It surprised him, the force of that desire. He’d never been the type to obsess over a woman. If she was interested, great, but if not, someone else was always bound to come along instead. Some irony, that the luck which made every other facet of his existence so easy clearly didn’t work when it came to his love life. Sex life? Well, that was a different story. Sex was easy. But when he’d seen Margot for the first time last spring, at Connor’s gallery opening — well, Lucas finally understood what people meant when they made comments about being hit by Cupid’s arrow. He’d been struck, that was for damn sure.
More irony, that the woman he couldn’t get out of his mind was probably the last one he should be interested in. She definitely didn’t do anything to hide her dislike for the Wilcox clan and all it stood for, even though Connor and Angela were doing their damnedest to get people to understand that the clan was very different now that Connor was its leader, and not his brother Damon.
Well, it was certainly true that Damon hadn’t done much to improve relations between the clans — the opposite, really. And while Lucas still mourned the loss of Connor’s older brother, Lucas’ own cousin and friend — the tragic waste of all that potential — he couldn’t argue with that death. It had been necessary, and something Damon had brought on himself. Still, it hurt. Lucas had a lot of friends, but Damon had been one of the closest, despite their differences. And Damon…he’d been someone with many acquaintances, but only one or two he called “friend.”
But Lucas didn’t want to think about that now. Not here, at what should be a joyous occasion. He tried to tell himself that at least Margot had danced with him, hadn’t thrown her drink in his face or said something particularly cutting or tried to hurl a fireball at him. Well, to be fair, he wasn’t even sure she was capable of such a spell. He’d gathered from a few things Connor and Angela had said that Margot’s talents lay in spells of illusion, not anything openly aggressive.
All right, so she’d danced with him. And then promptly bolted from the scene, as if she couldn’t handle the realization that she’d allowed a Wilcox to manhandle her in front of all these people, many of them her own clan members. Her precipitous departure wasn’t precisely a slap in the face, but it sure felt like it.
Lucas let out a sigh, then went in search of a waiter. It felt like time for that next glass of champagne after all.
* * *
Maybe it was because she’d tossed and turned for what seemed like half the night, but Margot overslept the next morning and then spent far too long taking a hot shower, as if by doing so she could wash away the last traces of Lucas Wilcox’s touch. After she finished drying her hair, she belatedly recalled that she’d said she would check on the house for Angela, as Tobias and Rachel were still at the resort, remaining available to the staff there while the newlyweds departed for a tour of some of the wine-growing areas down in the south of the state. “A fact-finding mission,” Angela had called it, no doubt referring to Connor’s joint venture with a friend of theirs to open a new vineyard over in Page Springs.
Margot was sure the house was just fine, but Angela had been worried in all the hubbub that she hadn’t locked up everything properly. Very well; Margot thought she’d hike up there after she had her usual tea and toast for breakfast, and rattle all the locks so she could say she’d done her duty. No one in the McAllister clan would disturb the place, and it was far enough off the beaten track that Margot somehow doubted a tourist would wander up there…especially with the illusions she’d set in place to prevent such a thing from happening…but it was a fine morning, and maybe the walk would help to clear her head a little.
The air did seem cooler today, a brisk breeze blowing from the northeast and pulling at a few stray tendrils of hair around her face. She let that wind guide her up the hill, a gentle pressure at her back, as if it were helping to propel her up the steep incline.
At the house, the front door was firmly locked, as she’d suspected. The back door that opened on the small garden and the path that led to the garage was not, however, and she shook her head at Angela’s carelessness, even as she laid her hand on the doorknob and murmured the small charm that would make the tumblers turn and the door lock itself. Or maybe the unlocked door had been Connor’s fault; Margot supposed a bride had a right to be a bit scatterbrained on her wedding day, but Connor should have been paying better attention.
A crunch of gravel made her turn around, eyes narrowing. No one else should be up here, unless it was Connor and Angela coming back to Jerome for something they’d forgotten. But no, that didn’t make sense. Margot knew the couple had planned to be on the road by around ten, and it was already almost eleven. They should be halfway to Phoenix by now.