Miranda pasted herself to the stone wall and crept closer to the Banquet Hall for a better listen.
“Aye, he’s never brought a lady friend to Conwy,” said an anonymous female voice with a thick Irish brogue. “Lucas is a very private person.”
“Then why, may I ask, has Mr. Fletcher gone to such extremes to please my darling Miranda?” Bernie asked.
Miranda peeped into the room. Bernie was the only person standing at the table, which was easily 25 yards long. Dark wood chairs with tall, intricately carved backs lined each side of the table, and bodies were seated in each. The diners, all of whom Miranda assumed were Conwy’s staff, served themselves from lovely porcelain casseroles, platters and tureens situated amidst fresh bouquets of wild roses and ivy. Five chandeliers, four smaller ones surrounding a magnificent central one the size of her Toyota, hung from the ceiling, which was so high the rafters escaped the light cast by the sparkling crystal ornaments. Elegant tapers of ivory and ecru burned on the table and from brass sconces throughout the room. The flames danced when someone laughed or reached across the table. Miranda caught the scent of something warm and meaty, and her belly noisily growled.
“We don’t question what Lucas does,” said an older woman with silver hair and a Welsh accent. “Our instructions were to treat Miss Penney as though she was the bloomin’ queen of England.” The woman paused, and then said, “We took it upon ourselves to treat her better than that.”
The table erupted in laughter. Miranda chewed her lip, desperate to join them. It spoke well of Lucas that his employees were so happy. But he was still the boss, and she was his queen…at least for the night. Since she was the one they were supposed to impress, they probably wouldn’t be able to relax if she were to walk in on them and take a seat.
“Thanks, Lucas,” she muttered sullenly as she turned and headed for Morgan’s office.
* * *
“Ken, have you seen…Oh, my…Hello.”
Miranda was sitting on a sofa, leafing through a golf magazine and she turned to face the man who had appeared in Morgan’s doorway. It was in her mind to tell him that Morgan wasn’t there, that she herself had been waiting for him for over twenty minutes, but the words fled her mind the instant the man walked into the room.
“Hello.” Miranda stood on legs suddenly gone very weak and very shaky.
“Hello,” he said again. “Miranda.”
His melodic pronunciation of her name turned her belly to jelly. When he offered his hand, she didn’t see it. Her eyes were fixed on his, marveling at their unusual shade of blue. Were his eyes really that blue, or was it the deep navy of his fisherman’s sweater making them seem so? Her eyes dropped to his mouth. The delicious shape of it and how it formed her name thrilled her, and his accent gave her goose bumps. He spoke to her again and she heard nothing other than the tone and timbre of his sexy voice.
“Miranda?” he repeated. “Are you all right?”
This was the man who had saved her from the crush. This man with the broad, muscled chest, glossy hair and incredible smile, who looked at her as though he had found a treasure at the end of a rainbow was…“Fine.” She shook herself out of her reverie. “I’m fine.”
“You wanted to see Kenneth? Perhaps I can help you.”
“No!” she said a bit too sharply. “Uh…no. I just…got a little bored waiting for you.”
He smiled. “For a moment I was afraid that you were trying to duck out.”
A loud, brittle laugh burst from her. She quickly turned it into a cough. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry I’m so late. We had to reschedule some playing dates in Europe to accommodate a makeup performance for the concert last week in Boston,” he explained. “Thunderstorms in Rome delayed my return. How was your flight over?”
Miranda still wasn’t hearing him. She had interviewed hundreds of celebrities, both major and minor, and Lucas was one of the few who actually looked the same in photos as in real life. Actually, photos didn’t do him justice. In real life, he was so gorgeous it was hard to breathe and look at him at the same time.
“I’m starving.” Lucas took her hand. “I imagine you are, too. Shall we?”
Miranda gave herself a mental slap. All the man had done was walk into the room, and she had become a drooling, mindless slave to his exquisite male beauty. This wasn’t like her, and it wasn’t how she wanted to be. She cast her eyes to the floor. It was easier to remain in control when she wasn’t swimming in his beautiful eyes.
“Yes.” Miranda noticed that he wore jeans and athletic shoes. Heat surged through her as her gaze lingered on how well he filled out his jeans. “Do you need to dress or something?”
“No,” he chuckled. “Do you?”
“No. Not if you don’t.”
He tucked her arm through his. “Then, my lady, we’re off.”
* * *
Lucas led her past the crowded Banquet Hall and up a long flight of stairs to a smaller, more intimate chamber. Smaller meaning that the room could seat only fifty people comfortably, where the Banquet Hall easily sat one hundred. A wooden table was set elegantly with an enormous floral display, and crystal and silver for a five-course meal. At one end of the table were a lit candelabra and one place setting. Twenty-five feet away, at the other end, was another candelabra and place setting.
Morgan posed staunchly near the center of the table, close to a standing bucket of ice from which jutted a bottle of champagne and at least three bottles of wine. He was dressed in a black cutaway coat and gleaming white gloves that matched his white silk cravat. Miranda wondered if he’d been waiting for her and Lucas all this time.
“Good evening, sir,” Morgan began formally, “and lady. Tonight, a warm appetizer of escargot avec garlique will start your meal, followed by crab tartlets with leek puree accompanied by a lightly chilled Verdicchio from Conwy’s award-winning wine collection. Next, we shall serve duck with kumquats, complemented by a well-rounded Brouilly. Blue cheese soufflés will follow, and the grand finale to your meal will be Belgian chocolate mousse and fresh raspberry sorbet presented with a sweet Gewürztraminer.” Morgan bowed crisply before approaching them. With great ceremony he took Miranda from Lucas and escorted her to one end of the table.
Lucas went to the other end. He didn’t sit until Miranda had been seated, but once he took his chair, she disappeared. His view of her was completely blocked by a three-tiered monument of roses, phlox, bear grass, philodendrons and Queen Anne’s lace in the center of the table.
Lucas was glad that Miranda couldn’t see him. It had taken every particle of will power he had to walk her to his private dining room when what he’d really wanted to do was pitch himself atop her right there on Morgan’s sofa. He drank long, hard gulps of his ice water, hoping it would cool the fire burning through him. The woman wore jeans, a sweater that revealed only a bit of her collarbone, no makeup and no jewelry and she had done nothing to her hair other than restrain it with a rolled bandanna. Yet she was still the sexiest thing he had ever seen. Maybe I’ve built this meeting up in my head for so long, I’ve made her something she isn’t, he considered.
To test himself, he cleared his mind completely, slowly stood, and peeped at Miranda over the top of the mountainous floral arrangement. She slumped against the tall back of her chair and appeared to be trying to hang the smallest of her three spoons from the end of her nose. She caught it deftly each time it dropped off. Her small frame looked even tinier in the massive chair. When she set the spoon back down, her sweater shifted, allowing him to steal a glimpse of the caramel glow of her right collarbone and the graceful place where her neck met her shoulder. Lucas winced in sweet pain at the sight of her smooth, ginger-brown skin, and the front of his pants began to feel more snug. Miranda tugged her sweater back in place, pulled off her bandanna and ran a hand through her hair. The spill of warm brown caught the candlelight, and Lucas was mesmerized by the crackle of natural red highlights in her hair. She looked forward,
and her eyes pinned him in place.
“I-Is…uh…everything all right down your end?” he hedged, reaching for something to say now that he’d been caught staring.
Miranda slightly rose, to see him over the flowers. “Everything’s fine. Thank you.”
Her sweater slipped again, and Lucas dropped into his chair. “It’s not me, damn it all,” he cursed under his breath. “It’s her.”
Morgan and his nattily dressed assistants brought the first course and set it before them, and then retreated from the room. Lucas enjoyed escargot avec garlique. It was one of his favorite dishes, and he was starving. But as he stared at the arrangement of steaming, buttery delicacies on his plate, he realized that his hunger wasn’t for food.
“Miranda?” he called.
“Yes?” She called back.
“Are you enjoying your escargot?”
“Yes. It’s very…snaily.”
“Very well, then.” He set down his cutlery and began twiddling his thumbs. He listened to the sounds of Miranda’s knife and fork moving against her plate.
“Miranda?” Lucas called again, this time startling the guilty Miranda in the middle of using her spoon to catapult snail bits into the gigantic floral arrangement.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’ve got Fenway Franks in the kitchen.”
Miranda smiled. Whatever tension and unease she had felt vanished as she laughed out loud.
Chapter 3
The “kitchen” turned out to be a stadium-sized cooking arena. The wood-fired grill in the center of the space was large enough to accommodate a baby whale when all the pits were lit, and the stone hearth built into one wall was taller than Lucas and as wide as a bus. Conventional appliances lined the wall opposite the hearth; they, too, were of commercial, rather than residential, size. The kitchen was dark and empty when Lucas brought Miranda into it.
“Where’s the chef?” Miranda asked as Lucas flipped a half dozen switches to illuminate the vast space.
“This is the old kitchen.” He opened one of the stainless steel doors of the refrigerator and began searching various compartments. “Conwy has three kitchens. This one, one in the staff’s lodge and one off the keep. This one is used only on special occasions. For holiday and record release parties, wedding receptions and the like.”
“Will your chef be upset that we didn’t eat his fancy dinner?” Miranda hopped onto a counter and watched Lucas. He finally found the Fenway Franks and displayed them for her with a tease of dimples that made her sweat.
“He’ll recover.” He turned the hotdogs over in his hands. “How does one prepare a Fenway Frank?”
Miranda scooted off the counter and took the package from him. “Usually, you boil them in a gallon of two-week old hotdog water. Do you have a small saucepan?”
“Probably.” He set about looking for one. He opened a cabinet beneath a wide counter and began rummaging through the cookware.
“There’s one.” Miranda pointed to the rack above the butcher-block cutting table. “It’s the perfect size, but I can’t reach it.”
Lucas, who was eight inches taller than she, reached up and easily unhooked the small pot. His movement hiked up his sweater, giving Miranda a glimpse of his taut lower abdomen and defined obliques. Miranda’s hormones roared into overdrive. Nothing appealed to her more than nicely sculpted obliques, the muscles that created that delectable ridge of flesh right above a man’s hips and anchored a tight and toned torso. “Do you have buns?” she asked.
Lucas, his eyes sparkling, handed her the saucepan. “Of course.”
“I meant…” She waved a hand, floundering for words and hoping to fan the sudden heat rising in her face. “You know what I meant.” She took the pot and the franks to the stove.
“You’re very pretty when you blush.”
Miranda felt a whoosh of heat, and it took her a beat to realize that it was coming from the stove. Lucas was standing beside her, and had turned on the burner. “How did you know that I liked hotdogs?”
“Your friend Bernard told us.” He watched Miranda use a paring knife to split the wrapper on the franks. She pulled each one from the package and dropped it into the pot, and then filled the pot with water at the sink. “He was quite helpful. In fact, he provided more information about you than we actually needed.”
Miranda set the pot over the gas flame. “Such as?”
“You were born on a Monday at Mercy Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland.”
“Anything else?” She faced him and set a hand on her hip. Her sweater slipped.
Lucas clutched at the insides of his pockets to stop himself from reaching for the inviting peek of skin. “He told us that you have a sister, Calista, who’s marrying a baseball player in June.”
“Who’s this ‘us’ you keep referring to?”
“Me and my publicist, actually. He acquires things for me. What I want, it’s his job to get.”
Miranda turned away from him and stared at the simmering franks. “So am I just another acquisition?”
He stepped behind her and gently settled his hands on her shoulders. When he spoke, his words warmed her right ear. “Yes, in that you are something that I absolutely had to have. No, in that I’m not looking for a casual encounter.”
She raised her head. Lucas didn’t move. He spent a moment breathing her scent, infusing himself with the jasmine sweetness of her hair and skin.
Miranda closed her eyes and enjoyed his proximity. But for the movement of her chest and shoulders as she breathed, she kept perfectly still. She would practically be in his arms with the tiniest movement, and that was the last place she wanted to be. Lucas might belong only to her for this moment, here in his old kitchen, but he wasn’t really hers, and never could be.
Lucas pulled away from her before he reached the point where he would never be able to do so. “I’ll get those buns.”
By the time he retrieved hotdog rolls and plates, Miranda had collected the condiments. The boiled franks steamed on a plate while Miranda and Lucas pulled stools up to the butcher-block table. Miranda was horrified when Lucas set his hotdog in a bun and then attempted to eat it with a knife and fork.
“That’s got to be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” she remarked. “It’s a hotdog, not filet mignon. Get your hands dirty.” She picked up her well-dressed frank and took a hearty bite.
“You’ve got mustard on the corner of your mouth,” Lucas told her.
She used the heel of her hand to wipe away the mustard then licked her hand clean. She couldn’t have charmed Lucas more if she had deliberately tried. He followed her example and chomped his frank in half in one bite.
“My God,” he exclaimed. “This is the best hotdog I’ve ever had.”
“Really?” Miranda was pleased.
“It’s also the only hotdog I’ve ever had,” he admitted around a second bite. “What’s it made of? It’s meat, yes?”
“Some say they’re made of pork or beef, others say raccoon tails and possum lips.” Miranda couldn’t keep a straight face when Lucas stopped chewing and looked at her, his eyes wide. “I’m kidding,” she giggled. “These are all beef.”
“There’s a relief. I once ate roasted spiders in South America, quite by accident, of course. The experience put me off my grub for a week.”
“Ugh. Is that the worst thing you’ve ever had in the course of your travels?”
“Your American beer runs a near second. It’s weak as spit, and your pubs serve it cold, as if it were lemonade.”
“I can’t have you insulting American beer. When he was giving you my life’s story, did Bernie tell you that the one and only time I ever got drunk was on a single spit-weak American beer on my twenty-first birthday?”
“I apologize,” Lucas said. “And please know that the quality of American women more than compensates for the deficient quality of the beer.”
“I suppose you’ve sampled both quite extensively?”
“The beer,
yes.” He went to the refrigerator again and withdrew a bottle of sparkling white wine. “As for the women, don’t believe everything you may have read about me in the gossip pages.”
“I don’t read gossip columns.”
“Beautiful and smart, too,” Lucas smiled.
Another irritating blush crept over Miranda’s skin. Lucas busied himself with cutting the foil on the wine and easing out the cork. It shot into the air and landed on the other side of the room, near an ancient wooden door held shut with a thick wooden beam. Miranda jumped at the sound of howling, followed by loud, eager scratching and sniffing on the other side of the door.
“Those are my pups,” Lucas said. “I haven’t seen them in three weeks, not since we began the Karmic Velocity tour. Would you like to meet them?”
“Sure.” She left her stool. Lucas took the wine and Miranda grabbed the two glasses and followed him across the kitchen.
“This is the Hound Room.” He tucked the wine beneath his arm so he could use both hands to heave the sturdy beam off of its brackets. He opened the door to the darkened room, and Miranda’s first instinct was to climb up on his broad shoulders.
“What the hell is that?” She almost shrieked when a pair of silvery-green eyes at the level of her chest approached her.
Lucas turned a knob and brought up the lights. “These are my pups.”
Miranda was pinned to the wall by a “pup” that was easily a foot taller than she, if it stood on its back legs. “P-P-Pups?” she gasped, eyeballing the dog and the rest of its pack. “They’re going to get bigger?”
Lucas snapped his fingers and the dogs sat with military precision. Their tags chattered as they quivered with joy at seeing Lucas. “They’re Irish wolfhounds. Reg here is leader of the pack.” He scratched Reg’s ears. The dog’s soulful eyes closed in utter contentment, and the dog sniffing at Miranda left her to nose Lucas’s free hand, placing her head under his palm. He kneeled to give her a good rub under her neck. “This is Sionne, Reg’s wife. The other four, Emrys, Saeran, Owena and Spot, are their children.” As he said the names, the “children” came to him, each of the gangly, long-legged beasts receiving a huge dose of their master’s affection. “Walks?” Lucas said.
Crush Page 5
