Love Islands: Red-Hot Sunsets. Jane Porter
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rich with the salty smell of the sea. ‘It’s a different kind of life having a father who’s the local parish priest,’ she confided honestly. ‘On the one hand, it was brilliant, because I never lacked love and support from both my parents, especially as I was an only child. They wanted more but couldn’t have them. My mum once told me that she had to restrain herself from lavishing gifts on me, but of course there was always a limit to what they could afford. And besides, as I’ve told you, they always made sure to tell me that money wasn’t the be-all and end-all.’ She looked at Lucas and smiled, somewhat surprised that she was telling him all this, not that any of it was a secret.
Never one to encourage confidences from women, Lucas was oddly touched by her confession because she was usually so outspoken in a tomboyish, challenging way.
‘Hence your entrenched disregard for money,’ he suggested drily. ‘Tell me about the down sides of life in a vicarage. I’ll be honest with you, you’re the first daughter of a man of the cloth I’ve ever met.’
The image of the happy family stuck in his mind and, in a rare bout of introspection, he thought back to his own troubled youth after his mother had died. His father had had the love, but he had just not quite known how to deliver it and, caught up in his own grief and his never-ending quest to find a substitute for the loss of his wife, he had left a young Lucas to find his own way. The independence Lucas was now so proud of, the mastery over his own emotions and his talent for self-control, suddenly seemed a little tarnished at the edges, too hard-won to be of any real value.
He dismissed the worrying train of thought and encouraged her to keep talking. She had a very melodic voice and he enjoyed the sound of it as much as he enjoyed the animation that lit up her ravishingly pretty, heart-shaped face.
‘Down sides... Well, now, let me have a think...!’ She smiled and lay down on the deck chair so that they were now both side by side, faces upturned to the brilliant blue sky above. She glanced across at him, expecting to see amusement and polite interest, just a couple of people chatting about nothing in particular. Certainly nothing that would hold the interest of a man like Lucas Cipriani. But his dark, fathomless eyes were strangely serious as he caught her gaze and held it for a few seconds, and she shivered, mouth going dry, ensnared by the gravity of his expression.
‘So?’ Lucas murmured, closing his eyes and enjoying the warmth and the rarity of not doing anything.
‘So...you end up always knowing that you have to set a good example because your parents are pillars of the community. I could never afford to be a rebel.’
Even when she had gone to university her background had followed her. She’d been able to have a good time, and stay out late and drink with the best of them, but she had never slept around or even come close to it. Maybe if she hadn’t had so many morals drilled into her from an early age she would have just got sex out of the way and then would have been relaxed when it came to finding relationships. Maybe she would have accepted that not all relationships were serious, that some were destined to fall by the wayside, but that didn’t mean they weren’t worthwhile.
It was a new way of thinking for Katy and she gave it some thought because she had always assumed, post-Duncan, that she would hang on to her virginity, would have learned her lesson, would be better equipped to make the right judgement calls.
Thinking that she could deviate from that path gave her a little frisson of excitement.
‘Not that I was ever tempted,’ she hurriedly expanded. ‘I had too much experience of seeing where drugs and drink and casual sex could lead a person. My dad is very active in the community and does a lot outside the village for down-and-outs. A lot of them ended up where they did because of poor choices along the way.’
‘I feel like I’m talking to someone from another planet.’
‘Why?’
‘Because your life is so vastly different from anything I’ve come across.’
Katy laughed. Lying side by side made it easier to talk to him. If they’d been sitting opposite one another at the table in the kitchen, with the yacht rocking softly as they ate, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to open up like this. She could spar with him and provoke him until she could see him gritting his teeth in frustration—in fact, she got a kick out of that—but this was different.
She couldn’t even remember having a conversation like this with Duncan, who had split his time talking about himself and flirting relentlessly with her.
‘What do you come across?’ she asked lightly, dropping her hands to either side of the deck chair and tracing little circles on the wooden decking.
‘Tough career women who don’t make a habit of getting too close to down-and-outs,’ Lucas told her wryly. ‘Unless, in the case of at least a couple of them who were top barristers, a crime had been committed and they happened to be confronted with one of those down-and-outs in a court of law.’
‘I remember you telling me,’ Katy murmured, ‘About those tough career women who never wanted more than you were prepared to give them and were always soothing and agreeable.’
Lucas laughed. That had been when he’d been warning her off him, just in case she got ideas into her head. On cue, he inclined his head slightly and looked at her. She was staring up at the sky, eyes closed. Her long, dark lashes cast shadows on her cheeks and her mouth, in repose, was a full, pink pout. The sun had turned her a pale biscuit-gold colour and brought out shades of strawberry blonde amidst the deep russets and copper of her hair. Eyes drifting down, he followed the line of her shoulders and the swell of her breasts under the bikini, which he had not really been able to appreciate when she had been hugging her knees to herself, making sure that as little of her body was on show as humanly possible.
The bikini was black and modest by any modern standard but nothing could conceal the tempting swell of her pert, small breasts, the barely there cleavage, the jut of her hip bones and the silky smoothness of her thighs.
Lucas didn’t bother to give in to consternation at the hot, pulsing swell of his arousal which, had she only opened her big green eyes and cast a sideways glance at him, she’d have noticed was distorting his swimming trunks.
He’d acknowledged her appeal from day one, from the very second she had walked into his office. No red-blooded male could have failed to. He’d also noted her belligerence and lack of filter when it came to speaking her mind, which was why he had decided to take on babysitting duties personally until his deal was safely in the bag. When you took into account that she had shimmered into his line of vision as a woman not averse to sleeping with married men, one who could not be trusted, it had seemed the obvious course of action.
But he knew, deep down, that even though he had dismissed any notion of going anywhere near Katy the prospect of being holed up with her for a fortnight had not exactly filled him with distaste.
He wondered whether he had even played with the forbidden thought of doing what his body wanted against the wishes of his brain. Or maybe he had been invigorated just by the novelty of having that mental tussle at all. In his well-ordered life, getting what he wanted had never posed a challenge, and internal debates about what he should or shouldn’t do rarely featured, especially when it came to women.
He thought that if she had lived down to expectations and proved herself to be the sort of girl who had no morals, and really might have tried her luck with him, he would have had no trouble in eating, breathing and sleeping work. However, she hadn’t, and the more his curiosity about her had been piqued the more he had been drawn to her like a wanderer hearing the call of a siren.
Which was so not him at all that he almost didn’t know how to deal with it.
Except, his body was dealing with it in the time-honoured way, he thought, and then hard on the heels of that thought he wondered what she would do if she looked and saw the kind of response she’d awakened in him.
Katy wasn’t sure whether it was the sudden silence, or just something thick and electric in the air, but she opened her eyes and turned her head, her mouth already opening