by Lynne Graham
Luc strode out to greet her. Sheathed in a formal navy pinstripe suit embellished with a silk geometric print tie, he looked shockingly sexy. A guilty little tremor ran down her backbone.
‘Do you realise how long we’ve been waiting for you?’
Her backbone became suddenly less sensitive. ‘I’m sorry.’
She could have bitten her tongue out as soon as she said it. Unfortunately, Emilie had trained her too well, to always apologise for being late. However, Star had had a very difficult afternoon. With no prior preparation, packing for herself and the twins and closing up Highburn Castle had been serious hard work.
She had phoned Rory as soon as she’d got home. He had arrived while she was still struggling to get organised. He had been shattered when she’d told him that she was flying back to France with Luc. While she had still been trying to explain Emilie’s financial situation, he had walked out in a temper. Now she could not imagine how she had ever thought she could hold onto any kind of relationship with Rory when Luc had stolen her life and her freedom for months to come.
‘Who disabled the car phone?’ Luc enquired glacially.
‘I did.’ Star owned up straight off. ‘I told you we were stuck in a traffic jam. I didn’t see the point of five-minute bulletins.’
Luc breathed in very deep. A combination of relief and raw exasperation powered through him. Punctual to a fault himself, he found her laid-back attitude infuriating. Star could leave a room promising to be just five minutes and then forget to come back at all. She was very easily distracted. But when telephone contact with the limousine had abruptly been severed, Luc’s stress level had rocketed. He had wondered if Star had changed her mind about their arrangement and gone for the sort of sudden vanishing act her flighty mother excelled at.
‘Do you think you could offer to take one of the twins for me?’ Star prompted as the ache in her arms at the combined weight of the babies reached an unbearable level.
‘Take one of the…?’ Luc just froze.
Star shifted closer and indicated Venus with a downward motion of her chin.
‘Where do I take hold of it?’ Luc demanded.
‘Just grab her before I drop her!’ Star urged.
Luc clasped Venus between two stiff hands and held his daughter in mid-air like an unexploded bomb. Initially delighted by the transfer, Venus then picked up on that adult uncertainty and let out an anxious wail of fright. In response, Luc extended his arms to put an even greater distance between them. Venus squirmed and yelped in panic, clearly thinking she was on the way to being dropped.
‘Hold her close, for goodness’ sake…you’re frightening the life out of her!’ Banding both her arms round Mars, Star sighed with relief at the easing of the strain in her muscles.
Luc grated, ‘I’ve never held a baby before!’
‘Well, it’s about time you learned. Babies are very touchy-feely and like to know they’re secure.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Luc draw Venus closer with such pronounced reluctance she could have kicked him.
‘Why’s she going all slack?’ Luc enquired in a driven undertone.
‘Because she’s in cuddle mode.’ She watched Venus snuggle her curly head down on Luc’s shoulder and just sag, the way very tired babies do.
‘She’s got little bones like a bird,’ Luc drawled flatly. ‘I was afraid I might hurt her.’
In the luxurious working area which made up only about a sixth of the passenger space available on the extensive Sarrazin jet, Star settled Mars into one of the baby seats awaiting occupancy. Luc bent down for her to peel Venus off his shoulder.
‘Cots have been organised for them in the rear cabin,’ Luc advanced.
Star strapped herself in beside the twins. Minutes later, the powerful jet taxied towards the runway. Luc was already perusing a file at the far side of the cabin. Star suppressed a rueful laugh. She had planned to tell Luc during the flight that Venus and Mars were his own flesh and blood. But she was exhausted, and what difference would another few hours make? She would be calmer and better equipped to deal with making that announcement in the morning.
As soon as they were airborne, the stewardess approached her and showed her down to the rear cabin, mentioning that a meal was about to be served, but Star said that she wasn’t hungry. Having settled Venus and Mars into the cots, she decided to take advantage of the bed beside them and get some rest.
About ten minutes later, the door opened with quiet care. ‘You should eat something,’ Luc informed her levelly.
Half asleep, Star flipped over, copper hair tumbling over one exotic cheekbone, aquamarine eyes heavy. Light spilled in from the passage to glimmer over the satin-smooth skin of her slender waist where the crop-top had ridden up. As she stretched unselfconsciously, the extended length of one long shapely leg emerged from the folds of her skirt.
She studied Luc from below her dark lashes, the perceptible tension in the atmosphere tugging at her senses.
‘You look like a gipsy,’ Luc murmured.
The dark, deep pitch of his accented drawl quivered along her nerve-endings, awakening treacherous warmth low in the pit of her stomach.
‘Sauvage…wild,’ he breathed in husky addition.
Suddenly her every muscle was taut. She stared helplessly at him. So tall, so dark, so extravagantly, breathtakingly gorgeous. Hunger surged up inside her with such greedy immediacy she could barely breathe. In a split second she relived the urgent passionate force of his sensual mouth only just over twenty-four hours earlier, the hard, powerful pressure of his expert body moving on and in hers. Sensual weakness cascaded like melting fire through her, her breasts now full and swelling, their pointed peaks tightening into aching prominence. But then, just as suddenly, she remembered how Luc had behaved after he had got out of her bed. Cool, distant, dismissive, all intimacy forgotten.
Star lifted her bright head from the pillow, aquamarine eyes glinting now with angry self-loathing. ‘Wild…but not free…not free to you ever again,’ she told him.
Luc surveyed her with glittering intensity. ‘This has the feel of a negotiation—’
‘Ever the banker,’ Star heard herself chide, but she was on a high from the excitement electrifying the atmosphere, a high that increased to the level of a stunning power surge when Luc bent the entire force of his concentration on her.
‘The situation has changed—’
‘Has it?’ Star let her head tip back, soft, full mouth in a slight considering pout. ‘I don’t think so. I just think you always want what you believe you shouldn’t have. But leave me out of it. It’d cost you too much.’
‘How much?’
‘Your problem is that you can’t think of cost except in terms of money,’ Star sighed without surprise, knowing that he would definitely run a mile if he suspected that further intimacy might well persuade her to stick like glue to him and refuse a divorce for as long as she could.
Luc dragged in a roughened breath.
‘And anyway,’ Star purred, like a little cat flexing her claws as she sent him a sidewise languishing glance, ‘I’m not tall or blonde or sophisticated. So we can’t possibly have a problem, can we?’
Without the slightest warning, Luc bent down and hauled her slight figure all the way up into the strong circle of his arms. A startled gasp of disbelief was wrenched from Star. He welded her into every angle of his hard, masculine physique and crushed her soft mouth with savage hunger under his. He stole every scrap of air from her quivering body. Burning fire leapt up at the very heart of her, a sweet, desperate ache stirring to make her slender thighs tremble.
Luc lowered her very gently down onto the bed again. Before he left, he scanned her flushed and bemused face with slumbrous amusement. ‘It’s not a problem for me, mon ange.’
He was right; it was her problem, Star acknowledged in shaken honesty. He had shot her to the height of excitement so fast she was still reeling from the extent of her own weakness. She hadn’t realised that he
r limited ability to resist Luc might be tested again. Only now did she see that in acceding with such apparent ease to Luc’s request that she spend one last night with him she had given him entirely the wrong impression. About her, about her attitude to sex…
Indeed, the very worst impression that she could have given him now that they were pretending to be reconciled for Emilie’s benefit! Star cringed, embarrassed and angry with herself when it was far too late to change anything. Luc assumed that what she had done with such seeming casualness once she would surely be eager to do again. And evidently Luc was more than willing to take advantage of any such eagerness on her part. Yet that reality left Star in even deeper shock. Luc was finally awarding her adult status, but only in the most basic field a woman could qualify in.
But their marriage was over, and she didn’t believe in casual sex. The night before, she had genuinely been saying goodbye to Luc and her love for him. But a male as unemotional as Luc couldn’t possibly understand such reasoning. He had simply noted that his soon-to-be-ex-wife had demonstrated little reluctance to jump into bed with him again. In fact they might never have got beyond the kitchen had it been left up to her. So why didn’t she just face the ugly truth head-on? Luc now thought she was not much better than a tart…
Didn’t say much for his morals, did it? Naively, she would have believed that Luc would be too fastidious to want a woman who might make herself so freely available to men. Just showed how much she knew about his sex! Just showed how much she knew about the man she had married! Suddenly, Star was in a white-hot rage with Luc, and very, very grateful that they would be getting a divorce…
*
As the limousine travelled down the thickly wooded approach road to Chateau Fontaine, Mars finally fell asleep again.
Star could have wept at her son’s sense of timing. Mars had cried from the minute he was rudely removed from his cosy cot on board the Sarrazin jet. He had wailed like a howl alarm all the way through Nantes Atlantique airport. Working himself up into a state of inconsolable misery, he had kept his mother far too busy to worry about anything else.
But now, when she finally had the peace to consider the timing of the trip which she and the twins had been forced to make, her resentment overflowed. ‘Mars will probably be crying half the night.’
Luc elevated a winged brow, a perceptible air of self-satisfaction in his level dark gaze. ‘I doubt it. I have an extremely competent nanny awaiting the children at the chateau.’
Star’s jaw dropped.
‘I should have asked Bertille to meet us at the airport—then we might all have enjoyed a more relaxing trip.’
Star’s jaw would have hit the floor had it had not been securely attached to other bones. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. You—’
Luc frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Star gasped incredulously. ‘You organise a nanny, over the top of my head…then you suggest that she could’ve managed my son better than I have!’
Registering his error as the limo filtered to a halt in front of the chateau, Luc shifted a fluid hand, intended to soothe Star. ‘You misunderstood me—’
‘Did I heck!’ Star shot back at him fiercely. ‘You’re the one responsible for my son’s distress—’
‘If you don’t keep your voice down, you’re likely to wake him up again,’ Luc countered in icy warning just as the passenger door beside Star swung open with a thick, expensive clunk.
‘Who was it who insisted on travelling with two babies until this hour of the night?’ Star demanded. ‘Of course Mars has been upset. All he wants is to be home in his own snug little cot—’
‘In a building which should be condemned, “snug” is scarcely the most apt word! Your so-called home is unfit for human habitation!’
Pained condemnation filled her disconcerted gaze. ‘I didn’t notice you being half so fussy last night!’
As she spoke, Luc noticed the passenger door standing wide. He frowned like a male emerging from a dream, his lean, dark devastating features setting into unyielding lines. The chauffeur was nowhere to be seen, presumably having decided that desertion of his duties was more tactful than hovering to listen to the happily reunited couple having a thunderous row.
His brilliant eyes glimmered like a banked-up fire ready to flame. ‘I suggest we drop the subject. There’s no reason for this dispute. It is irrational—’
‘Irrational? You insulted me. You, who can’t even hold a baby for five seconds without panicking, dared to deride my maternal abilities,’ Star enumerated shakily as she tugged Venus out of her car seat. ‘You insulted me, my home, my hospitality. Yet it was your arrogant refusal to rearrange your schedule, your stupendous ignorance of childcare, your absolute conviction that everybody has to jump to do exactly what you want when you want which was at fault.’
‘If you don’t keep quiet, I will treat you like a child having a temper tantrum, because that is how you are behaving,’ Luc condemned with freezing restraint.
‘How difficult it must be to deal with someone who has no respect for you, no fear of you and no dependence on your good will. Yes, I can see it must be a real challenge when someone like me dares to fight back. What are you doing with Mars?’
Emerging from the limo in a state of frozen fury, Luc pressed a shielding hand to the baby’s back, where he was now carefully draped over Luc’s shoulder still fast asleep. ‘He’s a sensitive child. He doesn’t need to be swung about like a little sack of potatoes.’
Star’s frown of surprise that he had lifted Mars faded at that point. Her attention was finally grabbed and held by the sheer vast magnificence of the building before them. The Chateau Fontaine was illuminated by what appeared to be around a hundred lights, both outside and inside. On her last visit, Star absently recalled how Emilie had strictly warned her not to leave on any unnecessary lights as her guardian paid close attention to all matters which related to household expenditure.
‘Of course, Emilie would never have said it, wouldn’t even think such a disrespectful thing about any member of your illustrious family,’ Star found herself musing out loud.
‘What are you talking about?’ Luc demanded as they crossed the superb arched seventeenth-century bridge that led to the huge and imposing front door.
‘Your father was as rich as Croesus, but he was as tight with his wealth as any miser,’ Star reflected. ‘That’s so sad. His only real enjoyment in life seemed to be saving money.’
It was perfectly true, but it had never, ever been said to Luc’s face before.
‘I suppose he’d have been apoplectic if he’d ever seen all these lights blazing…’ Star drifted into the chateau without a backward glance.
Bertille, the nanny, was young and warm and wonderfully appreciative of the twins. Only the meanest and most possessive of mothers could have objected to her assistance, Star conceded ruefully. A bedroom on the first floor had been rearranged as a nursery, and neither Venus nor Mars wakened again as they were settled into comfortable cots. As Bertille was to sleep in the adjoining dressing room, Star said goodnight and wandered back out into the corridor.
It was after midnight, and she was embarrassed to find the housekeeper had been patiently waiting for her to reappear. Selfconscious with such personal attention and the assurance that her humble wardrobe of clothing had already been unpacked for her, Star stiffened uneasily every time she was addressed as a married woman. Even so, it was quite a shock when the older woman opened the door of Luc’s bedroom and stood back, leaving Star little choice but to enter.
For the duration of their six-week long marriage, Luc had left her in a bedroom at the foot of the corridor. It had not occurred to Star that anything might be different this time around, but then she really hadn’t had time to consider the ramifications of returning to the chateau as Luc’s acknowledged wife. One of the bedrooms next to his, she decided, would be the most suitable choice.
However, sooner than be seen walking straig
ht back out again, Star lingered. The vast and magnificent room was centred on the superb gilded four-poster bed which sat on a shallow dais. Luc had slept in that incredible bed since he was eight years old. And so might a medieval merchant prince have lived, with glorious brocade drapes, fabulous paintings and the very finest antique furniture.
‘Luc was never like other children,’ Emilie had once confided. ‘He was a very serious little boy.’
But what else could he have been? An only child, born to parents who had inhabited different wings of the chateau and led entirely separate lives.
Lilliane Sarrazin had died in a car crash shortly after Star had met her. Reading between the lines of Emilie’s uncritical description, Luc’s mother had been as committed to extravagance as her husband had been to saving, but had shared his essentially cold nature. Was it any wonder that Luc, with every natural instinct stifled in childhood, should be so reserved, so controlled, so inhibited at showing either affection or warmth?
And yet Star could remember times when Luc had broken through his own barriers for her benefit. He had comforted her when she was nine years old and missing her mother. He had done so again—fatally—when she was eighteen and a half…
Star’s memories slowly slid back over eighteen months to her last stay at Chateau Fontaine. Emilie, who could not bear to think badly of anybody, had worked hard to give Star the impression that Luc’s terminally ill father was really a caring man, whom she had misjudged at their only previous encounter. It had not been the wisest idea.
Shortly after her arrival with Emilie, Star had been summoned to her guardian’s sick room for a private meeting.
‘You’ve done very well out of this family.’ Roland Sarrazin regarded her with sour disapproval.
‘I really appreciate everything that you’ve done for me—’
‘Just be grateful that Luc took pity on you,’ the older man urged. ‘I had no intention of accepting you as my ward when I sent Luc to Mexico. But when he met your mother she was so drunk she could barely stand. Decency demanded that I do my duty by you.’