The Man From her Wayward Past
• The guest house has nine bedrooms.
• Sort out the smallest of them for live-in staff.
• Live-in staff—that’s me! My new quarters will be fabulous when they’re finished. ‘When’, being the operative word.
TAKING the engine to its limits, he aimed a blow at the steering wheel. Nothing helped ease the frustration insi
de him.
‘Thanks, Nacho,’ he murmured, adding a few more choice curses.
If he hadn’t gone looking for Lucia he wouldn’t have found her—wouldn’t want her as he did. He wouldn’t have danced with her, touched her. He wouldn’t have the mystery of her time in London driving him insane right now.
There was only one way forward. Once he was sure she was physically safe, he was going to retrace Lucia’s tiny footsteps inch by scrupulous inch until he found out what she wasn’t telling him.
The attraction between them had been on the back boiler for years. It had simmered at the wedding and boiled over in the caravan. His primal instinct told him to carry her off. Not to listen to any excuses. He could just imagine Lucia’s response if he tried that approach.
Might be fun …
Lucia gave a happy sigh. For a girl who had grown up slaving over brothers as soon as she could hold a mop, there was nothing more satisfying than cleaning up after herself. The caravan might still be shabby, but at least there were no more dusty glasses lurking on forgotten shelves. It even smelled fantastic. She kept telling herself that cleaning would help channel the energy left over from Luke’s visit. It hadn’t even scraped the surface.
Flopping down on the bench, she glanced at his poster. She grabbed a magazine. Now it was just a case of finding a page that wasn’t devoted to ‘Different Sex Positions for Every Day of the Month …’ ‘Sex Positions for Your Sign of the Zodiac …’ ‘Hot Sex in Surprising Places …’ ‘Is that all anyone thinks about?’ she demanded, glaring at Luke’s centrefold.
Probably, Lucia concluded, thanks to posters like Luke’s. Flinging the magazine aside, she leaned back against the bench, trying not to think about sex or her hang-ups. And then she leapt up again, colliding with the shelf.
‘What the …?’ She jumped around, nursing her head. ‘Luke?’ Her heart roared into action as a vehicle door banged.
Was Luke back?
What could that mean?
She knelt on the bench to stare out. Her excitement evaporated. It wasn’t Luke with his sexy, brooding look, let alone Luke bearing armfuls of flowers with an adoring expression on his swarthy, disreputable face. It was Luke in practical mode, climbing out of a humungous pick-up truck. There was a hook on the back of the truck which he was now attaching to a fixing on the front of the caravan.
He might have warned her! Bracing her hands against the walls as the van rocked up and down, she finally made it to the door. She had to bounce off it a couple of times before she could force it open, by which time she was stoked.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘You might want to wait in the truck while I do this,’ Luke suggested, without bothering to glance up.
‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re doing.’
Luke’s tousled head lifted and his fierce gold stare pierced hers. ‘What does it look like, Lucia?’
‘You’re hitching up the caravan. And taking it where?’ she demanded. ‘If this is just another ruse to get me to move out—’
Luke straightened up to his full ridiculous height. ‘There’s no subterfuge involved in what I’m doing. I’m going to tow the caravan a safe distance away from the cliff.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You must have felt the wind lifting it?’
The cliff did seem dangerously close, now she came to look. ‘I have felt it rattling sometimes,’ she admitted, distracted by how thick Luke’s nut-brown hair was as the wind tossed it about, making it catch on his sharp black stubble.
‘And the jacks are broken so the caravan is resting on three wheels.’
That did not sound good. ‘Okay, thank you.’
‘Go and get something on before you freeze to death. You’re soaked through. Your clothes are sticking to your body.’
They were?
And her nipples were nicely puckered too.