Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

Green eyes huge, Tabby gaped at him because he had told her something she would never h

ave suspected for herself, for he always seemed so much in control. ‘Perhaps I should’ve thought of that. Naturally you were having trouble coping—’

Christien dug lean hands into the pockets of his well-cut trousers. ‘It was getting by without you I was struggling to handle,’ he ground out in a driven undertone.

The silence stretched and stretched.

‘Zut alors…I was planning to marry you and then I saw you with the biker and it all went pear-shaped on me. When our fathers died in that car accident, I wanted you,’ he bit out. ‘But pride wouldn’t let me have you, so I drank myself into a stupor to ensure I didn’t weaken.’

Tabby blinked. She was transfixed. He had been planning to marry her?

Christien shrugged a broad shoulder with something less than his usual grace. ‘I didn’t like feeling like that. I watched my mother sink into despair without my father. They had always been very close and for a while after his death she did not want to live without him. It was terrifying to watch. I decided I didn’t want to feel like that about any woman ever.’

‘I can understand that…’ Tabby mumbled, and yet she could offer nothing to match his unhappy experience.

Her stepmother had had shallow affections. Aside of a few noisy crying jags, the discovery that she was not as prosperous a widow as she had hoped had infuriated Lisa and ensured that her grief had been even more short-lived.

‘Were you serious when you said you were planning to marry me then?’ Tabby prompted hesitantly. ‘I mean, you were furious with me for lying about my age. How could you have been thinking about marrying me?’

‘How not?’ Clear dark golden eyes met hers in fearless acknowledgement. ‘I still wanted you. In the end that’s all it came down to.’

Still wanted her but much against his will, she translated. But she was still deep in shock. While being very moody and unsentimental about it, Christien was nonetheless giving her riveting information about what he had felt for her in the past. He was so tense, though, that she felt a sudden shout might shatter him to pieces and she was touched.

Christien expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss. ‘Once you lied to me about your age because you didn’t want to lose me. In the same way I chose to hold fire on telling you that I was engaged to Veronique on terms that you would never understand. Why? I didn’t want to lose you.’

‘Didn’t you?’ Her voice felt all strangled inside her throat.

‘That summer we were first together, I was in love with you. What else could it have been? That kind of madness that means you can’t bear to be apart for even a few hours?’ Christien rested shimmering golden eyes on her. ‘I wouldn’t admit it to myself but I had never felt for anyone what I felt for you—’

Her nose wrinkled and she made a frantic attempt to fight the tears threatening. ‘Oh Christien…’ she said thickly.

‘When Solange left you the cottage, I used it as an excuse to see you again in London. I had no need to make that a personal visit and I could have made more effort to discourage you from moving to Brittany—’

‘But I was so determined to make a new life here…I think that you weren’t the only one of us hiding from the truth—’

Christien spread graceful brown hands in an inconclusive motion. ‘Nothing went to plan then…but then I had no true strategy. Around you, I don’t think straight,’ he confessed with fierce reluctance. ‘I just needed to see you, be with you, make love to you, and that first time I did not even recall that Veronique was a part of my life!’

Tabby scrambled off the bed, crossed the carpet and closed her arms round him tight. She was satisfied for, to her way of thinking, he had not had a normal engagement with the other woman and she could not judge him for his lack of fidelity to a woman who had told him that he might do as he liked.

‘But I ended my engagement to Veronique immediately afterwards. I felt guilty but I didn’t hesitate,’ Christien confirmed.

‘Immediately afterwards?’ It was though yet another weight fell from Tabby’s troubled heart, for she needed to know that she could trust him.

‘I saw her in Paris and came back to Brittany that evening but you had already left the cottage. Unfortunately something foolish I said out of guilt to Veronique—that I was not thinking of marriage with you—very probably made her even angrier when she learned that I had in fact decided to marry you just as fast as I could.’ Christien volunteered with a grimace.

‘That’s right…at that point you were dreaming of refurbishing the cottage into a delightful residence for a convenient mistress…am I right?’

Beautiful dark golden eyes glinting with wariness, Christien finally nodded.

‘You see, I know you…I know how your mind works,’ Tabby warned him with newly learned assurance. ‘The idea of marrying me only came after you found out about Jake and when you realised I wasn’t up for the living-in arrangement—’

‘Can’t you tell when a guy’s ready to do anything to get you?’

‘Nope…I need it spelt out.’ Tabby was hardly breathing as she said it, for she was beginning to believe her wildest dreams had come true without her even appreciating it. It was the way he was looking at her.

Christien scooped her up and sat down on the edge of the bed with her cradled in his arms. ‘I love you, ma belle. I love you like crazy.’

Tabby heaved an ecstatic sigh. She had not even dared to hope and there he had been sneakily hiding his feelings from her. ‘You should have told me that ages ago—’