about where that little statue had come from. She’d only put it there because she’d been planning to clean it tomorrow. ‘Can’t be helped.’
‘Was it something special?’
It wasn’t the kind of thing he usually asked and for a moment she almost told him about the figurine of St Christopher—the patron saint of travellers—which her mother had taken with her when she’d left for England, setting out on a life which was supposed to be so different from what she’d left behind. But why would you start explaining a woman’s broken dreams to a man who probably wasn’t really interested—and a man who was only half dressed? Wouldn’t that lead to questions and then yet more questions, which might end up with her revealing telltale details about her background? And nobody wanted to hear those, least of all herself. She might as well write on a placard: This is why I am such a freak. She shook her head and turned away but not before the salty prickle of tears had stung her eyes.
Had Lucas seen it? Was that why his voice suddenly gentled in a way she’d never heard before?
‘Tara?’ he said.
Impatiently fisting away the tears, Tara didn’t know what she’d been expecting but it wasn’t for Lucas to turn her around to look at him. It was just a hand placed on her upper arm, through the thick barrier of her dressing gown. The type of reassuring gesture anyone might make to someone who was on the verge of crying, but it didn’t feel remotely like that. It felt...electric. Tara had grown up in a house where physical contact was frowned upon, where nobody actually touched each other—and nobody had touched her in years. Was it that which made her response to Lucas so instant? Her blood was heating, like syrup on an open flame, and her body felt as if it were dissolving from the inside out. She sucked in a shuddered breath and somehow it seemed inevitable he should pull her into his arms. It was comfort, she told herself. That was all.
But it didn’t feel like comfort. It felt like heaven. Like a taste of something she’d never quite believed in. He was so big and powerful—so warm and strong—that it seemed only natural to let her head fall to his shoulder and for her breath to fan the silken skin of his neck. Tara had no idea how long that wordless embrace lasted. It might have been a few seconds but, there again, it could have been longer. Suddenly he pushed her head away so he could look at her, his eyes searching her face long and hard, and she’d never seen him look so disorientated. As if he were in some weird kind of dream and was expecting to wake up at any minute.
But he didn’t wake up—and neither did she. They remained standing in the same spot, staring into each other’s eyes as if it were the first time they’d ever seen each other.
‘You’d better go back to your own room,’ he said unsteadily.
Afterwards, Tara would ask herself what had possessed her to behave in such an uncharacteristic way. Was it the certainty of knowing she wasn’t going to be working for him much longer which made her throw caution to the wind? Or just the fact that she’d never felt like this before—as if her body were on fire with a burning need too powerful to be ignored? For once she wanted to cast aside the roles she’d been given in life. To forget the person she’d been taught to become. Obedient Tara. Wary Tara. The woman who had never stepped out of line because that way lay danger and she had been fearful of what might happen if she refused to comply.
But now there was no fear, only an audacity which felt newly minted and exhilarating.
‘Why?’ she questioned.
Her question hung in the air.
‘You know why,’ he ground out.
And somehow she did. Even though she had no experience of such matters, Tara could tell that Lucas Conway wanted her in exactly the same way as she wanted him. It was explicit in the tension which radiated from his powerful body and the hectic gleam which was glittering from his eyes. Her mouth was dry as she gazed at his lips and the temptation to kiss them was just too strong to resist. Because those lips held the tantalising promise of something else—something she was keen to explore. Suddenly she reached up to wind her arms around his neck, her thumbs stroking the dark waves of hair which covered the base of his neck, and she heard him suck in a breath.
‘Go to bed, Tara,’ he growled.
Again, that boldness. That strange, uncharacteristic boldness as she repeated her own guileless question. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t want to take advantage of you.’
‘We’re not playing a game of tennis, Lucas.’
‘You know what I mean,’ he growled. ‘I’m your employer.’
‘Not right now you’re not,’ she declared fiercely. ‘Unless you’re planning on demanding I go and fix you a midnight snack or iron a shirt for you.’
An unexpected smile curved at his lips as Lucas realised how his humble housekeeper seemed determined to confound all his expectations tonight—in fact, to blow them clean away. She’d fearlessly come downstairs to tackle a potential thief like some kind of modern-day warrior queen. With her pale skin and red curls streaming down her back like a pre-Raphaelite painting, she looked fragile and ethereal and yet she was turning him on. Very, very much. And suddenly he couldn’t stem his desire any longer, not with her slim body so near and her mouth so tantalisingly close. He angled his head to kiss her, wondering if he was breaking some kind of fundamental rule. Some unspoken moral code. And then he cursed himself for even posing such a stupid question. Of course he was. Big time. He knew that. But knowing didn’t change anything—how could it when she was kissing him back with a hunger which felt as fierce as anything he’d ever encountered?
Her lips were as soft as petals and he could sense all the sweet promise in her slim young body. Already he felt as if he wanted to explode. As if he could tear that ugly dressing gown from her body and do it to her right there, up against the wall outside his bedroom. Yet something held him back and not just because this was the first time and instinct told him to savour it, in case there wasn’t a repeat. There was also part of him—a growingly distant part of him, admittedly—which wondered if one of them was going to suddenly come to their senses. As if something would suddenly shatter this strange spell and leave them facing each other with an air of disbelief and embarrassment.
But that wasn’t happening. The only thing on the agenda right now was that the kiss was growing deeper—and the first tentative thrust of her tongue was making his groin grow deliciously hard. Hell. What kind of sorcery was she wielding when she was doing so little? And why was her body still hidden from his hungry gaze, beneath the folds of that unspeakable dressing gown?
Pulling his mouth away from hers, he saw nothing but dazed compliance in her eyes and was unprepared for the ecstatic thundering of his heart in response. When was the last time he’d felt this...excited about having sex with a woman? Was it because this was the last thing he’d ever imagined happening, or because she was so different from anyone he’d ever been intimate with?
He thought about leading her to his bedroom in a way he’d done with other women countless times over the years, when instead he did something which had never happened before. Picking her up, he planted his foot in the centre of the door and kicked it wide open.
‘Lucas!’ breathed Tara, her voice sounding almost shocked as he carried her towards his bed, which was softly illuminated by the glow of a nearby lamp.
‘What’s the matter, Tara?’ he growled. ‘Don’t you like the masterful approach?’
She shook her head so that her curls shimmered down her back like a halo of fire and he could see her licking her lips before her next words came out with a rush of bravado. ‘I don’t like you kicking the paintwork when I’m the one who has to clean it!’
He laughed—which was extraordinary because he didn’t usually associate humour with sex—but his mirth was quickly forgotten as he lowered her to her feet. Pulling open the sash of her dressing gown, he narrowed his eyes on discovering she wasn’t naked underneath. Far from it. A baggy T-shirt of indeterminate colour hung to the middle of