She turned in his arms. “It’s cozy and warm. You’d never know that the most famous vintner in all Burgundy hides out in here instead of the château you call a relic.”
His white smile turned her heart over in the semidarkness of the room. “Do you like it enough to stay here with me tonight? Now that I have you to myself, I have no cares.”
“I thought you brought me here to talk.”
“Later.”
He pressed a hungry kiss to her mouth, tasting it over and over again. This was what she’d been aching for all day. Too soon they were both breathless. Raoul was the most beautiful, virile man she’d ever seen in her life. In her heart she knew his first wife had to have felt the same way about him.
Had they made love before their marriage? No woman could ever be immune to him, and he would have felt some attraction to Angélique or he couldn’t have married her.
Did she dare dream that Raoul would ask Abby to marry him? She didn’t have to hear Jean-Marc’s warning again that Raoul had buried his heart at the funeral. If he’d been letting her know marriage to Raoul wasn’t in Abby’s destiny, he’d done a good job. She tore her lips from his.
“Raoul—we shouldn’t be doing this. I’ll be leaving in a few days.”
He shook his head. “I can’t let you go. Let me love you, mon amour. While we were in Switzerland, my soul was struck by what we French call the coup de foudre. Love at first sight. It makes no sense, but there’s no other explanation to account for my feelings since I met you. Don’t be nervous.”
“But I am,” she confessed in a tremulous voice.
“Why? I know you want this too.”
“I do. More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life, but we’re not thinking clearly. There are too many reasons why we mustn’t.”
He crushed her against him. “Name one that matters.”
“How do we know this coup de foudre won’t happen to you again?”
“You mean to us! No, mon amour, you and I have experienced something that only happens once in a lifetime.”
“But your family needs more time.”
Raoul released her enough to look at her with a puzzled expression. “What’s going on with you? My family has nothing to do with my personal life.”
“Oh, yes, it does.”
Lines marred his striking features. “Be honest with me, Abby. What are you really saying?”
She couldn’t avoid this. “I don’t want an affair with you!”
Raoul’s black eyes pierced hers like lasers. His hands gripped her shoulders. “That’s what you think I want?”
She averted her eyes. “I don’t know anymore. I could never be intimate with you and then just fly away as if it never happened. That’s why I’d like you to take me back to the apartment now.”
“Are you saying this because Nigel is still in your heart and that’s what you can’t get over?”
“No—” she cried softly. “All feeling for him was burned out of me the second I saw pictures of his children and realized his wife was telling the truth. I honestly haven’t thought about him since.”
“Even so, being intimate takes time to get over and it hasn’t been that long since you broke it off with him.”
She eased away from Raoul. “You don’t understand. I never went to bed with him. We were going to go away over Christmas to be together for the first time. Thank providence his wife came to the office that day and opened my eyes.”
“Are you saying you’ve never made love?” Raoul sounded incredulous.
“That’s right.”
“Not even with the other man?”
“I couldn’t until I knew my heart. That moment never came.” She folded her arms to her waist. “Does that shock you?”