Luc gave a slight smile as he recognised her skittishness for exactly what it was. ‘But I couldn’t possibly desert you when you aren’t well,’ he drawled huskily. ‘Do you live here alone?’ he probed, having thought it was rather a large apartment for just one person.
He wondered if the owner of the pyjamas didn’t live here, too…Although he would have thought Grant would be more circumspect about telling him of Darci’s living arrangements if that were the case…
‘My flatmate has gone out this evening,’ Darci informed him. ‘I have two flatmates, actually, but one of them is away at the moment,’ she finished.
Luc quirked blond brows. ‘Male or female?’
‘Both female, of course,’ she came back tartly. ‘Now, I really do think you should leave, Luc—’
‘And I think that you need someone to take care of you—at least until your flatmate returns,’ he cut in decisively as he slipped his jacket off and laid it across one of the chairs. ‘Point me in the direction of the kitchen and I’ll get you something cold to drink. It’s important to keep up your liquids when you have a fever, isn’t it?’ he opined, when she looked totally nonplussed.
Darci couldn’t answer him for several seconds, totally thrown by the expanse of his broad back in the black silk shirt, and by how his muscles rippled beneath the softness of the material.
She had no idea how much time Luc necessarily spent behind a desk for his work, but he obviously made time to work out in a gym: his shoulders were wide and powerful, his chest muscles, and his stomach lean and flat.
In fact, all that lean maleness took her breath away!
Maybe she did have a fever? It would certainly explain the symptoms she was exhibiting: shortness of breath, fevered brow, flushed cheeks and a dry throat.
But she had a feeling that sexual awareness would also explain her ailments—the aching, heavy feeling of her breasts, and the moist heat gathering between her thighs!
She swallowed hard. ‘There really is no need for you to stay, Luc. I was about to go to bed anyway—’ She broke off, her eyes wide, and gave Luc an awkward glance for what she had just said.
Luc gave a knowing smile at her obvious discomfort. ‘Surely, Darci, you don’t imagine that I’m about to take advantage of your weakened state?’ he mocked softly, all the time knowing that was exactly what he had been thinking of doing!
In fact, he seemed to have thought of nothing else, anticipated nothing else, but taking this woman to bed for the last two days. The memory of those challenging green eyes, her temptingly full lips and the lush promise of her body had intruded into his thoughts all too often during the last forty-eight hours.
Finding her here wearing nothing but those disreputable pyjamas was doing absolutely nothing for his tenuous restraint!
‘Of course not,’ she dismissed sharply, her moss-green gaze no longer meeting his. ‘I—You’ll find some juice in the fridge in the kitchen.’ Reluctantly, she pointed him in the right direction.
In keeping with the Georgian building in which the flat was housed, the kitchen was long and rambling, with a large worktable in its centre and a breakfast bar at one end, at which it was possible to sit and eat. The room was obviously normally at the centre of life in this spacious apartment. The pots and pans hanging on one wall showed evidence of frequent use, along with the dried herbs set next to the Aga range, for adding to each dish as it was prepared.
A capable cook himself when there was the need, Luc could easily envisage cooking a meal in here with Darci—with or without the pyjamas.
Preferably without!
His body hardened just at the thought of a naked Darci moving effortlessly around the kitchen as they prepared a meal together, at the image of the fullness of her naked breasts, and those lean hips and thighs with a triangle of fiery red hair at their apex…
Having arrived at Garstang’s on time this evening, he had been at first irritated, then worried, when Darci hadn’t arrived at the restaurant at the appointed time. Then the pendulum had swung to anger as the minutes had ticked by with no sign of her arrival nor a telephone call to explain her tardiness.