The Irresistible Tycoon by Helen Brooks Page B

his feet, and as he reached out and took her hand his face didn’t reveal the anger he felt as she stiffened against his touch. ‘Just put it down to experience, Kim,’ he said softly. ‘Learn from it, take the positive and leave the negative on the side of the plate and don’t let it cripple you.’
    He was talking about more than work.
    She hesitated and then raised her head to meet his eyes, her gaze wary. ‘That’s easier said than done.’
    â€˜Possibly.’ He could feel her trembling slightly and it checked the crazy impulse he had to pull her into him and devour her mouth; the strength of his desire shocked him. He had never had any trouble in keeping work and play separate, in fact he would go so far as to say he had felt contempt in the past for any business associates who had been foolish enough to mix the two, but this was different. But perhaps that was what they all thought.
    The heat from his fingers seemed to be flowing into her, trickling into every nerve and sinew and setting her body alive with a strange electric current. What would it be like to be kissed by a man like Lucas Kane? Kim gave up the fight to dismiss the thought that had been paramount for most of the evening. Thrilling, exciting, out of this world. He’d know how to kiss. Sexual expertise was there in his eyes, his body, even the way he walked and moved…
    She jerked her hand free, disguising the gesture with a tight little laugh as she said, ‘This won’t get the coffee percolating.’
    Damn the coffee. Lucas smiled blandly. ‘Can I help?’
    The thought of him in the close confines of her little kitchen was overwhelming. ‘No, it’s fine. I won’t be a minute.’
    Lucas’s thick black lashes swept down, hiding his expression from her, and his voice was easy and controlled as he resumed his seat, saying, ‘No hurry.’
    No hurry? Once in the kitchen Kim leant her hot forehead against the cool impersonal surface of a cupboard and breathed deeply for several seconds. Her fingers were still tingling from his touch and her legs were actually shaking, she realised with a little dart of disbelief. It might be no hurry to him but she wanted him out of her house as soon as possible.
    He was dangerous. She moved away from the cupboards and stared out of the window to where the snowman was still standing patiently in his white frozen world, and remembered how Melody had clung to Lucas as he had enthused over their handiwork.
    Very, very dangerous. Kim’s eyes narrowed and she felt something very cold douse the heat inside her as she switched on the coffee machine.
    If Graham hadn’t died when he had, she would have left him within weeks, if not days, anyway. The abuse when he was drunk had been becoming increasingly nasty, and the shopping incident had happened the day before his accident. She had known it was the end of the line for their marriage then; she wouldn’t risk putting Melody in danger.
    She hadn’t loved him any more at that stage; she hadn’t loved him for months, even though she had stayed because of his threats of what he would do to Melody and to her if she left him.
    But that morning when he had struck her had cut the last tentative threads holding her to the marriage. It had happened to be her in the firing line then; it could have been Melody another time and the thought of that was insupportable.
    But she hadn’t had to leave. Graham had died, and in spite of all his death had uncovered she had felt a strengthening of her spirit, a determination that she would build agood life for her precious child. And a good life meant never putting Melody at risk again, never allowing a third party to come into their world. Friends were different, and Maggie had been wonderful, but a man…
    She had made a terrible mistake in her choice of a partner and she couldn’t trust it wouldn’t happen again.
    Melody liked Lucas.