So what was Luke Forster doing here?
Rooted to the spot, with a tray of drinks balanced precariously in her shaking hands, Lucia was hiding in the shadows by the bar, oblivious to the barman yelling, ‘Get a move on, Anita. There’s another order waiting. You know we’re shorthanded tonight, babe.’
‘Move it, Anita!’
She leapt into action at the sound of Van Rickter’s voice. Why couldn’t the manager keep his voice down? Her name-change wouldn’t fool Luke for a second. To make matters worse, Luke had a woman on his arm—a very glamorous woman. Lucia could just imagine them both laughing when Luke explained in his husky, mocking tone that Lucia was running away again, and this time with a name that reflected her interest in music and coffee.
‘Thanks, darling,’ the barman said as he passed another loaded tray across the bar. ‘You’re the best.’
She zipped away, taking the long route round to her table of customers to avoid Luke. She didn’t want him to see her like this … Not just working here at the club. She would defend her right to work to the bitter end. But Luke knew her too well. He would sense how she’d changed. Dirty … Defiled … Ashamed and afraid …
But she was fighting back in her own time, and on her own terms.
Stamping down on the recent past, Lucia returned her thoughts to Luke. She had tried everything to eject Luke from her head, but nothing worked. The more she tried the more she wanted him, and everything had changed since the last time they had met when she had flirted so outrageously with him. She had invited trouble by living up to her wild-child image and now she had to pay the price. The woman on his arm was more Luke’s type. Smart, sharp, businesslike and neatly packaged. Lucia doubted Luke’s girlfriend would get herself into any awkward position outside a yoga class. Her only consolation was that the girl’s improbably whitened teeth attracted the club’s ultraviolet light in a way no one would want unless they suffered chronic delusions of being a torch.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Lucia froze at the sound of Van Rickter’s voice. She had dumped the tray of empty glasses and had been hoping to make it to the stockroom before Luke spotted her. Rubbing her arms energetically, she said, ‘Don’t you think it’s cold in here? I thought I’d turn the heating up.’
‘Put some more clothes on while you’re at it,’ Van sneered. ‘The new uniform was designed with slimmer girls than you in mind. There should be some of the old shapeless ones in the back.’
‘That’s where I’m heading,’ she said brightly. Sloughing off Van’s insults, she glanced anxiously over her shoulder. Thankfully Luke was still in deep conversation with the blonde. Luke wasn’t just her brothers’ closest friend, he was a fully paid-up member of their over-protective, pain-in-the-ass, let’s-keep-Lucia-at-ten-years-old-for-ever gang. He certainly wasn’t someone she wanted to see her dressed in too-tight silver hot pants and an X-rated top.
‘Wait!’ Van Rickter barked in a way she was certain must draw Luke’s attention. ‘If you’re off the floor longer than five minutes, you’re fired. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Crystal,’ Lucia said, backing towards the stockroom.
‘Find the biggest uniform you can’ was Van’s parting shot.
‘Thank you. I will.’
She disappeared behind the door with a gust of relief. She couldn’t care less what Van Rickter thought about her. Ever since London she had wanted to be thought a sexless amoeba without cheekbones, breasts or a waist. Seeing Luke had only reinforced that desperate wish. Far from wanting to flirt with him, she would happily turn her back on all men with the greatest relief. And whatever sort of mess her life was in, she would sort it out. Not her brothers. And definitely not Luke.
Last year’s uniform wasn’t much better on her than this year’s, but at least it had a skirt. Well, almost. Wriggling into it, she plucked the matching satin shirt from its hanger and slipped it on, tying it beneath her ample breasts. She hesitated over the grubby plastic camellia blossom she was supposed to pin behind her ear. There were limits.
She walked out of the stockroom straight into Luke. Just her luck—he was at the bar buying drinks. Now she couldn’t breathe, let alone pull something out of the bag to defuse the shocked look in his eyes. ‘Luke!’ she said, feigning surprise as her heart threatened to explode. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I might ask you the same question.’ he said, taking a step back to eye her up and down.
Telling herself she was used to alpha males, having grown up with four of them, she lifted her chin. ‘This is where we always go,’ she said, gesturing around as if she was at the club with a huge gang of friends. This only succeeded in causing Luke’s eyes to narrow with disbelief.
With shock crackling between them as Luke scoffed disbelievingly, she drank him in. Luke was the essence of male. Bigger and more powerful than the other men in the club, he was infinitely better looking. Luke had always been able to melt her with a glance—though at the moment that glance was doing its best to incinerate her, which for once rested more comfortably with Lucia than the smouldering, sexy look Luke was so good at. He was even bigger than she remembered—harder, tougher—though, as always, immaculately groomed, with shoulders wide enough to hoist an ox and hard-muscled legs that went on and on to … to a point from which she quickly averted her eyes.
While she had
not only let herself go, but was wearing last year’s shabby club uniform, with her hair scraped back and her face glowing red and shiny beneath the lights. Perfect.
‘Lucia?’ Luke rapped sternly, staring down at her with knife-sharp eyes. ‘Are you working here?’
Of course she should have said, What’s it to you? But a row might draw attention and she couldn’t afford to lose this job. ‘No, of course I’m not working here,’ she protested with a laugh, glancing around to make sure no one had heard Luke calling her by her real name. ‘I come here so often they let me hang my coat in the stockroom.’
‘Really?’ Luke drawled, with an even more contemptuous expression in his brooding amber gaze.
‘Okay, from time to time,’ she admitted, brushing it off as she continued to stare at a face that was mesmerising in its harsh masculine beauty. If you wanted hard there was no better hard to be had than Luke Forster—as her yearning and thoroughly confused body would now attest. But Van was prowling, Lucia noticed. ‘Gin and orange for your friend?’ she suggested as the blonde, having exited the restroom, made a beeline for them.
‘I have ordered our drinks, thank you,’ Luke said coolly. ‘Vanessa,’ he murmured, in what Lucia considered an unnecessarily indulgent tone, ‘I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine.’
‘Not so much of the old,’ Lucia joked weakly, feeling awkward and ridiculously exposed when she compared herself to Luke’s neatly styled friend. The blonde was even prettier close up, and was hanging on to Luke’s arm as if her life depended on it.