Chapter 4

‘Oh...’ Layla made no further comment, knowing how touchy Emily could be, confiding in you one moment and snapping your nose off the next. "There’s plenty more fish in the sea!" Emily declared, slamming the fridge door and straightening, her blonde hair flying around her angry face. "If he comes calling again, he won’t find me waiting for him." "No," Layla agreed. Maybe you’ll meet someone tonight, "her cousin mused. I mean, it’s past time you leapt off the old virgin wagon and got a life!’ How do you know I haven’t already? Layla inquired. "Because you always come home at night and never that late. You know what I think? You’re too fussy.’ "Possibly," Layla conceded, sipping her tea while wondering how soon she could make her excuses, strip off, and get into bed to catch up on her sleep. Emily’s entire world seemed to revolve around the man in her life, and she got terribly insecure if she didn’t have one. Layla’s world, however, revolved around her studies. She had worked incredibly hard to win a place at medical school, was currently at the top of her class, and was convinced that men could be a dangerous distraction. Nothing was going to come between Layla and her dream of becoming a really useful person with medical knowledge and the skills to help others. After all, she had been raised with the warning story of how her mother had screwed up her life by relying on the wrong man. On the other hand, Layla also knew that sooner or later she would have to find out what sex was all about. How could she possibly advise her future patients if she didn’t have that all-important personal experience? But she was yet to meet anyone she wanted to become intimate with and thought it was very sad that something more than logic was required to fuel attraction between a man and a woman. After all, if only logic had ruled, Layla would have become involved with her best friend and study partner, Steve. She respected Steve as loyal, kind, and thoughtful, exactly the sort of man she respected. But if Steve, in his wire-rimmed spectacles and the sweaters his auntie knitted for him, had threatened to take his shirt off, she would have run a mile. There was not even the smallest spark on her side of the fence, but she kept on trying to feel that spark because she knew that Steve would make a wonderful partner. * * * Lucas stood in the rooftop bar admiring a bird’s-eye view of Montage Laguna Beach. By night, the busy resort in California was like a multicoloured jewelled necklace. Flaring scarlet lights in the night sky announced the grand opening of the Fever nightclub. Lucas smiled. Lucas’ partner in Fever, knew how to publicize such events and attract the attention of the tourists. "You’ve done an amazing job here," Lucas commented approvingly, gazing down through the glass and steel barriers at the packed dance floor. "Let me give you a proper tour," Randolph urged, keen to show off his masterpiece. A renowned architect and interior designer, he had good reason to want to show off the sleek contemporary lines of his creation. Having delivered exactly what he had promised, Randolph was keen to interest Lucas in making another, even larger investment. Almost a week of solitary introspection on board the ‘Seaduction’ had driven Lucas to the edge of cabin fever. He was fed up with work, sick of his own company but in no real mood for anyone else’s. He strolled down the illuminated staircase with Randolph, his bodyguards, surrounding him. The noise of the music was such that he caught only one word out of two spoken to him. Randolph was talking about an exclusive hotel complex he wanted to build further along the coast, but Lucas was not in the right mood to discuss the project. From the landing, he gazed down at the crowded floor, and that was when he saw her standing by the corner of the brilliantly lit bar, light shining off her hair an eye-catching shade of metallic copper... Her? His brain labeled her "just another woman," while his brooding gaze clung to her triangular face. He tore his attention from the fey quality of her delicately pointed features. Fey? "he silently repeated to himself. Where had he got that strange word from? He noted a full, lush pink mouth and the curling mass of glorious red hair snaking down her narrow spine. It also appeared to be more natural.His attention lingered, positively drinking in the swooping curves lovingly delineated by a pale lace dress. She had the figure of a fertility goddess with high full breasts, a tiny, highly feminine waist and a voluptuous bottom. His long brown fingers curled around the guard rail, a spooked sensation making the hair rise at the nape of his neck even as the throbbing pulse in his groin reacted and swelled with a very male lack of conscience or morality. He couldn’t remember when he had last been with a woman, an acknowledgement that almost shocked Lucas back to reality. Of course, when he was working, he would never waste time seeking out a woman...and when he wasn’t? The necessity of explaining his engagement and specifying no-strings-attached upfront had unequivocally cooled his libido. But now, without the smallest warning, he was recalling Beverly’s married lover, and he was angrily asking himself why he had bothered to halt his high sex drive. After all, Beverly didn’t care what he did as long as he didn’t interfere with her pleasures. And was that truly what he wanted from his future wife? A woman who would never question where he went or what he did? Or demand that he love her? Of course it was what he wanted, he reasoned with growing impatience, particularly when the alternative was jealous, debilitating scenes. Beverly’s affair had put him on edge, but did that affair offend him so much that he intended to break off the engagement and start looking for a more puritanical bride? He decided squarely that that would be nonsensical. He would never know any woman as well as he knew Beverly Carter. Struggling to suppress his unusually troubled and uneasy thoughts, Lucas focused on the redhead’s glorious shape. Hunger filled the hollow inside him, and it was the sort of hunger he hadn’t felt in years, gnawing powerfully at him with painful persistence, ignoring his rigorous efforts to pursue a functional conversation with Randolph. In an abrupt movement of rejection, he looked away from the redhead, but every muscle in his big, well-built body snapped taut. Nerves he hadn’t known he had jangled like alarm bells until Lucas was forced to glance back to the corner of the bar lest he lose sight of the woman. What was it about her? Perhaps he should find out.