Audrey waited until he gave the all clear and stepped over the threshold, but even though it was a few hours away from sundown, the heavy cloud cover outside made the cottage seem gloomy and unwelcoming...sort of like an abandoned house, which was pretty much what it was. ‘Gosh, it’s getting kind of dark in here. Is the power on again yet?’
Lucien flicked one of the light switches but the light didn’t come on. ‘It could be hours until it comes back on. A tree has probably brought the line down somewhere.’ He moved over to the fireplace where she had started preparing the fire. ‘I’ll get a fire going. Are there any candles about?’
Audrey went to the kitchen—where, thankfully, there were no spiders—and soon found some scented candles she’d bought her mother. It was kind of typical of her that they hadn’t been used. She brought them back to the sitting room and set one on the coffee table in front of the two facing sofas and the other one on the antique sideboard. ‘These should do the job.’
‘Perfect.’ Lucien came over with the box of matches and lit the candles and soon the fragrance of patchouli and honeysuckle wafted through the air.
Audrey couldn’t stop staring at his features in the muted glow of the candlelight. His skin was olive-toned and tanned as if he had holidayed in the sun recently. The flickering shadows highlighted the planes and contours of his face: the uncompromising jaw, the strong blade of a nose, the prominent dark eyebrows and those amazing midnight-blue eyes.
But it was his mouth that always lured her gaze like a yo-yo dieter to a cake counter. His mouth was both firm and yet sensual with well-defined vermillion borders that made her wonder what a kiss from him would be like. Would those firm lips soften or harden in passion? Would they crush or cajole? Would they evoke a storm of need in her that so far she had only ever dreamed about experiencing?
‘Is something wrong?’ Lucien frowned.
Audrey did a rapid blink and rocked back on her heels...well, not heels exactly. She was wearing ballet flats. Although, given that Lucien was so tall, maybe she should have worn stilettos...or maybe a pair of stilts. ‘Have you been on holiday recently?’
‘I spent Easter in Barbados.’
She gave a little laugh with a grace note of envy. ‘Of course.’
His frown deepened. ‘Why ‘‘of course’’?’
Audrey gave an off-hand shrug and bent down to tidy the out-of-date magazines on the coffee table. ‘Did you go with Viviana Prestonward?’
‘I went to see a client there. Not that it’s any of your or anyone’s business.’
She straightened from the coffee table and turned back to look at him. ‘Just asking. There’s no need to be so antsy about it.’
He turned to face the fire, stirring it so savagely with the poker the flames leapt and danced. ‘I’m not a rock star like my father. I don’t like my private life being splashed over every paper or online forum.’ He put the poker back in its stand and turned around to look at her. ‘Does it happen to you? The press interest?’
Audrey sat on the edge of the sofa and played with the fringe of the rug with her foot. ‘Not much, but then, I’m way too boring. Who wants to know what a library archivist gets up to in her spare time?’
His gaze became thoughtful. ‘What do you get up to?’
Audrey sat back on the sofa, and, picking up one of the scatter cushions, cuddled it against her stomach. ‘I read, I watch TV, go to the occasional movie.’ She made a rueful twist of her mouth. ‘See? Boring.’
‘What about boyfriends? Those dozens of lovers you were telling me about earlier.’
Audrey knew if she kept going with this conversation her hot cheeks would be giving the fire in the grate some serious competition. She tossed the cushion to one side and rose from the sofa in one movement that was supposed to be agile and graceful as a supermodel’s, but her foot snagged on the rug and she banged her shin on the coffee table. ‘Ouch!’ She clapped a hand to her leg and did a hopping dance as the pain pulsated through her shinbone. The scented candle flickered from the impact but thankfully remained upright.
Lucien came across and steadied her with his hands on her upper arms. ‘Are you okay? Did it break the skin?’
‘I’m fine. It’s just a bump.’
He bent down in front of her and inspected her shin; his warm, dry hand so gentle on her leg she couldn’t decide if it felt like a tickle or a caress—maybe it was a bit of both. The sensation of his fingers on her bare flesh stirred her senses, making her aware of each broad pad of his fingers. She suddenly became aware of the intimacy of his position in front of her. His face was level with her pelvis and her mind raced with a host of erotic images of him kissing her, touching her...there.
‘You’re going to bruise—you’re starting to already.’ His fingertip traced over the red mark on her shin as softly as a feather on a priceless object.
Audrey held her breath for so long she thought she might faint. Or maybe it was because no man had ever knelt down in front of her and touched her with such gentleness. Or maybe it was because she had never felt so aware of her body before—how each cell seemed to swell and throb with a need for more of his touch. Now that he’d touched her it awakened a feverish desire in her for more. What if he was to run his hands further up her legs...up her thighs? To the very heart of her femininity? What if he was to peel down her knickers and—?
Stop it right there.
There was no way she was going to act on her crush. No more clumsy attempts at flirting. No more making a gauche fool of herself. She would be sensible and mature about this. ‘You can get up now.’ She injected a hint of wryness into her voice. ‘Unless you want to rehearse your proposal to Viviana while you’re down there?’
Lucien rose from his kneeling position, his mouth so flat and hard it looked like paper-thin sheets of steel. ‘I’m not proposing to anyone. You need to put some ice on that bruise. I’ll get some from the kitchen.’
* * *
Lucien opened the small freezer compartment of the fridge in the kitchen and considered squeezing himself in there to cool off. Okay, so it was a little crazy to go down on bended knee in front of Audrey. Even crazier to touch her but she’d hurt herself and he’d felt compelled to do the Boy Scout thing. It was what any decent man would do...although nothing about his reaction to touching her was decent. As soon as he touched her he felt it. The little zing of electricity that he’d never felt with anyone else.
There was a simple solution: he had to stop touching her. He would keep his distance.
How hard could it be?
He took some ice cubes out of the tray and wrapped them in a tea towel and went back to the sitting room. ‘Here we go.’ He handed her the ice pack, taking care not to touch her fingers. See? Easy. No touching.
Audrey pressed the pack to her shin, her small white teeth nibbling at her lower lip like a mouse at wainscoting. After a moment she glanced up at him but her eyes didn’t quite connect with his gaze. ‘So...what do you love about her?’
Lucien looked at her blankly. ‘Pardon?’
This time her gaze was direct. ‘Viviana. The woman you’ve been dating longer than anyone else. What do you love about her?’
He knew whatever answer he gave was going to be the wrong one because he wasn’t in a relationship per se with Viviana. He had got to know her after doing some accounting work for her father and they’d struck up a casual friendship. It was a charade he was helping her maintain after being cheated on and then dumped by her boyfriend. He had seen far too many relationships—most of them his father’s—start in love and end in hate. If and when it came time for him to settle down, he was going for the middle ground: mutual respect, common interests, compatibility. ‘I don’t have that type of relationship with her.’
Audrey’s eyes widened so far it looked like her eyelids were doing Pilates. ‘What? But you’ve been dating her for weeks and week
s. Everyone assumes she’s The One.’
Lucien moved across to the fire and put on another log of wood. He considered telling her he had no such plans to marry Viviana but he realised the protection of a ‘relationship’ could serve him well when dealing with Audrey. Or at least he hoped it would. ‘For the record, I don’t consider romantic love to be the most important factor in a marriage. That sort of love never lasts. You only have to look at your mother and my father to see that.’
She put the ice pack on the coffee table, a frown troubling her brow. ‘Is she in love with you?’
‘We get on well and—’
‘You get on well?’ Audrey let out a laugh that had a jarring chord of scorn. ‘So that’s all it takes to have a successful marriage? Silly me for thinking for all these years the couple had to actually fall in love with one another, care for each other and want the best for each other.’
‘You might want to save your lecture for your mother,’ Lucien said. ‘How many times has she fallen in and out of love now?’
Her creamy skin became tinged with pink high on her cheekbones and her generous mouth tightened. ‘We’re not talking about my mother. We’re talking about you. Why are you going to marry someone you’re not in love with? I mean, who does that?’
Lucien straightened one of the trinkets on the mantelpiece. ‘Look, we’re clearly never going to agree on this, so why don’t we change the subject?’
‘I’m not finished discussing it,’ Audrey said. ‘Why would a beautiful-looking woman like Viviana settle for a man who doesn’t love her? Oh, I get it.’ She tapped the side of her head as if congratulating her brain for coming up with the answer. ‘She’s only with you because you’re the son of a famous rock star, right?’
‘Wrong.’ He gave her an on-off movement of his lips that could just scrape in as a smile. ‘She didn’t know who my father was when we first met.’ Which was a certain part—the main part—of Viviana’s appeal to him as a friend. He was tired of the groupies and sycophants who only wanted to hang around him because of who his father was. He’d been weeding them out since he was a teenager, trying to decide who was genuinely interested in him or just along for the vicarious brush with celebrity.
Audrey got off the sofa and limped across to the window to check on the weather. ‘Well, either way, I think you’re both making a big mistake. People who get married should love each other at the very least.’
‘But you’re never getting married, correct?’ Lucien decided it was time to direct the questions back at her to take the heat off him.
Her gaze moved to the left of his. ‘No.’
‘But what if you fall in love?’
Her teeth did that little lip-chewing thing again that never failed to draw his gaze. ‘I can’t see that happening anytime soon.’
‘But what if a guy falls in love with you and wants to marry you?’
She gave a laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh. ‘And how will I know it’s me they’re in love with or whether they want to meet my mother?’
Lucien frowned. ‘Has that actually happened?’
She made a wry sideways movement of her mouth. ‘Enough times to be annoying.’ She moved back to the sofa and plumped up one of the scatter cushions she’d been hugging earlier. ‘But then, I’m hardly in the same league as my mother in the looks department.’
Lucien wondered if her low self-esteem came from having such a glamorous mother. Sibella was absolutely stunning; even he had to admit that. It was no wonder his father kept going back to her like a drug he couldn’t resist. Had it been difficult for Audrey growing up in her mother’s shadow? Had she been compared to her mother and found lacking? He knew the press could be merciless in how they portrayed celebrities, but even family members often came in for a serve at times. He tried to recall any articles that involved Audrey but, since he generally shied away from reading the gossip pages, he drew a blank. ‘You have no need to run yourself down.’
‘At least you look like your father.’
Lucien thought about the lifestyle that had wreaked so much havoc on his father’s once good-looking features. ‘I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a compliment or not. And, just for the record, your mother’s looks don’t do it for me, okay?’
Audrey’s smile looked a little forced. ‘Good to know.’
There was a strange little silence. Strange because Lucien couldn’t stop looking at her girl-next-door features with those big brown eyes and her generous mouth and thinking about how naturally pretty she was. Understated and unadorned but still captivating. She reminded him of a painting he had glanced at once without really seeing, only to revisit it on another occasion and being stunned by its subtle beauty and hidden depths.
She had barely any make-up on and her skin had a healthy peaches and cream glow. Her dark brown hair had chestnut highlights that looked so natural he assumed they probably were. She didn’t have the show-stopping beauty of her mother, and in a crowd you would miss her at first glance, but she was one of those women whose looks grew on you the more you looked at her. She had hardly changed since she was eighteen, although her figure had developed a little more. He wouldn’t be worthy of his testosterone if he hadn’t noticed the way her breasts filled out her clothes.
The sound of a phone ringing broke the silence and Audrey turned and fished for her mobile in her bag on the floor near the sofa. She glanced at the screen and mouthed ‘It’s my mother’ before she answered. ‘Mum? Where are you? I’ve called you a thousand times.’
Lucien couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation but he could get the gist of it from Audrey’s answers. ‘What? How did you know I’m at Bramble Cottage? I... I’m with Lucien.’ She turned her back to him and continued in a hushed voice. ‘Nothing’s going on. How could you think—? Look, will you please just tell me where you are?’ Her hand was so tight around her phone he could see the whitening of her knuckles. ‘I know you want to spend time alone with Harlan but—’ She let out an unladylike curse and tossed the phone onto the sofa. She turned around and her shoulders went down on a defeated sigh. ‘She wouldn’t tell me a thing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘She kept dodging the question.’ Her forehead creased. ‘But I’ve just had a thought. Remember that chateau they rented during their first marriage for your father’s birthday in St Remy in Provence? She told me once it was one of her favourite places. Wasn’t it one of his favourites too? What if they’ve gone there? It’s a perfect hideaway. They used to go there quite a lot together.’
Lucien remembered the chateau more than he wanted to. He had attended the party for a short time more out of duty than any desire to celebrate his father’s birthday. It was one of those parties where there was a lot of alcohol and loud music and a fair bit of debauchery. He remembered Audrey’s mother doing a striptease—her birthday present to his father—and feeling embarrassed for Audrey, who’d left the room with her cheeks flaming. He wished now he’d gone in search of her and offered her some sort of comfort, but he’d been wary of being alone with her since the wedding, where she had made that tipsy pass at him. ‘Did your mother give any other clue? What did she actually say?’
‘She knew I was at the cottage.’
‘How did she know that?’
‘Phone app. She’s blocked me from finding her but she can find me just by clicking on the app.’ Her cheeks became a light shade of pink. ‘She thought...well, never mind what she thought.’
‘Was she drunk?’
Her eyes flicked away from his, her cheeks darkening. ‘No, I don’t think so... I got the feeling she and your dad just want to be left on their own for a bit.’
‘Unusual since they both love nothing more than an audience.’
‘Maybe they’ve both changed...’ Her teeth sank into her lip, her brow still wrinkled as if she was mulling over
something deeply puzzling.
Lucien had spent the last twenty-four years of his life hoping his father would change. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been disappointed by his father’s irresponsible and reckless behaviour and things didn’t get much more irresponsible and reckless than remarrying Sibella Merrington. Sibella wasn’t the person to help his father change. She was the one who kept him from changing. She encouraged every bad habit and, after the last time, Lucien was not going to sign up for another clean-up operation.
After the last divorce, it had taken him months to get his father back on his feet without two daily bottles of vodka on board. Numerous times he had come to his father’s house and found him blackout drunk. He’d tried everything to get him into rehab but his father always refused. His doctors had warned his father his drinking had to stop or he would suffer irreparable damage to his already struggling liver. Even if Lucien had to fly to every city and village across Europe he would not stop until he found his father and put a stop to this madness. ‘Yeah, well, next time you see a leopard running around without its spots, be sure to let me know.’
CHAPTER FOUR
AUDREY WENT TO the kitchen to see about some food for dinner in the pantry, where basic non-perishable items were stored. She lit another candle for the kitchen table and set to making a meal. Lucien was still in the sitting room, making the arrangements for a helicopter—gulp—to pick them up the following morning. She thought back over her brief conversation with her mother. She had teased her about being at the cottage with Lucien, but along with the teasing there had been a veiled warning about how far from his type she was.
As if she needed to be reminded.
Audrey had assembled a plate of crackers and a makeshift pâté of tinned tuna and sweetcorn when Lucien came into the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry there isn’t a gourmet meal on offer but most of the stuff in the pantry is past its use-by date. This is the best I could do.’
‘It’s fine. You needn’t have bothered.’
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