‘Well, I practised my grovelling on them before coming here.’
‘Is that what you’ve come to do? Grovel?’
‘If I have to.’ Luke placed his untouched bottle of beer on the counter and rubbed his hand over his jaw. ‘I hope it won’t come to that. I have a great deal to say to you and I hope you’ll hear me out.’
‘You’re here, in my kitchen, and I can’t kick you out or gag you, so I don’t have much of a choice, do I?’ Jess retorted.
It was so unfair that he could look so good and she couldn’t touch him. That he was so close and yet still so inaccessible. She couldn’t read his eyes, couldn’t find a clue to what he wanted to say in his inscrutable face, his tense body.
‘Thank you for finding out what happened to my mother.’
‘Even though I interfered and took the decision out of your hands?’ Jess asked, sceptical.
Luke shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and rocked on his heels. ‘I was scared to do it—scared of what I’d find out. I had finally come to terms with my mother’s death and I didn’t want to have to live with something else. When you handed me that envelope I felt like you were pushing me somewhere I didn’t want to go.’
Jess grimaced at the reluctant note she heard in his voice. ‘You’re still not happy I did it.’
‘I’ve been on my own for so long that I find it difficult to accept help—to feel comfortable with someone...’
‘Meddling? Interfering? Snooping?’
‘Concerned about me,’ Luke said firmly. ‘It’ll take some getting used to.’
Jess felt her heart roll over in her chest but dismissed the spurt of hope as her imagination. ‘That implies that there will be a tomorrow for us?’
‘I’m hoping that there will be a lifetime of tomorrows.’
Jess licked her lips. ‘You called me a control freak and overbearing, said you understood why my exes kicked me into touch. Snotty and interfering...’
‘I know, I know...I’m sorry. But I’d been slapped with a whole lot of things that day that I didn’t know how to deal with and I was reeling. You were in the splash zone.’
‘Like what?’ Jess demanded.
‘When you—briefly I’ll admit—thought that I’d slept with Kelly, I was hurt. I wanted you to trust me implicitly, but you hesitated.’
‘I did trust you—when I started thinking and not reacting.’
‘Then I saw the ad, saw all my dreams captured on screen, and I felt at sea. And then I realised that you loved me...’
‘Not any more,’ Jess stated, her colour heightened.
‘Liar,’ Luke countered. ‘I realised that you loved me but I didn’t know what to do about it. How could I ask you to leave your family, your business, your life to live with me? Someone who has no idea how to be part of a family, who doesn’t know how to give you what you need? Then you hit me with my past and it was too much...it was all too much. I miss you, Jess. I need you in my life.’
‘You hurt me,’ Jess said in a small voice. ‘You took my heart out and stomped on it. And now you’re back, asking me to risk it again?’
‘I want to be with you, Jess. I want you to be my family.’
Luke rubbed his shoulder with his hand. Jess heard his expulsion of air.
‘After my anger subsided and I looked at the folder I needed some time to think it all through: my mum, my father, you.’
‘And?’
‘And I’m glad to know that my mum loved me. I realise that my childhood is over and, most important, that I want to be with you—make a commitment to you. I don’t do that lightly or easily, because when I do, I do it with everything I have.’ Luke stepped forward and placed his hands on either side of Jess’s hips, effectively blocking her in. ‘I’m so in love with you.’
Jess gnawed on her bottom lip and looked up at Luke with wide, scared eyes. ‘So what are you suggesting, Luke, exactly?’
‘I realise that you can’t leave your business, so can we find a compromise? You spend a week with me at St Sylve, then I spend the next week with you here?’
When Jess didn’t answer, Luke sped up. ‘If that doesn’t work for you I’ll leave St Sylve, let Owen run it. Hire a vintner...go back to venture capital full-time.’
‘You’d hate it,’ Jess pointed out.
‘But I’d be with you, which is the most important thing to me.’ Luke raised an enquiring eyebrow at her still-troubled face. ‘What’s the problem, Jess?’