At her nod, he stepped back and she slipped in front of him. Once her hands were on the wheel, he covered them with his. “Feet apart. Hands steady.”
Lucas continued to talk, words of encouragement, but Mac’s mind couldn’t take it in. Just the sound of his voice in her ear was having the strangest effect on her breathing. And there were other sensations pouring through her. Instead of the salty air, it was Lucas’s scent she inhaled. He smelled like sun and sweat and something else that she couldn’t quite place. She could feel him too. His chest when it brushed against her back was like iron, and the hands trapping hers on the wheel were sure and firm, the palms surprisingly rough. For a moment, she closed her eyes and imagined what it might be like to have those hard hands pressed against other parts of her body.
Another wave had him shifting closer. His hands tightened on hers, pulling the wheel to the right. An arrow of heat shot through her, and her heart began to beat hard and fast, just as it had when she’d been lying on top of him.
“I’d better take over.”
“Yes,” she thought. Oh, yes.
“Doc, are you all right?”
Her eyes shot open as he turned her around to face him. “I’m…fine,” she managed to say.
“You look a little weak in the knees. Why don’t you sit down? You can see the island off there to your right.”
Very carefully, Mac made it to the cushioned seat that ran along the side of the boat. Just as soon as Lucas wasn’t actually touching her, some of her strength returned. It also helped that she wasn’t looking at him.
Fascinating, she thought as she focused her attention on a tiny speck some distance away in the water. Her reaction the first time he’d held her hadn’t been an aberration. Lucas Wainright could definitely turn her mind and body to mush.
And she liked it.
However, it would add complications to her research. How was she supposed to keep her mind on creating male sexual fantasies if Lucas could scatter her thoughts and melt her into a puddle whenever he touched her?
Narrowing her eyes, she watched the speck become larger. It was a problem she’d have to solve.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN SHE STEPPED OUT onto the dock, Mac’s eyes were first drawn to the white sand beach that stretched in both directions until it curved out of sight. Waves broke against it, then drew back to attack again in a steady rhythm. Fifty yards ahead, palm trees shaded a squat box of a cabin with a covered porch. Almost covered, she amended when she saw the ladder tipped against it, a pile of shingles stacked on its sloping roof.
Lucas grabbed her suitcase and climbed out of the boat. “I hope you’re not expecting anything fancy. Every time I come down here I try to make a few improvements, but it’s pretty rustic.”
“It’s lovely.” Pausing as she stepped off the dock, she looked at the sweep of shore again. “I’ve never seen a beach that wasn’t thronged with people. You must love it here.”
He looked at her for a moment. “I do. None of the rest of my family does. They call this place Lucas’s Folly.”
It was impossible to imagine the confident man striding in front of her up the path to the cabin as being capable of folly. She found her gaze riveted on his broad shoulders. Beneath the thin polo shirt he was wearing, she could see the easy, sure movement of muscles as he swung her suitcase in rhythm with his stride. She’d learned in her research that from a psychological standpoint, a woman who was attracted to a man’s muscular shoulders was probably looking for a strong emotional bond.
That was the last thing she wanted with Lucas Wainright, she reminded herself. If her plan was going to work at all, he was just someone she would practice on. A guinea pig.
She forced her gaze down the length of his back to his waist and below…. Suddenly, her mouth went dry as dust. He had what Madame Gervais would definitely call in her Parisian French a…
As she watched him climb the porch steps, the foreign words escaped her. “Great buns” was the only description she could think of in English. His cutoff jeans fit over his backside like a second skin, leaving very little to the imagination…just enough to make her wonder what his skin would feel like beneath that denim. Soft and smooth…firm and hard? Would it feel as hot as her own skin was beginning to feel?
The urge to find out was so sudden, so strong that Mac stopped dead in her tracks. If she hadn’t, she was sure she would have reached out and actually placed the palm of her hand on Lucas’s butt.
She made herself take a deep breath and let it out. In spite of the heat, the air felt cool compared to the fire that had started to burn in her body. What in the world was the matter with her? She’d never before found herself mesmerized by a man’s derriere—that was the French word. According to Madame Gervais, women who were attracted to that particular body part were lusty adventurers who were looking for similar qualities in a man.
The thought of herself as a “lusty adventurer” nearly made her laugh. Still, it might be evidence that she did have a sensual side to her nature, after all.
It was only as Lucas opened the door of the cabin and glanced back over his shoulder that she realized she was staring at that part of his anatomy.
“Are you all right?” Lucas asked.
“Fine.” She moved quickly up the steps and into the cabin. The air was stuffy and even warmer than outside. Or perhaps it was her own inner temperature rising because she was standing close to Lucas again. Close enough to touch.
Pushing the thought out of her mind, she focused her full attention on the small, tidy interior of the room. Though the darkness contrasted sharply with the glaring brightness outside, she noted that the room was minimally furnished with a couch, a coffee table, a desk and a chair. At one end, a wooden counter with two stools tucked beneath its wide ledge framed a space for a tiny kitchen. There was no clutter, nothing to suggest that the place was occupied except for the laptop computer and thick, sturdy briefcase that sat on the desk.
It was then that she noticed the framed photographs that nearly covered the wall above. Curious, she moved closer to get a better look. Most of the pictures were snapshots of Sophie and her younger brothers, the step-twins. Nicholas and Nathaniel’s high-school graduation, Sophie’s graduation from college. She’d met Sophie five years ago when she’d been doing postdoctoral work and Sophie had been finishing her undergraduate degree. They’d been fast friends ever since.
Her gaze shifted to a shot of the opening of Sophie’s antique shop in Georgetown. And there were others that captured less formal occasions—Sophie and the step-twins beneath a Christmas tree, a teenage Sophie standing by a red convertible dangling the keys from her fingers. There were twenty pictures in all, a sort of family album/mural, except that there were no parents in any of them. And no sign of Lucas.
Her attention was caught and held by the last photo in the bottom row. She was in it, standing next to Sophie. Lucas had snapped a victory picture after she and Sophie had beaten him at tennis.
Something moved through her then. Envy? Longing? Lifting her hand, she ran her fingers over the frame. The pictures were concrete evidence of something she already knew. Lucas Wainright valued his family.
“You played a great game. I’d be glad to make you a copy of the photo, if you’d like.”
“Thanks.” As she turned, she nearly bumped into him.
He handed her a bottle of water. “You’d better drink it all. In this kind of heat, it’s easy to become dehydrated.”
She took a long swallow, then watched as Lucas drained his bottle. She was close enough to see a drip of water run from the corner of his mouth to his chin, and then down the long column of his throat. In her mind, she imagined what it might be like to trace its path with her finger, to feel the coolness of the water, the heat of his skin underneath.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Mac reined them in. This was the second time in almost as many minutes that she’d fantasized about touching Lucas Wainright.
“Sophie says you have a problem you’d like my help with.”
Her nerves slithered into a knot in her stomach, and she felt the bottle slip from her fingers.
Lucas caught it before it hit the floor and handed it back to her. “That bad, huh?”
Before she could reply, he took her arm and led her out to the porch. “Why don’t you sit down. You can finish that water while I fix some sandwiches. We’ll talk about it over lunch.”
In the doorway, he turned back to her. “You can stay here as long as you want. If it helps any, Sophie was pretty sure I could help. And I’m certainly willing to do anything I can.”
WAS HE GOING CRAZY? Lucas spread slices of bread out on the counter. Standing on that boat with her body so close to his had turned his brain to mush and another part of his anatomy into something hard, erect and ready to go.
Except it wasn’t going anywhere. Taking a calming breath, he slapped slices of ham, then cheese on the bread. MacKenzie Lloyd was his sister’s best friend, and he could not, would not, get involved with her. He’d vowed a long time ago to keep his relationships with women entirely separate from his family. He never dated anyone in his family’s social circle, and he never brought any of his women friends home. It was just one of the methods he used to ensure that the women in his life never nurtured the false expectation that he would marry them. His other method was to be totally honest with them up front.