by Penny Jordan
‘You were skin and bone,’ Luc continued. ‘I thought…’
‘That I’d been pining away for you over the years?’
Luc gave her a direct look.
‘No. I didn’t think that, Belle. I’ve got my faults, I know that, but suffering from delusions has never been one of them.’
‘Who says it would have been a delusion?’ Belle surprised them both by admitting a little gruffly. ‘There was a time when we first parted…’ She paused, and then, her face clouding, told him, ‘Oh, Luc…I was so dreadfully unhappy then, and—’
She stopped abruptly. It wasn’t like her to admit to any kind of vulnerability, and she could see that Luc was as surprised by her admission as she herself was.
‘If we weren’t here…’ he began, and Belle shook her head chidingly. But that didn’t stop a tiny thrill of excitement running dangerously down her spine.
It had been a shock to open her front door that day and discover that her unwanted visitor was no less than Luc, her ex-husband, to whom she had neither spoken nor seen since their divorce seven years before.
The sight of him standing there, so tall and darkly handsome, so excessively and alluringly male and mature, had been more than her already overloaded weakened defence system had needed to send it into complete chaos.
As she’d clung to the front door she’d been able to literally feel the blood draining down through her body at the same time as a weakening rush of dizzying faintness poured swiftly through it.
She had known what was going to happen, known she was going to faint, but at the same time she had known too that she simply did not have the strength or the will-power to halt it. Her last thought as Luc had masterfully reached out to catch her up in his arms had been how good he smelled, how good he felt…how good it was to be held so protectively and so safely in his arms.
Her faint had only lasted a couple of minutes, but that had been long enough for Luc to close her front door and carry her upstairs, through the living room of her small mews house and into her bedroom.
She bad come round to discover that she was lying on her bed completely naked, with Luc leaning anxiously over her calling her name.
Even now, more than three months later, she still couldn’t quite account for the effect, the erotic charge, the sheer inconsistency of the emotions which had allowed her to experience a previously unknown rush of intense female sensuality at the knowledge that she was naked whilst Luc was fully dressed. It was so out of character for her, so alien to what she might have expected to feel, that for several seconds it had robbed her of the ability to make any kind of response to Luc’s presence other than to simply lie there watching him with widened golden eyes.
Later he had told her that it had been that look of dazed wonderment in place of the angry rejection and bitterness he had expected that had encouraged him to put aside his own protective defences and show her his concern and anxiety.
‘Luc…’ had been all she had been able to say, in an unfamiliarly weak and hesitant voice.
‘You fainted,’ he told her gently, his fingers stroking her forehead in reassurance.
‘I know… I haven’t been well,’ she responded. ‘I’ve had some kind of flu bug…’
‘Which you no doubt refused to acknowledge and fought off until it really made you ill,’ Luc countered a little grimly.
For a moment Belle was tempted to deny what he was saying, but the strong core of self-honesty she had developed since the failure of their marriage refused to let her.
‘I had an important client meeting to attend,’ she admitted. ‘I should really have put it off, but this is such a cut-throat business I felt I couldn’t afford to do so…’
Five years ago Belle had left the firm she had originally worked for and had set up in business on her own. Financially the rewards were not perhaps quite so high as they had been, and certainly the demands on her time and her energies were far greater, but so was the sense of satisfaction she gained from being her own boss.
Just recently, though, she found that she was deliberately ignoring opportunities to further her business and add to her client base, that she was beginning to respond to a previously unacknowledged need to allow things into her life other than her work, beginning to admit to a sense of awareness that there were certain things she was missing out on, certain emotional needs in her life which were not being met. But of course these were admissions she could not make to Luc, not when all those years ago Luc had accused her of putting her career above their marriage, when Luc had warned her that one day she would find herself lonely and alone.
‘You always did make far too many demands on yourself,’ Luc told her wryly, his criticism turning to concern as she suddenly started to shiver. ‘You’re freezing,’ he told her almost accusingly.
This caused her to flash back at him, her eyes brilliant with a mixture of fever and pride, ‘And whose fault is that? I’m not the one who took off my robe.’
Immediately she wished she hadn’t spoken, because now Luc, who before had only been looking at her face, watching her eyes, suddenly switched his gaze to her body.
Instinctively Belle tensed her muscles.
She had been a girl when she and Luc had first met. Now she was a woman. As a girl she had taken for granted the lush femininity of her body, the luminous sheen to her skin, the softness of her female flesh. Now she was older, her body shape different.
She could see the way Luc was frowning at her. No doubt she didn’t compare well to whoever was currently sharing his bed. After all, a man in his position, a man with all his sexual assets, his charisma, his good looks, not to mention his powerful position as a leader in his scholastic field, was bound to be able to have his pick of all the best of his female students.
She, on the other hand… But, no, she wasn’t going to start thinking about how empty her life was, how empty it had been since their divorce… Why should she? That had been her choice. There had been men, offers, opportunities; she had simply been too picky to accept any of them.
Luc was still frowning.
‘You’re too thin,’ he told her abruptly. ‘Are you eating properly?’
‘It’s fashionable to be thin,’ Belle returned sharply, even though she knew perfectly well that her body weight was normally a good half-stone heavier than it was right now, and that she personally had thought herself a little on the thin side before this bout of flu had brought her weight down even further.
‘Fashionable!’ Luc’s eyebrows rose.
‘Yes,’ Belle persisted. ‘Just because you don’t find my body attractive, that doesn’t—’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t find you attractive. I simply said you were too thin,’ Luc interrupted softly. ‘As a matter of fact—’
Quite what might have happened if he hadn’t abruptly stopped speaking she didn’t know, but he continued, his voice oddly hoarse, ‘You need something to eat. Get into bed and don’t you dare move so much as a muscle whilst I go downstairs and get you something.’
But she could hazard a very strong guess, Belle reflected with self-honesty after the door had closed after him. After all, whatever might have been the cause of their final quarrel, and her pride-fuelled abandonment of their marriage, it had had nothing to do with her not finding him physically attractive, or with her not wanting him…as a man…
Her face hot, she reminded herself that she was a woman in her mid-thirties, a woman whose body, whose emotions, whose most private physical needs had never once betrayed her in all the time she had been on her own.
It must be her weakened state that was making her so vulnerable, she reassured herself. Yes, that was it. That and the shock of seeing Luc so unexpectedly, of finding herself in such an unexpectedly dangerously intimate situation with him.
Thinking of which, where on earth was her robe?
She had just reached the bedroom door when Luc opened it from the other side, frowning severely at her when he saw that she had disobeyed his edic
t.
‘You shouldn’t be out of bed. You’ve already passed out once,’ he reminded her severely.
‘I was looking for my robe,’ Belle informed him, trying to summon what dignity she could. No small task when one was standing shivering and nude in front of the man who had every reason to find the sight of one’s naked form less than physically appealing.
‘Get into bed. I’ll go and find it for you,’ Luc told her with unexpected gentleness. ‘At least you’ve got the sense to keep this place properly heated, even if you don’t seem able to feed yourself. What on earth do you live on, Belle? There is hardly anything in your fridge or cupboards.’
‘That’s because I prefer to buy fresh food,’ Belle returned quickly and loftily. ‘And I’ve been too ill to feel like going out shopping for the last few days.’
‘Mmm… Well, I’ve managed to find a can of soup and some eggs. Drink your soup whilst I go back down and make you an omelette.’
He was certainly behaving very masterfully, Belle acknowledged as she tucked hungrily into her soup when he had gone back to the kitchen.
But hadn’t that always been one of the causes of their problems? The fact that it had irked his male pride that she had been the main provider. Not that he had tried to dominate her. No. She could never have loved him the way she had had he been like that. But she had always felt that he had subtly punished her for not being more helpless, more financially dependent upon him.
The warmth of her bed now that she had snuggled under the duvet and the blissful comfort of the hot soup in her stomach combined to make her feel relaxed and sleepy. So much so that by the time Luc returned with the promised omelette she was already half asleep. The sight of the amount of food he had piled onto the plate brought her sharply awake, though. Indignantly she stared at it.
‘I can’t eat all that,’ she protested. ‘It’s indecent. There must be at least a dozen eggs there…’
‘Not quite,’ Luc told her cheerfully, without any apparent remorse. ‘Actually we’re both going to eat it. I don’t care to miss out on my meals even if you do,’ he told her severely. ‘And since I could only find one plate, we shall have to share.’
‘The others are in the dishwasher,’ Belle informed him, and then added defensively, ‘I’m a single woman living alone, Luc. I don’t have either the space or the need to own a full twelve-place dinner service.’
‘Surely you entertain sometimes?’
‘Not really. I prefer to take business clients out, it’s much easier and more professional. And besides—’ she chewed a little betrayingly on her bottom lip ‘—it isn’t always a good idea to invite male clients into one’s home…’
‘You’ve had problems with men…clients…behaving badly towards you?’ Luc demanded fiercely.
‘Er…it was a long time ago, when we first divorced and it was probably my own fault. I didn’t realise the false message I could be giving inviting a client home.’
‘He frightened you? Hurt you? Who…?’
‘Nothing like that,’ Belle hastened to assure him. ‘It was just that there was a rather…embarrassing episode. A misunderstanding, really, that was all.’
‘You mean one of your clients tried to…?’
‘I’ve told you, Luc, it was all a long time ago, and fortunately he accepted that there’d been a misunderstanding. But after that I made the decision not to invite clients home—not that the way I run my life, either private or professional, is any business of yours.’
‘Don’t you ever find it lonely living alone?’ he asked her, completely throwing her. But before she could make the defensively protective denial that was hovering on her lips he further confounded her by admitting quietly, ‘I know that I do…’
‘You…you live alone…?’ Belle raised her eyes to his face.
‘I’ve lived alone since you left,’ he told her simply.
Belle’s appetite had completely deserted her, and oddly Luc didn’t seem to be particularly hungry either.
‘Belle…’
‘Luc…’
‘I’m glad to see you kept the bedhead,’ he told her huskily, and then he lifted his hand and reached past her to trace the initials and the date he had carved into it. ‘I have to admit it isn’t anywhere near so handsome, though, as the one you brought.’
‘Nor so expensive,’ Belle said quietly, dropping her gaze from his so that he wouldn’t guess that the cost she was referring to was not in terms of the money she had spent on the bedhead, but the reckless wastage, the dreadful continuing payment with increasingly heavy interest she was still having to make in terms of broken dreams and lost love.
‘Belle…’
As he withdrew his hand from the bedhead and straightened up, Belle lifted her head.
His gaze met hers and held it. Her whole body started to tremble, her heart beating far too fast.
Luc started to lower his head towards hers. He was going to kiss her. Belle just knew it. Her heart was racing so fast that she thought it might explode. Automatically she closed her eyes. She could almost feel the warmth of Luc’s mouth against her own, taste the wonderful familiarity of his kiss, breathe in his special scent, feel…
‘I must go…’
Abruptly her eyes snapped open. Luc wasn’t going to kiss her after all.
‘It was very thoughtful of you to call,’ she told him stiffly. ‘I’ll get in touch with Carol and tell her about Great-Aunt Alice’s mistake.’
‘It’s quite a coincidence that your niece and my cousin should be marrying…’
‘Yes…I suppose it is.’
‘Andy was telling me the last time I saw him that he’s applied to finish his training in the same town where Joy has just been appointed a junior registrar at the local hospital.’
Immediately Belle guessed what he must be thinking.
‘And of course you don’t approve of that. No doubt you think she should be the one to follow him?’
‘On the contrary,’ Luc replied evenly. ‘I think that he’s a very fortunate young man to have a woman who loves him so much that she’s prepared to take on the burden of being the major wage-earner until he’s fully qualified. After all, if Andy hadn’t changed his mind about the career path he wanted to follow, he would be qualified himself by now.
‘I still think it’s ironic that it takes longer to train to be a vet than a doctor, but I hope that Andy will appreciate both Joy and her love, and that he doesn’t allow his male pride—’
He broke off and looked away from her. ‘Fortunately his generation has a far healthier and more flexible attitude towards interchanging the traditional roles than ours perhaps did.’
Belle tried to speak, but found that she couldn’t articulate a single word because of the lump in her throat.
This was the first time Luc had ever acknowledged that he could have been wrong. She knew that she had made mistakes, gone about things the wrong way, been rather less careful of his male pride than she might have been, but this was the first time she had felt that Luc, too, might have regrets, doubts about the things he had done, the way he had behaved. ..reacted. Perhaps if she had known that then…if they had sat down together like this then and talked… But Luc wasn’t sitting down now; he was getting up. He was going away—leaving her—his Good Samaritan duties done.
Belle watched as he walked towards the door.
‘Thank you for… for the soup,’ she told him gruffly as he opened it, and then she looked away, closing her eyes, unable to bear watching him go out of her life…again…
When several seconds went by and she hadn’t heard the final click of the door she opened her eyes again, widening them as she saw how close Luc was to the bed. How close he was to her.
‘You don’t have to thank me Belle—not ever—not for anything,’ he told her, and then he did what he hadn’t done before. He bent his head and kissed her.
A brief, non-sexual, amicable little kiss—or so he’d said it was supposed to be, when he’d told her la
ter—but somehow their lips, their mouths, their senses had other ideas, and the brief brush of his cool mouth against hers became something warmer, deeper…longer…and far, far more intimate as their mouths clung together.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not well,’ Luc groaned, but he still took her in his arms, holding her tightly against his heart so that she could feel its fierce thud as he cupped her face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes.
Very tenderly Luc caressed her lips with his. Somewhere in the distance Belle could hear a noise, shrill, intrusive, unwanted. Her telephone was ringing. Reluctantly she broke the kiss.
‘It’s Carol,’ she told Luc as she recognised her sister’s number on the visual display unit.
When she picked up the receiver she could hear her sister’s voice announcing frantically, ‘Belle, something dreadful’s happened. Great-Aunt Alice has sent…’
Belle could see Luc walking towards the door. She wanted to call out to him to stay…not to go…not to leave her. But she was a grown woman, and grown women did not give in to such foolish urges, such foolish emotions.
Covering the receiver, she called out instead, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to let yourself out…’
‘Belle? Belle, is someone there with you?’ she could hear Carol demanding curiously.
‘It was just…an unexpected visitor…’ Belle responded as casually as she could as Luc closed the bedroom door very gently behind himself.
And it was, after all, the truth.
Carol, at any rate, seemed perfectly happy with her explanation, continuing urgently, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but Great-Aunt Alice has only gone and sent your wedding invitation to Luc. Belle! Belle, are you still there?’
‘I’m still here,’ Belle confirmed.
Ten minutes later, after her sister had rung off, Belle warned herself sternly that there was no point in wondering or dwelling on what might have happened if her sister hadn’t rung up, if Luc had continued to kiss her, if she had actually dared to give in to the emotions, the sensations that had been flooding her.