Margot didn’t want to think what that had cost. But it was pretty obvious that Lucas had enough money to do just about anything he wanted, so she wouldn’t even bother to protest that he shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble for her.
“Very impressive,” she said, returning to her salad, keeping her eyes on her food so she wouldn’t have to meet his.
He made a noncommittal sound and applied himself to his own salad. When they were both done, he rose and took her empty plate, then his, and disappeared briefly into the kitchen. She hadn’t really planned it that way, but she was staring in the direction he’d gone, so when he came back to the dining room, their eyes met for the briefest second. Warmth flooded through her at that gaze, and at once she looked back down, pretending to be rearranging the napkin on her lap.
Why the hell did he have such an effect on her? The way Lucas made her feel seemed worlds away from the way she had reacted to Clay.
But no, she wouldn’t think about that. She managed to smile as Lucas asked for her plate so he could dish up some potatoes and beef bourgignon for her, murmur a polite thank-you, and then wait while he got some for himself.
“I figured this was safe, since you had the venison at Rene’s,” he ventured, and she blinked, then realized he was talking about the food.
“Oh, yes. It’s fine. I mean, it smells marvelous.”
He nodded, and they both ate in silence for a minute or two. At last he said, “You seem sort of tense, Margot.”
Well, of course she was. She was sitting here with him at his dining room table, by candlelight. Most women would have been thrilled to have a man take so much trouble to create a memorable evening like this. But she didn’t know how to react to it. Should she remain coolly polite, letting him know that candles and Rhone wine and meals home-cooked by five-star chefs were all well and good, but that she had more backbone than to fall for something like that?
Or should she acknowledge that his efforts made some part of her feel all warm and melting, because it had been forever and a day since someone had paid this kind of attention to her?
No, that wasn’t true. Not really. No one had ever done anything like this for her before. Certainly not Clay.
“I suppose it’s all a lot to take in.” From somewhere she summoned a smile, along with the courage to meet his gaze directly. “I do appreciate all this. Really.”
“Okay.” After that, he seemed to let the matter drop, and moved on to talking about what they would do if it really did snow, how maybe he could take her up to the Snow Bowl and they could watch people playing in the snow, and then to a restaurant he knew of on the way there that wasn’t pretentious at all, but had some amazing soups and sandwiches.
She nodded and said that sounded like it would be fun, but her response felt tinny in her ears, as if she were saying the things she thought she should be saying, and not the one that lay in the very depths of her soul, of her heart.
No, I want to stay here. I want to stand with you in the garden and have you kiss me and keep me warm while the snow falls all around us.
Of course she would never tell him such a thing.
* * *
It really wasn’t fair that she should be so beautiful. In a way, her dress was almost prim, with its high collar, but the way it opened in front to reveal a glimpse of the heavy Navajo necklace she wore underneath, and a fainter glimpse still of the shadow between her breasts, seemed far more enticing than something that showed a lot more flesh would be.
Somehow Lucas managed to keep himself from staring at her, at the all too solid reality of her just a few feet away at his dining room table, but it wasn’t easy. His mouth kept moving, uttering the sort of easy banter he could probably manage in his sleep if necessary, and all the while his brain kept thinking, I want you. I want you. I want you.
All right, it wasn’t just his brain thinking that.
He had to force himself not to dwell on the curves of her body as revealed in the slim-fitting dress, because otherwise he’d have to force back an arousal for which there was no cure. Well, of course, there was a cure, but he didn’t think Margot seemed too interested in providing it.
Or…was she? The signals he kept getting from her were so mixed that he honestly didn’t know what to think. One minute she’d be polite, but only that, and in the next, her gaze would catch his, and he’d see a flicker of the same heat he knew rushed over his body every time he recalled that one sweet time he’d kissed her.
They talked of inconsequential things, of the possibility of snow, of how quickly the roads would be plowed, of the arrangements Connor and Angela had made in case the weather was not cooperating whenever the twins decided to make their entrance into the world. In that case, Darrell Wilcox, currently a junior at Northern Pines, would come out to make the trip with them. His talent, such as it was, involved making an area in front of him extremely hot. In most cases, it wasn’t a lot of use — although Lucas suspected his cousin had given his siblings a hot foot a time or two — but Darrell did make an excellent impromptu snow plow.