‘I have finished.’ Melody had sensed some kind of atmosphere and wasn’t about to be ushered away without protest. ‘Hello.’ She cut through anything Kim might have said with the directness of childhood as she stared straight into the silver-grey eyes and added, ‘I’m Melody Allen.’
‘How do you do, Melody? I’m Lucas Kane,’ Lucas said softly.
‘My mummy works for you,’ Melody said interestedly.
‘That’s right, darling.’ It was Kim who answered and now her voice held a note Melody recognised when she added, ‘Go and start getting ready for your bath now.’ For some reason, and Kim couldn’t have explained it even to herself, she didn’t want her daughter to have anything to do with this man. Not even in the slightest way.
Melody nodded and even took one step backwards into the hall, but her innate friendliness added to healthy curiosity was too much, and her little voice piped up, again directed at Lucas when she said, ‘We made a snowman and had crumpets for tea. Have you seen my snowman?’
‘Not yet but I’d like to,’ Lucas said quietly, smiling across at the small child who was a charming miniature of her beautiful mother. ‘Perhaps you can show him to me after your bath?’
This was getting out of hand. ‘I don’t allow Melody to bathe herself,’ Kim put in quickly, wishing he would go. The letters had gone and there was nothing she could do tonight to retrieve the situation. She would resign—eat humble pie, grovel, whatever he demanded—tomorrow, but she couldn’t cope with seeing him in her home or talking to her daughter. It made him too…human.
‘I can wait.’ The silvery eyes challenged her to say more and Kim knew, she knew he had read her mind again.
‘But you must be very busy—’
‘I can wait,’ he repeated smoothly.
‘Do you like crumpets?’ Melody had clearly decided this silly adult conversation had gone on long enough. ‘We’ve got some left and you can have one if you like,’ she offered magnanimously.
Lucas raised his gaze from Melody’s sweet, dark-eyed face to her mother’s horrified one, and Kim noticed his mouth was twitching and the silver eyes were bright with barely concealed amusement. ‘I love crumpets,’ he said very seriously, lowering his gaze to Melody’s, ‘and as I haven’t had my tea yet that sounds great.’
‘Great’ wasn’t quite the word she would have chosen. Kim stared helplessly, first at Melody and then at Lucas, who was returning her daughter’s grin, and knew she had been outmanoeuvred by a pair of experts.
‘You haven’t eaten?’ she murmured weakly.
‘No, Kim, I haven’t eaten,’ he agreed quizzically.
She didn’t believe this! How on earth had she found herself in this situation? she asked herself with silent despair. ‘We…we had hot soup and rolls followed by crumpets with butter and jam,’ she managed fairly distinctly, despite the choking feeling in her throat, ‘but I can rustle up an omelette or a pizza if you’d prefer?’
‘Soup and crumpets sound good to me.’ He was speaking to her but smiling at Melody as he spoke, and again the panicky sensation took Kim’s breath away.
It made sense to fix Lucas’s meal before she took Melody up for her bath, but she didn’t want to leave her daughter with her boss. She didn’t want them to get on too well—for Melody to like him. Her brain was racing but the small-mindedness of her thoughts wasn’t lost on Kim. But she needed to keep him absolutely separate in her head, she told herself frantically, isolated under the heading ‘work’ and totally detached from her personal life. She didn’t dare question why; she just knew it was imperative.
‘Do you want to come and help me fix a tray for Mr Kane?’
In spite of the gentleness of her mother’s voice, Melody knew a rhetorical question when she heard one, and now the small blonde head nodded obediently.
A larger, dark head across the room registered the message in the ‘Mr Kane’, but the crystal-clear eyes continued to smile at the little girl as Lucas said softly, ‘Thanks, Melody, and I look forward to seeing that snowman later.’
‘Make yourself comfortable.’ Kim couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. ‘I’ll bring you a coffee in a moment, or perhaps you’d like a glass of wine?’
‘I’m driving.’ It was an answer in itself and Kim recalled he hadn’t had anything stronger than mineral water at lunch, although the wine had been flowing freely and the other two men had imbibed.
A sudden memory—vivid in all its distasteful clarity—of Graham downing half a bottle of vodka before breakfast and then wondering why she had refused to let him take her and Melody to the shops in the car reared its head. It had resulted in a huge row; he had actually struck her that morning.
‘Kim?’
Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face because Lucas’s voice was sharply concerned, and now Kim realised she had been staring at him without seeing him. She murmured something about having remembered she’d left the gas on and stepped into the hall quickly, shutting the door behind her.
Brilliant. As Melody chattered away while they heated the soup and put the crumpets under the grill, Kim’s mind was buzzing. Now not only would he think she was grossly inadequate at work he would think she was lackadaisical at home too. Left the gas on. Kim wrinkled her small straight nose. The cottage was all electric!
She sent Melody upstairs to begin undressing before she took the tray through to the sitting room. Ridiculous, maybe, she acknowledged silently as she turned the handle of the door—nearly upsetting the tray in the process—but the easy way Lucas had with the child had disturbed her. He disturbed her, always, but she hadn’t expected him to know how to talk to children somehow. She would have thought he’d be even more cold and distant than he was with most adults, but he’d been warm, relaxed, his natural hardness quite gone. And she hadn’t liked how it had made her feel.
Lucas had taken off his overcoat and his suit jacket and pulled his tie loose when she walked into the room, and as she glanced at him—sitting in apparent lazy relaxation in front of the flickering coal fire the sitting room boasted—Kim felt a bolt of electricity shoot right down to her toes.
‘Nice, the real fire.’ His voice was deep, low in his throat, and his eyes were unfathomable.