One Night with His Wife(18)

Glittering dark eyes gazed down into hers. ‘Go—’

‘Luc, please—’

And then he just grabbed her, literally grabbed her up into his arms and brought his mouth down hot and hard and hungry on hers. The shock of that sudden onslaught knocked Star sideways, but his explosive passion blazed up through her like a bush fire. She couldn’t get enough of him and clung like superglue. When Juno was shown into Luc’s library by the housekeeper, Star was welded to every available inch of Luc in enraptured surrender.

There was the most awful scene, with her mother hurling all sorts of ridiculous accusations and threatening to go to the newspapers. After Juno stormed out again, Luc, who had uttered not a single word in his own defence, turned to Star, where she was cringing with shamefaced guilt. ‘We’ll have to move fast to spike your mother’s guns.’

‘She didn’t mean those things she said!’

‘She’s very bitter, and right now my father’s peace of mind is of paramount importance. A sordid scandal would destroy him. Since I invited this situation, I must ensure that there are no repercussions,’ Luc drawled flatly, no emotion of any kind showing in his lean strong face. ‘The only way I can do that is to marry you as quickly as possible. Your mother can get no immoral mileage out of that development.’

‘M-marry me? You’re asking—?’

‘Not a real marriage,’ Luc emphasised drily. ‘When the need for a cover story is past, we’ll get an annulment. So don’t get excited, mon ange. Nothing has changed.’

Star clasped her trembling hands together. ‘Do I get a wedding ring?’

Luc gave a grudging nod.

‘A dress?’

‘No.’

‘What’s wrong with me pretending it’s a proper wedding?’

‘Your imagination doesn’t need encouragement.’

They married in a civil ceremony in Nantes, attended only by Emilie and Luc’s lawyer. It was not a secret marriage, but neither was it publicised, and, with Roland Sarrazin so ill, people might have questioned their timing, but not the quietness of the ceremony.

Her father-in-law asked to see her after the wedding he had been too weak to attend.

‘I would not dream of questioning Luc’s choice of bride,’ the older man sighed, surprising Star with that assurance while simultaneously appraising her with a morose dissatisfaction that ensured she would not get a swollen head. ‘I hope I know better than to interfere in my son’s private life.’

Before Star’s thoughts could stray on to the devastating disillusioning reality of having been abandoned on her wedding night for another woman, the cold marble beneath her bare feet became uncomfortable enough to dredge her out of her memories. But she still found herself recalling when, later, a minor car smash had put Luc into Casualty with concussion and sent her running panic-stricken to his side. Flatly refusing to be hospitalised overnight, Luc had come home with her. She had just adored fussing round him, insisting he go to bed and getting her crystals out, determined to heal his headache away.

Now she shied away from the recollection of how appallingly immature she had been just eighteen months earlier, and stood up in sudden decision. It might be the middle of the night, but it was time she came clean with Luc about their children at least. Maintaining that fiction was unfair to him.

But when Star returned to the bedroom, Luc was nowhere to be seen. Too worked up now to settle again, Star pulled on jeans and a top and went off to find him. Her troubled reflections marched on. How did she stop craving what Luc could never give? A man couldn’t be forced into loving. So why did she keep on letting her emotions get the better of her? Why had she kidded herself that she was strong enough to spend one last night with Luc? That one night had plunged her back into emotional turmoil. That one night had convinced Luc that she would quite happily settle for sex if she could have him no other way. And Luc, ever the banker, was programmed to take advantage of the best deal he could get. Instead of crying like a drippy wimp, she should have lifted one of those giant ornate lamps in the bedroom and simply brained him with it!

Star had worked up quite a temper by the time she saw the light burning under the door of the library on the ground floor and walked in.

Luc was by the window, a brandy goblet clasped in one lean hand. His hair-roughened chest and his feet were bare, a dark green shirt hanging open over his well-cut chinos. Dressed so casually, and with his jawline darkened by stubble, he looked incredibly unfamiliar to her disconcerted appraisal.

‘Go back to bed,’ Luc advised flatly.

Even though he was standing in the shadows cast by the desk lamp, Star recognised his seething tension and came to a halt several feet away, scanning the fierce angularity of his dark golden features, the warning flash in his eyes before he veiled them and the rigidity of his broad shoulders.

‘Just for once, do as I ask!’ Luc raked with sudden unconcealed fury.

Startled into taking a backward step, Star studied him in honest bewilderment. ‘What have you got to be so angry about? I certainly didn’t ask for this situation with Emilie to develop.’

‘My anger dates back a lot further than yesterday. There was no “situation” until you decided that you were in love with me and refused to back off.’

Her natural colour receded under that surprise attack. ‘But—’

‘Before I married you, I saw only your youth and vulnerability. I didn’t appreciate how far you would go to get what you want!’ Eyes burnished gold with anger sought out and held hers. ‘The first time you approached me I should have squashed you beyond all hope of recovery! But I was reluctant to hurt you. You played on that—’

‘No…’ Star made a tiny awkward movement of appeal with her hand. ‘Not deliberately—’

‘I thought you were sweet, essentially harmless…’ A roughened laugh was wrenched from Luc. ‘But from the minute you came into my life you’ve been as destructive as an enemy tank!’

Star was paralysed to the spot by the shattering effect of Luc casting aside his reserve and getting truly personal. The anger and bitterness he was revealing really shook her up.

‘I’m drunk…’ Luc breathed grimly, as if she had asked a question.

Luc drunk? That struck Star as so extraordinary she just gaped at him. He didn’t look drunk, but he certainly wasn’t behaving with his usual chilling self-command. He had compared her to an enemy tank. She tried to force a smile at that colourful image, but she couldn’t. Shock went on spreading through her, and beneath it only guilt was rising in strength.

‘A lot of men would have taken you up on your invitation that winter.’ Shimmering dark eyes welded to her in unconcealed condemnation. ‘You were very sexy. I was never unaware of your attraction. I was never indifferent, but I kept my distance.’

‘Luc, I didn’t kn—’

‘I went against my father’s wishes when I reunited you with your mother. And how was I rewarded?’

At that unwelcome question, Star’s tummy just flipped.

‘One lousy kiss and I end up having to get married,’ Luc framed jaggedly, pale with sheer outrage at that recollection. ‘But that wasn’t the end of it, was it? You still wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

‘Please don’t say any more, Luc…’ Star urged in desperation. ‘If I could go back and change things, I would, but I can’t! I was obsessed with you…and I’m sorry…but I couldn’t help that, nor could I see how selfish I was being.’

‘You waited until I had a concussion,’ Luc continued between gritted white teeth, his husky accent fracturing audibly. ‘Then you slunk into bed with me when I was asleep. How low can a woman sink?’

Star studied the rug and watched it blur under her filling eyes. Seen through his eyes, framed in his words, her behaviour seemed even worse in retrospect. Yet after that night she had judged herself equally harshly. That was why she had left France. She hadn’t run away; she had simply seen that the very least she could do was get out of Luc’s life and leave him in peace.

Momentarily, she was tempted to mention the role which Gabrielle Joly had played in that final decision. But now that Gabrielle was gone from Luc’s life Star was too proud and still too sensitive on that subject to admit how disillusioned and hurt she had been by the other woman’s apparent hold on Luc. In those days, their marriage had been very much a fake, she reminded herself.

‘And when I finally dared to tell you that no woman was going to trap me into a marriage I didn’t want with sex, what did you do?’ Luc’s dark deep drawl had dropped to a seething whisper of what sounded like near uncontrollable rage.

‘The only thing I could do. I went away,’ she answered heavily.

At that response, Luc shuddered. ‘You went away,’ he echoed unsteadily. ‘You did not just go away!’

In bewilderment, Star stared at him. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘You left me a letter telling me you couldn’t live without me and vanished into thin air!’ Luc shot at her in savage condemnation, devastating her with the force of his anger.

‘What was wrong with that?’