Claiming His Runaway Bride / High-Stakes Passion. Yvonne Lindsay

to the wound site. A stab of guilt lanced through her. So wrapped up in her own problems, she hadn’t considered what he’d physically been through.

      “Sometimes it’s worse than others,” he admitted flatly before reaching into the shower to turn on the water. “Go on. Enjoy your bath.”

      He stepped into the large shower cubicle, and she watched as the water cascaded over his body, rivulets running through the light dusting of hair on his chest and arrowing down lower, past his taut stomach. Even though he’d obviously lost some weight in hospital, he still had a commandingly powerful build. As he lathered shower gel over his skin, she suddenly wished she’d had the courage to join him in the shower. To be the one stroking the glistening liquid soap down his chest and across the ridged hardness of his abdomen, and lower.

      A flush of heat suffused her body. What was she thinking? Only hours ago she’d been terrified at the prospect of travelling with him, of leaving the virtual safety of her hospital room. Now here she was, little more than an opportunistic voyeur as he luxuriated under the pounding water of his shower.

      She wheeled about and focused instead on the bath he’d drawn for her. She needed to twist her hair up, and unerringly she opened the correct drawer where her hair accessories were lined up. It should give her some comfort, she decided, that she instinctively knew where such things were. With a modicum of movement she pinned her hair up, undressed and lowered herself into the warm fragrant water. As the foaming bubbles closed over her body, she relaxed. They offered her some privacy for when Luc came out of the shower, but something inside her begged to attract his attention, something she couldn’t control.

      And that, right now, was her greatest fear. She didn’t recognise the woman who’d fallen in love with Luc Tanner and agreed to marry him. Clearly it wasn’t the Belinda Wallace she believed herself to be.

      Something within her had changed in the past several months. Something drastic. It had seen her uplift herself from her home in Auckland, from her family and from her career. To give all that up for him.

      She sank lower in the bath, covering her shoulders and stretching her long legs out before her. As she looked out the window over the valley, bathed in the start of a glorious sunset with swaths of red and purple creeping across the sky, she acknowledged she owed it to herself, and to Luc, to remember what that was.

      Four

      Despite the misgivings that plagued her about how she’d handle Luc’s exit from the shower, she was surprised to find that it all felt almost impossibly familiar. Even so, tension gripped her shoulders and she pushed her head back against the built-in cushion on the side of the bath, closing her eyes the moment she’d heard him snap off the water and push open the shower door.

      Her active imagination painted a very clear picture of how he looked as she heard him drag one of the thick white bath towels from the heated rail and cast it across his body to dry himself. She counted to one hundred, very slowly, before she opened her eyes again.

      Luc stood at the vanity, the towel riding low on his hips, his cane resting against the blush-coloured marble countertop. She watched as he smoothed shaving cream across the hard angles of his shadowed jaw and picked up his razor. There was something incredibly sexy about watching a man shave, Belinda decided as she found herself captured by his every movement.

      She must have stirred because suddenly he turned and caught her watching him. A slow smile pulled at his lips, a smile that melted her right through to her core.

      “Enjoying the bath?” His eyes glowed as he took in the curve of her shoulder, the sweep of her arm as it rested along the edge of the tub and back up again to her throat where her pulse beat rapidly in the slender column of her neck.

      If he’d have traced his fingertips along the same path she couldn’t have felt it more distinctly. Beneath the froth her breasts ached, her nipples tightened and her inner muscles clenched in response.

      “Mmm, wonderful,” she managed, but as she gazed at him she found herself referring more to the vision of male than the silky-soft environment in which she reclined.

      “Hungry?” he asked, sending her mind into overdrive before she realised that she was, indeed, starving.

      “Yes, I suppose I’d better get out.”

      “No, don’t bother. I’ll check first to see if dinner’s ready yet.” He swiped at his face with a small towel and dropped it into a laundry hamper on his way out of the bathroom.

      When he returned he pushed a small wheeled trolley with one hand. As he drew closer to the bath, Belinda spied a large ceramic platter and an ice bucket containing a bottle of one of the Hawke’s Bay region’s finest sauvignon blancs. Two elegantly cut crystal wineglasses stood beside the ice bucket.

      “You look like you’ve done this before,” Belinda commented as Luc extracted the bottle from the ice and deftly wiped it with a crisp white serviette.

      “I’ve done some waiting in my time,” Luc replied guardedly.

      He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to her, then pulled up the vanity stool next to the bath and sat down. His towel dropped away at the side, revealing the length of his right leg—exposing the angry scar. She averted her gaze to stare out the window and past the darkening valley to where the final remnants of the sun slipped beyond the last hill. His very nearness, and nakedness, played havoc with her heart rate. Even the warmth emanating from his body tempted and tormented her.

      Belinda focussed on taking a sip of the pale strawcoloured wine, letting the perfectly chilled tropical fruit flavours roll over her tongue and down her throat. She knew from what memory she still clung to with an iron grip that no one else had ever elicited such a powerful reaction from her before.

      Was this what had bound her to Luc? The overwhelming physical awareness that simmered constantly beneath the surface?

      “Here, try this,” Luc said, interrupting her thoughts.

      Belinda turned her head toward him, to the morsel of provolone cheese encased in a sliver of prosciutto he offered. Obediently she opened her mouth. If she’d thought for even a minute that she’d regained control of her equilibrium around Luc it was shattered the instant his fingertips touched her lips. Tiny shocks buzzed across her skin at the fleeting contact as the flavours exploded in her mouth.

      “Good?” he asked.

      “Mmm, delicious. But, Luc, you don’t need to wait on me,” she protested.

      “I know,” he answered simply. “Indulge me.” He dipped a slice of crusty bread in aioli. “Here, try this. It’s Didier’s own recipe and made with product sourced solely from Tautara Estate.”

      As he brought the morsel to her mouth a drop of oil fell and pooled in the curve of her collarbone right where it met her shoulder.

      “Ah, we can’t have that,” Luc murmured.

      He leaned forward, his tongue darting across her skin to lick up the single drop. Every muscle in her body coiled tight and she nearly shot out the water at the exquisitely brief caress. Her fingers curled tight around the stem of her wineglass, and she had to consciously stop the reflexive jerk that threatened to snap the delicate stem.

      “More?” His lips were by her ear, his breath fanning the suddenly hyperresponsive skin of her neck.

      “M-more?” She could barely get the single syllable past her tightened throat.

      “Antipasto.” Again his breath was a stroke of heated air over her skin.

      “I—”

      “Try this.”

      Helpless to do anything but open her mouth, she accepted the slice of marinated artichoke heart. Slowly he offered more bite-size delectable delights interspersed only with sips of wine.

      Luc carried their conversation, keeping things general. Aside from that one time he’d licked the oil from her skin he didn’t