Hot Picks: Exotic Propositions. Кейт Хьюит

of an afternoon with Lukas seemed thrilling, even if they were going to have that dreaded ‘talk’.

      ‘You look lovely,’ Lukas said when Rhiannon returned downstairs. He gestured to the picnic basket on one arm. ‘I had Adeia pack us a hamper.’

      ‘All…all right,’ Rhiannon stammered, suddenly unnerved by what looked like all the trappings of a romantic date.

      He led her not to the beach, as she’d anticipated, but to the dock.

      Along with a speedboat for travelling to the nearest island, an elegant sailboat rested there. It was this craft that Lukas indicated they should board.

      ‘We’re going to sail?’ Rhiannon said dubiously. ‘I’ve never…’

      ‘Don’t worry.’ Lukas’s smile gleamed as he stretched out one hand to help her on deck. ‘I have. And we’ll stay away from the press.’

      He certainly had sailed before, Rhiannon thought, when she was perched on a seat in the stern of the boat, watching with blatant admiration as Lukas prepared the sails and hoisted the jib. Every time he raised his arms she saw a long, lean line of rippling muscle that took her breath away.

      This felt like a date, she thought, as Lukas smiled at her over his shoulder. Lukas was relaxed, carefree, a different man.

      Why? Was she paranoid to be suspicious? To doubt this change in events, in mood?

      She didn’t want to doubt. She wanted to enjoy the sun, the afternoon. Lukas.

      ‘What are you thinking?’ Lukas asked as he came to sit next to her once the boat was cutting a clear path across the blue-green sea.

      ‘How we both need this,’ Rhiannon admitted. ‘A day away from the stresses and troubles back home.’

      ‘Home, is it?’ he murmured, without spite, and she flushed.

      ‘For now, I suppose.’

      ‘What was your home like growing up?’ As always he’d switched topics—and tactics—so quickly Rhiannon could only blink in surprise. ‘I know you were adopted, and it wasn’t very happy, but…’ He trailed off, spreading his hand, one eyebrow raised. ‘Tell me about it.’

      ‘There isn’t much to tell,’ Rhiannon replied, careful to keep any bitterness from her voice. ‘I was abandoned when I was three weeks old. Left on a church doorstep, actually. My mother—my adoptive mother, I mean—arranged flowers for the church and she found me. I’d only been left a little while, she said, or she would have been afraid of what the squirrels might’ve done to me.’

      Lukas’s lips pursed briefly in distaste before he continued, ‘Did she make any effort to find your mother or father?’

      ‘No. Mum always said anyone who would leave a baby like that didn’t deserve to have one. I used to dream…’ She hesitated. ‘I used to imagine them coming to look for me. I had all sorts of reasons why they might have abandoned me.’ She smiled ruefully; it hurt, so she shrugged. ‘Anyway, she and Dad adopted me—Social Services were happy to comply. Mum and Dad were upstanding members of the community, so everything was in order.’

      ‘But you never really felt they wanted you?’ Lukas finished, and Rhiannon flinched.

      ‘I’ve never said that!’

      His tone was gentle, his eyes soft and silver with compassion. ‘You’ve never needed to.’

      Rhiannon looked away, across the flat surface of the sea, glittering as if a thousand diamonds had been cast upon its waters. She hunched one shoulder. ‘They were older when they adopted me. Late forties. They’d never expected to have children. Mum couldn’t.’

      ‘All the more reason to be overjoyed when they were given a chance with you, I would have thought.’

      She shrugged. ‘I suppose by the time I came along they were well set in their ways. A little toddler can be a burden, I know.’

      ‘And you felt like one?’

      ‘They never said it,’ Rhiannon protested, almost desperate to exonerate their memory. ‘It was just…there.’ She paused, remembering all the moments, the pursed lips, the disapproving looks. The feeling that if she could just act as if she wasn’t there, perhaps they’d love her.

      Silly to think that way now, she knew. Yet that was how she’d thought when she was six, twelve, twenty-two.

      ‘I remember one time,’ she began, the memory rushing back with aching sorrow, ‘I was hungry. Mum strictly forbade snacking between meals, but I’d missed lunch at school for some reason—I can’t remember now. She was out at a flower guild meeting, and I made myself a sandwich. I cleaned up afterwards, so she wouldn’t even know, but there was a drip of brown sauce on the worktop, and she was…furious.’ Rhiannon managed a rueful smile. ‘No dinner for me that night.’

      She was surprised to feel Lukas’s hand on her shoulder, slipping up to cup her cheek. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Don’t be.’ She leaned against his hand; she couldn’t help it. The strength, the security radiating from him, from that simple gesture, were overwhelming. ‘It was a long time ago.’

      ‘But the scars are still there?’

      ‘Yes, I suppose they are.’ She thought of her mother’s pain-worn face on her sickbed, of how she’d cared for her endless day after endless day. Her mother had accepted those ministrations with pursed lips and hard eyes, glaring resentfully at the daughter whom she somehow blamed for her reduced circumstances.

      She’d asked her mother once, right before she had died, if she’d loved her.

      Her mother’s mouth had tightened as she’d admitted unwillingly, ‘I tried.’

      Tears stung Rhiannon’s eyes, surprising her. She was past tears. These were old memories, and she didn’t like Lukas bringing them up.

      She moved away; Lukas dropped his hand. ‘Tell me about yourself, Lukas. You mentioned that you clean up after other people’s messes. What’s that about?’

      His face blanked for a second, and she was afraid he wasn’t going to tell her, that this wonderful moment of intimacy—an intimacy she’d never expected to share with him—was over. Then he shrugged.

      ‘My mother left my father when I was five. She fell in love with another man—someone totally unsuitable. A racing car driver. And he lived life like he raced cars. Fast.’

      ‘And?’ Rhiannon prompted softly.

      ‘They were killed in a car crash when I was nine. It taught me a lesson.’ He could still hear his father’s hard voice. See where giving in to desire leads you. See what happens when you believe in love rather than duty.

      And he could hear his mother—her careless, mocking voice. He could hear his own pleas and they shamed him.

      ‘What lesson was that?’

      ‘She followed her own selfish desires—didn’t think about what her responsibilities were to her husband, her children. Look where it led her.’ He held up a hand to stop Rhiannon’s comment. ‘And my three older sisters have followed her path. Antonia, Christos’s mother, is divorced, she’s been in rehab half a dozen times, and is a wreck. Daphne is single, miserable, parties too much and is constantly getting in trouble with the press. And Evanthe, the youngest, is anorexic and has been suicidal in the past. All because of giving in to desire. Lust. What they call love. It made them weak, pathetic.’ As he had once been, and would never be again. He shook his head in disgust before glancing at Rhiannon. ‘Now do you see?’

      ‘I see,’ Rhiannon answered quietly. What she saw was three women desperate for love, who’d looked for it in all the wrong places. If she’d been given the chance, if her life had gone differently, perhaps she would have been the same.

      Was that what she was doing here?

      The