Snowbound Seduction: A Night of No Return / To Claim His Heir by Christmas / I'll Be Yours for Christmas. Sarah Morgan

be true, would it? Right from the beginning she’d found him scarily attractive, but the fact that she worked for him had put him off-limits. That and the fact that not once in the two years she’d worked for him had he given the slightest hint that the attraction might be mutual.

      But that had all changed, hadn’t it? And it was the shift to the personal that made it so awkward to be around him. Maybe it would have been different had there been other people here, but alone it felt—intimate. And yet they were still strangers. Intimate strangers.

      She couldn’t undo what had been done. She knew things now that she hadn’t known before and there was no way of unknowing them. She knew he’d had a daughter and that he’d loved her. She knew he blamed himself. She knew he was hurting.

      He said that he didn’t have a heart but she knew that wasn’t true. He had a heart, but that heart had been badly damaged. He was obviously suffering deeply but even without hearing the details, she was sure that he was wrong in his belief that he was somehow responsible for his daughter’s death. That couldn’t be the case.

      ‘Emma?’

      She gave a start. ‘Sorry?’

      ‘I asked if you were hungry.’ Apparently suffering none of her emotional agonies, he pulled open the door of a large modern fridge and she found herself staring at his shoulders, watching the flex of male muscle under the black sweater. His body was strong and athletic and she felt the heat spread through her body, the flare of attraction so fierce that she almost caught her breath.

      ‘Hungry would be an understatement,’ she murmured. ‘I’m starving. Right now I could eat ten camels. Which I suppose I might have to if you insist on making me go with you to Zubran.’

      ‘I was thinking of omelette.’ He turned his head and their eyes met. Tension throbbed between them, a living breathing force, and she stood up on legs that shook and threatened to let her down.

      ‘I love omelette. Where will I find a bowl?’

      ‘You think I need your help to cook a few eggs?’

      ‘Sorry. Instinct.’ She sat down again, relieved to take the weight off legs that seemed to have forgotten their purpose. ‘I usually do the cooking when I’m home. I’m teaching Jamie to cook—it’s one of the things we do together. Every Saturday we make pancakes for breakfast, it gives us time to talk. And then we pick a different dish. Last week we did pizza. Today we were going to make Christmas cake—’ She knew she was talking too much but she couldn’t help it. She talked to fill the silence because otherwise she found it too disturbing. ‘Of course, because of you, we won’t be making Christmas cake but you don’t need to feel guilty about that.’

      ‘I won’t.’ He pulled a box of eggs out of the fridge while she watched.

      He’d showered but he hadn’t shaved and his jaw was darkened by stubble that made him look more bandit than businessman. She remembered the roughness of it against her skin, the heat of his mouth, the touch of his fingers—

      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.’

      It was the most he’d ever told her about himself. The first really personal exchange they’d had. ‘So