It Was Only a Kiss

SEVEN



‘Ghosts do exist!’ Jess insisted, her glass of red wine wobbling dangerously.

Luke took the glass from her hand and put it back onto the small round table they were all sitting around in Rosie’s Pub and Grill. It was his—and his friends’—favourite pub to hang out in: a relaxed atmosphere, pool tables and, on the weekends, a surprisingly good band that played all their favourites.

‘You know, for a shockingly smart woman, your ability to believe in nonsense amazes me,’ Ally said, picking up a chip from the basket between them.

Luke agreed with her, but was old enough and wise enough not to say so with quite so much emphasis.

‘Just because you can’t see it or measure it doesn’t mean it’s nonsense,’ Jess replied.

‘It just means that you have a vivid imagination and no respect for science,’ Ally retorted, draping her arm around Owen’s neck.

His friend had that goofy look on his face that suggested that he’d been expertly and thoroughly used...and he certainly wasn’t complaining.

God willing, he’d have that same look on his face before long.

When the conversation drifted to the campaign, Luke thought that he’d moved from actively loathing the process of making the advertisements to tolerating the process. He enjoyed the physical stuff—riding the Ducati, surfing, even the mountain biking today had been fun. What wasn’t fun about hurtling down a forest trail at speed?

It was the attention he loathed. The cameras and the people constantly watching him sent him straight back to his childhood. He couldn’t shake the feeling that instead of having just his father waiting for him to mess up, now he had a posse of strangers waiting for him to fail. Jess helped him get through; she had a way of calming his churning thoughts with a quick smile. Hell, just her presence and constant chatter relaxed him...although he’d never admit that to her.

Luke sipped his beer and looked at Jess. He liked her, and it had been a long time since he’d just liked a woman. Along with the liking he also respected her; it took hard work and guts to build what she had, and he admired her dedication and work ethic. Jess, he realised, was not after a free ride from any man.

Luke looked across the room towards the pool tables. ‘A table is finally empty. Who wants a game?’

Owen and Ally nodded and Jess shrugged. Luke pulled her to her feet. ‘You and me against Owen and Ally. That’ll make it a little more interesting.’

Jess frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Two strong and two weak players,’ Luke explained.

Jess stopped in her tracks and looked at Ally, who grinned. ‘And we’re the weak players?’

Luke exchanged a look with Owen. They played most Friday nights and were pretty good at pool. Actually, they were excellent. ‘Uh...yes.’

Jess sent him a look that made his hair curl. ‘Well, let’s make this really interesting. Ally and me against you and Owen.’

Luke shrugged and smiled at Owen across Jess’s head. How could they lose? ‘Sure. What are the stakes?’

‘Dinner at the only Michelin-starred restaurant in the country—the one down the road. Losers pay.’

Again, how could he lose?

* * *

When Jess sank the winning shot, she rested her hands on top of her cue and shook her head at him. Her brown eyes sparkled in the low light of the bar.

‘Make the reservation, Savage, and bring your credit card with the biggest limit.’

Luke shook his head at the empty table. ‘How?’

‘I keep telling you that I have four elder brothers. When are you going to learn?’

* * *

Luke placed his elbow on the table and looked at Jess, who was making patterns in the condensation of her glass. She looked tired, Luke thought, and glanced at his watch. It was close to midnight and the band had switched from dance music to blues. It was freezing out, but a fire roared at one end of the room and the mood in the bar was mellow.

Owen and Ally had made their way back to St Sylve, and he supposed he needed to get Jess home, but he was reluctant to end the evening.

‘Crazy week ahead,’ Jess said quietly.

‘Like the last couple have been a walk in the park?’ Luke responded with a wry smile.

‘We’re filming the family scene at St Sylve on Tuesday, and my own family is coming in on Thursday night.’

He hadn’t forgotten. Luke licked his bottom lip and asked the question that he’d been longing to ask since he’d heard about her family. It was one he’d frequently asked of his friends growing up, trying to capture what it felt like to be part of a group, a clan...a family.

‘Tell me about your family.’

‘What do you want to know?’

Luke shrugged. ‘I don’t know...did you go on family holidays? Did your brothers tease you? What do you remember most about your teens?’

He sounded almost wistful, Jess thought as she put her elbows on the table and cupped her face in her hands. ‘Um...I felt like I was playing catch-up most of my life with my brothers. They were always bigger, stronger and faster, and they gave me no handicap because I was a girl. It was keep up or go home. They teased me incessantly and I made a point of annoying them in retaliation. Family holidays...?’

Jess thought for a moment. ‘We spent most holidays at my grandfather’s cottage at the beach. It was tiny, and we were packed into the house like sardines in a can. We had the best fun: hot days, warm seas, ice cream, blistered noses, beach cricket, bonfires on the sand. My brother John would play the guitar and we’d sing along—rather badly. Those holidays stopped when I was about sixteen.’

‘Why?’

Pain flickered in Jess’s eyes. ‘My grandfather walked out on my grandmother and he and his mistress hightailed it to that cottage.’

‘And that rocked your world?’ Luke commented. Why would the disintegration of her grandparents’ marriage affect her so much? He wanted to know. Just for tonight he wanted to know everything about her. ‘Why?’

‘My gran thought they had an awesome marriage. She considered him her soul mate, her best friend. Hearing that he’d been having an affair for ten years side-winded her. She moved in with us for a while, and I watched a vibrant, intelligent woman shrink in on herself. It was as if someone had removed her spine.’

Ouch, Luke thought.

‘And my mom took the strain because my grandfather still wanted a relationship with her, but he’d hurt her mother so badly... It was a nasty time, and because this was my family, highly volatile and voluble, nothing was kept from me. My brothers went to boarding school but I stayed at home, so I heard it all: the rants, the tears, the curses.’

Luke considered her words for a moment. ‘So when you caught your boyfriend in bed with someone else it was a double whammy? A visit to the past wrapped up in the present?’

Jess half smiled. ‘Along with dinged pride.’ She dropped her hand so that it lay beside his and curled her pinky in his. ‘Did your wife cheat on you?’

Luke waited for the fist in his sternum and frowned when he didn’t feel the normal punch the subject generally instigated. ‘I never caught her at it.’

‘Why did you divorce her?’ Jess asked, the side of his hand warm against hers.

Luke stared at a point past Jess’s shoulder and wondered whether or not to answer her question. Because she had a crazy shopping habit? Sure. Because she was bat-crap insane? That was a really good reason. Because...because...

‘Because I looked at her one day and realised that I really didn’t want her to be the mother of my children.’

‘Ah.’

‘Not that she had any intention of being a mother. She told me that she’d pop a kid out for me but had no intention of raising it. Since I knew exactly what it was like, being raised by a parade of nannies and au-pairs, I knew that I wanted my kids to have a mother.’

She heard the thinly disguised pain in his voice and wished she could soothe it away.

‘I realised a long time ago that I wasn’t cut out for the picket fence and two-point-four kids.’

Oh, Luke. You are so made to have a family. Instead of the words she wanted to say, she asked, ‘Why not?’

This was the trouble with smoky bars with low lighting and cool, vibey music. Confessions and confidences tended to flow.

‘I think to have a successful family you have to be part of one.’

‘I don’t know that I agree with you,’ Jess said, moving her hand across his. ‘Do you think you’d feel differently if your mother hadn’t passed away when you were so young?’

Luke wondered whether he should tell her or not...after all it wasn’t a secret. It wasn’t talked about, but it was not a secret. For the first time in his life he actively wanted to share this information with someone...wanted her to know a little piece of his soul. Normally that would terrify him, but in this warm bar, with soft music, a couple of drinks under his belt and a gorgeous woman looking at him with tender eyes, he couldn’t keep the words from spilling out. Tomorrow he might regret it...

‘No, I don’t think anything would’ve been different. My mother—a fairly moody creature, from what I hear—bailed out on me when I was three and got herself killed in a car accident a couple of days later. And my father was fickle, selfish and changed women like he changed clothes. Kids raised in a dysfunctional home do not have functional adult relationships and families. Basic psychology.’

‘That’s such nonsense—but back up a moment.’ Jess frowned. ‘Your mother left you?’

‘She had suitcases full of clothes and personal possessions in her car when she crashed. Nothing of mine.’ Luke felt the muscle tick in his jaw and closed his eyes. It had happened over thirty years ago—why did it still sting? Why did he still wonder what she’d needed, wanted from her life that had made her step out of the marriage, away from him? Freedom? Another man? And would he ever stop wondering what he’d done that had made his mother leave him instead of taking him with her?

He’d been three, for goodness’ sake...even he couldn’t have been that bad.

Jess shook her head and covered his hand with both of hers. She had a look on her face that Luke had come to recognise as stubbornness. ‘Who told you that she’d left you behind? And when?’

‘My father...all my life.’ Luke shoved his hand into his hair. ‘It was his standard way of ending a conversation—No wonder your mother left you... Fill in the blanks. Can’t catch a ball, make the swim team, come first in class.’

Jess’s mouth fell open in shock, and anger sparked in her eyes. ‘That’s...diabolical.’

‘That was my father.’

Jess’s eyes flashed. ‘That’s child abuse.’

Luke felt sparks jump in his stomach at her defence.

‘How did you manage to become so successful, so together, so strong after having that constantly fed to you?’

Because he’d been too damn stubborn and too proud to let his father win.

‘And, I’m sorry. I don’t believe your mother left you. I saw that photo of you and her in your bedroom—the look on her face as she looked at you. Nope, I don’t buy it,’ Jess said, her voice saturated with conviction. ‘She loved you...there has to be another explanation.’

Luke wished there was. But his mother was long dead and, as much as he appreciated Jess taking up the cudgels on his behalf, he knew that to think about his mother was useless and self-defeating. If he considered other scenarios he risked reopening old wounds.

He’d tried marriage. It had been a failure. Losing his dream of having a family of his own had hurt a lot more than losing his wife, but he’d come to terms with the idea that St Sylve would not be home to dirty kids running wild.

Knowing his mother’s motives wouldn’t change that. It was in the past and he couldn’t change what had happened.

‘What happened to your mom’s things?’ Jess leaned forward, her arms on the table.

‘According to my father she’d moved quite a lot of stuff out. The rest he tossed.’ Luke stifled a yawn. Suddenly he felt physically and mentally exhausted. ‘I remember someone saying that she took all her paintings for an upcoming exhibition. They’ve never been found. Somewhere, if they haven’t been burnt or tossed, there are about thirty Katelyn Kirby paintings floating around.’

‘Where did you find those two paintings?’

He didn’t speak but Jess read the answer on his face.

‘You bought them? Oh, Luke.’

At an enormous price, from a canny dealer who’d known exactly what he had.

Jess seemed immediately to understand that he’d needed a connection to her—something of hers that held something of her soul. Luke drained his glass. ‘Yep.’

Jess pursed her lips. ‘Dead or not, I really don’t like your father, Luke.’

He saw pity flash in her eyes and his spine stiffened. Of all the things he wanted from Jess, pity wasn’t one of them. He glared at her. ‘Don’t pity me, Sherwood.’

Jess jumped to her feet and shook her head. ‘I don’t pity you. I think you are one of the strongest, most together people I’ve ever encountered. I think you’re smart and resourceful and mentally tough.’ She cocked her head and listened to the music. ‘I love this song—dance with me?’

Luke blinked at the change of subject and looked at the empty dance floor. ‘Now?’

Jess nodded and held out her hand. ‘Yeah, now. What? Are you chicken?’

Luke grinned as he took her hand and led her to the dance floor. He placed his hands on her hips and rested his chin against her temple. Moody, romantic music brushed over them and Luke’s voice was threaded with laughter when he spoke. ‘You remember what happened the last time you called me chicken?’

‘I ended up against a wall, halfway to naked,’ Jess whispered back.

Luke’s heart picked up an extra beat at her soft, promise-soaked voice. ‘Willing to risk that happening again?’ he asked, holding his breath.

‘Cluck, cluck, cluck.’

Even he didn’t need more of a clue.

* * *

Luke pulled her across the dance floor towards the door, stopping briefly to throw some money on the table to cover their bill and to pick up Jess’s bag. As soon as they stepped out of the bar and into the frigid air he started to kiss her, and within a minute he had her up against the building, kissing her in the shadows of the doorway. His wonderful hands burrowed beneath her coat and slipped between her jeans and the skin of her back—touching, demanding, insisting that she match her passion to his.

She wanted this, Jess told herself. She needed this. If she was going to do this then she had to surrender to the moment, to stop thinking and enjoy this hard-bodied, hard-eyed man who had the ability to make her skin hum. For the first time in her adult life Jess switched off her brain and surrendered herself to the physical.

His hand, warm against her, made her feel intensely female. Sensation bombarded her. The rough spikes of his beard as he dropped kisses on her jawline. His tongue wet and warm in the dent of her collarbone. The amazing contradiction between that heat of his mouth and the icy air on her skin.

Jess couldn’t stop her hands from roaming up and under his jersey and shirt. She explored the wedge of fine hair on his chest. She traced the ridges of his stomach muscles, groaned at that particular patch of skin just beneath his hipbone that was so soft, so smooth, so male. Her thumb, sneaking beneath the waistband of his jeans, swiped over the long muscles in his hip, exploring the wonderfulness of him.

Luke groaned and lifted his head. He rested his arm against the wall above her head and his forehead against hers. ‘I love the way you touch me.’ He cursed. ‘But we can’t do this here. I want you where I can see you, taste you, enjoy every inch of you.’

‘Well, then, maybe you should take me home.’

‘That sounds like an excellent plan.’