Burning Up

But not this much peace and quiet.

Sliding his cell phone from his pocket, Lucas scrolled through his address book and punched speed dial. The phone rang once before a familiar voice picked up.

“David, mate, how are you?” he asked.

“Lucas. You’re still alive, are you? Heard you got drunk and fell off a balcony or something,” David Gracie said, laughing down the line.

Lucas and David had trained together at NIDA, and after a slow start David was now knocking back offers to appear in multimillion-dollar films, his star firmly on the rise.

“A slight exaggeration. Just got a dodgy knee for a few weeks,” Lucas explained lightly. The joys of being famous—everyone knew his business about two seconds after he did. “I’ve got a few weeks off, anyway, and I was wondering whether you wanted to grab a few warm bodies and come hang in the Blue Mountains?”

“Mate, I’d love to, but I’m about to head out to L.A. Maybe another time, yeah?”

“Sure, man. Absolutely.”

Ending the call, Lucas scanned his address book for another likely suspect.

“Hey, Mikey, how you doin’?” he asked as another acting buddy picked up.

But Mikey was in the middle of a theatrical season at the Opera House playing King Lear. In fact, it seemed all his old friends were tied up with something over the next few weeks. Some of them had day jobs now, having given up acting for something more reliable. Others had families, God forbid. No one was free to come play in the mountains. His thoughts flew to L.A., where there was always someone kicking around, ready to party. But there was no way any of his drinking buddies were about to jump on a plane and travel halfway around the world to stop him expiring from boredom.

“Damn.” Giving up for the moment, Lucas tossed his phone to one side and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The painkillers were starting to wear off, and his ankle and knee were throbbing like bastards.

The real issue, however, was his isolation. How the hell was he going to stay sane for four whole weeks of nothing?

Vaguely it occurred to him that there was something faintly pathetic about being so reliant on other people and stimuli to help him get by. What kind of man couldn’t stand a few hours of his own company, let alone a few weeks? Maybe he ought to tough it out up here to prove to himself that he could. Some early nights, a bit of clean living. Maybe it would even do him good.

Tension crawled up his back and into his shoulders at the very thought.

“Stuff it.”

Grabbing his phone again, he rang Derek, rolling his eyes when it went through to voice mail. Typical, the one time he actually wanted to talk to the guy.

“Listen. This stupid mountain idyll thing was a big mistake,” he told Derek’s voice mail. “Call me back and we’ll make other plans.”

Ending the call, he reached for the side pocket on his suitcase and found the painkillers he’d been prescribed. Tossing back a couple, he gritted his teeth until the world began to blur at the edges a little.

“That’s more like it,” he muttered to himself.

Levering himself up on his elbows, he glanced out the window and spotted his first pleasant surprise of the day—out on the balcony stood a big, kick-ass telescope.

“All right.”

Grabbing his crutches, he lumbered to the French doors that opened onto the balcony and stepped outside. He was greeted with a gust of hot, eucalyptus-tinged air, the warmth actually welcome after the air-conditioned house.

He’d always had a thing for telescopes, and he’d been meaning to buy one of his own for years. Somehow, though, he never seemed to spend enough time in any of his three homes to get around to investing in one.

The lens and eyepiece were protected by rubber caps, and he tugged them loose and lowered his head to the eyepiece. The telescope was trained down and to the right of the pool, and at first he saw nothing but blurry shapes and indistinct light and shadow.

It took him a moment to locate the right dials, but soon Lucas was twisting knobs experimentally—until the image in front of his eyes shifted abruptly into sharp focus.

“Holy hell!” he said, his head jerking back from the telescope in surprise.

He stared blankly at the sky for a short beat, then grinned widely and lowered his head to the telescope again to make sure that his eyes had not been deceiving him.

Framed perfectly between the not-completely-lowered edge of a Venetian blind and the windowsill of the caretaker’s lodge were the prettiest, plumpest, most delicious-looking breasts he’d seen in a long time. Full, creamy-white, with soft pink nipples that seemed to be sitting up and begging for his attention, they looked silky-smooth and very, very edible.

The owner of the breasts was moving around, shifting things. A book. A folded piece of clothing. She was wearing a fluffy towel cinched around her waist, and he eyed the torso beneath the breasts, trying to imagine what the rest of her body might be like. Long legs? Peachy ass? And did she wax? Or was there a thatch of curls between her thighs?

“Damn it,” Lucas said in frustration, then he sucked in a breath as the woman loosened the towel and let it fall to the ground.

“Oh, baby.”

His gaze roamed over her curvy, pert, juicy-looking butt, lingering on the two enticing dimples nestled in the small of her back.

Registering the tightness in his jeans, Lucas glanced down. He was as hard as a rock, his boner straining against his fly. At the sight he suddenly understood what he was doing—spying on some unknown, unaware woman like a pervert. Or, at best, a horny teenager. Neither category he was eager to qualify for. He might be a hard-drinking, womanizing party animal, but he wasn’t desperate.

Taking one last, lingering look at the breasts and an ass that would surely haunt him for days, Lucas forced himself to step back from the telescope.

Who was she? That was the burning question. The caretaker? Some kind of domestic staff? A vague memory floated to the top of his brain—Julie explaining that she’d arranged for a local chef to take care of his meals for the duration of his stay.

So, she was the chef. Interesting.

Lucas grinned to himself. Suddenly he had something to do. Meet the chef. Check out the rest of her hot little body. And maybe he could find a better way to kill time than staring at the ceiling and contemplating his own navel. Maybe he could contemplate her navel…among other things.

His grin got broader. He had a project.

Excellent.

3

SOPHIE PULLED ON underwear and dressed in a pair of black yoga pants and a stretchy, striped tank top. She’d had a crappy night’s sleep, tossing and turning, thinking belatedly of clever, pithy things she should have said to Brandon rather than stand mutely by while he told her how it was going to be.

Not that she would have wanted things to turn out any differently, not now that he’d made his true feelings so abundantly clear. A whole night’s reflection had brought her that much clarity, at least.

He wanted to have sex with other women.

He wanted to be free.

He thought she was staid and boring and bound by routine.

He really was a bastard. It was the perfect word to describe a man who could throw away fourteen years without even pausing to take a breath and discuss it properly. It wasn’t as though he’d even given her a chance to change, or fired off any warning shots to indicate their relationship was about to implode. He’d just made a decision and acted on it, without thinking of her at all.

Suddenly she recalled a night about six months ago when Brandon had shot to his feet and headed for the door when she’d suggested they watch There’s Something About Mary again. It was one of her favorite movies, and he’d always enjoyed it. But that night he’d launched himself out the door without a word, returning twenty minutes later with a selection of new-release DVDs from the video store.

Had that been her early warning signal?

Sophie frowned as she remembered that she’d never asked him why he’d done that.