by Lynne Graham
That day he had given her the rose, he had escorted her down to a limousine. Cinderella had never had it so good. There had been no glass slipper to fall off at midnight. He had swept her off her feet into a world she had only read about in magazines. He had revelled in her wide eyes, her innocence, her inability to conceal her joy in merely being with him. For five days, she had been lost in a breathless round of excitement. Fancy night-clubs where they danced the night away, intimate meals in dimly lit restaurants…and his last evening in London, of course, in his hotel suite.
But even then Luc hadn’t been predictable. When he had reduced her to the clinging, mindless state in his arms after dinner, he had set her back from him with a pronounced attitude of pious self-denial. ‘I’m spending Christmas in Switzerland. Come with me,’ he had urged lazily as though he were inviting her to merely cross the road.
She had been staggered, embarrassed, uncertain, but she had always been hopelessly sentimental about the festive season. Initially she had said no, uneasy about the prospect of letting Luc pay her way abroad.
‘I don’t know when I’ll be back in London again.’ A lie, though she hadn’t known it then, as carefully processed as she had been by the preparation of two-month absences between meetings. What Luc didn’t know about giving a woman withdrawal symptoms hadn’t yet been written.
Convinced that she might lose him forever by letting old-fashioned principles come between them, she had caved in. She had been so dumb that she had expected them to be staying in a hotel in separate rooms. Even in the grip of the belief that she would walk off the edge of the world if he asked her to, she hadn’t felt that she had known him long enough for anything else. He had returned to New York. Elaine Gould had been stunned to see a photo of her with Luc in a newspaper the next day. Elaine had tried to reason with her in a curt, well-meaning way. Even her landlady, breathlessly hung on the latest instalment of her romance, had given the thumbs-down to Switzerland. But she had been beyond the reach of sensible advice.
Six hours in an isolated Alpine chalet had been enough to separate her from a lifetime of principles. No seduction had ever been carried out more smoothly. No bride could have been brought to the marital bed with greater skill and consideration than Luc had employed. And, once Luc had taken her virginity, he had possessed her body and soul. She hadn’t faced the fact that she knew about as much about having an affair as Luc knew about having a conscience. The towering passion had been there, the man of her dreams had been there, but the wedding had been nowhere on the horizon. She had given up everything for love…oh, you foolish, reckless woman, where were your wits?
‘Catherine.’ As she sank back to the present, she shivered. That accent still did something precarious to her knees.
‘What were you thinking about?’
Blinking rapidly against the sting of tears, she breathed unsteadily, ‘You don’t want to know.’
‘If you come back to me,’ Luc murmured expressionlessly, ‘I’ll let Huntingdon have the contract.’
‘Dear God, you can’t bargain with a man’s livelihood!’ she gasped in horror.
‘I can and I will.’
‘I hate you! I’d be violently ill if you laid a finger on me!’ she swore. Her legs were wobbling and she couldn’t drag her eyes from his dark, unyielding features.
Unexpectedly, a smile curved his sensual mouth. ‘I’ll believe that when it happens.’
‘Luc, please.’ When it came down to it, she wasn’t too proud to beg. She could not stand back and allow Drew to suffer by association with her. She could not disclaim responsibility and still live with herself. Luc did not utter idle threats. ‘Please think of what you’re doing. This is an ego-trip for you…’
A dark brow quirked. ‘I’ve seldom enjoyed a less ego-boosting experience.’
‘I can’t come back to you, Luc…I just can’t. Please go away and forget you ever saw me.’ The wobble in her legs had spread dismayingly to her voice.
He drew closer. ‘If I could forget you, I wouldn’t be here, cara.’
Catherine took a hasty step backward. ‘Don’t you remember all those things I used to do that annoyed you?’ she exclaimed in desperation.
‘They became endearing when I was deprived of them.’
‘Stay away from me!’ Hysteria was creeping up on her by speedy degrees as he advanced. ‘I’ll die if you touch me!’
‘And I’ll die if I don’t. I ought to remind you that I’m a survivor,’ Luc drawled almost playfully, reaching for her, golden eyes burning over her small figure in a blaze of hunger. ‘You won’t remember his name by tomorrow.’
She lunged out of his reach and one of her stiletto heels caught in the fringe of the rug, throwing her right off balance. Her feet went out from under her and she fell, her head bouncing painfully off the edge of something hard. As she cried out, darkness folded in like a curtain falling and she knew no more.
* * *
‘You can see the area I’m referring to here.’ The consultant indicated the shading on the X-ray. ‘A previous injury that required quite major surgery. At this stage, however, I have no reason to suspect that she’s suffering from anything more than concussion, but naturally she should stay in overnight so that we can keep an eye on her.’
‘She’s taking a hell of a long time to come round properly.’
‘She’s had a hell of a nasty bump.’ Meeting that narrowed, fierce stare, utterly empty of amusement, the older man mentally matched his facetious response to a lead balloon.
The voices didn’t make any sense to Catherine, but she recognised Luc’s and was instantly soothed by that recognition. A shard of cut-glass pain throbbed horribly at the base of her skull and, as she shifted her head in a pointless attempt to deaden it, she groaned, her eyes opening on bright light.
Luc swam into focus and she smiled. ‘You’re all fuzzy,’ she mumbled.
A grey-haired man appeared at the other side of the bed and tested her co-ordination. Then he asked her what day it was. She shut her eyes again and thought hard. Her brain felt like so much floating cotton wool. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…take your pick. She hadn’t a clue what day it was. Come to think of it, she didn’t even know what she was doing in hospital.
The question was repeated.
‘Can’t you see that she’s in pain?’ Luc demanded in biting exasperation. ‘Let her rest.’
‘Catherine.’ It was the doctor’s voice, irritatingly persistent, forcing her to lift her heavy eyelids again. ‘Do you remember how you sustained your injury?’
‘I’ve already told you that she fell!’ Luc intercepted him a second time. ‘Is this interrogation really necessary?’
‘I fell,’ Catherine whispered gratefully, wishing the doctor would go away and stop bothering her. He was annoying Luc.
‘How did you fall?’ As he came up with a third question, Luc expelled his breath in an audible hiss and simultaneously the sound of a beeper went off. With a thwarted glance at Luc, the consultant said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to complete my examination in the morning. Miss Parrish will be transferred to her room. Perhaps you’d like to go home, Mr Santini?’
‘I’ll stay.’ It was unequivocal.
Catherine angled a sleepy smile over him, happily basking in the concern he was showing for her well-being. Letting her lashes lower again, she felt the bed she was lying on move. Nurses chattered above her head, complaining about what a wet evening it was, and one of them described some dress she had seen in Marks. It was all refreshingly normal, even if it did make Catherine feel as though she were invisible. Without meaning to, she drifted into a doze.
Waking again, she found herself in a dimly lit, very pleasantly furnished room that didn’t mesh with her idea of a hospital. Luc was standing staring out of the window at darkness.
‘Luc?’ she whispered.
He wheeled round abruptly.
‘This may seem an awfully stupid question,’ she muttered hesitantly. ‘But where am I?’
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‘This is a private clinic.’ He approached the bed. ‘How do you feel?’
‘As though someone slugged me with a sandbag, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was.’ She moved her head experimentally on the pillow and winced.
‘Lie still,’ Luc instructed unnecessarily.
She frowned. ‘I don’t remember falling,’ she acknowledged in a dazed undertone. ‘Not at all.’
Luc moved closer, looking less sartorially splendid than was his wont. His black hair was tousled, his tie crumpled, the top two buttons of his silk shirt undone at his brown throat. ‘It was my fault,’ he said tautly.
‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ Catherine soothed in some surprise.
‘It was.’ Dark eyes gleamed down at her almost suspiciously. ‘If I hadn’t tried to pull you into my arms when you were trying to get away from me, it wouldn’t have happened.’
‘I was trying to get away from you?’ Nothing in her memory-banks could come to terms with that startling concept.
‘You tripped over a rug and went down. You struck your head on the side of a table. Madre de Dio, cara…I thought you’d broken your neck!’ Luc relived with unfamiliar emotionalism, a tiny muscle pulling tight at the corner of his compressed mouth. ‘I thought you were dead…I really thought you were dead.’ The repetition was harsh, not quite steady.
‘I’m sorry.’ A vaguely panicky sensation was beginning to nudge at her nerve-endings. If Luc hadn’t been there, it would have swallowed her up completely. Yet his intent stare, his whole demeanour was somehow far from reassuring. Other little oddities, beyond her inability to recall her fall, were springing to mind. ‘The nurses…that doctor…they were English. Are we in England?’ she demanded shakily.
‘Are we—?’ He put a strange stress on her choice of pronoun, his strong features shuttered, uncommunicative. ‘We’re in London. Don’t you know that?’ he probed very quietly.
‘I don’t remember coming to London with you!’ Catherine admitted in a stricken rush. ‘Why don’t I remember?’
Luc appraised her for a count of ten seconds before he abandoned his stance at a distance and dropped down gracefully on to the side of the bed. ‘You’ve got concussion and you’re feeling confused. That’s all,’ he murmured calmly. ‘Absolutely nothing to worry about.’
‘I can’t help being worried—it’s scary!’ she confided.
‘You have nothing to be scared of.’ Luc had the aspect of someone carefully de-programming a potential hysteric.
Her fingers crept into contact with the hand he had braced on the mattress and feathered across his palm in silent apology. ‘How long have we been in London?’
Luc tensed. ‘Is that important?’ As he caught her invasive fingers between his and carried them to his mouth, it suddenly became a matter of complete irrelevance.
Watching her from beneath a luxuriant fringe of ebony lashes, he ran the tip of his tongue slowly along each individual finger before burying his lips hotly in the centre of her palm. A quiver of weakening pleasure lanced through her and an ache stirred in her pelvis. It was incredibly erotic.
‘Is it?’ he prompted.
‘Is…what?’ she mumbled, distanced from all rational thought by the power of sensation.
Disappointingly, he laid her hand back down, but he retained a grip on it, a surprisingly fierce grip. ‘What is the last thing you remember?’
With immense effort, she relocated her thinking processes and was rewarded. Remembering the answer to that question was as reassuringly easy as falling off the proverbial log. ‘You had the flu,’ she announced with satisfaction.
‘The flu.’ Black brows drew together in a frown and then magically cleared again. ‘Si, the flu. That was nineteen eighty—’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘I do know what year it is, Luc.’
‘Senz’altro. Of course you do. The year improves like a good vintage.’ As she looked up at him uncomprehendingly, he bent over her with a faint smile and smoothed a stray strand of wavy hair from her creased forehead.
‘It seems so long ago, and, when I think about it, it seems sort of hazy,’ she complained.
‘Don’t think about it,’ Luc advised.
‘Is it late?’ she whispered.
‘Almost midnight.’
‘You should go back to the hotel…are we in a hotel?’ she pressed, anxious again.
‘Stop worrying. It’ll all come back,’ Luc forecast softly. ‘Sooner or later. And then we will laugh about this, I promise you.’
His thumb was absently stroking her wrist. She raised her free hand, powered by an extraordinarily strong need just to touch him, and traced the stubborn angle of his hard jawline. His dark skin was blue-shadowed, interestingly rough in texture. He had mesmeric eyes, she reflected dizzily, dark in shadow or dissatisfaction, golden in sunlight or passion. Vaguely she wondered why he wasn’t kissing her.
In that department, Luc never required either encouragement or prompting. When he came back from a business trip, he swept through the door, snatched her into his arms and infrequently controlled his desire long enough to reach the bedroom. And when he was with her it sometimes seemed that she couldn’t cook or clean or do anything without being intercepted.
It made her feel safe. It made her feel that where there was that much passion, surely there was hope. Only of late she had listened less willingly to another little voice. It was more pessimistic. It told her that expecting even the tiniest commitment from Luc where the future was concerned was comparable with believing in the tooth-fairy.
‘I’ve only forgotten a few weeks, haven’t I?’ she checked, hastily pushing away those uneasy thoughts which made her so desperately insecure.
‘You have forgotten nothing of import.’ Brilliant eyes shimmered over her upturned face, meeting hers with the zap of a force-field, and yet still, inconceivably to her, he kept his distance.
‘Luc—’ she hesitated ‘—what’s wrong?’
‘I’m getting very aroused. Dio, how can you do this to me just by looking at me?’ he breathed with sudden ferocity. ‘You’re supposed to be sick.’
She didn’t know which of them moved first but suddenly he was as close as she wanted him to be and her fingers slid ecstatically into the springy depths of his hair. But, instead of the forceful assault his mood had somehow led her to anticipate, he outlined her parted lips with his tongue and then delved between, tasting her with a sweet, lancing sensuality again and again until her head was spinning and her bones were melting and a hunger more intense than she had ever known leapt and stormed through her veins.
With an earthy groan of satisfaction, Luc dragged her up into his arms and, although the movement jarred her painfully, she was more than willing to oblige him. Thrusting the bedding impatiently away from her, he lifted her and brought her down on his hard thighs without once removing his urgent mouth from hers.
Excitement spiralled as suddenly as summer lightning between them. Wild, hot and primeval. His hand yanked at the high neck of the white hospital gown, loosening it, drawing it away from her upper body. Cooler air washed her exposed skin as he held her back from him, lean hands in a powerful grip on her slender arms. A dark flush over his hard cheekbones, he ran raking golden eyes over the fullness of her pale breasts, the betraying tautness of the pink nipples that adorned them.
Reddening beneath that unashamed, heated appraisal, she muttered feverishly, ‘Take me back to the hotel.’
Luc shook her by saying something unrepeatable and closing his eyes. A second later, he wrenched the gown back up over her again, stood up and lowered her into the bed. Tucking the light covers circumspectly round her again, he breathed, ‘Chiedo scusa. I’m sorry. You’re not well.’
‘I’m fine,’ she protested. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’
‘You’re staying.’ He undid the catch on the window and hauled it up roughly, letting a cold breeze filter into the room. ‘You’re safer here.’
‘Safer?’
�
�Do you believe in fate, cara?’
Her lashes fluttered in bemusement and she turned her head on the pillow. Luc, who had been aghast and then vibrantly amused by her devotion to observing superstitions such as not walking under ladders, avoiding stepping on black lines…Luc was asking her about fate? He looked deadly serious as well. ‘Of course I do.’
‘One shouldn’t fight one’s fate,’ Luc mused, directing a gleaming smile at her. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’
She had never had an odder conversation with Luc and she was so exhausted that it was an effort to focus her thoughts. ‘I think it would be almost impossible to fight fate.’
‘I’ve no intention of fighting it. It’s played right into my hands, after all. Go to sleep, cara,’ he murmured softly. ‘We’re flying to Italy in the morning.’
‘I-Italy?’ she parroted, abruptly shot back into wakefulness.
‘Don’t you think it’s time we regularised our situation?’
Catherine stared at him blankly, one hundred per cent certain that he couldn’t mean what she thought he meant.
Luc strolled back to the bed and sank down in the armchair beside her, fixing dark glinting eyes on her. ‘I’m asking you to marry me.’
‘Are you?’ She was so staggered by the assurance that it was the only thing she could think to say.
He scored a reflective fingertip along the line of her tremulous bottom lip. ‘Say something?’ he invited.
‘Have you been thinking of this for long?’ she managed jerkily, praying for the shock to recede so that she could behave a little more normally.
‘Let’s say it crept up on me,’ he suggested lightly.
That didn’t sound very romantic. Muggers crept up on you; so did old age. A paralysing sense of unreality assailed her. Luc was asking her to marry him. That meant she had been living with a stranger for months. That meant that every disloyal, ungenerous thought she had ever had about him had been wickedly unjustified. Tears welled up in her eyes. Lines of moisture left betraying trails down her pale cheeks.