She gasped as he leaned forward. ‘Oh,’ she murmured as he removed her glasses and stood back to take a really good look at her.
‘Wow …’
‘Wow, good? Or wow, bad?’ she said tensely.
‘Wow, pretty damn fantastic,’ Luke murmured.
Nodding to the maître d’, Luke linked her arm through his and led her into the glittering crystal and gilt dining room, where it soon became obvious that no one gave a damn what she looked like because everyone was staring at Luke. Waving the waiter away, he insisted on pulling out her chair.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, staring at the envelope on her plate.
‘Damn, that looks like an envelope to me.’ Reaching across the table, Luke put his big paw over hers. ‘Before you open it, can I just say you look amazing tonight, Lucia?’
‘And you couldn’t have been more surprised?’ she supplied in a comic voice.
Luke shook his head as if he gave up. As he called the wine waiter over Lucia wondered if she had freed him from the obligation to work his way through the list of appropriate compliments her brothers must have foisted on him.
‘Your best champagne, please,’ Luke requested as the waiter hovered. ‘Well?’ he prompted, turning back to her. ‘Aren’t you going to open the card?’
‘Of course.’ She stopped as Luke reached beneath his chair and produced a gift-wrapped present. ‘You really didn’t need to.’
‘Just open it,’ he said.
He felt guilty as Lucia’s eyes lit with surprise and pleasure. He’d spent so much time teasing her over the years he had never really thought about Lucia’s feelings. He didn’t have any—why should she? But Lucia had enough feelings for both of them, he realised as she stared down at the gift. Her surprised expression touched him somewhere deep.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ he warned. ‘It’s just something I picked up at the hotel shop.’ On the instigation of your brother, he silently added. But this was the first time he’d bought Lucia anything. If he had even looked at her the wrong way when they were younger Lucia’s brothers would have ripped his head off.
She opened the card first. He was sorry he hadn’t been able to go somewhere with a wider selection—get something with a funny message on the front, something more appropriate for Lucia. The card was nice enough, but it was one of those ‘suits every occasion’ blank cards that hotels stocked. There were a bunch of flowers on the front in no-nonsense bright colours.
‘Lovely,’ she said, reading what he’d written inside: To my old sparring partner—Happy Birthday, Luke. ‘No one could accuse you of forgetting the old days.’ She smiled, as if that pleased her, and then turned the card over to read the script on the back. ‘Anemones are for unfading love, hmm?’ Her eyes were sparkling with humour as they searched his. ‘I’m betting you didn’t think to read the back?’
‘You’d be right,’ he admitted gruffly, caught out red-handed.
‘Anyway, it’s very nice of you to buy me a card at all, so thank you.’
‘Aren’t you going to open your present?’ She was still touching the card with her fingertip, as if there was something meaningful to be gleaned from his bold black writing. ‘Go on—open it,’ he pressed. Was he getting into this? ‘Luke, you shouldn’t have.’
‘And risk you having a strop because I hadn’t got you anything?’
‘I’m not fourteen any more, Luke.’
He’d reminded her of her fourteenth birthday party, which Nacho had arranged. It had been heavily policed by her brothers, who had checked up on Lucia and her friends every five minutes. Predictably, the girls had swooned when the boys had walked in, while Lucia had only craved a single glance from Luke. But the older they’d got, the more Luke had pushed her away. She had bumped into him the next day in the hay barn and screamed at him that he hadn’t even wished her a happy birthday, let alone bought her a present.
‘I’ve never made your life easy, have I, Luke?’
‘At least we’re on the same page where that’s concerned,’ he agreed.
He had bought a shawl—soft and feminine in moss-green cashmere. He’d thought it would look great against Lucia’s hair and eyes—though, admittedly, it wouldn’t look quite so great with a bright blue dress. ‘If you’d rather change it for another colour …’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she said, holding it to her face. ‘My brothers generally b
uy me pieces of tack for my pony.’
When all the teenage Lucia had craved was the latest colour lipstick, or music by whatever group was in vogue, he guessed.
‘I loved it that they remembered my birthday,’ she went on, ‘but sometimes …’
Sometimes she’d missed her mother, he silently supplied.