by Lynne Graham
‘Naturellement…I also believe that I can find you a house to live in here in France,’ Luc mused with growling sensual huskiness, a whisper’s breadth from her parted lips.
Her braincells surged together on the belief that something enormously important was being said. Was he teasing her? A house in France? My goodness, how stupid she was being! Was he…could he be asking her to stay on at Chateau Fontaine? What else could he be doing? A tide of pure joy roared up through Star and left her feeling totally intoxicated. Her fingers slid into his luxuriant black hair and curved down to his magnificent cheekbones.
‘House here in France?’ she echoed like an obedient child, eager to encourage further revelations but scared of the big prize being withdrawn if she seemed too pushy or greedy or impatient.
‘You’d like that…’ Luc gathered, lowering his proud dark head to sensually taste her full lips.
Liked that, liked everything! The hunger he expressed with one kiss sent heat hurtling through her at storm-force potency. She kissed him back with all her heart and soul and let her palms rove with wondering delight over his powerful shoulders. Mine, mine, mine, she wanted to yell to the rooftops, but she also wanted to live out every fantasy of eighteen months away from him.
She pushed at his shoulders with as much force as she could muster, grateful enthusiasm leaping through her. She wanted to show him just how much she could learn if he would only give her the opportunity and the time to pick up more experience. Then he would never, ever think that he needed a mistress like Gabrielle Joly in his life again.
Luc fell back against the pillows, a slight hint of disconcertion in his intent dark gaze. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing…absolutely nothing!’ Star was just a little shy now, on the spot, as it were, with all those lights on while being aware that Luc was very much a sophisticate. She was absolutely terrified of doing something wrong and spoiling the moment. After all, sex had to be of crucial importance to Luc if just one night with her could persuade him to ask her to forget that theirs was supposed to be a fake reconciliation and make it a real one instead.
‘Star…?’ Luc curved a hand to her downbent head. ‘I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy—’
‘Oh…you’re making me s-super-happy, because I—’ Just adore you. She swallowed it back hastily, not wishing to show herself too keen too fast. Goodness knows, that hadn’t got her very far before. Luc needed to believe that he had to make an effort to get those kind of results.
‘You need someone like me.’ Letting his fingers lace into her hair, Luc claimed a devouring kiss that left her quivering.
Intent on ensuring that he needed her even more, Star let an uncertain hand slide down over his taut stomach, fascinated by the way his muscles suddenly clenched and his equally sudden exhalation. She shifted position and bent her head, and let the tip of her tongue trace the intriguing little furrow of hair that ran down over his stomach and disappeared beneath the sheet. He jerked with satisfying responsiveness. Damp answering warmth surged at the very heart of her.
‘Later…’ His eyes blazing gold with desire, he tugged her up to him again, a ragged edge to his dark drawl. ‘But now there’s a couple of conditions to this arrangement that I need to be sure you understand and accept.’
Arrangement? In the act of drifting down to meet that wide sensual mouth like a programmed doll, Star found herself unexpectedly stayed by Luc’s hands on her arms. ‘Conditions?’
‘I expect total fidelity from you for the duration.’
Her lashes fluttered over bewildered eyes. She was really fighting to concentrate now, because Luc was wearing that deadly serious look which always intimidated her into listening.
‘Duration?’ she repeated dutifully, rather like someone knowing only about five words of a foreign language but working hard to follow and comprehend.
‘Inevitably this attraction will burn out.’
As Star stiffened, Luc locked both arms round her, brilliant megawatt eyes intent on her now troubled face. ‘On the other hand, it could last for ages,’ he extended, quick as a flash. ‘But the other little condition I need to mention is that you’ll have to be more discreet as my lover than you were as my wife. Emilie must not know.’
Star worked out the significance of that assurance very, very slowly, because her brain was functioning very, very slowly. And when it came to working out something that crucial to her life and her happiness, and she saw with stricken insight that nothing but sheer pain and disappointment awaited her, she didn’t want to think any more.
But comprehension still marched on at supersonic speed. She had picked Luc up wrong. And wasn’t that huge misapprehension as to his meaning entirely self-inflicted? She had been pathetically eager to believe that Luc was willing to give their marriage a real chance. But he had no intention of doing that. He still wanted a divorce.
Yet, in spite of that, he could ask her to stay on in France as his lover. Lover? A euphemism. Without love, she would just be his sexual partner, his mistress. Did he really think that she was that desperate to hold onto him? Enormous hurt enfolded Star like a blanket, chilling her overheated body to ice.
‘Let go of me…’ she said unsteadily.
‘Yes…switch off that blasted phone of yours!’ Luc agreed in exasperation, and willingly released her.
‘Phone?’ Star blinked, and only then did she hear the irritating buzz. She peered blankly at her bag, which was lying in a heap where she had left it earlier.
‘I’ll do it!’ Luc offered.
‘No…no!’ Suddenly Star was flying off the bed and running to answer that phone as if her life depended on it.
In a sense it did. As the pain of renewed rejection settled on her, she just wanted to run and run from Luc. She snatched the mobile phone from her bag. Rory’s voice greeted her. The tears came in reaction then, great, unstoppable rivulets pouring down her quivering cheeks. ‘Rory…oh Rory!’ she sobbed, and raced for the bedroom door to take the call in private.
CHAPTER SIX
STAR paced the floor of the giant front hall at Chateau Fontaine. ‘I’ve got to be honest, Rory…I still care about Luc. I can’t lie about that. All I’ve got to offer you is friendship, and you’d probably be better off without it while I’m feeling like this…’
‘You’re not short-changing me.’ Rory’s sigh carried down the phone line. ‘You’ve never offered anything else; you’ve always held back.’
Still in the act of zipping up a pair of beige chinos, Luc reached the galleried landing above just as Star spoke again.
‘I’m so grateful you’re still speaking to me…you know, after everything I’ve just told you. I really, really love you for that!’ Star admitted with tears stinging her eyes again.
‘You married a really smooth rat—’
‘I know he’s a rat, but maybe that was the attraction,’ Star muttered. ‘I imagined I saw all sorts of other things, but now I see how stupid I was, and that has to be for the best, hasn’t it?’
This was not eavesdropping, Luc told himself. He was in his own home listening to his wife telling her boyfriend she loved him. Loved him. The way she had loved him once? He wanted to yank the phone out of her hand and smash it to bits. Star was his wife! Wheeling round in his tracks, Luc strode away again, suddenly knowing only one thing for sure. He had no desire to hear any more.
But the strangest sensation of cold had begun spreading through Luc. He didn’t like it. It was as if a big black cloud was rising at the back of his mind. In the space of little more than twenty-four hours, Star had got under his skin to the extent that he felt he wasn’t in control any more. He liked that suspicion even less. But the inexplicable gap between what he was thinking and what he was actually doing could no longer be ignored. How else did he rationally explain asking Star to be his mistress? Where had that insane idea come from? Exactly when had a concept that far removed from reality crept into his subconscious mind?
It would be she
er madness. He wanted a divorce. He did not want to stay married to her. He didn’t care if she loved another guy. He just wanted to kill the other guy…he just wanted to kill her. No, not her, him! That black cloud kept on rising; he couldn’t concentrate. Perspiration beaded his skin. He clenched his fists in angry frustration. He didn’t want to think. Suddenly, he understood that much. In the grip of the powerful nebulous feelings closing in on him, he felt alarmingly unstable. What he needed was a drink.
Star switched off the phone and sank down on one of the hall chairs. All she could think about was what an idiot she had been to imagine even briefly that Luc might want their marriage to continue. So he had asked her to be his mistress instead. Well, there was no prospect of her lowering herself to that level.
But then what other kind of offer could she have expected him to make? She still hadn’t told Luc that he was the twins’ father! Just when had she stopped remembering that? Why hadn’t she paused to consider that letting Luc go on believing that Venus and Mars were another man’s children was to fatally colour his view of her and change their relationship?
Oh, golly, gosh, what relationship? she asked herself painfully, her head in her hands as she sniffed. That winter, over eighteen months earlier, Luc had reunited her with Juno. Star and her mother had met first at Luc’s Paris apartment. Afterwards, Luc had taken Star out to lunch. She hadn’t realised then that there was already a woman in his life: Gabrielle Joly had been the ultimate in discretion.
‘I think I fell in love with you the minute I saw you again,’ she had announced over that lunch.
Luc dealt her an arrested glance.
‘I didn’t know anything could feel this intense,’ she continued unsteadily. ‘I suppose you’re used to your looks knocking women flat, but what I notice most about you is how lonely you are—’
‘I’ve never been lonely in my life,’ Luc responded drily.
‘I don’t think you ever get close to anyone. I’ve been watching you. You freeze people out; you can’t help yourself. Anything personal or emotional and you’re really challenged to stay within a mile of the experience. Like now. You just want me to shut up and you want to escape without hurting my feelings,’ she said guiltily. ‘Well, thanks for listening to me. You can leave now if you like.’
He was trapped then for a little longer. She knew it, and had planned it that way, but her conscience twinged as she watched his long, beautifully shaped fingers close very tautly round his wine glass.
‘You’re just a child,’ he began.
‘No, I’m not a child. I seem like a child to you because I say things out loud that you wouldn’t scream under the worst torture. I’m sorry, but this is the only way I had of getting through to you. You quite like being with me,’ she pointed out shyly. ‘Haven’t you noticed that? And I notice you look at me, and then look away like you shouldn’t be looking, and—’
‘Bon! Ca suffit maintenant.’ Rising from his seat, Luc glowered down at her from his impressive height. ‘If you’re not embarrassed for yourself, I am.’
‘I know. But when you love someone as much as I love you—’
‘You don’t know what love is at your age,’ he drawled with sudden lethal derision.
‘I know more than you do. I don’t think you’ve ever been in love in your whole life,’ Star protested. ‘Love’s messy, and you’re not. Love would make demands you wouldn’t like and wouldn’t want to spare the time for—’
Taking her by the arm when she knew that what he was really desperate to do was gag her into silence, Luc dragged her out of the exclusive restaurant, seemingly blind to the fascinated stares his unusual behaviour was attracting.
Out on the pavement, she whispered, ‘I’m not expecting you to love me back, but doesn’t it give you a warm feeling to know that someone loves you?’
Brilliant dark eyes hooded, Luc thrust her into the back seat of his limo. ‘All that you’re suffering from is adolescent hormones—’
‘No, even if I could never, ever sleep with you, I would still care about you!’ Star argued vehemently.
Luc studied her with even more glacial cool. Star got redder and redder, and eventually dropped her head. ‘I’m sorry.’ She hesitated, and then rushed on, ‘Are you going to avoid me now? I couldn’t bear that!’
‘Of course I will not avoid you,’ Luc rebutted in exasperation. ‘But nor will we discuss this subject again. Is that understood?’
That same week, Luc had taken Emilie and Star to a dinner party held by some friends of his. Gabrielle Joly had been a guest as well, seated close to Luc and regularly engaging him in conversation. Gabrielle, with her endless legs, gorgeous blonde hair, exquisite face and svelte sophistication. Star felt so sick at the sight of what she feared might be the competition that she just couldn’t eat.
‘Tell me what you know about that Gabrielle woman,’ Star urged Emilie later that evening.
Emilie reddened almost guiltily. ‘I believe she was once a fashion model.’ The older woman hesitated. ‘I know no other way of putting this, Star…Gabrielle is Luc’s mistress, and has been for quite some time.’
‘His…mistress?’ The bottom fell right out of Star’s world.
‘Don’t look so horrified, Star. Frenchmen have always made convenient arrangements of that nature. Luc will never ask his mistress to play hostess at the chateau, but he’ll socialise freely with her everywhere else. Gabrielle would’ve been invited for his benefit this evening. She uses a house just a few miles from here.’
Pale as death, hearing the hollow note in Emilie’s recitation, Star produced a ragged laugh. ‘I wish you’d mentioned her existence sooner, Emilie.’
‘I didn’t want to put you off Luc,’ Emilie admitted ruefully. ‘Whether he realises it or not, he’s already very much attracted to you. Your warmth draws him like a magnet. When he walks into a room, you’re the first person he looks for, and if you’re not there he can’t settle until he knows where you are.’
‘But he already has her—’
‘Oh, well, if you can’t accept that a man of almost thirty comes with some worldly experience, you’d be wise to give up on him. And that would be a shame. We all need to be loved. If he doesn’t meet the right girl soon, the kind of girl who’s not afraid to fight through those barriers of his, he’s likely to end up as unhappy as his poor father is now.’
Was it any wonder that with such constant eager encouragement Star continued to love Luc to distraction? And Emilie might have known how Star felt about Luc, but Star didn’t confide in her mother, who was by then renting an apartment in Nantes. Determined to have nothing to do with the Sarrazins, Juno refused to visit Star at the chateau. For her daughter to love Luc Sarrazin would have seemed the ultimate disloyalty. So Star kept quiet.
But then fate took a hand: Roland Sarrazin had a heart attack and was rushed into hospital with Emilie by his side. In all the fuss, Star forgot that she should have visited her mother that day. That evening, Luc returned from the hospital, looking exhausted. Star rushed to offer sympathy.
‘Do you want to talk about how you feel?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Do you want me to talk about something else?’
‘No.’
Luc nodded grim agreement.
‘But you can’t want to be on your own!’ Closing her hand over his sleeve to prevent him from moving away, as he always did when she got too close, Star looked up at him with pleading eyes. ‘Isn’t there anything I can do to make you feel better?’
Glittering dark eyes gazed down into hers. ‘Go—’
‘Luc, please—’
And then he just grabbed her, literally grabbed her up into his arms and brought his mouth down hot and hard and hungry on hers. The shock of that sudden onslaught knocked Star sideways, but his explosive passion blazed up through her like a bush fire. She couldn’t get enough of him and clung like superglue. When Juno was shown into Luc’s library by the housekeeper, Star was welded to every availab
le inch of Luc in enraptured surrender.
There was the most awful scene, with her mother hurling all sorts of ridiculous accusations and threatening to go to the newspapers. After Juno stormed out again, Luc, who had uttered not a single word in his own defence, turned to Star, where she was cringing with shamefaced guilt. ‘We’ll have to move fast to spike your mother’s guns.’
‘She didn’t mean those things she said!’
‘She’s very bitter, and right now my father’s peace of mind is of paramount importance. A sordid scandal would destroy him. Since I invited this situation, I must ensure that there are no repercussions,’ Luc drawled flatly, no emotion of any kind showing in his lean strong face. ‘The only way I can do that is to marry you as quickly as possible. Your mother can get no immoral mileage out of that development.’
‘M-marry me? You’re asking—?’
‘Not a real marriage,’ Luc emphasised drily. ‘When the need for a cover story is past, we’ll get an annulment. So don’t get excited, mon ange. Nothing has changed.’
Star clasped her trembling hands together. ‘Do I get a wedding ring?’
Luc gave a grudging nod.
‘A dress?’
‘No.’
‘What’s wrong with me pretending it’s a proper wedding?’
‘Your imagination doesn’t need encouragement.’
They married in a civil ceremony in Nantes, attended only by Emilie and Luc’s lawyer. It was not a secret marriage, but neither was it publicised, and, with Roland Sarrazin so ill, people might have questioned their timing, but not the quietness of the ceremony.
Her father-in-law asked to see her after the wedding he had been too weak to attend.
‘I would not dream of questioning Luc’s choice of bride,’ the older man sighed, surprising Star with that assurance while simultaneously appraising her with a morose dissatisfaction that ensured she would not get a swollen head. ‘I hope I know better than to interfere in my son’s private life.’