by Penny Jordan
Darci blinked up at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. ‘But she said—She—’
‘I don’t give a damn what your friend Mellie said, Darci,’ Luc informed her disgustedly. ‘I have never met the lady—if, indeed, that’s what she really is,’ he added, with a scathingly dismissive curl of his top lip.
Darci couldn’t mistake the utter conviction in his voice for anything other than the truth, and she looked up at him dazedly, could clearly see freezing emotion in the harshness of his expression. She realised fully now what had been behind Luc’s seduction minutes ago—his deliberate seduction.
And if what he claimed was indeed the truth, then Darci knew she deserved the contempt she could see blazing down at her in those compelling brown eyes….
But if Luc was telling the truth then that meant Mellie had lied. And Darci still couldn’t see any reason, any scenario, in which her friend would need to do that.
She gave a shake of her head. ‘There’s absolutely no reason why Mellie would lie to me—’
‘I have no explanation for how or why Melanie Chandler lied to you, Darci,’ Luc cut in coldly. ‘I only know that she did lie! In the same way that you have lied—from the very beginning of our acquaintance to the bitter end,’ he added, his meaning more than clear.
Luc was telling her that after today she would never see him again.
‘If in the next twenty-four hours you feel the need to check with the Gambrelli Hotel, you will find that I intend staying on in London for several more days on family business,’ he continued. ‘I am only telling you this because once you have ascertained what really happened from your so-called friend, you may feel the need to apologise to me,’ he explained, at her wide-eyed expression. ‘I strongly advise you not to give in to the impulse.’ His eyes sparked dangerously. ‘Because there is nothing that you could have to say to me that I would ever wish to hear!’
With one last disgusted sweep of that hard, uncompromising gaze over her tousled appearance, he turned on his heel and left the room, the apartment door slamming behind him with controlled violence only seconds later.
Darci fell weakly back onto the bed to stare up at the ceiling, all arousal, all desire, having dissipated in the face of Luc’s cold fury. Her eyes were burning with unshed tears.
Tears of humiliation as she relived her complete abandon in Luc’s arms just now, as he’d caressed and touched her more intimately than she had ever been touched before.
But she knew now that Luc had deliberately aroused her, taken her to the very edge of release time and time again before denying her, and that the motivation behind that deliberation hadn’t been his own need or arousal but a punishment for Darci’s deliberate actions these last six days.
Because Luc denied ever having met Mellie, let alone being involved with her.
But he couldn’t be telling the truth.
Could he…?
CHAPTER NINE
‘OKAY, Darci, what’s going on?’ Mellie demanded down the transatlantic telephone line.
‘Going on?’ Darci came back lightly.
She had tried calling her friend in Los Angeles several times during the last twenty-four hours, with the intention of asking Mellie about her relationship with Luc. But now that she had actually got through to her friend she didn’t quite know what to say.
Not without accusing Mellie of being a liar!
And their friendship had been too long established, was too close, for Darci to feel able to do that….
But neither had she been able to dismiss Luc’s claims that he had never even met Mellie, let alone had an affair with her. He had sounded so absolutely adamant that he was telling the truth, had been so furious at her accusations—icily so!—that in the end Darci didn’t know which one of them to believe. Mellie or Luc.
Hence her phone calls to Mellie…
‘Yes—going on,’ Mellie repeated dryly. ‘Despite being the one to call me, repeatedly and urgently, you’ve spent the last five minutes chatting about everything and nothing. And Kerry was decidedly evasive when I spoke to her on Saturday,’ she added conclusively.
Dear, sweet, loyal, totally ingenuous Kerry, who couldn’t tell a lie even if she tried!
Darci took a deep breath. ‘I need to talk to you about Luc Gambrelli,’ she said bluntly.
There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line for several long seconds. ‘Why…?’ Mellie finally queried guardedly.
Why?
Because Darci couldn’t get Luc’s look of total disgust before he’d left her out of her mind!
Because his cold, deliberate anger at her own behaviour had been too genuine to be anything other than the real thing!
Because, incredibly, she now knew she had fallen in love with him herself….
Actually, she had known it the moment Luc had walked out of the apartment door and she’d been overwhelmed with a deep, sinking sense of loss. And the last twenty-four hours, as she’d wrestled with her conscience over her own actions, while at the same time trying to contact Mellie, had only confirmed those feelings.
She had fallen deeply, irrevocably in love with a man who now felt nothing but contempt for her.
With the stunningly handsome, the sexually arousing, the furiously angry with her, Luc Gambrelli!
‘Darci…?’ Mellie pressed uncertainly. ‘Why all this sudden interest in Luc Gambrelli?’
Darci drew in another deep, controlling breath before speaking. ‘He was at the film premiere I attended with Grant last Thursday evening.’
‘Yes…?’
That continued hesitancy in Mellie’s voice unnerved her. Worried her!
‘Did it never occur to you, Mellie, that I might meet him?’ Darci came back, just as guardedly.
‘You met him?’ Mellie gasped, dismay added to her tone of uncertainty. ‘Did you actually speak to him?’ she asked worriedly.
‘Yes, I actually spoke to him,’ Darci confirmed, knowing Mellie too well after all these years of friendship to be in the least fooled by the way her friend kept answering her questions with questions of her own. ‘And I’m sure, knowing me as well as you do, that I thought of what you had told me about your involvement with him! Why did you lie about your affair with him, Mellie? Why?’ she pleaded emotionally, her hand tightly gripping the telephone receiver as she acknowledged that this was exactly what her friend had done.
That Luc had been the one telling her the truth after all….
Luc stared down at the message on top of the pile he had picked up from Reception on his way through the hotel to his suite.
Would you please meet me at Garstang’s at eight o’clock this evening?
There was no signature to the message. But there didn’t need to be.
Only Darci could have sent such a request, asking him to meet her at the same restaurant—at the same time—as he had arranged previously.
Luc read the message a second time as he stepped into the lift, torn between crushing the piece of paper to a pulp in his hand and a grudging feeling of admiration for the position Darci had deliberately put herself in.
Because she now knew he had been telling her the truth about her friend Mellie…?
That might be so, but nevertheless Darci had to know that by asking him to meet her at Garstang’s, of all places, she was leaving herself open to the same humiliation she had deliberately inflicted on him previously—that he might now be the one not to turn up for the date and leave her sitting at the table, squirming under the curious stares of the other diners.
Luc’s anger towards Darci hadn’t abated much during the last couple of days, while he’d visited Wolf and then Cesare at their individual family homes outside London, to reassure them that, despite the delay, he would be in Paris by the weekend, as planned.
Those visits had unfortunately also subjected Luc firsthand to his brother’s and his cousin’s marital happiness!
He had seen as little as possible of his brother and his cousin and their re
spective spouses these last three months. Not because he didn’t like the women Wolf and Cesare had married, but because he did.
His whole family now seemed bent on Luc being the next and the last of the Gambrellis to get married, to the extent that it seemed whenever he visited any of his family, there was always a couple of single women—highly marriageable women—included in the lunch or dinner party. His mother was the worst culprit, constantly presenting eligible heiresses for him to vet as wife material whenever he visited her at the Paris apartment where she had chosen to live after the death of their father.
But Luc only had to see Wolf and Cesare so much in love, so totally besotted with their respective wives, to reassure himself that marriage wasn’t for him.
He didn’t need to get married; Wolf had inherited the title of Count, and Angel was expecting their first child—the heir—in a few months’ time.
Besides which, Luc liked his life exactly the way it was. At the moment he was free to do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, and the idea of giving up that freedom, of giving his whole heart into someone else’s keeping in the way that Wolf and Cesare had, sent a chill down his spine.
None of which answered the question as to whether or not he should meet Darci at Garstang’s this evening….
He really shouldn’t go—should leave Darci to her humiliation as a sign of his absolute contempt for the things she had believed of him, for the way she had behaved towards him….
Darci had never felt so nervous in her entire life as she did sitting at the table in the middle of the restaurant at eight o’clock that evening. As she waited to see if Luc would actually put in an appearance, or if his disgust with her ran so deeply he wasn’t even prepared to meet her here in order to let her apologise.
The restaurant was just as exclusive as she had thought it would be. The maître d’, obviously not recognising her as one of the select clientele who usually dined here, had looked down his haughty nose at her as he’d shown her to the table. Compared with her own simple white dress and lack of jewellery, the other diners were all glamorously dressed and be-jewelled—although they nevertheless spared her the odd curious glance as they chatted loudly together.
The only consolation Darci had as she sat down to wait was that each table was given a certain amount of privacy by the select placement of potted plants and partitions, allowing her a brief respite from the curiosity of other customers if she wanted it for a few seconds.
What Darci really wanted was not to be here at all!
Not an option, Darci, she told herself firmly, even as she outstared a man seated across the restaurant as speculation showed in his admiring blue gaze. To make matters more embarrassing, Darci was sure she recognized him as a popular actor from a top television programme that she watched whenever she wasn’t working!
She looked down uncomfortably at the gleaming glassware and pristine white linen on the table, sure, after sitting here for ten minutes, that Luc wasn’t coming.
Not that she altogether blamed him for exacting such retribution. In fact, she had deliberately chosen to meet him at Garstang’s so that he could do exactly that if he wanted to. It was the least she owed Luc after the way she had misjudged him.
‘Thanks, James. Bring a bottle of Gevrey Chambertin, hmm?’
Luc.
After spending the last ten minutes glancing anxiously towards the door, she had finally missed him when he did arrive!
She looked up at him dazedly as he stood beside the table, bedazzled and slightly breathless at how gorgeous he looked in a dark evening suit and snowy white shirt.
‘I’m sorry to be late, Darci. The traffic was heavier than I expected,’ he murmured huskily as he slid smoothly into the seat opposite hers.
She didn’t care if the London traffic was at a standstill so long as Luc was here, after all!
He looked good. His deep, burnished gold hair gleamed silkily in the muted overhead lighting, his face was all hard, aristocratic angles that reminded her he was the son and brother of a count, and the leashed power of his body was barely restrained by his sophisticated clothes.
But her heart sank as she looked up into a gaze hard with cool impersonality, telling her that Luc might have taken pity on her and come here this evening after all, but that he certainly hadn’t forgiven her!
She swallowed hard. ‘It’s very good of you to have agreed to meet me like this—’
‘I have agreed to nothing, Darci,’ he cut in icily, his eyes narrowed to slits. ‘To have left you sitting alone here would only confirm me as the callous bastard you already consider me to be,’ he explained harshly.
Would reduce him to the same level that Darci had lowered herself to when she’d deliberately stood him up….
She moistened dry lips. ‘Luc, I owe you an apology—’
‘Thank you, Paul.’ He turned to smile warmly at the wine waiter as he arrived beside the table with a bottle of red wine, and the next few minutes were taken up with uncorking and tasting the vintage.
Giving Darci a few minutes’ respite to look at Luc unobserved.
Yes, he was still as nerve-tinglingly handsome as she remembered.
Yes, he still made her feel weak at the knees just to look at him; he completely took her breath away, in fact.
But there was a remoteness about Luc this evening that hadn’t been there before. A bleakness that was more than surface deep and that totally eradicated the wicked glint of humour in his eyes which had so surprised her when she’d first met him. It sent shivers of apprehension down her spine!
The fact that she knew she deserved to feel those shivers didn’t make them any less effective.
Luc took his time sampling the wine, giving himself a necessary few moments’ respite to adjust to seeing Darci again. To recognise that she was even more beautiful than he remembered…!
In fact, he had felt a moment’s pure violence when he’d entered the restaurant a few minutes ago and seen her out-staring the avid gaze of a man seated at a table across the room. His own hands had clenched at his sides as he’d resisted the impulse to go to the other man’s table and tell him precisely what he could do with his admiring glances.
Not that he could exactly blame the guy for his interest when Darci was looking so absolutely beautiful, in a pure white dress that showed off the tan of her bare arms and throat, no jewellery to detract from her cream skin, and with her lush red hair secured at the sides of her head with two antique silver combs, completely exposing the delicate lines of her face, those moss-green eyes and the pouting mouth which was enough to entrance any man.
‘It’s fine.’ He finally nodded tersely for Paul to pour the wine, waiting until the waiter had left before looking across at Darci with mocking eyes. ‘What shall we drink to, Darci?’ he taunted. ‘New beginnings…?’ he ventured sardonically as he lifted his glass for a toast.
Darci found herself swallowing hard a second time since Luc’s arrival, not quite knowing how to deal with him in this intimidating mood.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have chosen to meet him in a restaurant at all—because all she wanted to do at this moment was apologise and then get as far away as possible from the mockingly scornful man Luc had become!
Her fingers shook slightly as she lifted her own wineglass. ‘To an apology given and accepted. I think that might be more appropriate…?’ she suggested as she looked at him from beneath lowered lashes.
Luc returned her gaze wordlessly for several long, tension-filled seconds. ‘But premature, surely?’ he bit out.
Because she hadn’t yet apologised?
Or because Luc had no intention of accepting her apology?
But if that was the case, then why was he here?
To punish her, possibly.
And she deserved to be punished after setting herself up as his judge and jury—and then having the audacity to pass sentence on him, too!
But he, in his turn, had passed sentence on her….
She frowned a
cross at him. ‘You know, your behaviour the last time we met wasn’t exactly gentlemanly,’ she reminded him hotly. ‘And don’t raise that arrogant eyebrow at me,’ she warned, as he did exactly that.
He looked surprised. ‘Which arrogant eyebrow?’
‘Your arrogant right eyebrow,’ she swung back impatiently, and she glared at that brow, her cheeks burning hotly just from mentioning what had happened between them before he’d left her so ignominiously.
Luc wasn’t sure whether to remain angry with Darci or to give in to the impulse he had to laugh as she displayed all the outraged indignation of a bantam hen just at the mention of what had occurred last time they’d met. But he was far from forgiving her yet for her assumptions about him, and definitely didn’t want to put things between them back on the same footing as they had been before—and any crack in his mocking line of defence was sure to do that.
He raised his arrogant right eyebrow even further as he looked across at her unemotionally. ‘You deserved what happened, you little hypocrite,’ he said evenly.
The colour in Darci’s cheeks flamed even brighter. ‘Perhaps I should just grovel and leave?’ she muttered between clenched teeth, and she reached down to pick up her bag.
‘I promise that I will give you reason to regret it if you should decide to leave me sitting alone here for a second time!’ Luc assured her uncompromisingly.
Darci straightened to look across at him uncertainly, knowing from the rigidness of his set jaw, the hard glitter of his eyes, that Luc wasn’t making an idle threat—that he was more than capable of causing a scene if she should decide to get up and leave.
But it was more than a little embarrassing to sit here knowing that he was completely aware of how aroused she had been that afternoon. His accusation that she was a hypocrite told her plainly that Luc knew exactly how close she had been to complete capitulation. That it was only Luc’s anger and contempt that had prevented the two of them from making love.