Modern Romance March 2015 Collection 2. Jane Porter

to rustle up a hot meal.’ He shrugged elegantly and shot her a crooked smile. ‘Feel free to share all your home truths about me!’

      ‘I most certainly will! And...one other thing.’ The plane began dipping, preparing to land. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t come prepared for warm weather.’ She thought wistfully of the innocent little ski-resort job she had mapped out as part of her recovery programme. ‘I hadn’t expected to find myself on a plane to Madrid.’

      ‘Believe it or not, there are shops there. A free wardrobe is part of the package.’

      ‘I don’t feel comfortable with that.’

      ‘Then we can agree on a repayment schedule— although you might want to settle into your new job when you get back to London before you start working out how to transfer money into my account for a handful of clothes.’

      ‘I wonder how it is that I never spotted just how infuriating you could be.’

      ‘That could certainly be one of the things you tell my mother that you dislike about me,’ Lucas pointed out. ‘Although who knows how she might react to the shock of hearing a woman speak her mind? You have to bear in mind that she’s had a stroke.’

      ‘You’re telling me that no one ever speaks their mind when they’re around you?’

      ‘Frankly, no. Although you’re more than making up for that.’

      The small plane touched down smoothly, skimming over the landing strip like a little wasp before slowly grinding to a halt. Conversation was abandoned amidst the business of disembarking, after which a long, sleek car was waiting for them, complete with uniformed driver.

      Cool, early spring temperatures greeted them. She was fine in what she was wearing but, stepping into the car, which was the height of luxury, she was suddenly and acutely aware of just not quite blending into her surroundings. What was appropriate gear for travelling in a luxury chauffeur-driven limo? She was sure that there would be some sort of dress code and, whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t what she was wearing. His mother might disapprove of supermodel girlfriends, but supermodel girlfriends would match expensive limos; supermodel girlfriends would pull off luxury houses and private planes...

      And suddenly she felt that tug of self-consciousness that had been her occasional companion growing up—the little pang of knowing that she really wasn’t too sure when it came to the opposite sex, of knowing that she would never really make it into the inner sanctum of the cool set, even though she got along just fine with them. Lucas’s mother might have whimsical dreams about her son finding a suitably wholesome, down-to-earth girl but she would discover fast enough that wholesome, down-to-earth girls were not fashioned for ridiculously wealthy lifestyles.

      Her eyes slid across to where he was sitting, casually at ease in his expensive limo. His sense of style was so much a part of him that he could have been wearing a bin bag and he would still have looked stupendously sophisticated. Stupendously sophisticated and utterly, bone-meltingly, sinfully sexy.

      He was right. There would be no need for her to pretend because there was no way his mother could fail to notice just how ill-suited they were as a couple. She wouldn’t be deceiving anyone. She would just have to be herself. This was going to be a little adventure, nothing to get all worked up and anxious about. Life threw curve balls and she was catching one. When again would she find herself in this position—freed from all responsibility; no job, nothing waiting for her back in London, suddenly free to do exactly what she wanted to do?

      She rested her head back and half-closed her eyes, and when she turned to look at him after a few seconds it was to find him staring right back at her. He had the darkest eyes imaginable and lashes most women would kill for. The perfect, beautiful symmetry of his lean face should have made him too...pretty, but there was a harsh, dangerous strength there that made him 100 percent alpha male.

      Her heart skipped a beat. She was supposed to be romantically involved with the guy! What a joke. As though someone like him would ever look at someone like her! Even that gold-digger who hadn’t been a supermodel had probably looked like one. But for a few heart-stopping seconds she imagined what it might feel like to be touched by him; to be seduced by that rich, dark, dangerous, velvety voice; to have him run his hands over her naked body.

      She bit back a stifled gasp as moisture pooled between her legs and a heavy, tingling ache began in her breasts and coursed through her body until she felt hot and uncomfortable in her skin.

      It was a physical reaction that was so unexpected and so blindingly powerful that she felt faint. Faint, giddy and slightly sick. She couldn’t remember feeling anything like this when she had been with Robbie. In fact, she couldn’t remember feeling anything like this ever. She was shockingly aware of her own body in a way she never had been before, aware that she wanted it to be touched, wanted the strange tickle between her legs to be alleviated.

      She dragged her eyes away from his mesmerising face, mortified at the suspicion that he could see exactly what was going through her head, and even more mortified when she belatedly remembered what he had said about making sure she didn’t start getting ideas.

      ‘How long before we get, er, to your mother’s house?’ she asked because talking might distract her from what was going on with her body.

      A little over an hour. An hour of sitting next to him in the limo, trying hard to rein in her wandering mind. An hour of pretending not to notice the muscled strength of his forearms; the taut pull of his trousers over his powerful thighs; the length of his fingers; the sexiness of his mouth; the way his voice curled around her, tantalising, tempting, as velvety smooth as the finest dark chocolate.

      Every confusing sensation racing through her body and running like quicksilver through her head crystallised to demonstrate, conclusively, just how inexperienced she was when it came to the opposite sex. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she couldn’t even rely on good old common sense to point her in the right direction or else she wouldn’t be sitting here, pressed against the car door to create maximum space between them, babbling like the village idiot because it was better than letting any disturbing silences settle between them.

      At the end of half an hour she knew more about Madrid than she did about her own village where she had grown up because she had plied him with questions. By the time they were drawing into Salamanca, she could have done a doctorate on the subject.

      Not only did his mother have a house in Salamanca but she also had a house in Madrid for those times when she fancied an extended shopping trip to the city, or when she visited friends and wanted somewhere to stay over.

      It hadn’t been used in a while because ill health had interrupted her usual routine, she had been told.

      ‘Relax,’ Lucas told her wryly. She was staring at him, mouth parted on the brink of yet another question. There seemed to be no end to them. He politely refrained from telling her that he had never known any woman to talk as much as she did. ‘You’re not walking into a dragon’s den.’

      ‘I didn’t think I was,’ Milly lied.

      ‘Oh, yes, you did. That’s why you haven’t drawn breath since you started asking me to give you a verbal guided tour of Madrid and its surroundings. If we’d been in the car for another hour, you would probably have extended your parameters to the rest of Spain, because you think that talking calms your nerves.’

      ‘I’m not nervous. We’ve agreed that neither of us has to pretend to be anything other than what we are.’

      ‘You’re nervous. And you’re the girl who wasn’t nervous when she was plying me with questions about my past. Don’t be.’ He gently tilted her chin away from him, directing her to look through the front window, and her eyes widened at the mansion approaching them. She had barely noticed when the limo had pulled off the main road. ‘We’re here.’

      Milly’s mouth dropped open. The low white house with its red roof sprawled gloriously amidst a profusion of shrubs, flowers and trees. The intense blue of the sky picked up the even more intense, vibrant colours