Love Islands: Red-Hot Sunsets. Jane Porter

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ really isn’t necessary...er... Lucas.’

      ‘You managed the first name. Congratulations. I wondered whether you would.’

      ‘I have a few grazes, that’s all.’

      He was kneeling in front of her and he began to feel her ankle with surprisingly gently fingers. ‘Tell me if anything hurts.’

      ‘Nothing,’ Katy stated firmly. She gave a trial tug of her leg so that Lucas could get the hint that this was all pretty ridiculous and overblown but he wasn’t having it.

      Relax, she told herself sternly; relax and it’ll be over and done with in a second and you can bolt back to your cabin. But how could she even begin to relax when those fingers were doing all sorts of things to her body?

      The feathery delicacy of his touch was stirring her up, making her breathing quicken and sending tingling, delicious sensations racing through her body like little lightning sparks. She looked at his down-bent head, the raven-black hair, and had to stop herself from reaching out and touching it just to see what it felt like between her fingers.

      Then she thought of the bulge of his arousal and felt faint all over again.

      ‘I’m surprised you have a first-aid kit to hand,’ she said breathlessly, tearing her fascinated gaze away from him and focusing hard on trying to normalise the situation with pointless conversation.

      ‘Why?’ Lucas glanced up briefly before continuing with his exceedingly slow exploration of her foot.

      ‘Because you don’t seem to be the type to do this sort of thing,’ Katy said honestly.

      ‘It’s essential to have a first-aid kit on board a sailing vessel. In fact, this is just one of many. There’s a comprehensive supply of medical equipment in a store room on the middle deck. You would be surprised at the sort of unexpected accidents that can happen when you’re out at sea, and there’s no ambulance available to make a five-minute dash to collect and take you to the nearest hospital.’ He was working his way gently up her calf, which was smooth, slender and sprinkled with golden hair. Her skin was like satin and still warm from the sun.

      ‘And you know how to deal with all those unexpected accidents?’ Lucas’s long, clever fingers were getting higher and, with each encroaching inch, her body lit up like a Christmas tree just a tiny bit more. Any higher and she would go up in flames.

      ‘You’d be surprised,’ Lucas drawled. ‘Your knees are in a pretty terrible state, but after I’ve cleaned them up you should be fine. You’ll be pleased to know that nothing’s been broken.’

      ‘I told you that,’ Katy reminded him. ‘Why would I be surprised?’

      He was now gently swabbing her raw, torn skin and she winced as he patted the area with some oversized alcohol wipes, making sure to get rid of every last bit of dirt.

      ‘Because,’ Lucas said wryly, not looking at her, ‘I get the feeling you’ve pigeonholed me as the sort of money-hungry, ambitious businessman who hasn’t got time for anything other than getting richer and richer and richer, probably at the expense of everyone around him. Am I right?’

      ‘I never said that,’ Katy told him faintly.

      ‘It’s hard not to join the dots when your opening words to me were to accuse me of being capable of kidnapping you.’

      ‘You were kidnapping me, in a manner of speaking!’

      ‘Tell me how it feels to be a kidnap victim.’ His voice was light and teasing as he continued to tend to her knee, now applying some kind of transparent ointment, before laboriously bandaging it and then turning his attention to foot number two. ‘I always wanted to be a doctor,’ he surprised her and himself by saying.

      ‘What happened?’ For the first time since she had been deposited on his bed, Katy felt herself begin to relax, the nervous tension temporarily driven away by a piercing curiosity. Lucas could be many things, as she had discovered over the past few days. He could be witty, amusing, arrogant and always, always wildly, extravagantly intelligent. But confiding? No.

      ‘My father’s various wives happened,’ Lucas said drily. ‘One after each other. They looked alike and they certainly were all cut from the same cloth. They had their eyes on the main prize and, when their tenure ran out, my father’s fortune was vastly diminished. By the time I hit sixteen, I realised that, left to his own devices, he would end up with nothing to live on. It would have killed my father to have seen the empire his grandfather had built dwindle away in a series of lawsuits and maintenance payments to greedy ex-wives.

      ‘I knew my father had planned on my inheriting the business and taking over, and I had always thought that I’d talk to him about that change of plan when the time was right; but, as it turned out, the time never became right because without me the company would have ended up subdivided amongst a string of gold-diggers and that would have been that.’

      ‘So you gave up your hopes and dreams?’

      ‘Don’t get too heavy on the pity card.’ Lucas laughed, sitting back on his heels to inspect his work, head tilted to one side. He looked at her and her mouth went dry as their eyes tangled. ‘I enjoy my life.’

      ‘But it’s a far cry from being a doctor.’ She had never imagined him having anything to do with the caring profession and something else was added to the swirling mix of complex responses she was stockpiling towards him. She thought that the medical profession had lost something pretty big when he had decided to pursue a career in finance because, knowing the determination and drive he brought to his chosen field of work, he surely would have brought tenfold to the field of medicine.

      ‘So it is,’ Lucas concurred. ‘Hence the fact that I actually enjoy being hands-on when it comes to dealing with situations like this.’

      ‘And have you had to deal with many of them?’ She thought of him touching another woman, one of the skinny, leggy ones to whom those thong swimsuits forgotten on the yacht belonged, carefully stored just in case someone like her might come along and need to borrow one of them.

      ‘No.’ He stood up. ‘Like I said, my time on this yacht is limited, and no one to date has obliged me by requiring mouth-to-mouth resuscitation whilst out to sea.’ He disappeared back into the bathroom with the kit and, instead of taking the opportunity to stand up and prepare herself for a speedy exit, Katy remained on the bed, gently flexing both her legs and getting accustomed to the stiffness where the bandages had been applied expertly over her wounds.

      ‘So I’m your first patient?’

      Lucas remained by the door to the bathroom, lounging against the doorframe.

      Katy was riveted at the sight. He was still wearing his bathing trunks although, without her even noticing when he had done it, he had slung on his tee-shirt. He was barefoot and he exuded a raw, animal sexiness that took her breath away.

      ‘Cuts and grazes don’t honestly count.’ Lucas grinned and strolled towards her, holding her spellbound with his easy, graceful strides across the room. He moved to stand by the window which, as did hers, looked out on the blue of an ocean that was as placid as the deepest of lakes. His quarters were air-conditioned, as were hers, but you could almost feel the heat outside because the sun was so bright and the sky was so blue and cloudless.

      ‘I’m СКАЧАТЬ