They weren’t finished.

A part of Lucas wondered if they’d ever be finished.

He looked into her eyes and saw the passion-glazed stare of a woman completely undone and should have felt a jolt of satisfaction for a plan that was coming together all too well.

Instead, all he felt was more want. More need.

Her blue eyes were shining with every ounce of passion that was flaring inside him. The smoldering fire between them leaped to life like an inferno.

Heartbeat pounding, he took her mouth again. And then Lucas did the only thing he could. He moved inside her again and heard her groan of satisfaction as his reward.

This wasn’t seduction anymore.

This was need. Crashing, burning desperation—and it wouldn’t be denied.

Dear Reader,

Writing a continuing family series, like the KINGS OF CALIFORNIA, is as much fun for the writer as it is for the reader. We all love revisiting earlier characters. It’s like having a nice long chat with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while. I especially enjoy writing groups of two or three at a time that are connected by more than just their family name.

In Ready for King’s Seduction, Lucas King gets his heroine. Not too long ago, he stood on the sidelines, laughing at his brother Rafe as he fell in love with Katie Charles, the Cookie Queen. Now, it’s Rafe’s turn to chuckle.

Lucas meets Rose Clancy, the younger sister of his ex-friend, and concocts a plan. He’s determined to get back at Rose’s brother for betraying the King brothers.

Rose Clancy, though, isn’t the wide-eyed innocent that Lucas remembers. she’s had a hard time of it, but she’s survived and rebuilt her life. Now she teaches people how to cook in their own homes. When Lucas hires her, Rose agrees because she can use all the clients she can get.

But while Rose teaches cooking, Lucas is teaching her passion, and neither of them is prepared for what they find.

I really hope you enjoy Ready for King’s Seduction! Next up is Sean King’s book, The Temporary Mrs King, and I hope you’ll watch for it! Follow me on Facebook and Twitter and let me know what you think!

Happy reading,

Maureen

About the Author

MAUREEN CHILD is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur. Visit Maureen’s website, www.maureenchild.com.

Ready for
King’s Seduction
Maureen Child

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To my mother-in-law, Mary Ann Child, for years

of laughter and love and adventures.

I couldn’t love you more.

One

“There’s something you don’t see every day.”

“What are you talking about?” Lucas King stepped through his front door onto the wide porch and handed his younger brother a beer. Just for a second, he took the time to admire the view of the Pacific Ocean, across the street. The sun was setting, staining the dark blue water deep shades of crimson and gold. He settled into the closest chair and took a sip of his beer.

Sean grinned and pointed. “That. Look what just pulled up outside your neighbor’s house.”

Lucas shifted his gaze to Ocean Boulevard and his eyes widened. A dark blue minivan was parked in front of the house next door. Ordinarily, no big deal—except for the giant covered skillet on the roof.

“What the—”

“Check out the sign on the side,” Sean said, laughing.

“‘Home cooking taught at home,’” Lucas recited, shaking his head. “So the sign on the side of the car in bright yellow paint wasn’t enough? They had to stick a pan on top?”

Sean was still laughing as he took a sip of his beer. “Not exactly aerodynamic.”

“It looks ridiculous,” Lucas said, wondering what kind of person would have so little pride they’d be willing to drive the thing. “Who the hell runs a business like that, anyway?”

“Mmm …” Sean’s tone changed as the minivan’s door opened and the driver stepped out into the street. “Whoever she is, she can teach me whatever she wants to.”

Lucas rolled his eyes even as he shifted his gaze back to the ocean. Big surprise. Sean was always willing and eager for the next woman to roll into his life. Give him five minutes with Pan-on-the-Car Woman, Lucas told himself, and Sean would have a weekend getaway scheduled. Well, Sean was welcome to the stream of women entering and exiting his life. Lucas liked his life a little more orderly.

Only half listening to Sean’s running commentary, Lucas ignored the woman and the car and focused on the stretch of water sliding toward the horizon. This is what he loved about where he lived. Every night after work, he could come out to the porch, have a beer, stare out at the water and let the world slip away for a while. Usually though, he thought—Sean’s voice an annoying buzz of sound in the background—he was alone.

Here, he didn’t have to be on top of King Construction. Here, no one was hounding him for a meeting or to fix something gone wrong with permits. There were no needy customers to placate and no hurry to accomplish a damn thing.

Oh, he liked his work. He and his brothers Rafe and Sean had built King Construction into the biggest firm of its kind on the west coast. But damned if it didn’t feel good to come home and let it all go for a while.

“Always did like a blonde,” Sean was saying. “And a tall one, too.”

Lucas snorted. “Blondes, redheads, brunettes. Your problem is you like ‘em all.”

“Yeah? Your problem is you’re too damn picky. When was the last time you called a woman who wasn’t a customer?” Sean kicked back in his chair, setting his feet on the stone porch-balcony rail in front of them.

“None of your business,” Lucas muttered.

“Hell. That long? No wonder you’re such a pain in the ass lately.” Sean took another drink of his beer. “What you need is a little female attention and if you’ve got eyes in your head, one look at this blonde and you’ll be ready to go.”

Lucas sighed and surrendered to the inevitable. Sean wasn’t going to shut up about the woman, so Lucas might as well get a good look at her for himself. “No way,” he muttered.

“Huh?” Sean glanced at him.

“I don’t believe this,” Lucas said, more to himself than to his brother. He stood up, eyes locked on the tall, curvy blonde hurrying around the front of her car. Her long hair was pulled into a ponytail at the base of her neck, the wind whipping her hair into a frenzy. Her skin was pale and, he knew, dusted with freckles across her nose and cheeks. He couldn’t see her eyes from here, but he knew they were a deep summer blue. Her mouth was wide and curved easily into a smile, and her laugh was infectious as hell.

He hadn’t seen her in two years and seeing her now sent a near electric current sizzling through him. Lucas watched her open the sliding side door, then bend over to reach inside.

Instantly, he shifted his gaze to the curve of her behind, defined by the tight black jeans she wore. That buzz of something inside him heightened into a crackling, pulsing energy.

“What’s going on?” Sean pushed out of his chair to stand beside his brother. “You know her?”

“I used to,” Lucas admitted. Not as well as he had wanted to at the time, of course. A guy just didn’t make moves on his friend’s sister.

“Great. How about you introduce me to tall, blonde and luscious—”

Lucas glared at him.

Sean nodded and held up both hands. “Okay then, never mind. So who is she?”

“Rose Clancy.”

Sean’s eyebrows went up high enough that the shock of black hair falling across his forehead completely hid them. Then he turned and looked at the blonde, still fishing around inside her van. “That’s Dave Clancy’s little sister?”

“That’s her.”

“The one he always claimed was practically a saint? Good? Sweet? Pure as the driven snow?”

“The very one,” Lucas muttered, his gaze now narrowed on her as he remembered all the times he had listened to his ex-friend Dave brag about his baby sister.

The Clancy family ran a rival construction company. Well, rivals in the sense that they were all in the same business. In Lucas’s mind, there had never really been a contest between them. King Construction was the best firm in the state, but Clancy came in a close second.

He and Dave had met at a chamber-of-commerce meeting and had immediately hit it off. They’d been friends as well as friendly competitors. Until the day two years ago when Lucas finally figured out that Dave Clancy was a liar and a thief.

“Didn’t I hear that Rose got a divorce last year from that ass she married?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said, still watching as Rose hurried back to her van for more supplies. “I heard she divorced him. Weren’t married long, either.”

Long enough, though, Lucas thought, to discover her husband was a cheating dog that should have been neutered for the good of humanity. Funny that her so protective older brother hadn’t bothered to save her from a bad marriage.

Rose gathered up a few more things, then slid the door closed, beeped the lock and headed for the house again. She never once glanced at her surroundings, so she didn’t notice Lucas and Sean standing on the porch staring at her.

“What’re you planning?” Sean asked and Lucas turned his head to look at him.

“Not planning a thing,” he lied as his mind raced with sudden possibilities.

“Right. Sell that to somebody who doesn’t know you.”

“Don’t you have a date tonight?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then maybe you should go.”

“Translation,” Sean said wryly, “you don’t want to tell me what you’re thinking about doing.”

Lucas grinned. “Smart man.”

Shaking his head, Sean set his half-empty bottle of beer down onto the stone rail and headed for the steps. He paused, though, to look over his shoulder at his brother. “You know, it was Dave who cheated us. Not his sister.”

Lucas met Sean’s gaze evenly, his eyes giving away nothing he was feeling. “Did I say anything about Dave?”

“No,” Sean admitted. “But I know how your mind works.”

“Is that a fact?”

“It is.” Sean tipped his head to one side and studied him for a long minute. “Kings don’t like getting screwed. But Lucas King takes betrayal as a personal insult.”

“Isn’t it?” Lucas looked away from his brother, back to his neighbor’s empty front yard and Rose’s ridiculous van.

Dave Clancy had been a friend. Someone Lucas trusted. And he didn’t trust many people. Having that friend turn on him had cut deep and damned if he’d apologize for still being angry.

“Dave cheated all of us,” Lucas reminded his brother. “He paid one of our employees to give him insider information and then he went out and undercut our bids on four different projects. I call that pretty damn personal.”

“We never found any proof of that.”

“Yeah? I got my proof when Lane Thomas left us to go to work for Dave’s outfit and suddenly the undercutting stopped. Coincidence?”

“Fine.” Sean pushed one hand through his hair and shrugged. “All I’m saying is taking your anger out on Rose won’t do a damn thing to settle up with Dave.”

“Who says I’m taking anything out on anybody?” Lucas asked.

“So you’re not planning on a little payback?”

“I’ll see you at work tomorrow, Sean.”

“No way does this end well,” Sean told him, then turned and headed down the front walk to his car.

Lucas dismissed his brother in the next minute. “It won’t end well for the Clancys,” he murmured thoughtfully. “That’s for damn sure.”

Rose waved goodbye to the woman standing in the doorway and didn’t let her smile fade until the front door was closed. The sidewalk was brightly lit and the streetlights on Ocean Boulevard gave off a soft, yellow glow, so she didn’t mind the darkness. It was actually a relief to get out into the cold, crisp night and away from the lingering smell of burned onions.

Kathy Robertson was determined to become a good cook—which made her an excellent client—but it wasn’t going to be easy. Still, that meant Mrs. Robertson was going to be a long-term project, and that meant solvency for Rose’s burgeoning business. A good thing. Smiling to herself, Rose stacked her supplies back in her van, slid the door closed and then jumped when a man’s voice spoke up from behind her.

“Been a while.”

She spun around, hand to her chest, and looked up at a man she hadn’t seen in two years. Not since he and her older brother had cut off all communication. As soon as her heart slid out of her throat, it started pounding in excitement. “Lucas?”

He was leaning against her van. How had he walked up without her being aware of it? Now that she knew he was there, her skin was prickling and her nerve endings were standing up straight, dancing in appreciation. He was wearing a pullover red sweater over a white T-shirt and black jeans. His boots were scuffed and his black hair was ruffled by the wind. His jaw boasted the shadow of a beard and his blue eyes were fixed on her.

“You scared me to death,” she admitted when she could find her voice again.

“Sorry,” he said, but didn’t sound apologetic at all. “Didn’t mean to startle you. But I wanted to talk to you before you left.”

“Where’d you come from?” She glanced up and down the street, idly noting the steady stream of traffic.

“I live next door,” he told her, jerking his thumb toward the two-story house boasting a wide, stone front porch.

“I didn’t know,” she said, which was a good thing. Because she might not have taken the Robertsons on as customers if she had known Lucas King lived right beside them.

A few years ago, she had spent a lot of time daydreaming about this man. It hadn’t gone any further than that, of course, because her brother, Dave, had made sure to keep Lucas at a distance from her. Still, it hadn’t been easy to put Lucas out of her mind. He continued to sneak back in at unexpected moments. Seeing him again was only going to refuel those old daydreams and make not thinking about him even more difficult.

But he’d made himself very clear three years ago. He hadn’t been interested in her enough then to go against her brother’s interference and there was no reason to think that had changed. Besides, she’d been through a lot in the past few years. She wasn’t the easily charmed or foolishly romantic girl she had been.

Sure, her mind taunted slyly, that’s why your heart’s still pounding and your palms are damp. Because you’re so cool and controlled.

Frowning at her own inner turmoil, she missed what Lucas said and was forced to ask, “What?”

He pushed away from the car, stuffed his hands into his back pockets and repeated, “I said, I’m glad to see you’re teaching Kathy to cook. I’ve been to dinner at their place. Not pretty.”

Wryly, Rose was forced to admit, “She is … challenging. But she’s determined to improve, and that’s good for all of us.”

Nodding his head, he glanced at the skillet on top of her car. “Interesting advertisement.”

She knew what he must be thinking, but Rose liked her skillet. An artist friend had made it for her and attached it to the roof of the van. “I think it’s quirky.”

“That’s one word for it,” he said.

Instantly, her back went up. She’d had to defend her new business to her older brother, and she wasn’t going to do the same with Dave’s ex-friend. Which reminded her of the fact that Dave and Lucas weren’t even speaking anymore. So why was Lucas talking to her now?

She pushed windblown hair off her face and asked, “Was there something you wanted, Lucas?”

He looked at her for a long, silent moment, those blue eyes of his shadowed in the dim light. But his stare was just as powerful as it had once been, and Rose felt her heartbeat quicken again in response. It was an involuntary reaction, she told herself firmly, and refused to acknowledge it further.

“Actually,” he said, “there is. You teach cooking classes in people’s homes, right?”

“Yeah …”

“Then I want to hire you.”

She hadn’t expected that and wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. Lucas King was one of the wealthiest men in America. He could employ a dozen chefs and never once have to enter his own kitchen if he didn’t want to. So why learn to cook for himself?

“Why?”

He pulled his hands free of his pockets and folded his arms across his broad chest. “I should think that would be self-evident. I want to know how to cook.”

“Yeah, I get that,” she said, still not willing to believe that he was serious. “What I don’t understand is why you want to hire me.”

“Because I don’t want to have to go out to take classes. You coming to my home is more convenient.”

“Uh-huh.” She was thinking fast and trying to see the trap in what he was saying, but she just couldn’t. Maybe he was being sincere. Maybe he really did want to learn how to cook for himself and seeing her here tonight had just been a happy accident.

But even as she thought it, Rose told herself there had to be more to it than that. As far as she knew, Lucas and her brother hadn’t spoken in a couple of years. Though she had tried to find out from Dave what had gone wrong in their friendship, her brother hadn’t told her a thing.

All he’d been willing to say was that Lucas King was out of their lives and she had better leave it that way.

If Lucas felt the same, and she had no reason to think he didn’t, why was he trying to hire her?

“How much do you charge?” Lucas asked, splintering her thoughts.

She told him and he nodded. “I’ll pay you twice your usual rate.”

“What? Why would you do that?”

“For your undivided attention,” he told her. “I’d want you here every night. Teaching me.”

She took a quick breath and tried to put out the flickering flames in the pit of her stomach. Every night. Teaching him. It sounded way more sexual than it should have.

“I have other clients,” she told him, though the truth was, her new business was barely up and sputtering. Besides Kathy Robertson, there were only three other women who had hired her so far and they were only once-a-month commitments.

“Three times your usual rate,” he countered, his gaze fixed on her, his expression unreadable.

Rose blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. With that kind of money, she could get a running start on building her business. Yes, she didn’t have to struggle. She was a Clancy after all, and if she was in deep trouble, she would only have to tell Dave she needed money.

But she really didn’t want to go to her brother. And she’d already invested everything she had into her business. So it was sink or swim. Lucas’s offer would make it much easier to stay afloat.

“You’re not making it easy to say no,” she admitted.

“Glad to hear it,” Lucas said.

She took a deep breath and, shaking her head slowly, heard herself say, “I don’t know, Lucas. If Dave found out about this—”

“So,” he interrupted, “you’re still letting your older brother run your life, is that it?”

Her head snapped up, her gaze locked with his and a fast spurt of anger shot through her. “Dave has never run my life.”

“Not how he saw it.”

“Things change.”

“Do they?” Lucas prodded. “Then take my offer.”

Frowning to herself, Rose knew she was being manipulated and she didn’t like it. But she also didn’t like the fact that Lucas had a point. If she turned his offer down, she was kowtowing to the older brother who already thought he had a right to run her life.

Well, times had changed and so had Rose. She was a grown-up. She had survived the loss of her father, the disintegration of a bad marriage and the bossiness of a brother who thought he knew best. She could handle Lucas King and the still-sizzling attraction she felt for him.

“All right,” she said, holding out her right hand, “it’s a deal.”

His hand enveloped hers in a warm shake that sent tendrils of something deliciously wicked streaming through her system. He gave her a half smile and said, “Great. We’ll start tomorrow. Six work for you?”

He let her go but her skin was still buzzing from his touch when she mumbled, “Yeah. Six is fine.”

“See you then.” Lucas turned and headed back to his house and Rose watched him go.

Leaning against her car, she ordered her heartbeat to slow down and told her stomach to stop spinning. Neither of those commands had the slightest effect on her.

When he disappeared into his house, Rose shook her head slowly and whispered, “I’m in so much trouble.”

Two

“Real men don’t eat mushrooms,” Lucas pointed out the next night as he sliced into the tiny white buttons. “They’re not even vegetables. Aren’t they a fungus?”

Rose laughed, and Lucas stilled for a second, listening to the sound of it. Just as he remembered, that laugh of hers was damned infectious. Made a man want to smile in response, then pull her in close for a long, deep, wet kiss that would end in—

“Technically, yes,” she said, when she’d stopped laughing at him long enough to speak. “They are fungi. For a long time, they were considered vegetables, but then researchers discovered they weren’t plant or animal, but their own species.”

“Great. And I’m going to eat them, why?”

Lucas waited for it and wasn’t disappointed. She laughed again and something inside him shifted, expanded.

Their first cooking lesson was going more smoothly than he’d expected. Sure, there had been some tension when she first arrived, but that had dissipated quickly enough when she got a look at his kitchen. He smiled to himself when he realized that she was the first woman to be seduced by his subzero fridge and Viking stove.

Hell, when he remodeled the house after buying it five years ago, he had insisted on top-of-the-line, and the designer had been given free rein in the kitchen. From the bamboo flooring to the glass-fronted cabinets, the granite counters and workstations and the island sink, the kitchen was the kind of room every cook dreamed of.

And the most Lucas had ever made in it himself was the occasional plate of bacon and eggs.

Now, though, he thought as he watched Rose moving through the room, he would always see her here. He would hear the echoes of her laughter. See the way she practically danced around the room with a sort of balletic grace. She cooed over the copper pots and pans and sighed deeply when she first opened the nearly empty butler’s pantry.

She might have been a little nervous when she’d first arrived, but in his kitchen, she was right at home.

“We’re using button mushrooms because they’re the most common. You can find them in any grocery store and they add just enough flavor to any dish to give it a hint of something … more.”

“More fungus. Great.” He shook his head, reminded himself that he wasn’t here to enjoy himself—or her. He had set this up as a way of paying back a friend for the kind of betrayal that Lucas never forgave. Rose wasn’t a date.

She was a tool.

Grimly, he went back to the task of slicing mushrooms while Rose gathered up the supplies she’d brought along and set them out on the cooking island.

“I brought enough with me for tonight’s lesson,” she said, “because this was all so sudden I figured you wouldn’t have the right ingredients.”

“Good call,” he said, his knife sliding through button after button.

“But it’s just a crime that you have this amazing kitchen and nothing in it,” she said with a long sigh. Shaking her head, she looked around the room as if studying an abandoned puppy and wondering how to find it a good home. “I’m going to leave a list of supplies for you to pick up. With a well-stocked pantry and refrigerator, you’ll always have options.”

He lifted his head to look at her, and their eyes locked. A second or two of pulsing tension passed before he said, “Until I learn how to cook, being well-stocked really isn’t necessary, is it?”

She plopped one hand on her hip. “How am I supposed to teach you how to cook if there’s nothing in your house to cook with?”

“Good point again,” he muttered, then rallied. “Okay, leave your list. I’ll have my secretary take care of getting whatever you think I need.”

“Your secretary.”

He frowned at her. “Something wrong with that?”

“Oh, no,” she said, lifting both hands in surrender. “Just typical, that’s all.”

“Typical of what?”

“Men like you. And Dave.”

“Excuse me?” He stiffened. “I’m nothing like your brother, let’s get that straight right now.”

Now it was her turn to stiffen up, and Lucas noted the flash of emotion in her eyes. “Look, I know you and Dave don’t speak anymore—”

“That’s right, we don’t,” he said, cutting her off before she could try to do something as fruitless as attempt to salvage a friendship that was dead to him.

It was good that she’d brought him up, though. Good to reinforce the fact that Rose was the sister of his enemy. A man he had once trusted. And the only reason Rose was standing here, driving him insane with her soft scent of lemons, was that Lucas was going to use her to get back at the man who had betrayed him. Revenge. Pure. Simple.

Sweet.

A minute or two of strained silence passed before she said, “All I meant was that men like you most often delegate work to your secretaries—even when it’s not something that’s really part of their job descriptions.”

He looked at her, the knife in his hand still. “My secretary’s job description includes pretty much whatever I say it does.”

“Uh-huh. Even grocery shopping?”

“There’s something wrong with that?”

She leaned both hands on the cooking island’s cool granite surface. Her skin looked even paler against the gleaming black stone. “How will you know what to get in the future? You plan to always have your secretary do the work for you?”

Actually, it sounded like a good plan to Lucas. If he wanted to grocery shop, there would be actual food in his house right now. But why would he when there was a great diner just a half block away and enough restaurants in the city of Long Beach that a man wouldn’t have to eat at the same place twice during a six-month span?

Rose shook her head. “Maybe I should be giving your secretary the lessons.”

Okay, that was a little insulting. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll get the groceries. Make a list, and I’ll take care of it before tomorrow night.”

Smiling, she said, “How about we do it together tomorrow? We’ll call it part of the lesson. I’ll show you how to choose your produce and what to look for at the meat counter.”

Lucas nodded, and she smiled even wider. Grocery shopping. Not exactly a high-end kind of date, he told himself, but then he wasn’t dating her, either. This was a planned seduction. What he wanted to do was get her off guard and keep her there. Then, when she was relaxed enough, he’d tumble her into bed. Once that was done, Lucas would tell her brother just how good she had been, and he’d have the kind of revenge that would tear at Dave Clancy for the rest of his life.

“But for now,” Rose was saying, “you finish slicing the mushrooms, then I want you to chop three tablespoons of fresh parsley.”

He paused and frowned. “Isn’t parsley the decoration on plates that no one ever eats?”

“Some of us actually do eat it.”

“Amazing,” he muttered, but went back to his task. While he worked, he managed to keep one eye on Rose as she explored his kitchen. She drew down plates and wineglasses from the cupboards, opened up the fridge and grabbed the sour cream, cheese and butter she’d brought with her for tonight’s recipe.

In a few minutes, they were working together amiably. But when she turned on the radio and soft jazz spilled from the speakers, Lucas began to worry.

He was actually enjoying himself.

And that wasn’t part of the plan.

“So?” Rose asked an hour later, “what do you think?”

She was sitting opposite him at the glass-topped table at the far end of the kitchen. Beside them was a bay window that overlooked a wide backyard. The garden lights were on, spilling small circles of golden radiance across the grass and neatly tended flowerbeds. The winter garden was sparse, but even in the dimly lit darkness, Rose could imagine how beautiful it all was in daylight.

She didn’t usually stay after the lesson and join her students for the meal they had created, but Lucas had insisted and frankly, Rose thought with an inner sigh, she hadn’t wanted to leave. Probably not a good idea to start getting attached, she warned herself sternly, but then she had always had a soft spot for Lucas King. She couldn’t explain it. It just … was.

Still, after two hours of working closely together in his amazingly wonderful kitchen, Rose still couldn’t have said that she knew Lucas any better than she once had. Oh, he seemed friendly enough, despite the thin thread of distance he insisted on keeping between them.

But then, she reminded herself as she looked back at her memories, Lucas had always been a little closed off. That’s probably what had drawn her to him in the first place, Rose realized. In her own family, the men had been outgoing, gregarious. Whatever they were thinking, they didn’t keep to themselves. They were loud and emotional and easy to read.

Meeting Lucas had been like brushing up against a gorgeous mystery. His blue eyes held secrets, his almost unreadable expressions tempted her to delve deeper and his quiet self-assurance had been a welcome difference from her brother and father.

He’d attracted her with his quiet thoughtfulness and, apparently, that hadn’t changed.

“Earth to Rose,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of her face.

She came up out of her thoughts fast and gave herself a shake. “Sorry. What?”

Lucas gave her a half smile. “You zoned out. Was it the sparkling conversation or the slightly charred chicken breast?”

She laughed a little. “The chicken is just a little well done,” she said, glancing down at the salsa-covered meat on her plate. “Not bad at all for a first try.”

“So the conversation put you to sleep?”

“No,” she said, taking a bite of the mushroom au gratin casserole. “But the lack of it might. You haven’t had a lot to say in the last hour or so, Lucas.”

“Cooking takes concentration,” he said with a shrug.

“Is that all it is?”

He looked at her. “What else would it be?”

“I don’t know,” she mused, taking a small sip of the chardonnay he had poured for both of them. “Maybe you’re regretting hiring me? After the way you and Dave left things, I’m still not sure why you hired me in the first place.”

His features tightened briefly at the mention of her brother, and, once again, Rose really wished she knew what had come between the two men. One day, their friendship was just … over. Lucas hadn’t come around anymore, and Dave had refused to talk about it with her. Unfortunately, that hadn’t changed two years later. Neither of them seemed willing to satisfy her curiosity.

“Dave’s got nothing to do with this,” Lucas murmured. “You teach cooking, I need to learn, end of story.”

“If you say so.” She didn’t believe him. Sure, there had been the coincidence of him seeing her at his neighbor’s house. But what had moved him to ask her to help him learn to cook? Why would he suddenly be willing to talk to the sister of the man he hadn’t spoken to in years? There was more here and she’d eventually get to the bottom of it. But for now, she was willing to let it go.

“So what did you think of the mushrooms au gratin?”

He grinned and took a big bite of the casserole side dish in question. Once he’d chewed and swallowed, he said, “It proves that with enough sour cream and cheese, anything is edible. Even fungi and parsley.”

“A lovely compliment,” she said, chuckling. “But you have to admit, the first meal you cooked turned out pretty well.”

“Better than Kathy Robertson’s?”

“Why are men so competitive?”

“It’s a gift. So?”

“Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. “I don’t really like to talk about my clients, but yours was way better. Kathy burned the onions so badly, I had to throw one of my favorite pans away.”

He shuddered. “Hope she kept the name of the last caterer she used.”

Laughing, Rose said, “That was just mean. She’s going to get the hang of it.”

He studied her for so long, Rose began to shift uneasily in her chair. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said with a shake of his head. “But you really are a positive, glass-is-half-full kind of woman, aren’t you?”

Rose tensed briefly. For most of her life, she had pretty much been the Pollyanna type. She looked for the good around her and generally found it. Until, of course, her ex-husband had not only snatched off her rose-colored glasses, but also ground them to dust under his heel.

After that, she’d had to fight to regain her sense of well-being. She’d had to force herself to smile until, eventually, it had become real. And now, she wasn’t going to go back to the dark side again. She wasn’t going to apologize because she liked rainbows and puppies and laughing children.

“Seeing the empty half doesn’t make you more mature or more intelligent,” she said softly. “It only means you’re looking for what you don’t have. How is that a good thing?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” she said, folding her napkin and standing up. “I like a half-full glass. And if yours is half-empty, then I’m sorry.”

He stiffened as if she’d hit a sore spot. Instantly, Rose regretted the fact that their semipleasant evening had deteriorated somehow. But maybe it was better this way. Keep the distance of teacher and student between them. Because he hadn’t hired her to be his friend—or anything else. This was a job. A good-paying job at that, and she wasn’t willing to risk it by opening up doors that should probably remain closed.

“My glass is just fine, thanks,” he said, his voice hardly more than a low rumble of sound.

“Glad to hear it.” Rose looked at him, and, in spite of knowing that she should just keep her mouth shut and protect this very well-paying job, she just had to say, “Maybe your glass is full, but if it’s holding the wrong things, what difference does it make?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Dumb analogy anyway. Look, why don’t I help you clean this up? Then we’ll make out a menu and a grocery list for tomorrow.”

She left him sitting at the table and even though she didn’t look around, Rose knew he was still watching her when she started loading the dishwasher.

“That’s it, you’re paying my dues at Weight Watchers.”

“Hmm?” Lucas looked up from the sheaf of papers he had been staring at for an hour without really reading any of it and looked at his secretary. “Evelyn, what’re you talking about?”

“This.” She held up an oversize frosted cookie and shook it at him. “Ever since Rafe married Katie, we’ve got these amazing cookies in the break room every day.”

“That’s a bad thing?” he asked, smiling.

Evelyn was in her late fifties with a rounded figure and short, graying brown hair. She was smart, efficient and knew as much as Lucas did about running crews and the customer base. She’d been with him for five years and had long since let go of her polite, businesslike tone with him.

“I’ve gained five pounds,” she muttered and gave the cookie a glare before taking a bite and nearly groaning in pleasure.

“Don’t eat them,” he said with a shrug.

“Excellent advice,” she muttered with a dark look. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Evelyn, was there a point to this?”

She sighed in defeat, took another nibble of the cookie and said, “There’s trouble on the Johnson site. The crew started digging for the new gas line before the WeDig people came out to clear the site and they hit the water line.”

“Perfect.” Anger churned his guts. His crews were more professional than that. They knew damn well that any digging had to be cleared by the city guys who came out to tell them where gas, water and cable lines were, giving them specific areas to avoid. “Who’s in charge of that site?”

She rolled her eyes. “Warren.”

“Damn it.”

“Exactly,” Evelyn said. “He’s on line two right now, wanting to talk to you.”

“Good. I’ve got a few things to say to him, too.” He waved one hand at his secretary, who backed out of his office chewing on her cookie and moaning like a woman having sex.

Oh, now there was an image he didn’t need in his head. Evelyn. Having sex.

He snatched up the phone, pushed line two and snapped, “Warren, what the hell is going on? You dug before getting the go-ahead?”

“Not me, boss. It was Rick. The new guy. Got impatient, I guess. I was making a run to a supply shop for more pipe. When I got back, it was like the Great Flood out there.”

“You’re in charge, Warren,” Lucas told him, tired of the man’s excuses. Whenever anything went wrong on one of his sites, he was never around. Always off doing something else. “You give the orders on this project, and you take your orders from me. You damn well know better than to dig before WeDig comes out to clear it and the guys should know it, too.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No more buts. I’ll be at the site in a half hour. For now, get some pumps in there to clear the yard and get that water pipe capped off.”

“Already done.”

“That’s something anyway …” Shaking his head, he added, “Keep the guys on site until I get there.”

“Right, boss.”

When he hung up, Lucas was still furious, but almost grateful for the shift in his thoughts. If not for Warren’s ineptitude, he’d have nothing on his mind but Rose Clancy. And he’d already done nothing but think about her since the night before.

She had haunted his dreams, making sleep nearly impossible, and then this morning over his cup of coffee, he’d smelled her in his kitchen. It was as if she was imprinting herself on his consciousness.

Now, Lucas thought back to how Dave had always described his sister. Younger, softer, easily hurt and scared of her own shadow. She hadn’t sounded all that appealing to him until the day he first met her. Then, her looks had bowled him over first and her laughter had hit him hard. There was something about a woman who knew how to laugh, he thought now. Maybe it was because growing up, he’d never heard his own mother laugh at a damn thing. Whining on the other hand … she had been very good at that.

As soon as that thought entered his mind, Lucas deliberately shut it down. It had sounded bad—disloyal—even to himself. His mom had done the best she could. She had just been too … alone.

Hell. Memories from his childhood weren’t going to make this situation any easier to deal with. Disgusted with himself and his lack of concentration, Lucas pushed aside all thoughts but those related to work. For most of his life, work had been his sanctuary. The place in the world where everything was as it should be. Where the rules were well-defined and always followed. Here, Lucas kept his finger on the pulse of the company. Here, he wasn’t questioned, just obeyed. Here, he was—

“How’d it go last night?”

“What?” He looked up as Sean strolled into his office and plopped himself down into one of the three chairs in front of Lucas’s desk. He was chewing on one of the frosted cookies.

“Did you know we’ve got cookies in the break room now?” He held one hand to his heart and bowed his head. “Thank you, sister Katie….”

“Yeah, I heard,” Lucas muttered. “Apparently a Weight Watchers class is in the offing.”

“Not for me,” Sean said with a laugh as he licked the last bit of frosting from his finger.

Lucas sighed. “Is there a reason you’re here?”

“Yep. Curiosity. How did it go last night? You know. With Rose?”

“How did you know about that?”

“Your secretary told my secretary, who told me and …” He shrugged and grinned. “Here I am. Seriously? Cooking lessons?”

Frowning, Lucas leafed through a pile of papers on his desk. He didn’t want to talk about this with Sean. Hadn’t he just been focusing on not thinking about her? For all the good it had done him.

In spite of his best efforts, she kept popping back into his mind. Her smile. The way light flashed on her long blond hair. The sound of her laugh and the fresh, lemony scent of her. It was all right there whether he wanted it to be or not.

“Nothing to say?” Sean whistled low and long. “Must be even more interesting than I figured.”

Glaring at his brother, Lucas demanded, “Don’t you have something to do?”

“Actually, yeah. I’m headed out to look into a new service provider. With the way the company’s expanding, our old one just isn’t keeping up.”

Lucas didn’t even have to pretend disinterest. Sean was enamored of all the technological aspects of the business, but once he started talking about it, Lucas’s eyes glazed over. “Good,” he said. “Go do it.”

“In a sec.” Sean leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “So tell me.”

“Tell you what?” He dropped the papers on his desk and sighed as he figured the fastest way to get rid of his brother was to answer his questions. “You already know I hired her.”

Sean laughed. “For cooking lessons.”

“Why is that so hard to understand?”

“Seriously?” Sean shook his head and stood up. “You, cooking? I should have been more impressed with her. Blonde, beautiful and a miracle worker. Teaching you to cook? Does she get hazard pay?”

Frowning, Lucas thought of the triple-her-usual-salary offer he’d made and realized that she was getting hazard pay. His scowl deepened as he snapped, “I’ve cooked for you before and you’re still breathing.”

“Only because of my excellent digestive system. It can withstand all sorts of toxins.”

“Get out, Sean.”

“Going, Lucas,” he said amiably.

“Oh—” Lucas stopped him with a single word. “There’s trouble at the Johnson site.”

“Warren again?” Sean frowned.

“Yeah, they dug without the okay and hit a water pipe. Apparently the home owner can now dock a boat off the patio.”

Shaking his head, Sean said, “I know the crews are your department, but if you want my opinion, we ought to get rid of Warren. We spend more time cleaning up after him than anything else. He’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

“Agreed.” Lucas nodded. “We’ll talk about it at the weekly meeting.”

“Right.” Sean headed for the door, but before he left, he asked, “On the Rose front, I hope cooking lessons are all you’re really up to.”

“What?”

“I hope you’re not still planning on using her for payback on Dave. Because, my man, that way lies misery.”

Lucas didn’t say anything, just stared at his younger brother until Sean shrugged and walked out. But long after he was gone, the man’s words were still ringing in the air.

Was he right? Was Lucas just asking for trouble by using Rose to get back at Dave?

Standing up, he turned his back on the work waiting for him and stared out the window at the world beyond the glass. Long Beach was shivering under gray skies and a cold rain driven by an icy ocean wind. Oak trees rattled bare limbs, and the tall pines swayed with each gust.

Truth be told, Lucas didn’t much like the idea of using Rose, either, though damned if he’d admit that to Sean. But the bottom line was, she was the sister of a man who had cheated him. Lied to him. And Lucas couldn’t let that slide.

Liars deserved what they got, he told himself as his hands fisted at his sides. Hadn’t he grown up watching his mother’s heart broken again and again by the very men she had trusted to keep her safe? First, it was his father, Ben King—though to give Ben his due, he hadn’t promised Lucas’s mother any more than he had the mothers of any of his sons.

But Lucas’s mother had pinned her hopes on love. Time and again, she’d gone searching for it, only to have whatever man she was pining over use her up and let her go. Her trust shaken, her heart shattered more times than he could even count, she’d finally given up. Destroyed by the very emotion she’d so longed to feel.

No, betrayal couldn’t be forgiven. Or forgotten. And he’d do whatever he had to do to make sure that Dave Clancy finally understood that.

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