One Night with His Wife

by Lynne Graham

  ‘No, I asked for the truth and you told me the truth,’ Star recited shakily, tiny tremors of reaction starting to ripple through her slender length. ‘If it wasn’t for the sex, you wouldn’t have any use at all for me. It’s about the only thing I’ve got to offer, isn’t it?’

  Luc closed his hand over her rigid shoulder and spun her round. ‘Mais c’est insensé!…That’s crazy!’ he launched down at her roughly. ‘Why are you talking like this?’

  Star focused on the top button of his aqua silk open-necked shirt. Inside herself she felt as if she was dying. ‘You really weren’t jealous of Rory,’ she gasped strickenly. ‘My fertile imagination at fault again! But let me tell you one last thing, Luc Sarrazin…you can take your over-developed conscience, your pious outlook and your cruel, unfeeling brain and take a running jump, because I want nothing more to do with you in this lifetime!’

  Luc seemed stunned into paralysis by that concluding speech. Star took advantage of his loosened hold to drag herself free and race for the sanctuary of one of the bedrooms.

  Crisis. Serious crisis. Those two words stood out in Luc’s head in letters ten feet tall, but he found that for several deeply disturbing minutes, he couldn’t think round them, over them or under them. Then, for a fleeting moment, he recalled the sense of self-satisfaction he had experienced in parrying her questions without even having to think about them. Now he was in shock at the results. He had hurt her, really hurt her.

  And you were planning to make her fall in love with you again. A ragged laugh was wrenched from him. The truth was he hadn’t a clue where to start. Total meltdown failure now stared him in the face. But the only face Luc could see was Star’s…ashen, empty, defeated. As if she had given up on him finally and for ever. Luc endured another terrifying few minutes when he couldn’t string two simple thoughts together. He recognised his own instinctive fear for the first time and headed straight for the drinks cabinet, only to freeze. Only a wimpy personality needed alcohol to work out problems…and he hadn’t done so well working them out the last time, had he?

  *

  The muslin drapes at the window fluttered softly in the light breeze coming in off the Mediterranean. From her bed, Star was watching the sun sink down below the horizon in a crimson blaze of splendour and listening to the soft rush of the surf.

  There had been no tears; she felt totally hollow. It was the end, the literal end. Luc’s every response eighteen months ago had been prompted by guilt and compassion. She had done all the running; she had always done all the running with Luc. Now she was facing the consequences—just as much as he was, she affixed, with a guilt that made her feel even more wretched. Two innocent children were involved now.

  As the bedroom door opened, she was jerked out of her reverie. Moonlight glimmered over the paleness of Luc’s shirt. Highwire tension was etched in his taut stance just one step inside the door.

  ‘You’re right,’ he drawled with staggering abruptness, his accent thick as molasses. ‘I was jealous of Rory…I was so jealous I felt physically sick. You were ecstatic to see him and you touched him. Pour l’amour du ciel…I wanted to beat him up and throw him in the moat!’

  Stunned by that blunt confession coming straight at her without warning, Star mumbled. ‘Oh…’

  ‘But I did not recognise that I was jealous at the time…’ Luc thrust driven fingers through his tousled black hair. ‘I thought it was your over-familiarity with him that was making me angry, but when I think back, you might not have done anything I liked with him, but then neither did you do anything wrong.’

  Star nodded very carefully, as if she was willing him to continue.

  Luc moved his hands in an odd jerky motion and then lunged back against the door, to slam it in a clear burst of frustration. He thrust his dark head back, hands coiled into fists. ‘I am very, very possessive of you. I know that’s not right, but that seems to be the way I am…’

  He sounded really ashamed of that admission. Suddenly needing to see him better than moonlight allowed, Star sat up to switch on the bedside lamp. She collided with staggeringly defensive dark eyes, and her heart ached for him as if he had squeezed it.

  ‘I was very relieved to realise that you and Rory had never been lovers. But that wasn’t right either…’

  That this was the guy who had told her to go off and experiment with boys her own age was silently acknowledged by the self-derisive twist of his wide, sensual mouth.

  ‘So you’ve got a dog-in-the-manger side to you,’ Star muttered tautly.

  ‘I haven’t thought about that…’ A flash of dismay showed distinctly in his serious gaze, and even in that tense atmosphere she almost smiled. He looked slightly panicky, as if she had moved off his authorised script and he wasn’t equipped to handle it.

  ‘What else have you thought about?’ she asked thickly.

  ‘That I interpreted certain events in the manner that suited my view of myself best,’ Luc admitted. ‘I think I married you because I knew that sooner or later I would lose control and end up in bed with you.’

  ‘But, Luc, when you got me, you didn’t want me. I was your wife for six weeks—’

  ‘And I said at the outset it wasn’t to be a real marriage. I’m stubborn,’ he grated with sudden impatience. ‘If I slept with you, then it was a real marriage, a serious commitment…a commitment I hadn’t even considered making at that stage of my life.’

  ‘So you thought, If I sleep with her, I’ll be stuck with her…and that was enough to keep me in a bed at the foot of the corridor,’ Star said with flat bitterness. ‘Thanks for clarifying that.’

  ‘It was for your sake as much my own. And will you for once acknowledge that that entire six weeks was spent waiting for my father to die…and then burying him?’ Luc demanded starkly. ‘I know you think I’m unfeeling and cold, but I had a lot more on my mind than my own physical needs!’

  Hot, shamed colour washed up over Star’s startled face. She lowered her head, unable to comprehend how she could possibly have overlooked that harsh background to those weeks for so long. But then she hadn’t loved Roland Sarrazin. He had been a distant stranger to her, a grudging guardian, a man with precious little interest in her. ‘Yes…’

  ‘I was under a lot of stress, and you were very appealing, but I didn’t want to use you just for…comfort,’ he bit out very, very low.

  At that, Star lifted her head, aquamarine eyes swimming with tears. ‘So you used Gabrielle Joly instead…’

  Luc studied her in complete shock.

  ‘Yes…I knew about Gabrielle,’ Star confirmed, recognising that that really was a surprise to him.

  Striding over to the bed, Luc sank down beside her. ‘How did you find out about Gabrielle?’ he demanded thickly.

  She ignored that question. ‘I thought you were finished with her…until our wedding night, when I heard you on the phone to her,’ she shared chokily.

  Luc lifted his hand and pushed her tumbled hair off her cheekbone, stunning dark eyes full of regret but also considerable bemusement. ‘And yet you said nothing…you, who could talk up a storm over a leaf falling, said nothing about something so much more important?’

  ‘You spent our wedding night with her.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid…’ Luc groaned. ‘How could you be that stupid?’

  ‘I heard you say you were coming over—’

  ‘To return my set of keys to her house…’ Unsurprised, it seemed, by Star’s incredulous frown, Luc expelled his breath in a hiss of annoyance. ‘That’s all the excuse I’ve got. It was crazy…and she was certainly very surprised to see me on that particular night. But that night I just needed to get out and I seized the first flimsy excuse I could come up with and acted on it.’

  ‘To return keys?’ Star repeated in disbelief. ‘On our wedding night? You didn’t come home that night…do you think I don’t know that?’

  ‘I fell asleep in the car by the riverbank…I never entered her home. I dropped off the keys and reali
sed how open to misinterpretation my call was,’ he shared with palpable discomfiture. ‘I left again immediately.’

  Fell asleep in the car? Luc, within a quarter-mile of a home possessed of thirty-odd bedrooms? Luc dropping off keys that he could have had returned without going anywhere near Gabrielle? It was so unlikely a story that Star simply stared at him wide-eyed.

  Dark colour overlaid his fabulous cheekbones. ‘It was a mad impulse, foolishly acted on because I didn’t trust myself within reach of you that night. I knew you would come to me…’

  Star dropped her head. He wasn’t wrong about that. That had been exactly what she’d planned to do. But eavesdropping on that call had blown her intentions out of the water and left her high and dry, not to mention paralysed with shock, violent jealousy and very real distress.

  ‘And I wasn’t sure I had enough will-power to resist such an invitation. I was burning for you that night…possibly even a duck T-shirt wouldn’t have held me back.’

  ‘I’d bought a really naff black slinky nightie. It was too big for me. I dumped it.’

  ‘I cannot believe that you said nothing after listening in on that call I made to Gabrielle…’ Luc framed her face, forcing her to meet his fiercely enquiring gaze.

  ‘What right had I to say anything?’ Star demanded shakily. ‘You had stated up-front that we weren’t going to have a normal marriage…and there you were acting on it. That’s how it seemed to me. You were just going to go on with your life like I wasn’t there, and if I forced the issue, what would I get out of it?’

  ‘The truth?’ Luc prompted hoarsely.

  ‘But I couldn’t stop you sleeping with her if you wanted to…’ Star reeled off brokenly, still bewildered by the idea that an episode which had caused her so much anguish might never actually have happened in reality. ‘You could just have told me that what you did with her was none of my business. And once I’d pushed you to the stage of saying something like that, it would have been like something written in stone, and it would have been the end of my hoping to make our marriage a p-proper one!’

  Luc felt gutted by the time Star had finished speaking; her pain was still so raw. He clenched his teeth, angry that he had caused her that much pain. She had been too damned scared to confront him about Gabrielle. Like a child unable to cope with unpleasant reality, she had spent the remainder of their marriage pretending to be her usual sunny, cheerful self, and he hadn’t noticed anything different. But still he could not get his mind around the level of savage insensitivity she had believed him capable of.

  ‘How could you credit that I would spend our wedding night with another woman? What sort of a bastard did you think I was that I would humiliate you like that?’ Luc demanded. ‘I knew how you felt about me. Even if I’d been on fire with lust for some other woman I wouldn’t have sunk that low.’

  ‘So instead you slept in your car on the riverbank…like a vagrant in a Ferrari,’ Star whispered unsteadily. ‘How could you ever think I would have imagined you doing something like that?’

  ‘But now I finally know why you left me and never once thought of coming back,’ Luc conceded in sudden harsh conclusion.

  Weary of all the emotions he had put her through, Star let her head flop down on his shoulder, breathing in the achingly familiar scent of his warm skin with a mixture of anguish and tormented hunger. ‘You can sleep in here tonight…’

  ‘No…short of you tying me to the bed and raping me. I won’t allow you to accuse me again of just using you for sexual release.’

  ‘That night at the castle,’ Star reminded him helplessly. ‘Stop acting like Mr Noble, Mr High-Minded—’

  ‘I can’t explain that night I…I just didn’t want to leave you…I could think of nothing else but sex as an excuse. It was all that was left after you let me believe that the twins were some other man’s.’

  His lingering annoyance on that score made her tense. But just as suddenly he hauled her all the way into his arms, devouring dark eyes searching hers. ‘Whatever else has changed, you still need me, mon ange,’ he murmured with unhidden satisfaction.

  She went limp against him, but not for long. The fiery demand of his sensual mouth on hers awakened her. And the most consuming impatience seemed to possess both of them. Star helped him to haul his shirt over his head, but was sidetracked when he bared his muscular chest, spreading her palms there, pressing her lips lovingly to every part of him she could reach.

  He came down with a groan, struggling to snake his hips free of his trousers while she wrenched at her skirt. But the zip caught, Luc gave it one sharp tug, and when it stayed jammed, he just ripped it apart.

  ‘So I’ll buy you another ten,’ he muttered feverishly, already engaged in extracting her from her T-shirt and capturing a tautened pink peak with a very vocal male groan of appreciation.

  Her excitement was so intense she felt drunk and out of control, heart racing insanely, every pulse pounding. Her body throbbed with a kind of ecstatic torment of anticipation. He traced the damp heat of her readiness and she twisted and turned, frantic for a more forceful invasion, every sense craving him with shameless, helpless abandon.

  ‘I just want you…I just want you.’

  ‘This is not a very cool start to a honeymoon.’ Luc freed her of her last garment with a dexterity that was more driven by desperation than actual skill.

  ‘Honeymoon…? Oh…oh, please,’ Star moaned, clenching her teeth. ‘Talk later?’

  ‘If I’m still alive after this much excitement, mon ange.’ With a ragged laugh, Luc came down on her and entered her in one powerful thrust. A shuddering groan of pleasure escaped him.

  Star wasn’t capable of vocalising at that point. The height of her excitement was blinding, silencing, all-consuming. The whole centre of her being was locked into every glorious movement he made. It was like suddenly entering heaven and hoping that heaven was endless. Never before had she experienced such a sense of oneness with Luc; never before had she felt sheer joy rippling through her in concert with the wild high of his possession. An intoxicating combination which sent her spinning into an earth-shattering climax of mindless strength.

  He held her so close and tight in the aftermath it was a wonder that she could breathe. In fact she didn’t think two adults could ever before have occupied so small a space in so large a bed, and that closeness made her feel so good it brought tears to her eyes. She kissed a loving trail across his shoulder, caressed his damp back.

  He held her back about six inches from him, but kept their bodies still intimately entwined. His slashing smile made her heart bang up against her ribs. ‘I really do get a high from giving you pleasure…I just want to do it again…and again…and…and again,’ he teased, punctuating each repetition with tiny provocative and still hungry kisses. ‘Rain-check on talking?’

  Star studied him with passion-glazed eyes of wonderment, happy, so happy, that if she could have stood being separated from him she might have danced round the room. He hadn’t gone to Gabrielle on their wedding night. She decided there and then that he was a god among men; Gabrielle had been incredibly gorgeous, yet Luc had clearly ended that relationship because he was getting married. So, whether he recognised the fact or not, he had made a commitment to his teenage bride, Star concluded with a wave of enormous satisfaction.

  ‘You look wonderfully smug,’ Luc muttered.

  Tact seized a rare hold of her. ‘I’m just happy…’

  *

  Star opened her eyes and lay sleepily still while a vague memory of Luc assuring her that he would see to Venus and Mars slowly surfaced.

  For goodness’ sake, it was eleven! Luc couldn’t possibly have managed the twins on his own! Feeling guilty as hell, Star got up, and, hearing sounds from the lounge area, headed in that direction.

  Luc was down on his knees with Venus and Mars propped up against the sofa cushions he had dragged down onto the floor for their benefit.

  ‘Daddy…that’s what you call me in English, b
ut if it’s French, which you have to learn as well,’ he was warning them, ‘it is Papa,’ he sounded out carefully, and then repeated it, even more slowly.

  It was so sweet. The twins made various little sounds like a chorus. Mars was the most earnest in his efforts to acquire this knew knowledge. Venus clutched at her toes, but she didn’t take her attention from her father’s darkly handsome visage for a second. Star had never seen her daughter stay that still in one place for so long.

  ‘Luc…how the heck did you cope?’

  His dark head turned, his eyes gleaming with amusement. ‘It was a true learning experience…Zut alors! They have some appetite for their breakfast! I forgot to arrange high chairs, so feeding them was difficult, but we managed, and I got them washed and dressed as well,’ he pointed out with considerable pride in his achievement.

  The twins were only wearing vests. Star swallowed back laughter. ‘You washed them too?’

  ‘Of course I did…with a sponge. Venus turned that into quite a game. Watch Papa try to catch me,’ Luc shared with a rueful grin of recollection, rising upright as Star bent down to cuddle their son and daughter. ‘She found out that I’m clumsy, but persistent! I now badly need a shower.’

  There was a fine dust of what just might have been baby cereal in his black hair. He hadn’t managed to shave yet either. He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. ‘I have very real respect for you now, mon ange,’ he asserted seriously. ‘How did you cope with them on your own? It was really hard work. I felt like I needed another set of eyes and at least two extra pairs of hands.’

  ‘You were brilliant, absolutely brilliant,’ she assured him softly, her eyes full of warmth.

  ‘Non…I was lousy this time around, but next time I’ll be better.’

  A lot of other men would have been in a bad mood after more than five hours of childcare, and most rich men would have suggested that perhaps leaving Bertille behind had been a major mistake. But Luc wanted to be a hands-on father, not a distant one, and she was impressed that he wanted to rise to that challenge when he didn’t have to.