by Helen Brooks
‘Thanks.’ He straightened as he took the cup and she felt her senses respond with humiliating swiftness. ‘So…’ He made no effort to stand aside and unless she literally barged past him she was effectively trapped in her little part of the kitchen. ‘I told you I loved you and you reacted by telling me to get the hell out. Care to explain why?’ he asked with a cool lack of expression.
‘Would you listen if I said no, I wouldn’t?’ Kim responded painfully. ‘No.’
‘I thought not.’
Where could she start? She took a hefty gulp of the scalding hot coffee and then winced as it burnt her throat, her eyes smarting. ‘Do you want me to resign?’ she asked quietly, knowing she was prevaricating. ‘No, Kim, I do not want you to resign,’ Lucas said with formidable control. ‘I want you to talk to me.’
He was asking for the hardest thing in the world, as though it was as easy as falling off a log. She stared at him, her face tight with tension, and then looked down into the rich warmth of the fragrant coffee as she said very softly, ‘It’s a long story and it won’t change anything.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
She looked up at him then, searching her mind for an escape route, but there wasn’t one. She had known all along there wouldn’t be. He had made up his mind he wanted the ‘t’s crossed and the ‘i’s dotted and, Lucas being Lucas, that was exactly what he would get. Never mind about her pain, her humiliation, her excruciating shame…
She took a deep breath and began talking. It wasn’t so bad at first; she began with the agony of her aunt dying and the way she had been whisked into care, detailing the fight to rise above the loneliness and isolation she had felt in a steady quiet voice. And then she paused, her voice very low as she said, ‘And then I went to university and met Graham.’
‘Did you love him?’ Lucas asked softly.
‘I thought I did.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘It was so amazing to have someone need me so badly, to want to be with me every minute, to love me so much. I’d never had that before and it quite literally bowled me off my feet. Graham bowled me off my feet. And then we got married.’ She stopped abruptly, feeling horribly trapped and moving restlessly in the tiny space. ‘Can we go through to the sitting room?’
‘Sure.’ He gently touched her cheek with one large hand before standing aside to let her pass. His fingers were cool, steady, and the tingling sensation in her flesh made her suddenly short of breath. It made her scurry through to the sitting room with more haste than dignity, and as she turned to face him again he raised his eyebrows at her.
‘I wasn’t going to ravish you on the kitchen floor.’
‘I know that.’
‘You don’t lie very well, Kim,’ said Lucas matter-of-factly. ‘Continue with the story. You’re now married.’
It sounded simple when it was said like that.
‘Graham didn’t love me,’ Kim said mechanically, forcing herself to go into automatic to get through the next minutes. ‘I don’t actually think he was capable of the emotion. He’d put on a good show at university and we always seemed to be with a load of people there, the life was so gregarious. His drinking didn’t stand out there, either; everyone in Graham’s set drank too much.’
Lucas nodded. ‘I too was young once,’ he said drily.
‘His parents financed a little business for him and he was pleased with that at first, acting the big I am among his friends and cronies. But the drinking was getting worse. I tried to help him but he’d turn everything round on me, saying he had to drink because I was a useless wife, hopeless in bed, that sort of thing.’
She had tried to continue in the flat even tone but the pain of Graham’s rejection, the incredibly cruel things he had used to throw at her, was still a raw wound.
‘We’d been married eighteen months when he suggested…’ Kim sat down on one of the easy chairs, her head lowered and her hair covering her face like a veil. She had felt too weary that morning to fiddle with it before taking Melody to school, but she was glad now of the slight protection it gave from those piercing eyes.
‘What did he suggest, Kim?’ Lucas said tensely.
‘He asked…he wanted me to sleep with one of his prospective clients,’ Kim said numbly. ‘He’d been furious when I got pregnant with Melody so quickly after we’d got married, and when I wouldn’t have an abortion like he wanted he blamed that—the added responsibility of a family—on the business failing. He said I owed him.’
Lucas swore softly but the sound was none the less ugly for its quietness. He knew this slimeball’s type; unfortunately there were several spawned in each generation. Men without conscience, men who would use vulnerability and gentleness in another person to bring them under their domination. Kim had been a sitting target for him with her background, and with her looks he must have thought he’d won the jackpot.
‘Melody was five months old,’ Kim continued quietly, ‘and right up to that point I’d tried to convince myself that I could turn the marriage around, for our child’s sake if nothing else. I’d done everything I could to make him love me, tried to please him in every way I knew how.’ She stopped again, the memory of her abasement from those days horribly vivid. How often, in the weeks and months following Graham’s vile request, had she told herself she must have been mad, insane, not to see what he was really like? But she hadn’t. She just hadn’t.
‘But that day I went berserk.’ Her voice was shaking now in spite of her efforts to control it. ‘Really berserk. I flew at him, hitting him, punching him, and he struck me back so hard I lost consciousness for a time.’
‘Hell, Kim.’ He knew she probably didn’t want to be touched, not in view of what she was reliving, but Lucas couldn’t see her sitting there, so small and slender and broken, and not hold her. He lifted her up to him, and as she stiffened, her body tensing, he said softly, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right; I just want to hold you as one human being comforting another, that’s all. Nothing more, Kim. I swear it.’
He would have given the world for five minutes alone with Graham Allen if the dirty swine hadn’t been dead. And he would have made him suffer. An artery pumping out his life blood had been too quick an end for the so-and-so.
‘When I came to he was sitting in front of me with Melody on his knee,’ Kim whispered against his shirt, her head still hanging limply. ‘He told me if I ever confided in a living soul, told them anything of what had gone on, he would kill her, and then me. I believed him, Lucas. He was actually capable of that when the mood took him. He said it was important for the business he was seen as an established family man and that if I tried to leave him he would find us. He did promise he’d never hit me again, though.’
‘You should have left him. There are places—’
‘No. He’d have found us.’ Kim raised desolate eyes, her lashes starred with tears. ‘But from that day I moved into Melody’s room on a camp bed. I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. Something died for ever that day, Lucas. I know it. I could never trust any man again.’
‘I’m not any man,’ he said grimly, seating himself on the sofa with Kim on his knee and holding her when she would have struggled away.
‘Things got worse and worse,’ Kim continued, her body tight and rigid. ‘He…he became like a devil. And then, the night after the shopping incident, when he’d broken his word and hit me again, he found me looking at flats in the paper. He attacked me, said I was withholding his conjugal rights so he’d take what was rightfully his by force if he had to. But I fought back, hit him over the head with a saucepan in the end and locked myself in Melody’s room. I thought he might try to break the door down but in the event he went off on a drinking binge, and the rest you know.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Except that he left debts, huge debts—for me, that is—and I was stupid enough to have signed documents that made me as responsible as Graham.’
‘Hence you jumping at the job at Kane Electrical,’ Lucas said softly, his voice shaking a littl
e with what he was feeling. ‘And here was me thinking you had fallen for my irresistible charm.’
He was trying to lighten things, Kim knew that, but his closeness was too much to cope with. ‘Please let me go, Lucas,’ she said tremblingly. ‘And don’t feel sorry for me. I didn’t tell you about Graham for that.’
‘Listen to me, Kim.’ He lifted her chin so that she had to look into his face, and she saw fierce anger was battling with a tenderness that made her want to howl like a baby. ‘I can’t deny I want him to suffer the torments of the damned for what he’s put you through, and if he were alive I’d find him and teach him a lesson that would mark him until his dying day. That’s the way I’m made, I’m afraid. But you’ve got to put that maniac behind you. He’s history, dead, gone—and I don’t mean in just the physical sense.’
She was dazed and shaking, as much by their intimacy as the terror she had relived.
‘If you let him shape your future he’s really won, don’t you see that?’ Lucas urged huskily. ‘And you’re worth more than the dregs he’s left you, and so is Melody.’
‘Melody is one reason I don’t want a relationship with anyone, ever,’ Kim said tightly, afraid the pull of his magnetism was going to convince her black was white. ‘We’re safe as we are, Melody and I, and that’s all I ask of the future, Lucas. To be safe.’
‘The hell it is.’ It was a growl, and immediately he added, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t look like that; I’m not going to hurt you, for crying out loud. But, like I said before, I’m not anyone, and what’s between us is something outside the normal realm of things. Of course you want to be safe, but there’s more to life than just that, my love. Don’t throw all your hopes and dreams and aspirations on the funeral pyre of that rat. I can make you alive in a way you’ve never dreamt of.’
My love. Kim couldn’t speak at all, she could only look at him, but her eyes were huge with distrust and fear and he read the panic and denial in her face with deep and silent frustration.
‘I want you, Kim, but not for a night or a week or a month,’ he said very softly.
‘No.’ Before he could say any more she jerked herself away from him, sliding to her feet and shaking uncontrollably as she said, ‘You have to understand, Lucas, please. I can’t… I don’t want commitment.’
How many times had he said exactly that to some beauty or other he was inviting into his bed? Lucas’s thoughts were self-derisory and caustic. And now he was being hoist with his own petard. But he was damned if he was going to let her go. She was his, in her heart. He just had to convince her of it. But she had had enough brute force and manipulation to last her a lifetime and he wasn’t about to indulge in more of the same. If he took her she would capitulate in seconds; he had no doubt about that. But he wanted more than her body and a momentary acceptance in her emotions. Much more.
‘Okay.’ He stood up slowly to face her, thrusting his hands into his pockets to remind himself not to touch her. How he wanted to touch her…
‘Okay?’ The tears were still sparkling on her white cheeks and Kim took a shaky breath. ‘What do you mean okay?’
‘I accept your proviso that we’re just friends,’ Lucas said evenly, ‘and I appreciate that you trusted me enough to tell me about your past. That’s the first requisite of friends, trust.’
Kim stared at him, feeling she was entering an Alice in Wonderland experience. She hadn’t mentioned anything about being friends, had she? she asked herself bewilderedly. And where had he got this idea about her trusting him?
‘So, we’ll go on from here with no bad blood between us, yes?’ Lucas’s tone was soothing. He had noted the brittle stance of her body, her chalk-white face and agonised eyes, and it had warned him she was at the limit of her endurance for one day. He also knew he wanted her more than ever.
‘I…I don’t know,’ Kim stammered defensively, suddenly unsure of exactly what was being said.
‘Kim, you’ve told me you need to work to pay off Graham’s debts,’ Lucas said calmly, ‘and surely you want to provide Melody with the best standard of living in the meantime? That taken as read, you working as my secretary is a good deal for both of us. I get someone who is completely trustworthy and willing to give the job her all; you get an excellent salary with no strings attached.’
‘But…but what you said…’
‘About loving you, wanting you?’ Lucas expelled a quite breath. ‘That still stands, I’m afraid, but I’m no callow youth in the grip of adolescent urgings he can’t control. And life goes on, even in the midst of my bruised ego. I’m a businessman first and foremost, Kim. You should know everything comes second to that.’ And the funny thing was, he would have meant that last sentence at one time, Lucas admitted with bitter self-mockery.
‘The last few months have been somewhat…strained at times, haven’t they?’ Lucas raised dark sardonic eyebrows, and at Kim’s faint nod inclined his own head in agreement. ‘But now we both know exactly where we stand and with no hard feelings. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
He smiled as she spoke but Kim was beyond smiling back. Her eyes opened wide as he placed his hands on her slender shoulders but she stood quietly before him, forcing herself not to shrink away. And when the dark head bent and he lightly brushed the top of her head with his lips she still remained motionless, wondering—with a bewilderment that was stronger than anything she’d felt before—why she felt her heart was breaking.
CHAPTER NINE
KIM didn’t go into work that day although Lucas left immediately after their ‘clearing of the air’, as he referred to their talk.
He had ordered her to go back to bed and get some sleep before she had to collect Melody again, but she found sleep was the last thing on her mind in the hours that followed. After an hour or so of tossing and turning she threw back the covers irritably and got dressed again, giving the house an impromptu spring-clean that took all the rest of the day and most of the evening.
The hard physical work helped; at least she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow that night, and her dreams—if she had any—must have been non-threatening because she couldn’t remember them in the morning, which was a Saturday.
She found her heart was beating so hard it was suffocating the first time she met Lucas after the morning at the cottage, but he had retreated into the hard, attractive, distant tycoon of earlier days and within an hour or two—amazingly to Kim—she found herself relaxing, and by the end of Monday she was sufficiently loosened up to laugh at one of his wickedly amusing observations on life.
The next morning she experienced the same hot shivers and thudding of the heart as the day before, but when Lucas made no attempt to be close or anything but her boss, their old working relationship gradually settled into place.
The silver-grey eyes still pinned her on occasion but that was Lucas, she assured herself each time she caught him looking at her in a certain way. And the habit he had of almost reading her mind was peculiar to him too. It didn’t make her comfortable, but cosiness or serenity had never been an option around Lucas anyway.
Kim found she was missing Maggie more than she would have thought possible as the days and weeks crept by, especially after one of her friend’s phone calls or letters which were all determinedly cheerful and which never mentioned Pete.
She had mentioned Maggie’s situation to Lucas whilst assuring him she would make alternative arrangements for Melody, should the need arise, but it was four weeks before this happened and then the late meeting just necessitated Janie—the mother of Melody’s schoolfriend—walking across the road to the school and keeping Melody until seven, when Kim collected her.
By the time the May blossom had fallen and June had arrived, and Melody was well underway with her herb and vegetable patch, Kim was forced to acknowledge to herself that she was lonely. She adored Melody, worshipped her, but the lack of adult stimulation was getting to her, she told herself crossly one Saturday morning after a particularly vivid and erotic
dream concerning Lucas.
She missed Maggie’s easy, funny companionship, that was all it was. She narrowed her eyes against the hot June sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window. But it wasn’t, was it? her innate honesty forced her to recognise in the next moment.
It wasn’t so much that she was lonely as lonely for Lucas, and there was a subtle difference there. Since she had accepted that she loved him there was barely a minute or two that ticked by that he wasn’t on her mind. It wasn’t so bad when she was at work—at least she could see him there, hear him talk, laugh at his jokes and exist on the perimeter of his busy life.
Sad girl. The thought was immediate and extremely annoying, but truthful. She hunched her shoulders against it and frowned at the sunlight.
And all the long work lunches they shared didn’t help. She was forced to see him in a different light when he took her to one of the little restaurants he favoured, or to the pub, and although he assured her he’d treated June exactly the same and it was the way he liked to relate to his secretaries, it nevertheless caused Kim untold painful heart-searchings.
As had the couple of times she had found herself at his home. She’d met Martha, his housekeeper, and the animal occupants of the beautiful mansion. Again, good reasons for her being there—the first time he had called in on his way back to the office after lunch for a file he’d forgotten, and the next he had asked her to bring some papers to him one morning when he had been working at home, but each time Martha had insisted Kim partake of coffee and home-made shortbread before she had left, and treated her as—what, exactly? Kim asked herself silently. A buddy, a friend? Certainly not as one of Lucas’s employees.
And Lucas’s relationship with his housekeeper she’d found particularly unsettling. His gentle teasing of the little old grey-haired woman, the warmth and tenderness in Lucas’s voice, and the blatant devotion in Martha’s when she spoke of the man she called ‘my wee lad’ had all been disconcerting. Unnerving even.
