Modern Romance March 2015 Collection 2. Jane Porter

gaily sightseeing! And, when he’d run her to ground, not only had she expected an apology but she had the barefaced nerve to compare him to an ex-fiancé who had made off with her best friend!

      Was there a crazier way to join dots?

      ‘So now I’m on a par with a guy who strung you along before he got caught in bed with your best friend?’

      ‘I’m drawing a comparison.’ Milly pushed herself away from the counter and turned her back on him so that she could make herself a cup of coffee. She could feel his eyes boring into her back. Typical! He was charm personified when she was obeying his rules but the second she so much as expressed an opinion that didn’t happen to tally with his, the second she stood up to him and refused to let him treat her like a kid, he suddenly couldn’t see her point of view!

      ‘It’s a ridiculous comparison and I’m not having this conversation. The phone lines are temporarily dead, and it looks as though I’m going to be staying on here a little longer than I originally anticipated, so you might want to rethink your sulkiness—because it’s going to be a little charged if you’re either jumping down my throat or stalking around in surly silence.’

      Had he actually considered the challenge of bedding the woman? Was there a less appropriate candidate? He shot her a glance of pure exasperation. How much more illogical could one human being be? And how much more temperamental? One minute, she was as chirpy as a cricket, pouring out her life story with gay abandon. The next minute, she was a raging inferno, behaving as though his act of kindness in putting himself out to find her had been offensive somehow.

      ‘I just bet you’re like that with all those women who fling themselves at your feet,’ Milly snapped, turning back to face him and plonking herself at the kitchen table with her mug of coffee in front of her.

      ‘Are we still embroiled in this pointless argument?’ Lucas flung his hands in the air and then raked his fingers through his dark hair and folded his arms. ‘Like what?’ He wondered why he was being drawn into this when there was nothing to stop him getting up and walking out of the kitchen, leaving her to stew. ‘What am I like with all those women who fling themselves at my feet?’

      Histrionic scenes annoyed him. In fact, he could think of nothing more unacceptable than a woman having a hissy fit. Women should be obliging, soothing, a source of undemanding pleasure to interrupt the ferocity and stress of his working life.

      He assumed that the only reason he was putting up with the red-faced, throbbing little ruffled angel in front of him was because she wasn’t his woman.

      More to the point, he wasn’t exactly awash with choices, considering she was in his lodge, sharing his space.

      But you could always walk away, a little voice in his head pointed out, and Lucas brushed it aside. This was not an occasion for walking away.

      ‘High-handed and annoying!’

      ‘You’re telling me that you find me annoying?’

      ‘You think you can do whatever you like because of the way you look.’

      Lucas smiled, a slow, devastating smile that made her pulses jump. ‘Is there a backhanded compliment in there somewhere?’

      ‘No. I bet you play the field and lead women on because you can...’

      Lucas stifled a groan. ‘You’re like a dog with a bone.’

      ‘I take it there’s a backhanded compliment in there somewhere?’ Milly parroted tartly and his smile broadened. How was she supposed to get on with the business of being angry with him when he smiled like that? How was she supposed to remember what an arrogant jerk he could be?

      Lucas tilted his head to one side, as though seriously considering her rhetorical question.

      ‘Possibly,’ he said slowly, his dark eyes roving over her flushed face. ‘I’m surprised you stuck it out in a job where you were forced to take orders.’

      Milly glared. It had taken a lot of tongue biting to work in a hot, understaffed kitchen where she had never been given the opportunity actually to produce anything of her own...but she still didn’t care for him pointing that out to her.

      ‘There are always up sides to any situation,’ he told her, accurately reading the expression on her face and following her thoughts as seamlessly as if they were written in big, bold letters across her forehead. ‘You can waste time feeling sorry about yourself and moaning about the job you’ve lost...’

      ‘I wasn’t moaning!’

      ‘Of course you were. Or, you can see it as a good thing. So you no longer have to run around taking orders from someone you don’t particularly like in a job that was going nowhere anyway. And, getting back to your sweeping generalisation that I lead women on because I can, I think it’s wise for me to dispel that myth before it has time to blossom into another full-blown argument.’

      His dark eyes were cool and Milly stiffened.

      ‘I’m not interested in—’

      ‘Well you’d better start working up an interest because, frankly, I wasn’t interested in hearing you compare me to the bum who let you down.’

      Milly reddened because she knew that she had been unfair.

      ‘You were high-handed,’ she began weakly in her defence and the temperature in his eyes dropped a few notches from cool to glacial.

      ‘I’ve already told you that I would never sleep with any woman who was involved with someone else. Likewise, I would never sleep with any woman if I was involved with someone else. The thought of that disgusts me, so I couldn’t be further from the unprincipled bastard you got yourself involved with.’ He didn’t take his eyes off her face. ‘When I go out with a woman, she is safe in the knowledge that I’m not going anywhere else and I’m not looking anywhere else either.’

      Milly shivered at the rampant possessiveness in his voice. She wondered what it would be like to have that possessiveness directed on her, to have this big, powerful man focus all his attention on her, to the exclusion of anybody else.

      ‘And yet you’re not a jealous guy.’ She moved on the conversation to dispel the alluring thought of him wanting her so badly that he literally didn’t have eyes for any other woman. Her skin tingled, as though he had brushed it with his fingers, and her whole body shrieked into heated response.

      ‘I’ve never had cause to be.’

      ‘Because all those women who come running when you snap your fingers wouldn’t dream of ever giving you anything to be jealous about?’ She thought of the way everyone had looked at him in that expensive café, on the street as they’d been leaving...

      Something stirred at the back of her mind but she shoved it aside because she wanted to hear what he had to say.

      ‘Because I have yet to meet anyone I’m interested enough in,’ Lucas answered bluntly. He picked up his phone, searching for the signal that might or might not appear at any given moment. The lines were down but hopefully not for long. Like anywhere else where the weather could become suddenly and wildly unpredictable, there was no telling when normality would be restored.

      The endless cry of the commitment-phobe, Milly thought. Men who could have whoever they wanted never had an interest in settling for one because why opt for one type of candy when there were so many jars and bottles to choose from? He could barely be bothered to have this conversation with her. He was searching his phone for a signal. She knew that. He was desperate for an outside line and connection with the real world. He’d already gone beyond the line of duty in putting himself out to stage a rescue mission for someone he happened to be stuck with.

      ‘Am I boring you?’ she asked and Lucas looked at her.

      ‘You’re the most demanding woman I have ever met in my entire life.’

      ‘What’s that supposed to