She hugged her friend briefly and propelled her over the threshold, and Lucien stepped aside to allow her to pass. Sophie shivered and wrapped her arms around her midriff as she watched Kara's retreating back with an increasing sense of panic.
"So," Lucien said. "It's just you and me again."
Oh God. She couldn't do this. Everything he said came out sounding like a movie hero.
"What do you want, Lucien?"
"My PA back?" His tone was neutral as he held her gaze steadily.
A strangled laugh choked out of Sophie's throat.
"I’ve quit."
"I didn't get your resignation letter. Invite me in."
Sophie didn't want this big man in her small house, but the only other option was to continue the conversation on the doorstep, and she suspected that the neighbours were already having a field day with her marital problems. She could practically see the curtains twitching and hear the phone calls passing between them to alert each other to another potential sideshow going on in the street.
"Fine. Come in."
She turned her back on him and headed for the kitchen. She heard the door close and knew he was in the room by the crackling electricity of his nearness, but she forced herself not to turn around until she'd filled the kettle and reached for mugs.
"Sit down?" She turned and gestured towards a dining chair as she cleared the breakfast debris off the table, still not meeting his eyes.
He moved and sat where she'd indicated, his body somehow far too big for her kitchen. He was dressed in black, and it matched her mood.
Does he have to sprawl like that? How could he look so comfortable in another man’s kitchen, with another man’s wife? But then again, her husband had never registered highly on Lucien’s respect radar.
Coffee made and on the table, Sophie was all out of delaying tactics. It was time to face Lucien Knight.
Chapter Two
"You didn't come to work on Monday."
Sophie placed the mugs on the table and sat down opposite Lucien.
"Did you seriously expect me to?"
He lifted one shoulder, as if bemused she even needed to ask. "Yes."
She shook her head. He couldn't be serious. "You hit my husband."
"Do you expect me to apologise? He deserved it." Lucien worked hard to maintain his casual bearing but the expression in his eyes went from cool to lava hot, leaving Sophie well aware of how on edge he was.
"You had no right." Sophie's fingernails bit into her palms as her fists tightened. "I wanted to do things my way. You took away my choices."
She watched him digest her words and for the briefest moment, saw uncertainty flicker in his eyes.
"Choices?" He leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the table. "Way I see it, you didn't have any choices to make, Sophie. Your husband's a lowlife, you needed rid of him."
Sophie mirrored his rigid stance across the table. "And there you go again, making my decisions for me."
A pulse flickered along the hard set of his clenched jaw.
"I thought you'd make the wrong one."
"So you made it for me."
He leaned back, folding his arms defiantly across his chest.
"I'm not sorry."
"Men never are." Sophie regretted the cheap generalisation the moment it left her lips, but the last few days had left her more than a little jaded.
"I'm not like him, Sophie." Lucien's words were spoken so softly that Sophie only just caught them.
"No. No, you're not like him," she spat. "You're your very own brand of fucked up, Lucien."
Her words must have hit home, because he cast his eyes down and sighed heavily. Robbed of the luxury of his expression, Sophie was almost undone by the vulnerability in his new aspect: the sweep of his long lashes against his cheekbone and the fullness of his slightly parted lips. For a split second she was transported back to his office in Norway, looking at the photograph of the boy this man had become, the laughing child with the mother he adored. He was alone in the world, and her point-scoring felt suddenly shoddy.
"I didn't mean to take away your choices." Lucien's voice was quiet but steady.
Sophie believed him. He was a man who operated on his own screwed up set of morals, and in her heart she knew his actions had been driven by anger with Dan rather than a desire to control her.
Fact was, the end result would have been the same either way.
She'd have told Dan about her affair. Dan would have confessed to his affair.
Where do you go from there, really? They'd betrayed each other's trust, trampling their marriage into the dust as they went.
"Lucien." Sophie looked back into his air force blue eyes when he raised them to hers. "What's happened has happened. I need to find a way to get through this, and you need to find a new PA."
He huffed lightly. "I don't want a new PA. Come back to work."
"Never in a million years."
He shook his head. "We could make it work. We're grown ups, Sophie."
She all but laughed. "What, so I should just come into work as if nothing has happened? Make your coffee, type your reports, and conveniently forget we've had sex?"
"Who said forget?" Lucien's eyes darkened as they settled on hers again. "I don't want to forget fucking you. I don't want to forget how you feel in my hands, or how your face looks when you come."
Sophie stared at him, dry mouthed. He had a directness that knocked the air clean out of her lungs.
"So no. Not forget. Move on." He sipped his coffee. "You can go back to being the girl who kisses envelopes before she mails them."
Sophie tried to remember that girl. It was almost impossible. She was a stranger, even though only a few weeks had passed since she’d posted that fateful letter.
"I can't do it," she said, flatly.
"Yes you can. If nothing else Sophie, we can be friends, and colleagues."
He made it sound so perfectly reasonable. So achievable. So very casual. Easy come, easy go. But then wasn't that exactly who he was?
It might be who he was, but it wasn't who she was.
"I can't, Lucien, it's too hard. I can't be friends with you, and I can't sort out the mess my life is in with you around."
Lucien looked around her small kitchen. "I take it he's not living here anymore?"
Surprised by his change of tack, Sophie shook her head and dug her nails into her palms again. Physical pain to distract from the mental pain, but the tears gathered regardless.
"Are you okay on your own?" he asked softly.