by Susan Napier
‘No, thanks, I’ve just been digging up a new area of vege garden for Zoe. I think I’ve had enough exercise for one day,’ he said, dropping his sunglasses into his chest pocket. ‘Good game, though,’ he added laconically and Veronica noticed that unlike Ross, who was wheezing heavily, he barely seemed out of breath.
He padded around to unhook a netted hoop and Veronica swam over to get the one from the shallow end, handing it up to him, trying not to notice the way the soaking denim clung to his thighs as he crouched and then stood to hand them to Sophie, who trotted away to drop them back in the locker.
He looked down at her. ‘Had enough?’ he demanded, flicking a glance at Ross, who was still trying to recover his breath, and Veronica realised that beneath his cool front was a banked fury.
She nodded hastily, but before she could turn back to the steps Luc bent, extending his hands, and when she tentatively placed her own in his, he pulled her out of the pool in a single movement, as if she weighed less than a feather, a brief ripple of contraction across the hard abdomen bared by his open shirt the only sign of effort. At close quarters she could feel the full impact of his angry tension.
He stepped back and gave her wet swimsuit a raking look that made her conscious of the high-cut briefs that extended her already long legs and the deep cleavage of the ruched halter top that was designed to support her full breasts, moulding them high against her chest, the double lining not thick enough to hide the outline of her nipples, pebbled by the cool water.
‘Is this yours?’ He moved over to pick up the large striped towel that lay across one of the sunloungers, and when she nodded he shook it out and held it up.
Veronica walked nervously towards him, far too aware of her body. He made her conscious of her essential femininity in a way that Ross’s suggestive leering never could, but she sensed he was in a dangerous mood.
His brown eyes were a fathomless black that made her skin goose-pimple as he dropped the towel over her shoulders, and she quickly wrapped it, sarong-like, around her body.
She didn’t dare object as he escorted her up the path and was relieved when Sophie ran up between them.
‘Luc’s driving Gran and me over to St Didier soon, to see the Jarditrain, and we wondered if you wanted to come?’ she said. ‘It’s a huge model railway this man has built in his back garden, with twenty-five different trains that run all around the track, through all sorts of scenery and tunnels and over bridges and stuff like that…’
‘Sounds fun,’ said Veronica distractedly, and stumbled over an uneven joint in the pavestones as Luc said:
‘Why don’t you run along and get changed, Sophie, while I make sure Veronica is OK?’
‘Oh, sure…’ Sophie paused and turned big eyes up to Veronica. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do, but Luc always knows,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He told me once when I was being bullied at school that if you’re not big enough to beat someone yourself you have to find someone to be your champion.’
‘Sophie didn’t know what you and Ross were doing, but she thought you looked upset, so she ran to get me,’ clipped Luc as the girl peeled off towards the house, pigtails bouncing. ‘You’re damned lucky she decided to look for you at the pool, and that I was working out in the garden. Unless we misread the situation and you were enjoying what he was doing—’
‘Of course I wasn’t!’ Veronica denied fiercely, still feeling shaken by the whole ugly incident. In hindsight it was obvious that Luc and Sophie hadn’t simply wandered onto the scene by chance. ‘I know I have to thank you for distracting him—’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ he muttered grimly, lengthening his stride as they passed under the twin almond trees at the edge of the cottage garden.
‘I’m glad you won when you did,’ she said, wary of his meaning as she hurried to keep up with him. ‘He was scoring so well there at the end I was afraid—’
He halted her with a blistering look. ‘Only because I let him,’ he bit out. ‘Ten-zip would have been more gratifying for me, but it would have been counter-productive. When you beat a man that completely, you don’t humiliate him as well—unless you want to make a bad enemy,’ he said, stepping back to let her precede him into the cottage. ‘I may happen to think Bentley’s a pompous bastard with an over-inflated opinion of his self-worth, but he’s Ashley’s fiancé, so a certain amount of diplomacy is required in getting the message across…’
‘What message?’ she asked, nervously hugging the towel around her.
‘That you’re under my protection,‘he replied, his voice redolent with dark satisfaction.
Her face registered her instinctive objection to the implication and he was swift to strike.
‘You want me to tell him you’re not?’ he invited with dangerous softness.
The consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. She swallowed. ‘I’m sure he won’t try anything like that again—’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘But what? Did he have reason to think you wanted him to try it on with you? Did you and he arrange to sneak off for a watery rendezvous—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I think he’s repulsive!’ she snapped.
‘Then what in the hell did you think you were doing in the pool with him?’ His rage broke loose in a low roar. ‘Damn it, don’t tell me you don’t know what a lecher he is. I’ve seen the way he leers over you when Ashley’s not around. Why the hell did you let him get close enough to grab you—?’
‘I didn’t let him do anything,’ she protested, buffeted by his unleashed fury, trying to persuade herself that his anger wasn’t really directed at her.
His brown eyes smouldered with hostility. ‘You shouldn’t have gone down to the pool alone.’
She blinked, rocked by the accusation. ‘Are you blaming me?’
‘At the very least you could have got out as soon as you saw him coming—’
‘I didn’t see him coming, that was the problem.’ It was her turn to blister him with a look. ‘You are blaming me,’ she said incredulously.
His olive skin darkened and he shifted his feet. ‘That swimsuit fits you like a second skin,’ he muttered.
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s because it’s designed for swimming,’ she pointed out sarcastically. ‘Do you expect me to wear my clothes when I go into the pool? How dare you try and blame me for Ross’s behaviour? His lack of self-control is his own problem, not mine!’ She stepped up to poke him in the chest with an outraged finger as she spoke. ‘He wanted to play a game of tag, obviously as an excuse to feel me up, and I said no. How much clearer could I have been? I never invited him to touch me and I never will. Believe me, Ashley is welcome to the puffed-up sleazebag.’ She ripped off her towel and threw it at him. ‘I won’t apologise for looking like this. Just because I slept once with you does not make me a slut!’ she articulated starkly.
Streaks of colour mounted his hard cheekbones as his hand fisted in the damp towel. ‘I never thought you were,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I’m not that much of a hypocrite—’
‘You virtually accused me of making it easy for him!’ she cried.
‘I didn’t say that. It’s him I don’t trust. I don’t want him anywhere near you,’ he said with sullen belligerence. ‘I don’t like him touching you. I don’t like the way he looks at you. He’s damned lucky I only gave him a few unfriendly taps. If he does it again he won’t be coming up for air again quite so quickly.’
Remembering the flying elbows, head-dunkings and jarring full-body smashes during the lawless one-on-one, Veronica marvelled at his understatement.
Then his words fully sank in and a possible source of his indiscriminate rage suddenly hit her between the eyes.
Her stomach flipped.
Was Luc jealous?
He was certainly acting like the quintessential territorial male, radiating a violent antagonism that signalled his dominance to challenger and female alike.
&nbs
p; Or, given his murky recent past, was he just being dog in the manger?
She wished she hadn’t made her dramatic gesture with the towel. Now she had nothing to hide behind. Except words. She stood straight and proud.
‘I’m sure he won’t. After all, he’s already warned me against trusting you—’
He glowered. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She couldn’t back down now. The festering wound would never heal if she ignored it. ‘He told me about you and Karen. He said you were more than just acquaintances—’
‘And you believed him?’ His thick fury almost convinced her, but she had seen the tell-tale shutters go up at the mention of her sister’s name. ‘He lives in Australia, for God’s sake. What the hell would he know?’
‘He said Ashley had photos of you and Karen at a dinner—’
‘A dinner?’ he interrupted scathingly. ‘Is that all? No porno pics of us actually getting down and dirty, then?’ he lashed out, his words dripping with acid. ‘For God’s sake, how could you give credence to anything that cretin says? You said yourself he’s a sleazebag! The only way he can make himself look good is to make someone else look bad!’
She knew he was right, but she also knew that lies were often based in truth, and trust was a two-way street.
‘There’s no smoke without fire.’
The trite phrase seemed to be the last straw. ‘Well, if you’d rather believe him than me, go ahead!’ he exploded. ‘Unlike you I don’t choose to run my life guided by the opinions of muckraking slime!’
He stormed out the door, leaving Veronica’s head ringing as if she had been hit by a stun-grenade. He had never actually addressed the allegation at all, she thought numbly. Instead, all his anger had been directed at the fact that she had taken Ross’s word as gospel.
But she hadn’t…not really. Her own self-doubt had made the idea seem all too credible, but, still, she had harboured the secret expectation that Luc would flatly deny the accusation as a slanderous lie. If he had, she would have believed him in a heartbeat.
That he hadn’t was a sickening blow to her unacknowledged feelings, leaving her fiercely grateful that she had fought the powerful attraction that had tempted her to abandon her pride and her principles to a transient affair.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FORCING herself into motion, Veronica walked into the bedroom, her mind a blessed blank as she undid the ties at the nape of her neck and peeled the clinging-wet bathing-top over her head, dropping it carelessly on the tiled floor beside the bed on the far side of the room. She frowned as she looked around, blinking an annoying blur from her eyes.
‘Looking for this?’
Veronica spun around, rubbing fiercely at her wet lashes.
Luc came into focus as he stepped into the room, holding up her towel. ‘Sorry, I forgot I was carrying it when I flounced off.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘I thought you might need it.’
With a gasp Veronica snatched up the nearest thing from the bed to cover her swaying breasts. Unfortunately it turned out to be a small, decorative cushion barely equal to the task. She hugged it to her chest with both arms.
His eyes didn’t waver from her pale face and suspiciously bright eyes, his smile fading. ‘I’m a little touchy on the subject of personal loyalty right now,’ he said more sombrely. ‘I’m afraid I was making you pay for someone else’s sins. In the circumstances you had every right to ask what you did—and expect a straight answer, even if it’s not a very edifying one. Sometimes a kiss is nothing more or less than a kiss.’
‘W-what?’
‘I’m talking about Karen,’ he said abruptly. ‘That public dinner just after they first came to London was the only time I ever kissed her, although, strictly speaking, Karen was the one doing the kissing. She’d had a few drinks too many and started throwing herself at me. Melanie was embarrassed, so I acted amused, and played along, trying to keep the flirtation light to avoid creating an awkward scene at the table, but Karen took it for encouragement. She developed a bit of a crush on me for a few weeks afterwards—kept ringing me, turning up at my office or on my doorstep, that kind of thing. She made a nuisance of herself until I asked Melanie to have a quiet word with her. I haven’t seen her since.’
‘Oh…’ The stinging at the back of Veronica’s eyes eased, but now her throat was too thickly clogged to speak. It sounded just like one of Karen’s fleeting infatuations. In addition to her regular string of boyfriends, she had a habit of embarking on short-lived fixations with men who were either glamorously unattainable or potentially useful. Luc had probably qualified on both accounts.
‘She’s a very pretty girl but not my type at all,’ Luc continued, prowling slowly around the end of the other bed. ‘She seemed to think I would find her gorgeous self impossible to refuse but—unbelievable as it might be to both her and you—I was never even tempted to take her up on her invitation…’
Now he was closer, she realised he wasn’t quite as subdued as he appeared. Even in wet cut-offs and a damp, unbuttoned shirt he exuded an air of panache, but beneath his civilised expression lurked a potent hint of untamed wildness. ‘I don’t find it unbelievable, Luc,’ she admitted, ‘I know what Karen can be like, you don’t have to—’
‘I find that my being rich is like an aphrodisiac to some women,’ he confided softly, coming to a stop in front of her, making the wide space between the beds suddenly feel much more confining. ‘They think that because I can have anything I want, I automatically want to have everything. It doesn’t occur to them that wealth enables me to be more—not less—discriminating. Or that I might not appreciate being objectified as some kind of sexual luxury-item for status-hunting females. That’s why I steer clear of the usual fashionable haunts for the polished horde.’
He looked at her through a thick veil of lashes. ‘You know, just because I slept with you in Paris doesn’t mean I’m a promiscuous satyr…’
The breath whooshed out of her lungs and she could feel herself blushing from her head to her heels at the sly paraphrase of her own words. ‘I’m sorry—’ She bit down hard on her tongue. He had her so tangled up that she was now apologising to him!
‘I’m not normally so reckless a lover,’ he murmured. ‘I stay away from casual pick-ups and I’m usually extremely careful about who I invite into my life. I truly do appreciate the rarity value of a woman like you…’
His lashes swept up as he trailed off to watch her nibble at the tantalising bait.
‘L-like me?’
‘A woman who’s smart and not afraid to be herself, who takes responsibility for her own actions and stands up for her convictions…’He walked his fingers lightly up the side of her arm to the accompaniment of his words. ‘A woman who has a good sense of humour, who’s compassionate, and tolerant of other people’s very human failings…’
She eyed him suspiciously as he toyed with the piped edge of the cushion that peeped out from under her protectively clamped elbows, and continued his flattering paean:
‘A woman who’s warm, generous and forgiving…’ her eyes narrowed and his buttery voice slowed to a sexy drawl ‘…and deeply passionate…’
He gave the cushion a sharp tug that slid it out from beneath her folded arms. ’You’re getting this all wet. Let me dry you properly,’ he chided, throwing it out of reach on the other side of the bed and quickly moving in with the towel to dab at the beads of moisture dripping from her hair onto her shoulders, stroking the soft cotton down her breastbone, insinuating between her shielding hands.
‘I can do that—’ she said weakly.
‘But I want to,’ he insisted with implacable softness, brushing away her increasingly feeble attempts at concealment, and blotting over the creamy globes of her breasts with dedicated attention to detail. ‘We don’t want you catching a chill.’
‘It’s at least thirty-eight degrees outside,’ Veronica raggedly protested the absurdity, shivering as the towel dragged across a tender nipple.
‘
But you’re shivering,’ he pointed out, gently frictioning her other nipple to a tingling point.
‘Not from cold,’ she choked, and his nostrils flared triumphantly at the heady scent of her swift arousal.
‘Oh, I missed a bit,’ he murmured, dropping the pretence of the towel altogether and bending his head to sip at a little droplet running down over the rounded side of her breast, lapping it up with a long stroke of his tongue, catching her by the waist as she shied, so that he could scrape his exquisitely rough jaw against her soft flesh and nuzzle his way to the quickening peak. Capturing the quivering bud between his firm lips, he began to suckle warmly, his other hand moving to cup the neglected breast and fondle it to a similar, aching fullness.
‘Luc—’ Her hands pressed against his slick chest, slipping against his damp skin.
‘You can dry me next,’ he promised, releasing his glistening captive for appreciative study before cherishing a series of softly exploring kisses to the tip of her left breast.
‘I can see your heart beating,’ he husked as he licked at the rhythmically pulsing nipple. ‘Do I make your heart beat a little faster, Veronica?’ he murmured, and took it deeply in his mouth, his hand sliding over the smooth fabric front of her high-cut briefs to run a finger back and forth over the pouting cleft at the juncture of her thighs, delicately tracing the puffy contours. ‘How much faster can I make it go…?’ he wondered as he rolled his hot, wet tongue around her nipple and pressed it against the slick hardness of the roof of his mouth as he suckled more strongly, sinking his teeth deep into her sensitised flesh.
Her shuddering body arched helplessly and he lifted his head, his arm going around her supple waist as he teased out her pleasure with skilful fingers, increasing the wringing dampness of the taut fabric pulled tight between her legs.
‘You can thank me now,’ he growled, looking down into her passion-hazed face with heavy-lidded satisfaction.
‘I—W-what—?’ she panted, struggling for oxygen to fuel the wild-fire in her blood.