Love Islands: Red-Hot Sunsets. Jane Porter

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СКАЧАТЬ for the pool as though the hounds of hell were after you,’ Lucas murmured.

      She was in his bedroom and touching her had ignited a fire inside him, the same fire that had been burning steadily ever since they had been on his yacht. He knew why she had leapt off that deck chair. He had enough experience of the opposite sex to register when a woman wanted him, and it tickled him to think that she wasn’t doing what every other woman would have done and flirting with him. Was that because she worked for him? Was that holding her back? Maybe she thought that he would sack her if she was too obvious. Or maybe she had paid attention to the speech he had given her at the start when he had told her not to get any crazy ideas about a relationship developing between them.

      He almost wished that he hadn’t bothered with that speech because it turned him on to imagine her making a pass at him.

      Lucas enjoyed a couple of seconds wondering what it would feel like to have her begin to touch him, blushing and awkward, but then his innate pragmatism kicked in and he knew that she was probably playing hard to get, which was the oldest game in the world when it came to women. She had revealed all sorts of sides to her that he hadn’t expected, but the reality was that she had had an affair with a married man. She’d denied that she’d known about the wife and kiddies, and maybe she hadn’t. Certainly there was an honesty about her that he found quite charming but, even so, he wasn’t going to be putting any money on her so-called innocence any time soon.

      ‘It was very hot out there,’ Katy muttered awkwardly, heating up as she recalled the pivotal moment when raging, uncontrolled desire had taken her over like a fast-moving virus and she had just had to escape. ‘I just fancied a dip in the pool and unfortunately I didn’t really look where I was going. I should head back to my room now. I think I’ll give my legs a rest just while I have these bandages on—and, by the way, thank you very much for sorting it out. There was no need, but thanks anyway.’

      ‘How long do you think we should carry on pretending that there’s nothing happening between us?’ Which, frankly, was a question Lucas had never had to address to any other women because other women had never needed persuading into his bed. Actually, it was a question he had not envisaged having to ask her, considering the circumstances that had brought them together. But he wanted her and there was no point having a mental tussle over the whys and wherefores or asking himself whether it made sense or not.

      On this occasion, self-denial probably made sense, but Lucas knew himself and he knew that, given the option of going down the route of what made sense or the less sensible route of scratching an itch, then the less sensible route was going to win the day hands down every time.

      He also knew that he wasn’t a man who was into breaking down barriers and jumping obstacles in order to get any woman between the sheets—and why would he do that anyway? This wasn’t a game of courtship that was going anywhere. It was a case of two adults who fancied one another marooned on a yacht for a couple of weeks..

      In receipt of this blunt question, presented to her without the benefit of any pretty packaging, Katy’s eyes opened wide and her mouth fell open.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘I’ve seen the way you look at me,’ Lucas murmured, moving to sit on the bed right next to her, and depressing the mattress with his weight so that Katy had to shift to adjust her body and stop herself from sliding against him.

      She should have bolted. His lazy, dark eyes on her were like lasers burning a hole right through the good, old-fashioned, grounded common sense that had dictated her behaviour all through her life—with the exception of those few disastrous months when she had fallen for Duncan.

      The slow burning heat that had been coursing through her, the exciting tingle between her legs and the tender pinching of her sensitive nipples—all responses activated by being in his presence and feeling his cool fingers on her—were fast disappearing under a tidal wave of building anger.

      ‘The way I look at you?’

      ‘Don’t be embarrassed. Believe me, it isn’t usually my style to force anyone’s hand, but we’re here and there’s a sexual chemistry between us. Are you going to dispute that? It’s in the air like an invisible electric charge.’ He laughed with some incredulity. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but it’s something I can’t remember feeling in a very long time, if ever.’

      ‘And you think I should be flattered?’

      Lucas frowned because this wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting. ‘Frankly, yes,’ he told her with complete honesty.

      Katy gaped, even though she knew very well why a woman would be flattered to be the object of attention from Lucas Cipriani. He was drop-dead gorgeous and a billionaire to boot. If he made a pass at a woman, then what woman was going to stalk off in the opposite direction and slam the door in his face? He probably had a queue of them waiting to be picked.

      Her lips tightened because what he saw as a flattering, complimentary approach was, to her, downright insulting.

      At least the creep Duncan had had the wit to approach her a little less like a bull stampeding through a china shop.

      But then, Katy concluded sourly, time wasn’t on Lucas’s side. They were here for a limited duration, so why waste any precious time trying to seduce her into bed the old-fashioned way?

      ‘That’s the most egotistical, arrogant thing I have ever heard in my entire life!’

      ‘Because I’ve been honest?’ But Lucas flushed darkly. ‘I thought you were all in favour of the honest approach?’

      ‘Who do you think I am?’

      ‘I have no idea where you’re going with this.’

      ‘You think that you just have to snap your fingers and someone like me will dump all her principles and come running, don’t you?’

      ‘Someone like you?’ But she had scored a direct hit, and he was guiltily aware that he had indeed compartmentalised her, however much he had seen evidence to the contrary.

      ‘The sort of person,’ Katy informed him with scathing distaste, ‘Who needs a good, long lecture on making sure her little head doesn’t get turned by being on a big, expensive boat—oh, sorry, super-yacht—with the great Lucas Cipriani! The sort of person,’ she added for good measure, ‘Who comes with a dubious reputation as someone who thinks it’s okay to hop into bed with a married guy!’ It made her even madder to think that she had fallen into the trap of forgetting who he really was, won over by his charm and the random confidences he had thrown her way which she had sucked up with lamentable enthusiasm.

      And what made her even madder still was the fact that he had managed to read her so correctly! She thought she’d been the model of politeness, but he’d seen right through that and homed in laser-like on the fevered core of her that was attracted to him.

      ‘You’re over-analysing.’ Lucas raked his fingers through his hair and sprang to his feet to pace the cabin before standing by the window to look at her.

      ‘I am not over-analysing,’ Katy told him fiercely. ‘I know what you think of me.’

      ‘You don’t.’ Unaccustomed to apologising for anything he said or did, Lucas now felt...like a cad. He couldn’t credit how she had taken his interest in her and transformed it into an insult, yet he had to admit to himself that his approach had hardly been handled with finesse. He’d been СКАЧАТЬ