Luke strode through the doors thrown wide from the next room and had a foot on the bottom step before he looked up and stilled. A slow, knowing smile spread across his face. “I was just coming to get you. Our guests are starting to arrive, darling.”

The wand must have touched Luke as well. Before now, she’d only ever seen him dressed casually. Even then, and even when ill, he’d looked striking, had an undeniable charisma. But now, in an elegant tuxedo, its cut and custom tailoring accentuating the breadth of his shoulders and his lean strength, he looked devastating. A surge of possessiveness and pride swept through her. This man was her husband.

She quashed both the possessiveness and the pride. She had no right to feel possessive of a man who wasn’t in any way hers. And she had no right to the pride. He’d had to believe he was dying to offer marriage. Even so, he waited expectantly for her. And she couldn’t quite calm the leap of her pulse.

Part of his attraction was the way when he looked at her she felt like he only saw her, only thought of her, as though she fascinated him every bit as much as he fascinated her.

Meg held a little tighter to the banister. She had only one dress suitable for a dinner like this. And it was red. Now Luke would think, and he’d be right, that she wore the red lace beneath it. Or worse, and he’d be wrong, that she wore it for him.

She descended the stairs. Wearing the demure but fitted dress and too-high heels, she was well out of her comfort zone. Or maybe it was his silver gaze steady on her that made her hyperaware of her every movement.

Tonight. She just had to get through tonight without succumbing to his pull. When she was away from him again she’d be fine, but when he was near, he scrambled her thought processes till she didn’t know what she wanted, or till she wanted things she knew she oughtn’t.

She stopped a step above him and finally, defiantly, met his gaze. And looked quickly away, her defiance doused. Heat. She’d read heat in his eyes. For her.

It was insane.

As insane as the heat of the response deep within her that his gaze had ignited.

He needed to get back out into the real world, remember the type of woman he was attracted to, the type of woman who belonged in his world, and stop playing games with her.

Except it didn’t feel like a game.

She looked back at him, he waited, his hand extended. Trapped by his gaze, Meg swallowed and put her hand in his, felt his fingers fold around hers. And at that touch, that gentle, unerring connection, something shifted and changed, including Meg in this evening’s magic.

Hope flickered. Might she be entitled to one enchanted evening?

She did her best to quash the thoughts. A childhood spent lost in books and fairy tales was now having the unwanted repercussions her grandmother had warned of.

Luke smiled, that same smile he had back up in her-his-bedroom as his fingers tightened around hers. “Let’s go, Mrs. Maitland, we’re having a party.” His tone was light, teasing. Maybe she’d imagined the heat.

The living room was now decorated in silver and gold, with enough candles to keep them going for months if the power ever went out. Luke paused in the doorway and glanced up. Mistletoe hung from the door frame. In full view of those guests who’d already arrived, he planted a quick, hard kiss on her lips. Then he put his mouth close to her ear and whispered, “I knew you’d look good in red.” His words and his warm breath on the bare skin of her neck sent a shiver through her.

Pretending she hadn’t heard, hadn’t been affected by his words or his kiss, Meg dredged up a bright, but possibly vacant, smile as guests approached.

“Wyatt, Martha, good to see you. You’ve met my wife, Meg?” Luke released her hand but rested it instead at the curve of her waist. She wasn’t sure which disturbed her composure more.

He stayed by her side almost all evening as he worked the room with skill and ease. As head of Maitland Corporation, he left the running of the foundation to Blake, the director, but he spoke with knowledge and passion about the foundation’s work. He talked to almost everyone, smiling and magnanimous, while at the same time ensuring Meg was included in conversations, asking her opinion on whatever topic came up. But he also took advantage of every opportunity, and created more than a few of his own, to touch her: to take her hand, or touch her arm, to curve his palm around her waist, to cup her shoulder. Once, claiming she had a crumb of pastry from a canapé on her cheek, he’d turned to her and brushed his thumb across her face, letting her see the heat in his eyes, making her want him.

And if he wasn’t at her side, he was watching her, making her think about him, about their promise. The evening became an exquisite torture.

A bejeweled woman, who’d just promised the foundation a hefty donation, turned away, her parting words See you both at the New Year’s Eve cocktail party, ringing in Meg’s ears and Luke’s gaze pinning her. He lifted two champagne flutes from the tray of a circulating waiter and passed one to Meg. He led her to a somewhat quiet corner of the room and she took a sip of the sparkling liquid.

“I was going to tell you about the cocktail party.”

“Clearly I need to take a look at our social calendar and see what’s expected of me. It’s not in my house, is it?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll deal.”

They watched the mingling crush. By then she’d be long gone. “I didn’t realize you were such a people person.”

“I’m not,” he said softly. “But I know how to play the game.” He turned his back on the room so that only she could see his face and hear his words. “The only person I’m thinking about is you and how good you look in red. And how good you’ll look out of it.”

His words, blatant and seductive, shocked her. How had they got to this point and, more importantly, how did she stop it? Because while she was certain it was all just a part of the “game” to him, if affected her differently, more deeply than he could know. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“What you’ve been doing all evening. I’m trying to concentrate, to listen to what people are saying and you’re making me think…”

“Think what, Meg?” His low voice seemed to sink through her to her core. “About the things I might like to do with you? Because I’ve been thinking about my husbandly privileges.”

She backed a little farther into the corner. “You’re not really my husband.” But he’d caught what she’d been thinking and she hated that he knew it. That she was that transparent. Because being married to someone carried connotations regardless of the reasons for the marriage.

He leaned closer. “That’s the thing, Meg, I really am your husband. And you know it. And you think about it.”

“Stop it, Luke. Please.”

Something in her tone or her words stilled him. He backed off a little, easing her need to either reach for him or run from him. “If you want me to.”

She nodded. “I do. Thank you.” She was Meg. She wasn’t allowed to want him. Not in the real world. She looked past him to see Sally approaching, glowing with the success of the evening so far.

“You two make a gorgeous couple.” Sally kissed both Meg and Luke. “I’m so pleased you finally found a good woman, Luke, and had the sense to marry her. I foresee a long and happy union.”

If only in my dreams. The line from the Christmas song popped into Meg’s head. Now clearly wasn’t the time to tell Sally that she was leaving and that Luke would be starting divorce proceedings as soon as possible.

Luke smiled and raised his glass to Sally, which could look like he was agreeing with her. It could, if you were Meg, also look like he was avoiding commenting on what she’d said.

She sat beside Luke for the dinner, ignoring the occasional press of his thigh against hers. He kept their topics of conversation neutral, his tone and his glances warm, only a degree or two more than friendly. For all of his subtle teasing foreplay earlier, he seemed, from the time of her request, to have switched off, or at least turned down the wattage on the sensual messages.

Whereas Meg had to fight to hide her feelings, and fight to conceal the slow burning fuse of desire he’d lit and that now refused to be extinguished.

When the dinner was all but over, he sat back with his arm behind her and his hand curled around her arm, his thumb tracing lazy circles that sent heat spiraling through her. It was just a thumb. It shouldn’t be able to do that.

She waited till he was deep in conversation with the man across the table before easing her chair back. Not deep enough, apparently. He dropped a firm hand to her thigh, anchoring her to her chair and looked at her, a knowing smile glinting in his eyes and touching his lips. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not running away now.”

“I was just…” she could see him waiting for her excuse “…I’m not needed here,” was the best she could come up with.

“I need you here.”

She could almost wish that was true. He’d needed her once and married her because of it. That need had passed. He was back in his life, he was strong and healthy. His hand gentled on her thigh, but the heat of his palm burned through the silk of her dress, sizzled along her skin.

“I’m tired.” She tried again, which was also true, although she didn’t expect to sleep any more tonight than she had last night. Last night she’d been dealing mainly with the surprise of his sudden return. Tonight she’d be battling the strength of a desire that seemed to have flamed from nothing. Even though she realized now that the seeds had been sown and taken root back on the island. Then, she’d been able to ignore it, pretend it was something else. But she’d built fantasies around Luke. Fantasies she’d scarcely acknowledged.

She needed to leave. And not just this party. She needed to leave this house, break the spell she was falling under. Already she was way too close to the precipice of stupidity.

“You can’t leave,” he said quietly, “because I have plans for you, Meg. Slow, sensuous plans.” Holding her gaze, his hand inched farther up her thigh.

Lost. She was lost. The precipice rushed closer.

He wanted her and he knew she wanted him, knew what his touch was doing to her, how it heated her, and he knew she wanted more of it.

Luke pushed his chair back. Claiming jet lag, he excused them both.

In the entranceway, he shut the double doors behind them, muting the sounds of music and conversation. Illuminated only by flickering candles and fairy lights, he murmured, “Mistletoe,” and then pulled her to him and kissed her. Meg welcomed the press of his hard body against hers, reveled in the taste of him. The man she’d married. His mouth and lips and tongue teased and explored and seduced. Already, she knew the way their mouths fit together, knew the scent of him. He gripped her waist, slid his hands to cup her behind, she answered his pull with an involuntary rocking of her hips.

He shuddered in her arms and broke the kiss to rest his forehead against hers, breathing as heavily as she was. “I made you a promise, Meg. Will you let me keep it?”

Five

Meg nodded her agreement, the small movement moving both their heads. Reaching up, Luke pulled the mistletoe free, then led her past the Christmas tree slowing only enough to brush his lips across hers. Once, and then again. Light and shadows danced across his face.

They entered a hallway and he shut the door behind them, once again turning her, pressing her up against it as he kissed her, one hand holding the mistletoe above them, the other sliding up beneath her dress over nylon, encountering bare skin at the top of her thigh.

The hand stilled, the kiss stopped and the mistletoe dropped to the floor.

Luke drew back. “Stockings?” he asked, his voice hoarse but his fingers still burning against her skin.

Meg shrugged, her throat suddenly too dry for words. She hadn’t meant the stockings for him; she preferred them to pantyhose, but she also liked their risqué-ness, as she liked her lacy lingerie. It was supposed to be her secret weakness.

“Pretty, quiet, Nurse Meg. I knew there was more to you than met the eye. Be very, very grateful I didn’t know that till now.” He took a step back from her. “Show me.”

She hesitated. She was no lingerie model.

“Show me,” he insisted again, his voice a command as though she were a siren, as though she, Meg Elliot, tempted him to danger.

“I can’t.” Shyness warred with a budding sense of power. “Not here. Someone could come this way.”

Luke grasped her hand and tugged her down the hall way and into the first door they came to, shutting it behind them. Meg took a few steps into the library with its walls of books and its two-seater couch. She turned back to see Luke leaning against the door, watching her. “Show me.”