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One touch.
She’d be right back where she was so many years ago, hungry and hot for him.
Oh, who was she kidding?
She’d never stopped wanting him, and feeling like he might want her too?
It might be worth any regrets they might have come morning.
And heaven help her, if he didn’t ask her a question soon, she was going to push him back on the sofa and get her hands on him where they should have been years ago.
His eyes moved from her eyes to her mouth and then lower where she could feel her blouse gaping open enough that he would see the silk cup of her bra.
“Caro? Why did you leave?”
CHAPTER 5
“Caro, why did you leave?”
He couldn’t regret the question, even if his voice held a plaintive note that he hated. Despised.
Lucas hated the gnawing ache in his middle even more.
He saw her mouth working to speak, but he didn’t hear the words.
He hoped that she had an answer for him. He’d spent over a decade trying to imagine what it would be.
“I had you,” he had words pushing their way out of his heart, desperate to be heard, “I know that I had you that night. The way you kissed me back. The way you pressed up against me.” He felt himself harden to the point of pain in his jeans. Just the thought of her heat pressed up against his cock. “I had you and then you were gone.”
“You had a call.”
He looked at her and knew that she didn’t even think that was much of an excuse. Her cheeks were ruddy and dark. It wasn’t a color that agreed with her. Neither was her ridiculous answer.
“The call ended.”
“The call ended,” she repeated, “and your daughter came in. I felt like I’d been caught red handed.” Her cheeks heated as if it had just happened to her again. “At least we weren’t caught with our pants down.”
“Very near to,” he reminded her. “Another minute or two and I would have had you stripped down on that prep table having the tasting that I’d been dreaming of for weeks.”
The way her eyes widened made his chest expand with an indrawn breath. He liked the idea of surprising her. Liked the idea of making her gasp and groan.
He needed to touch her soon or he might lose his mind.
But he still needed answers.
“Why didn’t you stay when Nadia came in?”
“Why?”
The look on her face was hard to see. It unsettled him beyond what he thought he could handle.
“Yes. Why, Caroline? What could have sent you away?”
Her whole posture changed. She sat up and her spine stretched until she looked him straight in the eye. “I did. I walked away because I wasn’t going to be an obstacle for you.”
He felt the back of his neck heat up. “Obstacle? What are you talking about?”
“You had a young daughter who needed you, Lucas. And me? I was just starting out. Going out into the world after working for a world class chef already felt like skydiving with a fear of heights. What started between us that night? That was a whole other mountain to scale. I didn’t know if I could handle it.”
