Carole Mortimer - From New York With Love

He shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s because you’re trying to spoil my fun.’

She gasped. ‘Because I won’t let you stand there and gawp at me while I change my blouse?’

‘I never gawp, Cyn,’ he drawled derisively. ‘If I stayed I would just stand here quietly and appreciate.’

Her face warmed. ‘You aren’t staying.’

Lucien gave another appreciative grin; she really was cute when she got her dander up.

Cute? He had never found a woman cute in his life!

Until now...

Because Cyn, all hot and bothered and clutching his T-shirt tightly to her as if it were her only defence, was most definitely cute.

‘Okay, I’ll leave you to change,’ he murmured dryly. ‘I’ll take the bottle of wine and glasses through with me.’

‘Fine.’ She nodded distractedly.

Anything to get him out of the room while she changed her top, Lucien acknowledged ruefully as he collected up the bottle of wine and glasses before leaving. As if such a flimsy barrier—any barrier!—could have stopped him if he had decided he wanted her naked!

* * *

‘Did you have Dex follow me today...?’ Thia prompted huskily when she entered the kitchen.

Lucien turned from taking food out of the huge chrome refrigerator that took up half the space of one wall in what was a beautiful kitchen—white marble floors again, extensive kitchen units a pale grey, a black wooden work table in the middle of the vast room, silver cooking utensils hanging from a rack next to a grey and white cooker. No doubt there was a dishwasher built into one of those cabinets, too.

He hadn’t answered her question yet...

‘Lucien?’ she said softly as she lifted her replenished glass from the table and took a sip of red wine.

‘I got so distracted by how sexy you look in my T-shirt that I’ve forgotten what the question was,’ he came back dryly.

No, he hadn’t. This man didn’t forget anything. Ever. And his prevarication was answer enough. He had instructed Dex to follow her this afternoon. And Thia wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Annoyed that he had dared to have her followed at all, but also concerned as to why he continued to feel it necessary...

And sexy was the last thing she looked in Lucien’s white T-shirt. The shoulder seams hung halfway down her arms, meaning that the short sleeves finished below her elbows, and it was so wide across the chest it hung on her like a sack, so long it reached almost to her knees. Well...it didn’t hang completely like a sack, Thia realised as she glanced down. Colour once again warmed her cheeks as she saw the way the T-shirt skimmed across the tips of her breasts. Across the hard, aroused thrust of her nipples!

Even so, ridiculous was the word Thia would have used to describe her current appearance, not sexy.

‘Did you have Dex follow me today?’ she repeated determinedly.

‘I did, yes.’

‘Can I ask why?’ she prompted warily.

‘You can if you can make salad and ask at the same time.’ Lucien seemed totally relaxed as he placed the makings of a salad down on the kitchen table before returning to the fridge for steaks.

Thia rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a woman, Lucien. Multi-tasking is what we do best.’ She took the salad vegetables out of the bags and put them in the sink to wash them.

‘That sounds...interesting.’ He turned to arch mocked brows.

She was utterly charmed by this man when he became temptingly playful. And she shouldn’t allow herself to be.

It wasn’t just those twelve years in age that separated them, it was what Lucien had done in those twelve years that set them so far apart—as evidenced by all those photographs of him online, taken with the multitude of women he had briefly shared his life with. Or, more accurately, his bed.

And at the grand age of twenty-three Thia was still a virgin. Not deliberately. Not even consciously as in ‘saving herself’ for the man she loved and wanted to marry.

She had just been too busy keeping her life together since her parents died to do more than accept the occasional date, and very rarely a second from the same man. Jonathan had been the exception, but even he had become just a friend rather than a boyfriend. Thia had never been even slightly tempted to deepen their relationship into something more.

And yet in the twenty-four hours she had known Lucien Steele she seemed to have thought of nothing else but how it would feel to go to bed with him. To make love with him.

Weird.

Dangerous!

Because Lucien might desire her, but he didn’t do falling in love and long-term relationships. And why should he when he could have any woman—as many women as he wanted? Except...

‘What are you thinking about so deeply that it’s making you frown...?’ he asked huskily.

Thia snapped herself out of imagining how it would feel to have Lucien Steele fall in love with her. A ridiculous thought when she so obviously wasn’t his type.

And yet here she was, in this apartment, with a relaxed and charming Lucien, and the two of them intended to cook dinner together just like any other couple spending the evening at home together.

She took another sip of wine before answering him. ‘Nothing of any importance,’ she dismissed brightly as she put the wine glass down to drain the vegetables. ‘Do you have any dressing to go with the salad or shall I make some?’

‘Can you do that?’

Thia gave him a scathing glance as she crossed the room to open the vast refrigerator and look inside for ingredients for a dressing. ‘I’m a waitress, remember?’

‘You’re a student, working as a waitress in your spare time,’ he corrected lightly.

She straightened slowly. ‘No, I’m actually a waitress who’s working for a degree in my spare time,’ she insisted firmly. ‘And you still haven’t answered my original question.’

‘Which was...?’

‘Why did you have Dex follow me today?’ she repeated determinedly, knowing that Lucien was once again trying to avoid answering one of her questions.

He shrugged. ‘Dex suggested it was necessary. I agreed with him.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that he was obviously as concerned about your walking about New York on your own as I was. You might have been robbed or attacked. Speaking of which...’ Lucien strolled across the kitchen, checking her wrist first, which was only slightly reddened from where Jonathan’s fingers had twisted it, before gently peeling back the sleeve of the white T-shirt. He drew in a hissing breath as he saw the livid black and blue bruises on the top of her arm.

‘They look worse than they feel.’ Thia pulled out of his grasp before turning to take down a chopping board and starting to dice vegetables for the salad. ‘Isn’t it time you started cooking the steaks...?’ she prompted dryly.

‘Deflection is only a delaying tactic, Cyn. Sooner or later we’re going to talk about those bruises,’ he assured her grimly.

‘Then let’s make it later,’ she dismissed. ‘Steaks, Lucien?’ she repeated pointedly when she turned to find him still watching her from between narrowed lids.

He gave a deep sigh. ‘Okay, Cyn, we’ll do this your way for now,’ he conceded. ‘We’ll eat first and then we’ll talk.’

‘It really is true what they say—men don’t multi-task!’ She smiled teasingly.

‘Maybe we just prefer to do one thing at a time and ensure that we do it really, really well?’ Lucien murmured huskily, suggestively, and made a determined effort to damp down the renewed anger he felt at seeing those bruises on Cyn’s delicately lovely skin.

Colour washed over her cheeks. ‘You’re obviously wasting your talents as an entrepreneur, Lucien; you should have been a comedian.’