‘Can I come too?’ Owen asked.
‘Who is going where?’
Both men turned quickly, and Luke’s cup wobbled as he saw Jess standing in the doorway of his house, dressed in jeans and low boots, her face mostly free of make-up and her hair pulled into a messy knot.
Luke felt his stomach clench and release.
After he’d introduced her to Owen and they’d exchanged some small talk, Owen glanced at his watch and excused himself. Luke thought that he needed to get back to the lands too, but he felt reluctant to leave Jess. It wasn’t good manners just to leave her on her own, he told himself...lied to himself.
‘We need to get your stuff into the manor house. I switched the electrics on; you now have lights but it’ll be a couple of hours until you get hot water.’
‘Thanks.’ Jess wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ll do that later. I want to explore St Sylve, if that’s okay.’
‘Sure.’ Luke shrugged. ‘I’ll give you a tour. What do you want to see?’
Jess shrugged. ‘Everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘I know the cellars and the buildings. I want to see the lands and the vineyard and the orchards.’
‘Okay.’
Luke stepped into the house and deposited the coffee cups on the hall table. Yanking down a heavy jacket from the rack behind the door, he handed it to Jess, thinking of how icy it could get on the bike. He pulled on his own battered wool-lined leather jacket over his long-sleeved T-shirt and stuffed a beanie into one of the pockets. In the shadows of the mountains the temperature could drop rapidly.
‘If you want to tag along, I need to check on how far along my staff are with the pruning, then I need to go across the farm to check on repairs to a fence.’
Luke gestured to his powerful dirt bike and led her towards it.
‘My Land Cruiser has gone in for a service, and the farm truck has gone to town, so this is the only mode of transport I have at the moment.’ Luke slung his leg over the bike. ‘Hop on. Relax and don’t fight me. Do you want a helmet?’
Jess sent him a cocky grin before sliding on behind him. ‘No, I want my own bike.’
‘You ride?’ Luke asked, not able to imagine this city slicker in charge of a dirt bike.
‘I have four older brothers. I ride, fish, surf, play one hell of a game of touch rugby, can start my own fire for a barbecue and change a tyre,’ Jess said as she settled herself on the bike, her thighs warm against his hips, her breasts against his back.
Oh, hell, she sounded like the perfect woman. That was not good. Luke turned the key and the bike roared to life.
‘Oh—and the faster the better!’ Jess yelled in his ear. Luke grinned as he picked up speed. ‘Yee-hah!’
Luke felt her hands, light on his hips, and smelt the occasional whiff of something sexy from her perfume. He knew that she was smiling, and when her body relaxed he realised that her tension had disappeared.
Luke felt the wind on his face, her warmth at his back and felt...content? He let the thought roll around his head...contentment.
No, probably not. And even if it was, experience had taught him that it wouldn’t last.
* * *
It was mid-afternoon before Luke turned the bike to head back to St Sylve, and Jess was past frozen. A cold front had rapidly moved in, with an icy wind that had blown in heavy clouds and was sneaking in under her clothes. Jess buried her face in between Luke’s shoulderblades and gripped his hips with now frozen hands. She wished she felt comfortable enough to slide her hands up under his jacket to get her hands out of the freezing wind.
Jess pulled her head up as Luke braked and stopped the bike. He left it idling as he half turned to face her. He took her hands in his and rubbed them.
‘I can feel you shivering. Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you out this long,’ Luke said, blowing his hot breath onto her hands.
Jess quivered and not only because of the cold. Seeing that dark head bent over her hands and feeling his warm breath on her skin made the worms squirm in her stomach.
‘How long until we’re back?’ Jess asked, her teeth chattering.
Luke winced. ‘About forty minutes. This cold front came up really quickly.’ He looked up and frowned at the black clouds gathering above. ‘We might get wet.’
Jess shrugged. ‘Well, then, we’d better get moving.’
Luke pulled a black-and-white beanie out of his pocket and pulled it over her ears, tucking away her hair. They were close enough to kiss, Jess thought. She could count each individual spiky eyelash, could see the gold highlights in his very green eyes, could make out the faint traces of a scar in his left eyebrow.