LITMIR.BIZ

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a glance at the spider and fought back a shudder. ‘It’s probably got babies. It seems cruel to kill it.’

      He shook his head as if he was having a bad dream. ‘Okay. So I humanely remove the spider.’ He picked up an old greetings card off the bookshelf and a glass tumbler from the drinks cabinet. He glanced at her. ‘You sure you want to watch?’

      Audrey rubbed at the creepy-crawly sensation running along her arms. ‘It’ll be good for me. Exposure therapy.’

      ‘Ri-i-ight.’ Lucien shrugged and approached the spider with the glass and the card.

      Audrey covered her face with her hands but then peeped through the gaps in her splayed fingers. There was only so much exposure she would deal with at any one time.

      Lucien slipped the card beneath the spider and then placed the glass over it. ‘Voila. One captured spider. Alive.’ He walked to the front door of the cottage and then, dashing through the pelting rain, placed the spider under the shelter of the garden shed a small distance away.

      He came back, sidestepping puddles and keeping his head down against the driving rain. Audrey grabbed a towel from the downstairs bathroom and handed it to him. He rubbed it roughly over his hair.

      She was insanely jealous of the towel. She had towel envy. Who knew such a thing existed? She wanted to run her fingers through that thick, dark, damp hair. She wanted to run her hands across his scalp and pull his head down so his mouth could cover hers. She wanted to see if his firm mouth would soften against hers or grow hard and insistent with passion.

      She wanted. Wanted. Wanted the one thing she wasn’t supposed to want.

      Lucien scrunched up the towel in one hand and pushed back his hair with the other. ‘This storm looks like it’s not going to end anytime soon.’

      Just like the storm of need in her body.

      What was it about Lucien that made her feel so turned on? No other man triggered this crazy out-of-character reaction in her. She didn’t fantasise about other men. She didn’t stare at them and wonder what it would be like to kiss them. She didn’t ache to feel their hands on her body. But Lucien Fox had always made her feel this way. It was the bane of her life that he was the only man she was attracted to. She couldn’t walk past him without wanting to touch him. She couldn’t be in the same room—the same country—without wanting him.

      What was wrong with her?

      She didn’t even like him as a person. He was too formal and stiff. He rarely smiled. He thought she was silly and irresponsible like her mother. Not that her two tipsy episodes had helped in that regard, but still. She had always hated her mother’s weddings ever since she’d gone to the first one as a four-year-old.

      By the time Sibella married Lucien’s father for the first time, Audrey was eighteen. A couple of glasses of champagne—well, it might have been three or four, but she couldn’t remember—had helped her cope reasonably well with the torture of watching her mother marry yet another unsuitable man. Audrey would be the one to pick up the pieces when it all came to a messy and excruciatingly public end.

      Why couldn’t she get through a simple wedding reception or two or three without lusting over Lucien?

      Another boom of thunder sounded so close by it made the whole cottage shudder. Audrey winced. ‘Gosh. That was close.’

      Lucien looked down at her. ‘You’re not scared of storms?’

      ‘No. I love them. I particularly love watching them down here, coming across the fields.’

      He twitched one of the curtains aside. ‘Where did you park your car? I didn’t see it when I drove in.’

      ‘Under the biggest oak tree,’ Audrey said. ‘I didn’t want it to be easy to see in case the press followed me.’

      ‘Did you see anyone following you?’

      ‘No, but there were recent tyre tracks on the driveway—I thought they were Mum and Harlan’s.’

      ‘The caretaker’s, perhaps?’

      Audrey lifted her eyebrows. ‘Does this place look like it’s been taken care of recently?’

      ‘Good point.’

      Another flash of lightning split the sky, closely followed by a boom of thunder and then the unmistakable sound of a tree crashing down and limbs and branches splintering on metal.

      ‘Which tree did you say you parked under?’ Lucien asked.

      Audrey’s stomach lurched like a limousine on loose gravel. ‘No. No. No. Noooooo!’

       CHAPTER TWO

      LUCIEN HAD TO stop Audrey from dashing outside to check out the state of her car by restraining her with a firm hand on her forearm. ‘No. Don’t go out there. It’s too dangerous. There are still limbs and branches coming down.’

      ‘But I have to see how much damage there is,’ she said, wide-eyed.

      ‘Wait until the storm passes. There could be power lines down or anything out there.’

      She pulled at her lower lip with her teeth, her expression so woebegone it made something in his chest shift. He suddenly realised he was still holding her by the arm and removed his hand, surreptitiously opening and closing his fingers to stop the tingling sensation.

      He usually avoided touching her.

      He avoided her—period.

      From the moment he’d met her at his father’s first wedding to her mother he’d been keen to keep his distance. Audrey had only been eighteen and a young eighteen at that. Her crush on him had been mildly flattering but unwelcome. He’d shut her down with a stern lecture and hoped she would ignore him on the rare occasions their paths crossed.

      He’d felt enormous relief when his father had divorced her mother because he hadn’t cared for Sibella’s influence on his father. But then three years later they’d remarried and his path intersected with Audrey’s again. Then twenty-one and not looking much less like the innocent schoolgirl she’d been three years before, she’d made another advance on him at their parents’ second wedding. He’d cut her down with a look and hoped she’d finally get the message...even though a small part of him had been tempted to indulge in a little flirtation with her. He had wanted to kiss her. He’d wanted to hold her luscious body against his and let nature do the rest. Sure he had. He had been damn close to doing it too. Way too close. Dangerously close.

      But he’d ruthlessly shut down that part of himself because the last thing he wanted was to get involved with Audrey Merrington. Not just because of who her mother was but because Audrey was the cutesy homespun type who wanted the husband, the house, the hearth, the hound and the happy-ever-after.

      He wasn’t against marriage but he had in mind a certain type of marriage to a certain type of woman some time in the future. In the distant future. He would never marry for passion the way his father did. He would never marry for any other reason than convenience and companionship. And he would always be in control of his emotions.

      Audrey rubbed at her arm as if she too was removing the sensation of his touch. ‘I suppose you’re going to give me a lecture about the stupidity of parking my car under an old tree. But the storm had barely started when I arrived.’

      ‘It’s an easy mistake to make,’ Lucien said.

      ‘Not for someone as perfect as you.’ She followed up the comment with a scowl.

      He was the last person who would describe himself as perfect. If he was so damn perfect then what the hell was he doing glancing at her mouth all the time? But something about Audrey’s mouth had always tempted his gaze. It was soft and full and shaped in a perfect Cupid’s bow.

      He wondered how many men had

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