Anne Oliver - The Ex Factor

She didn’t put on the romantic piano CD or light the candles as she’d intended. Obviously they were going to be wasted on Luke and they certainly didn’t need any reminders of the past.

Which had her wondering why he hadn’t married one of those beautiful women she’d seen him with and had those children he’d always wanted.

His father had made it quite clear that was what he expected when he’d answered the one and only phone call she’d ever made to Luke, a month after they’d parted ways.

Luke’s mobile number had no longer worked, and, desperate to contact him, she’d phoned his parents’ home. She’d been so relieved when his father had answered her long-distance call from Coffs Harbour.

‘Melanie?’ he said in a voice so like Luke’s, her heart turned over in her chest. Then a silence so long she thought they’d been disconnected. ‘Ah, the waitress.’

The scorn in his voice lanced through her like a skewer through a cocktail kebab. ‘Please, I need to contact him; it’s very important.’

‘With girls like you it always is.’ She heard the unmistakable annoyance, the scepticism in his voice.

Melanie hugged her arms and stared at the black windows, remembering in horrible detail her fear, the overwhelming sense of aloneness, the frustration of being stopped at the gate, so to speak. So close yet so far.

‘I need to speak to Luke,’ she repeated.

‘He’s not interested in any further contact with you. Why don’t you save yourself the trouble and just let it go?’

So with no alternative, she had. A few months later she’d resigned herself to never seeing Luke again, a year later her application into the Bachelor of Nursing course had been accepted and she’d started over with a new career and a new outlook on life.

But like the storm, those dark memories had encroached on the room, sucking away the warmth of the fire. A flash of lightning lit up the scene as Luke entered the living room in the thick bathrobe with his wet clothes in his hands.

His overpowering, masculine energy, like a magnetic field, radiated across the room, dragging the breath clean out of her lungs. What she could see of his skin beneath the smattering of springy chest hair gleamed bronze and inviting against the snowy white towelling, a temptation that had her hands curling in reflex.

No. She forced her hands to straighten, smoothed her damp palms over her jeans. She wasn’t going down that track again.

Their eyes met while her heart drummed like the rain on the roof. Dark eyes, dark gaze. But for a beat of time, a warmer hot chocolate gaze that melted her from the inside out, thawing the chill of the past few moments. The way he’d looked at her so many times before.

But his father’s words rang in her ears, as loud and clear as the day he’d said them. The waitress. She might have pulled herself up a ways, but she was, and always would be, the hired help’s daughter.

Apart from the sex, she wasn’t in his league. It made it easier to turn away, to gather up her belongings in the living room. To ignore the sensation of Luke’s eyes burning through her as she shrugged into her coat while he leaned against the back of the couch.

She pulled her keys out of her pocket. ‘The dinner’s ready when you are. I’ve left a menu on the bench, the makings for breakfast are in the fridge, so I’ll be…’ She trailed off under his harsh gaze.

‘You’re not thinking of driving in this, are you?’

As if to punctuate his words, lightning stabbed through the window, followed immediately by a crack that shook the house on its foundations.

She matched his glare with one of her own. ‘I can’t stay here.’ With you naked under that robe. With five years of loneliness and frustration chipping away at my will-power. She turned away and began walking towards the door. ‘I have to get home.’

‘I saw the state of the track and that was a good hour ago,’ he said, and she felt the air move as he dumped his clothes on the couch. ‘No streetlights till you hit sealed road, maybe not even then. No one to lend a hand if you get bogged.’

She swung back to face him. ‘I’ve got my mobile phone.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mel. Surely we can manage to share a meal and a fire without…’

Tearing each other’s clothes off? Ah, yes, exactly what he’d been going to say, Mel thought, watching the tell-tale line of colour etch his cheekbones, feeling the flare of response smouldering in her own traitorous body.

She let out a slow breath. ‘Okay.’

It wasn’t one of Carissa’s ‘signs’—it wasn’t—but she could do this; they could do this. Two intelligent, civilised adults could share an evening, no problem. If she didn’t dim the lights and use the candles, if she stuck to the rock CD or no music at all—if she didn’t look at him—they’d do fine.

She could retire to the second bedroom after tea, catch up on some much needed rest, and in the morning this whole getaway retreat thing would be over and the Rainbow Road would be ten thousand dollars richer.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘WILL anyone worry if you don’t come home tonight?’

His voice took on a low, husky sound and all manner of scenarios involving her and Luke and why she wouldn’t be home tonight danced into Melanie’s mind. She slammed a mental lid on that Pandora’s box and shook her head.

‘No. I stay over at Carissa’s sometimes. Adam and I don’t keep tabs on each other.’ She gestured at the bench. ‘Your dinner. I’ll let you get on with it.’

‘Alone?’

The breath caught in her throat as the unspoken message in his smoky voice shivered through her, as the lambent heat in his eyes sent her pulse sky-rocketing. ‘You obviously intended solitude,’ she pointed out.

‘When circumstances change—’ he shrugged ‘—hardly seems fair that the cook goes hungry after all the trouble she went to.’

Circumstances had changed all right. Which was why she was stuck here for now, alone with Luke Delaney.

Resigned, and, yes, hungry, she slipped her keys back in her pocket, shrugged off her coat and moved to the small kitchen area off the living room. ‘Why don’t you try the wine while I get the seafood? We can eat by the fire, it’s warmer there.’

And she didn’t need to face Luke in a robe across the intimate table setting with its scented candles and vase of violets. She took the cocktails out of the fridge and set them on the bench.

‘Here you go.’ The husky sound of his voice made her jump.

She hadn’t heard Luke come up behind her and jerked around, almost knocking the two wineglasses from his hands.

It was easier—but safer—to look straight ahead at the large, blunt fingers curled around the delicate crystal stem…and on that soft V of the robe…than to tip her head back and meet his eyes.

He smelled of soap and new fabric and if she leaned closer her lips would meet warm, masculine skin just above that V. She remembered in full detail the exact spot where her lips touched his body when they stood toe to toe. Thigh to thigh. Breast to chest.

Oh, boy. Not so safe after all.

She tried to ignore her body’s toe-curling, lip-tingling response and took the glass with a murmured, ‘Thank you,’ and stepped back.

Except that now she could see the masculine texture of his jaw, the fullness of his lips and the dark stillness in his eyes, like a deep river with hidden depths and mysteries.

She took a sip to moisten her suddenly parched throat and watched him do the same. Watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. Oh, stop. Watching, staring, admiring. Remembering.

‘Why don’t you—’ get out of my space, you’re crowding me ‘—go make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring the food.’