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Authors: Helen Brooks

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BOOK: The Irresistible Tycoon
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She jerked her hand free, disguising the gesture with a tight little laugh as she said, ‘This won't get the coffee percolating.'

Damn the coffee. Lucas smiled blandly. ‘Can I help?'

The thought of him in the close confines of her little kitchen was overwhelming. ‘No, it's fine. I won't be a minute.'

Lucas's thick black lashes swept down, hiding his ex
pression from her, and his voice was easy and controlled as he resumed his seat, saying, ‘No hurry.'

No hurry? Once in the kitchen Kim leant her hot forehead against the cool impersonal surface of a cupboard and breathed deeply for several seconds. Her fingers were still tingling from his touch and her legs were actually shaking, she realised with a little dart of disbelief. It might be no hurry to him but she wanted him out of her house as soon as possible.

He was dangerous. She moved away from the cupboards and stared out of the window to where the snowman was still standing patiently in his white frozen world, and remembered how Melody had clung to Lucas as he had enthused over their handiwork.

Very, very dangerous. Kim's eyes narrowed and she felt something very cold douse the heat inside her as she switched on the coffee machine.

If Graham hadn't died when he had, she would have left him within weeks, if not days, anyway. The abuse when he was drunk had been becoming increasingly nasty, and the shopping incident had happened the day before his accident. She had known it was the end of the line for their marriage then; she wouldn't risk putting Melody in danger.

She hadn't loved him any more at that stage; she hadn't loved him for months, even though she had stayed because of his threats of what he would do to Melody and to her if she left him.

But that morning when he had struck her had cut the last tentative threads holding her to the marriage. It had happened to be her in the firing line then; it could have been Melody another time and the thought of that was insupportable.

But she hadn't had to leave. Graham had died, and in spite of all his death had uncovered she had felt a strengthening of her spirit, a determination that she would build a
good life for her precious child. And a good life meant never putting Melody at risk again, never allowing a third party to come into their world. Friends were different, and Maggie had been wonderful, but a man…

She had made a terrible mistake in her choice of a partner and she couldn't trust it wouldn't happen again.

Melody liked Lucas. And perhaps he was only being friendly and supportive to her about the report incident, but she didn't dare allow the kind of matey relationship to grow between them she wouldn't have necessarily thought twice about with any other colleague.

She'd work her socks off for him, go the extra mile and beyond as far as her work was concerned—she owed him that at least—but she would keep him very firmly at arm's length. It might make things a little awkward at times but she'd have to cross that bridge when it came to it.

She nodded sharply to the golden-haired reflection in the window, lowered the blind abruptly and set about preparing the coffee tray, her mouth set in a grim determined line that wasn't at all like its normal soft self.

CHAPTER FIVE

C
ONTRARY
to the fear which had gripped Kim when she'd watched the Aston Martin drive away that snowy night in January, Lucas didn't ask one personal question or do more than briefly enquire after Melody in the following few weeks, keeping their relationship focused and pleasant.

The report was returned within a couple of days from a somewhat bewildered friend of Lucas's to whom he had written regarding a forthcoming golf tournament, and was the best possible outcome Kim could have wished for.

February passed with more snow, rigid white frosts and a hectic time at the office as the Clarkson contract was finally settled to Lucas's satisfaction. March was a kinder month weather-wise, but by the end of that month Kim found herself wondering if her relationship with her dynamic boss was quite so cool and controlled as she had thought it was.

He had managed to get under her skin somehow, and not just in the sexual sense—that was something she'd accepted she would have to battle with daily; he was just one exceptional man—but in a hundred other, more subtle ways.

Lucas had a wickedly dry sense of humour for a start and he wasn't averse to laughing at himself, which was a revelation to Kim after Graham's self-important, pontifical attitude to life. She found herself laughing umpteen times a day, and often when she least expected it.

He had the habit of scattering numerous little personal facts about himself and his family into even the most businesslike of their days, and by now Kim knew that his parents had retired to a villa in the sun; that the prolific amount
of aunts, uncles and cousins on his mother's side made for some crazy family parties when relations would fly the short journey from Colombia to his parents' home in Florida; that like himself his father had been an only child and his English relations were few and far between, and many other details besides.

Kim was aware that Lucas's large country residence situated well beyond the city limits was home to an elderly housekeeper as well as himself. Martha had been with the family since Lucas was a babe in arms, and besides the two human occupants the mansion housed an assortment of feline inhabitants—all belonging to Martha—and two Great Danes which were Lucas's.

This last had caused Kim one of many disturbed nights in relation to her boss.

She hadn't had him down as an animal-lover before he had mentioned his home situation, or the sort of man who could be altruistic to old ladies who hadn't wanted to leave the country of their birth for warmer climes.

The comfortably cold and detached picture of a cool stainless-steel, remotely controlled bachelor pad with all mod cons and the biggest bed money could buy had taken a knock, and when she had made the mistake of revealing her surprise and preconceptions and Lucas had admitted—charmingly—that a few years before she would have been spot-on, it had been scant comfort.

She wanted—
needed
—to keep him in a neatly labelled box in her mind and, annoying man that he was, he seemed determined to break out of it.

Somehow, and she didn't quite know how he had accomplished it, he had managed to paint a picture on her mind that was quite different from the one she wanted to see when she looked at him. If he had met her head-on in direct challenge she would have been able to cope with it and refuse to take on board Lucas the man, rather than Lucas
the ruthless tycoon, but he had trickled himself into her psyche with the steady drip-drip of relentless running water.

He was a brilliant and inexorable strategist. She had seen him in action too many times in business now to doubt it, and had marvelled more than once that his adversaries hadn't seemed to be aware of what he was doing, not realising all the time he was applying an equally ruthless policy with her.

But perhaps she was imagining all this? Kim sat for a moment more in the BMW before squaring her shoulders and opening the car door. Whatever, she couldn't let her guard down with Lucas Kane, not for a moment. That, if nothing else in the whole tangled situation, was crystal-clear.

The March day was damp and mild but very blowy, and in spite of the fact that her parking space was only a few yards away from the main doors of Kane Electrical, the wind had tugged several golden tendrils of hair loose from its customary tight knot at the back of her head by the time she entered the building.

Charlie, the caretaker, was standing in a quiet and empty Reception—it being too early for the rest of the staff yet—and addressed her immediately, saying, ‘Power cut, I'm afraid, Mrs Allen. All the lights are out and the lifts are down, but they assure me it won't be too long before we're back in operation.'

‘Thanks, Charlie. Looks like it'll be Shanks' pony and the stairs, then.' Kim flashed the elderly man a grin before making for the stairs at the back of an unusually dark Reception and running up them lightly, her mind already grappling with the first few things she had to do that day.

She emerged from the fire door into the top floor corridor dimly lit by the emergency lighting, still concentrating on her imminent workload, and straight into the arms of her
esteemed boss with enough force to send them both against the far wall.

She was pressed against the length of him, his arms holding her in instinctive protection against his muscled chest, and as she raised a flushed and breathless face to him, her wind-blown hair curling in shiny, silky strands about her pink cheeks, he made no attempt to let her go.

The hushed dark corridor, the utter absence of all sound or movement made the moment surreal, like a vaguely remembered chimerical dream, and it seemed part of the fantasy when his dark head bent and caught her mouth in a deep languorous kiss that went on and on. His lips were moving against hers slowly as he crushed her closer, his hand cupping her head for deeper penetration as he urged her into an increasingly intimate acceptance of his hungry mouth, and it didn't occur to Kim to even struggle.

There was an insistence, a dominant mastery that demanded rather than asked for her consent and there was no way she could refuse. She had lived this moment so many times, tasted it, savoured it in her dreams, and now, in the shadowy alien confines of the silent corridor, fantasy and fact were combining in overwhelming ecstasy.

Heat was surging in the core of her, lighting flickers of fire in every nerve and sinew, and as her lips parted to allow his probing tongue access into the secret places her body curved closer into him, the physical ache becoming sweeter.

He made a small sound of pleasure deep in his throat and Kim answered it with one of her own, faintly bewildered by her desire. She had lost all thought of where she was, her mind and her emotions totally captive to the sensations he was evoking with such consummate ease. This was the sort of kiss she had dreamt about as a young, romantic teenager before life had taught her such things only
existed in the land of make-believe, but this was
real
, this was now.

She was kissing him back in the way she had during her sleeping fantasies, without restraint, hungrily searching for she knew not what.

Graham had not been an adventurous or a thoughtful lover and she hadn't slept with anyone before her husband, therefore her sexual experience was limited to Graham's hasty couplings without much finesse. This was gloriously, frighteningly different.

The warmth and the slowly building ache in the core of her femininity, the spasmodic thrills circulating her bloodstream and causing her breath to shudder and gasp against his warm knowing mouth, were something outside her knowledge and desperately seductive. This was pleasure; this was the sort of pleasure she had read about but never imagined was so fiery, so consuming, so frightening. And she wanted more, much more.

Kim wasn't even aware of the sudden brightness of lights against her closed eyelids, but the whirr of the lift did cause her to open dazed eyes, or perhaps it was the fact that Lucas's mouth had left hers.

‘The power's back on.' His voice was thick and husky and he still held her against him, his arousal hard against her softness.

She was trembling, she knew she was trembling, and now that his lips had stopped fuelling the fire that had eaten up all her inhibitions and common sense she felt a growing horror at her complete submission to his lovemaking. And bereft. Bereft at the feeling of loss now it had stopped.

‘Let…let go of me.' It was a faint whisper but he didn't argue, his eyes a brilliant silver in the hard, ruthless lines of his face.

‘That was unintentional, Kim.'

As she jerked back from him, her hands to her hot face,
the words caught at her. Was he saying he regretted it? She stared at him wildly, her eyes deep pools of black velvet in the flushed smoothness of her face. Probably. But then she had more or less offered herself on a plate and few men would resist such an opportunity. What would have happened if the power hadn't come back on when it did?

She clenched her shaking hands into tight fists at her side, noticing, with further shame, that Lucas was perfectly cool and relaxed. And it was her humiliation that made her say, her voice bitter and tight, ‘You mean you just felt a sudden urge for a quickie?'

Immediately the ugly words left her lips she wished them back, the crudeness shocking her, but it was too late. She had said them. Out of pain and anguish, but she'd still said them.

And Lucas was furious. She knew it from the dark colour that flared across the hard cheekbones and the muscle working in his jaw, but his voice was at direct variance to his face when he said icily, ‘You rate yourself very cheaply if you believe that.'

‘I'd say it's you who rates me cheaply,' she hissed back sharply.

‘Then you'd be wrong.' The words were like bullets. ‘If you were anyone other than who you are I wouldn't have stopped at a kiss, believe me, Kim.'

What did that mean? That he had stopped because he didn't fancy her that much, or because she was his secretary and it would cause too many complications, or what? ‘So you expect me to be grateful you didn't force me?' she snapped bitterly.

‘I wasn't using any force.' His voice was soft now, soft and mocking, and his eyes dared her to deny what they both knew. ‘You were with me every inch of the way from the second our lips touched.'

‘I don't think so!' she flung sarcastically.

‘I know so.' He paused, the glittering silver eyes like liquid steel as they held hers. ‘But when I take you it won't be in a work situation and on the floor of a corridor, Kim. That's a promise.'

She stared at him, utterly taken aback and more frightened than she had ever been in her life. But not of Lucas. Of the feeling deep inside his softly growled words had evoked. She wanted to hate him or at least dislike him but she couldn't. Neither could she pretend that he was just someone she worked for and dismiss him the moment she left the building; he had woven himself too skilfully into her life for that.

‘I resign.' She raised her chin defiantly, her back ramrod-straight. ‘As of now.'

‘Don't be childish,' he said cuttingly, and before she could say anything more he had stepped past her and opened the door onto the stairs, leaving her alone and shaking.

Childish? She stared at the door, nonplussed by the sudden end to what she had considered the most devastating experience of her entire life.
Childish?
How dared he?

She stood for a moment more and then forced her shaking legs to carry her into the office where she made straight for her little cloakroom.

The flushed, bright-eyed girl in the mirror, with the bruised mouth, was not someone she recognised, and she gazed at herself for a full minute before she could persuade her trembling hands to do something about her dishevelment.

Childish. The word had stung and she couldn't get it out of her mind. Possibly because she had to acknowledge, ruefully and only after another five minutes had ticked by in painful self-assessment, that there was more than grain of truth in it.

She had handled it all wrong from the moment his mouth
had touched hers. What she should have done—what any normal, level-headed, experienced woman would have done—was to accept the kiss lightly, move gracefully out of his arms after a moment or two and make some casual comment to defuse what had been—by his own admission—a momentary impulse on Lucas's part.

Instead she had nearly eaten him alive and then accused him of—she didn't like to think what she had accused him of. She gave a little groan, scraping every tendril of hair back so tightly into the knot that her scalp ached.

He must thing she had a screw loose. The mirror told her that she was once again transformed into the neatly tailored, cool and efficient Mrs Allen—on the outside, at least. Perhaps she did have a screw loose, she admitted weakly. In fact she suspected she had whole box of them jangling about with regard to Lucas Kane. Certainly he had the power to turn her into someone she didn't know, someone who was very different from the reserved, cool, careful person she had believed herself to be before she had worked for him.

She was typing away at her word processor, her mind ten per cent on her work and ninety per cent on Lucas's return, when she heard his voice in the corridor outside talking to someone. Her heart jumped up into her throat but she forced her hands to keep up a steady rhythm, even as every sense in her body tuned itself in to the moment when he would walk through the door.

She thought the other voice belonged to Lucas's general manager, who had his office at the other end of the corridor, but she couldn't be sure; most voices had a habit of lowering themselves deferentially in Lucas's presence.

And then the door opened and, although she kept her eyes on her work, she knew he was looking at her.

‘Kim?'

She'd half hoped—coward that she was, she conceded
silently—that he would simply carry on as though nothing had happened, but she might have known Lucas wouldn't take the easy way out. She raised reluctant eyes to meet his piercing grey gaze and the butterflies in her stomach did a war dance.

BOOK: The Irresistible Tycoon
12.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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