by Lynne Graham
In an effort to lessen that risk she stepped away from Bastien and endeavoured to act more like an employee than a lover. The cameras continued to flash regardless. Questions were shouted, asking who she was in both French and English. They, like the photographers, were ignored.
Her colour fluctuating, Lilah climbed into the limo outside the airport accompanied by Berdina, who was to act as her guide on the shopping trip, and Ciro, who was with her for security. By that time Lilah was worrying that her family or her friends would see photos of her with Bastien in the papers and become suspicious that she was doing more than simply working for him.
But once the affair was over would that really matter? she asked herself ruefully.
The car whisked them to the Avenue Montaigne, where a whole range of designer shops were located.
While Berdina’s attention was elsewhere Lilah looked up Marielle Durand on her phone. Photos of a slender exquisite blonde cascaded across the screen and Lilah swallowed hard. Marielle had been a famous model before her marriage.
Her thoughts abstracted, Lilah prowled through Louis Vuitton, Dior and Chanel and browsed, before obeying the letter of the law in Ralph Lauren and flourishing Bastien’s credit card to buy Bastien a new tie. He couldn’t complain now, could he? She had bought something.
Bastien joined her at noon. ‘Where are your shopping bags?’ he demanded.
Lilah extracted the small package from her clutch and handed it to him. ‘For you.’
Bastien frowned at her. ‘For...me?’
‘You said I had to spend your money, so I did.’
Bastien unwrapped the gold silk tie and studied it in astonishment. ‘You bought me a tie?’
‘I won’t need anything new to wear this century, after the amount of stuff you bought in London,’ Lilah pointed out.
‘That wasn’t the point of the exercise,’ Bastien traded harshly. ‘The point is that, for once, I wanted you to do exactly as you were told.’
‘Sorry, sir, I’ll have to try harder,’ Lilah quipped.
‘Have you always found it this hard to follow instructions?’
‘When you’re issuing them...yes,’ she admitted ruefully.
‘You should want to please me,’ Bastien told her as blue eyes bright as sapphires met his critical gaze.
With her dark hair framing her triangular face and her eyes sparkling above her neat little nose and her full rosy mouth, she looked amazingly fragile and feminine—as well as fizzingly alive.
‘Why?’
‘It puts me in a better mood.’
While Lilah tried to imagine Bastien’s moods influencing her in any way, the limo nosed back into the traffic.
The Durands lived in an imposing eighteenth-century townhouse on Ile Saint-Louis. A maid ushered them into an airy salon, where introductions were performed and drinks were served.
Keenly aware of Marielle Durand’s scrutiny, Lilah struggled to relax. Marielle was even more beautiful in the flesh than she had looked in her photographs, and Lilah was surprised to realise that the other woman was English.
Bastien surprised Lilah by closing his hand over hers to keep her close while he chatted to François. The conversation was solely in French, until Marielle addressed Lilah in English and asked her about her home town. Relieved not to be forced to stumble out any more stock phrases in her schoolgirl French, Lilah relaxed a little over the light lunch that was being served.
Over a glass of wine, the beautiful blonde invited Lilah to walk round the garden with her.
‘How long have you been with Bastien?’ Marielle asked with unconcealed curiosity, as soon as the men were out of earshot.
‘Only a few days,’ Lilah admitted wryly. ‘Am I allowed to ask when you...?’
‘Years and years ago—soon after I first made my name in the modelling world. He was probably my most exciting affair,’ the other woman confided with an abstracted laugh. ‘I adore my husband, but I’ve never felt anything like the excitement I once felt around Bastien. He’s a heartbreaker, though, too damaged to ever trust his heart to one woman and settle down.’
‘Damaged?’ Lilah queried with a frown.
‘Oh, I don’t know any details, but I’ve always been certain he must come from a challenging background. No man’s that hard to hold, and no man finds it that impossible to trust a woman without good reason,’ Marielle opined. ‘He was too complicated for me.’
And then Lilah made a discovery that disconcerted her: she liked complicated—actually enjoyed the challenge of wondering what made Bastien tick. He was like no other man she had ever met. Incalculably clever, impatient, volatile and unpredictable. He was an unashamed workaholic, evidently unfulfilled by the huge achievements he had already made. What had made him like that... Who had made him like that? What drove him? And why did she care?
* * *
‘You charmed the Durands very effectively,’ Bastien pronounced on their journey back to the airport. ‘You don’t have a jealous bone in your body where I’m concerned, do you?’
‘Why would I?’ Lilah parried, quickly overcoming her surprise at that unexpected stab. ‘I can’t think you’d welcome a possessive woman.’
That was certainly true, Bastien acknowledged grudgingly, and yet when he had glanced out through the patio doors standing open to the sunlight to see Delilah smiling and laughing, seemingly on the very best of terms with Marielle, he had been surprisingly riled by Delilah’s complete indifference to his past history with the beautiful blonde.
The faintest colour warmed Lilah’s cheeks, because although she had not been jealous or possessive she had felt uncomfortable in Marielle’s company—and positively nauseous at the knowledge that Bastien had been sexually intimate with her hostess.
‘Where are we going now?’ she asked, purely to change the subject.
‘I have a chateau in Provence...’
CHAPTER SIX
THEY LEFT THE airport in a rough terrain vehicle, with Bastien at the wheel and his security team following in another car.
The glorious Provençal light was beginning to fade, softening hard edges with shadow. They drove through rugged hills with deep gorges and fertile valleys. The hilltops were scattered with picturesque fortified villages with narrow meandering streets and sleepy shuttered houses. As the landscape grew increasingly spectacular the land became lusher. Ancient vineyards cloaked the sloping hills with ranks of bright green vines, while orchards of peaches, pears, nectarines and cherries flourished on stone terraces.
‘Did you inherit the chateau from your family?’ Lilah finally asked, unable to stifle her curiosity because Bastien had not offered a shred of further information.
‘I’m not from a rich family,’ Bastien told her drily. ‘My mother was a waitress born in an Athens back street. My father is a small-time property developer who is, admittedly, married to a very wealthy woman. Regrettably, he was never married to my mother.’
‘Oh...’ Lilah responded after an awkward pause. ‘When you mentioned your father giving your mother the sea horse pendant, and you thinking that you and your parents were the perfect family, you gave me a very different impression of your background.’
‘What I meant was that back then I was still young enough to be ignorant of exactly what their relationship entailed.’
‘And what did it entail?’
‘My father, Anatole, is married to another woman. My mother was his mistress. She once admitted to me that she deliberately chose to become pregnant with me because she believed my father would divorce his wife for her if she gave him a child,’ Bastien volunteered in the driest of tones. ‘Unhappily for her, her scheme failed—because my father’s wife had already conceived my half-brother, Leo, who is only a few months older than I am. My mother was extremely bitter about that development.’
/> ‘And she told you that?’ Lilah pressed in consternation.
His beautifully shaped mouth quirked. ‘Athene wasn’t the maternal type, and she never did overcome her resentment at having the responsibility and expense of a child she no longer had any use for.’
Lilah compressed her full lips, the skin around her mouth bloodless from the force of will it took for her to remain silent in the face of what he was telling her. She was shocked, but she didn’t want to admit it, sensing that Bastien would ridicule her revulsion at his mother’s callous candour. But no child should know he was unwanted, she thought painfully. No child should have to live with the demeaning knowledge that he had only been conceived to be used as a piece of emotional blackmail in his mother’s battle to win a wedding ring from his father.
‘No comment? I felt sure you would have several moralising remarks to make.’
‘Then you were wrong. I know that all children don’t grow up in a picturebook-perfect world,’ Lilah breathed tautly. ‘Otherwise my father would have loved my mother and stayed faithful to her...’
‘He wasn’t?’ Bastien shot her a disconcerted look from frowning dark eyes. ‘You’re very close to your father. I naturally assumed...’
‘My parents weren’t happily married. There were always other women in my father’s life, and constant upsetting scenes in my home. He didn’t love my mother. They’d been together since they were teenagers, though, and everyone expected him to marry her—so eventually he did,’ she proffered ruefully. ‘It was a long time before I understood that succumbing to that social pressure had made him feel trapped in their marriage. He’s a different man with my stepmother.’
‘Did your father’s infidelity contribute to your judgemental view of me as a “shameless man whore”?’ Bastien shot at her, throwing her completely off balance.
Lilah flushed to the roots of her hair at having her own insult flung back at her two years after the event and when she’d least expected it. ‘Of course not... However, you are a womaniser, Bastien.’
‘But not a man whore. I have never been unfaithful to a lover,’ Bastien asserted levelly. ‘I have never taken indiscriminate sexual partners either. While my values may not be the same as yours, I do have standards.’
Mortification had claimed Lilah and it was eating her alive. She closed her hands together tightly on her lap. ‘I lost my temper that night. I shouldn’t have made such personal and disparaging comments to someone I barely knew,’ she conceded, hoping that her admission would close the subject.
‘Is that an apology?’
Lilah breathed in so deep that her narrow chest swelled.
‘I mean,’ Bastien mused, and his deep, dark, Greek-accented drawl was as rich as molasses, ‘I did only ask you to dine with me and spend the night. I didn’t assault you or abuse you.’
Lilah lost her battle with her temper and flung her hands up in a violent demonstration of exasperation. ‘All right...all right... I’m sorry with bells on! Are you satisfied now?’
Bastien stole an amused glance at the glittering brightness of her eyes above her pink cheeks. ‘What would a virgin know about a man whore’s lifestyle anyway?’ he derided.
Staring rigidly out through the windscreen as the vehicle turned between tall stone pillars to drive down a lane lined on both sides with very tall stately trees, Lilah rolled her eyes. ‘Maybe I read a lot of raunchy books...’
Amused against his will, Bastien bit out a rough-edged laugh. She was in the wrong and she knew it—but she still wouldn’t back down the way other women did with him. He enjoyed her stubborn streak and the challenge of making her toe the line.
Lights came on as Bastien parked and killed the engine. ‘Welcome to the Chateau Sainte-Monique.’
Wall lamps in the form of iron lanterns illuminated the old building, accentuating the warm honey-coloured stone of the façade and the very Provençal violet-blue shutters at the many windows. Gravel interspersed with formal beds of flowers and trees ornamented the frontage.
Lilah climbed out of the car and accompanied Bastien to the entrance. ‘So, when did you buy this place?’
‘About three years ago. The owner was an elderly countess, whom I met during the course of a land development deal. The first time I saw the chateau I made her an offer, but it was months before she finally agreed to sell. The renovation took another year. I come here when I want to relax and when I can work from home. I stayed here all last month,’ Bastien admitted smoothly.
A middle-aged man in a crisply ironed white shirt and bow tie opened the door and greeted them with a smile.
‘Stefan and his wife, Marie, take care of everything here,’ Bastien informed Lilah after making an introduction, and a lean hand resting at the base of her spine guided her indoors.
The interior was breathtaking. The hall had a chequerboard black-and-white marble floor and surprisingly modern furniture. A huge stone staircase curved up from the ground floor.
Their luggage was being brought in behind them, and Bastien was heading for the stairs, when Stefan opened a door and a familiar little bark of eagerness froze Lilah in place. Stefan grinned as a brown, silky little bundle of flying flapping ears and wriggling body flew at Lilah with a noisy burst of excited barking.
‘Yes...yes, I missed you too,’ Lilah admitted, crouching down to scoop up the miniature dachshund. She separated him from one of the beloved squeaky toys he liked to carry around in his mouth and attempted to calm him before she put him down again.
As the dog snatched up the toy again and hurtled across to Bastien, Lilah warned him. ‘Just ignore Skippy. He’ll get the message and leave you in peace...that’s what Vickie always did with him. She prefers cats.’
Skippy nudged the toe of Bastien’s shoe with his nose, his beady little eyes pleading. Bastien sidestepped the animal to stride on up the stairs, and Lilah watched in dismay as Skippy hurtled in his wake. Stefan moved forward to intercept the little dog, seemingly aware that his employer was not animal-friendly.
Lilah followed Bastien upstairs into a spectacular atmospheric bedroom furnished with a mixture of antique and contemporary pieces. Oyster-coloured silk festooned the windows and tumbled down in opulent swathes from the wrought-iron crown holder above the big bed.
‘This is an amazing place,’ Lilah whispered, impressed beyond words by the splendour of her surroundings.
‘The maids will unpack for you. I’ll see you downstairs for dinner in an hour,’ Bastien imparted as a man brought in her luggage and two young women in uniform arrived to move the cases into the dressing room visible through an open door.
Lilah hovered uncertainly.
‘Dress up...’ Bastien lowered his handsome dark head to murmur huskily in her ear. ‘Dress up for dinner so that I can enjoy undressing you later, glikia mou.’
Banners of self-conscious colour brightened Lilah’s porcelain-pale complexion as she turned her head to stare up at him. She collided with brilliant dark eyes that glittered like stars in the low light—stunning eyes, ringed by spiky lashes of velvet black. She was mesmerised. He curved long flexible fingers to the side of her face and brought his mouth crashing down on hers.
That kiss was a taste of heaven and a taste of hell in one package. It was heaven because she couldn’t get enough of that hot, hungry mouth on hers and hell because she hated the response she couldn’t suppress. He released her, staring down at her for a split second in silence, and then swung on his heel and walked out.
Lilah drifted into the marble bathroom, her fingers creeping up to brush her tingling swollen lips, shame and guilt rising like a dark, choking cloud inside her. It would be cruel if he made her like having sex with him, she thought wildly. Or would it? Surely that could only be foolish pride talking?
Her rational brain scolded her for the melodrama Bastien could somehow infuse into her ver
y thoughts. Common sense told her that simply accepting that their intimacy was inevitable would make the experience much more manageable for her. After all, she wasn’t a masochist, was she?
Sex was supposed to be enjoyable, she reminded herself. But from listening to friends talk about their experiences she knew it often wasn’t that great. Once she had done the deed with Bastien she would probably wonder what all the fuss was about, she reflected wryly, because, after all, sex had to be the most ordinary pursuit in the world.
Stripping, she went for a shower, retrieved her cosmetics to do her face and finally returned to the bedroom wrapped in towels. In the dressing room she flicked through the formal wear now hung for her perusal. Dress up, Bastien had urged. Humour sparkling in her eyes, she pulled a ballgown from the rail and fanned it out on the bed. It was over the top and theatrical, rather like the chateau, and when she had modelled it she had noticed Bastien’s dark golden eyes blaze like banked-down fires.
* * *
Bastien stood in the hall, watching Delilah descend the stairs with the glossy grace and dignity of a queen. The dress was amazing—a glistening sheath in peach that hugged her slender body to just below the waist before it flared out into thousands of layers of net that swept the stone steps. Her black hair tumbled in a mane down her back, strands rippling round her triangular face to highlight her bright blue eyes. The tightening swelling at his groin was so instant he didn’t even question his reaction.
He stretched out a lean-fingered brown hand to greet Lilah as she reached the foot of the stairs, his arrogant dark head thrown back, smouldering dark golden eyes locking to the full pink pout of her lush mouth. He closed his fingers round hers.
‘In that dress you take my breath away,’ he told her.
Her mouth ran dry as she met his gaze and her small breasts swelled below the skin-tight bodice as she gulped in oxygen. She hadn’t expected that blunt compliment, didn’t know how to deal with it.