Lucas. She hadn’t even heard him sneak up behind her.
“Hey! Give that back.”
He ignored her and pressed her red phone to his ear—the same ear she used to nibble and whisper her most secret fantasies into. Right before he’d fulfilled each of them in sensual detail. She absolutely deplored the rush of heat that memory evoked.
“Mitch, this is Lucas Stone. After the accident your father told me Nadia insisted on ending our marriage. He had me sign divorce papers. If Nadia didn’t sign the forms or didn’t know what she was signing, we might still be married.”
She couldn’t still be married. She couldn’t.
The strength and fight drained from Nadia’s limbs. She staggered to the kitchen and folded, as limp as freshly pressed pasta, into a chair. Parking her elbows on her knees, she plopped her head in her hands.
Lucas had to be wrong. Not just because of the things she’d done to try to forget him, but because she didn’t want to be tied to a jerk who’d betray her.
Then there was the truth she’d discovered about her mother after the accident…Those facts changed everything. No matter what her shrink claimed, Nadia couldn’t risk marriage. Not with her potentially defective genes.
And that wasn’t the only thing that had changed. She pressed a hand over her navel and tried to convince herself that losing her baby had been a good thing given the circumstances. But as always, her pep talk fell flat.
Suddenly, her goal of getting through this year without botching the terms of the will or losing her mind seemed inconsequential. She had worse problems, specifically, the one that had followed her into the kitchen.
She dragged her gaze from his polished Guccis standing toe to toe with her Ralph Lauren sandals, up his sharply creased trousers over his lean h*ps and flat belly. Straightening, she snatched her phone from his outstretched hand before glaring at him. He’d ended the call without letting her say goodbye to her brother.
“If we’re still married, I’ll just get another divorce.”
His mouth tilted into a see-if-I-care smile. “You’re assuming I won’t change your mind.”
A sound of disgust gurgled in her throat. “Trust me, you can’t.”
Her unintentional challenge registered in his eyes and she wanted to kick herself for not choosing her words more carefully. She had brothers. She knew better than to throw down a gauntlet that way.
Lucas loomed over her, forcing her to lean way back in the chair and tilt her head to look up at him. His legs brushed her knees and her pulse rattled like a ship’s dropping anchor chain. “Do you remember how good it was between us, Nadia?”
Heat blossomed inside her, unfurling like petals opening in the spring sunshine. She pressed her knees together to crush the ache between her legs and fought an urge to squirm in her seat.
How could she still desire him after what he’d done?
The memories of how it had been still haunted her. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. Their passion had overridden everything—especially common sense—which was how she’d ended up pregnant within two months of meeting Lucas.
On her wedding day she’d been so full of joy, hope, excitement and love. They’d made love for the first time as husband and wife in an empty anteroom of his family’s church with their guests only yards away because they simply couldn’t wait. And despite, or maybe because of their cramped, illicit location it had been the most amazing sex of her life.
She squashed the memory and frowned harder. “That was a long time ago.”
His direct gaze held hers. “Letting you go was a mistake. But I wanted you to be happy.”
Snorting in disbelief, she shoved the chair backward and stood. “If you’re trying to convince me you took that money for my benefit, you’re wasting your breath. You won’t get your hands on another dime of Kincaid money, so don’t even think about asking for alimony if we have to redo this.”
“I’m not interested in handouts.”
“Even though a Kincaid handout bought you this.” A snap of her wrist indicated his designer clothing.
“What I have now came from my own sweat. Your father’s bribe was barely a drop in the bucket.”
Two million was barely a drop? How loaded was Lucas?
He set the grocery bag on the counter, shrugged off his suit coat and draped it over the back of a chair. The David Yurman cufflinks he removed and dropped into his pocket were similar to the ones she’d bought Mitch for his birthday last year. He rolled up his sleeves revealing a Cartier Roadster watch on his tanned, hair-dusted wrist.
Oh, yes, Lucas had serious money these days.
But why was he undressing in her kitchen? “What are you doing?”
“Helping you cook.”
“I don’t need help.” Not anymore. Thanks to her downtime in Dallas she’d become a freaking gourmet. But then she’d never done anything by half measures. If she jumped in, she tended to go for the deep end. What was the point in holding back when the things that mattered most could be snatched away in an instant?
“You’re going to get my help and my company whether you want it or not.” Lucas opened a cabinet door. Apparently not finding whatever it was he was looking for, he searched through another and another until he located her new pasta pot in a lower cabinet.
“You can’t just barge in here and take over.”
“Looks like I already have.”
Daddy, if you weren’t dead, I’d kill you for this.
“Then by all means make yourself at home in my kitchen.” She served the words with a generous side of sarcasm and a mutinous glare.
“Do you have any red wine?”
“I don’t drink.”
Blue eyes nailed her to the travertine tiles. “That’s not what the tabloids say.”
Shame crawled up her neck and across her face. So she’d partied a bit over the past few years. But partying alone wasn’t fun. It was pathetic. And she’d been alone in Dallas every day and every one of the past fifty-two nights.
“I was trying to forget my dead husband and the baby I’d miscarried.”
Incredulity filled his eyes and slackened his jaw. “You expect me to believe you’ve been pining away for me for more than a decade?”
She squared her shoulders and sniffed. “Of course not. I had better things to do.”
And if she hadn’t, she’d never admit it.
He carried the pot to the sink and hit the faucet lever. While the water flowed he raided her cupboards, found salt and olive oil and poured both into the water without measuring.
She scrambled to her cookbook and scanned the recipe. A teaspoon of salt. Two tablespoons of oil. “How did you know to do that?”
He set the cookware on the burner and turned on the stove. “You’ve forgotten I grew up helping around the house. I learned how to cook as soon as I could reach the controls on the stove.”
How could she ever forget that his loving family had been as warm and welcoming as hers had been cold and reserved? Or that she’d almost become a part of the Stones’ tight-knit clan. And thanks to her miserable, meddling father and Lucas’s greed she’d lost that chance.
Jerks. Both of them.
“How are your mother and sisters?”
“Fine.” He moved to the knife and cutting board she’d left out in preparation for chopping nuts. A quick twist of his wrists tore the bag. He poured walnuts onto the white surface and started chopping quickly and decisively with far more skill than she’d managed to acquire.
Eleven years ago Sandi had been sixteen and Terri thirteen. They’d treated Nadia like the big sister they’d always wanted. And she’d loved it. “They must not think much of me if they believe I walked out on you when you needed me most.”
“An accurate assessment. But they’ll come around when we tell them the truth.”
She’d often wondered why the Stones had never contacted her after the accident. Now she knew. And while she wanted to correct their opinion of her, it wasn’t because she intended to allow Lucas back into her life. As soon as she got rid of him today she’d find a way to avoid him until he left town again.
“They don’t need to come around.”
He barely glanced up. “How many nuts do you need?”
“A cup.” She carefully measured a teaspoon of vanilla and turned on the mixer to stir the fragrant liquid into the brownie batter. “Lucas, if we’re still married—and I don’t think we are because my father wouldn’t make that kind of sloppy mistake—we are not staying married.”
But her father had made a lot of mistakes recently, a nagging voice reminded her. Big mistakes. Like getting a woman her age pregnant and missing employees embezzling millions from right beneath his nose. Rand and Mitch were handling those messes without her and being excluded irritated her like a bad rash.
She tamped down the accompanying twinge of worry and reminded herself that her marriage and its dissolution had happened years ago when Everett Kincaid had still been at the top of his game.
Lucas dumped the nuts into the mixing bowl.
“Hey, you didn’t measure. How do you know that’s a cup?”
“Experience.”
While she’d traveled the globe more times than she could remember before she’d turned eighteen, Lucas had been far more experienced than her in almost every other way eleven years ago, thanks to his less than stable upbringing. The contrast between his simple lifestyle and his savvy attitude had intrigued her.
He’s not interesting. He’s opportunistic. And don’t you forget it.
She scraped the brownie batter into the pan then shoved the rectangle into the preheated oven.
Discovering she’d been living a lie had left her with a lot of questions—questions that had kept her up most of the night. She wanted answers even if it meant tolerating Lucas’s company over lunch.
She propped a hip against the kitchen table, aiming for a casual pose when she was anything but relaxed. “What happened to you after the wreck?”
He leaned back against the counter and crossed his ankles. “Your father had me transferred to a Denver rehabilitation facility. He relocated my family and dumped his bribe into a bank account in my name. I studied while I was stuck in that wheelchair. Because of our background and our grades my sisters and I were able to get scholarships and financial aid to cover the majority of our tuition. I invested what was left after the medical bills and made it work for us.”
“How?”
“I’m good with numbers.” He pushed off the counter and gestured toward the steaming pot. “Water’s boiling. Show me what you can do.”
A blatant bid to avoid answering, but his tone carried just enough of a challenge to imply doubt in her cooking skills. She’d show him. And she’d get her answers. But first, she reread the last part of the recipe—just to be safe. She’d be darned if she’d have him looking over her shoulder correcting her “mistakes” the way her father always had. She began easing the pasta into the water.