Nick frowned his displeasure.
‘I—because there aren’t any buses from this area to my apartment,’ she stated lightly.
‘Take it from me, Beks, it’s a bad sign when the chef won’t stay long enough to eat her own food,’ Nick told his daughter teasingly.
‘Not at all,’ Beth answered. ‘But, as I told you earlier, I do have a life of my own.’
Nick remembered everything this particular woman had ever said to him. And he was also becoming aware of the subtlety of all her moods—and her driving need at this particular moment was obviously to get as far away from him as possible…
He turned to his daughter. ‘Beks, could you just go and check that I turned off the headlights on my car before I came in?’
‘As long as you keep stirring the sauce while I’m gone,’ his daughter warned sternly.
‘I’ll do my best,’ Nick replied, his narrowed gaze returning to Beth’s slightly flushed face once Bekka had gone out into the hallway. ‘Okay, so what did I do now?’ he asked wearily, once the two of them were alone.
‘What makes you think you’ve done anything?’
‘Possibly the fact that, even though you’ve cooked the dinner, you refuse to stay and share it with us?’
‘Is it really necessary for me to eat it as well as cook it?’
Nick shrugged. ‘It seems a pity for you to have to prepare something for yourself when you get home.’
She shrugged slender shoulders beneath that overlarge sweater. ‘The tumbet won’t be ready for another hour or so.’
‘And is spending another hour or so in my company such a problem?’ he probed huskily.
‘Of course not,’ she said sharply. ‘I just—I thought you promised Bekka that you would keep stirring the sauce?’ she reminded with a frown.
‘To hell with the sauce!’ A nerve pulsed in Nick’s tightly clenched jaw.
‘The tumbet will be ruined if the sauce burns,’ Beth pointed out ruefully.
‘To hell with the tumbet too!’ Nick took the saucepan off the hob before taking a deliberate step closer to Beth, so that he now towered over her much slighter form. ‘Tell me the real reason you’re refusing to stay and have dinner with Bekka and me,’ he demanded.
Beth feigned an uninterest she didn’t feel as she gave another dismissive shrug. Feigned, because she was too aware of Nick, of his close proximity, to feel in the least uninterested!
‘You’re very pale, Beth. I think you need to eat…’
‘What I need is to be allowed to leave here so that I can get on with my own life!’ Beth knew by the way Nick’s eyes narrowed on her speculatively that she had spoken more forcefully than she had intended. Than was prudent with a man as perceptive as Nick Steele.
But she couldn’t be here with this man and his young daughter. Found this whole domesticated scenario too disturbing. Almost as disturbing as she found Nick himself…!
Beth pushed away from the kitchen unit to move abruptly away from him. Away from the sensual spell his proximity was once again weaving about her already heightened senses…
‘It will take me another twenty minutes or so to get the tumbet in the oven, and then I’m going home,’ she told him abruptly, before turning away with the intention of removing the roasted vegetables from the oven.
‘Beth, what the—’
‘Take your hand off me!’ she gasped as he grasped her arm.
Nick looked down searchingly into that pale and delicately lovely face; Beth’s eyes were huge and haunted, her cheeks paler than ever, her lips trembling slightly, her chin raised in the constant challenge this woman seemed to feel she had to show to the world. To him in particular…?
He gave a shake of his head. ‘I want you to stay and have dinner with us, Beth.’
‘Unfortunately those wants conflict with my own.’ She held his gaze as she firmly, determinedly, moved out of his grasp.
Nick let her go, not wanting to bruise a single inch of that delicately pale skin. ‘What do you want, Beth?’
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘I want you to leave me alone, Nick. For you not to call me again. To stop involving me in your own and Bekka’s lives.’
‘Isn’t that going to be a little hard to do when you’re one of Bekka’s teachers…?’
‘I meant your personal lives,’ Beth insisted.
‘And by personal lives, you mean…?’
‘I mean insisting I go out to dinner with the two of you,’ she said impatiently. ‘Inviting me to go bowling. To spend Christmas Day with the two of you here—’ She broke off as her voice broke emotionally. ‘To looking after Bekka. To cooking dinner for the two of you…’
‘Beth—’
‘Please don’t touch me, Nick!’ She backed away from him, her cheeks chalky-white now. ‘I—it was hard for me when Ben and my parents—when they all died. But somehow, little by little, I survived. I survived, Nick!’ she repeated shakily.
‘I can see that,’ Nick murmured distractedly, and he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets—before he gave in to the impulse he had to take this woman in his arms and attempt to make all the pain she had suffered go away!
Beth was so young, so delicate, too damned fragile to have suffered and survived the things she had been through—the death of her parents and her husband.
‘I intend continuing to survive,’ she added firmly.
‘By keeping yourself emotionally apart?’ Nick guessed.
Tears glistened on her lashes as she nodded. ‘And we both know how to do that, don’t we?’
Nick had meant to pierce that prickly exterior Beth presented to the world. To have her talk to him, tell him things about herself, anything about herself, as long as she let him in.
And by doing so he had hurt her. Had brought all that pain and suffering back into stark relief.
‘Your car lights are off, Daddy,’ Bekka announced happily as she came back into the kitchen. ‘And there are some carol singers at the door,’ she added excitedly as she slipped her hand into his. ‘Can we go and listen to them and then give them some money?’
Nick dragged his gaze away from Beth to smile down at his daughter. ‘Sure we can.’ He gave her hand a squeeze before glancing across the kitchen. ‘Coming, Beth?’
‘I—no,’ Beth refused. ‘I’m just going to finish up here and then call a taxi, but the two of you go ahead,’ she urged lightly.
He frowned darkly. ‘We haven’t finished talking, Beth.’
‘I think we’ve said all that needs to be said, don’t you?’ she dismissed.
Nick continued to look at her broodingly for several long seconds before he felt Bekka’s renewed tugging on his hand and allowed his daughter to pull him out into the hallway.
Beth sat down on one of the kitchen chairs as soon as she had finished talking to the taxi company and put the tumbet in the oven, very aware of her need to get away from here. Away from the cloyingly domestic atmosphere of just being here with Bekka and Nick. And the maelstrom of emotions that created inside her.
She had loved Ben so much—been devastated when he died. Her only way of coping with his loss, and that of her parents, had been to remove herself from the place where she had spent so many happy years with all of them. To move to London, a place where she could be assured of anonymity. A place where she could