Riches to Rags Bride / The Heiress's Baby. Myrna Mackenzie

can’t do this.”

      Lucas recognized guilt the moment he saw it. He lived with it every day, and this moment, this day, would no doubt heap more guilt upon all that he already carried.

      “You didn’t do anything,” he said. “I did. Please don’t worry about this. Don’t even think about it. It’s all on me. I stepped well over the line. I apologize for touching you.”

      And because he was afraid that he might touch her again, scare her more, worry her more, he turned and walked away.

      The truth was that he had done everything wrong with Genevieve from the start. He had hired her when he shouldn’t have, given her too much work, not understood her situation, forced his will on her by making her move here, and now he had kissed her. His self-control had been compromised from day one.

      That was going to have to stop. From now on he needed to realize that the two of them had to work in concert. Only by succeeding at this job and standing alone would she claim that independence she craved. Only by completing this task and moving on to the next and the next could he begin to make amends for his past transgressions. When this was over, she needed to move on. He needed that, too.

      No more touching, he told himself. But he still craved another taste.

      Genevieve stared in the mirror. She touched her aching lips. Something had happened back there with Lucas.

      “A lot of somethings,” she whispered. First of all, she had seriously messed up, allowing her daydreaming ways to get in the way of doing her job well. The room was a mess and she intended to fix it.

      But more important than that was the other. Not the kiss. She wouldn’t think about the kiss. It had been too overwhelming, too wonderful, too insane, too … everything. Thinking about kissing Lucas—or worse, kissing him again—would make her crazy. As it was, her nerves were tingling. If she hadn’t somehow recalled herself, she would have been totally lost in his arms and then …

      “Then, nothing, you idiot.” Because that was what happened with Lucas. She’d been warned. Women tripped over each other trying to get to that incredible mouth of his and then he got tired of them. He moved on. Always. Always. And anyway, she did not want a man, did she?

      “No, I can’t want a man.” Certainly not Lucas.

      Yet here she was, doing what she had forbidden herself to do. Thinking about the kiss.

      So Gen forced herself to remember the other, the way Lucas, a man who exuded power and control had been so angry at the thought that he might have harmed her that he let that famous control slip. She’d seen the pain behind the mask.

      Lucas wasn’t a man without feelings, as some thought. He was a man who didn’t want to feel. He kept it bottled up. What had he said? That line about how a man like him should have learned how easy it was to hurt a woman? Apparently, he had regrets, bad memories of past relationships. He wasn’t as cold as people said he was.

      And there it was. Another brick in the wall that separated her from Lucas. Because if she fell in love with him and got hurt when he left her …

      “I’ll be a part of his pain,” she said. Like Rita. Like … Angie? Was there a real Angie?

      Don’t think about it. Don’t go there. And don’t get too close to him. It was immensely clear that any personal involvement between her and Lucas could only end up badly for both of them. Best to keep her distance.

      A full hour after he had pulled Genevieve into his arms, Lucas was still agitated. He’d removed himself from the house to the yard, had taken off his jacket and was concentrating on splitting wood for the fireplaces for the winter. But the physical activity wasn’t chasing away his irritation.

      What had he been thinking? Lucas thought, slamming the ax into the wood so hard that the two halves flew across the yard. He never got involved with his employees; he certainly never had anything to do with potentially vulnerable women. Yet he had kissed Gen, a move that was surely only going to complicate things in major ways.

      What was a man to do in such circumstances?

      “Man up,” he muttered, setting up another log and cleaving it cleanly in two. “Apologize.”

      But he’d already done that. It didn’t feel like enough. The only thing to do now was move on. Never touch her again. Stop looking at her as a woman. At all.

      Just do whatever you can to make this project move forward, make this project successful and get everything done and out of the way.

      Then he would finally feel as if he deserved some small degree of absolution. By helping a few women forge a path back to happiness, he could find some solace.

      But to do that he had to stop sidestepping time spent with Genevieve and just … get down to business. Surely if he kept his head down, his nose to the grindstone, and never touched her again, they could both walk away from this situation reasonably satisfied in just a few weeks.