by Lynne Graham
Striding in the direction of the heli-pad, he was even more happily engaged in rationally reviewing obvious facts which might not immediately appear as obvious to Star as they were to him. Point one, he thought, smiling at the prospect, Rory would now sadly be nothing more for Star than a fleeting thought of what might have been, but was not to be. All children deserved two caring parents living under the same roof.
Frozen in position by one of the tall dining-room windows, Star watched Luc approach the waiting helicopter with eyes of complete incomprehension. He spoke to his pilot, sunlight glinting off his luxuriant black hair, one lean hand thrust with casual nonchalance in the pocket of his well-cut trousers. Star could not credit what she was seeing. He looked so relaxed, not at all like a male who had just been given a revelation of earth-shaking magnitude. Maybe he had walked outdoors in an effort to keep a tight rein on his temper. Maybe she just couldn’t read body language. When had she ever known what was happening inside that tortuously complex brain of his?
Striding back through the front door, emitting a strong air of decisiveness, Luc headed straight for the stairs. Star hurried across the hall in his wake. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To see my children.’
The sound of the possessive pronoun he used off-balanced Star.
Bertille had already fed and dressed the twins, and as soon as she saw their parents appear, she smiled and slipped out. Luc stilled in the centre of the room, just staring at the two babies playing on the carpet, his bold profile taut.
Venus cried, ‘Mum-mum!’ and began to crawl towards Star.
‘They can move independently…and talk?’ Luc breathed in almost comical amazement.
‘Well, Venus knows two words…those two.’ Star was watching Mars. Her son could only crawl backwards. Brought to a halt by the barrier of the wall, he loosed a plaintive wail, big brown eyes filling with tears of frustration.
As Star went to help, Luc startled her by getting there first. Hunkering down with athletic ease, he lifted Mars and spoke to him in husky French. A total pushover for all affection and attention, Mars’s tears dried up like magic. Beaming, he snuggled into the shelter of Luc’s arm with the air of a baby who would be quite happy to spend the rest of the day there.
‘He’s so trusting…’ Luc commented in a roughened aside, torn between the child he held and Venus, who, intrigued by his presence, had switched direction from her mother to make a beeline for him instead.
Planting herself back on her bottom, Venus tugged at the tassel on one of Luc’s shoes. Then she threw her bright curly head back and looked up at him with a playful smile of challenge.
Luc extended his free hand in welcome. Venus gripped his thumb. Then she let go to make a frantic grab at the gold watch she had just noticed gleaming on his wrist. At that sudden switch of focus, Luc’s rare smile broke out, amusement lighting up his lean strong face. ‘She’s like a miniature clone of her mother.’
Her heart rocked by that intensely charismatic smile, Star’s mouth ran dry. ‘Well, Mars takes after you.’
In fact it was as if their respective genes had known better than to try to mix in their offspring, Star reflected ruefully. Mars got upset if his routine was disrupted, and when he played his ability to concentrate was already noticeable. Venus did everything at high speed and took life just as it came.
As the minutes passed, with Luc wholly engaged on interaction with the twins, Star’s tension steadily increased. She just couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Careless of his beautiful expensive suit, Luc was now seated on the carpet with Venus and Mars swarming over him as if he was a large and novel toy. Little hands were snatching at his tie, digging into his pockets, pulling at his hair and exploring his face.
Star had never dreamt that Luc might drop his dignified reserve to allow all that close bodily contact and over-familiarity. In fact she would have sworn that he would run a mile from such treatment. Nor had she appreciated that learning that the twins were his might enable Luc to relax and handle their children with much greater confidence than he had shown before.
Indeed, the most awful biting jealousy surged up through Star as she stood there. She was totally ignored by all. She had even been denied her usual enthusiastic early-morning welcome from her babies. And she was now an unwilling audience to the birth of what appeared to be a mutual admiration society for three.
‘They’re both yawning,’ Luc commented a whole twenty-five minutes later, his disappointment audible.
‘You’ve overtired them,’ Star heard herself snipe, although she was well aware that after their disturbed night the day before both children would have a much greater need for a long morning nap.
Star settled the twins back into their cots, but not before quite a few hugs and kisses had been exchanged.
‘I didn’t expect such young children to accept me so easily,’ Luc finally drawled, finding himself as ignored as Star had felt ten minutes earlier.
Star turned her head, shining copper hair framing the tight expression on her triangular face. ‘They’re very fond of Rory, and because of him they like and trust all men,’ she said dismissively.
Luc gazed steadily back at her, stunning dark eyes unreadable as an overcast night sky, but his magnificent bone structure was taut beneath his smooth golden skin.
‘So can I expect to see a lot of you in England after the end of the summer?’ Star asked brittly. ‘You know, I’m homesick already.’
‘We’ll discuss that downstairs,’ Luc informed her, and strode out.
I just bet we will, Star thought, resenting the way Luc automatically assumed charge and closing out the little voice that warned that she was being mean and nasty. After all, just at that minute she felt like being horribly mean and nasty. It felt better than dwelling on the physical ache of painful yearning which Luc could rouse in her just by being in the same room. She could even justify nastiness as a necessary defense mechanism against a male who had hurt her as much as Luc had hurt her during the early hours of the morning…
First wanting her, then rejecting her, but not before he had picked out every one of her failings and held them up to her, so that she could know what an awful person she was. That seemed to be a pattern with Luc too. It was as if every time he felt he might be getting too close to her he just instantly switched off again and dragged up every reason under the sun to keep his distance.
And what she had said about Rory was true…up to a point, she reasoned. Rory was fond of the twins, but he really saw them as an extension of Star, while Luc had instinctively responded to their son and daughter as individuals and had awarded them and not Star his full attention. Was that a sin or a virtue? she asked herself bitterly.
Coffee had been laid out in the main salon when Star finally came downstairs again. While he’d entertained Venus and Mars, Luc had appeared more relaxed than she had ever seen him. Now she absorbed his cool and distant expression and veiled eyes. In a split second her nervous tension mushroomed. So Luc had accepted the existence of his children and had spent some time with them, but that certainly didn’t mean he was pleased that the wife he was planning to divorce had made him a father.
And if Luc was about to throw recriminations, Star wanted them over with as soon as possible. ‘Well?’ she said baldly, giving him the opening.
‘Coffee?’ Luc proffered smoothly.
‘Coffee makes me sick when I’m nervous!’
Luc poured himself a cup with the kind of cool that set her teeth on edge.
‘Well?’ she prompted a second time. ‘Just go on. Say it!’
Luc raised a politely enquiring brow. ‘What is it you wish me to say?’
In a whirl of sand-washed silk and frustration, Star spun away again, bangles jangling on her slender wrist in tinkling accompaniment. ‘If I hadn’t sneaked into bed with you, you wouldn’t be a father now!’
‘I knew what I was doing, mon ange.’
Star whirled round again, aquamarine eyes confused.
‘Did you notice me struggling?’ Luc enquired drily.
Her cheeks warmed.
‘Naturally not,’ Luc answered for himself. ‘I was enjoying myself far too much to call a halt, and I didn’t protect you from pregnancy. The responsibility for the conception of our children is undoubtedly all mine.’
His absolute self-command disconcerted Star just as much as what he was saying. After all, the enemy tank he had likened her to had taken surprise hostages. And possibly Luc was still in shock at that development.
‘You don’t have to take the blame,’ she began, sounding more like her usually fair self. ‘I knew—’
‘You knew nothing,’ Luc stressed with a wry twist of his sensual mouth. ‘Isn’t that the definitive point?’
Her face burned at that incontrovertible fact. She might have known about the birds and the bees the night the twins had been conceived, but the combination of boarding school and Emilie’s careful supervision had given Star little opportunity to experiment. A few over-enthusiastic clinches with teenage boys had not prepared her for the distinct but delicious shock of sharing a bed with a fully grown adult male possessed of the ability to give her the ultimate in pleasure.
Luc moved to lift the birth certificates which she had last seen in the dining room from the magnificent mantelpiece. Although only he could have been responsible for having moved them, he perused the certificates afresh with a decided hint of fascination. ‘Viviene and Maximilian…Viviene and Max Sarrazin,’ he sounded out softly.
‘Known as Venus and Mars,’ Star stressed, pausing in her restive movements round the room.
‘But my son and my daughter, who will naturally be brought up here in their family home.’ Luc was very still, the long, lean flow of his powerful body perfectly poised by the superb fireplace.
Taken aback by that confident statement, Star dropped dead and stared. ‘What are you talking about?’
His brilliant dark eyes were steady as a rock in his lean strong face. ‘I think you should sit down and have some coffee. All this frantic pacing up and down must be making you dizzy—’
‘Look, I’m not dizzy!’ Star folded her arms tight. ‘I don’t want to sit down either.’
‘And I don’t want to argue with you, but if you force the issue, you’ll find yourself on a losing streak,’ Luc warned.
Her eyes fired with quick resentful anger. ‘Will I indeed? Five minutes after finding out you’re a father, you start making outrageous statements and trying to lay down the law.’
‘And I should add that the law—French family law, at least—will come down on my side,’ Luc drawled with cool exactitude.
Goosebumps rising on her bare arms, Star went rigid. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That a description of the home environment in which you were keeping my children in England would be very much in my favour in a French court.’
Star turned pale. ‘You’re threatening me…’
‘You’re shocked,’ Luc noted. ‘Why? Sadly, the twins are more entitled to tender treatment right now than you are, mon ange.’
‘You are threatening me…’ Shaken disbelief was splintering through Star.
‘You should know where you stand. Between a rock and a hard place,’ Luc told her helpfully, lest she be too slow to have absorbed that message. ‘No way are you removing my children from beneath this roof at the end of the summer and taking them back to England with you!’
‘You can’t—’
‘I can stop you. I would dislike the means I would have to utilise, but I would do it,’ Luc countered levelly. ‘You’ve made some unwise decisions since our children were born—’
‘Like what?’ Star slammed back at him ungrammatically, thrown into a greater panic by every word he voiced with such intimidating calm.
‘In spite of the fact that you were existing below the poverty line, you didn’t inform me of their birth nor did you ask for my financial support. Now even I am aware of the accepted authority which states that the needs of the child should always come first.’ Luc sent her a winging glance of reproof. ‘In attempting to raise our children in an undesirable environment, while also denying me my rights as a father, you failed to behave like a mature and responsible parent.’
Star’s soft lips fell open in appalled incredulity at that judgement.
Luc screened his penetrating gaze and spread his lean hands in a wry, dismissive gesture. ‘Now, I don’t believe it would be fair to judge the teenager you were at the time of their birth against that particular yardstick. But you must accept that in any custody dispute you will be compared to me, and my worst enemy couldn’t label me as either immature or irresponsible.’
It was a terrifyingly impressive conclusion. By the time Luc had finished speaking, he had succeeded in seriously scaring Star. A custody dispute in which what she could offer their children would be measured against what Luc could offer? Luc, with several centuries of solid family respectability behind him and every one of his gloomy ancestors born in wedlock. Luc, with his immense wealth and with his opinions on global financial problems sought by the highest placed politicians in Europe. Star’s blood simply ran cold.
‘I just don’t understand any of this…’ Star was fighting to keep a grip on her turbulent emotions. ‘The instant you find out that the twins are yours, you immediately start threatening to take them from me—’
‘No, that’s not either my wish or my intention. But, ironically, it is exactly what you did to me before I came downstairs again,’ Luc drawled very quietly. ‘Were you expecting me to jump for joy when you announced that you were already homesick and you talked about returning to England?’
Star reddened and looked away with extreme awkwardness. ‘No…but—well, OK, maybe it was a threat,’ she muttered in an undertone.
‘Thank you. But although you’ve finally told me that the twins are my children, you don’t appear to have the slightest grasp of how much that fact is going to impact on all our lives.’
‘But why should it change anything?’ Star demanded. ‘I’m quite happy for you to see them as much as you want—’
‘Will you please explain to me why you can’t accept that I should want my own children as much as you want them?’ Luc enquired, with what appeared to be sincere incomprehension.
Her bewilderment and fear flipped into total panic at that announcement. ‘Because you didn’t want me, didn’t want to be married, for goodness’ sake!’ Star practically shrieked back at him. ‘Why would I ever think that you would welcome being saddled with two kids from that same stupid fake marriage? I thought you’d be furious if you found out I was pregnant! I thought you’d want me to have a termination! I thought you’d be outraged with me for creating such an ongoing problem…’
‘So you made some very wild assumptions and created a really huge ongoing problem. That doesn’t make any kind of sense to me,’ Luc admitted with the strangest half-smile of evident acceptance. ‘But then not a lot of what you do makes sense to me, so it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’re becoming very upset.’
Star gulped back the thickness of tears in her throat. ‘And you’re surprised?’
Luc took a slow, fluid step closer. ‘How can I be a father to two children living in a different country? I can’t agree to that. Perhaps I came on too hot and heavy, but you have ties back in England that I want you to put behind you now.’
Star blinked, her breath snarling up in her throat. Ties? What ties? What had she to put behind her? Four hours of sleep had left her brain less than agile, but Luc appeared to be firing on all four cylinders, like a Ferrari ready to roar down a race track.
‘I’m referring to Rory,’ Luc clarified without hesitation. ‘I won’t stand back and allow a casual lover to take my place with my children.’
She almost told him that she had never slept with Rory, but then angry defensiveness and pride overcame the desire to be that honest. What business was it of his? How many wome
n had he slept with since she had last been in France? Gabrielle might be old history but that didn’t mean that Luc had become celibate. And what right did a male set on divorcing her have to dictate what she did in her own life? The right of power and influence, her intelligence warned her at that point. Luc had already said that if she tried to take the twins home he would go to court and, at the very least, prevent her from removing them from France.
Star jerked in even greater confusion as Luc suddenly reached for her fiercely clenched hands to draw her to him.
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
‘Once you told me that the only thing in the world you would ever want was to be my wife, and that if you couldn’t have me your life wouldn’t be a life any more…it would just be an existence, shorn of all sunlight and happiness, because inside yourself you would just want to die,’ Luc recited in his rich, dark accented drawl.
Star just froze. The words were vaguely recognisable. Her note, her goodbye note eighteen months earlier! Her lashes fluttered and then stayed deliberately down low, because at that precise moment she could not have looked Luc in the face to save her life. The cringe factor of that cruelly sharp memory of his was high, indeed sufficient to make her entire bodily surface blush.
‘And you wonder why I had the moat dragged…’ Luc murmured gently. ‘But now I’m asking you to put your money where your mouth is.’
Star blinked. ‘P-put my money where my m-mouth is?’ she stammered helplessly.
‘Yes, and live up to all those heartfelt sentiments…ah, non,’ Luc scolded softly as she suddenly attempted to wrench free of his determined hold.
‘You’re trying to send me up!’ she condemned hotly.
‘No. For the sake of our children, I’m challenging you to forget Rory and concentrate your attention back on me and our marriage,’ Luc contradicted tautly. ‘I accept that that will be a challenge for you. But I’m hoping that even if you can’t recover that original enthusiasm, some day you could be happy with me again.’