The Sicilian's Innocent Mistress

‘It wasn’t Paris by moonlight that seduced you, Darci.’ Luc’s voice had hardened impatiently. ‘Any more than it was the moonlight that seduced me,’ he continued more gently. ‘Darci, no matter what I may have said to you previously, you must now realise that I have no intention of saying goodbye to you at the end of this weekend.’

‘You won’t have any choice in the matter,’ she cut in decisively. ‘I already have a very full life, Luc, and I certainly don’t have any room in it for a rich Sicilian playboy who might have decided he wants to hop in and out of my bed whenever he happens to be in London!’ She glared at him stubbornly.

Luc’s eyes narrowed to icy slits even as he acknowledged that Darci’s accusation might be true—was true!—of all his previous relationships.

‘It is exactly because you have these sort of prejudices where I’m concerned that the two of us need to talk,’ he placated huskily.

‘Before or after we’ve gone to bed together?’ Darci retorted.

‘That, my dear Darci, is entirely up to you,’ he drawled.

Really, the arrogance of the man—to believe that her capitulation earlier entitled him to think he could now instigate an affair with her!

A relationship which, loving him as deeply as she did, Darci knew could never be the light-hearted affair for her that it would be to Luc….

‘I’m sorry, Luc, but I don’t do affairs,’ she told him, before turning sharply on her heel and walking away from him towards the lift.

Totally aware of Luc’s dark gaze on her back every step of the way!

He was still standing where Darci had left him when she turned, once inside the lift, and pressed the button to ascend. His expression was unreadable, his gaze enigmatic, and Darci only breathed again when the lift doors closed on him.

What was she going to do? she wondered desperately as the lift went up.

She loved Luc. Of that she had absolutely no doubt.

Just as there was no doubting, from what he had said just now, that Luc desired her enough to initiate an affair.

An affair that Darci had once believed she would accept, if it was ever offered, but now knew that she couldn’t.

Just as she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist Luc if he should make love to her again….

Something she was pretty sure was going to happen when he rejoined her in the suite.

Again she asked herself what she was going to do.

She could just take tonight and then tell him tomorrow that there would be no affair.

Except that one night with Luc would never be enough.

Even a week, a month, two months wouldn’t be enough!

Tonight she had realised that the love she felt for Luc was so overpowering, so deeply a part of her, that only a lifetime with him would assuage the need she had for him.

And, just as she didn’t ‘do’ affairs, Luc had made it obvious he didn’t ‘do’ lifetime commitment….

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DARCI didn’t prepare for bed once she got back to the suite. Instead she changed into the denims she had worn to travel over in earlier today, and a fitted black T-shirt, before moving to sit curled up in the window seat in the sitting-room, wrapping her arms about her bent knees as she stared sightlessly out of the window and prepared to sit and wait for Luc to return from the party.

She had realised Luc was right as she’d flung the seductive black dress back into her suitcase—with an inward vow never to wear it again!—they did need to talk. And the sooner Luc accepted that she wouldn’t enter into an affair with him the better it would be for both of them.

Although, again, she knew Luc was going to be very hard to resist if he should attempt to seduce her into capitulating….

Darci had never realised, never guessed, that loving someone, loving Luc, could be so totally, so emotionally consuming, that she didn’t seem to be able to think of anything else but him.

It almost made her understand why Mellie had resorted to subterfuge in order to try and attract Grant’s attention!

Almost….

Because, no matter how much she might love him, Darci knew she would never be tempted to such deception in order to have Luc permanently in her life.

She stiffened tensely as she heard the key-card in the lock seconds before the door handle turned, her heart beating faster, the palms of her hands suddenly damp as she knew that, even though it was still only eleven o’clock, Luc was back.