Bridegrooms Required: One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required. Sharon Kendrick
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On closer inspection, there was a small puddle on the sill where the rain obviously leaked through on a regular basis.
‘If I’d been around there is no way I would have let you move into a place when it was in this kind of state.’
‘Well, there’s no point saying that now because you weren’t around,’ she pointed out. ‘Were you?’
‘No.’ God, no. But now he was.
Their eyes met again, and Luke tried to subdue the magnetic pull of sexual desire. It had happened before—this random and demanding longing—but never with quite this intensity. It was sex, pure and simple. And it meant nothing, not long term—he knew that. Its potency and its allure would be reduced by exposure and it was completely unconnected with the real business of living, and relationships.
He should get out of here. Now. Away from those witchy green eyes and those soft lips which looked as if they could bring untold pleasure to a man’s body.
Yet some dumb protective instinct reared its interfering head, and when he spoke he sounded like a man who’d already made his mind up. ‘You can’t stay here when it’s like this.’
‘I don’t have a choice,’ said Holly quietly.
There was a pause.
‘Oh, yes, you do,’ came his soft contradiction.
Holly stared at him in confusion, convinced by the dark look on his face that he was going to tell her to go back where she came from—back where she belonged. But this wasn’t the Wild West, and she was a perfectly legitimately paid-up leaseholder of this flat! She gave a little smile. ‘Really? And what’s that?’
Luke wondered if he had just taken leave of his senses. ‘Well, you could always come up to the house and stay with me,’ he offered.
She searched his face. ‘You’re kidding!’
‘Why should I be? I feel responsible—’
‘Why should you feel responsible?’
‘Because it’s bleak and cold in here, and because the property is mine and I have enough bedrooms to cope with an unexpected guest.’
‘But I don’t even know you!’
He laughed. ‘There’s no need to make me sound like Bluebeard! And what’s that got to do with anything? You must have shared flats with men when you were a student, didn’t you?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘So how well did you know them?
‘That’s different.’
‘How is it different?’
The difference was that none of her fellow design students—for all their velvet clothes and pretty-boy faces and extravagant gestures and prodigious talent—had appealed to Holly in any way that could be thought of as sexual. She had shared flats with men of whom she could honestly say it wouldn’t have bothered her if they had strutted around the place stark naked. Whereas Luke Goodwin...
She thought of soft beds and central heating, and couldn’t deny that she was tempted, but Holly shook her head. ‘No, honestly, it’s very kind of you to offer, but I’ll manage.’
‘How?’
‘I’m resourceful.’
‘You’ll need to be,’ he gritted, his eyes going to the grey circle of damp on the ceiling. ‘I’ll have someone fix that tomorrow.’
He started to move slowly towards the door, and Holly realised that she was as reluctant for him to leave as he appeared to be. ‘Would you like some tea? As a kind of thank-you for helping me bring my stuff up?’ she added quickly. ‘And you’re the one with the milk!’
‘And the biscuits!’ He found himself almost purring in the green dazzle of her eyes. ‘That would be good.’ He nodded, ignoring the logic which told him that he would be far wiser to get out now, while the going was good. ‘I left them downstairs. I’ll go and fetch them.’
The room seemed empty once he had gone, and Holly filled the kettle and cleared a space in the sitting room, dusting off the small coffee-table and then throwing open the window to try and clear the air.
But the chill air which blasted onto her face didn’t take the oddly insistent heat away from her cheeks. She found herself wondering what subtle combination of events and chemistry had combined to make her feel so attracted to a man she had known less than an hour.
But by the time Luke returned with the milk and biscuits she had composed herself so that her face carried no trace of her fantasies, and her hand was as steady as a rock as she poured out two mugs of tea and handed him one.
‘Thanks.’ He looked around him critically. ‘It’s cold in here, too.’
‘The window’s open,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Yeah, I’d noticed.’
‘I’ll shut it.’ The room now seemed so cramped, and he seemed so big in it. Like a full-sized man in a doll’s house—and surely it wasn’t just the long legs and the broad shoulders. Some people had an indefinable quality—some kind of magnetism which drew you to them whether you wanted it or not, and Luke Goodwin certainly had it in spades.
She perched on the edge of one of the overstuffed armchairs. ‘So what were you doing in Africa?’
He cupped the steaming mug between strong, brown hands and stared into it. ‘I managed a game reserve.’
Holly tried hard not to look too impressed. ‘You make it sound like you were running a kindergarten!’
‘Do I?’ he mocked, his blue eyes glinting.
‘A bit.’ She crossed her legs. ‘Big change of scenery. Do you like it?’
‘Give me time,’ he remonstrated softly, thinking that, when he looked at those sinfully long legs, he felt more alive than he had any right to feel. And the scenery looked very good from where he was sitting. ‘Like I said—I just got in late last night.’
Holly found that breath suddenly seemed in very short supply. ‘And are you here for...good?’
‘That depends on how well I settle here.’ He shrugged, and he screwed his eyes up, as if he were looking into the sun. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in England.’
She thought that he didn’t sound as though he was exactly bursting over with enthusiasm about it. ‘So why the upheaval? The big change from savannah to rural England?’
He hesitated as he wondered how much to tell her. His inheritance had been unexpected, and he had sensed that for some men in his situation it could become a burden. He was Luke—just that—always had been. But people tended to judge you by what you owned, not by what you were; he’d met too many women who had dollar signs where their eyes should be.
Yet it wasn’t as though he feared being desired for money alone. He had had members of the opposite sex eating out of his hand since he was eighteen years old. With nothing but a pair of old jeans, a tee shirt and a backpack to his name, he had always had any woman he’d ever wanted. And a few he hadn’t, to boot. Even so, it was important to him that he had known Caroline before he had inherited his uncle’s estate. And what difference would it make if Holly Lovelace knew about his life and his finances? He wasn’t planning to make her part of it, was he?
‘Because my uncle died suddenly, and I am his sole heir.’ He watched her very carefully for a reaction.
Holly’s eyes widened. ‘That sounds awfully grand.’
‘I guess it is.’ He sipped his tea. ‘It was certainly unexpected. One morning I woke up to discover that I was no longer just the manager of one of the most beautiful game reserves in Kenya, but the owner of an amazing Georgian house, land and property dotted around the place, including