by Penny Jordan
She was proud of the way she was guiding her clients to combine sound investment and financial management with an awareness of the moral issues involved in making profits, an awareness of other people’s poverty, and, increasingly now, prospective clients were approaching her because they had heard of her humanitarian beliefs and record.
Three days after Luc had last rung her, he finally telephoned.
‘I don’t know if you’ve received a copy of the wedding present list or not yet,’ he began, ‘but it occurred to me that if we were to club together we could potentially remove one of the larger items from the list.’
‘We could, but—’
‘Why don’t we discuss it over dinner?’ Luc interrupted her.
‘I…’ Belle opened her mouth to refuse, but discovered instead that her voice seemed to have deserted her.
‘I’ve got to come down to London to see a colleague the day after tomorrow. If you’re free that evening I could call for you…’
‘I… Yes. Very well,’ Belle agreed weakly.
* * *
Luc took her to San Lorenzo which, in itself, surprised her. Not so much because of its reputation as one of the best and most expensive restaurants in London—after all, as a Fellow he was now hardly the struggling young academic he had been when she had first met him—but because she hadn’t really thought that such a high-profile society place would be to his taste. What surprised her even more, though, was the discovery that the staff knew him well enough to have remembered his name.
Sensing her surprise, Luc waited until the wine waiter had gone before explaining easily to her, ‘One of my students used to insist on bringing me here for her tutorials.’
‘Really?’ Belle gave him an icy little smile. ‘I though it was the tutor who dictated where a tutorial would take place, not the student.’
‘Mmm…but this student was rather special.’
‘Oh.’ Belle’s voice had grown even icier.
‘Mmm…’ Luc smiled reminiscently, apparently unaware of the frigid atmosphere Belle was generating. ‘She was a second or third cousin to the owners of the restaurant, and she was working here to help finance her way through university as a mature student—’
‘She was a mature student?’ Belle interrupted him sharply.
‘Well, yes…’
‘How mature?’ Belle demanded instantly.
‘Oh…pretty mature… Around fifty or so…’
Immediately Belle started to relax, unaware of the look of wry comprehension mixed with tenderness that Luc was giving her. She had always been very passionate and, whilst not possessive, certainly inclined to be very protective of their relationship. He, on the other hand, as he openly had to admit, had been rather immaturely jealous. He re-angled his chair so that the darkly handsome young waiter who was currently studying her with burning admiration was blocked out of her view.
It was late when they finally left the restaurant, and it was Luc who commented wryly as he hailed a taxi, ‘We still haven’t decided about the wedding present.’
‘No,’ Belle agreed.
They had been too busy talking about themselves to discuss anything so mundane as the rival attractions of a washing machine or a dishwasher, the two items they had narrowed their choice down to.
‘I must have made you so angry sometimes,’ Belle had commented at one point during the evening, when they had been discussing the breakdown of their marriage.
‘Not angry, no,’ Luc had countered quickly, shaking his head and reaching across the table to take hold of her hand in both of his.
‘Hurt, rejected, and even at times demeaned, yes. But angry, no! It hurt me that I couldn’t afford to provide you with the material things you wanted, that I wasn’t the one paying the mortgage, that I couldn’t go out and order that bed you wanted…’
‘You were a proud man, and I should have realised how much what I was doing was hurting you,’ Belle had groaned remorsefully, but once again Luc had shaken his head.
‘No. If I was proud then it was a false pride. My pride should have been in you, in what you were doing for both of us, in what we were achieving by working together.
‘I made a lot of mistakes, Belle, but so far as I am concerned the biggest mistake of all was the one I made when I let you go.’
‘I made mistakes as well,’ was all Belle had been able to whisper in response.
Now, on the way home in the taxi, she was mentally examining what he had said. Uncertainly she darted a glance at him. His face was turned towards the window, so that she could only see his profile. To say he regretted their divorce was one thing; to say that he still loved her was something else again.
‘Have you got time to come in for a cup of coffee? ’ Belle asked him uncertainly as the taxi drew up outside her home. ‘We ought to make a decision about the present’
‘Yes, of course,’ Luc agreed immediately.
The flowers he had given her when he’d picked her up were in water in the kitchen. As she waited for the coffee Belle breathed in their scent, touching the petals with gentle fingers.
Luc was standing in the sitting room removing his jacket as she walked in. He glanced at his watch and then cursed.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Belle asked him.
‘I’ve just realised that it’s half past twelve, and not half past eleven as I thought,’ he told her. ‘That means I’ve missed the last train. Never mind. I’ll book myself into a hotel.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Belle protested. ‘Not at this time of night. I…you could stay here…the sofa converts into a bed and…’ Uncertainly her voice trailed away. Staying here with her was probably the last thing Luc wanted to do.
But just as she was wishing that she had not spoken so impetuously, she heard him saying warmly, ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind, I would be very grateful.
‘This reminds me of the first time you stayed over with me,’ Luc told her five minutes later, when they were drinking their coffee.
‘You mean the night you’d taken me to a college ball and your car wouldn’t start so we had to spend the night together in your rooms?’
‘Mmm…that’s the one,’ Luc agreed reminiscently.
As she looked hurriedly away from him Belle hoped he hadn’t noticed the way she had to wrap her hands tightly around her coffee mug to stop her fingers from trembling.
That had been the first night they had actually been lovers. She had known how she felt about Luc then, of course, and she had been pretty sure that he shared her feelings, but that night had been the first night she had allowed herself to give way to those feelings.
She could still vividly remember how nervous she had felt when she had walked with Luc to his rooms. There had been no question of him deliberately contriving to have his car break down—they had discovered later that the part in question had been slowly wearing away for some time—but there had been something about the way he had held her earlier when they had been dancing, the way he had kissed her, the passion with which he had whispered to her that she was the most beautiful girl at the ball, the most beautiful girl in the whole world, that had warned her how potentially dangerous it would be for them to be alone together.
He hadn’t touched her at first, explaining almost formally that since there was only one bed he would sleep on the floor, but then she had started to shiver, as much with nerves as cold, and he had come over to her, slipping off his dinner jacket to place it on her shoulders. The moment she had felt the warmth of his fingertips against her skin she had been lost.
The sexual tension between them even in the short time they had known one another had become increasingly hard to ignore each time they touched, kissed…breathed… It had been there, that night, and as her body shuddered helplessly and visibly at his touch, Belle had known that the moment had come to succumb to it.
As she’d turned towards him his jacket had slid disregarded to the floor. She’d raised her face towards him, her eyes misting
with emotional tears as he’d reached out and cupped it with hands that trembled just as much as her body had done. He had started to kiss her, softly, gently, and then, abruptly, he had stopped, withdrawing his mouth from hers.
Deprived of its warm, sensuous contact, Belle had opened her eyes to stare with uncertain questioning into his.
‘I can’t…’ he’d begun hoarsely, and then stopped. ‘I don’t…’
He had closed his eyes and leaned away from her, the moonlight picking out the arch of his throat and the tensing of his jaw. His eyes had closed in some kind of male anguish. Opening his eyes, he’d looked directly at her and told her thickly, ‘Belle, if I touch you now…kiss you now…it won’t…I can’t…it won’t be gentle,’ he had finally told her rawly. ‘I want you too much to be able to…’
Instinctively Belle had known what he meant, what he was trying to tell her. Boldly she’d stepped towards him, and away from her virginal girlhood.
‘Show me,’ she’d commanded him softly. And then she had simply stood waiting, watching him.
She had known, felt the difference the moment he touched her. His fingers had burned against her skin, almost as hotly and excitingly as the look she’d seen in his eyes. But that had been nothing compared to the tension, the need, the hunger she’d felt in him when he had kissed her, his mouth almost bruising the softness of hers as he’d given way to the intensity of his passion before lifting his mouth to apologise disjointedly, touching her lips with his fingertips, telling her that he was thoughtless, selfish, that he had no right…
‘Stop talking and kiss me again,’ Belle had interrupted him huskily. This time she had returned his passion measure for measure, biting wantonly at his bottom lip, running her tongue-tip excitedly along the shape of his mouth, opening hers to the hot thrust of his tongue when he’d reacted to her sensuality. How long they had stood like that, kissing one another, devouring one another, consuming one another in the fierce passion of their mutual need, Belle had had no idea. She’d only known that when they finally broke apart it was with one accord, as though their every movement had been perfectly choreographed. As they’d undressed one another she’d had no sense of shyness or uncertainty; there had been no clumsiness or awkwardness, only the soft slithering sound of their clothes falling away from their bodies and then that fierce, primitive moment of mutual, visual examination, of studying one another as they’d stood clothed only in the soft shadows of Luc’s room.
It had been seeing the way Luc had looked at her that had made her lift her head in pride and joyous recognition of the full power of her femininity, glorying in Luc’s reaction to it and her own sense of pleasure and strength in the message his reaction had given her. She was beautiful, desirable, loved. She had seen all that and more in his eyes.
And she’d felt the same way about him. Very gently she’d reached out and touched him, carefully placing her lips to the hollow at the base of his throat, her hands spread out across the breadth of his chest.
Very delicately she had breathed in the scent of his skin, and then very deliberately she had tasted him.
Her touch had had the effect of smashing the barrier holding back an oceanic dam, but she had given herself willingly, gladly, voluptuously and joyously to the tumult, making herself a part of its power. Later, exhausted, beached, bleached dry, lightheaded with the release and emotionally intoxicated with the euphoria of their love, they’d promised one another that this was just the beginning, the explosive starburst of a whole new universe of love that they would share for ever.
The following morning she had woken up in Luc’s bed with Luc’s dinner jacket draped over her naked body. On the empty pillow beside her had been a red rose, and attached to its stem had been an engagement ring…
She glanced instinctively now at her left hand, and realised to her chagrin that Luc had done the same.
‘You’re still wearing it,’ he told her softly, not just echoing her thoughts but showing, too, that he had guessed just what she had been remembering.
‘It’s a little bit on the tight side, and I’d have had to have had it cut off,’ she told him, not quite truthfully. But there was no way she was going to admit to him just how she still came to be wearing it, no way she was going to tell him about that night, less than a year after their divorce had become final, the night which had been the anniversary of the night he had given the ring to her when, overcome by sentiment and longing, she had slipped it back onto her finger and had left it there. No need, either, to mention just how often in times of anxiety and stress she touched it, twisting it, gaining comfort from its presence and from the memories she had learned to cherish.
‘Besides, you still wear your wedding ring,’ she pointed out, gesturing to the plain gold band on his left hand.
‘I wasn’t the one who wanted a divorce,’ he told her sombrely.
‘It’s getting late,’ Belle told him hurriedly. ‘We ought to go to bed—’ She stopped, and bent her head so that the thick cascade of her hair fell across her face, concealing its hot colour.
‘I…I haven’t anything I can offer you to wear, I’m afraid,’ she apologised. ‘I’ll just go and get some clean towels and some bedlinen.
She kept the duvet for the sofa bed in the top of the wardrobe in her own bedroom. It was, after all, seldom used. She was standing on her dressing table stool trying to get it down when Luc saw what she was doing and came in to help her.
‘Let me do that. You might fall,’ he chided her.
‘No, I won’t,’ Belle denied, and of course promptly did, bringing the duvet with her, so that as Luc rushed forward to catch her it unfurled, engulfing them both.
She was wearing a silk jersey black dress she had bought in Italy, very plain in design and very fluidly sexy. As she tumbled it rode up, revealing the soft flesh of her thigh and the wispily brief briefs she was wearing underneath.
Luc, who had put out his hand to steady her, discovered that instead of touching her waist his hand was actually resting on the smoothly naked flesh of her leg.
Were his fingertips actually stroking her skin, not just touching it? Belle wondered dizzily. Or was she just imagining it, wanting it…
‘Belle.’
She heard him whisper her name, and instinctively she looked up at him.
‘You haven’t changed,’ he told her softly. ‘You still do things to me that…’ He groaned rawly under his breath as he leaned over her. Belle felt her stomach muscles clench as she recognised that he was going to kiss her. But she didn’t do anything to try to stop him. On the contrary…
‘Belle…’
‘Mmm…’ Dreamily Belle opened her eyes at the same time as she snuggled deeper into Luc’s arms.
‘You know what’s going to happen if we stay here like this, don’t you?’ Luc warned her.
‘No,’ Belle fibbed untruthfully as she delicately nuzzled the deliciously Luc-scented skin just below his jaw. ‘But you could always show me,’ she added helpfully, and encouragingly, just in case he hadn’t quite got the message.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Luc told her throatily as he tasted the soft sweetness of her lips, deliberately lingering over them, teasing the warm outline of them with tiny little kisses.
‘No, I won’t tempt you,’ Belle agreed obediently as she opened her mouth to the delicate probing of his tongue-tip.
Some time later, as he carried her to her bed… their bed…Luc reproved her, ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it’s wrong to tell lies?’
But Belle’s only reply was a long, shuddering sigh of pleasure as he placed her naked body onto the bed and then covered it with his own.
‘Oh, Luc… Luc… I’ve missed you so much,’ she whispered to him as she held him tightly.
‘Nowhere near as much as I’ve missed you,’ he told her. ‘Nowhere near…’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘PEOPLE are talking about us. I warned you that they would,’ Belle told Luc, shaking her head reprovingly at him as
he offered her the last of the petits fours. ‘Your parents have been watching us very suspiciously for the last hour.’
‘Mmm…’ Luc responded. ‘And so have yours.’
‘Well, you’ve got to admit it is rather unusual for a divorced couple to be so…’
‘Intimate with one another?’ Luc suggested as she finally gave in and took the sweet he was lifting to her lips.
‘Friendly with one another, I was going to say,’ Belle corrected him sternly.
‘Friendly!’ Luc gave her an extremely wicked look. ‘You were rather more than friendly last night…’
Quickly Belle placed her fingertip to his lips.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she warned him. ‘Don’t you dare.’ But there was laughter and warmth in her eyes, rather than disapproval, and there was a matching warmth in Luc’s.
* * *
‘Darling…what on earth is going on? Luc’s mother has just asked me how long you and Luc have been back on speaking terms, and I must say…’
‘We decided it was time we put aside our differences,’ Belle told her mother calmly, half an hour later.
‘Well, yes…that’s very sensible, darling, but I must say…’
‘Carol wants you, Mum,’ Belle warned her mother as she saw her elder sister frantically beckoning to their mother, smiling to herself as she quickly escaped from her parent’s anxious questions. There was no doubt about it, she and Luc had created quite a stir. She could see the open speculation in people’s eyes as they watched them. Only Joy, the bride, seemed oblivious to the undercurrents and speculation sweeping through the room.
‘Aunt Belle, there you are. I just wanted to tell you again how grateful Andy and I are to you and Luc for your wonderful wedding present. I never expected…’
‘You like it, then?’ Belle asked her niece with a smile.
‘Like it? We are over the moon. I never…I didn’t even know you knew I wanted…’
‘Your mother happened to mention that you’d seen it and fallen in love with it,’ Belle informed her niece fondly.
‘Yes. I had…we had. But for you and Luc…’ She stopped and fell silent as Belle raised a quizzical eyebrow.