MELANIE MILBURNE - Their Most Forbidden Fling

‘Sure, why not?’ Molly said. Anything to make her relax and stop making a fool of herself , she thought.

He placed a glass of white wine in front of her. ‘I have red if you prefer.’

‘No, white is fine,’ she said. ‘Red always gives me a headache.’

Lucas went about preparing the meal. Molly watched as he deftly chopped vegetables and meat for the stir-fry he was making. He worked as if on autopilot but she could see he was frowning slightly. Was he regretting asking her to stay for dinner? He wasn’t exactly full of conversation. But, then, she was feeling a little tongue-tied herself.

‘So why an intensivist?’ he asked after a long silence. ‘I thought you always wanted to be a teacher.’

‘My teacher stage only lasted until I was ten,’ Molly said. ‘I’ve wanted to be lots of things since then. I decided on medicine in my final year at school. And I chose intensive care because I liked the idea of helping to save lives.’

‘Yeah, well, it sure beats the hell out of destroying them.’

Molly met his gaze over the island bench. ‘How long are you going to keep punishing yourself? It’s not going to bring him back.’

His eyes hardened. ‘You think I don’t know that?’

Molly watched him slice some celery as if it was a mortal enemy. His jaw was pulsing with tension as he worked. She let out an uneven sigh and put her wine down. ‘Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for me to stay and have dinner,’ she said as she slid off the stool she had perched on. ‘You don’t seem in the mood for company. I’ll see myself out.’

He caught her at the door. His long, strong fingers met around her wrist, sending sparks of awareness right up to her armpit and beyond. She looked into his eyes and felt her heart slip sideways. Pain was etched in those green and brown depths—pain and something else that made her blood kick-start in her veins like a shot of pure adrenalin. ‘Don’t go,’ he said in a low, gruff tone.

Molly’s gaze drifted to his mouth. She felt her insides shift, a little clench of longing that was slowly but surely moving through her body.

His body was closer than it had ever been. She felt the warmth of it, the bone-melting temptation of it. She sensed the stirring of his response to her. She couldn’t feel it but she could see it in his eyes as they held hers. It sent an arrow of lust through her. She wanted to feel him against her, to feel his blood surging in response to her closeness. She took a half a step to close the gap between their bodies but he dropped her wrist as if it had suddenly caught fire.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, raking that same hand through his thick hair, leaving crooked finger-width pathways in its wake.

‘It’s fine,’ Molly said, aiming for light and airy but falling miserably short. ‘No harm done.’

‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Molly,’ he said, frowning heavily. ‘Any … connection between us is inadvisable.’

‘Because you don’t mix work with play?’

His eyes were hard and intractable as they clashed with hers. ‘Because I don’t mix emotion with sex.’

‘Who said anything about sex?’ Molly asked.

His worldly look said it all.

‘Right, well … I’m not very good at this, as you can probably tell,’ she said, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. ‘I try to be sophisticated and modern about it all but I guess deep down inside I’m just an old-fashioned girl who wants the fairy-tale.’

‘You’re no different from most women—and most men, for that matter,’ he said. ‘It’s not wrong to want to be happy.’

‘Are you happy, Lucas?’ Molly asked, searching his tightly set features.

His eyes moved away from hers as he moved back to the kitchen. ‘I need to put on the rice,’ he said. ‘You’d better keep an eye on your cat.’

Molly went outside to find Mittens. He wasn’t too happy about being brought back inside, but she lured him back in with a thread she found hanging off her coat. She closed the door once he was inside and went back to where Lucas was washing the rice for the rice cooker. ‘What can I do to help?’ she said. ‘Shall I set the table in the dining room?’

‘I don’t use the dining room,’ he said. ‘I usually eat in here.’

‘Seems a shame to have such a lovely dining room and never use it,’ Molly said. ‘Don’t you ever have friends over for dinner parties?’

He gave a shrug and pressed the start button on the cooker. ‘Not my scene, I’m afraid.’

‘Do you have a housekeeper?’

‘A woman comes once a week to clean,’ he said. ‘I don’t make much mess, or at least I try not to. I wouldn’t have bothered getting anyone but Gina needed the work. Her husband left her to bring up a couple of kids on her own. She’s reliable and trustworthy.’

Molly cradled her wine in her hands. ‘Do you have a current girlfriend?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘I’m between appointments, so to speak.’

She angled her head at him. ‘What sort of women do you usually date?’

His eyes collided with hers. ‘Why do you ask?’

Molly gave a little shrug. ‘Just wondering.’

‘I’m not a prize date, by any means,’ he said after another long moment. ‘I hate socialising. I hate parties. I don’t drink more than one glass of alcohol.’

‘Not every woman wants to party hard,’ she pointed out.

He studied her unwaveringly for a moment. ‘Not very many women just want to have sex and leave it at that.’

Molly felt a wave of heat rise up in her body. ‘Is that all you want from a partner?’ she asked. ‘Just sex and nothing else?’

Had she imagined his eyes looking hungrily at her mouth for a microsecond? Desire clenched tight in her core as his gaze tethered hers in a sensually charged lock. ‘It’s a primal need like food and shelter,’ he said. ‘It’s programmed into our genes.’

Molly was more aware of her primal needs than she had ever been. Her body was screaming with them, and had been from the moment she had laid eyes on him on the street the other day. It still was a shock to her that she was reacting so intensely to him. She had never thought herself a particularly passionate person. But when she was around him she felt stirrings and longings that were so fervent they felt like they would override any other consideration.

‘We’re surely far more evolved and civilised than to respond solely to our basest needs?’ she said.

His eyes grazed her mouth. ‘Some of us, perhaps.’

The atmosphere tightened another notch.

‘So how do you get your primal needs met?’ Molly asked with a brazen daring she could hardly believe she possessed. ‘Do you drag women back here by the hair and have your wicked way with them?’

This time his gaze went to her hair. She felt every strand of it lift away from her scalp like a Mexican wave. Hot tingles of longing raced along her backbone. She felt a stirring in her breasts; a subtle tightening that made her aware of the lace that supported them. Her heart picked up its pace, a tippity-tap-tap beat that reverberated in her feminine core.

His eyes came back to hers, holding them, searing them, penetrating them. ‘I’m not going to have my wicked way with you, Molly,’ he said.

‘But you want to.’ Oh, dear God, had she really just said that? Molly thought.

‘I’d have to be comatose not to want you,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to act on it. Not in this lifetime.’

Molly felt an acute sense of disappointment but tried to cover it by playing it light. ‘Glad we got that out of the way,’ she said, and picked up her wine. ‘You’re not really my type in any case.’

A short silence passed.

‘Aren’t you going to ask what my type is?’ she asked. ‘Oh, no, wait. I remember. You already have an opinion on that, don’t you?’

‘You want someone strong and dependable, loyal and faithful,’ he said. ‘Someone who’ll stick by you no matter what. Someone who’ll want kids and has good moral values in order to raise them.’

Molly raised her brows in mock surprise. ‘Not such a bad guess. I didn’t know you knew me so well.’

‘You’re like an open book, Molly.’

She dropped her gaze from his. He was seeing far too much as it was. ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.

‘The guest bathroom is just along from the library.’

As Molly came back from the bathroom she took a quick peek at the library. It was a reader’s dream of a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stacked with old editions of the classics with a good selection of modern titles. The scent of books and furniture polish gave the room a homely, comfortable feel. She ran her fingers along the leather-bound spines as if reacquainting herself with old friends.

She thought of Lucas in his big private home with only books for company. Did he miss his family? Did he miss the wide, open spaces of the outback? Did he ever long to go home and breathe in the scent of eucalyptus and that wonderful fresh smell of the dusty earth soaking up a shower of rain?

Molly turned from the bookshelves and her gaze came upon a collection of photographs in traditional frames on the leather-topped antique desk. She picked up the first one—it was one of Lucas with his family at Christmas when he’d been a boy of about fifteen. His parents stood proudly either side of their boys. Lucas stood between his brothers, a hand on each young shoulder as if keeping them in place. All of them were smiling; their tanned young faces were so full of life and promise.

Within two years it would be a very different family that faced the camera. The local press had hounded the Bannings after the accident. And then the coroner’s inquiry a few months later had brought the national press to their door. Sensation-hungry journalists had conducted tell-all interviews with the locals. Even though the coroner had finally concluded it had been an accident and Lucas was not in any way to blame for Matt’s death, the press had painted a very different picture from the gossip and hearsay they had gleaned locally. They had portrayed Lucas as a wild boy from the bush who had taken his parents’ farm vehicle without permission and taken his best friend for a joyride that had ended in his friend’s death. Jane and Bill Banning had visibly aged overnight, Lucas even more so. He had gone from a fresh-faced teenager of seventeen to a man twice that age, who looked like the world had just landed on his shoulders.

Molly reached for the other photo on the desk. Her heart gave a tight spasm as she saw Matt’s freckled face grinning widely as he sat astride his motocross bike, his blue eyes glinting with his usual mischief.

The last time she had seen her brother he hadn’t been smiling. He had been furious with her for going into his room and finding his stash of contraband cigarettes. She had told their parents and as a result he had been grounded.

For every one of the seventeen years since that terrible day Molly had wished she had never told their parents. If Matt hadn’t been grounded he might not have slipped out with Lucas that night behind their parents’ backs. Matt had hated being confined. He’d got claustrophobic and antsy when restrictions had been placed on him. It was one of the reasons he had been thrown from the vehicle. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt.

‘I thought you might be in here,’ Lucas said from the doorway.

Molly put the photo back down on the desk. ‘I hadn’t seen that picture before,’ she said, and picked up another one of Ian and Neil with their current partners. ‘Neil’s been going out with Hannah Pritchard for quite a while now, hasn’t he? Are they planning on getting married?’