‘Oh, go to hell!’ flared Jane.
Marc laughed, in no way upset by her spurt of temper.
‘I’ve always thought my ideal woman would be tall, red-haired and gracious in any situation,’ he remarked. ‘But you, you remind me of…What’s that ferocious little creature you have here? The one that snarls and bares its teeth? A devil, that’s it. You’re a little Tasmanian devil, aren’t you?’
Jane gave him a long, smouldering, silent glare.
‘They’re very bad-tempered creatures,’ continued Marc in a conversational tone. ‘Although I’m told they make good pets if you can tame them—but only one man in a thousand is capable of doing it.’
‘Just try!’ snapped Jane.
Marc smiled provocatively.
‘I might. It would be a challenge to see if I could get you eating out of my hand. All right, enough of these games! What’s to become of you?’
‘I’m staying here,’ insisted Jane.
‘What about when you want to go to the shops, or to buy petrol, or clothes, or to visit the hairdresser’s?’
‘I never go to the hairdresser’s!’
‘Never?’ marvelled Marc. ‘You mean all that long, blonde, wonderful hair is natural?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s very beautiful,’ said Marc, momentarily diverted. ‘But we must not lose the thread of our conversation. Even if you don’t go to the hairdresser’s, there must be some place where you need to spend money.’
‘I won’t go out at all,’ threatened Jane. ‘I’ll just stay here at the house until you leave.’
Marc’s lips twitched. ‘And if I choose not to feed you?’
‘I’ll eat grapes.’
‘Quelle drôle de femme! Comme elle est farouche! No, no, Jane, this won’t do. In any case, I need all the grapes I can get to make the best possible wine here. I have a much more sensible idea. I’ll employ you.’
‘Employ me?’ echoed Jane in a baffled tone.
‘Yes, you can be my personal assistant for the next three months on a salary of——’ He named a figure which made Jane blink at its generosity.
‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Why would you want to do a thing like that?’
Marc shrugged.
‘It seems a very good idea. You could learn a lot from me, Jane. I’m thirty-four years old; I’ve been a professional winemaker for the last twelve years and I’ve been working in my family vineyard for even longer than that. It’s an excellent opportunity for you.’
‘Maybe,’ admitted Jane grudgingly. ‘But what’s in it for you?’
‘Well, I don’t want you starving on the streets or plotting sabotage behind my back. This way I can keep an eye on you. Besides, I’d like to try my skills at taming a genuine Tasmanian devil.’
Jane hated being teased. Ever since childhood it had been the surest way to make her fly into a rage. Now she opened her mouth to protest hotly, to refuse Marc’s stupid, insulting proposition, and then paused. If she didn’t accept, what could she do? She would either have to leave the place entirely or stay here on even more humiliating terms. Was she really prepared to beg for croissants every morning? No way! Wasn’t it better to be Marc’s employee? Besides, if she stayed then she might be able to talk him out of buying the property at all…
A sweet radiant smile replaced her scowl.
‘All right,’ she agreed meekly. ‘It’s a deal.’
Marc suddenly looked uneasy.
‘There are conditions,’ he warned. ‘No bombs in the car, no fires in the equipment shed, no poison in the coffee.’
‘Moi?’ demanded Jane innocently.
Marc sighed and shook his head.
‘For centuries the men of my family have had the gift of prophecy,’ he lamented. ‘They are forewarned of disaster to the Le Rossignols by a mysterious prickle down their spines. Me, I have a mysterious prickle down my spine.’
In spite of Marc’s foreboding no disasters happened immediately. As a matter of fact he and Jane soon developed a strong professional respect for each other. Yet, much as she admired Marc’s knowledge about vineyards, Jane found the whole situation fraught with unbearable tension. In her rash determination to hold on to her territory at any cost, she had not stopped to consider what an intimate situation she was being plunged into with this suave, mocking Frenchman.
Morning after morning she came downstairs and had to look at him over the breakfast table, just as if they were married. There were so many decisions to be made about what they would eat for dinner, whose turn it was to load the washing machine, whether or not friends should be invited over for Sunday lunch. Worst of all was the alarming and wholly unwelcome attraction that she felt towards him. Even though she tried to fight against it, Jane was no more immune to Marc’s smouldering animal magnetism than any other woman would have been. Her weakness infuriated her. She had never trusted men with those brooding, bedroom eyes or that hoarse, caressing voice. At any rate not since she was nineteen years old and had fallen violently in love with Michael Barrett, her chemistry tutor in Adelaide.
Michael had pursued her with an ardour that had flattered and excited her and she had been bitterly disillusioned to overhear other students joking crudely about the way he always tried to seduce the prettiest girl in each new class. Fortunately matters had not gone quite that far between them although they had gone quite far enough to lacerate Jane’s pride. Her cheeks burned even now whenever she thought of one particularly torrid evening in Michael’s flat when he had kissed her violently and——Well, she felt bitterly certain that Marc was another man just like that. Someone only interested in scoring women as if they were goals in a soccer match, and Jane had no intention of adding to his tally!
All the same, it became harder and harder to face him calmly over the breakfast table each morning, particularly since he was in the habit of appearing in a navy-blue towelling dressing-gown that left the top of his muscular, tanned chest exposed. Again and again Jane felt her eyes straying in horrified fascination to the dark, springy hairs that curled over the V of fabric, then up the brown column of his neck to the aggressive line of his jaw and the taunting half-smile that always seemed to hover around his lips as he read the newspaper. What a fool she was! Why couldn’t she just settle for someone dull and nice and devoted like Brett? The restless yearning she felt for a man who would make her blood pulse like molten fire through her veins was probably quite insane! It seemed to be a law of nature that the only men who made her heart pound and her breath come faster were utterly worthless like Michael. Or dangerous and probably untrustworthy like Marc. No, she would be much wiser to give up crying for the moon and settle for second best.
When her twenty-seventh birthday arrived two weeks after her return from France, she was so depressed that she almost made up her mind to do exactly that. Over breakfast she sat gloomily stirring her coffee and sighing quietly to herself. If she knew Brett, he was bound to arrive some time during the day, probably with a bale of wire for the vineyard and definitely with another one of his matter of fact proposals. Well, this time she really ought to accept! After all, she wanted a home and children and she was fond of Brett. Besides, she wasn’t getting any younger and she didn’t want to feel as if love had passed her by completely. Sometimes she thought she was probably the only twenty-seven-year-old virgin in Australia. Or even in the world. She sighed again.
‘Mon Dieu!’ exclaimed Marc. ‘What is the matter with you? Do you have asthma?’
‘No,’ retorted Jane with a scowl. She rose to her feet abruptly, pushing away her coffee-cup, and headed for the French doors which led out of the kitchen into the garden.
‘Where are you going?’ demanded Marc with a frown.
Jane paused with her hand on the door handle and turned back to look at him. An unwanted thrill of excitement tingled through her as she scanned every detail of his body from his carelessly brushed-back hair, his narrowed eyes and twisted smile to his lean, muscular body which seemed to
strain against the confining dressing-gown. She shuddered and looked away.
‘Into the garden,’ she replied drily and then chanted half to herself, ‘Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going into the garden to eat worms!’
The baffled look on Marc’s face almost made her laugh as she escaped into the cool, dewy crispness of the garden. Luckily the fine autumn weather was holding well. Although there was an early morning freshness in the air, the cloudless blue sky held the promise of a fine day. If the good weather held she should soon have an excellent harvest.
Yet the lift in her spirits was only momentary and before long she was pacing around the shrubs and flowerbeds feeling tragic again. What a mess everything was! It looked as if she was going to lose her home and her livelihood; nobody did love her except Brett and she really wished he wouldn’t and, worst of all, she was locked into this ridiculous, humiliating situation with Marc Le Rossignol, whom she both desired and disliked, with equal fervour!
She was on her third circuit of the garden when she heard the sound of a utility truck pulling up in the turning circle behind the house. Her spirits plummeted even further. It had to be Brett! Feeling as if she were about to make a visit to the dentist, Jane sat down at the pine table near the barbecue. If he asks me to marry him, I’ll say yes, she told herself defiantly. At least it will make Brett happy and it will get Marc Le Rossignol out of my life forever!
A moment later Brett came strolling around the corner of the house with a lettuce under his arm.
‘Happy birthday,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Brett.’
‘I’ve got some irrigation pipe out in the ute for you. I thought you’d prefer something practical.’
‘Thanks. That’s very nice of you.’
‘No worries. And I thought you could do with a lettuce from my veggie garden.’
He set the lettuce down on the table in front of her and then took Jane in his arms as she rose to her feet. His face looked as red and good-natured as ever and she wanted to return the fervent emotion that she saw shining in his eyes, but somehow she couldn’t. At the last moment, as he bent to kiss her, she turned her head so that his kiss landed on her cheek instead of her lips.
‘Ah, come on, Jane,’ he protested. ‘You can do better than that. Give us a proper kiss.’
Jane’s instinct was to run, but she steeled herself to obey. Glancing at the kitchen, she saw that Marc was standing just inside the French doors and suddenly a crazy impulse seized her to tell Brett that it was Marc she loved and to flee inside to him. How stupid could she be? Instead she flung her arms around Brett’s waist and kissed him warmly on the lips. Brett looked shocked and then delighted. He kissed her back with a warm, moist fervour that made her stiffen with distaste.
‘Ah, that’s the way,’ he exclaimed, approvingly at last. ‘I knew you’d come round if I waited long enough! Listen, Jane, what do you say we stop all this pussyfooting around and get married right away?’
Jane stared at him in horror. This was the proposal she had been waiting for—the proposal she had meant to accept. She opened her mouth to say yes and was seized by such a blind, unreasoning panic that for a moment she could say nothing at all.
‘No!’ she wailed at last, pushing away the bewildered farmer. ‘I’m sorry, Brett, you’re a really, really nice man, but I don’t love you and I never will. Now please go away!’
Hurtling into the house, she almost knocked Marc down in her mad rush.
‘Get out of my way!’ she cried impatiently, confusingly aware of his strong hands steadying her arms, the spicy, masculine scent of his body so close to hers, the questioning glint in his eyes. The irrelevant thought occurred to her that she would have no trouble kissing Marc or agreeing to marry him. She gave him a violent push and ran for the stairs.
‘Don’t let him follow me!’ she begged over her shoulder, and then vanished.
Much as she simply wanted to race up the stairs two at a time, lock herself in her wardrobe and never come out again, Jane couldn’t help pausing anxiously on the stairs to see what happened. A moment later she heard Brett’s heavy tread as he entered the kitchen.
‘Get out of my way, mate,’ he ordered, amiably enough.
Craning her neck, Jane risked a look, and saw that Marc was barring Brett’s way with equal amiability.
‘She doesn’t want to see you,’ said Marc, in a pleasant voice that held an undertone of steel.
‘Now, look here,’ protested Brett. ‘I’m not just mucking about and leading her on, you know. I came here to ask Jane to marry me.’
‘I’m sorry for you. But it seems you have your answer and the answer is no.’
‘This is your fault,’ said Brett accusingly. ‘Coming here, filling her head with your fancy foreign ideas. I’ll bet you’re just trying to turn her against me so that you can have some rotten little affair with her and then go off and leave her broken-hearted.’
‘Whatever happens between Jane and me is none of your business,’ replied Marc with aristocratic hauteur. ‘But, since you seem a decent fellow, I will tell you this. In fact, Jane and I have an understanding between us. Naturally in these circumstances she does not want to be involved with any other man. Nor would I permit it.’
‘But you’ve only been staying here with her for two flaming weeks!’ exclaimed Brett in an outraged voice. ‘How the hell can you have an understanding with her in that time?’
‘You seem to forget that she was in France for six months before that,’ Marc reminded him.
Brett’s face creased into a baffled frown.
‘You mean, you knew her in France before you came here?’ he demanded.
With the merest upward flick of his eyebrows, Marc contrived to suggest that this was so.
‘Well, she never said anything to me about it!’ insisted Brett belligerently.
‘Why should she tell you?’ countered Marc. ‘She regards you as a dear friend, certainly, but she would hardly want to discuss her love for another man with you.’
‘Oh, yeah, love is it?’ demanded Brett sceptically. ‘Well, it had better be, mate, and the real thing into the bargain. Because I’ll tell you this. I’m not going to quarrel with any other bloke if he wins Jane fair and square and she really prefers him to me. But if you’re taking advantage of her and your intentions aren’t serious, I’ll knock your flaming teeth down your throat!’
‘Would I be thinking of buying this property if my intentions weren’t serious?’ asked Marc coolly. ‘Now, come on, Brett, Jane has asked you to leave. Please go quietly and we can all meet one day soon for a drink as friends.’
‘All right,’ grumbled Brett. ‘But you watch yourself, mate, because I’ll have my eye on you, see?’
The moment Jane heard the utility truck departing, she came slowly down the stairs and appeared in the kitchen with a shamefaced expression. Her emotions were in turmoil. She felt shocked and guilty at precipitating the whole scene by her recklessness in kissing Brett. At the same time she was both grateful to Marc for getting rid of him and appalled and embarrassed by the lies and half-truths he had told to do so. It made her feel even more troubled to see that Marc looked as cool and unruffled as ever.
‘What was that all about?’ he demanded with an odd expression.
Jane winced.
‘Don’t ask!’ she begged, pulling a face. ‘The whole situation was so awful I could just die!’
‘You seem to me to have a very frivolous and unreliable character,’ said Marc disapprovingly. ‘One minute you’re kissing that poor young man violently, if very ineptly, the next you’re ordering him to leave the premises and asking me to get rid of him. If I’m going to act like a bouncer in a nightclub, at least I want to know what’s going on here.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t understand!’ burst out Jane unhappily. ‘You see, it’s my birthday and I knew Brett would ask me to marry him—he always does. Only this time I was going to say yes, but then he gave me the lettuce and then I kissed hi
m and then I said no and so he followed me inside.’
‘Ah, that explains everything,’ murmured Marc with a glint of amusement in his eyes.
‘Don’t laugh at me!’ shouted Jane hotly. ‘This is serious!’
‘Serious, ma foi! Of course it is serious. A proposal of marriage is always serious. But you have not told me the most important thing. When this excellent young man came to propose to you with a lettuce-why a lettuce, I ask myself? Why not a bunch of roses?—why did you say no?’
‘Because I don’t love him,’ wailed Jane. ‘And I thought I could go through with it, but I couldn’t.’
‘Ah, so this is why you kissed him with your eyes closed and your face screwed up as if you were taking the medicine?’
‘You were watching!’ protested Jane indignantly.
‘I couldn’t help it. I was so close to the French doors that it happened before I could move away. You looked ridiculous, both of you. As a kiss, it was not impressive.’
‘Oh, really?’ demanded Jane. ‘I suppose you could do much better?’
‘Of course.’
Before she knew what was happening, Marc swept her into his arms with a force that made a surprised gasp burst from her lips. It was the last sound she made for a considerable time.
Scarcely able to breathe in that crushing embrace, she felt his warm mouth come down on hers and found herself being kissed with a passion that made her dizzy. A high-voltage current seemed to tingle through every part of her body and her resistance crumbled. She melted into Marc’s arms and lifted her trembling lips to his as his hold tightened further. Her eyes closed and she let herself float on a tide of sensual arousal so urgent that it shocked her. Never before had she experienced such intense desire. A dark, throbbing heat seemed to be spreading through every part of her so that she felt powerless to resist as Marc’s mouth plundered hers. Her nipples rose into hard, tight buds and her heart began to hammer frantically, making every pulse in her body leap. A riot of sensations clamoured for her attention. She felt acutely conscious of the powerful, insistent pressure of Marc’s virile body against hers, of the rhythmic, demanding caress of his hands moving down her spine, of the heady, intoxicating masculine smell that rose from his body in waves. All she wanted in that moment of wildness was to fling off the clothes that constrained her and offer herself to him passionately and completely. But when his hands came up and cupped her tingling breasts, she broke away with a muffled gasp.
Unwelcome Invader (Harlequin Treasury 1990's) Page 4