'You must bring her again, Luc,' Tonio said. 'Preferably for dinner. Is good to see someone enjoy my food.'
'Indeed I must,' Luc agreed, the way he was looking at her bringing a glow of colour to her cheeks. It wasn't difficult to see why so many women jumped at the chance of his company, Sorrel thought wryly, caught once again in the spell of his wildly attractive sexual charisma. This lunch with him had been… fun.
Full of good food and wine, she didn't at first notice they were heading back towards Wapping. When it finally dawned on her, she asked in rather sleepy bewilderment, 'What about this interview with Lady Fair, then?'
'All in good time.' He grinned at her. 'I wanted to relax you first, loosen up your inhibitions. And you'll want to change into one of your new outfits, won't you?'
'Oh lord!' Sorrel was suddenly remembering her worries over how much of her background she should reveal to her interviewer and wishing she had never drunk all that wine.
'You have half an hour,' he said when he had followed her into her apartment. 'They'll be here at three o'clock.'
'Here!' She stared at him. 'They're coming here? Why didn't you tell me? The place is a mess…'
'Nonsense.' His reply was brisk. 'You're not the type to live in a mess. This place looks exactly what it is, the kind of place a creative artist can feel comfortable. Miriam will be ecstatic. Now go and change.' He pushed her towards the staircase. 'And wear the suede dress.'
There didn't seem much point in arguing, but as Sorrel had her foot on the first stair she changed course for the bathroom. If she was to undress, she would feel safer with a locked door between them.
A quick sponge down and she shook the suede dress from its tissue wrappings, loving the feel as its softness caressed her skin. Touching up her make-up and renewing her perfume from the small spray in her handbag, she was as ready as she would ever be.
'They're on their way up,' Luc informed her as she stepped nervously out of the bathroom. Almost immediately her doorbell pealed, and while Sorrel was still riveted to the spot, he went to answer it.
'Luc, darling …' a feminine voice cooed, and although the light in her hallway wasn't good, Sorrel saw a pair of arms coil round Luc's neck to pull his mouth down. And this time, though his body blocked out the woman in his arms, Sorrel forced herself to watch, because if she ever allowed herself to succumb to the fierce attraction he exerted over her, this was what she would have to suffer, time and time again, until he tired of having her in his life.
Then Luc was turning, urging the visitor forward. She was of medium height, with brown hair, long and straight, falling girlishly almost to her waist, and yet as she came forward into the light, the girlish illusion was shattered, for this was a mature woman of perhaps forty, attractive rather than beautiful, her face lively with intelligence.
Luc performed the introductions and included the man ambling along after them, encumbered by cameras. 'So this is your little protégée, darling.' Miriam Gee looked Sorrel up and down knowingly before turning her attention to the apartment and calling excitedly to the photographer, 'Oh, Steve, you'll get some great pictures here. Just look at those windows!'
As she dragged the hapless Steve out of earshot Sorrel murmured to Luc, 'I thought you told me your intimate friends called you Luc.'
He smiled at her, slightly puzzled. 'And so they do.'
But Sorrel shook her head firmly. 'Oh no, your friends call you Luc. Your intimate friends call you Luc, darling.' She cooed the last two words.
He chuckled, his arm sliding around her shoulders. 'And when are you going to call me Luc, darling?'
'Oh, I don't see us ever getting that intimate,' she retorted smartly.
She was sure he was going to retaliate, but Miriam pre-empted him by saying tartly, 'You can flirt with her in your own time, Luc, not in mine. We'll do the photographs first, Steve has to get off.'
For the next hour Sorrel had her treasured privacy well and truly violated. Miriam prowled everywhere, even up into her gallery bedroom, and Sorrel was photographed in her small, neat kitchen, standing beside her tall windows, sitting at ease on one of her sofas; she was instructed to change into the bright orange jumpsuit to be photographed working at her drawing-board, changed once again into the clinging black evening dress to be photographed at her dressing-table in her bedroom putting on some of her own jewellery, only to be hustled back into the jump-suit to be photographed downstairs at her work-bench.
It was almost a relief to see the photographer go off and to return to the apartment, but it was then the real questioning started. It was easy enough talking about her training and the kind of work she had been doing since setting up her workshop at Wapping. It was when Miriam asked what had prompted her to go into jewellery design that she hesitated.
Hesitated too long, for to her horror she heard Luc say, 'It was in her blood I should think, seeing that her father is one of the country's leading gem dealers.'
'Her father?' Miriam's head snapped up. 'Valentine. You mean Felix Valentine?' As Luc nodded, her gaze swung back to Sorrel, a look of stunned amazement on her face. 'Marcia Valentine is your mother?'
'No…' The denial came out like a strangled cry as she shot a look of bitter reproach at Luc. Marcia was never going to forgive her for this, and that meant her father wouldn't either. But now Luc had let the secret out, there was nothing for it but to put the record straight. Gaining control of her voice she said quietly, 'No, I'm his daughter by a previous marriage, when he and my mother were very young.'
Miriam pounced again, and Sorrel found herself answering questions about her mother and the Berisford-Reid family, fatalistically praying that they weren't going to be upset. At last Miriam was packing away her tape recorder and notebook, a gloating expression on her face as she said, 'You promised me a good story, Luc, darling, but I never dreamed it would be as good as this.'
When she was gone, Sorrel turned on him. 'How could you, Luc? I thought you were my father's friend! He's going to be very upset about this—not to mention Marcia.'
'Why the hell should he be upset? You're his daughter, for God's sake! A daughter any parent should be proud of; not only beautiful but highly talented.' He gripped her shoulders hard, reinforcing his argument. 'It's neither just nor reasonable that you should be hidden away as if you were something to be ashamed of, and I've already told Felix so. All right, so Marcia will have to bite the bullet for a while, but she'll get used to the idea.' His lips curled cynically. 'Knowing her, I guarantee within three months she'll be taking credit for your success.'
A lump had been rising in her throat while he spoke. He was taking her part—and against his friend! No one had ever shouted in her corner before, and that Luc should be doing so now touched her deeply. Her mouth working as she tried to master her emotion, she asked huskily, 'You told my father?'
The hard anger in his eyes softened to something like tenderness while his grip on her shoulders gentled to a caress. 'Yes, I told him, and he agreed with me.' He watched her disbelief warring with a terrible yearning as tears welled in the wide, sherry-brown eyes, and he was struck by how like the face that was lifted to him now was to the face behind the mask in that extraordinary portrait he had seen in her bedroom, and he knew a stab of unreasoning jealousy that the painter, too, had seen below the surface to the real, very vulnerable woman he held in his arms.
'He did?' she asked wonderingly, and he found himself wanting to reassure her, to give her everything she lacked. He pulled her against him, his senses leaping at the contact, but experience told him this was not the time to indulge the desire licking like fire through his veins, and he turned the embrace into one of comfort. 'Yes, he did, and to prove it, he and Marcia are having dinner with us tonight.'
Sorrel's eyes widened incredulously. 'In public?'
'At the Savoy, and you can't get more public than that. So put your feet up for an hour, then have a long, leisurely bath—' he had to clamp down on a sudden surge of desire '—and glam yours
elf up in that pretty lilac evening dress. I'll be back to collect you at eight.' He kissed her gently and very sweetly, and she was so stunned she responded blindly.
By the time she was walking beside Luc through the portals of the famous hotel, Sorrel was shivering and stiff with nerves. 'It's all very well for you,' she said when he teased her, 'but I've never even been inside a place like this before.' Suppose she did something gauche and made her father ashamed of her, she worried silently.
'I guarantee there won't be a lady there I'd be more proud to be seen with.' His encouraging words were accompanied by the warmly reassuring clasp of his hand as he led her through the foyer. She was still looking up at him idiotically as they walked into one of the bars where her father and Marcia waited.
The evening turned out to be less of an ordeal than she had feared. Conversation was a little stilted at first, especially with Marcia, but under Luc's skilful direction even she thawed, until by the end of the evening she was openly introducing Sorrel as her stepdaughter to friends who paused at their table, ignoring their astonishment and implying that only loyalty to her mother had kept Sorrel away from her father's family for so long. Sorrel exchanged wry amusement with Luc, but her father's open pleasure in her company more than made up for his wife's face-saving fiction.
Not until the two ladies adjourned to the powder-room did some of Marcia's true feelings surface, when she said tartly, 'I do hope you're not going to make a fool of yourself over Luc, my dear. It can be pretty heady having a man like him paying you attention, but don't forget that he and Bianca Fratelli have been a regular number for some time.'
'If you're warning me not to fall in love with him,' Sorrel retorted coolly, 'there's no need. Even if it weren't for Bianca, I have more sense than to fall for a man who has women standing in line for him.' They were brave words but very hollow, because after what he had done for her tonight, she was already more than half in love with him.
'It wasn't so bad, was it?' Luc said as they waved Felix and Marcia oft.
'You know it wasn't.' Her father had just invited her to his home to meet her two brothers during their next holiday from university and her voice was husky with emotion as she looked up at him. 'I—thank you, Luc. Without you it wouldn't have been possible.'
He put a hand beneath her chin and kissed her lightly but with exquisite tenderness. His own voice was slightly husky as he teased, 'Now don't go mushy on me. They may be going home but for us the night's only just begun.'
She sniffed, managed a shaky smile and admonished, 'Luc… it was very good of you to arrange this dinner with my father, but—'
'It wasn't good of me at all,' he broke in, 'and it isn't good of me to take you on to a nightclub either. In the first place, I would very much like to dance with you, and in the second place, now we've cleared things with your father and Marcia, it's time to get the gossip columnists talking about you.'
'Gossip columnists!' She stared at him in horror.
'Not a breed I admire, but I learned early that if they were going to use me, there was nothing to stop me using them.' He flagged down a cruising cab.
She was still staring at him in bemused bewilderment after he had given the driver the name of a nightclub she had only ever read about. 'I haven't the slightest idea what you're getting at.' She lurched against him as the cab swerved out into the flow of traffic.
'It's simple.' His arm snaked round her to steady her. 'Just a matter of dropping the right word into the right ear at the right time. So when I want a bit of free publicity I make sure I'm photographed partying with some beautiful lady, and I just "happen" to mention whatever it is either I or the lady want to make known. That's how we launched Magda Pendine's boutique, and Hywel's first Collection, among other things.'
'You partied with Hywel!'
'No, idiot, with Bianca and the other models he was using at the opening.'
If what he was implying was true, it gave an entirely different slant to his so-called reputation, the many photographs she had seen in the press of Luc escorting one beautiful woman after another. 'So it'll just be a publicity exercise,' she said, and though it might square her conscience regarding Bianca, it also brought a sharp stab of disappointment.
'That's right,' Luc agreed, reading her disappointment and taking encouragement from it. 'Tonight we're promoting the newest star on the jewellery design scene. You did agree to make yourself available for any necessary publicity,' he added wickedly.
The club had the reputation of being capriciously selective in the patrons it allowed through its doors, but Luc's arrival was warmly welcomed. Their progress to their table was lengthy as Luc was greeted by so many people, and to each group he introduced Sorrel as the find of the century, warning them not to miss the launch of her fabulous jewellery designs, puffing her up so much that even people she recognised as household names were looking at her as if she was someone special.
When they finally reached their table he ordered champagne and laughed at the expression on her face. 'What's the matter, darling? Don't you like being a celebrity?'
That casual 'darling' acted like a supercharger to her pulse rate, and she found herself wishing with a terrible yearning that she was his darling. 'I feel as if I've been hit by a ten-ton truck,' she said ruefully, and he would never know how true that was.
They danced and talked, all the time being interrupted by people who wanted to talk to Luc, sometimes women who cooed and pawed him with covetous hands, sometimes men who leered at Sorrel knowingly, and once by a smooth gentleman who asked pertinent questions and whom Luc revealed, after he had moved on, as the gossip columnist on a popular daily paper.
Feeling like someone who had jumped in at the deep end, Sorrel let the waters close over her head, giving herself up to the seducing movements of his body against hers as they danced again. So what if it was all a publicity stunt? For just a short time she could pretend she was in his arms because he wanted her there. No past, no future, no commitments elsewhere, tonight he was hers, and when they left here they would go back to her apartment… Her body caught fire at the voluptuous pictures her imagination was conjuring.
It was at that moment a flash bulb popped in her face and the dream shattered. Luc smiled down into her dazzled eyes. 'Mission accomplished, I think. We might as well leave now.' Moments later they were out on the pavement and he was hailing a cab, giving the driver her Wapping address.
'What about your car?' she questioned half-heartedly, for suddenly she was feeling cold and very tired.
He assured her he would collect it later, and when he asked the driver to wait while he escorted her to her door, she didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. 'You're nearly out on your feet, darling.' He kissed her gently and pushed her inside. 'I'll call you.'
She very much doubted it. Hadn't he said, 'Mission accomplished?' But call her he did. Half a dozen times during the next two weeks they spent a similar evening together, being seen at all the places the wealthy and influential disported themselves.
When that first photograph was published, it had seemed to Sorrel that her feelings for the man whose arms held her must be blazingly obvious, but though she watched closely for Bianca's reaction, she could discern no change in the girl's friendly attitude. It only confirmed her certainty that Luc had been telling the truth when he asserted his reputation in the gossip columns had been deliberately sought for publicity purposes, and that Bianca was sure enough of his feelings for her not to worry.
Only once did the model appear to get uptight, when the third photograph came out and Hywel teased, 'You do realise the whole of London believes you're lovers? But at least you don't look quite so starry-eyed this time.'
Aware that Bianca was within hearing, and surprised and cross at his insensitivity, she retorted, 'Whatever London believes, the people who matter know it's only a publicity stunt.'
'Oh, good. There's still hope for me, then.' Hywel shot an oddly taunting glance at Bianca and the look she ret
urned was definitely hurt.
The conviction that Luc's consistently amorous behaviour was only a ploy to build up public interest in the launch of her jewellery designs made it easier for her to combat it, though when he kissed her the voice of reason was difficult to hear over the clamour of her senses.
It was on their sixth 'date' that things changed. To begin with it was no 'in' place he took her to, but a quiet restaurant where the tables were discreetly widely spaced and the postage-stamp-sized dance-floor encouraged closeness. No one greeted them as they threaded their way to their table, or interrupted them as they worked leisurely through the menu, yet Luc was even more attentive and lover-like.
Being full of the delicious veal hongroise, Sorrel declined dessert, only to find the aroma of Luc's crêpes drenched in Cointreau titillating her taste buds. Smiling at the childlike longing of her expression, he scooped up a portion and popped it into her mouth.
It was a subtly erotic experience, being fed from his plate with the same fork he was using, and a trembling began inside her. 'There are no reporters watching our act tonight,' she said shakily in an attempt to get her feet back on firm ground.
'No, there aren't, and that's deliberate.' Something seemed to flare in the dark depths of his eyes. 'I decided I'd let you back off long enough. Tonight is for us.' He pushed his plate aside and took her hand. 'Come on, let's dance.'
Weakly she allowed him to lead her on to the floor, though once there, what they participated in was not like any dancing Sorrel had known before. With his eyes and his hands and his body he was subtly making love to her to music. And caught in the thrall of his enchantment, she found herself sinking without a struggle, her body taking light from his, her senses sending to her brain only messages of sheer, intoxicated delight. Her arms coiled submissively around his neck, her fingertips exploring the texture of his hair, the skin above his collar, and longed to explore further. Her body arched closer to his as his hand caressed her back, bared by the slinky black dress, her mouth tasting the skin of his jaw while his ragged breath stirred the hair at her temples.
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