‘When does your shift end today?’ he asked, catching her off guard as she organised his fresh supplies.
Was he suggesting they get together when her shift ended? It would give her chance to talk about the baby... But his voice was too intimate, too darkly amused. Luc wasn’t going to suggest a quiet talk over a cup of coffee, she suspected.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said on a dry throat. ‘That all depends.’ She hurried to move the trolley towards the door. Luc was leaning against the wall, watching her like a tiger with a mouse.
‘That’s all right, you can go now,’ he said, opening the door for her.
She breathed a sigh of relief to be let off the hook. She’d choose the time, and she would choose the place to tell him.
‘See you later,’ he said.
His warm, clean scent washed over her as she moved past him. Luc had recently showered, and his hair was still damp. Waving in disarray, it had caught on his stubble. He hadn’t shaved.
And why should she care? Emma decided as she pushed her trolley out into the corridor.
Fit, tall and hard, wearing snug-fitting jeans, Lucas Marcelos was a formidable sight. She cared. ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ she enquired in her best professional voice. But then some demon must have climbed inside her throat. ‘Perhaps you’d like your shoes cleaned or your trousers pressed?’ With you still wearing them, preferably, her hostile face clearly said. ‘How about the bed? Would you like me to straighten that before I leave?’
That was absolutely the wrong thing to say, she realised as a slow smile curved his mouth. Luc really knew how to use a bed. And not just to lie in it.
‘Why don’t you come back later to do that? I’ll put a sign outside my door when I’m ready for you.’
With difficulty, she curbed her thoughts and managed to say nothing in reply, other than a polite ‘Yes, sir.’
‘There is one thing.’
‘Yes, sir?’ she repeated with studied patience.
‘Tell Housekeeping they need to get bigger towels.’
None of their guests was half his size. Luc was a towering presence in every way. ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’
‘Yeah. How long do you plan to keep this up?’
‘Keep what up, sir?’ She waited a moment. ‘If there’s nothing else, sir?’
‘Not for now.’
* * *
He leaned back against the door and laughed. On each meeting he liked Emma more. It wasn’t just her voluptuous form, her flame-red hair or her spiky nature—though he liked that a lot. She might look young and vulnerable with that pale Celtic beauty, but beneath her demure uniform-clad exterior Emma Fane was still the firebrand he remembered and had enjoyed. She was everything he’d craved when he’d first seen her in London, and he was in no way done with her yet.
She’d improved, he concluded as he pulled a sweater over his shirt. She was more assured. While in London he hadn’t been very interested in her personality, he had detected that she was bolder now, though she’d been bold enough then—a wild thing, furious with passion. She was different now. Steely.
It was only natural she would have toughened up after her parents’ accident and the subsequent brutal press revelations. He was impressed with her control, and the polite words she’d trotted out, delivered with that fiery emerald stare. That wasn’t something he was going to forget in a hurry.
Picking up the keys to his car, he looked around and thought the room seemed empty without her. Emma was a small woman with plenty of character. She’d been too busy with her bridesmaid’s duties for them to get together last night, and then she had taunted him with the lilting laugh she reserved for her friends. Her reddened, careworn hands hadn’t changed, he mused as he left the room and strolled down the corridor towards the bank of elevators. He had noticed them in London, with particular reference to the magic such work-worn hands could weave—once she had been shown how to use them and had been encouraged.
Nodding politely to his fellow guests, he entered the elevator still thinking about Emma. When she had disappeared out of his bed in London in the middle of the night, his enquiries had proved he wasn’t the only one to be surprised by her disappearance. Emma was such a good worker, he’d been told, and had such great prospects of advancement in the business. Well, he’d noticed that in her himself. Why would she leave? Where would she go? She was renowned for putting in long hours without complaint, and always making the best of every situation. What had happened to Emma Fane had been the question on everyone’s lips. He knew now that she was making the best of a bad situation. But did he know anything about that situation?
Emma Fane was trouble he didn’t need, he told himself firmly as he stood back to let the other guests spill out into the lobby first. He admired her professionalism, but it riled him that she could treat him like any other guest. After their night in London he’d expected more.
Giving him the chance to turn her down?
Okay. Yes. His pride was bruised. He had never been wrong-footed by a woman before. Had Emma forgotten that he’d made her scream with pleasure in his arms? Or was that why she was keeping her distance from him? Couldn’t she trust herself around him?
He liked that version best, and smiled as he waited for the valet to bring his car round. There was no basis for his obsession with Emma. Full lips, full breasts and shapely legs—all great, but he wasn’t about to fall at the feet of a flame-haired temptress simply because she was dressed in a severely cut uniform that demanded it be ripped off her. Tipping the valet, he got into his car.
All that day he lectured himself on steering clear of a woman who affected him so badly he couldn’t concentrate. Hadn’t he vowed never to become plagued by a woman again? He’d kept that pledge up to now—apart from that one slip in London with Emma. When he’d woken that morning he’d been almost glad she’d gone—until he’d started missing her. Hadn’t he learned that caring destroyed lives, or that hunger for a woman could so easily become an obsession? He wasn’t going down that blind alley ever again.
So why was he still thinking about Emma Fane?
Because she was making herself unavailable to him, and that was a situation he would not allow to continue.
With the last appointment of the day done and dusted, he gunned the engine and released the handbrake. Thanks to Emma, he was aching with frustration. If he couldn’t get her out of his head he would continue to be distracted. And that wasn’t going to happen. He had to do something about Emma Fane. And soon.
CHAPTER THREE
LUC MARCELOS. SEX GOD. Damaged hero, according to the press, though whatever that meant had been carefully hushed up, Emma reflected as she hurried about her final tasks of the day.
That was another advantage of being as rich as Croesus. If people wanted to feed at his trough, they had to kowtow to Senhor Marcelos. Yes, there’d been talk about his past—nothing specific, a few high-profile affairs and some mammoth business deals. He let certain gossip get through on purpose, she suspected, so that the things he really cared about remained hidden. She could see something swirling behind his eyes and knew she wasn’t imagining it, because she had the same hurt and shadows in her own stare. They were both private people who relied on themselves and no one else, but she couldn’t pretend that Luc’s shadows didn’t intrigue her, or that she wouldn’t like to know more about him, what made him tick.
Must she always go looking for trouble?
Apparently, yes, or she would have found some excuse not to service his room. One of the other chambermaids at the hotel would have jumped at the chance to take over from her.
Why didn’t she ask them?
Not a chance.
It didn’t matter how dangerous Luc might be—while he was here she couldn’t stay away from him. There was a good reason for that. She had to find
the right moment to tell him about the baby, and at some point he would leave Scotland for destinations unknown. Luc had homes all over the world, and could go to any one of them. Before he left she had to talk to him. He was hardly going to leave her a forwarding address.
When her shift was over she ran up the back stairs to her room. Her thoughts were still just as confused. Her main aim was to be a good parent, and to be as honest as she always had been, which meant coming clean with Luc, but each time she saw him her head reeled and her thoughts scrambled. How was she supposed to form a sound judgement about a man she only knew by reputation?
It didn’t help that Luc seemed to think she was still that girl he knew from London, the girl who would go to bed with him at the drop of a hat. He couldn’t know that things had changed radically for her since then. She’d been half-crazy with grief and shock that night and in her furious despair had found release and pleasure with him, but her reality had changed and she had no excuse now.
Safe in her tiny box room beneath the eaves, she lay on her narrow cot and thought about Luc... Luc naked. Luc looming over her, bronzed and immense, his wild black hair waving around his face, his stubble thick, his mouth firm and curving in a wicked invitation to sin. He hadn’t needed to seduce her. She had been seduced at her first sight of him. He had made her body sing. He had inhabited every part of her, mind, body and soul, and with pleasure had come oblivion, which was all she’d craved.
So she had no excuse for still wanting him. She was back on her feet now and had more sense. She should steer clear—except she couldn’t, because there was a baby to consider now. Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, she frowned, trying to imagine a situation where they could face each other and talk sensibly. It didn’t seem likely they ever would. Luc had never been interested in conversation. She had to change that.
How?
Luc had a world of women at his beck and call. How was she going to persuade him that becoming a father would be so much more rewarding?
She shivered as memories of her own father came flooding back. He hadn’t wanted her. He hadn’t changed his life for her. However hard she had tried to win his love, he had rejected her. Was that what she wanted for her child?
She had to clear her mind and stop panicking. It was better that her child knew its father, rather than that it grew up searching and hoping and hunting for some elusive role model that didn’t exist. And she had a nest egg to build up fast. She couldn’t afford to lose this job. She had to provide a good home for her child. That was more important than anything else.
Examining her reflection in the mirror, she straightened her uniform and smoothed her hair. She took pride in what she did, and that wasn’t going to change, but she had to face facts. Lucas Marcelos was fabulously wealthy with an aristocratic lineage stretching back to antiquity. She was the last in a long line of black sheep. How likely was it that Luc would take her seriously when she told him about their child? He was more likely to think she was trying to scam him and get money out of him with the news that she was pregnant. But she knew the truth and could hold her head up high. And she wasn’t the first of her friends to deal with a bad boy.
The next morning, she straightened her room with new purpose before going downstairs to start work. She had decided to tell Luc today how things stood. Only then could she get on with her life. He was going back to Brazil, so they would both get a chance to think things through quietly before they came to any decision about the future. Telling him shouldn’t be so hard. The entire Thunderbolt team was composed of bad boys, and her friends Lizzie and Danny had married two of them...
Why would that make it easier for her? She had no interest in taming Luc.
No. She had better things to do. Like working hard and raising a child. She certainly didn’t have any more time to waste daydreaming.
The first bombshell to hit her when she arrived in the staffroom was the news that Lucas Marcelos wasn’t leaving until the end of the week. All her thoughts of telling him and then them both having chance to think things through calmly while they were half a world apart crashed and burned. Luc would be right here. The consequences of telling him would be in her face.
‘And he’s calling for more towels,’ the housekeeper announced, draining the remaining blood from Emma’s face. ‘The new big ones I bought especially for him.’
‘More towels?’ one of the chambermaids queried with a frown. ‘I just took him some more towels.’
‘It’s not for us to question our guests,’ the housekeeper reprimanded as she continued with her work.
Luc would keep on calling for one thing or another until she went upstairs to see him, Emma guessed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go,’ she said, wanting to make an end of it. It was better to face him now than allow this charade to continue.
* * *
He looked up at the knock on the door. ‘Come in.’ Putting his newspaper down, he stood up then relaxed as Emma used her pass card to open the door.
‘Towels,’ she told him briskly, sidestepping him as she walked into the room.
‘Coffee?’ he suggested, watching her back view appreciatively as she disappeared into the bathroom.
‘Do you need more coffee?’ she asked him with a touch of impatience.
‘I have all the coffee I need, thank you. I just thought you might like a cup.’
‘I’m afraid that wouldn’t go down very well with my boss.’
‘You never used to worry about what your boss thought.’
She chose not to answer him. He moved in front of her so she couldn’t leave. ‘You’ve still got a job in London, if you want it.’
‘As what? Your part-time mistress?’ she said in the same clipped and professional voice.
Nothing quite so permanent, he thought as his appetite sharpened. ‘You could continue your training course.’
‘Thanks for the offer.’
‘And?’ he prompted.
‘And nothing.’
The lift of her brow said Emma believed he belonged to that group of gilded individuals who only had to look a certain way for a woman to fall at their feet. And she wasn’t one of them. She had carefully turned her face away from his naked chest. He hadn’t thought about it until now. He had slipped on a shirt and jeans for the sake of decency after his shower, not wanting to slob around in a robe, and only noticed now that the shirt wasn’t fastened.
‘Luc, I need to talk to you—’
‘And I to you,’ he assured her, but they were interrupted by a second knock on the door. ‘Breakfast. Hot coffee, freshly baked rolls. How can you resist?’
Easily, her look told him. Emma could resist the coffee and him.
She stood aside as he opened the door to let the waiter in, giving him all the chance he needed to admire her resolute profile: the firm mouth he loved to kiss, and the neat nose that made him smile when it wrinkled. Her expression right now was fixed in disapproval. How he’d love to soften that. He cleared the table for the waiter instead.
‘Join me?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.
He loved the way she drew herself up. She still had to tilt her chin at an acute angle in order to meet his stare. ‘Join me for breakfast—coffee at least,’ he pressed as the waiter set out breakfast on his dining table.
‘Sorry, sir. I can’t do that,’ Emma told him firmly.
He could just imagine the rumours flying around the kitchen after this. He should be more considerate and think about her reputation, but this was the woman who had clung to him and wrapped her naked limbs around him as she’d begged him for more. Why was she acting so cool now? He stopped her at the door with a hand on her shoulder, and turning his back on the waiter he murmured, ‘Why don’t you lighten up?’
‘I’m not expected to lighten up,’ she replied, matching his discretion. ‘Thi
s is my job. I’m working.’
‘So being pleasant to guests isn’t part of your job description?’
‘There are limits,’ she said, glancing over his shoulder at the waiter.
‘If you didn’t work here, would you join me for coffee?’
‘If I didn’t work here, I wouldn’t be in your room.’
She turned and seized hold of the doorhandle—so tightly her knuckles turned white. ‘If you will excuse me?’
‘Allow me,’ he said.
There was a rapid transfer of hands as Emma whipped hers away before he could touch her. The waiter was ready to leave, and they both stood back to let him go. He tipped the man a fistful of coins. Once he was out of earshot he turned back to Emma. ‘Are you sure you won’t join me?’
‘Completely sure,’ she said firmly. ‘May I go now, sir?’
There were dozens of things rampaging behind her eyes that he guessed she would like to say, but not now. He decided to push a little harder to find out what was on her mind. ‘You do know I’m staying on for another few days?’
‘Yes, I heard.’
She had turned back to face him, and again that unsaid something flashed across her face. ‘If there’s something you need to say to me, Emma, just spit it out.’
She looked genuinely shocked for a moment, and then reverted to her role of efficient hotel employee. ‘Just call downstairs when you’re ready to leave, and they’ll have someone come up to collect your luggage.’
‘I think I can manage the cases myself,’ he gritted out. Digging into the back pocket of his jeans, he said, ‘Here...for you.’
‘What’s this?’ She frowned as he held out a twenty.
His patience was exhausted. ‘It’s money, Emma. What does it look like? It’s common practice in the hotel industry to offer money for good service. I’ve had you running up and down for the past couple of days. A tip is customary in Scotland as well as in London, I presume?’
She flinched as he pressed the note into her hand. And then, very slowly and deliberately, she folded it and placed it on the table just inside his door. ‘There are some excellent charities you can give this money to. But I’m not one of them. Have a good day, Senhor Marcelos,’ she added with a cool stare. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay.’
Brazilian's Nine Months' Notice Page 3
