By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс
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Beneath her silken finery her breasts all at once felt indescribably tender. Some of the insulting assumptions he’d made during their previous encounter flooded back with raw immediacy, and she found herself breathing rather fast.
‘Perhaps you mean with whom.’
His eyes glinted. ‘Comment?’ He tilted up one thick black brow. ‘Vraiment, it’s coming back to me. How you are.’
How she was, though, seemed to wholly concentrate his attention, because he devoured her from head to toe, raking her ensemble with a wolflike, smouldering curiosity that eliminated the rest of the world from her awareness. At the same time, the smoothness of his deep voice was having its old hypnotic effect. She might have been walking with him through the shrubbery on a summer’s night.
‘You are very pale. Your lips are pale.’ He examined them with an intense interest. ‘And you are thinner.’ His gaze swept over her, lingering a second longer than was necessary below her throat. ‘Though not too thin, fortunately.’
Scandalously, her overly sensitive breasts swelled to push the boundaries even of this new bra, and she began to feel almost aroused.
Inappropriate. Thoroughly inappropriate.
All these conflicting sensations were making her giddy, but somehow she stayed upright and said things. Some things, at least.
As if in a dream she inclined her head. ‘I’m sure you mean that as a compliment, though I have no idea what you expected. It’s only been a couple of weeks.’
She realised she’d made a gross tactical blunder when the ghost of a smile touched his mouth and she caught a glimpse of his white, even teeth. ‘Five weeks and three days, to be exact.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said crushingly. ‘I haven’t been counting.’
She had the disconcerting feeling that the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth signalled satisfaction. But what did he have to be satisfied about? Why did he think she’d come here? For him?
He gestured then to the fascinated onlookers, in particular to a couple of elderly women who were circling to view her narrowly.
‘Maman, Tante Marise, c’est Shari,’ he said. ‘La fiancée de Rémy.’
‘Ex-fiancée,’ Shari corrected hurriedly, but her words were lost in the babble as family members closed in around her and subjected her to a gamut of curiosity. Only thing was, their questions, arguments and observations were all for each other, not for her.
Not that she’d have understood them anyway. Their French was so rapid and idiomatic she could scarcely pick up a word.
Except for the term fiancée. That was being bandied about quite furiously.
The next thing she knew someone patted her, though stiffly. Then someone else murmured something to her about Rémy and gave her a kindly nod. More people spoke to her, some with increasing warmth until everyone, including a hearty uncle with a face not unlike a truffle, seemed to be hugging her, kissing her and calling her ma pauvre and ma puce.
SHARI had visualised herself sitting in the rear of the chapel, alone, concealed perhaps by a marble pillar, a remote, mysterious, but essentially inconspicuous ghost. That wasn’t how it went.
For one thing the ghost space was heavily occupied. Once inside that chapel, the passing of a life cut short was uppermost, whether or not Luc Valentin was present, overwhelmingly attractive and closely scrutinising her every move. As for being inconspicuous, the aunts had hustled Shari into the second front pew, across the aisle from Luc.
She’d always been far too emotional in stressful situations, and Rémy was all too powerfully present for comfort. And when Luc rose to deliver a brief eulogy, mainly in French, and a couple of people on her side of the aisle snivelled, Shari couldn’t help shedding a couple of polite tears in sympathy.
The trouble was her tears took on a life of their own. It was so ridiculous. Once started they wouldn’t stop. She cried so much about Rémy’s stupid, selfish conceit, the agony he’d caused her and the humiliating things she’d let him get away with, that she filled up bunches and bunches of tissues. Though she tried to keep it as quiet as possible, her sobs probably sounded pretty heartbroken, when she wasn’t at all. Face it, she wasn’t all that sad.
But Rémy’s family assumed she was. Those nearby patted and consoled her. Aunts, cousins, even the uncle shuffled seats to get near her and murmur comforting things until she gave in, laid her head on the truffle’s shoulder and cried all down his suit.
Luc kept halting his speech to glower at her with a brow as dark as thunder. She could hardly blame him. When the worst of the embarrassing paroxysm had passed, he lowered his austere gaze to his text and continued on in English with a rather biting courtesy.
Shari supposed she should appreciate the consideration, although she doubted Rémy was the finest flower of the French nation, cut down in his prime by a heartless fate. She knew damned well what Luc meant to imply by that. A heartless whore.
And when he said a man was known by the quality of those who’d loved him, and went on to describe Rémy as a man who’d been possessed of earthly treasure and looked directly at her, she glared incredulously back through her tears. Oh, come on.
The man was a hypocrite. If she hadn’t been so weepy and trembly from stress and the lack of a breakfast, she might have jumped up and said a few very gracious, dignified though at the same time rather terse things.
But the emotional toll of the past few weeks chose that critical moment to suspend her freedom of choice. Once again, just when she wanted to be at her sophisticated best, she was overcome by a wave of nausea.
Without time even to fumble for a dry tissue, she sprang up and rushed for the entrance, stumbled outside into the chill air and retched into a flower pot.
Nothing much came up. How could it? Nothing had gone down.
Sweating and gasping, as the last wrenching spasm subsided, she noticed a pair of masculine, highly polished leather shoes standing nearby. It occurred to her, even in her woeful state, they looked as if they’d been handmade by some Italian master.
‘Are you better?’ Luc’s concerned voice broke through her humiliation and distress. ‘Can you stand?’
‘Of course,’ she gasped. ‘I’m fine.’ She straightened up, grateful to feel his strong hand under her tottery elbow, and blotted her upper lip and forehead with a tissue. Foraging in her bag for another, she came across the bottle of cola. God bless the Hôtel du Louvre. Unscrewing the cap, she took a swig and turned aside to discreetly rinse her mouth. ‘Excellent,’ she panted, applying a tissue to her lips. ‘I’m just a little empty. I haven’t had any breakfast.’
‘Elle n’a pas pris de petit déjeuner!’ an excited voice relayed from close at hand.
‘Comment! Pas de petit déjeuner?’
Until that ripple of concern about her non-breakfast electrified the crowd, Shari hadn’t really noticed people streaming from the chapel and regrouping. Some had positioned themselves quite near to her and Luc, and were scrutinising her every move.
From under her chic chapeau, Tante Laraine in particular was watching her with an expression Shari couldn’t quite interpret. Well, how would she? It was a very French expression. Though encountering the woman’s disconcertingly shrewd gaze a second time, Shari corrected that analysis. A very womanly expression.
She wished she could melt through the stonework. Didn’t these people understand a woman’s need to retch in private? Several of them seemed anxious