Summer Sins

She felt tears prick in the back of her eyes and blinked, angry with herself.

Oh, come on. Wise up. Why the Little Miss Sensitive act suddenly? she berated herself. He’d said ‘dinner’, but obviously he’d had more in mind than that, and he hadn’t liked being turned down. Men never liked being turned down—and a man like him probably never had been. That was why he’d stormed off like that. She’d caught him in the most delicate part of male anatomy: his ego.

Her face puckered. But he wasn’t like that. He hadn’t been all evening. He had been wonderful. Attentive, charming, engaging, with that dry, ironic humour that brought a glint to his eye and a smile to her mouth. He had been the perfect dinner companion, and as for everything else—well, that had just been magic, the only word for it.

Until that brutal departure. Her throat tightened again, and she took a jerky sip of cooling coffee, forcing it down to try and open her throat.

It had been so out of place, that flare of icy anger. She took a painful breath. Surely a man as sophisticated, as obviously experienced with women as he was, could have managed the scene more gracefully? Even if he’d smarted at her rebuff, he need not have shown it—he could have extricated himself with élan, with a smooth word, affecting regret, with sophistication and charm. But he hadn’t. Obviously when it came to bedtime, Xavier Lauran, for all his cool sophistication, all the seductive magic of his eyes, his voice, was just another man who thought the price of a meal included a woman for the night.

He’d promised her ‘just dinner’ and like a fool she’d believed him.

She slid out from her seat. Presumably the waiting staff would take care of petty concerns like the bill, and although there was someone instantly there to help pull the table back sufficiently and bid her good-night, she knew it was pretty obvious that her escort had stormed out on her. Well. She gave a silent, heavy sigh. What was that to her? Nothing. Just as it was nothing that Xavier Lauran had proved, after all, to be a man who for all his expensive packaging still operated on the same sordid, commercial premise that any of the punters at the casino did when they thought they could indulge in some ‘private hire’ with the hostesses.

The only difference was, they were more honest about it.

She walked out of the restaurant, head held high.

She needed to change. Her own clothes had been put in another bag from the shop, and she’d checked it in to the Ladies’ Cloakroom. They would be damp still, she knew, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting out of here. If the boutique was closed, she’d simply put the dress, stockings and shoes neatly folded inside the original bags, and leave them with the concierge to be given to Xavier Lauran. What he did with them she didn’t care. Hand them on to the next stupid female he wanted to have for dinner … and breakfast.

Not, of course, that breakfast was necessarily on the menu. Who knew? Maybe he just chucked them out after he’d had sex with them and sent them home in his damn chauffeur-driven car. Maybe they were OK with that sort of treatment. Maybe Xavier Lauran deliberately picked up girls like he’d clearly thought her to be, cheap hostesses in cheap casinos, because he knew they’d be so impressed by him, by his flash car and his offer of dinner cooked by a French chef, and the free run of a five-star hotel boutique. Maybe Xavier Lauran deliberately—

‘Lissa—’

She stalled, head whipping around. He was heading towards her, walking from the bank of lifts. His stride was rapid, intent on intercepting her. She started forward again, her pace increasing urgently. She had to get to the Ladies. It would be sanctuary. Safety. Safe from Xavier Lauran, who’d smiled so devastatingly into her eyes and who’d only wanted a night of sex with her.

She made it to the Ladies, hurling herself inside and then standing there trembling. She dived into a stall and plonked herself down on the closed unit. She stared at the locked door.

Her mouth pressed together.

Truth pressed down on her.

Oh, God, what a hypocrite she was. She could rant away all she liked about men thinking that dinner meant bed-and-breakfast, as well, and get on her high horse that Xavier Lauran was no better than any of them. But she knew, as she swallowed through the tight, stricken cords in her throat, that, berate him all she might, the truth was that she was a hypocrite. A one hundred per cent, fully paid-up hypocrite.

She made herself say the words. Say them clearly and plainly in her head.

I would have said yes.

If she could have, she would have said yes.

She closed her eyes, sinking down her head. She would have done it. She would have let him take her by the hand, lead her upstairs, let him take her into his arms, slide his mouth across hers to take the possession of it the way she had wanted right from the very first moment she saw him, let him take possession of her body.

For however long he wanted. For a single hour, a single night—however long he wanted her.

That wa

s his power. That was the power she had felt flowing into her, through her, unstoppable, unavoidable. The power of an emotion that she had never felt before, but which she now felt more intensely, more overwhelmingly than she knew she would ever feel about any man again.

The power of desire.

Her eyes shadowed, and she lifted her face from her hands.

Desire she could never fulfil.

Because it was impossible, just impossible. Nothing in her life made it possible for her to say what she had longed to be able to say, that simple, sighing yes.

She stiffened her spine. Well, it was just as well she hadn’t, wasn’t it? Just as well she’d said, ‘I can’t.’ Because that had unleashed a side of Xavier Lauran he’d hidden from her all evening, ever since he’d denied buying her time for what the casino had sold it to him for.

Anger spurted through her. She was glad of it. Grateful. It helped to scour out the stupid, naïve mush that was making her hide herself away like this. It was as well she’d got the measure of the man, so she could see the ‘magic’ for what it was. For him nothing more than a ritual to be gone through before moving on to the main event of the evening. And when he was denied it he’d turned nasty.