by Anna Cleary
She got up and walked out. Once in the street, she ran.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS as well Luc’s strides were longer than Shari’s because she could run amazingly fast for a pregnant person.
When had a woman been more difficult to pin down? It was absurd how hard this—this conquest was proving. An unwelcome flash of déjà vu rocked through him just then and nearly stopped him in his tracks.
Zut, it was his recurring nightmare. The last time he tried to pin down a woman she’d left him. Abandoned her home and her world.
Surely this wasn’t the same though. It was in no way the same.
Dodging people and traffic, he cursed himself fiercely for the fiasco of the day. Everything had gone wrong. He’d known Shari was in a volatile frame of mind. Of course she was, in her condition. Why hadn’t he noticed the state of the apartment? This was no way to bring a woman home.
But why couldn’t women understand that forcing a man into this ridiculous pursuit procedure only roused him to more lust? The more he ran, the more his blood seethed in his veins with a single red-hot intent.
As if he hadn’t done enough to her already, he was conscious of a primitive need to catch her and take her down. On the pavement. On the street. Or at least rush her to his bed and plunge himself into her until she surrendered herself to him in screaming ecstasy.
At the same time he felt constrained by an opposing instinct to handle her as if she were made of the most delicate porcelain. The woman had him tied up in knots.
His heart muscle was working overtime by the time he caught up with her. When he saw how her eyes hardened to see him, his gut clenched. The impulse to grab her and kiss her, plunge his tongue into her mouth until her knees buckled was overwhelming, but he restricted himself to gently touching her arm.
‘Shari. Please, will you calm down?’
She slowed her pace to a very fast walk, her face set against him.
‘What are you doing? Where are you running?’ He knew his voice sounded too harsh, courtesy of his pounding blood pressure. ‘Should you be running?’
‘I’m going back …’
‘Mais pourquoi? Bien sûr, je suis un bâtard, Shari, mais j’ai …’ In the stress of the moment he didn’t hear everything she’d said, then realised it was the apartment she was returning to. For the moment, anyway.
‘… my things.’
‘But why?’ He’d just launched into an emphatic and just defence of his behaviour when a series of shouts that had been in the corner of his ear all along finally captured his attention. Turning, he recognised Louis, the waiter from the café, jogging along behind him with the shopping bags.
With emotion running higher than the Eiffel, he was hardly in the mood to smile, but there might have something comical in the scene. The red-faced guy puffing to catch up with them acted as a circuit breaker. He was obliged to stop and was relieved to see that at least Shari paused too, looking on with a polite smile while he showered Louis with thanks and euros.
With passions under tighter controls, they resumed walking, Luc racking his brains for something he could say to minimise the damage and manoeuvre events into a situation he could control.
‘Perhaps I need to explain,’ he said, as calmly as he was able with his adrenaline ready to burst the levees. ‘What I said in the café was not intended the way it may have sounded. I didn’t mean you to think I don’t accept your word.’
‘No?’ She cast him the sort of glance usually reserved for snakes.
He felt stirred to defend himself. ‘Chérie. What I said burst from my heart in the heat of the moment.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Mais non. You misunderstand. I was trying to demonstrate how we must trust each other.’ He waved the salad bag. ‘Vraiment, we are in similar boats, you and I.’
‘You think?’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘I doubt if you’d like the view from this canoe, monsieur.’
Anyone would have thought he was a selfish animal, without a vestige of humanity. But since they were approaching his building, he restrained his impassioned defence.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he said with restrained dignity, ‘we are nearly there. Let us not argue before Madame la concierge.’
She froze him with a glance.
It was challenging to know whether she was so complicated because she was a woman or because she was an Australian. Or was it purely the result of her being pregnant? Of course, he had to remember she was used to being with a violent psychopath.
She needed to learn there were guys in the world who knew the meaning of civility, even if they occasionally overlooked a few minor details in the matter of their surroundings.
He turned away from her to greet the concierge. ‘Madame. Comment ça va?’
He listened with greater attention than usual to the latest about the old woman’s grandson, her daughter-in-law, and her arthritic cousin in Nantes. Only when the vieille was threatening to open up her concerns about her entire extended family did he deal with the issue of addressing the boxes he’d instructed the maid to leave with her. As well, he provided Madame with enough euros to cover the cost of postage, along with a generous contribution towards her retirement fund.
After that burst of friendly conversation, the journey up to the apartment was tense, as if one false word could detonate an explosion. He kept to his side of the lift, Shari to hers.
Shari held herself taut, resisting the current of sexual electricity rampant in the confined space.
Every so often his hot angry glance flickered over her, causing her to burn with indignation. While she’d at last intuited that he wasn’t likely to slam her with his fist, it was pretty clear there were other desires percolating through his handsome head.
As if.
Did men ever think of anything else but sex?
He looked as sulky as a boy, but what right did he have to be upset? It was as clear as a bell what she had to do.
In the apartment, while he shoved his purchases into the fridge willy nilly, she said politely, ‘Would you mind if I used a laptop?’
‘Certainement.’ He crammed the door shut on the foodstuffs. Then with the most elaborate courtesy he showed her into his office and switched on his computer. He leaned down to type in a password. ‘If you are wishing to send an email …’
‘I’m booking a flight.’
His handsome face stiffened. ‘I see. Then in that case …’
He hit the Internet connection and stood back, with a flourish of his hand indicating she should use his office chair.
She sat down and clicked to the site. She could feel his hand on the chair, his fingers brushing against her hair. ‘Are you intending to watch over my shoulder?’
He said evenly, ‘I’m not watching. I am remaining here to offer my moral support.’
‘Just a bit late,’ she murmured.
She regretted saying that, actually. Glancing up, she caught an accidental glimpse of his reflection in a mirror that hung outside in the hall.
He’d moved back to glower against the filing cabinet, his arms folded across his chest, dark eyes smouldering, his brow like a storm cloud. Every line of his lean body looked furious. But what did he have to feel so raw about? She was the one In Trouble.
Considering he didn’t want to be burdened with another man’s offspring, he was taking her decision to leave hard. She supposed it must be a macho thing. The caveman wanted to feel in control of the cavewoman, regardless of whose embryo she was incubating.
She typed in her credentials, then scrolled through the flight times.
Disappointingly, all remaining flights for the day had been filled. Conscious of Luc’s acute gaze trained on the screen, she tried for tomorrow’s with the same result. Incredulously she tried the following day’s flights, and the day’s after.
No good. She realised despairingly that, unless she wanted to sacrifice the ticket Neil had purchased for her and try another airline, she was stuck for the whole week.
She even tried other airlines, knowing she’d never really waste Neil’s generous gift. Then, to underline her terrible luck, the website she was struggling with froze.
Only just resisting smashing something and bursting into tears, she stood up abruptly and turned towards the door. ‘This is a waste of time. I’ll go back to the Louvre instead.’
‘Why?’ he said sharply. ‘Because I stated what is true between us? Ecoute.’ He grabbed her and turned her to face him. His dark eyes were cool and stern. ‘I’m not a perfect guy, Shari, but I am attempting to be—to do what is the right thing. I understand you were upset today with the perfumes, the apartment, but—most of that is fixed now. I was tactless to say what I said in the café, perhaps, but what do you expect?’ He flung up his hands. ‘Zut, we are from opposite ends of the earth. And, yes, yes, I know. You are a woman, I am an idiot. I will offend you—you will offend me, perhaps—many, many times, but … Nom de Dieu. This talking with you is like walking on eggs.’
She hissed in a breath through her teeth. Her overstressed heart smarted. But while strongly in need of sinking down in a heap and weeping the hot, bitter tears of the chastised damsel, somehow she managed to resist caving in to that final humiliation.
‘In case it has escaped your notice,’ she said stiffly, the merest tremor in her voice, ‘there are some things that do upset the average woman.’
‘I’ve heard. And I’m guilty of all of them.’ He flung up his hands, his sexy lips crushing each other in their vehemence.
‘No.’ She made a desperate bid to gather her serenity about her. ‘Maybe you’re right. I may have been a bit tense today. Maybe I’ve been unfair, but at least try to extend the limits of your male imagination. I have something—someone growing in here.’ Raking his lithe, angular, non-pregnant form with her eyes, she clutched her stomach region. ‘It’s hard to be charming and elegant when little eyes and ears are suddenly developing inside you. How do you think you’d cope with it, monsieur?’
His eyes glinted. ‘I think I can imagine it. I have seen Alien, the movie. But surely the ears don’t start to develop for another week or two?’
‘What?’ Jolted, she ignored his silky Gallic sarcasm to stare bemusedly at him. ‘Where’d you get that?’
A rather diffident expression crossed his face. Then his sensuous mouth relaxed and he looked less angry. Less sulky. His dark lashes flicked down as if he was suddenly feeling confident. Smug, even.
He lifted his shoulders with elegant nonchalance.
‘Last night, naturally, I was—working. As a pure accident or some strange prompting of fate I happened to stumble across a website that illuminated the—what do you say?—prenatal stages. It seems it is a long process, this development of the senses.’ While she goggled, his hands made an earnest demonstration of her abdomen growing to the size of a football field. ‘En fait, while some hearing will certainly be possible soon, I believe the entire auditory channels aren’t properly established until some time well after the baby’s birth. Eighteen months or so. It is still a very sensitive time in a child’s brain.’
‘Oh.’ She mouthed the word, actually. For though she parted her lips, no sound would come out.
Shock, of course. She’d imagined he’d used both the b word and the ch word, when even in her deepest womanly recesses she hadn’t permitted herself to think those frightening terms.
He placed his hand gently over her womb. ‘We’ll have to be very careful.’
As she stared down at that lean, tanned hand a sexual lightning bolt sizzled along her veins. Her mildly emotional state intensified a thousandfold, only it was with a more positive emotion, a more physical emotion, if such a thing could exist.
It certainly existed right then. Her devastated heart opened to him, while the rest of her being hotted up like crazy.
‘Well. I had no idea you … I’m surprised,’ she breathed. ‘I didn’t expect you to … Well, to be interested.’
‘I am interested.’
‘I thought you were deeply horrified by—the situation.’
‘I am thirty-six years old, Shari. An unexpected child—could be a beautiful gift.’
Oh, God. Her thrilled heart shook like an alder. ‘Well, you know … I’m so sorry about everything.’ Her eyes misted and her voice choked a little. ‘I know I’ve been too difficult. And too emotional. And I am a terrible frump.’
‘No, you haven’t. And you are not.’ His deep voice thickened. His hands travelled up her arms to her shoulders, where it was a short and entirely natural distance to her breasts. ‘I’ve behaved like un imbécile. Here you are feeling strange and unnatural and I have to behave like a … You’re—an angel. You’re perfect. So beautiful, so feminine. I want to …’
What he wanted to do he never quite had the chance to say, because even as her heart thrilled with more incredulous trembly emotion he started to kiss her face and eyes and throat. But he did murmur, ‘I don’t want us to be angry, chérie,’ and a lot of passionate and tender-sounding things in French—at the same time as sliding his hands under her top and unfastening her bra.
His lips found hers. She was so glad she hadn’t fled home with her tail between her legs. A man who could kiss like this deserved every chance to prove himself. While his tongue touched the insides of her mouth with fire and ignited her blood, he held her breasts in his hands and gently pinched her wildly responsive nipples.
She made no attempt to resist the sexual maelstrom. With desire blazing in every corner of her being she burned like a beacon, pushing up his black sweater the better to explore his gorgeous chest and rouse him to the same flaming lust consuming her.
She didn’t even have to try. The heat of his satin skin seared her palms, while one lick of his nipples had a dynamite effect. The rigid length straining against his jeans testified to that.
He stopped her hands from travelling too far, though still kissing her, he slipped his hand down inside her jeans. At the first delicious stroke of his fingers through the fabric of her pants she was moist, urgent to take him inside.
She clung to him, wrapping her legs around him as he carried her. Somehow they divested themselves of their clothes without completely separating for more than a second here, a moment there.
He pushed her onto the bed with his powerful body, and she surrendered, locking her ankles around him. His magnificent penis, hot, hard and virile, teased the yearning entrance of her sex deliciously.
Thrilling, she held her breath.
His dark eyes burned fiercely into hers. ‘Are you certain we should? Will it be too rough? Am I too grand?’
She held back a laugh. ‘Never too grand, monsieur. And I’m hoping for some rough.’
His eyes gleamed, then he thrust inside her with devastating conviction. The fantastic friction turbo-charged her excitement to such a violent pitch of ecstatic passion, she exploded into climax faster than was decent.
It was a long afternoon. After a time, though time was hazy, she pushed Luc onto his back and said, smiling, ‘Now then, lover. I’ll try not to be too rough.’
Straddling his narrow hips with sinful intent, she slid onto him and rode him until his dark impassioned eyes lost focus and the world dissolved in bliss.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IN THE heat of the moment, Shari hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the chambre à coucher to which she was being transported. But there came a time when her eyes opened wide.
The room was still a yellow fantasia, but the empty space above the fireplace was now occupied by an exquisite rococo painting of some gentlemen with ladies—fully clothed—in voluminous dresses, lounging under the spreading boughs of a tree.
She studied it thoughtfully. She felt pretty sure she’d seen it somewhere before. It was too far away for her to take a squiz at the artist’s name, but she thought she’d wait until she was alone before investigating.
An expedition to the boudoir revealed that all evidence of any female occupation prior t
o her own had been obliterated. Her perfume bottle now graced the dressing table, and her clothes, meagre as they were, were hanging in the wardrobe. Her shampoo bottles imbued the bathroom with a personality she could feel at home with.
Returning to Luc’s arms, she snuggled against his chest. His bristly jaw brushed her forehead. ‘I love that picture.’
‘Mmm.’ His voice was a contented growl. ‘Me too.’
She spun a whorl of chest hair around her finger. ‘Since you’ve got a maid to leap to your every command, I’m thinking now I might stay the whole week.’
He sighed. ‘Suppose I hire a chef? Then you will stay even longer.’ When she failed to reply, he gazed down at her. ‘Be my lover …’
Well. This came pretty close to sounding like a commitment, of sorts. Her heart shivered with joyful doubt and excitement. ‘You do know I’m about to get really enormous?’
‘Every man in Paris will envy me.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Are you sure? Wait till I tell Neil.’ Then meeting his amused, tender gaze, she said, ‘This isn’t just because I’m pregnant and you’ve been harbouring some weird sicko fantasy about pregnant women?’
He laughed heartily, then tenderly tweaked her hair. ‘It’s because you are you.’ His eyes grew serious. ‘Beautiful, unique you.’
He kissed her then, with such passionate ardour she believed him. Believed every word.
And knew she was in love. All at once Paris was heaven. The sun came out, the trees glowed greenly and the flowers in the gardens all opened their beauteous faces. She strolled along the banks of the Seine with her lover, argued with him, teased and drank coffee with him in cafés on the Left Bank. She visited Notre Dame de Paris with him and was awed.
She prevailed on him to take her to all the tourist hangouts, and he obliged without protest, regaling her with a dizzying lunch at the top of the Eiffel Tower, hours and hours of pictures in galleries all over Paris, and dinners in restaurants where the waiters could run up steep flights of stairs balancing steaming trays aloft on one hand.