by Penny Jordan
If Sondra hadn’t happened to call round with those papers he needed…
He grimaced to himself, remembering the scene she had interrupted: Vanessa’s belligerent insistence that she was old enough to direct her own life.
‘In your eyes, maybe,’ Marcus had told her flatly. ‘But not in the eyes of the law. I meant what I said, Vanessa. You’re not old enough to go out alone to the kind of nightclubs you—’
‘But I wouldn’t be alone,’ Vanessa had interrupted him hotly. ‘Sasha will be with me.’
‘No!’ Marcus had said, and the force of that harsh denial was still reverberating in the air when Sondra walked in.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ he had apologised to her as he ushered her into his study.
‘That’s OK,’ she had told him sunnily, adding, ‘I’ve been there myself, you know. I had some pretty bad fights with my dad before I grew up enough to recognise that he wasn’t trying to spoil my fun… just see to it that I didn’t get hurt.
‘It makes things tougher when he’s not there all the time, of course. Up until I reached puberty he’d been pretty easygoing, spoiling me rotten, I guess. It was Mom and my stepdad who laid down the law, but even so it came as pretty much of a shock once Dad started getting heavy with me, cross-questioning my dates and bringing in all kinds of rules and suchlike. Seemed like I only had to want to do something for him to tell me no. We said some pretty tough things to one another at times, but now there’s no one whose opinion I value more. You’d get along real well with him, Marcus. You’re pretty much two of a kind. Guess you’d better watch out, huh? They say a girl kinda tends to go for men like her dad when she’s had a good relationship with him.’
She had laughed as she said it, but even so Marcus had been aware of the very real meaning beneath her comment and of his own frisson of response to it.
‘Just as well I’m already married… and too old,’ he had laughed back, but he suspected she was not deceived and that she had recognised that small, very masculine surge of sexual excitement she had given him. She had come to collect some papers as well as deliver some, and since they weren’t quite ready she had offered to go into the kitchen and make them both a cup of coffee.
Quite how and when the coffee had turned into fullblown ‘afternoon tea’ with Vanessa and Sasha coaxed downstairs to help her he wasn’t sure.
Or how he had come to abandon his work and take the three of them out for ‘proper’ afternoon tea? Or how he had allowed Sondra to persuade him into allowing her to take the girls to the exclusive gym where she had a temporary membership, exclaiming when he had expressed doubts that he was always welcome to join them and keep a fatherly eye on them if he wished.
He hadn’t done so, nor had he taken her up on the suggestion, when he had thanked her, that he could always repay her by taking her out to dinner.
It had been Vanessa who, when Sondra had commented that she was taking a couple of days off to do some sightseeing, had begged to go with her.
Marcus had pointed out to his daughter that Sondra was hardly likely to want her company, but the American girl had overruled him, claiming that there was nothing she would enjoy more.
She had arrived this morning, whisking both girls off with her, leaving him to get on with his work in the peace he had begun to think he might never experience again.
Only, instead of concentrating on his work… he looked at Eleanor’s photograph. She was due back tomorrow only suddenly, urgently, betrayingly he wanted to be with her now, out of the way of this charming, dangerous girl-woman who had made her desire for him so plain. Because he didn’t want her and wasn’t tempted by her, or because he was?
He could see from her expression, when he explained his plan for her to ask her if she could stay with the girls for a couple of nights, that he had both surprised and annoyed her; that his reaction was not the one she either expected or wanted.
Even so, she agreed to stay, but not without first touching him lightly on the arm, and inclining her body just that little bit too close to his own, giving him a look from under her eyelashes which just fell short of being too openly sexual as she suggested that he delay his departure until first thing in the morning.
‘Your wife will probably be having dinner with her business associates,’ she pointed out to him, ‘and won’t be able to spend the evening with you. Why not have dinner here with us and then leave in the morning?’
‘I’ve already checked,’ Marcus lied. ‘The only available flight is this evening. I was just waiting for you to get back to confirm my booking…’
‘Your wife is a very lucky woman,’ Sondra told him softly. ‘I wish I had a man in my life who missed me so much.’
Although she was smiling at him, there was a speculative, feline look in her eyes which told Marcus what she was really thinking.
Normally her behaviour would have merely amused him; it wasn’t a situation that was new to him, after all, and he was glad that she could not know, as he did, that beneath his awareness of his own male vulnerability to what she was offering ran the far more dangerous threat of his anger and resentment against Eleanor.
For what? Being too busy with her own problems, her own life to recognise what was happening to him? He was not a child now; Eleanor was not his mother; she was not responsible for his feelings and the way he reacted to them; he was.
Watching Vanessa before he left, he was aware of the way her body was changing, of the way she was changing, turning from a child into a woman.
He and Julia had not planned to have children, she because of her career and he because of his own ambivalent feelings towards his own childhood and the problems he felt he had still not resolved, but once Vanessa was born he had been determined to be as good a father to her as he could be.
He had never felt physically entirely at ease with her, though, had never shared the easy closeness he had witnessed and envied in other fathers.
Now, witnessing the way she had been behaving towards Eleanor, seeing her surly deliberate aggression and recognising her deliberate attempts to humiliate and upset his second wife, he wondered how much he himself was responsible for her behaviour.
Very few children could ever happily accept their parents’ divorce, he knew and accepted that; teenagers were notoriously difficult to deal with even for their natural parents, and the anecdotal tales told of the horrors of stepmotherhood were legendary, but that didn’t stop him from feeling guilty when he saw the way Eleanor was struggling to establish a better relationship with Vanessa. Nor did it help knowing that he found it easier to deal with Eleanor’s sons than he did his own daughter. It was not that he didn’t love Vanessa; he did, but at times he also resented her for the problems she was causing between Eleanor and himself. And Eleanor for letting her?
Well, she seemed to have taken well enough to Sondra, and the American girl was tough enough to be able to handle her. She, unlike Eleanor, would not be hurt if Vanessa chose to reject her. She was far too tough for that.
* * *
Eleanor dressed carefully for her dinner date with Pierre Colbert, putting on a silk jersey Donna Karan wrap dress which she had had for several years, but which was still one of her favourites. The rich colour suited her skin, the cut emphasising with subtle elegance the feminine slenderness of her body; it was a dress which made her feel confident of herself as a woman, without being too overtly sexual. It was also, she admitted, a dress which discreetly flattered the ego of the man accompanying any woman who wore it, because it said so eloquently that she wanted to look good for him.
Not that she wanted to look good for Monsieur Colbert in any sexual sense; but, meeting him now on his own home ground, she had quickly discovered that he was a man to whom the opinion of others was very important; his home, a small, almost starkly elegant villa in what she had learned was one of the most sought-after areas locally, bore out that opinion.
As did his wife, whom she had met the first time she had visited their home. A small
, dark, extremely chic ex-Parisienne, she had been dressed in clothes which had undoubtedly come from one of the major couturiers; Jade would no doubt have been able to tell her exactly which one. The house, she had explained to Eleanor as she showed her around it, had been designed by a top French architect, the décor by an Italian interior designer, and although Eleanor had admired it she had admitted to herself that its cool starkness did not appeal to her anything like as much as the older, less elegant homes she had seen, with their sunlight-faded stuccoed walls, the open doors hinting invitingly at quiet, secluded patios filled with terracotta pots of tumbling geraniums, their shuttered windows concealing the cool dark rooms beyond them.
Arles itself and the surrounding countryside had entranced her, but Provence was a place for lovers, not for a solitary businesswoman.
Ideally too she would have much preferred to be staying at one of the small local hotels and not this luxurious but somehow unatmospheric place into which Monsieur Colbert had booked her.
Chiding herself for being ungrateful, she checked her make-up and hair. As André had subtly pointed out to her, it was the most expensive hotel in the area.
‘My uncle must think very highly of you indeed,’ he had told her, watching her. ‘And I am beginning to understand why. There is something very sexually provocative about a beautiful, intelligent woman,’ he had added softly.
There was also very definitely something provocative about a highly sophisticated and very good-looking flirtatious man, Eleanor had acknowledged wryly to herself, and if André had been merely a good-looking dilettante…
But he wasn’t. As she had quickly discovered, he had all of his uncle’s shrewdness and more, and she suspected that he was the one responsible for the carefully planned expansion of Monsieur Colbert’s originally quite small business.
Initially it had come as quite a shock to her when he had casually mentioned graduating from Harvard Business School.
‘My father is from a town on the French and Italian border,’ he had told her with a smile. ‘He has family in America. Where my uncle considers himself to be completely and solely French, I think of myself more as a citizen of the world.’
It was just as well that Monsieur Colbert had organised this final dinner to set the seal on their contract, Eleanor reflected as she picked up her bag. This afternoon, as she was walking with André, someone had backed into her, causing her to stumble slightly, and just for a moment, as André turned to steady her, just for a heartbeat of time while he looked down into her face and then very deliberately at her mouth…
She gave herself a small admonitory shake. Yes, it was perhaps just as well that she was not seeing André this evening.
Monsieur Colbert had told her that he would send a car and a driver to pick her up and take her to the restaurant, which was not situated in the town but in the hills beyond it, the favoured haunt of the very rich and famous who had made the area their home, he had informed her.
There was no doubt Monsieur Colbert considered that taking her to dinner there was a treat, but if Marcus were here with her he would have understood that she would much have preferred to dine somewhere less ostentatious, somewhere where both food and décor were simple and reflected the countryside.
As she walked into the foyer, the first person she saw was André. He came towards her, smiling lightly.
‘A surprise, non? But I hope a pleasant one. I managed to persuade my uncle to invite me to join you, and I am now to act as your chauffeur.’
As he was talking to her, André was looking at her, and suddenly Eleanor wished that she had worn something other than the Donna Karan dress. Worn for a business meeting with a man who placed a good deal of importance on creating the right image, it was one thing; worn in the company of a man who had already made it subtly obvious that he was sexually interested in her, it was another.
Nothing was said, André was far too sophisticated and subtle for that, but the way he looked at her, the proximity of his body to hers as he escorted her out to his car, the way his touch lingered on her arm as he helped her into it, all carried a message that he was well aware of the discreet sensuality of her appearance and that he was responsive to it.
* * *
The restaurant was everything Eleanor had expected and a little bit more; surprisingly, the food did have a very local flavour, the chef Paris-trained but originally a local boy who had returned to his home to adapt the skills he had learned in Paris to reflect the best of the local cuisine.
The food, wine and the conversation subtly directed by André, all must have gone slightly to her head, Eleanor reflected later when it was time to leave and she realised that she was standing almost invitingly close to André as he came to her side.
Almost immediately she distanced herself from him, thanking Pierre Colbert for the evening and promising him that she would sign and return the contract to him just as soon as her solicitor approved it.
His terms, although stringent, were fair, the fees more generous than she had expected, although the time clauses he had wanted to insert had initially proved to be a small stumbling block. In the end Eleanor had got her way and he had agreed to modify them.
‘There really is no need for you to drive me back,’ she protested to André. ‘I can get a taxi.’
‘I want to drive you back,’ he assured her, and the way he smiled at her sent an urgent warning homing into her brain, at the same time as her body responded to the smile he was giving her and the light pressure of his hand on her arm.
They were in the car when he turned to her and murmured, ‘It’s early yet; there is a small village close to here with a stone fountain built by the Romans. It is still in use today. You would like to see it…?’
‘But it’s dark,’ Eleanor protested, laughing in spite of herself. How long was it since she had last felt like this, behaved like this, felt so free and unburdened, and, yes, perhaps a little silly as well? But it was fun being with André, being flattered and admired by him, even though she knew he was not the kind of man she would ever want to have a permanent relationship with… a serious relationship…
Was that part of what was wrong between her and Marcus… they had become too serious, forgotten what it was like to have fun together? Marcus seemed so distant and disapproving these days; where André made her feel almost giddy and girlish, Marcus made her feel increasingly aware of all her responsibilities, and her inability to deal properly with them.
He was impatient with her, irritated by her, she sometimes felt, shutting himself off from her, and not just when it came to Vanessa.
Caught up in her thoughts as she was, it was several seconds before she recognised that André had turned off the main road.
As she turned to look at him, he smiled at her and told her softly, ‘The moon is almost full; it will give us enough light for you to see the fountain by.’ And then he started to grin and added more prosaically, ‘Besides, the square is floodlit at night so that tourists can admire the fountain and the church all the more easily.’
Eleanor had to laugh, but she still shook her head.
‘No, André, I can’t,’ she told him regretfully. ‘My flight leaves early in the morning and I still haven’t packed. Please turn round and go back…’
‘If you are sure that is what you want.’
Eleanor looked steadily at him. He was right about the moon; its light was strong enough for her to see the outline of his profile, strongly beautiful in a way that was entirely masculine. He had to have just about the most sensual mouth she had ever seen on a man, she admitted to herself, and that included Jade’s Sam. And just for a second she allowed herself the indulgence of wondering what it would be like to be kissed by him…
Just for a second. As soon as her brain recognised what her emotions were doing, it caused her to sit more firmly upright in her seat and to turn her head away from him as she told him quietly, ‘Yes, that’s what I want.’
He didn’t make any attempt to change
her mind, although she noticed the way the car slowed down slightly as he passed a secluded shadowy lay-by.
When she made no response the car soon picked up speed again, and if he was seriously disappointed by her refusal he gave no sign of it, chatting easily to her about his uncle’s business and his own part in it.
Any small feminine frisson of disappointment she might have felt that he had accepted her refusal so easily was soon squashed by her own acknowledgement of the dangers involved in even such a small indulgence of vanity.
A brief verbal flirtation, the odd languishing look, perhaps even the odd kiss, there was no harm in them in themselves, but as to where they might lead…
It was not the desire and admiration of another man she wanted, she admitted as they reached her hotel, it was the return of her relationship with Marcus to what it had once been.
André escorted her towards the hotel entrance, but once they reached the doors she turned round and smiled at him.
‘There’s no need for you to come any further,’ she told him softly.
He paused for a moment, looking searchingly at her.
‘If you’re sure…’
‘I’m sure,’ she told him.
There had been a moment in the car when she had been tempted, not so much by André himself, she recognised now, as by what he represented, but that moment was gone now. What it had done more than anything else was to reinforce her awareness of how much Marcus meant to her. But how much did she mean to him? Their marriage, their relationship, which had once seemed so strong and sturdy, had seemed recently to have grown increasingly fragile, or was it just that the recent damage to her own self-confidence made her see things that way?
Suddenly she couldn’t wait to reach her room and telephone home; suddenly it wasn’t enough that she would be there herself tomorrow. She wanted and needed to speak to Marcus now.
She was halfway across the foyer when she saw him, shock, disbelief and then finally incredulous joy illuminating her face as she stood watching him walk towards her.