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She remembered all of it.
She closed her eyes. This was not working. Forget love—all she wanted was to be able to be in the same room as him and not feel this almost unbearable sizzle. She wanted to be able to listen to what he was saying without thinking of everything else that he could do with his mouth.
She wanted to be able to look at him without thinking of sex.
She wasn’t sure whether the fact that he clearly wasn’t suffering the same degree of torment made it worse or better.
Better, she told herself firmly. Definitely better. At least one of them was still sane.
And then she caught his eye briefly, caught a glimpse of darkness and heat, and knew that she was wrong. He was feeling everything she was feeling. He was fighting everything she was fighting.
The knowledge made her limbs shake and she clutched her mug, her heart banging against her ribs. ‘So tell me about this place. It’s not somewhere I would have expected you to own. You’re all about glass and cutting-edge design and this must have been built by Henry the Eighth.’ She was chattering frantically to cover up the way she was feeling but of course he knew exactly what was going on in her head.
And he wasn’t going to do anything about it.
His self-discipline in all things was legendary.
Except for last night.
Last night, he’d lost control.
But there was no sign of that now as he glanced at the walls of the kitchen. ‘Slightly earlier than Henry the Eighth, with later additions. And it’s true that if I’m designing a new building then I like to make use of modern techniques and materials, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love old buildings. The history of this place is fascinating. And I don’t own it by myself.’ He broke eggs into a bowl and whisked them expertly. ‘When it came onto the market, Mal, Cristiano and I bought it. It’s owned by a company we set up together.’
‘Mal, the Prince? And Cristiano Ferrara who owns the hotel group?’
‘That’s right.’ He poured eggs into the skillet and they sizzled in the heat. ‘The plan is that once I’ve finished the restoration, we turn it into an exclusive hotel that will probably be rented as a whole. We’re planning to hold traditional British house parties.’
‘I love that idea.’ She’d known he had powerful friends but it wasn’t until today that she’d realised just how powerful. ‘I didn’t even know this sort of place ever came up for sale. How did you find out about it?’
He tilted the pan. ‘I’d had my eye on it for a while.’
‘Who owned it before? It must have been awful to have to sell something like this.’
The change in him was visible and immediate. That beautiful mouth hardened into a thin, dangerous line that made her immediately conscious that she’d somehow said the wrong thing.
‘It was built by a wealthy merchant in the thirteen-hundreds,’ he said evenly, ‘and stayed in the family until the last member gambled away all his money.’
‘Gambled? Horses?’
‘Much more twenty-first century than horses.’ Lucas tilted the pan slightly. ‘Online poker.’
‘Oh. How awful.’ She glanced round the kitchen and tried to imagine owning something like this and then losing it. ‘Imagine losing something that had been in your family for centuries. Poor man.’
‘That “poor man” was a selfish, miserable excuse for a human being who took great pleasure in using his wealth and status to bully others, so don’t waste your pity on him because he certainly doesn’t deserve it. More coffee?’
Emma was so astonished she couldn’t answer. It was the first time she’d ever heard him make an emotional comment about a business deal. ‘You work with plenty of wealthy, selfish human beings. Who was this guy?’
Lucas slid the omelette onto her plate, his expression blank. ‘He was my father. You didn’t give me an answer about the coffee so I’ll just top it up anyway, shall I?’
Had he really just said what she’d thought he said? ‘Your father?’
‘That’s right. My mother was his archivist. She left university and found her dream job here, working with the collection that had been pretty much neglected. She worked here for fifteen years and they had an affair. But he wanted to marry someone with the right heritage and apparently that wasn’t my mother—’ his tone was flat ‘—so she lost a job that she adored, her home and the man she loved. Not that she should have worried too much about the last bit. I think that could have been considered her lucky break, but obviously that’s just my personal opinion. Unfortunately, she didn’t see it that way.’
