Tania stared at him. She barely heard what he said. It was the sheer self-confidence of the man that left her almost speechless. Almost …
“You’re not listening to me, are you, Claude?” she raged at him. “I’ve no intention of working on anything with you. I have a life of my own. I’m happy with it. It’s what I chose, and the last thing I want is to get any closer to something that only brought me pain and unhappiness.”
“Do you always run away from things?”
She stared at him helplessly. They seemed to have cut across the barrier of conventionality frighteningly fast. He questioned her in a way David Lee would never dare to do, after knowing her for two years. Time seemed to have no meaning where Tania and Claude were concerned. In some strange way she felt as if she had known him always. Probably because of the snippets of information James had told her about him, and the occasional newspaper cutting. And yet, she really knew very little about him if she thought about it. Only his career and his undoubted attraction for women, and the fact that he and James had made a great team in all their undertakings. Personally, he was a closed book — and she intended keeping it that way. Claude had very different intentions.
“Do you always act this way with strangers?” Tania countered, her face beginning to feel heated again. A small smile touched his mouth. She found herself looking at it, seeing the way his lips curved, revealing regular teeth and an oddly tender expression. His hand reached out towards her again, and one finger followed the contour of her cheek as if he wanted to learn its shape by heart.
“You and I were never strangers, Tania,” he said softly. “I know too much about you from James. Our families were frequent topics of conversation while we rested from a climb in a cold canvas tent on a mountainside.”
The thought of it made her shiver. “You do have a family then?” She asked sarcastically. “I thought you were too much the loner to have any encumbrances.”
To her surprise, a look of something like pain shot across his face. It took Tania an instant to register it, and then it was gone so fast she wondered if she had imagined it.
“I have a family,” he stated without expression. “I’ll tell you about them over dinner. We are having dinner tonight, I suppose? Or have you got all dressed up like this just to tease me?”
“I’ve no intention of teasing you,” she said quickly.
“Good. Then since the taxi’s been waiting outside with its meter ticking away, I suggest we go.”
She followed him out of the flat and into the taxi. He gave the driver the name of a swish hotel, and half an hour later they were sitting together in a discreet little alcove with silent waiters ready to do their bidding. Claude certainly lived up to his image, Tania thought caustically.
They ordered their meal and a bottle of wine, and it was all served to them with perfection. Succulent steaks and a frothy sweet concoction to follow would put on pounds in weight, Tania thought, but it was all too good to resist. Besides, a few extra pounds wouldn’t hurt her.
“You were going to tell me about your family,” she prompted, when they were drinking coffee and liqueurs. She imagined that he lived in some elegant bachelor establishment, though she vaguely remembered hearing some reference to a family home in the south of France. James may have told her something, but she’d never really wanted to know. Or she may have read something in an article …
“I live at my family home, south of Bordeaux,” Claude said. “I have my own quarters there —”
“Quarters? You make it sound like an army barracks!”
Claude laughed. “Not quite! Though it’s probably big enough for that. No, it’s just that I have my study for my work, and my own rooms for when I want to entertain my friends. It’s more convenient for me and the rest of the household.”
“I see.” What Tania saw was the indulged son of the house. What his ‘entertaining’ amounted to, she didn’t care to know. It wasn’t her business.
“I don’t think you do, chérie.” The French endearment made her heart leap a little. “But no matter. You’ll understand when you come to France.”
“I’ve already told you I’m not going!” she said heatedly.
“Not even for James?” The emotional blackmail was there again, but this time his eyes challenged hers, knowing that by now she would have thought about it, considered it. There was no doubt in his mind that she would accept. She could see it as clearly as if it was written all over him.
“I suppose you’re waited on hand and foot in this huge mausoleum of yours,” she mocked him, ignoring his words.
“We have staff, yes. Of course. It’s necessary.” He spoke with such acceptance of what was to him a normal way of life that Tania felt a little ashamed of her comment. Trying to amend matters would probably make it worse, and in any case, Claude was searching in his wallet for some snapshots.
“This is my mother.” He showed her a photo of a silver-haired lady of obvious wealth. Uneasily, Tania remembered James’s one-time comment that even if the rest of the world thought Claude Girard a playboy, those who knew him well could tell differently. “And this is my sister, Monique. She lives with us at the château now, since her husband died —”
“The château?” Tania echoed. James had definitely never mentioned any château! Communication between herself and her brother had been strained in the past year or so, and she had thought the idea of James and Claude starting the mountain rescue team was even more foolhardy than the sponsored climbs on precipitous slopes.
Claude pushed another photo under her nose. “And this is Henri.” His voice had perceptibly changed, in a way Tania couldn’t quite define. It had roughened slightly, yet was infinitely caring, and her heart lurched as she looked at the photo of the small boy with laughing dark eyes and tousled dark hair. He was the image of Claude. The boy smiled into the camera from a child-size wheelchair. Tania stared at it, not quite knowing what to say.
“I’d give him the mountains if I could,” Claude said, a subdued, vibrant anger in his tone.
Tania passed her tongue over her dry lips. Who was Henri …?
As if he sensed the unspoken question, Claude looked up at her from the snapshot. “Henri is Monique’s son, my nephew. He’s eight years old, and highly intelligent. He loves the mountains, and knows nearly as much about them as I do — though purely theoretically, of course. He’s trapped inside that damned wheelchair.”
Abruptly, he put the photos away, and Tania knew at once that this was Claude’s vulnerable area. She hadn’t believed he had one, until now. It was obvious that he loved the child dearly, and bitterly resented whatever it was that had put him in the wheelchair. Claude was the enemy, but at that moment it was she who felt like reaching out and touching his hand … She didn’t. Instead, she asked very quietly if he wanted to tell her about it.
“Another time. We’ll have some more coffee and another drink and then I’ll take you home. You have plenty to think about, and I’ll be in touch again tomorrow. Perhaps we could go walking in Hyde Park. I’m told it’s something every foreign visitor is supposed to do when he comes to London, and on the few occasions I’ve been here, I’ve never found the time for it. Shall I call for you after lunch?”
It never entered Tania’s mind to say no. So smoothly she hardly knew how it was happening, Claude Girard was slowly taking over her life. It was only for this one weekend, she told herself later, as she prepared for bed, with the memory of the chaste kiss he had pressed to her lips as they parted. This one weekend, and then she would never see him again.
The thought was not quite as satisfying as she had expected. There were facets of the man she had never imagined before. He wasn’t as totally brash or devil-may-care as she had thought. The playboy image seemed to disperse a little when she recalled that haunted look on his face when he gazed at the photo of his small nephew. It was a look that haunted Tania too as she wondered if she was in for another sleepless night on account of Claude Girard.
&nbs
p; Her last drifting thought as she finally encountered sleep, was that it might settle her nerves more quickly if she did as he wanted and went to France with him. Perhaps she did owe it to James … the images of her brother and Claude and the handicapped Henri became all jumbled in her mind before blackness eventually blotted them all out.
Chapter 3
“You must see that I can’t possibly stay for six months,” Tania said firmly, as she and Claude sat on a park bench the following afternoon. The day was hot, and she wore a thin summer dress and ropey sandals. Claude’s arm slid along her back, and she edged away a little. She had no wish to resemble any of the other dozens of couples out for a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park. Lovers, most of them … and Claude was anything but her lover!
“Why not?” Claude said immediately. “I’m not a writer, and I’ll need time to work on the book. You’ve got more insight into setting out reports and so on than I, so your help in that area will be invaluable as well as the information on James that I need, chérie.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Claude, I have a job. I’m coming back to it. I don’t want to stay any longer than necessary.” She spoke deliberately, as if she spoke to a child, although he was anything but that. He leaned towards her, his thigh warm against her own in the beige linen slacks he wore. His face was close to hers, but no-one noticed them, or cared. To anyone else, they were just two more lovers enjoying a day out …
She wished these stupid thoughts didn’t keep coming into her mind! She was suddenly very conscious of him as a man. A very sensual man who, whether she liked it or not, had the power to completely reverse her strongest intentions. No man should have that much power over another person.
“Tania, if I could, I would keep you in my château for ever, but I give you my word you’ll be free to leave whenever you wish. I’m not your jailor.”
Not physically, maybe. But right then he was holding her captive with the very power of his personality. His arm had tightened around her shoulder, and she could feel its warmth through her thin dress. His other hand had somehow moved to rest lightly on her leg above her knee, and she could feel the pressure of his fingers there. He seemed to dominate her whole being, belying his own words. She was imprisoned by him at that moment as surely as Henri was chained to his wheelchair.
Remembering the boy, Tania shifted away from Claude. All right. Somehow — Lord knew how — she had agreed to do as Claude wanted and go to France with him, but for as short a time as possible. She still seethed when she thought of how he had gone to Lance and prepared the way … but it was now a fait accompli, and she wouldn’t go back on her word.
“You said you would tell me about Henri,” she said hesitantly, remembering too the closed-in look of pain on Claude’s face on the previous evening. “If you’d rather not —”
He shook his head quickly. “It’s best that you know before you meet him. It happened several years ago before his father died. The family all lived near Paris then, and Henri was an athletic little boy, the pride of his parents and the rest of his family. He always wanted to climb a mountain with me someday. I told him he would. I promised him.”
Tania felt her throat thicken. It was clearly abhorrent to Claude that it was a promise that couldn’t be kept.
“His father had taken him riding in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. A car backfired and frightened Henri’s pony. It bolted and threw him. His foot was still caught in the stirrup and he was dragged along the ground for some distance.” Claude’s voice had become heavy and strained as he relived the moments. “At first we thought he was only badly bruised. He wasn’t even concussed. He spent a week in hospital being thoroughly checked over, and gradually we learned that it was far more than bruising. It was a spinal injury that prevents him from walking more than a very few laboured steps a day. The doctors say it may improve in time, or it may not.”
Tania was horrified as she listened. “Can’t they do anything for him?” Poor little boy, to be condemned to such a life.
“There’s talk of some new operation, but it hasn’t been perfected yet, and we’ve no wish for Henri to be used as a guinea-pig,” he said, almost curtly. Tania guessed this question must have been the subject of some heart-rending discussions among the family. Her heart went out to them all at that moment. She put her hand on Claude’s arm, pressing the hair-roughened skin beneath the pushed-up shirt sleeves.
“Saying that I’m sorry seems to be so inadequate,” she murmured.
“Yes. We are all inadequate when fate steps in to shape our lives. You and I both know that, Tania. You lost a brother, and I a good friend and business colleague.” He neatly turned the conversation away from the touchy subject so painful to him, and back to their own mutual concern. “I know that James would want us to be friends. I want that too.”
She thought he was going to say something more, and she flinched away from any more maudlin references to her brother. The plain fact was that Claude had been closer to James in the past few years than she had been. It was no fault of either of them. It was simply that their lives hadn’t touched after their parents died, and the brief affinity had flared and then died away. She could blame it on circumstances. Her parents’ absorption in their own world, doing their best for their children, but inevitably depriving them of the home-life of normal children. Teaching them to be self-sufficient in their different ways, but denying them a lasting filial affection. Tania felt almost guilty at times, that the sadness she felt on account of James’s death was more for all the lost years. Seeing how deeply Claude felt about his nephew’s plight, and the fond affection with which he’d shown her his family snapshots last night, Tania was acutely conscious of the loss.
She felt guilty, too, that Claude might expect too much of her. Until now, she hadn’t considered that what she had to tell him for his book might not be all that he expected. It was time he knew.
“Claude, I’m not sure how far back into James’s life you mean to go with your book,” she said quickly. “But although we spent all our time together until we were about Henri’s age, we were both sent off to different schools then, and only saw each other at holiday times. Later, when our parents were financially able to do more for us, James went to college and I went to Paris. I don’t want to come to France under false pretences.”
She had the oddest feeling that he knew all that already. James would have told him. So what did he want of her?
“You haven’t answered my question,” he stated.
“What question?”
He suddenly leaned forward and touched her lips with his mouth. His flesh was warm and firm. She could feel the tiny tingling sensations where the dark facial hair was already starting its regrowth by mid-afternoon. His masculine scent filled her nostrils. It was only a fleeting kiss, but after the previous emotional moments when she had realised his vulnerability, Tania had the strongest urge to wind her arms around his neck and pull him close. She resisted, the shock of her own reactions making her sharp as she repeated the words.
“I don’t remember you asking me a question, Claude.”
He laughed softly. “It was about our being friends. Only I’m not sure that friendship is quite what I have in mind. Perhaps we can discover a more delightful kind of relationship, you and I.”
He ran his finger down her bare arm. The tiny golden hairs reacted shiveringly. She couldn’t mistake the blatant meaning in his dark eyes. Memories of James telling her of Claude’s conquests sharpened her voice even more.
“I wouldn’t count on it. I have plenty of friends in England. I’m not looking for anything more.”
“It sounds a very sterile kind of existence. No special man in your life, then?”
She wasn’t falling into that trap. The next minute he’d tell her he was ready to fill the vacancy.
“Naturally I have a man friend. You only just missed him on Friday night as a matter of fact. I think I told you I was expecting someone.”
She looked at him stead
ily, and saw the sudden speculation in his eyes. When he had arrived at Tania’s flat, she had been dressed in the Chinese robe. If she had been expecting someone, a man, it was someone she knew very intimately. She could read his thoughts and stared him out boldly. Let him think what he liked. She wasn’t getting entangled with Claude Girard, for all that he could stir her senses faster than any other man she had ever known. He was merely an episode in her life, not the whole book.
“He can’t be such a special friend if he lets you spend the entire weekend with another man,” Claude said abruptly.
Tania flushed. “You’ve hardly given me time to do anything else, have you? Anyway, David knows how I feel — felt — about you —” She could have bitten out her tongue as she altered the word to the past tense. Now Claude Girard would think she was adding herself to his list of conquests. But he didn’t comment on it, except to say drily that he’d have to do his best to change her opinion of him, then.
Annoyed with herself, Tania knew that her opinion had already shifted gear a little. She didn’t want to stop hating him and what he stood for, but the hatred wasn’t such a deep shade of black as it had been two days ago. Was it really only two days ago that she had stood on the platform of James’s old college and performed the little ceremony to open the sports hall in his name? Only two days ago that she met Claude Girard for the first time? It seemed as if she had always known him.
“When do you go back to France?” she asked quickly, wanting to change this conversation away from such personal probing.
“I intended going tomorrow, but I’ve decided to go tonight. So you’re free to see your David this evening, if you want to …“
“Thank you!” Tania said sarcastically. It would be a long time before she asked his permission! The old antagonism was creeping up on her again. She welcomed it. It was safer than any growing warmth towards him.
With This Ring Page 4