By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс
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every woman in Sydney first.’ She laughed sadly, though it was a rueful sadness now, not the broken-hearted one it had once been. Rueful, she supposed, for her part in everything that had gone wrong. Sad, because Rémy, having hurt so many people, would now never even have the chance to redeem himself.
Luc leaned over and kissed her. ‘He was a fool. He didn’t know what he had.’
‘You’re not wrong.’ She smiled.
He took her in his arms and kissed her again, more deeply this time. Quite emotionally in fact. It was really very stirring and beautiful. And the graze of his chest hair against her breasts was so erotic, she felt as if she was in the most perfect location on the planet.
When the kiss ended they drew apart, then laughed a little embarrassedly at their intensity. ‘Who’d have thought we’d have ended up here?’ she said, grinning.
‘Not me. When I saw you this morning I thought I was hallucinating.’
‘I thought I was going to faint.’
‘I have that effect,’ he said modestly, laughing when she gave him a playful punch. He stacked the pillows up behind his head. ‘But I can’t understand why you agreed to be engaged to him? What was it about him?’
‘Dunno. I was a fool. Naive, I s’pose. He seemed—charming. Exciting. Romantic.’
‘Romantic?’ His face expressed Gallic disbelief.
She hardly wanted to admit she was a Georgette-Heyer-style Regency heroine with deep-held fantasies about marrying a sexy earl. Not that Rémy was in any way an earl, though he’d claimed to have one in his family.
‘Well, he was my first Frenchman. All my girlfriends thought he was really, really hot. I felt so lucky … I was sort of swept along, I guess. For a while.’ She compressed her lips. ‘I s’pose in fairness he was too. And Em was so thrilled. I think she was relieved he’d finally decided to settle down.’ She grimaced. ‘The irony of that. He was about as settled down as Casanova. I’ve sure learnt my lesson. Settling down is highly overrated.’
‘Be careful who you settle down with next time.’
She squeezed his pleasingly hard bicep. ‘Haven’t you been listening, monsieur? There won’t be a next time.’
‘How can you say so? There’ll be some good solid guy searching the world for you even now.’
She felt a sharp pang. He wasn’t thinking of himself in that regard, then. She said rather tartly, ‘Tsk, tsk. Poor him. He can wash his own socks and cook his own dinners. From now on I intend to be a woman of affairs, living for the good times.’
Luc appraised her face. She was smiling, but there were shadows in her eyes. As on that night in Paddington, that impulse seized him. That desire to drive away those shadows and wipe the darkness from her life.
He’d have laughed at himself if it hadn’t been for a flash of his return to his hotel that night. Blindly negotiating the city streets, scored with longing and regret. Guilt. One of the most rugged journeys of his life.
At the time he’d burned to snatch her out of harm’s way. But, of course, the cold light of morning had reminded him of his reasons to board the plane, Rémy’s theft from the company being foremost.
He frowned. ‘Was it—so bad?’
She glanced quickly at him. ‘Not at first. But—gradually. As the gloss wore off. I think you’ve guessed …’ She dropped her eyes. ‘He wasn’t always—very nice.’
‘He was—violent?’
There was a tiny tremor at the corner of her mouth, and he felt something inside him tighten.
‘Not with his fists, no, except that one time at the end when he was desperate to find his passport. He was just cruel—in little careless ways. Things he said. About me, about Neil. Sometimes he’d touch me, pull my hair in a joke, though always a little bit too hard. Not like a person who loved you.’
Luc lay frowning, his pulse beating hard with the increase in his blood pressure. His fists had bunched involuntarily. It was a good thing Rémy was where he was now, or he’d have felt this fierce need to go after him and teach him something about civility and decency. Not that more violence would ever be the answer.
He glanced at her downcast face. ‘I had heard—Rémy’s papa wasn’t very kind. There were rumours in the family …’
‘I know. Emilie mentioned it once. But I never expected—that.’
‘Of course not.’
Perhaps unlucky Rémy had been poorly conditioned as a child, but … Luc burned to think of a man treating any woman this way. To enjoy hurting Shari … How could the guy have? Examining the fragile lines of her face, he guessed there was more she could have told. Far more.
Caution sounded a warning note in his brain. Perhaps it was better he didn’t know those things. His rational mind told him the more a man learned about a woman, the more he saw into her, the deeper he sank into the emotional quicksand. Already his responses to her were out of all proportion. Way out. Just one morning with her and he was dangerously close to relaxing his guard completely.
Had he forgotten where it could all end?
Shari felt a tension in the lengthening silence. Maybe she’d said too much. She could almost hear his brain analysing the evidence, weighing it all up.
‘Anyway, enough about my little case,’ she said lightly. ‘Everyone’s break-up is painful, is it not? C’est la vie, hey, monsieur?’ With a rueful smile she reached up and rubbed her knuckle over his cheek. ‘Haven’t we all loved and lost?’
His expression lightened almost at once. ‘You are right. My last lover preferred a famous movie star to me. Can you imagine?’ He made a comical face, and she joined him in a laugh.
As the room grew silent again she wondered if there was a certain brooding flavour to the atmosphere. ‘She must be insane,’ she murmured.
He grimaced, then his face lightened to a smile. ‘I thought of you every day, after we parted.’
‘About the bruise?’
He frowned. ‘Not that. About you. How beautiful you are. How—original.’ She hardly believed it. Even so, her mouse heart thrilled to its little rodent core. ‘Every hour … of every day.’
‘And I thought of you every day. I wanted to murder you. I wanted to make you sorry. I wanted to put my hands around your strong, beautiful neck and …’
A flame lit his dark eyes. ‘Come here.’ He reached for her. He whispered the words against her mouth. ‘I was sorry. I am sorry. Now I want you to forget—everything.’
This time his passion was darker, more fervent, more tender. A fierce and ardent light glowed in his eyes as he rocked her, filled her and pleasured her until she was blazing with light and higher than the moon.
And she did forget. She forgot everything in existence except the world of his arms, his passionate mouth, his beautiful, hard, thrusting body, the fierce heat in his eyes.
While Paris ticked over outside and the day drew on, their lips grew raw with kissing, their bodies sated. With exhaustion in view, Luc dragged up the sheet to cover them. Shari lay face to face with him, languorous eyes to eyes.
Gently, he pushed her hair from her face. ‘Two days is too short. You should stay longer.’
‘What for?’ She traced the outline of his mouth with her finger.
‘For this.’
Her heart skipped a heavy beat. What was this? This mad, uncontrollable need to hold him to her and never let him go. When had she ever known this intense mutual tenderness and passion? She wanted