In the Heat of the Spotlight

‘I’m finished.’

‘You’re scared.’

Hell, yes. She glanced up at him, hands on her hips. ‘Oh, you think so? Of what?’

‘A lot of things, I suspect.’

Luke sounded so calm, so relaxed, and here she was feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board. Unable to protect or hide herself, just out there for his relentless examination. ‘Well, I’m not scared,’ she snapped. ‘But I don’t particularly like talking about all that, and since we have a full day I’d like to get on with it. That all right by you?’ She spoke in a sneering drawl, the kind of voice she’d used so many times before. The kind of voice she hadn’t used with Luke since they’d started on their second chance.

Well, so much for that.

‘It’s all right by me,’ he said quietly and, without another word, Aurelie whirled around and stalked out of his bedroom.

* * *

Luke lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, too dazed to do anything but try and process what Aurelie had told him. Pete Myers. A man who had to have been at least fifty when he’d first started with Aurelie. A man who had abused her affection, used her body and her trust. And Aurelie didn’t see it that way.

She saw it as a relationship. Hell, no.

Sighing, he ran his hands through his hair, pressed his fists into his eyes. He had no idea what to do. He was still so afraid of failing her. Failing her like he had last night, when he’d gone about it completely wrong. He’d been trying to ease Aurelie into love-making gently, sweetly, but he’d been the one in control. Hell, he’d told her that before they even started. Anything that happens between us, happens at a pace I control... Got that?

He winced at the memory. He’d thought it would help her, to know they would go slowly, but now he saw how it must have accomplished the opposite. He’d been just another man controlling her, using her body. Luke swore aloud.

He saw now that Aurelie needed to feel in control. To be in control. That was, he suspected, why she insisted on believing Pete hadn’t taken advantage of her, that it had been a willing, committed relationship—because then it was something she could control.

And last night, in an utterly misguided attempt to help her, he’d quite literally taken all the control away from her. Groaning aloud, Luke dropped his fists from his eyes and stared at the ceiling once more. It was time, he knew, for a third chance. Time to earn her trust once more.

By the time he’d showered and dressed, eaten and answered emails, he was near to running late. He’d knocked on the door of Aurelie’s room but there had been no answer and he felt a flicker of foreboding. Was she trying to avoid him? Well, that could only last so long.

His mouth firming into a determined line, he headed downstairs.

Aurelie was waiting in the lobby, dressed in a mint-green shift dress, her hair tucked behind her ears, her arms folded. She was fidgeting and she didn’t meet his gaze as he came towards her. Clearly now was not the time to have some kind of emotional discussion, and maybe he needed the time—the break—too.

‘All ready?’ he asked lightly, and she nodded tensely, her gaze fixed somewhere around his shoulder.

They didn’t speak in the limo on the way to the airport, or as they boarded the jet that would take them to Hong Kong. Luke pulled out some papers, thinking to work, but then he decided he wasn’t that patient after all.

‘Aurelie.’ She turned towards him, still not meeting his eyes. ‘You’re doing a pretty good job of avoiding me even though I’m right here.’

She lowered her head so her hair fell forward in front of her face. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

‘Maybe you could tell me what you’re thinking.’

‘That.’

He sighed and slipped his papers back into a manila folder. ‘What else?’

She shook her head, bit her lip. Luke just waited. ‘I’m thinking I wish I hadn’t told you everything I did this morning.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because...’ she lifted her gaze to his, and he saw the storm in her eyes ‘...because you think of me differently now, and I can’t stand that—’