It was Luc. For a count of ten nail-biting seconds, she believed she was hallucinating. As she fell back, her hand slid weakly from the door. ‘Luc…?’ she whispered.
‘I see you haven’t made it back to Peterborough yet. Or was it Peterhaven?’ Magnificent golden eyes clashed with startled blue. ‘You didn’t seem too sure where you lived. And you’re a lousy liar, cara. In fact, you’re so poor a liar, I marvel that you even attempted to deceive me. Yet you sat in that car and you lied and lied and lied…’
‘Did I?’ she gasped, in no state to put her brain into more agile gear.
‘Do you know why I let you go this afternoon?’ He sent the door crashing shut with one impatient thrust of his hand.
‘N-no.’
‘If you had told me one more lie in the mood I was in, I would have strangled you,’ Luc spelt out. ‘Where do you get the courage to lie to me?’
It was nowhere in evidence now. Helplessly she stared at him. He was so very tall and, in the confines of a ha
ll barely big enough to swing the proverbial cat in, he was overpowering. He had all the dark splendour of a Renaissance prince in his arrogant bearing. And he was just as lethally dangerous. As he slid a sun-bronzed hand into the pocket of his well-cut trousers, pulling the fabric taut across lean, hard thighs, she shut her eyes tight on the vibrantly sensual lure of him.
But her mouth ran dry and her stomach clenched in spite of the precaution. Had she really expected to be quite indifferent? To feel nothing whatsoever for this man she had once loved, whose child she had once borne in fearful isolation? Now she knew why she had fled his car in such a state, both defying and denying the existence of responses she had fondly believed she had outgrown with maturity.
A woman met a male of Luc Santini’s calibre only once in a lifetime if she was lucky. And forever after, whether she liked it or not, he would be the standard by which she judged other men. She was suddenly frighteningly aware that, in all the years since she had walked out of that Manhattan apartment, no other man had stirred her physically. It had been no sacrifice to ignore the sensuality which had in the past so badly betrayed her. Now she was recognising that facing Luc again had to be the ultimate challenge.
The silence went on and on and on.
‘Cristo, cara!’ The intervention was disturbingly low-pitched. ‘What is it that you think of? You look as though you’re about to fall down on your knees and pray for deliverance…’
Her lashes flew up. ‘Do I?’ It was called playing for time by playing dumb. What was he doing here? What did he want from her? Which lies had he identified as lies? Dear God, did he suspect that she had a child? How could he suspect? she asked herself. Even so, she turned white at the very thought of that threat.
Without troubling to reply, he strode past her to push open the kitchen door and glance in. In complete bewilderment, she watched him repeat the action with each of the remaining doors, executing what appeared to be an ordered search of the premises. What was he looking for? Potential witnesses? Her mythical husband? Or a child? Her flesh grew clammy with fear. In the economic market, Luc was famed for his uncanny omniscience. He noticed what other people didn’t notice. He could interpret what was hidden. If he had ever taken the time to focus that powerful intelligence on her disappearance, he would have grasped within minutes that there was a strong possibility that she was pregnant.
‘Did you enjoy yourself trailing my security men all over town for three hours this afternoon?’ Luc enquired dulcetly, springing her from her increasingly panic-stricken ruminations.
‘Trailing your…?’ As she registered his meaning, her incredulity spoke for her.
‘Zero for observation, cara. You don’t change. You wander around in a rosy dream-state like an accident waiting to happen.’ He strolled fluidly into the lounge, his wide mouth compressing as he took open stock of his surroundings. ‘No verdant greenery, not a floral drape or a frill or a flounce anywhere in sight. Either you haven’t lived here very long or he has imposed his taste on yours. Dio, he had more success than I…’
The last was an aside, as disorientating as the speech which had preceded it. Unwittingly, she went pink as she recalled scathing comments about her preference for nostalgia as opposed to the abrasively modern d;aaecors he favoured. It was an unfortunate reference, summoning up, as it inexplicably did, stray and rebellious memories of baths by candlelight and an over-the-top lace-strewn four-poster bed…
The vast differences between them even on that level were almost laughable. Two more radically differing personalities would have been hard to find. Her dreams had been the ordinary ones of love and marriage and children.
But Luc hadn’t had dreams. Dreams weren’t realistic enough to engage his attention. He lived his life by a master plan of self-aggrandisement. He achieved one goal and moved on to the next. The possibility of failure never occurred to him. It was, after all, unthinkable that Luc would ever settle for less than what he wanted. As she thought unavoidably of how much less than her dreams she had settled for, bitterness coalesced into a hard, unforgiving stone inside her.
‘Feel free to make yourself at home.’ Her sarcasm was so out of character that Luc whipped round in surprise to stare at her.
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ he breathed almost tautly.
‘I’ll talk to you whatever way I want!’ she dared.
‘Be my guest,’ Luc invited. ‘You won’t do it more than once.’
‘Want to bet?’ Her ability to defy him was gathering steam on the awareness that neither Daniel nor any trace of him could betray her in this apartment.
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t risk it,’ Luc responded. ‘You have this appalling habit of backing the wrong horse. And the odds definitely aren’t in your favour.’
Courageously, she lifted her chin. ‘I am not afraid of you.’
‘You ought to be.’
Her Joan of Arc backbone suffered a sudden jolt in confidence. ‘Are you trying to threaten me?’ she asked shakily.
‘To my knowledge, I’ve never tried to threaten anyone.’ It was an assertion backed by immovable cool.