Under the Millionaire's Mistletoe

One

The babble of chatter and laughter ceased.

The only sounds left in the sudden hush of the living room were the rich baritone of Bing Crosby crooning “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and the crackle of the fire in the stone fireplace.

Perplexed, Meg Elliot turned, careful not to spill the pyramid of Christmas tarts from the silver tray in her hands.

And came face-to-face with a stranger.

Face-to-chest, actually. She had to look up from the navy polo shirt stretched across his shoulders to see his face. Dark, wavy hair, in need of a cut, brushed his forehead. He was clean-shaven and tanned. Too tanned for this time of year at Lake Tahoe, and not a skier’s tan. But it was the silver eyes boring into her with unreadable intent that stilled her.

She knew those eyes.

But she didn’t know this man.

She’d met so many people in the last few months, it was no surprise that she might forget a face. Except for the fact that this man was not the forgettable type-imposing, disconcerting and way too handsome.

How had he even gotten in? Caesar, guard dog extraordinaire, invariably created an unholy ruckus when anyone, even her friends, approached the house. It had taken him all of the three months she’d lived here to get used to her. And the stranger standing in front of her, silent and watchful, most definitely did not fall into the category of friend. He dropped a leather overnight bag to the carpet with a quiet thud.

There was something so expectant in the way he and, she realized, her guests, watched her. And waited.

The seconds ticked by. Who was he? She needed the answer to that single, simple question before she knew how to react.

He glanced up. Above her hung a chandelier, and incongruous among the glinting crystal dangled a sprig of mistletoe. Surely not?

Meg looked back at him, looked again into those eyes.

Eyes she’d only ever seen the likes of once before.

She felt the color drain from her face. He eased the tray from her hands, placed it on the table behind her. “Luke?” His name left her lips on a whisper.

He watched her struggle for calm, and his mouth stretched into a smile that held little humor. He slid large hands over her jaw to cup her face. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” he said softly as he lowered his head.

Too stunned to react, Meg stood rooted to the spot. Warm lips collided with hers. There was hunger in his kiss, hunger and a quest for control.

She wouldn’t react. Wouldn’t let herself react.

His fingers threaded into her hair as he claimed her mouth in a blatant attempt to dominate her, and then he gentled his kiss. That surprising gentling melted her defenses and dissolved rational thought.

He was alive. He was home. He was kissing her again.

He’d kissed her only once before. She’d thought her memories had been colored by the circumstances of the time.

Apparently not.

This kiss was every bit as beguiling and as latent with promise as that first one.

But the moment she found herself kissing him back, reaching for him, he lifted his head and then set her away from him as though it was she who had initiated the kiss and he needed to put distance between them to prevent her from doing it again.

Dimly, she heard a burst of applause.

Her awareness returned. Her guests-the organizing committee for tomorrow night’s charity dinner-were witnessing this scene play out. She felt the color rush back to her cheeks.

Luke’s gaze didn’t leave her face. “Aren’t you going to introduce me, darling? I saw only a few familiar faces.”

Not daring to look away, she said, “Everyone,” and the word came out a hoarse whisper that made him grin a shark’s grin. She cleared her throat. “This is Luke Maitland. My husband.”

Then it all happened in a blur: hugs, congratulations, assurances that they knew she’d want to be alone with her husband after his unexpected return. Within minutes she and the stranger she’d married stood together at his front door as the quiet purr of the last departing vehicle faded into the night.

Meg stepped out and away from the arm he had draped possessively and firmly-as though he knew she wanted to bolt after that final car-over her shoulder. Frigid air wrapped itself around her in its stead.

He followed close as she led the way back to the high-ceilinged living room. His living room. Platters of nibbles still sat on the coffee table, Bing still sang, but everything had changed.

Those eyes. How could she not have known him instantly?

Finally, when the silence had stretched way beyond comfortable, Meg spoke. “You’re looking…better.” The last time she’d seen him he’d been lying, pale and unshaven, on a makeshift hospital bed on an Indonesian island. And taller. In the few days she’d spent with him, he’d invariably been lying down, or bent with pain when he’d tried to stand. Illness had a way of diminishing people. There was nothing diminished about him now. Upright and strong, he comfortably cleared six foot.

“Disappointed?” he asked quietly.

The question stunned her. “No! How can you ask that? I thought you might die.”

“So did I. But that wouldn’t necessarily have worked out badly for you.” He glanced around the sumptuous living room.

They’d spent only a few days together, but she’d thought she’d had a bond with the observant, insightful man in her care. A man who, despite his pain, had made her laugh. The man she remembered had been nothing like this-cool and distant. Suspicious. Then again, the man she remembered had been close to death. “No, it would have worked out terribly.”

His gaze never wavered. “You got my house. It could have been permanent. And you’ll have realized by now that there’s much more than the house.”

Back then, he’d talked only of the beauty and magic of the area, of how he’d wanted someone who could appreciate it to have it, someone who understood him. She’d had no idea when she’d married him just how wealthy he was, that when he’d said house he meant mansion on the shore of Lake Tahoe, complete with private jetty, indoor pool, game room, boardroom and a library stocked floor to ceiling with books. She could have lived happily for years in the library alone.

Meg crossed to the fireplace and positioned herself behind an armchair, her fingers pressing into the padding of its high leather back. “You have no right to just walk in here-”

“To my own house?”

“To just walk in,” she continued, “and start accusing me of…what exactly is it you’re accusing me of?”

He paused and she held her breath, waiting, uncertain. “Nothing,” he said on a rough sigh, dragging a hand across the back of his neck, and some of the accusation leached from his eyes.

“Luke, it was all your idea. You practically demanded I marry you.”

He strolled closer, picked up one of the Christmas cards from the mantelpiece and glanced at the inside before replacing it. “I don’t remember much more than a token resistance from you.”

“You were sick, so let me help you remember. As I recall it, you were desperate. You even invoked the memory of your mother.”

She’d met his mother only once. Meg had gone with a friend to hear her speak at a lunchtime fundraiser in L.A. and had been so impressed that she’d introduced herself to her afterward. They’d ended up having coffee together and talking for hours. It was as a result of that one fateful meeting that when things had ended between Meg and her then-boyfriend she’d thought of doing something completely different. Had thought of Indonesia and the Maitland Foundation. A path that had led her to here and now. “You asked me to do it for her-because of how much I’d respected her and because I knew how revered she’d been on the island. And you even threatened that if I didn’t accept you were going to propose to the very next woman who walked into the room.” She’d believed him to be serious and in an uncharacteristic fit of possessiveness Meg hadn’t wanted anyone else to have “her” patient, the man she’d spent so many hours talking to. “You said I was doing you a favor.”

Hard to imagine how that could be true now, how plain Meg Elliot, with little to call her own, could have done a handsome millionaire a favor by marrying him.

He rested an arm on the mantel and stared at the fire. A smile touched his lips and then vanished. Uncomfortable in the same room as the stranger who was her husband, Meg edged around the chair and toward the door. She needed space, needed to get to her own room and process what was happening, figure out what she did next. His return changed everything.

“You must be tired.” She had no idea where he’d come from or how far he’d traveled today. But it was late and deep lines creased the skin around his eyes, so she assumed her guess had some foundation. “We can talk all this through in the morning.”

Luke straightened and strode to the door, cutting off her exit. “You’re right. I am tired.” He looked down at her, then lifted his hand to twist a lock of her hair around his finger. “I take it our bed’s in the master bedroom.”

Meg swallowed. “Our?” He was joking. Testing her. She was sure of it. Almost one-hundred-percent sure. Ninety-eight at least. Even if she had been the type of woman someone like him would be attracted to, theirs had been an arrangement of practicality and desperation. An arrangement that they’d agreed would end when he returned home.

“You got the benefits of being my wife. Surely I get some benefit in being your husband?”

She pushed his hand away and squared off to him. “You got benefits. Because of me, your brother hasn’t moved into this house already.”

“Half brother,” he corrected her. “And that wasn’t the benefit I was thinking of.”

“It was when you married me. Or maybe you didn’t care about there being any benefit to you, but you most definitely cared about making sure Jason didn’t benefit. Cared enough to marry a stranger.”

“A stranger with the gentlest hands.”

Meg stilled.

“I thought about those hands as I was recuperating.”

His sudden change of tone and topic disconcerted her and she took a step back. He was still trying to dominate her, unsettle her, this time with words. That was all it was. She couldn’t let him know the effectiveness of his strategy, how very unsettled she was. She, too, had thought about her hands on him.

“You have a lot to explain to me. Where have you been? Why haven’t you been in touch before now?”

He watched her steadily. “Nagging me already?”

“Legitimate questions.”

“I have several of my own.”

“Understandably. So I suggest we both get a good night’s sleep and deal with them in the morning. The guest wing is that way.” She pointed down the hallway.

“The guest wing? In my own house?”

“My things are in your room. I’ll shift them out tomorrow. But for tonight, yes, you can have the guest room.” Over the lonely months Meg had imagined many possible scenarios for Luke’s homecoming-they had varied from tender to joyful to passionate.

This tension-laden standoff certainly hadn’t been one of them.

Luke watched his wife’s pretty blue eyes as he searched for the familiar in her face, searched for the differences. Time was, women jumped at the chance of going to bed with him. Although admittedly he was a little out of practice. Still, appalled horror was definitely a first for him.

He’d dreamed of this woman. And granted, many of those dreams had been the product of delirium. Many, but not all. The others had been the product of good old-fashioned desire. He hadn’t known whether that attraction was merely the product of time and circumstance.

And he still couldn’t answer that question for sure. Different time, different circumstance and he could still feel the pull of the woman standing in front of him.

Who was this woman he’d married?

He recognized the irony in his situation. Most of his life he’d kept people at a distance and now he had a wife he scarcely knew.

He reached for the tendril of golden-brown hair that curled against her pale throat. She blocked his hand, wrap ping slender fingers around his wrist. “Afraid of me, Meg?” Her scent was something floral. Innocent. And distracting.

She dropped his wrist, lifted her chin and her wide clear eyes searched his face. Defiance overlaid a glimmer of wariness. “Should I be?”

He could still feel the imprint of her fingers, her skin against his. It had been like that whenever she’d touched him. “What do you think?” He didn’t know why he was goading her. He’d had scarcely more than a few hours’ sleep in the last forty-eight hours. All he really wanted was to lie down somewhere, he didn’t care where, and close his eyes. He’d come home, not knowing what to expect, but knowing she couldn’t have been as simultaneously wholesome and desirable as his memory wanted to paint her. Besides, he’d never really been into wholesome.

“I think, no.”

He hadn’t even known if he’d be able to find her. He certainly hadn’t expected her to be hosting a party in his own house. It tarnished the wholesome image, made him doubt his judgment and his memories. “You’re sure?”

“I think, for some perverse reason, you’d like me to be afraid of you. But the man I remember was decent and kind.”

He watched her lips, a soft coral pink. He hadn’t intended on kissing her. But her lack of recognition of him had galled. And besides, she had been standing under the mistletoe. What was a husband supposed to do? “I was sick. I wasn’t entirely myself.”

“Some things don’t change.”

Another first, someone defending him to himself. “And some things change completely, Mrs. Maitland.” For instance, he now had the wife he’d sworn he’d never burden his life with.

“I’m not Mrs. Maitland. I never took your name. It didn’t seem right.”

He didn’t know whether he was relieved or affronted. “Just my house. My money. My life.” He curled his hand around the newel at the base of the stairs.

Her eyes narrowed and her hands went to her hips. “You’re swaying, and talking almost as much gibberish as you were that last day on the island. Go to bed.”

“Come with me.” He was in no state to do anything other than sleep. But she didn’t know that. “I’ve been sleeping alone for so long.”

“Luke.” She said his name with such frustrated impatience, and none of her earlier trepidation, that maybe she did know.

“That wasn’t how you used to say my name.” He’d heard her the times when she’d thought he was sleeping. And even when she’d known him to be awake, there had been such tenderness in her voice. “And not how I dreamed of hearing you say it.”

“First my hands, now my voice. Any other parts of me you dreamed of?”

Luke smiled. “I don’t think you want to know.” Color climbed her cheeks.

Two

Luke woke alone in a broad, soft bed. Nothing unusual about the alone part, but the bed was a different story altogether. The snow-white sheets smelled fresh and clean and felt crisp against his skin. A feather pillow cushioned his head. Opening his eyes, he scanned the room. A miniature Christmas tree stood on the dresser. Christmas?

Then he remembered last night. Though he’d been so exhausted, it was all a little vague. Coming home. Finding Meg, the woman he’d married out of desperation and anger, here. And he remembered the mistletoe. That memory was crystal clear. He also recalled his last sight of her hurrying up the stairs away from him.

Throwing back the covers, he strode to the window and pushed the curtains wide, needing to orient himself to the time and the season. Outside, ponderosa pines framed a panoramic view of Lake Tahoe. A leaden sky hung low and oppressive with the threat of snow but gave no real clue as to the time of morning.

He stretched, easing his shoulder through a full range of movement. It was his shoulder that had started it all. A gash from a handsaw dropped from the roof of the almost-completed school building. In the heat and humidity the cut became infected. The infection steadily worsened. And the remote Indonesian island’s depleted medical supplies hadn’t run to the antibiotics he’d needed.

He’d only gone to the island to fulfill a long overdue promise to his mother to take a closer look at the Maitland Foundation’s work there. She’d headed up that office until her death a year ago. But while seeing the foundation’s work, he’d discovered his half brother’s duplicity. And the visit had nearly ended up costing his life.

He’d also discovered Meg.

And got himself a wife.

A wife he now had to un-get.

A movement on the path leading up from the lake toward his house caught his eye. His wife. Meg. Not Meg Maitland. But Meg…he couldn’t even remember her surname. Wearing sweats and a form-fitting, long-sleeved top, with her hair tied into a high, swinging ponytail, she jogged along the path toward him, her breath making small puffs of mist in the air. Caesar trotted at her side, a stick in his mouth. His dog at least had known him last night, even if he now seemed more than happy with his allegiance to her.

She glanced up, saw him, then averted her gaze. Was he-? Luke looked down. He wore boxers-one of his few purchases on the way home. So, what was her problem? Whatever it was, she definitely wasn’t looking back his way. She tossed the stick for Caesar and when he returned with it, she bent over and fussed with him for a while before disappearing round the side of the house.

Fifteen minutes later, Luke, showered and fully dressed, rummaged through his kitchen cupboards looking for something to eat. The pantry was better stocked than he ever remembered it being.

At the sound of footsteps, he turned. She, too, had showered and now wore appealingly snug jeans and a red-and-white sweater. She looked fresh and innocent, like she ought to still believe in Santa Claus. But looks could be deceiving. He had a lot of questions for her. Questions he intended to get answers to today.

He hadn’t exactly behaved with his trademark calm detachment last night. A fact he regretted. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret kissing her. It might have been his only opportunity. Soon she would be out of his house and out of his life. That’s what they’d agreed should happen if-when, she’d insisted-he came back. Though they hadn’t discussed time frames.

“Do you want me to make you lunch?” she asked.

“Lunch? I usually start with breakfast.”

A smile twitched at her lips. “After midday, I usually call it lunch.”

He remembered that smile, how easily and often it played about her mouth, how it made her blue eyes sparkle like sunlight on water, reminding him of the lake he loved. Making her smile had been one of his few pleasures when he’d been laid low. “You’re kidding me.” He knew he’d been tired, but…he searched the kitchen. The clock on the microwave read one-forty. And he knew that wasn’t a.m.

“You must have been exhausted.” She watched him warily.

He nodded.

“Sit down. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

Was she was trying to soften him up, being all sweet and obliging, this woman installed in his house, his life? Did she want something from him? Of late, it seemed everyone-friends, enemies, officials-wanted something.

His cynicism must have shown because her hands went to her hips. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, sit down.” She pointed, straight-armed, at one of the bar stools behind the breakfast bar. “I’m not going to try and poison you and I don’t want anything from you. I’m offering-and it’s a one-time-only offer-to make you lunch. While you look infinitely better than you did back on the island and much better than you did last night even, to be honest, you still don’t look great. And as from now, I’m going to refuse to care.”

Luke smiled as he strolled to take the seat he’d been ordered to. So, his Florence Nightingale wasn’t all sweetness and light. He liked her better for it. It made her more real. He watched her moving about his kitchen, opening and shutting cupboards and the fridge with what he deemed unnecessary force. She didn’t bother asking him what he did or didn’t want on his sandwich, which didn’t bother him, because he was so ravenous he didn’t care.

He’d never sat here and watched a woman in his own kitchen before. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

Gradually, her movements slowed and gentled to some thing practiced and efficient as she set about putting the sandwich together for him. He watched her deft hands with their delicate fingers, watched the sway of her hips and the curve of her rear as she crossed the kitchen for this or that, and decided that a woman in his kitchen wasn’t entirely a bad thing. A few minutes later, she slid the plate across the breakfast bar toward him. “Thank you.”

The simple courtesy seemed to surprise her, which shouldn’t surprise him. He hadn’t exactly been Mr. Charming last night. Or this morning.

Luke turned his attention to the sandwich. He was halfway through it when a cup of coffee materialized beside his plate. He looked up and met her gaze. Her earlier stony expression had softened. “Thank you,” he said again.

And was rewarded with a soft smile and felt again a glimmer of the brief connection they’d once shared. “You’re welcome. You still drink it black?”

He nodded. Not that there’d been the option of having it any other way of late. She turned her back on him and adjusted the radio till she found a station playing Christmas carols. She wore her hair out and the soft curls brushed just past her shoulders. He’d never seen it out before. On the island, for practicality’s sake, it had always been tied up. And last night, apart from that single tendril she’d allowed to curl beside her throat, it had been twisted into something fancy at the back of her head. He hadn’t realized that it was quite so long or silky and his fingers itched to touch it, to know the feel of it. He clenched his fists and his jaw. Hair was hair. He did not want to know how hers felt. What he wanted was to get his life back to normal.

And that did not include having a wife in it.

She’d made herself a coffee, too, and picked up her cup, cradling it with two hands as she leaned back against the counter on the far side of the kitchen.

Luke returned his attention to his sandwich and didn’t look at her again until he was finished. But when he did he found her gaze still steady on him.

“You were hungry?”

“Apparently.”

“I can make you another one. Or get you some fruit.”

“It’s my house, Meg. I can look after myself.”

She bit her bottom lip.

“So, tell me-” They both spoke at once.

“You first,” she said.

“Tell me about the last three months.”

She shrugged. “I left the island, came back here. It took a while to convince Mark of the truth of my story and that your letter to him hadn’t been signed under duress. Putting in the tree house incident was what clinched it. He figured you wouldn’t have told that story to anyone you didn’t trust. Even at gunpoint.” Her eyes danced.

“And you’re now the only person in the world apart from Mark and me who knows.”

“My lips are sealed.” She pressed the lips in question together.

But they hadn’t always been sealed like that. They’d parted for him last night. Let him into her warmth.

“Mark was great. He went along with everything, helping explain my presence to your friends. Apparently, you’re so deeply private that no one was surprised they hadn’t heard of me. Only pleased to meet me. And Mark helped me look for you.”

How hard had they looked and how much had Mark-his attorney and his friend-helped her?

Kind, intelligent Mark. In those moments Luke had tried to be altruistic, he’d thought that if he didn’t make it back, Meg and Mark might be good for each other. He wasn’t feeling altruistic now. Far from it.

A too-familiar tension started to build. It was getting old, the second-guessing, the not knowing who to trust. “Do you want to walk?” He needed to get outside, to get moving.

And he needed to remember who his friends were. They weren’t many but they were true. And Mark was one of them. Luke had no need or right to doubt him.

As for Meg, he wanted to trust her, but the jury was still out on that one. In reality, he’d known her only a few days in Indonesia and he’d been perilously ill most of that time. His judgment couldn’t possibly have been sound. He’d been betrayed before by people he’d thought he knew. And he didn’t truly know why she’d agreed to marry him.

“Sure.” Gentle, trusting. She gathered up their few dishes, put them in the dishwasher, then followed him to the front door.

He opened the closet wondering whether his jacket would still be there. It was. On the same peg he always hung it on. The first one. So, she hadn’t got rid of his stuff or even moved it for her own convenience. He’d wondered how much of his presence she’d expunged from the house when she’d kept him from his bedroom last night.

A red jacket hung beside his. He reached for it and the scarf hanging with it, passed them to her, then held open the front door.

As she walked past him, he caught the scent of her hair, green apples, and he had to fight an urge to stop her so that he could lower his head and inhale that freshness, inhale some of her seeming innocence. The sort of innocence a man could want to take advantage of.

“Jason hasn’t bothered you?” Because Jason, his half brother, was exactly the type of man who would take a perverse pleasure in abusing innocence.

She hesitated. “Depends on what you mean by bothered?”

He pulled the door shut behind them. “Care to explain?”

They walked down the stairs together. “He comes around a lot. At first he was suspicious, a little bit antagonistic even. He had a lot more questions than anyone else about our relationship and our…marriage. And he seems to come round only when no one else is here.”

At the foot of the stairs, she bent to pat Caesar, who’d bounded up, joyous at the prospect of another outing. Luke was sure his dog-part Alsatian, part something that really, really liked to fetch sticks-used to have more dignity, but he’d dropped to the ground and rolled over for Meg to scratch his belly. She had nice hands, delicate and gentle. And soothing. And he would not think about her hands. Specifically, he would not think about her hands on him. She straightened. “I gather I’m not the type of woman you usually dated.”

“I guess not. You’re definitely shorter.” Meg barely came up to his chin. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously but she didn’t say anything and he fathomed the reason for her skepticism. The last woman he’d dated was Melinda, an ex-model, willowy and glamorous. Who wouldn’t in a million years have even contemplated a six-month stint of voluntary work in third world conditions. That was, in essence, the biggest difference.

“I met your last girlfriend.”

“You did?” He couldn’t imagine the two of them having anything in common. He started for the path and she walked at his side.

“She called around one day and Jason arrived just a few minutes after. He told her I was your wife, although I suspect she’d heard something to that effect already. And then he told me she was your ex-girlfriend.”

And wouldn’t Jason have enjoyed that spot of stirring. “How did she take it?”

“She smiled.”

“That’s good,” he said hopefully. Melinda had broken it off with him several months before he’d gone to Indonesia. She had no cause to be upset.

“It wasn’t a happy smile.”

“Oh.”

“I know it’s none of my business, but why did you and her break up?”

Maybe she had a little cause. He cleared his throat. “Because I didn’t want to get married.”

“Which kind of explains the not-so-happy smile.”

“I guess.”

“She was very beautiful.” She said it with a kind of awe. But as beautiful as Melinda had looked, she had nothing on Meg, whose source of beauty had nothing to do with the clothes she wore and everything to do with what shone from within.

“Perhaps you should explain to her why you married me,” she said quietly.

“I’ll think about it.” He couldn’t see that it would achieve anything, but Meg seemed to want it. Maybe to ease her own conscience. She seemed so earnest. So innocent. “How old are you?”

A grin tilted her lips and coaxed one from him in return. Admittedly, it was an odd question to ask his wife. “Twenty-eight,” she said. Nearly ten years younger than him. A world of difference in age and cynicism. Maybe it was that openness to her that made her look so young, so appealing.

Meg broke their tenuous connection as she turned away and continued walking toward the lake. “I learned your age from our marriage certificate.”

That piece of paper legally binding them. He’d need to set about unbinding them as soon as possible, because despite their verbal agreement that she’d leave when he got back, she was legally his wife. She’d have rights if she chose to exercise them.

She’d helped him, he owed her something. Certainly more than mere gratitude. How much more would be the pivotal question. And Mark would no doubt have an opinion on that as well as the most efficient and effective way to undo what he’d done. Set them both free. “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

He’d call Mark on his personal line later, set up a meeting for first thing Monday morning. The sooner that was sorted, the better. Regardless of how much she was likely to cost him. In the meantime, he’d be friendly but distant. He didn’t want to alienate her. But on the other hand, he didn’t want to encourage her to think there was anything more to their marriage than her having the use of his house until his return. He also needed to talk to Mark about Jason.

At the water’s edge, they negotiated age-old granite boulders. As she clambered between two rocks, he offered his hand. Her glance flicked to his face, she took his hand-hers cool and fragile in his-and then eased it free as soon as the need passed, sliding it into her jacket pocket. He could almost want it back. He shoved his own hands into his pockets. “You were telling me about Jason. That at first he was suspicious…” Jason was an unscrupulous slimeball with a talent for ferreting out people’s weaknesses. But he hid that side of his nature well and knew how to ingratiate himself with people.

“Then something changed. Once he accepted our…marriage,” she glanced away as she said the word, “…he got a whole lot nicer, started offering to help me with things. But he had a lot of questions about where you were, why you weren’t home with me. I’d told him, like you suggested, that you’d stayed on to straighten out things with the charity on the island and that you’d be home in a couple of months.”

The track along the shore narrowed, forcing them to walk close, down-padded shoulders occasionally brushing. “Did you accept his help?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“A simple question.”

“But there was something weird in the way you asked it, like you were accusing me of something.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of anything. Jason’s offers of help have been known to take many forms.”

“I don’t really understand why you hate him so much. He can be a bit creepy, but he’s had a tough life.”

Not like you. The implication was clear. That was how Jason had got to Luke, too, playing the sympathy card, explaining how hard done by he’d been because of Luke’s dead father, their father, a man who’d never acknowledged him, playing on Luke’s feelings of guilt. So he’d given him a house, a job, money. And then Jason had betrayed him by blackmailing his mother. A fact he hadn’t discovered till he was in Indonesia going through some of her possessions. He’d threatened to very publicly expose her dead husband’s indiscretions, which according to Jason, were many and damning. In doing so, he’d not only stain the memory and reputation of their father, but more importantly, would harm the image of the charity he’d founded. A charity that meant the world to Luke’s mother.

Luke had told Meg none of the details. Maybe he should have because it sounded as though Jason had been playing on Meg’s sympathies, too. All Luke had shared with her, when his death was looking like a distinct possibility, was that he didn’t want to die knowing Jason, as his closest living relative, might benefit in any way. “So how much help did you accept from him, and what did you mean by creepy?” The very thought of Jason anywhere near Meg was creepy. The man had the moral code of a hyena.

She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets. “He has an…unusual way about him. But he tried to be helpful. He gave me names of people and professionals for if I needed any work done, told me which restaurants were good. Things like that. But it was Mark who suggested the private investigator I used to try to track you down.”

“You looked?”

“Of course I looked. But the investigator didn’t turn up anything. So I went back there as soon as I got my visa renewed.”

“To the island?”

“Yes.” Sorrow clouded her eyes. “Where did you go? Where did everyone go?”

He hated the thought of her going back there. That it was for him made it even worse.

She’d left because the situation on the island had deteriorated rapidly into one of chaos and violence. She’d actually argued that she should stay with him, but the local staff had convinced her that they could care for him until the plane arrived to airlift him and a wounded islander to the nearest hospital for treatment.

“I don’t know what happened to it, but the plane never arrived. We gave it a day, but after fresh fighting broke out, we fled the village and then the island.”

She nodded. “No one I spoke to had heard of you or any of the villagers we knew. At least they said they didn’t. There was nothing left of the village itself. Or the school.”

He heard the bleakness in her voice. It had made her sad, and it had made him angry. But there was nothing either of them could do about it now. The village had been caught in the middle of an escalating dispute linked to a decades-old conflict. “I know some of them got away. Were able to start afresh.” That small truth was the best he could offer her.

She walked on, visibly subdued. Despite his earlier resolve to keep his distance, Luke slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him. The future would separate them, but they shared a past that no one else would understand. And he would offer her what comfort he could-the comfort of a friend-inadequate as it might be.

He still had questions, but now no longer seemed the time to ask them. They walked the rest of the loop in silence. His arm still about her shoulders. Her leaning subtly into him. He should let her go, but something about walking like this, with her, was deeply peaceful. He remembered that about her, a feeling of stillness and calm when she’d been the one nursing him.

The house, festooned with Christmassy boughs of greenery, came into view. In the eight years he’d lived here he’d never once decorated for Christmas.

He’d thought about putting up a tree one year, but if he put a tree up, then he’d have to buy ornaments. And, well, it just never happened. There was no point for a man living on his own. But this morning he’d noticed festive touches everywhere. Red bows on the uprights of the stairs, Christmas towels in the guest bathroom, a Christmas tree decorated in only white bows and white lights, simple but effective. “Where will you go?”

She stiffened. “That’s not your problem or your concern. But,” she drew in a deep breath that lifted her shoulders, “can I stay till Monday? Till my car’s ready. It’s at the mechanic’s. That’s why the committee meeting was here last night.”

He stopped, forcing her to stop with him and looked at her. “Of course you can stay.” He should be grateful. He’d been thinking two or three weeks, maybe a month, would be reasonable. But the thought of her leaving Monday was like having the rug pulled out from under his feet. Now that she wanted to go, he wanted to keep her near. Surely he ought to at least know his wife a little, if only so that he knew how she was likely to play it during their divorce.

Plus it would look strange to both his friends and hers if his wife left so soon. Ultimately, of course, they’d have to deal with it. But there was no hurry. “Stay as long as you need.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “But Monday will be good.” She gently turned down his offer. He’d wanted her gone, so he had no call to feel rebuffed. It had been like that back on the island. The conflicting feelings she evoked. The desire to have her near, the resenting of that desire and then the desire to have her back when she left. Turns out it wasn’t contrariness caused by being bedridden.

She smiled at some hidden thought. She had the sweetest-looking lips. Eminently kissable. For all the admonishments he’d delivered to himself, he couldn’t help wondering what she’d do if he kissed her again. No mistletoe, no audience.

She’d kissed him once. Back at the camp. The minister had left his bedside after marrying them. Darkness had fallen and Meg sat quietly by his side. She used to sometimes sit there and talk to him as he dozed, telling him stories from her childhood, as outside, unseen night insects sang.

The evening after their marriage she’d kept his hand in hers and Luke had lain there, eyes closed, trying to listen to what she said, but mainly just listening to the sound of her voice, the sound of home.

When he’d asked, after realizing it was something he should have asked first, she had talked about the boyfriend whose desertion had precipitated her trip to work with the foundation. About how she specialized in finding men who needed her for a time, emotionally, financially or physically, but then dumped her when the need had passed. Initially, she laughed at her own stories, but then, as she talked about her dreams of a family of her own, her voice changed, there was a catch to it, and then she stopped talking altogether. He opened his eyes to see a tear rolling down her cheek.

She tried for a smile. “Some wedding night, huh.”

“Come here.”

And she did. She moved from her chair to sit on the side of his bed.

“Closer.”

She leaned down.

He brushed the tear away with his thumb and then slid his hand round to the back of her head, pulled her closer still and kissed her, slow and sweet, and he forgot about the pain and thought maybe he’d died and already gone to heaven.

She sat back up looking as shaken as he knew he’d feel if he wasn’t so damn sick. Instead, he felt…a little better.

“Not bad for someone on death’s doorstep.” She tried to make light of what had just passed between them.

“Wait till I’m better.” He winked. “I could make you forget all your sorrows.”

“Is that a promise?”

“If you want it to be.”

“Then get better. And I’ll hold you to it.”

“Now that’s what I call an incentive.”

It was the last time he’d been alone with her. The next day, she’d left on the boat that was to bring back supplies to replenish those raided from the island’s medical facility.

But he wasn’t sick now. He stopped walking and pulled her closer, let her see his intent. He read trepidation mixed with a little curiosity, a little anticipation in her gaze.

Beside them, Caesar growled deep and low. Meg stiffened and looked away. “Someone’s here.”

They rounded the side of the house to see a red Corvette driving away. Luke watched till Jason’s car disappeared from sight before dropping his arm from Meg’s shoulders and heading into the house. He hated what Jason had done to his mother, and hated the thought of him anywhere near Meg. He wanted the man out of his life for good.

The homemade wreath adorning his front door swung as he pulled the door open. Controlling his breathing, he stepped inside and held the door for Meg. She stood on the path at the base of the stairs watching him, her expression unreadable, her nose and cheeks pink from the cold.

Finally, looking straight past him, she climbed the stairs. He shut the door behind them and watched as she unwound her scarf. The peace and connection he’d found in her presence only minutes ago had vanished. She’d shut herself off from him.

He stood between her and the closet and took her scarf from her hands. “You don’t understand.”

“And I don’t need to. Families are complicated. It’s your business. It’s nothing to do with me.” She unzipped her jacket.

“You’re my wife.”

She stilled for a second, looking at her hands. “In name only.”

“But still my wife.” He didn’t know why he was invoking the “wife” clause; he should be the last one reinforcing it. But he wanted her to understand.

“Don’t tell me you aren’t thinking about how soon you can divorce me, if you haven’t started proceedings already.”

“I haven’t started proceedings.”

“Yet. But you’ll be at Mark’s office first thing Monday morning?”

Luke said nothing. Meg looked up, met his gaze and nodded her understanding.

As she shrugged off her jacket, he moved to stand behind her, helped ease it from her shoulders and down her arms. He caught the scent of green apples but couldn’t afford to be distracted by it. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to get divorced, too?” She turned, they were so close that he could encircle her with his arms. Hold her. Tell her everything. His wife in name only. Or they could not talk at all. He could taste her lips. Touch her skin. Feel her heat.

“Of course I want it, too.”

Divorce, they were talking about divorcing.

“That’s why I don’t need to get involved in your personal life. Any more than I already am.”

He hung up her jacket. “Any more than you are?”

She swallowed. “I’m living in your house. And I’ve made friends with some of your friends and their partners. I couldn’t help it. When they learned about me, they wanted to meet me, to get to know me. They’ve been kind. I like them.”

He nodded, gave her time to go on.

“Julie finally left her husband. She stayed here for a week when she first left. And Sally and Kurt are expecting their second child. She’s due in three months. I said I’d help with babysitting when she went into hospital. And when she came out. You know how organized she is. Of course that might not be so easy now.” She was talking fast, not meeting his gaze. “And I’m sorry. It just sort of happened.” She looked up at him, apology in her eyes.

Just like he used to when he’d been sick, he’d gotten distracted by the soft cadence of her voice rather than focusing on the specifics of her words. The details of her supposed crime had washed over him. And today there had been the added distraction of his very real ability to do something about it. He could reach out, trail a finger down the softness of her cheek, touch it to those lips. Desire stirred.

Three

Meg stepped back from Luke, the husband she didn’t know, away from the warmth in his eyes. Warmth that had her thinking things she had no business thinking. She blamed the window. She’d come back from her walk with Caesar and looked up to see him standing at the wide picture window, wearing only boxers, his torso lean and sculpted, and a purely feminine thrill of appreciation had swept through her.

“I’m glad you found friends here, that you weren’t alone,” he said after a pause so long that she’d thought he hadn’t been going to answer.

His softly spoken words disconcerted her. She didn’t want to like him. At least not in the softening, melting way she could feel herself liking him. That was far more dangerous than the physical pull of attraction that she-and most likely the majority of the female population who came within his sphere-felt for him. She’d agreed to marry him because he’d believed-rightly-that his death was a real possibility and it had seemed imperative to him that Jason not be able to inherit. She’d been prepared to do anything to ease his agitation.

But he hadn’t died.

He was very much alive.

And watching her.

“But hopefully they have the good sense to stay away now that I’m back. All I want is peace and quiet.”

Meg remembered the dinner. He might want peace and quiet but he wasn’t going to get it. Not tonight, which was probably a good thing because Meg wasn’t so sure she wanted to be alone with him.

“Show me round the house.”

“I haven’t changed anything. You don’t need me to show you round it.” Regardless of what he did or didn’t need, she needed to put a little space between them. And she would-as soon as she’d told him about the dinner. Because the way they’d walked, with his arm around her, had felt so natural, and when he’d looked at her, he’d thought about kissing her and she’d wanted him to. It would feel so good, which would be all bad.

She was lonely. That was all. Her life had been on hold these last few months, but she was picking up the pieces again. She didn’t need to lean on Luke.

Her work with the Maitland Foundation since she’d been back had been a welcome distraction.

“You’ve been having parties. That’s a change.”

“Do you mean last night? That was a final committee meeting.”

“You put up Christmas decorations.” He continued, not taking her opening to ask what the committee meeting was for. “That’s a change. A bigger one than you know.” He flicked one of the red bows tied to the stair uprights. “I don’t usually do Christmas.”

It seemed a sad thing to say. She couldn’t imagine not marking Christmas in some way. “That’s not changing as much as adding something temporary.” She was going to have to tell him about tonight.

The bow slipped and they both reached to catch it, hands tangling as they trapped the red velvet against the smooth wood of the post, halting its downward slide. For a second they stilled. His warm hand covered hers, pinning it with the bow beneath it.

He was close again. And again his proximity, his warmth and scent had her resolutions slipping. Meg slid her hand from beneath his, bringing the broad ribbon with it, and took a step back. With nerveless fingers she smoothed out the loops of the bow. From the kitchen she heard the strains of “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

“Do you remember our promise?”

She glanced up to see him watching her closely, desire kindling in the depths of his eyes. He couldn’t mean the promise her thoughts had leaped to. He must have meant their vows. “To love and honor? And only those vows because there was no time to write our own. ‘In sickness and in health and to disinherit your brother and give me somewhere to live when I got back here.’”

A smile flickered and vanished. “That wasn’t the promise I was talking about.”

Oh. That promise. The one she’d secretly cherished in her darkest hours, something full of the possibility of tenderness and passion and the affirmation of life, and the one she’d now hoped he’d forgotten. “I don’t think anything we said or did back then applies to the here and now.”

“Some things transcend time and place,” he said evenly. “And a promise is a promise.”

Meg swallowed and tugged a little more at the bow.

“I sometimes think that promise was what I lived for,” he said, almost to himself, “what kept me hanging on when I should have died waiting for the antibiotics to reach me.”

She took another step back. His smile returned, knowing and tempting. “If it helped, then I’m glad of it.” The bow came completely undone in her unsteady fingers.

He reached for the loose end, so that it became a connection between the two of them. “Did you ever think of it? Or did you forget about me altogether?”

She avoided the first of his two questions. “I didn’t forget about you.”

He pulled his end of the ribbon closer to him, bringing her hand with it. Then he lifted her hand, supported it with his own and with a sudden frown studied the ring that adorned her ring finger. “Our wedding ring?”

Meg shrugged, though with him cradling her fisted hand in his palm, nonchalance was the last thing she felt. “I had to have something. People were asking. I bought it over the internet so nobody would see me going to a jeweler’s to get it.”

“And this convinced them?” With the forefinger of his free hand he touched the simple thin gold band. “I would have chosen something a little more…expensive.”

“Its importance is in what it symbolizes, not what it’s worth. As I told your friends, this was all I wanted. Its simplicity and purity were the perfect representation of our relationship. Besides, I didn’t want to spend a lot.”

He straightened her fingers and the velvet ribbon whispered to the floor between them. “You paid for it yourself?”

“Of course.” She tried to ease her hand free, but he held firm. “It wasn’t much.”

“I can tell. And our engagement ring?” He looked from her hand to her face. “Where’s that?”

She shook her head. “We weren’t able to get a suitable engagement ring. It was hard enough getting the wedding band, which we had brought over from another island.” She filled him in on the details of the story she’d concocted for his friends. “You wanted us to choose the engagement ring once you came home, but I was going to argue against that. I like the band on its own.”

“What else were we going to do once I came home?”

She swallowed. “Well, there was…our honeymoon. People asked about that.” Which now that his return was real would be a divorce instead. Meg tugged at her hand and he allowed it to slide free.

Luke folded his arms across his chest and she could read nothing of his thoughts, how he felt about the stories she’d had to make up because she hadn’t been able to tell people he married her out of desperation. It had seemed important that nobody, and especially the half brother he was so keen to disinherit, knew the true circumstances. “Do we know where we’re going for that?”

“You wanted St. Moritz or Paris, but I wanted Easter Island.”

“So we compromised?”

Meg allowed a small smile. “Um…no. We settled on Easter Island because you’ve been to St. Moritz and Paris before, but neither of us has been to Easter Island. And besides, we both wanted to see the statues.” They had talked about the statues in one of their bedside conversations.

“I agreed they’d be amazing to see. Doesn’t mean that’s where I’d take my bride. I’d definitely go for a little more luxury. A little more hotel time, something a little more romantic.”

“That’s how people know how smitten you are with me.”

“Smitten?”

“Hey.” She smiled at his indignant expression. “It was my fantasy.”

“Was it not supposed to be reality-based?”

“You’re saying it’s beyond the realms of possibility?” Her smile faded. Of course someone like him, a multi-millionaire, consistently named in most-eligible-bachelor lists, wouldn’t really ever be interested in her, Meg Elliot, nurse. “Your friends believed it,” she said in her defense, then frowned. “At least they said they did. They thought I was good for you.”

“That’s not what I meant. I was talking about realistic honeymoon destinations, not the reality of you and me together.”

But Meg was on a roll. “They said I’m not like the women you’ve dated in the past-ones who don’t challenge you emotionally, who let you shut yourself off from them. You must have finally realized what’s important in life, must have trusted your ability to give and receive love.”

“All my friends said that, or just Sally, who thinks one psych paper in college makes her Carl Jung?”

Meg hesitated, then sighed. “Mainly Sally,” she finally admitted. But she’d so wanted to believe her, wife of one of Luke’s friends, that she’d bought into her assessment.

Luke’s sudden burst of laughter was the last thing she expected. “So, Easter Island, I can’t wait to see those statues.”

“It’s not funny.” He was still laughing at her. “I didn’t realize when I agreed to this pretence how complicated it would get. I thought I’d come here and, well…I guess I didn’t really think about it at all. But there were people with questions and expectations and I had to tell them something.”

“I’m sure you did the best you could.”

“But you would have handled it better? What would you have told them?”

“To mind their own damn business.”

“You can’t say that to people. And certainly not to your friends.”

“I can and I do. And friends are the ones who take it the best.”

“That’s not my style.”

“I guess I might have told them we were going somewhere private where I could keep the island promise I made to my wife. That would have been almost as effective at getting them to stop asking questions. They know I don’t make promises lightly.”

And just like that any trace of levity left his face, but he had to be joking still. Regardless, the sudden change threw her off balance, swept away any sense she’d had that she might be in control of their conversation.

To avoid the questioning intensity in his gaze and the confusion it stirred, she stooped and picked up the ribbon and began rolling it up. “That promise…” she said lightly, trying to inject a touch of dismissive humor into her voice “…it seems like it was a lifetime ago. Like we’re not those same two people.” She had the ribbon half rolled up when he caught the end. She studied their hands, joined by a strip of red velvet. His large and tanned, hers smaller and pale but thankfully steady.

“Look at me, Meg. And let me look at you.” He still sounded far too serious for her peace of mind. She could almost imagine a trace of need in his voice. “I held your face in my mind for so long. I can’t quite get enough of the real thing.”

Which seemed the oddest thing to say about her. She had a talent for blending in and going unnoticed. She was the type of person people often forgot having met. Slowly, she looked up. He kept perfectly still as her gaze tracked over his torso, settling inevitably on his face, on the eyes that showed his wanting.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

An even bigger surprise. She swallowed and shook her head. “That would be a bad idea.” Because if he kissed her, she’d kiss him back, and then he’d know she wanted him. But while she knew she should just turn and walk away, she didn’t. Her feet wouldn’t listen to her head. He lifted the red velvet, drawing her hand up with it, and then he captured her wrist, raising her hand farther till he touched her fingertips to his jaw. A shiver passed through her and the velvet dropped again to the floor.

She used to touch his jaw like that when he was sick and weakened and feverish. But he was far from sick or weak now, and if anyone was feverish, it was her.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm. Warmth, heat, liquefied her bones. “I remembered your touch.”

She couldn’t stop herself, she cupped her palm around his jaw. So smooth now, so strong. He framed her face with his hands and lowered his head toward hers.

She had time to back away.

She stayed precisely where he was.

He kissed with exquisite gentleness. His lips were soft and seeking as though he was savoring the taste of her in the same way she savored the taste and feel of him. He kissed, drew back a fraction, kissed again, brushing his lips over hers. He angled his head, deepened the kiss, teased her teeth and tongue. Her mouth parted beneath his. His kiss was…beautiful. It was perfection. The way they fit so naturally together held an aching rightness. Made her feel that she’d been missing this, him, for so long.

She slid her arms around his waist and stepped into him. And still he kissed her, his fingers threading deeper into her hair.

Meg forgot all the reasons why this was a bad idea and lost herself in his kiss, in the simple joining. He gave of himself, made no demands, and because of that swept her away, a leaf delighting in the wind, flying for that brief time between tree and ground.

And for that brief time it was just him, just her, no past or future, just the now and this kiss, his lips against hers.

Too soon, but what had to be minutes later, he lifted his head, his hands still framed her face, his thumbs lazily stroked her cheeks.

“Remind me in what possible way that could have been a bad idea. I’m thinking it was one of the best, if not the best idea I’ve ever had.”

She opened her mouth to speak and waited for her brain to provide the words.

He slid his hands over her shoulders, down her arms, till he held both her hands in his. And Meg knew she was in deep, deep trouble because all she could think was that she wanted him to kiss her again and then she wanted more. Much, much more.

The chiming of the doorbell broke through the sensory spell he wove. Her first reaction was disappointment. Her second, as sanity returned, was relief. That kiss could only have led to places they couldn’t go, not without horribly complicating what was already a far-too-complicated situation, and not without threatening the safe cocoon she’d spun around her heart.

She started for the door.

“Leave it,” he said.

But she’d remembered who it likely was. “Um… No. We can’t.” We can’t leave it and we can’t go where you’re thinking. Where I was thinking. Wanting.

Luke looked from the broad cedar door to Meg. “You know who that is?”

Meg glanced at her watch. “Maybe.” They were punctual, a little early even, which normally she’d rate as a good quality.

“So it’s someone for you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Whoever it is, send them away. I don’t feel like company today.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Because?”

The chimes rang softly through the house again. “Because I think it’s the caterers.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “Why are there caterers ringing my doorbell?”

“Because they’d like to come in?” She kept her tone hopeful and innocent.

“Meg?” His tone was anything but hopeful or innocent. She’d have said more suspicious and accusing.

“They have some setting up to do. For the dinner tonight.” The doorbell rang again and was followed by an insistent knock.

“Open it. And then I think you better tell me what dinner they’re setting up for.”

Meg let the small army of caterers in, guided them through to the kitchen and took as long as she could showing them anything and everything she thought they might need to know. She didn’t leave till it became obvious she was only getting in their way.

She went back to the entranceway where she’d left Luke, where he’d kissed her, but he wasn’t there. The red bow was back in place on the post. She could look for him, but she’d doubtless see him soon enough. In the meantime, she had things she needed to do. Like run away before she started acting on three months’ worth of daydreams.

In her-Luke’s-bedroom she pulled a plain black suitcase from the wardrobe and dropped it onto her-his-bed and unzipped the lid. From the top dresser drawer she gathered her underwear and put it into the case. The second drawer contained Luke’s clothes. She opened the third drawer and pulled out her T-shirts.

“What are you doing?”

She tensed at the sound of his voice and spun, her T-shirts clasped to her chest, to see him standing in the doorway. “Packing.”

“You do have a knack for stating the obvious.”

“We agreed I’d go as soon as you got back.”

“And then we agreed Monday, because your car is at the mechanic’s.” Luke strolled across the room and positioned himself in front of the wide window that most days allowed forever views out over the lake. Today, ominous clouds hid the far, snow-capped mountains, restricting the view instead to the lake’s edge. “What is it you’re frightened of?”

“Nothing.” And even though he wasn’t looking at her, she clutched the T-shirts a little tighter, a flimsy barrier against his questions, his insight.

“Now, me, I’m frightened of you.”

A ludicrous notion. “I don’t think so. You hold all the power here. Your house, your territory.” Not to mention his looks, his wealth, her weakness for him.

“What scares me, Meg,” he said to the window, “is the way I feel when I look at you. And the way those feelings intensify when you look back at me.”

His words stilled her, made her want to hope. She covered the foolish, unlikely hope with glibness. “And I’ll just bet you’re a ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ kind of guy.”

“Sometimes,” he said quietly. “Not always. Sometimes the fear is to protect us.”

Meg placed the T-shirts on top of her underwear, spreading them so they hid the scraps of lace that were her secret indulgence. Plain, practical Meg liked pretty, sometimes even sexy, lingerie.

Luke crossed to the dresser. She’d divided the space on top in half. One-third, two-thirds, actually. A third for his things, a watch and a framed photo of his mother only needed so much space. The two-thirds on the right was littered with her things. Perfume, a pair of earrings, a scented candle and… “Don’t touch that.”

He turned with a curling photo in his hand. “This?”

“Yes,” she sighed, “that.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t mean don’t touch it. You can have it. Throw it out if you like.”

He lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“I needed something to show people when I went back to try to find you. Clearly, I don’t need it anymore.” The photo showed the two of them, Luke sitting up in bed, looking ill but still with a certain intensity to his gaze, and Meg perched beside him looking worried and pointing to something off camera. Their wedding photo. She didn’t even know why she’d left it out and on the dresser.

He was about to place the photo back where it had stood leaning against her perfume, when instead, he picked up the small crystal bottle and brought it to his nose. He closed his eyes and nodded. “Very Meg.” Opening his eyes, he studied her. “Flowers and sweetness.” Meg adjusted her T-shirts in the case.

“Tell me about this dinner the caterers in my kitchen are setting up for.”

She opened her mouth to speak.

He held up a warning finger. “I just want the facts. No evasive answers. What party do you have planned for tonight?” He frowned. “And if you’re planning a party, why are you packing as though you can’t get out of here fast enough.”

“There’s a Christmas dinner for the Maitland Foundation here tonight. Most of the really big donors will be here. I haven’t had all that much to do with the organization. I just agreed with Sally when she suggested that this house would be the perfect place for the dinner. And agreed with her that there was no reason it couldn’t be here.”

“She didn’t tell you that she asks every year if she could have it here, and that every year I tell her no?”

Meg swallowed. Sally had told her she’d bear the blame if Luke got back before Christmas, but it didn’t seem fair. “Actually, she did. But I couldn’t see any reason not to have it here. You have a beautiful home. And it’s so much more personal to have a dinner in a home than at a restaurant.”

Luke blew out a heavy sigh. The hands at his sides had curled into fists. And for a few brief seconds he shut his eyes. Meg contemplated sneaking out. Too soon he opened them again, the silver sharp and intent. “So why are you packing now?”

“Now that you’re back, I don’t need to be here for it.”

He crossed to the bed. Took everything out of her suitcase, dropped it onto the bedcover, then zipped the case shut. “Think again. If I have to be here for this dinner, then you most definitely do.”

She unzipped the case and gathered up the pile of clothes. “No, I don’t.”

“These donors who are coming, they know I have a wife?”

“Yes, most of them,” she said slowly, holding her clothes to her chest and hoping fervently that she’d covered her underwear with her T-shirts.

“Then they’ll expect you to be here. The Maitland Foundation and its donors espouse strong family values. You could cost it thousands if you don’t show, Mrs. Maitland.”

“That’s not fair.”

“You’re right, it’s not.” He smiled, devious and victorious. “I’ll leave you to start getting ready.” He stopped at the door and nodded at the clothes in her arms. “I’m sure the red will look fetching on you.”

Meg glanced down. There were only two red items in her arms and neither of them was a T-shirt.

Four

Meg paused and wrapped her fingers around the polished wood of the banister. She’d made a point of staying out of the caterers’-and Luke’s-way while she showered and dressed and put up her hair. But now she barely recognized the entranceway that she’d last seen just a few hours ago. Her homemade decorations were gone. The stairs were twined with ivy, among which nestled hundreds of glinting fairy lights. Below her, an enormous Christmas tree, topped with a star, glittered and sparkled in silver and gold in the entranceway, scenting the air with the fragrance of pine. Tall candelabra stood either side of the front door. The house was filled with the delicate notes of a string quartet playing Christmas music. It was as though someone had waved a wand and transformed the already graceful foyer into something magical.

Luke strode through the doors thrown wide from the next room and had a foot on the bottom step before he looked up and stilled. A slow, knowing smile spread across his face. “I was just coming to get you. Our guests are starting to arrive, darling.”

The wand must have touched Luke as well. Before now, she’d only ever seen him dressed casually. Even then, and even when ill, he’d looked striking, had an undeniable charisma. But now, in an elegant tuxedo, its cut and custom tailoring accentuating the breadth of his shoulders and his lean strength, he looked devastating. A surge of possessiveness and pride swept through her. This man was her husband.

She quashed both the possessiveness and the pride. She had no right to feel possessive of a man who wasn’t in any way hers. And she had no right to the pride. He’d had to believe he was dying to offer marriage. Even so, he waited expectantly for her. And she couldn’t quite calm the leap of her pulse.

Part of his attraction was the way when he looked at her she felt like he only saw her, only thought of her, as though she fascinated him every bit as much as he fascinated her.

Meg held a little tighter to the banister. She had only one dress suitable for a dinner like this. And it was red. Now Luke would think, and he’d be right, that she wore the red lace beneath it. Or worse, and he’d be wrong, that she wore it for him.

She descended the stairs. Wearing the demure but fitted dress and too-high heels, she was well out of her comfort zone. Or maybe it was his silver gaze steady on her that made her hyperaware of her every movement.

Tonight. She just had to get through tonight without succumbing to his pull. When she was away from him again she’d be fine, but when he was near, he scrambled her thought processes till she didn’t know what she wanted, or till she wanted things she knew she oughtn’t.

She stopped a step above him and finally, defiantly, met his gaze. And looked quickly away, her defiance doused. Heat. She’d read heat in his eyes. For her.

It was insane.

As insane as the heat of the response deep within her that his gaze had ignited.

He needed to get back out into the real world, remember the type of woman he was attracted to, the type of woman who belonged in his world, and stop playing games with her.

Except it didn’t feel like a game.

She looked back at him, he waited, his hand extended. Trapped by his gaze, Meg swallowed and put her hand in his, felt his fingers fold around hers. And at that touch, that gentle, unerring connection, something shifted and changed, including Meg in this evening’s magic.

Hope flickered. Might she be entitled to one enchanted evening?

She did her best to quash the thoughts. A childhood spent lost in books and fairy tales was now having the unwanted repercussions her grandmother had warned of.

Luke smiled, that same smile he had back up in her-his-bedroom as his fingers tightened around hers. “Let’s go, Mrs. Maitland, we’re having a party.” His tone was light, teasing. Maybe she’d imagined the heat.

The living room was now decorated in silver and gold, with enough candles to keep them going for months if the power ever went out. Luke paused in the doorway and glanced up. Mistletoe hung from the door frame. In full view of those guests who’d already arrived, he planted a quick, hard kiss on her lips. Then he put his mouth close to her ear and whispered, “I knew you’d look good in red.” His words and his warm breath on the bare skin of her neck sent a shiver through her.

Pretending she hadn’t heard, hadn’t been affected by his words or his kiss, Meg dredged up a bright, but possibly vacant, smile as guests approached.

“Wyatt, Martha, good to see you. You’ve met my wife, Meg?” Luke released her hand but rested it instead at the curve of her waist. She wasn’t sure which disturbed her composure more.

He stayed by her side almost all evening as he worked the room with skill and ease. As head of Maitland Corporation, he left the running of the foundation to Blake, the director, but he spoke with knowledge and passion about the foundation’s work. He talked to almost everyone, smiling and magnanimous, while at the same time ensuring Meg was included in conversations, asking her opinion on whatever topic came up. But he also took advantage of every opportunity, and created more than a few of his own, to touch her: to take her hand, or touch her arm, to curve his palm around her waist, to cup her shoulder. Once, claiming she had a crumb of pastry from a canapé on her cheek, he’d turned to her and brushed his thumb across her face, letting her see the heat in his eyes, making her want him.

And if he wasn’t at her side, he was watching her, making her think about him, about their promise. The evening became an exquisite torture.

A bejeweled woman, who’d just promised the foundation a hefty donation, turned away, her parting words See you both at the New Year’s Eve cocktail party, ringing in Meg’s ears and Luke’s gaze pinning her. He lifted two champagne flutes from the tray of a circulating waiter and passed one to Meg. He led her to a somewhat quiet corner of the room and she took a sip of the sparkling liquid.

“I was going to tell you about the cocktail party.”

“Clearly I need to take a look at our social calendar and see what’s expected of me. It’s not in my house, is it?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll deal.”

They watched the mingling crush. By then she’d be long gone. “I didn’t realize you were such a people person.”

“I’m not,” he said softly. “But I know how to play the game.” He turned his back on the room so that only she could see his face and hear his words. “The only person I’m thinking about is you and how good you look in red. And how good you’ll look out of it.”

His words, blatant and seductive, shocked her. How had they got to this point and, more importantly, how did she stop it? Because while she was certain it was all just a part of the “game” to him, if affected her differently, more deeply than he could know. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“What you’ve been doing all evening. I’m trying to concentrate, to listen to what people are saying and you’re making me think…”

“Think what, Meg?” His low voice seemed to sink through her to her core. “About the things I might like to do with you? Because I’ve been thinking about my husbandly privileges.”

She backed a little farther into the corner. “You’re not really my husband.” But he’d caught what she’d been thinking and she hated that he knew it. That she was that transparent. Because being married to someone carried connotations regardless of the reasons for the marriage.

He leaned closer. “That’s the thing, Meg, I really am your husband. And you know it. And you think about it.”

“Stop it, Luke. Please.”

Something in her tone or her words stilled him. He backed off a little, easing her need to either reach for him or run from him. “If you want me to.”

She nodded. “I do. Thank you.” She was Meg. She wasn’t allowed to want him. Not in the real world. She looked past him to see Sally approaching, glowing with the success of the evening so far.

“You two make a gorgeous couple.” Sally kissed both Meg and Luke. “I’m so pleased you finally found a good woman, Luke, and had the sense to marry her. I foresee a long and happy union.”

If only in my dreams. The line from the Christmas song popped into Meg’s head. Now clearly wasn’t the time to tell Sally that she was leaving and that Luke would be starting divorce proceedings as soon as possible.

Luke smiled and raised his glass to Sally, which could look like he was agreeing with her. It could, if you were Meg, also look like he was avoiding commenting on what she’d said.

She sat beside Luke for the dinner, ignoring the occasional press of his thigh against hers. He kept their topics of conversation neutral, his tone and his glances warm, only a degree or two more than friendly. For all of his subtle teasing foreplay earlier, he seemed, from the time of her request, to have switched off, or at least turned down the wattage on the sensual messages.

Whereas Meg had to fight to hide her feelings, and fight to conceal the slow burning fuse of desire he’d lit and that now refused to be extinguished.

When the dinner was all but over, he sat back with his arm behind her and his hand curled around her arm, his thumb tracing lazy circles that sent heat spiraling through her. It was just a thumb. It shouldn’t be able to do that.

She waited till he was deep in conversation with the man across the table before easing her chair back. Not deep enough, apparently. He dropped a firm hand to her thigh, anchoring her to her chair and looked at her, a knowing smile glinting in his eyes and touching his lips. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not running away now.”

“I was just…” she could see him waiting for her excuse “…I’m not needed here,” was the best she could come up with.

“I need you here.”

She could almost wish that was true. He’d needed her once and married her because of it. That need had passed. He was back in his life, he was strong and healthy. His hand gentled on her thigh, but the heat of his palm burned through the silk of her dress, sizzled along her skin.

“I’m tired.” She tried again, which was also true, although she didn’t expect to sleep any more tonight than she had last night. Last night she’d been dealing mainly with the surprise of his sudden return. Tonight she’d be battling the strength of a desire that seemed to have flamed from nothing. Even though she realized now that the seeds had been sown and taken root back on the island. Then, she’d been able to ignore it, pretend it was something else. But she’d built fantasies around Luke. Fantasies she’d scarcely acknowledged.

She needed to leave. And not just this party. She needed to leave this house, break the spell she was falling under. Already she was way too close to the precipice of stupidity.

“You can’t leave,” he said quietly, “because I have plans for you, Meg. Slow, sensuous plans.” Holding her gaze, his hand inched farther up her thigh.

Lost. She was lost. The precipice rushed closer.

He wanted her and he knew she wanted him, knew what his touch was doing to her, how it heated her, and he knew she wanted more of it.

Luke pushed his chair back. Claiming jet lag, he excused them both.

In the entranceway, he shut the double doors behind them, muting the sounds of music and conversation. Illuminated only by flickering candles and fairy lights, he murmured, “Mistletoe,” and then pulled her to him and kissed her. Meg welcomed the press of his hard body against hers, reveled in the taste of him. The man she’d married. His mouth and lips and tongue teased and explored and seduced. Already, she knew the way their mouths fit together, knew the scent of him. He gripped her waist, slid his hands to cup her behind, she answered his pull with an involuntary rocking of her hips.

He shuddered in her arms and broke the kiss to rest his forehead against hers, breathing as heavily as she was. “I made you a promise, Meg. Will you let me keep it?”

Five

Meg nodded her agreement, the small movement moving both their heads. Reaching up, Luke pulled the mistletoe free, then led her past the Christmas tree slowing only enough to brush his lips across hers. Once, and then again. Light and shadows danced across his face.

They entered a hallway and he shut the door behind them, once again turning her, pressing her up against it as he kissed her, one hand holding the mistletoe above them, the other sliding up beneath her dress over nylon, encountering bare skin at the top of her thigh.

The hand stilled, the kiss stopped and the mistletoe dropped to the floor.

Luke drew back. “Stockings?” he asked, his voice hoarse but his fingers still burning against her skin.

Meg shrugged, her throat suddenly too dry for words. She hadn’t meant the stockings for him; she preferred them to pantyhose, but she also liked their risqué-ness, as she liked her lacy lingerie. It was supposed to be her secret weakness.

“Pretty, quiet, Nurse Meg. I knew there was more to you than met the eye. Be very, very grateful I didn’t know that till now.” He took a step back from her. “Show me.”

She hesitated. She was no lingerie model.

“Show me,” he insisted again, his voice a command as though she were a siren, as though she, Meg Elliot, tempted him to danger.

“I can’t.” Shyness warred with a budding sense of power. “Not here. Someone could come this way.”

Luke grasped her hand and tugged her down the hall way and into the first door they came to, shutting it behind them. Meg took a few steps into the library with its walls of books and its two-seater couch. She turned back to see Luke leaning against the door, watching her. “Show me.”

Somewhere in the last hour she’d stopped pretending to herself that she didn’t desire him, hadn’t always recognized that something in him called to her. One night with her husband. She was entitled to that much, wasn’t she?

Slowly, her hands against her thighs, she walked her fingers to gather up the fabric of her dress, lifting it higher till the tops of her stockings were just visible, a stark line against her pale skin. She opened her hands and let the fabric fall back into place.

Luke stood utterly still. Never had she seen such naked desire in a man’s eyes. And it was all for her.

He closed the gap between them and holding her gaze ran both hands beneath her dress and up the outside of her thighs till his palms cupped the strip of skin between black nylon and red lace. His eyelids dropped lower and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath as his hands slid farther around, cupping and pulling her against him.

And then he kissed her, the way only he ever had, fitting his mouth perfectly to hers, slowly, sweetly, joining them seamlessly and with just his kiss transporting her, promising her pleasure. Heat and urgency and need that inflamed her with reciprocal need. Hooking his thumbs over the edge of her panties, he slid them down her legs and she stepped out of them-a scrap of lace on the dark wood flooring.

Large, warm hands skimmed back up her thighs, passing the tops of her stockings till they rested on bare skin.

She’d drunk only a few sips of champagne throughout the evening; the intoxication that governed her now was fueled by desire. Meg tugged the hem of his shirt free, sliding her own hands against the heat of him. She pulled his bow tie undone, and with frantic fingers worked at the buttons of his finely pleated shirt till she could push apart the sides and touch her palms, her fingers, to the strength and contours of his torso. She eased his shirt back from his shoulders. A raised scar ran across his right shoulder. The gash that had started the chain of events that led to now. She touched her lips to his shoulder, grateful for the first time for that injury.

Beneath her fingertips lay the heated silk of skin over hard, contoured muscle, the light abrasion of hair, she felt his deeply indrawn breath and the rapid beat of his heart, knew it matched her own.

He cupped his hand between her legs, slid a finger through her folds, found her wet for him. Silver eyes darkened to pewter. “Tell me what you want, Meg.”

No one had ever asked her that. And the answer was both complicated and blindingly simple. “I want you. Now.”

He led her to the couch, sat and pulled her down on top of him, her knees straddling his thighs, she pressed her center against the hardness of him. Luke kissed her lips, her throat, her shoulder. He pushed the skirt of her dress up so he could freely touch the skin that seemed to so delight him. Enthralling her in the process.

He slipped the clips from her hair so that it tumbled loose around her shoulders. Finding the zipper at the back of her dress, he slid it down, peeled the dress from her so that it was now no more than a silken red pool of fabric around her waist.

“Show me how you like to be touched. I want to give you pleasure.”

Already he was. So much more pleasure than she’d ever known. Warm hands and warmer lips skimmed over every inch, every curve and dip of bare and lace-covered skin, caressing and teasing, adding fuel to the already-burning flames, till she writhed with need. She covered his hands with hers as he cupped her breasts and her head fell back.

For now, he was her husband. And she wanted him. Needed him. Hard and deep within her. For now.

“Condom?” Please, please let him have one because heaven knew what she’d do if he didn’t.

He nodded, pulling a foil square from his pocket as she reached for his zipper and freed the straining length of him. Waiting just long enough for him to cover himself, she slid down onto the length of him, bringing him home, shuddering with pleasure as he stretched and filled her.

His gaze locked with hers, intent and powerful, as she rocked against him, with him, over him. Passion turned his eyes storm-dark. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as his hands gripped her hips and they found a building rhythm of their own. Clamoring need and desperate desire drove them higher and faster till sensation, the effervescence of champagne bubbles, filled and overwhelmed her. She cried her arching completion moments before he drove his release home.

Meg fell forward, resting her head on the top of his and he snaked his arms around her waist and held her to him, his ear to her thudding heart. When he’d promised to make her forget her sorrows, she hadn’t realized he’d make her forget her very self. That in his arms she would forget her inhibitions and become the woman she imagined she saw in his eyes.

The silence and stillness of the room stole over them as her heartbeat slowed and her gasping breath eased.

What now? Too soon the taunting inner voice asked. What now, indeed. She had no idea, no answer. Her mind still reeled from the power and passion of their lovemaking. She pulled away from Luke, and his clasp loosened. She slipped her arms back into the sleeves of her dress. He helped ease the fabric up over her shoulders, planting a kiss between her breasts the moment before the spot was covered. She eased out of his lap and Luke stood, too.

Not meeting his gaze, she turned and searched for her panties. She bent to pick them up, but they were snatched out of her reach before she touched them. He slipped them into his pocket.

Wordlessly, they walked to the library door. She reached for the handle, but he covered her hand with his. And when she looked at him, he kissed her, gentle and lingering. They turned the handle together and stepped out into the hallway. When she would have headed the way they had come he shook his head, and with a firm grip on her hand led her farther down the hallway. He stopped at the third door. The guest room. His room.

His seeking gaze searched her face. “This time I want you naked and beneath me.”

Meg caught her bottom lip with her teeth. Apparently finding what he sought, Luke opened the door and pulled her with him into the darkened room, whispering, “Never let it be said that I didn’t utterly satisfy my wife.”

Meg woke in her husband’s bed, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder, her arm draped over his chest, her legs entwined with his.

He’d kept his promise and given her so much more.

Slowly, carefully, she disentangled herself and eased from the bed. He didn’t so much as stir.

As she slipped back into her dress and gathered up her discarded stockings and shoes, she paused by the wide window. They’d slept with the curtains open and overnight a light snow had fallen, dusting the trees and boulders on the lake shore. The sight was so beautiful that it made her heart ache. Soon she’d be gone from here. She’d stepped onto a stage and played her part. But the time for her exit was drawing inexorably closer.

Feeling like an intruder, she slunk back through the still house. Bundling up against the cold, she took Caesar for his morning walk along the shore, tossing his stick repeatedly. Tempted by beauty’s promise of stillness and serenity, she walked out to the end of the jetty and looked over the lake. The mountains on the far side were still obscured by heavy cloud.

At the sound of footsteps, she turned, a leap in her pulse. Not Luke but Jason. Her heart sank and she realized she’d hoped, wanted, it to be Luke. Wanted to see the man she’d made love to last night. Wanted to see his face and at the same time was afraid to. In the light of day would there be any of last night’s tenderness and connection, or would it be regret and distance she saw there?

“I thought I saw someone down here.” Jason smiled, warmth in his voice. He looked a little like Luke. Similar build and coloring but his watery-blue eyes were always moving, scanning the surroundings.

Meg smiled back, but doubts gnawed at her. What had Jason done to cause Luke to dislike him so intensely? Intensely enough that he would rather marry her than have his half brother inherit from him.

“So are the rumors true? Has my brother come home?”

Half brother. Meg nearly said that out loud. Luke was always careful to draw the distinction. “Yes.”

Jason’s smile wavered and he glanced over his shoulder at the house. Was that anxiety in his question? Jason had always seemed eager for Luke’s return.

“I was just going back inside. Come in. He’s probably up by now.” Meg walked back along the jetty. Jason fell into step beside her.

“I’m on my way to meet someone and I want to go before there’s any more snow. I haven’t got time to stop. I’ll call in later.”

She shrugged. “I’ll let him know to expect you.”

“And let him know…”

She waited for him to finish.

“Nothing,” he finally said. “Just…put in a good word for me, will you?” She walked round to the front of the house with him. As he drove away, she climbed the stairs.

The front door swung open. Luke, in jeans and bare feet, pulled an olive-green T-shirt over his head. He tugged the hem of the shirt over the plane of his stomach and looked past Meg. Jason’s red Corvette disappeared around a bend in the road, leaving it empty and still. “Damn.” Luke’s gaze came back to her. “How long was he here and what did he want?”

“Not long and to know if you were home.” Meg stepped past Luke and into the house. The Christmas tree dominated the entranceway. They’d kissed here last night. Her face heated with the recollections of where that had led to.

Luke’s hand wrapped around her wrist, stopping her when she would have walked away, turning her back to face him. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him that yes, you were home.”

“What else?”

Meg tugged her hand free. “Ask him yourself. I don’t want to be a pawn in your petty squabbles.”

“They’re not petty.”

“No, I suppose not.” For all that she hadn’t known Luke long, she knew him well enough to be certain of that. “But I still don’t want to be caught in the middle of whatever it is. I think Jason really did try to help me while you were gone.”

“If he did, it was for his own reasons.” The creases in his brow deepened. “He blackmailed my mother.”

A woman who’d devoted her life to others. A year after her death, the villagers still spoke of her with love, talked about her compassion and understanding and her ability to get things done. They’d probably still be talking about her a decade from now. And Jason had blackmailed her? “No.” He wouldn’t have, would he?

“Right up until her death. I didn’t find out till I went through her papers in Indonesia.”

“I remember your saying you’d discovered something about him. You were so angry.”

“Still am.”

As Meg repositioned a gold bauble on the tree, she could just make out his distorted reflection in its surface. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I haven’t made a final decision. I want to talk to him first. Confront him with it.”

“Will you bring charges?” She turned back to him.

Grimness tightened his mouth. A mouth that could give such pleasure. “Most likely. After I strip him of the car, the house and the job I gave him.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t play the disappointed-in-me card, Meg. The man was blackmailing my mother. I owe it to her.”

“You’re right, and I’m not disappointed.”

“But?”

“I just wondered if that was your only option.”

“Unless you can suggest a better one, one that does justice to my mother?”

As Meg shook her head, he slid his phone from the pocket of his jeans, punched in a number. “Jason. You should have stuck around.” Did Jason hear the command in the quietly spoken sentence? Meg tuned out the short conversation as she walked away. Luke caught up with her in the kitchen as she was pouring two coffees. “He’ll be back later today.”

She passed him a mug. As she lifted hers to her nose to inhale the fragrance, the ring on her finger caught her eye. The dinner was over, there was no need for her to wear it any longer. Putting down her coffee, she twisted the simple gold band from her finger and held it out to him.

He looked at her hand but didn’t reach for the ring and a glimmer of a smile touched his lips. “You can’t give it back to me. I never gave it to you in the first place.”

Oh. Right. So much for that gesture. Feeling like a fool, she went to slip the ring into her pocket. He did reach for her then. He picked up her left hand and slid the ring back into place. “But leave it there for now. I didn’t want to make you a pawn, Meg. I wanted to give you something.”

“And to stop Jason getting anything.”

“Mainly that,” he agreed. “And you know what else?”

“What?”

“This isn’t how I planned on starting this morning.”

She didn’t want to think about what he might mean by that. There were a number of possibilities. All of the ones that sprang to her mind were unwise.

He tugged her closer, pressed a soft, beguiling kiss to her lips. Very unwise.

“Good morning,” he said with a smile once he’d pulled away, his gaze locking on to hers.

All of her tension had melted with just that one kiss. It was a masterful tactic, a potent secret weapon in his arsenal. “Good morning.” Kiss me again.

But he didn’t. “Have you had breakfast? Or is it lunchtime already again?”

“Breakfast, and no, I haven’t eaten. But Luke, I think I should go.”

She watched his face, his eyes, but couldn’t read his reaction. “Eat first,” he finally said. Not, No, don’t go, Meg, which she would have been foolish to expect. Sometimes, though, she was foolish. Last night being the most recent example. Making love to a man she had no future with. Letting herself love him, even just a little.

In the kitchen, he had her sit on a stool at the breakfast bar while he got out a pan and bacon and eggs. “How did you learn to cook?” No man had ever cooked for her.

He passed her a mug of coffee. “Mom got heavily into her charity work from an early age. She wasn’t always around a lot. And when I was a teenager I went through several years of being constantly hungry. Appetite’s a great motivator. It’s not like I can produce a gourmet meal or anything, but I can do the basics. You want a filling, sustaining meal after or before a day’s snow skiing or water skiing? I’m your man.”

I’m your man? The expression was depressingly appealing. As was the man himself.

Within a few minutes he’d carried two plates of eggs and crispy bacon to the small oak table in the breakfast nook. He sat at a right angle to her and they ate in a silence that would have been restful were it not for Meg’s regret and quiet despair about how soon this was ending.

Beyond the window, snow flakes began to drift and swirl.

She hadn’t heard a weather report in days, but Jason had spoken as though more snow was expected. “Thank you.” She stood from the table. “Now I should go.” She had to end it. The sooner the better. Drawn-out goodbyes were too hard, too painful.

“I thought your car was at the mechanic’s till tomorrow.”

That was her problem. “It is.” She caught her bottom lip in her teeth. “You could take me to Sally’s?”

Silver eyes assessed her. “Is that what you want?”

No, I want you to ask me to stay. To see where this thing we have leads. Unless this thing we have is all in my head. “Yes, it’s what I want.”

“Because from what I know of you, the things you’ve told me, the things I’ve seen, you don’t always consult your own needs.”

Meg said nothing. Was she that transparent? She did put other people’s needs ahead of her own. That was how she’d been brought up. That was what she was supposed to do, wasn’t it?

“You’ve called her?” he asked after a pause.

“Not yet.” But she would, and could only hope that Sally kept her questions to herself. For her months here she’d pretended she’d had a real marriage. Now, two days after her husband’s return, she was seeking sanctuary at her friend’s place. But fortunately, in those two months, Sally truly had become a friend.

“What does staying at Sally’s achieve?”

Couldn’t he just let it go? She sighed and tried to keep her voice neutral. “Distance. Perspective. It gives you your home and your life back.” But mainly, it would stop her doing dumb things like watching his hands as he held his fork or his cup and remembering the feel of those hands on her.

Luke looked toward the window but said nothing.

Meg paused at the doorway. “I’ll need an hour to gather up all my things from around the house and finish packing.”

He gave a single abrupt nod and she left the room. It was easy enough to pack up her clothes and belongings from the master bedroom, but she took her time, folding slowly, uncharacteristically uncertain about how best to pack her bags. In the wardrobe, she let herself touch Luke’s suits, his sweaters. Beside the bed, she straightened the fishing magazine and the book that she’d left all this time on the bedside table. She’d read the book-a thriller-her first month here. Imagining a connection with him as she did so. Her fingers turning the same pages his had.

She lingered in front of the wide window. Its view over the lake had always brought her a measure of serenity. It didn’t today. Today, the dark turbulent sky matched the oppression she felt.

She finished in the bedroom but needed to check the rest of the rooms. Over the months she’d lived here, she’d managed to spread herself and her bits and pieces throughout the house. She’d have to do a room-by-room search.

At the door to the library, she paused, not sure she wanted to face the scene of last night’s…encounter. She toyed with the idea of just buying a new book to replace the half read one she’d left in there, then decided she was being ridiculous. She was a grown woman, for goodness’ sake. She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Luke sat on the couch, a sheaf of hand-written papers on his lap, his long denim-clad legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He looked up as she entered and the memories came flooding back.

Memories of sights; shadows and contours, and scents; his shampoo, his sweat, the essence of Luke himself and sensation; frantic hands, warm lips on skin, desperate longing and utter completion filled her mind. Images of her own reckless abandon.

“I just,” she cleared her throat, “came to get my book.” She pointed at the book on the small table beside him. He watched her silently as she dashed forward to snatch it up and backed out of the room.

As she shut the door behind her again, she thought she heard him speak. A short phrase, too indistinct for her to make out. Show me. She was imagining things. Nothing to show. No stockings today, no red lace. White and a little lacy, with a small bow between her breasts. But mainly plain. That’s who she really was. But for a few forbidden seconds she imagined the things she could wear for him if- She cut off her own thoughts. No ifs. No maybes. They’d had an agreement. She’d lived up to her part of it. And now she was going. Last night was…a bonus. Such an inadequate word. A night’s insight into a world of possibilities, of pleasure and promise and wholeness.

Ten minutes later he found her on the stairway, strode up to meet her and took her case from her hand. He carried it down, set it by the Christmas tree in the entrance. “There’s more?”

“One.”

She followed him up to the bedroom. Her second case, bulging and heavy, sat at the base of the bed. He looked about the room, his gaze sweeping from the bed to her face. “I’ll think of you when I’m sleeping in here.”

“Don’t, Luke.”

“Don’t think of you when I’m sleeping in here? Or don’t tell you that I will?”

“Don’t…tell me.” It was only fair that he think of her; she’d thought of him often enough as she’d lain there, and knew she would think of him still wherever she went next. For a time at least. But time healed all, dulled memories and yearnings. Eventually she’d forget him. Forget last night. Move on. She had to.

“I spoke to Mark this morning.”

The simple statement doused the recollections. Mark was his attorney as well as his friend. “And?”

“And he’s coming round tomorrow morning. But he said, whatever we do, we shouldn’t sleep together.” His lips twitched.

How could he think this was funny? But his amusement called a response from her, a spark of un-Meg-like mischief. Mark would surely be appalled at how incautious their actions had been. “Did you tell him?”

Luke shook his head. “Didn’t want to spoil his weekend. I’ll tell him tomorrow.”

“It won’t make a difference, you know.” She wanted Luke to know that. “I don’t want anything from you. I never did. The fact that we slept together doesn’t change that.”

“Nothing, Meg?” He picked up her case as though it was weightless. “When you have money, it seems everyone wants something from you. It’s hard to believe that there are people who really don’t.”

Maybe he wouldn’t truly believe that till she walked away from him.

“Even my mother. She only approved of me and what I did because it meant I could donate money to her causes. And maybe she was right.”

“That wasn’t the only reason she approved of you. She loved you.”

“I’m sure she did.” He spoke without conviction.

“She couldn’t not have.” Meg spoke with more vehemence than she’d meant to. She half loved him herself and she’d known him only a whisper of time.

Luke’s eyebrows lifted. And Meg regretted the intensity of her words. Did they reveal too much? Too much of what? She couldn’t even say herself. Her feelings, her heart, were galloping ahead to places her mind knew they shouldn’t. They’d passed like, and attraction, passed fascination and warmth, were mired in enthrallment, a deep drugging spell of connection and wanting and rightness. But she wouldn’t let it be anything more than that. It was a spell that could, and would have to, be broken. Because she was leaving.

That was what they’d agreed.

Six

Luke carried Meg’s suitcase downstairs, set it beside the first and said what he’d known for the last hour. “We’re going to have to wait till the snow stops and the roads are cleared.” She followed his gaze through the panes of glass bordering the door. Snow had blanketed the pines and the ground outside in white and was still falling.

He didn’t know what to expect. Frustration that she couldn’t get away, as she so clearly wanted to, or resignation that she was stuck here with him for longer still? He didn’t expect her to step toward the door and place her fingertips on the glass, soft wonderment in her expression. “I grew up in southern California. It never snowed.” She glanced at him. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, turning back to the window.

As she was, beautiful and serene and unspoiled, like the snow outside.

And always able to find a silver lining.

“It might be. But it’s no good for driving in.” He was deliberately brusque because it beat the hell out of getting sappy, of letting the way she affected him on so many levels show. They’d made love last night, but she was going this morning. It was for the best. Too much time with her was blurring the lines between what he ought to do, send her off so that she could find someone less jaded, someone who shared her optimism and her dreams, and what he wanted to do, take her back upstairs to his bed, make her his, hope a winter-long blizzard moved in.

He needed to find some kind of middle ground. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Her slow smile of pleasure and approval warmed him. Or maybe all she felt was relief at not being trapped indoors with him. He handed her her coat from the closet. “There are so many things we’ll never do together. But we’ve got this day, whether we like it or not.”

She’d be gone soon enough. A walk in the snow couldn’t hurt. Layers and layers of clothing. And it was surely better than being inside with her with little to do except be ambushed by thoughts of making love to her again, sinking into her heat, of watching a different kind of wonderment on her face, of seeing her ecstasy. Which was how he’d spent the morning. Staying out of her way but acutely aware of her.

She was her own kind of delirium. He could no longer pretend his reaction to her was a product of fever, and honesty compelled him to admit that something about her had called to him well before his infection had become serious. The attraction of innocence, of her optimism? Wanting to drench himself in her aura. Snap out of it. He shoved his arms into his coat, hands into gloves and his feet into snow boots and stood apart from her, not so much as looking at her, while he listened to her movements, the rustle of clothing, the zipper on her jacket sliding up, a soft stomp as she pushed her feet into boots.

He opened the door and stepped outside, breathed deeply of the Meg-free air. The door closed behind him. Her shoulder nestled against his. Her scent assailed him. The scent he’d reveled in last night.

She walked ahead, tripping lightly down the steps, her footsteps crunching through snow as she skipped ahead, her brightly colored Sherpa hat bobbing with her footsteps, the tassels by her ears swinging like braids. Already she was committed to an idea that was nothing more than an off-the-cuff suggestion to find a way through the situation. Luke followed, gloved hands in his pockets, his step measured and slow. She stopped, flung her arms wide, tipped her face skyward and spun in a slow circle, embracing the day. Already her nose and cheeks were pink. He wanted to kiss her. Heaven help him. He wanted to kiss those cheeks, those eyes, those lips. “Help me make a snowman.” She crouched down, gathered a ball of snow and began rolling it.

She’d make a great mother. Not something he’d ever thought before about the women he’d been involved with. She had so much of the carefree spirit of a child within her. And yet she’d seen hardship, she’d been confronted with it daily in Indonesia. Seen it and chosen to keep the flame of optimism alight within her. He crouched, too, began rolling a second snowball. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this, certainly not since he was a child. He stacked his snowball on top of the larger one she’d rolled and began rolling a third for the head.

“Carrot,” she announced, “for the nose. And I don’t suppose you have buttons?”

He shook his head.

She headed back to the house. “I’ll find something.”

Luke was settling the head in place when Meg came hurrying back with a carrot and two plums. She pressed the carrot and fruit into place, one of the plums shedding a single purple tear. Then she wrapped her scarf around the snowman’s neck and pulled a camera from her pocket. “Stand by Frosty.”

“Frosty?”

“It’s almost Christmas. What else are we supposed to call him?”

He reached for the camera. “You stand by…Frosty. I’ll take your picture.”

She shook her head and the light in her eyes dimmed just a little. “I’d like one of you.”

To remember him by? “For that matter, I’d like one of you.” To remember her by. Even though he had the feeling his problem was going to be in trying to forget her.

She shrugged and stood by the snowman. “Come stand with us. My arm is just long enough to take a picture of us both.”

He stood at her side and taking a glove off, eased the camera from her hand. “My arm’s longer.” She pressed up against him and without thinking, he slid his free arm around her shoulders, pulled her closer. The thinking occurred too late, when he inhaled the fragrance of her shampoo. “On three. One. Two. Three.” The shutter clicked.

“One more,” she said. “Just in case.”

“On three again.” This time on three, as the shutter clicked she wriggled in his hold and planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

“Let me see it,” she said as though she hadn’t just done that-kissed him as though it was a perfectly ordinary thing to do. Which, perhaps with someone else it would be, but from Meg it hadn’t felt ordinary. It had felt like a gift.

Refusing to be distracted, he adjusted the setting to replay and, not looking at the picture, passed her the camera. What he did look at was her. Her breath coming in small misty puffs. Her cheeks and nose getting redder still with the cold. The lips that had moments ago touched his face. So much for not getting distracted.

He dropped all pretence of resolution and cupped a hand to one rosy cheek. Meg looked up, a smile playing about her lips. The smile dimmed and her lips parted as she read his intent. Using his teeth he pulled his other glove off, let it fall to the snow so that he could frame her face with both his hands. Skin against skin.

Slowly, he lowered his head and kissed her.

Properly.

If they only had this day left, if he only had a finite and too-limited number of kisses left, then he wasn’t going to let her waste them on his cheek.

The warmth of her mouth was an erotic contrast to the chill of her lips. Her heat, as his tongue teased and tasted, swamped him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him back, softened against him. Pure Meg. Laughter and depth, temptation and innocence. His past, his present and his- Just his past and his present. That’s all it would be.

He kissed her still, widening his stance so that he could fit her more closely against him. Kissing her out here was safe. Layers of clothing and a bitter chill to prevent his taking any of them off. But the temptation was so great that he’d likely stay out till they both froze just for the pleasure of feeling her pliant mouth beneath his, her warmth and sweetness, her eagerness.

It was Meg who broke the kiss, leaning back, her arms looped around his waist so that her hips pressed a little more firmly against his. “I don’t think we should.”

He’d think a little more clearly if it wasn’t for those hips. He knew all the reasons why she was right. This was ending. And it needed to end cleanly. As cleanly as was possible given what had already passed between them. He didn’t want to hurt her. “You’re right. But just one more.” He waited for her smile, waited till the indecision in her eyes was swept away by agreement and the flare of hunger as she abandoned reason and caution and lifted her face to his. Meg. His wife. So quick to respond to him. Something primal stirred. More than lust. He chose not to examine it, let desire and pure pleasure take the upper hand.

They were both breathing heavily, their breaths mingling in the air, by the time she again pulled away. And this time she broke all contact, stepping away from his touch, turning to adjust the snowman’s carrot nose. “We should go in.”

And this time he knew better than to disagree. Because despite what he’d thought, kissing her out here wasn’t safe. Far from it. Kissing the way they had been spoke too openly of more, of picking up where they’d left off last night. Of his falling into her heat. Of staying there.

“Besides, I’m cold.” Her cheeks were flushed.

Luke lifted her hand, pulled a glove off and enclosed her fingers in his. He tucked her hand against his side as he led her back to the house.

Inside again, he hung up their coats. He didn’t look at her cases by the front door as he led her toward the living room, knew a moment’s hesitation as they passed the Christmas tree, he wouldn’t kiss her inside, knew another moment as they passed the stairs, the stairs he wouldn’t lead her up to his bedroom. Finally in the relative sanctuary of the living room, he lit the fire. “Stand here. Warm yourself.”

Unquestioning and not meeting his gaze, she held her hands out to the flames.

Luke left the room, returned in five minutes carrying two cups of cocoa. He didn’t know why looking after her gave him such pleasure and satisfaction, but it did. She stood exactly where he’d left her, staring into the flames.

“You’re warm enough?” He handed her a cup of cocoa and she nodded as she took it, seemingly intrigued by the marshmallows floating on the top.

“What now?” she asked.

Almost all of the ideas that sprang to mind were unwise. “I have a suggestion.”

Her gaze lifted and narrowed on him.

“Not that.” He laughed. Because if he didn’t laugh he’d take the assumption as an invitation. “Not that the idea doesn’t have merit.” A slow blush crept up her face. “I’m suggesting a movie.” She quickly covered the flash of disappointment in her gaze. But the flash had pleased the unwise part of him. Like her, he covered the reaction. He slid a movie into the player, picked up the remote. “The snow’s stopped. Soon enough the roads will be cleared and you’ll leave.” He led her to the couch and sat close beside her, pulling the broad coffee table closer so that he could rest his feet on it. She watched him, waiting for him to continue. He settled into the soft black leather of the couch, pulled her back with him and tried to explain his reasoning. “I never intended to marry. Never thought I would. I don’t need other people the way some do.

I’m content on my own.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “So this might be it. My only chance to spend time with my wife. To experience married life. We can be like an old couple who have comfortable routines they’ve settled into over a lifetime of being together. Cocoa and a movie on a snowy afternoon. We’ll argue over chick flick or action movie.” He picked up the remote, pointed it at the TV and the screen flickered to life. “Action movie will win because we watched your chick flick last week.”

As the opening credits rolled and on-screen a car wound its way up a rocky mountainside at night, she nestled a little closer and stretched her legs out alongside his, resting her small feet, in their red socks, beside his.

They were an hour into the movie which had managed to capture only a portion of his awareness away from her, when Caesar started barking. Moments later the doorbell chimed. Luke glanced at his watch, his mood darkening. He stood. “You keep watching. I just have to deal with this.”

She reached for the remote, located the Pause button. “I’ll wait.”

“I’m not sure how long this will take. Depends on how much of a fuss he makes.”

“He? Jason?”

Luke nodded, resenting this intrusion, the sullying of his afternoon with her. But he needed to deal with it. He’d been thinking about their earlier conversation, about finding a way to deal with Jason that did justice to his mother.

“I’ll wait,” she said, looking away from him as she settled back into the cushioning leather, looking small and stoic, expecting better of him than he was prepared to give. On-screen, the hero was frozen with a gun pressed to the villain’s temple, his eyes bleak.

Seven

Seconds after Luke strode from the room, the sound of voices, muted but clipped, reached Meg, then faded as they headed to Luke’s office along the hallway. She made a bowl of popcorn, set it on the coffee table and then crossed to the wide windows. Outside, Frosty stood a lonely sentinel on the lawn, Meg’s scarf loose about his neck, his eyes dark and desolate. For a time she heard nothing. Then shouting. She crossed to the open living room door, her fingers gripping the door frame, hesitant.

Only one man was shouting. Jason. She couldn’t hear Luke at all.

She was still standing there, distressed by the anger she heard and wondering whether there was anything she could do to help, when the voice quieted. A minute later, Jason stormed out of Luke’s office, slamming the door behind him. He stalked along the hallway toward her.

“Will you be okay?”

Jason looked up, a dark dislike glittered in his eyes. “Don’t pretend you care.”

“I’m not pretending.”

His step slowed. “Then call your husband off.”

“It’s not my place.”

Jason shook his head, disbelieving. “Indonesia. What the hell am I supposed to do there?”

“Indonesia?” That was what Luke had decided?

“The precious Maitland Foundation. I’m supposed to spend the next two years in hell.”

“Beats jail,” she said quietly.

“He couldn’t prove it.”

Not, I didn’t do it. “It’s not so bad. You might even like it. It might even be good for you.”

“That’s what he said.” Jason strode away cursing, and Meg went back into the living room, resumed her seat on the couch. Such a world of difference between the two men. Outside, an engine roared into life. Tires screeched. Several minutes later Luke eased himself down beside her, slipped his arm back around her shoulders. He tugged her in close.

“Good choice.” She chanced a glance at him. He didn’t look happy but wasn’t quite as grim as when he’d left.

He leaned closer, kissed the top of her head and for a second rested his cheek there. “I guess so. Now start this movie up again or I’ll have to assume control of the remote.” No mention of the fact that the roads must now be drivable.

Meg relaxed against him, breathed in his nearness and pressed the button for play. If only.

If only they were a married couple and this was their life. If only he wanted to spend all his snowy afternoons, and rainy and sunny and windy ones, with her. A good man sharing the moments as he held her. Not to mention his nights and mornings, too. Instead of a man who wanted to have this brief time with her and then send her on her way.

Too soon the movie ended. She should stand, move away from Luke, get him to take her to Sally’s. But she didn’t move.

“The sequel’s even better,” he said, his arm still draped over her shoulders, his body pressed against hers.

“I’d heard that it was. So often they’re not.” She was pathetic. Wanting this. Wanting the crumbs of his presence and affection. She was too scared to analyze what it was she felt for her husband, but it was powerful enough that she wanted to eke out every moment she had left with him.

“I have it. Do you want to watch it?”

More than anything, because it bought her another couple of hours with Luke. She made to stand because another couple of hours only prolonged the inevitable. He wanted hours; she wanted years, a lifetime even. He pulled her effortlessly back down. “I should get going to Sally’s,” she said. She’d always been the type to rip a bandage off and get the pain over with.

“Should or want to?” He searched her face.

“Should.” It was the last thing she wanted.

“Then don’t. Stay here. This is okay, isn’t it?” As though that was the only thing stopping her from staying.

This was so much better than okay, which was precisely why she should go to Sally’s.

“I make a mean spaghetti Bolognese.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for both of us if I left now?”

He contemplated her question, gave it more thought than she’d expected and she found herself on tenterhooks for his answer. Finally, he shook his head. “I like being near you, Meg. I don’t know why. You ease something within me. I’m going to miss you when you go, so I’m in no hurry for that to happen.”

He spoke an echo of her thoughts out loud.

Whatever time they had would be all that she would get. She wasn’t going to curtail it. She sank back into the cushions of the couch, determined instead to make every minute, every second of these precious hours count, to store every moment in her memory.

As they watched the sequel, the afternoon bled into dusk which darkened quickly to night. They ate together, his spaghetti Bolognese as good as he’d claimed. And then they watched the third and final installment.

As the closing credits rolled, neither of them made any move to stand.

Far from it. “Lie down here with me,” he said as though he knew that if she got up from the couch it would be to leave. It had to be. “It’s wide enough.”

So they lay down facing one another, heads on cushions. His hand resting at the curve of her waist.

“What will you do when you leave here?” he asked.

Meg chewed her lip. “Sally’s offered me a job with the Maitland Foundation.”

“You’ve accepted?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to see what you thought. Whether that might keep me too close?”

His hand curved more firmly around her. “The thought of having you close isn’t such a terrible thing.”

“But after people have thought we were married.”

“We were married.”

“Not properly.”

He shifted his hand, found hers, touched a finger to the gold band adorning it. “Tell that to the minister.”

“I just mean that it could be awkward.”

“I do what I think is right. I thought, still do, that marrying you was the right thing to do at the time.” He pulled her a little closer. “I’ve had no cause to regret that decision.”

“You don’t regret what we did last night?”

A smile spread across his face. “How could I possibly regret that? The very thought of it could sustain me for years to come.”

“I can’t help feeling that we’re missing something. That we ought to be regretting it.”

“In that case, you’re thinking too much.”

Maybe he was right. She was overthinking things. They’d had their night. She’d be able to take those memories and these with her, tucked up beside him, the scent of his cologne, the snow outside, the fire inside. He would be her benchmark, her standard. But he so far outshone anyone else she’d ever met that it was impossible to imagine that standard being reached again.

They lay on the couch talking for hours about everything and nothing. She’d never shared so much of herself with anyone or felt so honored and warmed by the trust he showed in sharing with her.

They changed positions so that he was spooned behind her, stroking her side. After a time his hand slowed and stopped. His breathing softened.

Meg still lay awake. “What if I loved you?” she whispered into the darkness.

She felt a deeper stillness steal over him.

He’d heard.

He said nothing.

And she knew there was no “what if” about it. Somewhere, somehow she’d fallen in love with him, with his quiet strength and his deep integrity, with his silver eyes and the way he kissed her, held her, and because he of all people seemed to see the person she was inside.

But he hadn’t asked for that-her love.

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” he said gently.

Luke felt Meg shrink a little away from him and against overriding impulse he didn’t pull her back. She didn’t really love him. She couldn’t because he was all wrong for her. He was too old, too cynical about life and people and love. He was a loner. Wasn’t he?

She deserved someone closer to her own age, someone closer to her in optimism and kindness. She imagined qualities in him he didn’t have.

He would let her go. Set her free.

In the morning.

And the thought filled him with desolation. It was the thought of a Meg-less existence that broke his resolve, made him pull her in closer to him, made him try to absorb a little of her essence into himself. He wanted something from her that he’d never wanted from a woman before-just to be with her, to have her near. And the nearer the better. The feelings were so new that he didn’t know what to do with them, how to deal with them.

She’d helped him so much. Helped him on the island when he’d first been injured, helped him by marrying him, and the very thought of her had sustained him when he’d been ill. Even now, lying here like this, her breathing soft and gentle, she soothed something within him, filled and completed him. In so many ways she was his better half. But she deserved more. She deserved to find her own better half.

So he would help her by letting her go.

The doorbell chimed through the house. Meg and Luke struggled to sitting, his arm falling from her. Through the windows a clear, bright day showed snow-covered mountains on the far side of the crystalline lake. Meg had never been so disappointed to see a beautiful day.

Luke stood, running a hand through his hair as he looked down at her. “That’ll be Mark.”

His attorney. That announcement, more than the weather even, told her that her time with Luke was over. She’d served her purpose, and in return had found a deep, brief perfection. That would be enough. It had to be.

They walked to the front door together. He would take Mark to his office. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

She nodded. She’d be gone before then. It was the best, the only, way. She wasn’t going to stay for the humiliation of the terms he wanted to end their connection with, no matter how gently he would do it.

He turned for his office. Mark looked at her, pity in his gaze. “He’ll look after you,” he murmured.

Great, even his attorney felt sorry for her.

Luke stopped at the office door. “Wait,” he said as though he knew she’d already decided to go. He held her gaze until she nodded.

Unable to stay in the house where for such a brief time she’d found bliss, Meg took Caesar outside, striding unseeing along the path she’d walked so often, and tried to shut out her awareness of the ticking time bomb that was Luke’s meeting with Mark.

Caesar found and then dropped a stick in the center of the path. “Not today, buddy.” She strode past it, but when he next overtook her, it was back in his mouth.

It was over. Her fantasy. And she knew the answer to the question she’d posed to Luke-would her working close by be a problem. It might not be for him, but it would be for her. Seeing him and having to not let him see she loved him. Hearing people talk about him. Seeing him dating other women. No, it definitely wasn’t going to work for her. She wasn’t that reasonable. She wasn’t that thick-skinned.

She stopped at the base of a dead and blackened pine that alone had at some point been struck by lightning. Caesar dropped his stick and sniffed, his nose tracking to the body of a small bird, a mountain chickadee, lying still and stiff. Meg stared at the little corpse, her heart breaking at the sight.

She had to leave.

Despite tacitly agreeing to wait, she couldn’t. She would get her car and go. She would do it before the meeting was even over, before Luke and Mark gently, kindly explained the details of how her happiness was to end. Because she knew she couldn’t take their explanations with anything like the dignity they deserved. She considered her options. Sally would come if she called. Her friend would take her to collect her car. And then she could go. Somewhere. Anywhere. Away.

Pulling her phone from her pocket, she hurried back along the path. She caught sight of the lake and the snow-capped mountains through the screen of pine trees and stopped. It was a sight that had always filled her with peace and given her strength. She took a moment to absorb the view for the last time.

Caesar dropped his stick onto her foot.

She shook her head at him. “You don’t give up, do you, buddy?” She bent to pick up the stick and stilled with her fingers wrapped around its roughened bark.

He didn’t give up. He never gave up. Not when it came to something he wanted. Even now he watched her, tail wagging, willing her to throw the stick.

Crystal-clear understanding and resolution welled within her.

Meg straightened and threw the stick. She wasn’t running away. Not this time. She wasn’t subjugating her needs. She wasn’t going to go without telling Luke that she loved him. Without asking him to at least try to love her back. To give her, them, a chance.

Something had begun between them back on the island and that something had blossomed and grown into so much more.

He’d said himself that she should give her needs priority, ask more for the things she wanted. And the only thing, the only one, she wanted and needed was him.

He could grow to love her back. She knew it. He just had to let himself. Because not only was he necessary to her, she was, if not necessary, then at least good, for him. She believed that much with all her heavy heart. A heart that nurtured an insistent flicker of hope.

All she had to lose was her pride. And it was worth the sacrifice to know that she wasn’t going to turn tail. She ran. Not away from him but toward him, toward their home, up the steps pausing briefly at the Christmas tree to make her wish on the single bright star at its top and burst into his office.

Conversation stopped as Luke and Mark looked up at her from the leather armchairs in front of Luke’s desk, surprise in two pairs of eyes. They both stood. Meg’s gaze went briefly to the single thin stack of papers neatly aligned on Luke’s desk. Divorce papers? Her heart hammered in her chest.

She walked up to Luke, lifted the mistletoe she’d pulled from the Christmas tree and held it above his head. Stretching up onto her tiptoes, she kissed him, joining her mouth to his, trying to put a forewarning of her love into the tenderness of her kiss.

His arms slid obligingly around her waist, he angled his head to deepen the kiss. She could almost give in to the temptation of just this, being held in his arms. But she needed more. She broke the kiss, stepped back and out of his hold. “Mark, I want to talk to my husband. Alone.” She kept her gaze on Luke, he met it steadily, emotions in his eyes she didn’t dare interpret and a glimmer of wry amusement at her demand.

“I was just going. I’ll see myself out.” Mark’s voice reached her seconds before he shut the office door quietly behind him. Leaving her alone with Luke.

For the longest time she stared at him, he was everything to her; he was the man she loved. She just had to tell him that.

She took a deep breath and pointed to his desk. “I won’t sign those papers.”

He frowned and his gaze flicked to the desk.

“I don’t care what you’re offering. I want more. I want you. I’m not going to let you shut me out of your life because you don’t want to need anyone. It doesn’t work that way. You need me. You just don’t know it. And I…I need you. I love you. You might not be ready for that yet, but you have to give it, me, a chance.”

Luke closed the distance she’d tried to establish and pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. He eased the mistletoe from her fingers, held it above her head and sliding his finger from her lips, replaced it with his mouth, looped his arms once more around her.

Too soon he broke the kiss. “I don’t want you to sign those papers.”

“You don’t?”

“No.” He shook his head and a smile touched his lips. “They’re to do with Jason. Not you. Not us.”

“But I thought…Mark…he wasn’t here because of me, because of you wanting a divorce?”

“We did discuss you.”

“And?”

“I told him we’d slept together.”

“And?”

“And I told him I love you, which was wrong of me.”

Because it wasn’t the truth? Her jaw clenched with the force of suppressed emotion.

He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks. “Because you should have been the first one I told.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. “It wasn’t until Mark walked in that I was forced to contemplate a Meg-less existence. The prospect was dreadful. From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were somehow necessary to me. I didn’t realize how or why, but I do now. I want you in my life, my home, my heart. Always. If you’ll have me.”

Meg nodded, her throat too clogged to speak.

“Is that a yes?”

She nodded again.

He lifted his hands to her face, his silver eyes glittering with emotion. “Hi, honey, we’re home,” he said. And then, finally, he kissed her.