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‘Agreed,’ he said.
When he clasped Lucia’s hand their heat mingled. Her eyes darkened and her lips parted to suck in air, but there was still too much reserve in her—and until he got past that …
She turned for home as if nothing of significance had passed between them.
But it had and they both knew it. They had both committed to travelling the same road together for a while, with neither of them certain where that road might lead. His goal had always been straightforward: restore St Oswalds and the guest house, and then shoot back to attend to his other business interests. But then he’d rediscovered Lucia and retraced her steps to London, with everything that involved.
He should have known life was always going to be more complicated than he had originally planned.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They say that you have to get all the pus out of a wound before it can heal, but the cleansing of the wound can be traumatic.
They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Who is this indefatigable ‘they’? And have ‘they’ tried it? Have ‘they’ tried laying themselves bare in front of the one person with whom ‘they’ least want to share their shame?
THEY reached the house and parted without a word to find a shower. She came down to find Luke in the kitchen. He didn’t waste any time—but then subtlety had never been Luke’s strong point.
‘Let’s talk about what happened in London,’ he said tensely, his eyes like shards of glass.
‘Luke, please, I don’t want to do this now.’ Her voice rose with every syllable. Luke’s expression told her he hadn’t just dug up part of her life she had been trying so hard to forget, he had laid it bare, and now he was going to shake it in her face and demand a reaction. ‘Please don’t make me …’
Luke slammed the door shut so there was no escape from the kitchen. Leaning back against it, he said in a deceptively soft voice, ‘As someone who cares about you, Lucia, I think it’s important that we do this.’
‘I don’t care what you think. I don’t need you to fight my battles for me, Luke—’
‘So I’m not supposed to care that I find you working as a cleaner in a trashy club?’ he broke in. ‘Or to notice that you’re living in a barely habitable caravan in Cornwall, out of season on a rundown caravan park?’
‘You’re happy enough to work with me.’
‘Margaret’s known us long enough,’ Luke said, refusing to rise. ‘And I’m giving Margaret the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she’s on to something.’
‘Let me out of the kitchen now, Luke. I don’t want to talk about this.’
‘If not now, when?’ he demanded. ‘You’ll never be ready, Lucia. You keep everything locked inside you until it grows like a worm and eats you from the inside out. And I won’t stand by and watch that happen.’
Luke was whip-fast as she tried to slip past him. She stared in fury at his fists planted either side of her face on the door. ‘If co-operation’s the key to working together you’re not making a great start,’ she fired back. ‘First you go nosing about in London, and now you’re trying to—’
‘I’m trying to what?’ he bit out.
She had been distracted by something else. ‘You’ve been fighting,’ she exclaimed under her breath. ‘Luke, what have you done?’ she asked faintly.
Pulling back, he studied his bruised knuckles. ‘I’ve been hitching up caravans and moving rocks. What?’ he demanded. ‘Do you seriously think I’d beat up on some sad, disgusting little man? Is that why you think my knuckles are bruised?’
‘So you know …’ she whispered.
‘Of course I know,’ Luke confirmed. ‘What I can’t understand is why you didn’t tell me.’
‘Because whatever happened in London I’ve dealt with it. It’s over and it will never happen again.’
‘Is it over?’ Luke said quietly.
As he spoke Luke lowered his arms and stepped away from the door, but this time she made no attempt to escape. Le
aning back against the wall, she hugged herself for comfort as she remembered the day her life in London had come to an abrupt end.
‘Moving from getting a good degree to my new life in London was supposed to be so different from the way it worked out—so straightforward.’
