‘You bet I am.’
Maybe he should have organised a chaperon. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought Ruby here in the first place. Maybe he needed to get a grip and take their relationship back to what it had been before—distant, formal. But something had shifted in the last twenty-four hours. Something that couldn’t be so easily dialled back. There was a new sense of intimacy, a sharing of hurts and wounds from the past that had somehow breached the chasm that had existed between them before.
And being so far away from Rothwell Park added another dimension to their relationship. Being away from his ancestral home always gave him a sense of freedom, a sense of living in the moment rather than in the past. But was living in the moment with Ruby a good idea or a bad idea?
All he knew was that he trusted her to help him sign off on the inspection of the villa for the builder. Her attention to detail was similar to his own—little escaped her. Would she notice the way he was drawn to her, even though everything rational and logical in his mind told him to keep his distance?
He had made it a whole lot harder to keep his distance by bringing her to his island.
They would be totally alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
AFEWMINUTESLATER, Ruby stepped down from the helicopter on legs that were not quite steady—not because of the flight, but because of how close she had come to leaning closer and kissing Lucas.
The temptation to do so had been close to overwhelming. She had forgotten all about the pilot, forgotten all about the dreaded flight—all she had been focussed on was Lucas. In the space of a few hours he had become her entire focus. She was aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before. Aware of the magnetic pull of his body to her sensually starved one. Aware of the subtle change in their relationship that was not just about his current blindness but something else—something she couldn’t quite describe.
What had she got herself into by coming with him to his private island? Normally she was so straight down the line and sensible. She wasn’t the type to do things on a whim, to be impulsive or reckless. But it seemed there was a secret part of her that was all those things—or at least when she was with Lucas Rothwell.
She was starting to understand why Harper had found it so hard to resist Jack Livingstone. What was it about renowned playboys that was so darn irresistible? Not that Ruby had ever considered Lucas a particularly charming man. He had always been so brusque and aloof with her in the past. But his gentle handling of her phobic reaction to the helicopter flight had revealed a tender and compassionate side to his personality that was equally addictive as full-blown charm. Perhaps even more so.
Ruby stood for a moment, taking in her surroundings. The island was larger than she had been expecting, with a forest of cypress pines behind the helicopter landing spot. It was fringed by sandy beaches, one of which had a jetty near a luxury villa.
She lifted her face to the sun to breathe in the salty sea air. ‘I feel like I’ve stepped into a fairy tale.’
‘It’s a nice place. Serene, peaceful...’
‘I love serene and peaceful,’ Ruby said, linking her arm through his as they followed Stavros, who was taking their luggage on ahead. ‘I used to dream of visiting a place like this when I was a kid. You should’ve seen some of the places I lived in before I came to live with Gran. It would have made your skin crawl.’
‘I hate the thought of you suffering like that.’ His voice was laced with anger. ‘Some people don’t deserve to have children.’
‘Careful, there’s a couple of steps here on the path,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m just glad I had Gran and your parents. They were kind to me—especially your mother. I remember once she let me play dress-up with some of her clothes and jewellery. I had the best fun. I pretended I was a movie star. She even gave me a bright red lipstick to use. Gran took it off me, of course. She’s not a make-up person.’
Lucas stopped walking to look in the direction of the cypress forest, his brow furrowed in a frown. ‘My mother lost a baby before I was born. It was a little girl. They—or I should say Mum—called her Sophia. My father was against naming a miscarried child.’
Ruby’s heart contracted. ‘I didn’t know that. How terribly sad.’
Lucas continued walking along the path with her. ‘Yes, I imagine it was. I don’t think my father is the type of man to understand how a woman would feel about such things. He refused to talk about it—ever. It was as if it had never happened. My mother was thrilled when she got pregnant with me, but I’ve always wondered if she was disappointed that she didn’t have another little girl to replace the one she lost.’
This time it was Ruby who stopped walking to look up at him. ‘But she loved you, Lucas. You’re surely not in doubt of that?’
He gave a loose shrug of one broad shoulder, his lips set in a grim line. ‘It was a difficult birth, and she had a long bout of postnatal depression afterwards. A nanny was engaged for me, and she ended up staying on until I went to boarding school at six. My mother loved me in her way, but she never stopped grieving for the child she lost. Unfortunately, due to the complications of my birth, there was no possibility of her having any more children.’
‘No wonder your parents had such a rocky relationship,’ Ruby said. ‘There were so many unresolved issues. But I wonder why Gran didn’t tell me any of this.’
‘Your grandmother is an old-school housekeeper. What goes on up upstairs, stays upstairs.’
Ruby wondered what her gran would think of her spending a week alone with Lucas Rothwell. When she had quickly visited her in hospital, before leaving, she had been a little sketchy on the details, simply saying she was filling in for her as housekeeper.
She resumed walking with Lucas up the path leading to the villa. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t know more about your mother’s pain. I might’ve been able to comfort her in some way.’
‘You did comfort her,’ Lucas said with heavy conviction. ‘She loved it when you came to live at Rothwell. She would be so proud of you now...to see how you’ve turned out. A smart and successful businesswoman who sets goals and works hard to achieve them, no matter what obstacles are in her way.’
‘You’vebeen my biggest obstacle so far.’ Ruby gave him a playful shoulder-bump. ‘Go on—admit it.’
He made a soft sound of wry amusement. ‘But you won me over in the end.’
Ruby wasn’t so sure about that...