by Julia James
She glanced warily around as she marched towards the concierge’s desk, but there was no sign of him. Good—he’d left.
She clumped heavily on the marble floor, and didn’t care. She reached the concierge and hefted up the boutique bags.
‘For Mr Xavier Lauran,’ she said shortly. ‘I don’t know his room number.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ the uniformed concierge said, and lowered the bags behind his desk. She nodded her thanks, and headed to the main entrance of the hotel. The revolving doors opened on to a portico where taxis and cars could draw up. Was Xavier Lauran’s chauffeured car still waiting for her? She didn’t care if it was. She wasn’t getting into it anyway. There was a Tube station quite near here, and the rain had stopped finally. It was chilly, but dry. She wanted to go home.
She hovered on the exterior concourse a moment, getting her bearings. She was somewhere in Mayfair, on the corner of one of the grand Georgian squares, but for a moment her orientation was awry. She glanced around.
And there was Xavier Lauran. Tall, hands plunged into the pockets of his cashmere overcoat. Immobile. Waiting.
He walked up to her. She tried to walk past him. He blocked her instantly, hands slipping from his pockets and catching her by her elbows.
‘Lissa—please. If you do nothing else, let me apologise.’
She stared up at him.
‘I behaved like a brute. An oaf. And I’m sorry—truly sorry.’
How he did it she didn’t know, but he guided her to the far end of the concourse, where there were no people, no cars, no doorman.
He looked down at her. There was an expression in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. It made him look … different. She didn’t know why. Could only know, right now, that her heart had started to thump. With hard, heavy slugs.
And that her throat was tight, so tight.
‘I’m truly sorry,’ he said again, and his voice was different, too, though she couldn’t tell why.
He was speaking again, and she forced herself to listen over the pounding of her heart.
‘If there is someone else in your life, then I understand. And I respect you for being honest with me—and I am sorry, truly, for having placed you in this position in the first place. Making you feel that you had to accept my invitation or risk your job—even though it’s a job I wish you didn’t have.’ He took a breath. It seemed ragged to her ears.
‘I told you I was merely inviting you for dinner, and you have my word that at the time that is all I intended. Nothing more. But—’ He took another indrawn breath. ‘When I saw you, dressed as your beauty should be dressed, I was simply blown away. I have no other excuse. And I thought …’ his eyes washed over her, and she felt her legs weaken. ‘I thought you were responding to me in the same way, for the same reason.’ His mouth pressed minutely, then released. ‘Which is why I made the invitation that I did. I did not mean it insultingly or cheaply.’
His hands around her elbows eased upwards, and without her realising it he was drawing her closer to him.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he said softly. ‘Even now, knowing as I do that you are not free, even with that knowledge I still want for this one, single time—this. Allow me, please—for it is all I can have of you.’
He lowered his head to hers.
His kiss was heaven. Soft, and lingering and exquisite. She gave herself to it, gave herself with all the yearning she was filled with to the magic in his lips, his touch, taken for those few precious moments to a paradise she had not known existed.
And then, even as her heart soared, he was drawing away from her, letting go of her.
‘Goodbye,’ he said softly.
And then he was walking away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I’VE got a booking for you at an insurance company.’
The temp agency girl’s voice was brisk and businesslike. Lissa forced herself to concentrate. It was punishingly hard. For a start she was tired—but that was nothing new. Her late nights at the casino always left her tired. She should be grateful, though, that she still had a job there. She had so very nearly lost it.
But what was new, horribly, bleakly new, was this sense of the world having had all the colour drained out of it. Everything was grey.
Only one single place had colour in it—only one place was bathed in radiant, luminous light. Her memory of that evening—that precious, unforgettable evening which shone like a jewel in the secret, private place she kept it.
Yet it was a jewel with facets that were razor sharp, piercing her with pain whenever she permitted herself to remember that night.
But she had made the right decision—the only decision. There was nothing else she could have done.
Even as she told herself that, a small, treacherous voice would whisper in her inner ear.
You could have had one night … one hour … that, at least, you could have had …
But she knew she could not have done that. Knew that if she had succumbed to that exquisite temptation, the pain she felt now would be nothing in comparison. One night, one hour in his bed, would have only created a longing in her for more that she could never assuage.
He was not for her. He couldn’t be. She had duties and obligations elsewhere. Commitments.
And more, so much more than that—she had love. Love and responsibility and care. She couldn’t abandon them. Not for a night, not for an hour, not for a minute.
But it was hard—however much she reminded herself that it was impossible to indulge her desire for the man who had, out of nowhere, suddenly transformed her life. She knew she had to forget him but the longing could not be suppressed. Only repressed. Shut down tightly into the box of ‘might have beens.’
Well, there were a lot of ‘might have beens’ in her life. And they had all ended with that hideous, bloody mess of twisted metal and broken bodies.
Except her body.
Guilt, survivor guilt, seared through her. As she stood up from the chair in the agency, her legs strong and healthy, her body strong and healthy, she felt guilt go through her. Guilt and resolution.
Keep going—keep going. Work, by day and by night, work and earn and save.
But would she ever have enough?
Into her mind, the treacherous thought came again.
If only Armand.
But it had been days now, days after days, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Hope had drained out of her. Just as colour had drained out of her life.
She got to her feet, ready to set out for the insurance company’s offices. At least temping gave her higher rates than permanent work, and it was flexible enough for her needs—like the days she had to get to the hospital.
Guilt stabbed her, as it always did whenever she fell into self-pity or resentment. She had no right whatsoever to either emotion.
She had walked out of the crash without a scratch.
In her mind’s eye formed, as it always did, the image that haunted her, tormented her. The hospital chapel, the two cold, still bodies.
And one more body, still alive, but broken, still broken.
Pain choked her. And guilt. Not just guilt for having walked out of the crash that had destroyed so much, but guilt now for wanting even more from life than what she already had.
Wanting Xavier Lauran.
Whom she could never have.
Xavier sat at his desk, his eyes resting on the unopened e-mail on his screen. It was from Armand. His expression tightened. He did not want to open the e-mail. Did not want to read it. He didn’t want to think about Armand, and most of all he did not want to think about the woman his brother wanted to marry.
Not thinking about Lissa Stevens was essential. He had spent every day since that night at the hotel not thinking about her. He had spent every night battling not to remember her.
A bitter smile twisted his mouth. The saying was true—the road to hell was paved with good intentions. He’d had only good intentions when he’d made the decision
to check out the woman Armand had talked about wanting to marry. His only thought then had been to save his brother from a disaster that, on past performance, was a real risk. But his good intentions had turned on him.
At some point he knew, with that cool, rational brain that he’d used to live his life by, he would have to think about Lissa Stephens. He would have to come to terms with the disaster that had befallen not his brother but himself. He had fallen, head first, into a pit of his own making. A pit he could not escape but which he had to find a way of dealing with.
Just how he was going to deal with it, however, was at the moment completely beyond him. His eyes shadowed. He had wanted Lissa Stephens that fateful night with an intensity that had shocked him as much as it had enthralled him—and he still wanted her. Wanted her more than ever. She was a presence he could not rid himself of, a memory he could not burn out of his mind. Though he refused to let himself think of her, that did not mean she was not there.
He wanted her.
He wanted her, and he did not care that she worked in a casino, did not care that he still did not know whether she was or was not fit to marry his brother, did not care if she was going to marry his brother.
It did not stop him wanting her.
What was he going to do? How could he meet her again, on Armand’s arm, and know that she was never going to be his?
The thought tormented him, the harsh, brutal knowledge that she was forbidden to him. Never before in his life had any woman he’d wanted been forbidden to him. He had never looked at married women, and none who were unmarried, with whom he’d decided to embark on a liaison, had ever turned him down. Why should they have? He had always been able to have the women he wanted. It had never been an issue, never been something he’d thought deeply about, never had cause to. He’d selected women from the many available to him with the same rationale he brought to bear on everything in his life. She would be beautiful, chic, well educated, well-bred, an habituée of the circles in which he moved. She would be experienced in the art of love, and she would want exactly what he wanted—a sensual, suitable sexual and social partner who would fit the space in his life which he allocated for that purpose. And when the affair lost its flavour, as it always did at some point, then she would agree with him that it was time to part, without rancour or regret.
But now he had been given a poisoned chalice by fate.
I desire my brother’s bride …
With tight, heavy emotion he clicked on Armand’s e-mail. His eyes scanned the words rapidly. It was just about his upcoming business schedule in the USA. Nothing about marriage plans.
Why not?
The question hung in Xavier’s focus. Why had Armand gone so quiet on a topic he’d written so enthusiastically about only a short time ago? Xavier’s mouth tightened. Was Armand’s reticence now because he did not trust his brother not to interfere, even though he’d asked him not to? Did he suspect that being despatched to the Middle East and America had been a deliberate ploy on his part?
A heavy rasp escaped Xavier. What did it matter? From now on he was out of it—he had to keep a very, very long distance from Armand and his plans to marry Lissa Stephens. It was the only safe thing to do—the only rational thing.
Lissa Stephens could never be his.
However much he wanted her.
It had been a long, tiring day, and Lissa had to force herself to walk briskly out of her local Tube station in the rush-hour crowds. She carried bags of grocery shopping bought from one of the City supermarkets. It meant lugging the bags home, but there was no supermarket near her flat—only a dingy convenience store near the entrance to the station, stocking overpriced groceries and sad looking fruit and vegetables. This part of London depressed her. Here in the tatty concrete wilderness around the Tube station, an unsuccessful urban regeneration project of the fifties and sixties, where the only people were those who could not afford anywhere better, her spirits never failed to droop.
But, however depressing the area, her flat did nevertheless have advantages. Not only was it social housing, so the rent was low for London, but it was also on the ground floor, and only a quarter of a mile away from St Nathaniel’s Hospital, which made her mandatory weekly visits there blessedly easier.
Her expression changed slightly as she rebalanced her shopping bags and continued to trudge homeward in the dusk.
It had been on one of her weekly visits to St Nat’s that she had first met Armand. He had been visiting a colleague who had collapsed with a heart attack, so he’d said later, but it had taken only a single look as they’d waited for the elevator together for him to smile, so warmly, so appreciatively.
And that was how it had started.
If only—
No. Automatically she cut off the pointless hope. There was no purpose in holding on to it. It was folly to hold out for the happy-ever-after ending that she dreamed of, where Armand’s magic wand would make everything all right. In the end there was only herself to rely on. Even as she forced herself to recall that, a thought came to her.
Xavier …
Xavier Lauran is rich …
No.
It was impossible and out of the question. She must not let her thoughts stray in that dangerously tempting direction. She must not let her thoughts stray to him, period. Doing so was like poking a wound with a stick, just to see the blood run.
She reached the old Victorian tenement and got out her keys. Her spirits low, battered on all fronts, she told herself she had to keep on at the task ahead of her. She could do nothing else. All her strength, her focus, her time and her will-power, had to be bent to that purpose only.
Work, earn, save. No let up, no reprieve. For as long as it took.
As she opened the door to the flat, she froze. There were voices inside, and they were not coming from the television. One was familiar, but the tone was not familiar, at all. It was excited, happy, with no trace of either the thread of pain or the drug-induced slurring. The other voice was also familiar but hearing it made her surge disbelievingly into the living room and stop dead. A figure unfolded from the battered sofa. Lissa’s face lit.
‘Armand,’ she cried.
She went into his outstretched arms.
‘Xavier, have you been listening to anything I’ve said?’
The voice beside him was light, with a teasing note, but Xavier had to force himself to pay attention. He’d had to force himself to pay attention to everything that Madeline de Cerasse had said to him all evening. He’d taken her out to dinner. It had been a deliberate gesture on his part. Completely rational. He needed, he knew, to pick up his normal life. He needed, he knew even better, to have sex as soon as possible. With another woman. And since he was, he realised, technically still regarded as her lover, at least by her, he knew it would have to be Madeline.
There was only one problem. He had absolutely no desire whatsoever to take Madeline to bed.
His eyes rested on her a moment. Her beautifully styled brunette crop set off a face of piquant allure, matched by a chicly elegant body that she was well skilled in using to sensual advantage in bed. He had every reason to desire her.
Yet he did not. He did not want her.
He only wanted one woman.
And he couldn’t have her.
Abruptly, knowing he was breaking his own first rule of affaires with his selected partners, he set down his fork. He was always considerate and tactful when the time came to end a relationship, letting his partner have sufficient time not just to accustom herself to the dissolution of their affair, but also to arrange an alternative partner for herself, to make the parting easier. This time he was neither.
‘I have something to say to you,’ he announced brusquely.
Five minutes later he was sitting at the table on his own. Madeline had gone. He was not surprised. He had tried to soften the blow, but it had been difficult to do so at such short notice. She had reacted by assuming the role of offended woman. He had allowed her to d
o so, letting himself appear the brute it comforted her to cast him as.
Well, perhaps he was a brute. There was certainly anger burning in him. Anger at himself. He should not have interfered in his brother’s life. He should have left his marriage plans well alone. He should have—
He tossed down his napkin and got to his feet abruptly. It was irrelevant what he should or should not have done. It was too late.
Too late for regrets. Too late for everything.
Lissa Stephens was not for him and never could be, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do about it.
How could the world change so much, so swiftly? The question swirled in Lissa’s head like a carousel, making her giddy with happiness. It had all happened so quickly—dizzyingly quickly. Armand had flown in from Dubai and done what Lissa had prayed that he would—and feared so much that he would not. He had waved his wonderful, miraculous magic wand and transformed everything. He had made all the necessary arrangements—that was what he’d been doing when he’d gone so quiet, so it would be a wonderful surprise, he’d said, his face lit from within with a glow that had made Lissa curl with happiness.
Now, a mere twenty-four hours later, it was done. America next stop.
She didn’t mind being left behind—understood the reason for it and rejoiced in it. As she made her way back from the airport even the damp and derelict street she lived in suddenly seemed bathed in glorious sunshine. Everything was radiant.
It took her another twenty-four hours, so suffused in happiness was she, for the realisation to come to her. When it did, her breath caught with the impact of it. She had three weeks to herself—the time the trip to America would take.
Three whole weeks.
Her breath stilled in her lungs.