‘Your world can be as big as you want it to be. Don’t put false limits on your imagination.’
She laughed without humour. ‘And how am I supposed to do that? And what if I’m happy here? Has it even occurred to you that not everyone wants what you want, and that some of us are happy in our own back yard? Or is this all about you, Luc? Are you trying to get me to come back to London so I’ll be there at your beck and call?’
To any other woman he might have said, ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ but this was Emma.
‘And you can stop looking at me like that right now,’ she flashed furiously. ‘I don’t want your pity. And I can’t think why else you would waste your precious time pretending you care about me, unless it’s to pursue that ridiculous idea that I would be prepared to share your bed until you tire of me, and that I wouldn’t even be your full-time mistress—short term, didn’t you call it?’
‘Do you want to be my full-time mistress?’
‘Stop teasing me,’ she yelled. ‘That is not what I want. Anything but that.’
‘I’m not teasing you. Nothing’s changed. I want you to come with me when I leave Scotland. I want you in my bed.’
‘And what about my future?’ she demanded with a scandalised laugh. ‘What type of future will I have if I’m forever trailing around after you? I won’t have a future! And if you think for one minute I’d agree to that, you really are off your head. Is that clear enough for you?’
‘You won’t turn me down,’ he said quietly, and with absolute confidence.
‘Won’t I?’
Emma huffed incredulously, but as she went to storm past him he caught hold of her and dragged her close. Every inch of him was pressed up hard against her. Every inch of her was soft and warm and yielding, as her stiffness and anger gave way to something else.
‘Do you seriously think you only have to snap your fingers and I’ll come running?’ she demanded in a shaking voice.
‘Yes,’ he said as he smiled into her darkening eyes. ‘I think exactly that.’
‘No, Luc.’ She slowly shook her head. ‘You don’t know me. I won’t be controlled, and you are always trying to control me.’
‘But you want me. You’ve tried life without me and you know how empty that is.’
‘I know you’re an arrogant—’
He drove his mouth down on hers, kissing her into silence. She was everything he wanted and more. She was hot. She was aroused. She was angry. They matched each other for passions. She was already moving against him in the hunt for more contact, and he knew exactly how to deal with that.
Infuriated beyond reason by frustration when he pulled away, she launched an attack, her tiny fists flailing as he brought her back and held her tight against the wall of his chest. ‘Don’t,’ he murmured against her silky hair. ‘You’ll only hurt yourself.’
‘I’ll hurt you first,’ she assured him heatedly.
She already had, he realised. Emma Fane had blasted his cold stone heart to hell. ‘I would never hurt you.’
‘So you say.’ She whipped her face away as he brushed her mouth with his.
‘I mean it,’ he insisted quietly, realising he was absolutely sincere.
‘Until the next woman comes along?’ she demanded sceptically, staring at him with furious eyes. ‘I know your track record, Luc. Everyone knows your track record. It’s hardly a secret when you feature in every celebrity magazine under the sun.’
‘If you think I live my life in a public forum, you don’t know me at all.’
She was panting for breath—anger, not arousal, he suspected as she softened against him. ‘Come with me,’ he coaxed then. Cupping her chin, he brought her back to face him, and when he brushed her lips this time he felt her tremble. ‘You’ll achieve nothing here, except working yourself to death, when I can offer you a world of opportunity.’
‘Yes,’ she interrupted, her eyes wounded as she stared into his. ‘But it would be your world, not mine.’
‘Working double shifts as you do shouldn’t be anyone’s world,’ he said, filled with exasperation and anger when he thought of how this hotel abused its staff. ‘Killing yourself with exhaustion won’t help you to forget anything.’
‘Don’t,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you dare pull that card!’
Emma had never given herself the chance to recover from the shock of her parents’ death, and he knew grief couldn’t be pushed aside and forgotten, and that it had to be brought out into the open, to be faced up to and dealt with. And even then, coping strategies were necessary for a long time, maybe for ever. Emma hadn’t scraped the surface of her grief, but had thrown herself into his arms, and then into her work instead.