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‘We can’t afford a big enough place in London, and I can’t afford to work out of London because the pay isn’t good enough, so this is our compromise.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Angie is a teaching assistant, which means she can be there for after-school care and holidays when I’m not around. It works well. Or at least, it did.’
‘You mean until you got snowed in because your selfish boss kept you late at the office.’
‘That wasn’t really what I meant, no. Lately it’s been—’ She broke off and smiled. ‘Never mind. None of that is relevant.’
Lucas cursed softly and paced back to the fireplace. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I had no idea you had responsibility for your brother. I’m not such a monster that I would have kept you that late in the office every night if you’d explained.’
‘There was nothing to explain. You pay me to do a job, and you pay me well. You have a right to expect the job done well. And I don’t need to leave early during the week. I rent a room in an area of south London that couldn’t exactly be described as a hub of activity. There’s not a lot to go back to and anyway, I love my job.’
He dimly remembered her saying that to him the night before. ‘Where exactly do you live?’
When she told him, Lucas didn’t even bother trying to hide how appalled he was. ‘If I’d known that I never would have let you work until two in the morning.’
‘You always arranged for me to have a lift home so it was never a problem.’
‘You still had to walk from the car to your house.’ And the thought of her doing that horrified him. She could have been mugged. Or worse.
‘You’re overreacting. More often than not the driver would wait until I put my key in the door, but honestly, Lucas, I was fine.’
He looked at her cheeks, pale as chalk, and knew she wasn’t fine now.
And not because of some random mugger who had attacked her in the street, but because of him. And he was about to make it a thousand times worse. He wasn’t about to offer up soft words and promises of happy ever afters. He wasn’t about to give her anything except a major dollop of pain.
What they’d shared was the sexual equivalent of a hit-and-run.
‘We have to talk about last night.’ His voice was rougher than he intended and she looked as uncomfortable as if he’d just suggested she strip naked and pose for him.
And she’d already done that.
He had a vivid image of her body, creamy skin warmed by the firelight, her curves both a sensual invitation and a balm to a man seeking oblivion.
He no longer had to wonder what she looked like under her ultra conservative clothing. He knew. And he had to wipe it from his mind.
‘Honestly, I’d rather not.’ Her hands were clasped in front of her, her knuckles white. ‘Just tell me whether you want me to hand write the letter now or type it up and email it to you.’
Lucas dragged his mind away from thoughts that could only be described as shocking. ‘What letter?’
‘My letter of resignation. Or I suppose you could lend me a computer and I can just type it here if you like.’
‘Resignation?’ It was the last thing he’d expected her to say. ‘What are you talking about? Why would you resign?’
‘Er...because that’s the only option?’
‘Well, it’s not an option that works for me,’ Lucas thundered, the sudden rush of anger surprising him almost as much as her unexpected proposal. His emotions were all over the place and that shocked him too because he wasn’t used to having to struggle for control. Usually it wasn’t concealing emotion that was his problem, it was expressing it. ‘I don’t know why you would even suggest it when you’ve just spent five minutes telling me how much you love your job and how much you need the money. You’re not resigning and that’s final.’
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s my decision.’
‘Well, you’re making the decision for the wrong reasons so I’m not accepting it.’
‘You honestly think we can still work together after last night?’
‘Yes. Because last night was a one-off and is never going to happen again.’ He knew from experience that it was better to spell it out but if he’d expected her to wilt then again she surprised him.
‘I know that. But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to work together. It would be horribly, hideously awkward. It’s already horribly, hideously awkward and since you obviously prefer to be blunt about the whole thing, I’ll be blunt too. I cannot believe I had sex with my boss. I cannot believe I was so unprofessional.’ She fiddled with the edge of her sweater and then turned away from him but Lucas wasn’t having that.
‘Why are you blaming yourself?’ He closed his hands around her shoulders and spun her round to face him, forcing her to look at him. ‘What happened last night was my responsibility, not yours.’
‘That isn’t true. You didn’t know what you were doing.’ She looked pale and tired and suddenly he remembered the nightmare drive she’d had to reach him the night before. That alone must have been exhausting. And then there had been everything that had happened afterwards.
He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Emma, I knew exactly what I was doing.’ Escaping. Taking ruthless advantage of a decent young woman who ordinarily wouldn’t have found herself anywhere near a man as damaged as him.
‘It was my fault. You were out of your mind with grief,’ she said softly. ‘I handled it badly.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘You told me to go away. Over and over again you told me to go. And did I listen? No, of course not.’ Her tone was loaded with self-recrimination. ‘It was so arrogant of me to think I could help. Stupid. There was nothing that could have helped, I see that now.’
‘You did help.’ And that had come as a surprise. For those moments in front of the flickering fire, the pain had eased. But at what cost? Guilt gnawed at him. ‘I owe you an apology.’
‘For what?’
‘I used you.’ His brutal honesty made her flinch.
‘That isn’t the way I see it.’
‘Well, it’s the way it was.’ He refused to gild the truth and when she tried to pull away he tightened his grip, refusing to let her duck the subject. With that in mind he asked the question that had been playing on his mind since waking. ‘I was rough. Did I hurt you?’
‘No! You were amazing. The whole thing was incredible. To be wanted like that and—oh God, I can’t believe I just said that—’ She covered her face with her hands, her moan muffled. ‘Please, just shoot me right now. Shoot me and end this. This has to be the single most embarrassing moment of my life. Please—if you’re a nice man you’ll accept my resignation and then I’ll never have to face you again.’
There was something so hopelessly endearing about her that had the situation not been so serious, he would have smiled. ‘I’m not a nice man and you’ll be facing me on a daily basis, so you might as well get used to it.’ He tugged her hands away from her face. ‘And because I’m not a nice man I’m going to embarrass you even more by asking when you last had sex with someone.’
‘That is such a personal question—’ And then she caught the ironic lift of his eyebrow and turned vivid scarlet. ‘You’re thinking that we’ve already made this personal—’
‘Just a little.’ He made a concerted effort to delete thoughts of the way her lithe, naked body had felt under his. ‘So when?’
‘I don’t know. It’s been a while.’
Which confirmed all his worst fears. ‘Why?’
‘Meeting people isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies. During the week I only meet people at work and I don’t want to have a relationship with someone I work with—’ she caught his eye and turned fiery red ‘—and before I took the job with you...well, there was someone actually,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘but it didn’t work out and that’s probably a good thing because although I thought I was in love with him, it turned out I wasn’t.’
Love.
Hearing the word was enough to make him release her but she looked so miserable that he felt the need to lighten the atmosphere. ‘So let me guess—you met this loser at school and when he fumbled under your skirt you hit him with your pencil case and after that he could never father children.’ He was rewarded by a gurgle of laughter.
‘Close.’
‘It was a school bag and not a pencil case?’ Tara would have been bitching about how tired she was, he thought. He would have been treated to sulks and moods, not a sweet smile. And never in a million years would Tara have let him see her without make-up.
‘It was a little more mundane than that. And it wasn’t at school. I didn’t have time for boys when I was at school.’ Avoiding his gaze, she turned back to the window, staring down at the acres of parkland and woodland that wrapped itself around the castle. ‘I was fourteen when Mum got pregnant. When other girls were discovering make-up and dating, I was helping with a baby.’
‘Why? Where was your mother?’
‘She died.’ Slowly, she turned her head, her eyes uncertain as she looked at him. ‘This is way too much information. Do you honestly want to hear it?’
‘Yes.’ Lucas surprised himself by saying that. ‘All of it.’
She gestured awkwardly. ‘It’s just that we don’t normally do the whole personal conversation thing—’
‘Well, we’re doing it now. I think we’ve already overstepped what might be considered personal boundaries and we’ve definitely passed the point of worrying about what we normally do,’ he said dryly, ‘so just talk. I want to know what happened.’
She paused. ‘Mum found out that she was pregnant, and it was...difficult. For all of us. She was a single parent. My dad left when I was a baby so it was just her and us. And then Jamie.’
‘So Jamie’s dad isn’t your father?’ Relationships, he thought. Always complicated.
‘No. And Jamie’s father...well, he wasn’t around either.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘And then, neither was my mum. Five days after the birth she had a pulmonary embolism—a blood clot that lodged in her lung. Something to do with the birth and the hospital missed it.’ She leaned her forehead against the window and stared down at the snow. ‘She died when Jamie was just days old. And that was really...hard.’ That single word encapsulated so much unspoken emotion.
He tried to imagine how that must have felt—to be fifteen and rushing home to care for a baby at a time when she was still a child herself. ‘How the hell did you manage?’
‘My grandparents moved in with us for a few years, and that was the worst time of all. When they first found out Mum was pregnant, they were horrified and they said so. Truthfully, they were vile to her.’ Her composure slipped slightly, exposing a seam of anger. ‘Then when she died they couldn’t separate how they felt from the way they reacted to Jamie. They saw Jamie as the reason she was dead and it was just horrible. It was obvious that they just saw him as a mistake and a burden. That’s why I snapped at you just now. That was exactly the word they used. “Sacrifice”. They told us that Mum had ruined everyone’s lives and if we kept Jamie we’d be throwing our lives away. They wanted us to put him up for adoption. They didn’t want him—their own flesh and blood. Can you believe that?’
Lucas felt the ache in his temples. The pressure.
Yes, he could believe that.
‘But you refused.’
‘It was a hideous time. My sister and I decided to consult a lawyer and after a long, complicated battle which I don’t intend to bore you with, we were given custody.’
‘Long and complicated?’ Another understatement, he thought, oddly disturbed by the thought of two teenage girls taking on the world in order to keep their baby brother with them.
‘We had to show we were able to care for him. Fortunately there was money from Mum’s life insurance. My sister gave up her plans to go to college and instead became a teaching assistant at a school with a crèche.’
‘And your grandparents?’
She rubbed her forehead with her fingers, her expression resigned. ‘Let’s just say it’s a tense relationship. For Jamie’s sake we wanted it to work out but life doesn’t always happen the way you want it to.’
And didn’t he know it. ‘I had no idea you had such a complicated history. You never mentioned it.’
‘Why would I mention it? My private life isn’t exactly relevant to the practise of architecture.’
‘And no doubt you’re about to tell me that this man you met, who was probably the love of your life, dumped you because you had a baby to care for?’
‘Actually I dumped him. He was putting so much pressure on me to lead my own life and didn’t seem able to understand Jamie is my life. Not my whole life, obviously, but a huge part of it. As for Edward being the love of my life—’ She broke off and shrugged. ‘For a while I thought he was, but I was wrong. I could never love someone who had such a casual attitude towards responsibility.’
‘What about since then? Are you telling me you haven’t dated?’
‘As I said, the only place I meet people is at work and I’d never date anyone from work.’ Her smile was a rueful acknowledgement of the contradiction offered by their current position. ‘Which leads me neatly back to the place we started. Lucas, you have to accept my resignation.’
‘No.’ He heard the ice in his own voice. ‘That is not going to happen. And I can’t believe you’d even suggest it.’
‘We are not going to be able to work together after this.’
‘Yes, we are.’
‘I am not going to be able to face you on a Monday morning knowing that we...that you...you’re my boss!’
‘It was just one night, Emma. Just one night.’
‘You don’t have to repeat yourself. Nor do you have to panic. I don’t want a relationship any more than you do.’
The fact that she read him so well should have reassured him, but it didn’t. ‘If you don’t want a relationship then I don’t understand the problem. We carry on as before. Nothing has changed.’
‘Except that I’ve seen you naked and you’ve seen me naked. I just think that working with you is going to be so embarrassing.’ Pink-faced, she wrapped her arms around herself and he found himself watching every movement she made, aware of her in a way he’d never been before. He’d worked with her for two years but he’d never really seen her.
Or maybe he hadn’t allowed himself to see her.
‘Then get over it. And get over it fast because I’m afraid I’m going to ask something more of you. I want you to delay the start of your holiday until at least Tuesday.’
‘What?’ Appalled, she stared at him. ‘No way! You can’t do that. I promised Jamie I’d be home. This is my holiday.’
‘You can still have your holiday, it will just start a few days later.’
‘But why? It’s not as if you need me. You’re not even in the office for the next week or so. You’re in Zubran.’
‘I need you with me.’ He’d made the decision when he’d woken and realised what lay ahead of him. And that had been another decision that hadn’t been easy to make. For personal reasons, it would have been best to send her away. For professional reasons, he needed her there.
Her mouth fell open in shock. ‘You want me to go with you to Zubran? The desert?’
‘Desert and coast. Palm trees. Sand. Sun. All those rare things you are unlikely to find here in a typical British winter. Or a typical British summer if it comes to that. No more shivering. Just for a couple of days.’ He hadn’t expected her to argue because Emma never argued with him. Usually she anticipated what he needed and provided it with smooth efficiency. ‘And although you’ll be working for most of the time, there should also be some downtime when you can chill by the pool.’ But not with me. ‘And do some reading or something. While I work.’
‘Would you mind not emphasising the whole “one-off” thing all the time. I get it, OK? You don’t have to attach a caveat to everything you say. It’s very demeaning. As if you think I’ve suddenly turned into a creepy stalker.’
‘I was just trying to tell you that as well as work, you should be able to have some time for relaxation.’ Even as he said it, he wondered if she even knew the meaning of the word. It sounded as if her life had been one long slog since her early teens. ‘The meeting is tomorrow and the launch party is on Sunday night. In between I have to fit in media interviews. I want you to coordinate those.’
‘I know about the meeting. That’s why I drove here with those papers that need your signature. And I know about the party—I’ve been talking to Avery Scott about nothing but that party for the past six months. I can recite the guest list. I can itemize the menu.’
‘Which is precisely why I need you there.’
‘You want me at the party?’ She looked puzzled and then surprised. ‘I assumed you meant that you wanted me to deal with the media and attend the meeting.’
‘That too. I had an email from the Ferrara Group this morning. They want to talk about another possible development on Sicily. They’ve found a piece of land that interests them in a different part of the island and want to talk through ideas.’
‘Yes, I get all that—’ her head throbbed at the thought of yet more work ‘—but why would you want me at the party? It’s a social event.’
‘It isn’t a social event for me; it’s an opportunity to showcase our work, talk to prospective clients and answer questions about the hotel structure and design. Attending alone isn’t an option.’
‘You were taking Tara.’
