by Abby Green
Luc was shocked at the bitter tone to her voice. He’d never heard it before. But before he could ask her what she meant, a young officious woman in a long violet gown was coming forward to greet them. She was the PR lady. ‘Mr Barbier, Miss O’Sullivan, we’re so grateful you could both join us at short notice. Please, do come this way.’
They were led through the marbled foyer into a huge ceremonial room where the drinks reception was being held before the dinner. Luc noticed people turning to look, and how their eyes widened when they saw who it was. He usually would have wanted to snarl at them that he had as much of a right to be here as they did. But for the first time, he found himself not really caring how they were looking at him.
He was too distracted by the woman by his side.
They were served with champagne and Nessa took her arm out of Luc’s. Perversely he wanted to take it back. She was looking up at him with a minute smile playing around her mouth. He said, ‘What?’
‘You said I looked as if I was about to walk the plank but you look as if you’re about to take someone’s head off.’
Luc relaxed his features, unnerved she’d read him so well.
‘Haven’t you been to this event before?’ she asked.
Luc took a healthy swig of champagne and shook his head. ‘No. They’ve never deigned to invite me. I was too much on the edges of acceptability for them.’
‘So you don’t want to be here?’
Luc looked out over the crowd and noted the furtive glances he drew. ‘Whether or not I want to be here is beside the point. I’ve worked as hard as anyone here, harder, perhaps. I deserve to be respected and not stared at like an exhibit in a zoo. I deserve to be here.’
As soon as he’d spoken, he was shocked he’d let the words spill out. In a bid to divert Nessa away from asking more questions, he turned to her. ‘What was that outside...? You made a comment.’
She flushed and took a sip of her own drink. Luc noted that her hands were tiny, with short, functional nails and clear varnish, unlike the elaborate claws many women sported. He also noticed that her hands looked softer already. His body thrummed with an arousal he was barely able to keep in check, especially when his taller vantage point gave him an all too enticing view of her cleavage.
‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’
Luc’s gaze narrowed on her. ‘Nessa...’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t count these people as my peers, not really.’
‘Why? You come from the same world. You have a family lineage in racing to rival any one of these guests.’
‘Perhaps. But that counts for nothing when you’re losing it all. When my father got ill and the stud started to go downhill, most of these people turned their backs on us, as if we were cursed. See that man over there?’
Luc followed her eyeline to a portly man with a face flushed from drink. The man caught Nessa’s eye and went even redder, sidling out of sight like a crab disappearing under a rock.
‘Who is he?’ Luc asked.
‘He’s P J Connolly. Used to be one of my father’s oldest friends. They grew up together. He runs the state-owned stud. He was in a position to help us out but he never did. It was only when Nadim bought us out and the farm started to recover that we became personae gratae again.’
Luc was stunned. He hadn’t expected to feel any sort of affinity with Nessa. He’d assumed she’d be air-kissing old friends and acquaintances within minutes, but she too knew how the cold sting of rejection felt.
She turned back to him then and looked up. ‘How do you know so much about horses? I can’t believe it was just through your work with Leo Fouret.’
Luc balked at her question. Most people were usually too intent on believing one of the many rumours about him to ask him such a question directly.
‘Didn’t you hear?’ he said with a lightness he didn’t feel. ‘I’m descended from gypsies.’
Nessa just looked at him and cocked her head to one side as if considering it. ‘I don’t think so.’
A weight lodged in Luc’s chest at her easy dismissal of such a lurid claim. At that moment the PR lady came back to them, smiling widely. ‘Mr Barbier, Miss O’Sullivan, there are a few people who would love to congratulate you on your win today. Please follow me.’
The weight in Luc’s chest didn’t abate as the woman led them further into the room. No one had ever looked at him as Nessa just had, without any guile or expectation for a salacious story.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NESSA WAS STILL irritated by the interruption earlier. Luc had looked as if she’d delivered an electric shock rather than asked an innocuous question. She was also still mulling over how he’d been deliberately ostracised from this milieu, and how it had obviously affected him.
They had just finished the sumptuous dinner when Nessa snuck a glance to where Luc was seated opposite her. He was talking to an older woman on his right-hand side, and as Nessa looked at him his eyes met hers and a shaft of sensation went straight into her gut.
She quickly looked away and put her napkin to her mouth, almost knocking over her glass in the process, in a bid to disguise that she’d been staring. When she could risk another glance, she saw the tiniest smile playing around the corners of his mouth, and it couldn’t have been due to what the woman was saying because she looked all too serious.
Damn him. Nessa wanted to kick him. He must know exactly what his effect on her was—he’d been the one to awaken her, after all. She felt intensely vulnerable and averted her eyes from then on. Then the chairman got up to make a speech, so thankfully she could focus on that and not Luc. She tuned most of it out except the bit where he said, ‘...and we’d like to say welcome to our newest import, all the way from France. Luc Barbier stunned the crowds today with a spectacular win...’
Nessa looked at Luc and saw him incline his head in acknowledgement of the chairman’s gushing praise. The expression on his face was cool, not for a second revealing anything. Nessa wondered what he was thinking. She was surprised at the affront she felt on his behalf that he hadn’t ever been invited before now.
Then she got a mention too and her face flamed bright red as everyone in the room turned their attention to her.
When the speech was over the guests got up to go to a different room where soft jazz was playing. Nessa felt awkward standing alone, not sure if Luc was going to leave her to her own devices now that everyone was lining up to speak to him. She longed to take off the shoes, which were killing her, but to her surprise Luc came straight around the table and walked up to her.
‘So, what was making you look so angry during the chairman’s speech?’
Nessa blanched. She was far too expressive for her own good, useless at hiding anything. The thought of him noticing her reaction was beyond exposing. Luc wasn’t budging, waiting for her reply.
She blurted out, ‘Well, it’s not as if you’re new to the scene here, is it? You’ve been here for a couple of years, had plenty of horses in races and won more than your fair share, not to mention your accomplishments in France.’
Luc’s tone was dry. ‘This community is a tight-knit one. They don’t allow entry purely by dint of your owning a stud and racing stables.’
‘That’s ridiculous. You have as much right to be here as anyone. You have a brilliant reputation. Paddy—’ She stopped abruptly and bit her lip.
Luc arched a brow. ‘Paddy what?’
She cursed her loose tongue. ‘Well, you probably won’t believe me, but Paddy idolises you. You’re all he talked about for the first few months he was working for you. To be honest I think part of the reason he’s in hiding is because he’s so mortified that he let you down...’
Luc looked at Nessa. He knew vaguely that he should be working the room, capitalising on being welcomed into the fold, but he was more intrigued by this conversation. Disturbingly he did seem to recall Paddy Jnr’s rather puppy-like manner and the way he’d followed Luc around for the first few weeks. When Paddy had first
disappeared Luc had recalled his slavish devotion and had seen it in a more suspicious light. But now...
Nessa went on. ‘He thinks you’re a maverick, and he admired your unorthodox methods.’
Luc battled with the urge to trust what Nessa was saying. ‘You say one thing but his actions say something else. They’re nice words, Nessa, but I don’t need staff idolising me. I just need people I can trust.’
‘Who do you trust?’
‘Almost no one,’ Luc answered and for the first time in his life it didn’t feel like something to be proud of. Disgruntled at the turn in conversation, and not liking how Nessa’s affront on his behalf made him feel, he took her arm and led her into the other room where couples were already dancing.
But as soon as they approached the dance floor she became a dead weight under his hand. He glanced at her and she was pale and had a terror-struck expression on her face. Something sharp lanced him in his chest. ‘What’s wrong?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t dance.’
‘Everyone can dance. Even me.’ He hadn’t actually intended on dancing but now he was intrigued.
She started to pull away. ‘No, really, I’ll just watch. There have to be any number of women here who’d love to dance with you.’
Luc couldn’t say he was unaware of the fact that a few women seemed to be circling, but apparently he was with the only woman in the room who didn’t want to be with him. It was a novelty he didn’t welcome.
He moved his hand down her arm to her hand and gripped it firmly and tugged her very reluctant body onto the dance floor.
* * *
Nessa felt sick. This was her worst nightmare. She hated dancing in public with a passion and could already hear the laughs and jeers of her brothers ringing in her ears. Come on, Ness, you can’t actually trip over your own feet—oops, she just did!
‘Really, I would rather just—’ But her words dried up in her throat when Luc pulled her into his chest and put an arm around her back, then took her hand in his, holding it close to his chest.
Suddenly they were moving, and Nessa had no idea how her feet were even capable of such a thing, but suddenly she was being propelled backwards. No one was staring. Well, they were, but it was at Luc, not her.
Her tension eased slightly but then she became aware of how it felt to be so close to his body. Her eyeline was somewhere around his throat. She was still a full foot smaller than him, even in heels, and she felt very conscious of the taller and more swanlike women that glided past with their partners.
The more she thought about it, the more she had to wonder if she’d hallucinated what had happened in the stables. Right now, aside from her own thundering heart-rate and physical awareness of him, Luc could have been a total, polite stranger.
And then he looked down at her and said, ‘I never really congratulated you on your win today. If you perform like that again, you could be the face of a new generation of women jockeys.’
Had that been today? It felt like years ago. Nessa blushed, not expecting praise from this man. ‘It could have been a fluke. If I do badly at the next race it won’t help your reputation, or my career.’
Luc shook his head. ‘You handled her beautifully. Where did you learn to ride like that?’
Nessa swallowed. The air suddenly felt thicker. She looked at Luc’s bow tie. That seemed safer than looking up into the dark eyes that made her feel as if she were drowning.
‘My father, before he got too ill. But mainly Iseult; she’s got the real talent. I was never off a horse really, as soon as I got home from school and then every weekend when I came home from university—’
‘You went to university?’
Nessa looked up. ‘Iseult insisted we all go. She knew I wanted to be a jockey and she helped me, but she made sure I had something else to fall back on. The world of racing for female jockeys isn’t exactly...easy.’
‘What did you study?’
‘Business and economics.’
Luc arched a brow. ‘That’s a little removed from racing.’
Nessa felt self-conscious. ‘I know, and it kept me off the scene for a few years. But I didn’t mind, really. I wanted to learn how to take care of our business if anything happened again.’
‘Even though your brother-in-law is a sheikh and rich as Croesus?’
Nessa gave him a withering look. ‘None of us expect handouts from Nadim. Not even my sister, and she’s married to him! And anyway, Iseult hadn’t met Nadim by the time I began university, so things were still pretty grim. I knew I didn’t have the luxury of doing what I wanted and following a precarious career path.’
Luc had to admit to a grudging respect for Nessa and what her family had obviously been through. Unless of course it was all lies designed to impress him. But as much as he hated to admit it, he didn’t think it was.
Since he’d discovered she was a virgin and wasn’t putting on some innocent act, it had shifted his perception whether he liked it or not. Also, he could verify her story pretty easily if he looked into it.
She looked up at him again and he saw something like determination in her eyes. ‘You never did answer my question earlier...how you came to know so much about horses.’
Luc cursed the fact that they were so close and surrounded by couples. No escape. But then, what did he have to hide except a very banal answer?
‘An old man lived in the apartment next to my mother’s. He paid me sometimes to do odd-jobs for him, shopping, things like that. He used to be a champion jockey as a young man but an accident had ruined his career. I was always fascinated by his stories and the fact that every thoroughbred today is descended—’
‘From just three Arab stallions,’ Nessa finished. ‘I know, that’s always fasincated me too.’
‘Pierre became a chronic online gambler but in spite of knowing everything about every single horse’s lineage and form he always lost more than he won. He taught me almost everything, including how to invest prudently, which was ironic because he never took his own advice.’
Nessa felt ridiculously emotional to think of a young Luc Barbier spending all that time with an old injured jockey. ‘He sounds like an amazing person. Is he still alive?’
Luc suddenly looked more remote. He shook his head. ‘He died when I was a teenager. Before he died, though, he gave me Leo Fouret’s number and told me I should call him and impress him with my knowledge of racing, and that if I did he might take me on.’
Which he obviously had. Nessa was a little stunned. But before she could ask Luc any more questions she felt him pull her in much closer to avoid colliding with another couple. She’d almost forgotten they were on a dance floor, surrounded by people.
And then she felt it. The press of his body against her lower abdomen. His arousal.
She looked up, eyes wide, cheeks flaring with heat. Luc arched a brow in silent question as they kept moving, which only exacerbated the situation.
Nessa could hardly breathe. The previous conversation and revelations were forgotten. All she could think about now was the way he’d been so cold the other day in the changing rooms. What happened between us won’t happen again.
She’d thought he’d meant he no longer desired her. ‘I thought you said it wouldn’t happen again.’ Nessa had just assumed that her virginal state was a huge turn-off.
‘I meant what I said,’ Luc answered now.
Nessa was confused, and aroused. ‘But...’ She couldn’t articulate it.
‘But I still want you?’
She nodded dumbly, feeling completely out of her depth and clueless as to how to handle this situation.
Something stark crossed Luc’s face. ‘Just because I want you doesn’t mean I have to act on it. I don’t have relationships with staff.’
Nessa wanted to point out she was hardly staff, as she was working for free, but she was afraid it would sound pleading.
It was torture to be this close to him, knowing that he did want her but could act so cool ab
out it. She was not cool. She was the opposite of cool. Her insides were going on fire and between her legs was hot and slippery.
Emotion was rising and bubbling over before she could stop it. She felt especially vulnerable after hearing his story about the old jockey. She pulled free of his embrace. ‘You said you don’t play games but maybe you lied, Luc. I think you’re toying with me as a form of punishment. You know you’re more experienced than me so maybe this is how you get your kicks.’
Nessa walked quickly off the dance floor—as quickly as she could in the heels. To her horror, she felt tears prick the backs of her eyes and she was almost running by the time she reached the foyer.
A man stepped forward. ‘Miss O’Sullivan?’
It took her a second to recognise the driver. And then his eyes lifted to something, or someone, behind her. Luc. Nessa composed herself, aghast that she’d run like that. The last thing she wanted was for him to know he affected her emotionally.
The driver melted away again and Nessa turned around reluctantly. Luc caught her arm and tugged her over to a discreet corner. He was grim. ‘I told you before that I don’t play games. And I don’t get off by denying myself, believe me—this is new territory for me.’
Nessa felt slightly mollified by that. Maybe she’d overreacted. And now she was embarrassed. If anything she should be rejoicing that he wasn’t taking advantage of her lack of control around him.
She pulled her arm free, avoiding Luc’s eye. ‘It’s late, and I promised Pete I’d be up early to train for the next race tomorrow.’
Eventually Luc just said, ‘I’ll have Brian drive you home. I have a meeting to attend tomorrow morning here in town so I’ll stay the night.’
Nessa hated herself for the betraying lurch she felt, as if she’d been hoping that Luc might have said something else, like stay. She stepped back. ‘Goodnight, Luc.’
He called Brian on his mobile phone and the driver reappeared. Within seconds of Luc delivering his instructions Nessa was in the back of the car, being driven swiftly away from Dublin Castle and back out to Luc’s racing stables.