Snowbound Seduction: A Night of No Return / To Claim His Heir by Christmas / I'll Be Yours for Christmas

‘Sorry. Instinct.’ She sat down again, relieved to take the weight off legs that seemed to have forgotten their purpose. ‘I usually do the cooking when I’m home. I’m teaching Jamie to cook—it’s one of the things we do together. Every Saturday we make pancakes for breakfast, it gives us time to talk. And then we pick a different dish. Last week we did pizza. Today we were going to make Christmas cake—’ She knew she was talking too much but she couldn’t help it. She talked to fill the silence because otherwise she found it too disturbing. ‘Of course, because of you, we won’t be making Christmas cake but you don’t need to feel guilty about that.’

‘I won’t.’ He pulled a box of eggs out of the fridge while she watched.

He’d showered but he hadn’t shaved and his jaw was darkened by stubble that made him look more bandit than businessman. She remembered the roughness of it against her skin, the heat of his mouth, the touch of his fingers—

She remembered all of it.

She closed her eyes. This was not working. Forget love—all she wanted was to be able to be in the same room as him and not feel this almost unbearable sizzle. She wanted to be able to listen to what he was saying without thinking of everything else that he could do with his mouth.

She wanted to be able to look at him without thinking of sex.

She wasn’t sure whether the fact that he clearly wasn’t suffering the same degree of torment made it worse or better.

Better, she told herself firmly. Definitely better. At least one of them was still sane.

And then she caught his eye briefly, caught a glimpse of darkness and heat, and knew that she was wrong. He was feeling everything she was feeling. He was fighting everything she was fighting.

The knowledge made her limbs shake and she clutched her mug, her heart banging against her ribs. ‘So tell me about this place. It’s not somewhere I would have expected you to own. You’re all about glass and cutting-edge design and this must have been built by Henry the Eighth.’ She was chattering frantically to cover up the way she was feeling but of course he knew exactly what was going on in her head.

And he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

His self-discipline in all things was legendary.

Except for last night.

Last night, he’d lost control.

But there was no sign of that now as he glanced at the walls of the kitchen. ‘Slightly earlier than Henry the Eighth, with later additions. And it’s true that if I’m designing a new building then I like to make use of modern techniques and materials, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love old buildings. The history of this place is fascinating. And I don’t own it by myself.’ He broke eggs into a bowl and whisked them expertly. ‘When it came onto the market, Mal, Cristiano and I bought it. It’s owned by a company we set up together.’

‘Mal, the Prince? And Cristiano Ferrara who owns the hotel group?’

‘That’s right.’ He poured eggs into the skillet and they sizzled in the heat. ‘The plan is that once I’ve finished the restoration, we turn it into an exclusive hotel that will probably be rented as a whole. We’re planning to hold traditional British house parties.’

‘I love that idea.’ She’d known he had powerful friends but it wasn’t until today that she’d realised just how powerful. ‘I didn’t even know this sort of place ever came up for sale. How did you find out about it?’

He tilted the pan. ‘I’d had my eye on it for a while.’

‘Who owned it before? It must have been awful to have to sell something like this.’

The change in him was visible and immediate. That beautiful mouth hardened into a thin, dangerous line that made her immediately conscious that she’d somehow said the wrong thing.

‘It was built by a wealthy merchant in the thirteen-hundreds,’ he said evenly, ‘and stayed in the family until the last member gambled away all his money.’

‘Gambled? Horses?’

‘Much more twenty-first century than horses.’ Lucas tilted the pan slightly. ‘Online poker.’

‘Oh. How awful.’ She glanced round the kitchen and tried to imagine owning something like this and then losing it. ‘Imagine losing something that had been in your family for centuries. Poor man.’

‘That “poor man” was a selfish, miserable excuse for a human being who took great pleasure in using his wealth and status to bully others, so don’t waste your pity on him because he certainly doesn’t deserve it. More coffee?’

Emma was so astonished she couldn’t answer. It was the first time she’d ever heard him make an emotional comment about a business deal. ‘You work with plenty of wealthy, selfish human beings. Who was this guy?’

Lucas slid the omelette onto her plate, his expression blank. ‘He was my father. You didn’t give me an answer about the coffee so I’ll just top it up anyway, shall I?’

Had he really just said what she’d thought he said? ‘Your father?’

‘That’s right. My mother was his archivist. She left university and found her dream job here, working with the collection that had been pretty much neglected. She worked here for fifteen years and they had an affair. But he wanted to marry someone with the right heritage and apparently that wasn’t my mother—’ his tone was flat ‘—so she lost a job that she adored, her home and the man she loved. Not that she should have worried too much about the last bit. I think that could have been considered her lucky break, but obviously that’s just my personal opinion. Unfortunately, she didn’t see it that way.’

It was the most he’d ever told her about himself. The first really personal exchange they’d had. ‘So she basically had an affair with the boss.’ Emma felt her mouth dry and he looked at her with that keen, perceptive gaze she found so unsettling.

‘If you’re making the connection you appear to be making then I can assure you there are no similarities at all. This was a lengthy relationship which was supposedly based on love and trust—’ his tone was threaded with cynicism ‘—whereas—’

‘You don’t need to finish that sentence.’ She interrupted him hastily. ‘We’ve been over this a thousand times already. I know what last night was.’

‘Do you?’ He was unnervingly direct and she knew that there was no way she could confess that she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Still less could she admit that it wasn’t just the sex she was thinking about; it was him. The more she discovered about him, the more her vision of him shifted. He was no longer her cold, detached boss. He was a man with a past.

‘I love my job. I’d never do anything to jeopardize that. To be honest I can’t afford to let anything jeopardize that. And I’m not in a position to have a relationship with anyone right now. There isn’t room in my life. And then there’s the fact that you’re far too bitter and twisted for me.’

He frowned slightly, those dark brows pulled together in silent contemplation as if he wanted to say something else. And she didn’t want him to say it. She wanted him to stop talking because every time he spoke he revealed something else and the more he revealed the more personal it became.

‘So your mum discovered that she was pregnant, and then what?’ Colour touched her cheeks as she remembered a small detail from the night before. The man had been half out of his mind with drink and grief, but he hadn’t forgotten the condom, as if some part of him was programmed to remember. And she was relieved about that, of course, because the situation was already complicated enough without adding to it, but still, it made her wonder.

‘He duly announced he was getting married to another woman. Perhaps if she hadn’t made that fatal mistake, he might have let her stay. He was perfectly happy to have a lover on the scene, but a child would have made the whole thing vastly inconvenient and not at all British, so that changed things.’ The words flowed from him and it was so unusual to hear him talk like this that she sat still and just listened. She wondered if he even realised how much he was telling her.

‘So your mother resigned?’

‘No. My mother never would have resigned so he had to find another way of getting rid of her.’ He sat down across from her and picked up his fork. ‘He accused her of theft. So not only did he humiliate her and ruin her chances of getting another job, but he made her hate him. And it made her hate me too, because I was inadvertently the reason for all that.’

The lump in her throat came from nowhere. ‘Couldn’t she have taken him to court or something? Got some help?’

‘I don’t know what went through her head. Maybe she did talk to a lawyer. I don’t know, but certainly nothing came of it—’ he sliced his omelette in two ‘—all I know is that it was a struggle. We lived in the smallest room you have ever seen. It had just one window and it never let in enough light.’ He frowned. ‘I couldn’t work out why anyone would have designed a window that didn’t do the job it was intended to do. That was when I started to dream about buildings. Buildings with space that let in the light. I drew myself a house and promised myself that one day I was going to build it and live in it.’

It was easy to imagine him as the child, drawing his dream. Especially when you saw the man he’d become. ‘Did he never acknowledge you?’

‘No. And the irony was, he never had any more children. I was his only child. Now isn’t that poetic justice? He wanted a family. The tragedy was that he actually had one, but he never acknowledged it. You’re not eating. Is there something wrong with your omelette?’

She’d been so lost in his story she hadn’t taken a single mouthful of her food. ‘Did you meet him?’

‘When she found out that he had no living heir, my mother was determined that I should have the recognition that she felt was my right.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Or maybe she was hoping that he’d take me on so that she could have her life back.’

‘You went to see him?’

‘Yes, but not because I wanted him to suddenly play “Dad”. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. And his response was that it didn’t matter what she did, he would never give me Chigworth Castle. I was thirteen years old and so angry with him that I punched him, then I told him he didn’t need to give it to me because I was going to just take it from him when I was ready. It gave him quite a laugh, this skinny kid without a penny to his name trying to give him a black eye and then threatening to take his castle.’ He gave a cool smile. ‘He wasn’t laughing on the day I took ownership. Cristiano Ferrara fronted the deal so he had no idea who was buying it until it was sold. Not that it would have made any difference. He’d spent all his money so he wasn’t in a position to negotiate or withdraw. But I wouldn’t have put it past him to burn the place to the ground rather than stop me owning it.’

There was a dull ache behind her ribs. ‘When was this?’

‘Eight years ago. I was twenty-six, my career was on the rise and I’d landed a few huge commissions that proved to be life-changing.’