planning to eat if you hadn’t found me here?’ Lucy asked jerkily, moving from doorway to kitchen table and then sitting awkwardly on one of the chairs while he continued to look at her in a way that made her blood sizzle, because she just had to see that mouth of his to recall his very passionate kiss. Her lips still felt stung and swollen.
‘I have two top chefs on speed dial,’ he drawled, amused when her mouth fell open. ‘They’re usually good at solving the “what to eat?” dilemma for me. Not that it’s a dilemma that occurs very often. If I’m on my own, I eat out. Saves hassle.’
‘Go ahead and order what you want from your two top chefs,’ Lucy told him. ‘Never mind me. I...er...’
‘Ate already?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘And I don’t believe you. Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that you feel uncomfortable being in a kitchen with me and breaking bread? We’re a married couple, after all.’
‘I don’t feel uncomfortable,’ Lucy lied. ‘Not in the slightest!’
‘Then where are your suggestions?’
‘Do you even know where to find anything in this kitchen?’ she asked impatiently.
Dio appeared to give that question a bit of thought then he shook his head. ‘I admit the contents of the cupboards are something of a mystery, although I do know that there’s some very fine white wine in the fridge...’
‘Are you asking me to cook something for you?’
‘If you’re offering, then who am I to refuse?’ He made for a chair and sat down. ‘It doesn’t offend your feminist instincts to cook for me, does it? Because, if it does, then I’m more than happy to try and hunt down one or two ingredients and put my cooking skills to the test.’
‘You don’t have cooking skills.’ From some past remembered conversation, when she had still had faith in him, she recalled one of his throwaway remarks that had made her laugh.
‘You’re right. So I don’t.’
This wasn’t how Lucy had imagined the evening going. She had more figured on dealing with shock at her announcement followed by anger because she knew that, even if he heartily wanted to get rid of her, he would have been furious that she had pre-empted him. Then she had imagined disappearing off to bed, leaving him to mull over her decision, at which point she would have been directed to a lawyer who would take over the handling of the nitty-gritty.
Instead she felt trapped in the eye of a hurricane...
She knew where everything was and she was a reasonably good cook. It was something she quite enjoyed doing when she was on her own, freed from the pressure of having to entertain. She expertly found the things she needed for a simple pasta meal and it would have been relaxing if she hadn’t been so acutely aware of his eyes following her every movement.
‘Need a hand?’ he asked as she clanged a saucepan onto the stove and she turned to him with a snappy, disbelieving frown.
‘What can you do?’
‘I feel I could be quite good at chopping things.’ He rose smoothly to join her by the kitchen counter, invading her space and making her skin tingle with sexual awareness.
Stupid, she thought crossly. But he had thrown down that gauntlet, brought sex into the equation, and now it was on her mind. And she didn’t want it to be. She had spent the past months telling herself that she hated him and hating him had made it easy for her to ignore the way he made her feel. It had been easy to ignore the slight tremble whenever he got too close, the tingling of her breasts and the squirmy feeling she got in the pit of her stomach.
He’d never been attracted to her, she had thought. He’d just seen her as part of a deal. He’d used her.
But now...
He wanted her; she had felt it in his kiss, had felt his erection pressing against her like a shaft of steel. Just thinking about it brought her out in a fine film of perspiration.
She shoved an onion and some tomatoes at him and told him where to find a chopping board and a knife.
‘Most women would love the kind of lifestyle you have,’ Dio murmured as he began doing something and nothing with the tomatoes.
‘You mean flitting from grand house to grand house, making sure everything is ticking over, because Lord help us if an important client spots some dust on a skirting board?’
‘Since when have you been so sarcastic?’
‘I’m not being sarcastic.’
‘Don’t stop. I find it intriguing.’
‘You told me that most women would envy what I have and I told you that they wouldn’t.’
‘You’d be surprised what women would put up with if the price was right.’
‘I’m not one of those women.’ She edged away, because he was just a little too close for comfort, and began busying herself by the stove, flinging things into the saucepan, all the ingredients for a tomato-and-aubergine dish, which was a stalwart in her repertoire because it was quick and easy.
Dio thought that maybe he should have tried to find out what sort of woman she was before remembering that he knew exactly what sort of woman she was. The sort who had conspired with her father to get him where they had both wanted him—married to her and thereby providing protection for her father from the due processes of law.
If she wanted to toss out hints that there were hidden depths there somewhere, though, then he was happy enough to go along for the ride. Why not? Right now he was actually enjoying himself, against all odds.
And the bottom line was that he wanted her body. He wanted that itch to be scratched and then he would be quite happy to dispose of her.
If holding her to ransom was going to prove a problem then what was the big deal in getting her into his bed using other methods?
‘So, we’re back to the money not being the be all and end all,’ he murmured encouragingly. ‘Smells good, whatever you’re making.’
‘I like cooking when I’m on my own,’ she said with a flush of pleasure.
‘You cook even though you know you could have anything you wanted to eat delivered to your doorstep?’ Dio asked with astonishment and Lucy laughed.
He remembered that laugh from way back when. Soft and infectious, with a little catch that made it seem as though she felt guilty laughing at all. He had found that laugh strangely seductive, fool that he had been.
‘So...’ he drawled once they were sitting at the kitchen table with bowls of steaming hot pasta in front of them. ‘Shall we raise our glasses to this rare event? I don’t believe I’ve sat in this kitchen and had a meal with you since we got married.’
Lucy nervously sipped some of the wine. The situation was slipping away from her. How many women had he sat and drank with in the time during which they had been supposedly happily married? She hadn’t slept with him but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t aware that he had a healthy libido. One look at that dark, handsome face was enough to cement the impression.
She had never, not once, asked him about what he did behind her back on all those many trips when he was abroad, but she could feel the questions eating away at her, as though they had suddenly been released from a locked box. She hated it. And she hated the way that fleeting moment of being the object of his flirting attention had got to her, overriding all the reasons she had formulated in her head for breaking away from him. She didn’t want to give house room to any squirmy feelings. He had turned on the charm when they had first met and she knew from experience that it didn’t mean anything.
‘That’s because this isn’t really a marriage, is it?’ she said politely. ‘So why would we sit in a kitchen and have a meal together? That’s what real married