Veronica’s attention was caught by a crumpled loose page sticking out at the back of the book, her heart accelerating as she realised it was from an English equivalent of the French tabloid she had picked up on the train, and featured a very familiar strip of photographs.
‘I haven’t had time to stick this one in yet,’ Sophie said, tugging it free and smoothing it carefully on top of the scrapbook. ‘Ashley bought the paper at the airport and it’s been stuffed in her luggage, so I’ll have to iron it first.’
‘That’s Max Foster.’ Sophie’s stubby finger unnecessarily identified the pugnacious Scottish action-film star in the top photo. ‘Luc got me his autograph last year. And, see—there’s Luc squidged between him and that blonde lady—’
A very beautiful blonde lady, Veronica amended. The first two photographs of the trio at a restaurant table were murky and pixelated, as if snapped by a cell phone in low lighting, others of the two men in a wild scuffle were better lit but blurred by movement—specifically the big fist mashing into Luc’s half-obscured face. Wild-eyed Max Foster hogged most of the camera, looking like a dissipated copy of the macho characters the forty-five-year-old actor played on the big screen, and notoriously carried over into his turbulent private life.
It was no wonder she hadn’t recognised Luc at a glance, Veronica thought as she stared at the dark, grainy pictures. As well as being slightly out of focus in most of the shots, he was dressed with alien black-tie formality, and against his inky jacket his pony-tail was invisible, leaving his hair looking as if it were cropped short.
The accompanying text tagged Luc variously as a ‘secretive tycoon’ and ‘mystery millionaire’ reputed to be a ‘long-time close friend’ and ‘frequent private companion’ to Elise Malcolm, the thirty-eight-year-old wife of a rising star in the House of Commons. Andrew Malcolm’s demands for strong moral leadership and emphasis on his own stable home-life, incorruptible principles and squeaky-clean background were rapidly building him a political power-base, and his attractive, Oxford-educated wife was considered one of his vital social assets.
According to the copy, Max Foster had been ‘off his face’ when he entered the restaurant of the small and exclusive Mayfair hotel to join Lucien Ryder at his table. But when the ‘fuming millionaire’ took exception to offensive remarks about Elise Malcolm he followed the actor to the restroom and their ‘furious slugfest’ had spilled out into the hall, only ending when hotel security staff had pulled the two angry men apart.
There was a great deal of speculative innuendo about the words that had given such offence, and what the ‘elusive financier’ and his ‘distraught companion, nervously fingering her wedding ring’ had been doing having a late-night supper in a restaurant that catered solely to hotel residents and their invited guests. Much was made of the fact that, since rumours of the incident had begun swirling nearly a fortnight before the photographs had surfaced in the press, Andrew Malcolm had been conspicuously silent about the state of his ten-year marriage.
Careful to avoid libel by actually stating it, the paper was inviting the inference that Foster’s drunken antics had blown the whistle on Luc’s long-standing affair with Malcolm’s wife.
‘Does Luc know you’ve got this?’ Veronica asked carefully, fighting a sudden urge to tear the thing into a million separate pieces. Sophie was too young to read between the lines of the report—to her it was just a story about a fight Luc had with a famous film star.
But Sophie surprised her. ‘Of course he does,’ she said. ‘I already showed him the whole scrapbook. Mum doesn’t want me to put this in, but Luc said that would be like censorship—if I’m going to keep a record of his life then it should be a proper one that shows the bad as well as the good. He said a biography isn’t true to life if it doesn’t show a person warts and all…’
But this was a rather large, ugly and disfiguring wart, Veronica thought unhappily. The kind of painful blemish that could create scandals, wreck careers…and break hearts.
No wonder Luc hadn’t wanted her to know about it. She half wished now that she didn’t, but it was too late to turn back the clock.
Just as she was lecturing herself not to jump to damaging conclusions on flimsy evidence from a tainted source the way she had over Karen, she looked up to see Luc in the doorway, and couldn’t help her guilty start at his realisation of what she and Sophie were holding.
His smile died, his face turning to carved granite, and to Veronica’s despair the shimmering skein of invisible awareness that had vibrated between them ever since Paris suddenly winked out of existence.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANOTHER flash of sheet lightning and warning grumble of thunder made Veronica jump nervously as she put her hand to the weathered wooden door at the top of the narrow flight of stone steps. The sky had been growing progressively darker since lunch-time, thickening cloud turning the usual azure to a very deep mauve, and now the distant flashing and crashing that had been rolling around for the last half hour was rapidly moving too close for comfort. Back in New Zealand thunderstorms were short and sharp, heralded by driving rain, but although the swirling breeze had picked up a little, it still felt hot and dry against her skin.
She was unprepared when the unlatched door swung open at the pressure of her t
ouch. She peered into the dim interior, her tentative knock on the thick door-post producing only a soundless thud.
‘Luc?’
She could see a couch and several chairs arranged around a stone hearth at one end of the room but no sign of any human occupant. She leaned a little further and caught sight of the corner of a large, rumpled bed. She cleared her throat and raised her voice.
‘Luc? Are you in there?’
Suddenly the whole world behind her lit up with blinding brilliance and almost simultaneously an ear-splitting roar of thunder rattled her bones. With a cry she threw herself inside.
‘Luc!’
There was still no answer, and, trembling from mingled fright and apprehension, she edged further into the room. He could be in the bathroom, she thought, eyeing the door on the other side of the bed, which was slightly ajar, revealing a sliver of tile and tub. She couldn’t hear any sounds from within, but her ears were still ringing from the thunder.
‘Luc, are you there?’ She raised her voice to a level he couldn’t fail to hear, but there was still no response.
He was unlikely to be far away if he had left his outer door open and a couple of uplights on, she reasoned, wincing at another horrendous crash. She saw a few fat spots of rain hit the flagstones but the brief spatter stopped almost as soon as it started. Regardless, she certainly wasn’t going to step outside again while the storm remained directly overhead.
She shivered in spite of the heat. She had an excuse for coming here but it was pretty thin, so perhaps she should indulge her curiosity while she had a chance.
She looked around, coming to the conclusion that Luc was organised without being obsessive—unlike her ex-fiancé, who had always insisted on everything being in its rightful place. There were one or two items of clothing and several books casually strewn around but apart from the unmade bed everything else looked tidy. Perhaps he had been taking a siesta, because the standard fan beside the bed was still rotating its whirring face back and forth, stirring up the sultry air above the king-sized mattress. Against the wall beside the wardrobe was a large desk on which his open laptop sat, next to a neat stack of papers and bound documents anchored by Luc’s distinctive silver cell phone.
Unfortunately her own still hadn’t recovered from its heatstroke, but today she had at long last managed to have a proper conversation with her sister. Now at least they both knew where they stood.