.’
Katy looked at him and collided with eyes the colour of the deepest, darkest night. Her heart did a series of somersaults inside her chest. He was temptation in a form she was finding irresistible. Every word he had said and every argument he had proffered combined to produce a battering ram that rendered her defenceless.
‘You’re just bored,’ she ventured feebly, a last-ditch attempt to stave off the crashing ache to grab hold of what he was offering and hold on tight. ‘Stuck here without a playmate.’
‘How shallow do you think I am?’ Lucas grinned, his expression lightening, his eyes rich with open amusement. ‘Do you think I need to satisfy my raging libido every other hour or risk exploding? I’m tired of talking. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time trying to persuade a woman into bed with me.’
‘Should I be flattered?’
‘Most definitely,’ Lucas returned, without the slightest hesitation.
Then he reached out, trailed a long finger against her cheek and tucked some strands of coppery hair behind one ear. When he should have stopped and given her time to gather herself, because she was all over the place, he devastated her instead by feathering his touch along her collarbone then dipping it down to her cleavage.
Gaze welded to his darkly handsome face, Katy remained rooted to the spot. Her nipples were pinched buds straining against the bikini top. If she looked down she knew that she would see their roused imprint against the fabric. Her eyelids fluttered and then she breathed in sharply as he stepped closer to her and placed both of his big hands on her rib cage.
He had been backing her towards the bed without her even noticing and suddenly she tumbled back against the mattress and lay there, staring up at him.
She was about to break all her rules for a one-night stand and she wasn’t going to waste any more time trying to tell herself not to.
