One Night with His Wife(30)

Eyes shuttered, Star stood up, every movement stiff. ‘That I’ve got no plans to forever figure in your mind as that poor deprived child you thought you were rescuing from Mexico. And it’s obvious that’s all I’m ever going to be. Did you honestly think I’d want to stay around after hearing that?’

As she attempted to move past him, Luc shot out a powerful hand to prevent her. ‘You misunderstood me…’ he gritted.

‘No, I asked for the truth and you told me the truth,’ Star recited shakily, tiny tremors of reaction starting to ripple through her slender length. ‘If it wasn’t for the sex, you wouldn’t have any use at all for me. It’s about the only thing I’ve got to offer, isn’t it?’

Luc closed his hand over her rigid shoulder and spun her round. ‘Mais c’est insensé!…That’s crazy!’ he launched down at her roughly. ‘Why are you talking like this?’

Star focused on the top button of his aqua silk open-necked shirt. Inside herself she felt as if she was dying. ‘You really weren’t jealous of Rory,’ she gasped strickenly. ‘My fertile imagination at fault again! But let me tell you one last thing, Luc Sarrazin…you can take your over-developed conscience, your pious outlook and your cruel, unfeeling brain and take a running jump, because I want nothing more to do with you in this lifetime!’

Luc seemed stunned into paralysis by that concluding speech. Star took advantage of his loosened hold to drag herself free and race for the sanctuary of one of the bedrooms.

Crisis. Serious crisis. Those two words stood out in Luc’s head in letters ten feet tall, but he found that for several deeply disturbing minutes, he couldn’t think round them, over them or under them. Then, for a fleeting moment, he recalled the sense of self-satisfaction he had experienced in parrying her questions without even having to think about them. Now he was in shock at the results. He had hurt her, really hurt her.

And you were planning to make her fall in love with you again. A ragged laugh was wrenched from him. The truth was he hadn’t a clue where to start. Total meltdown failure now stared him in the face. But the only face Luc could see was Star’s…ashen, empty, defeated. As if she had given up on him finally and for ever. Luc endured another terrifying few minutes when he couldn’t string two simple thoughts together. He recognised his own instinctive fear for the first time and headed straight for the drinks cabinet, only to freeze. Only a wimpy personality needed alcohol to work out problems…and he hadn’t done so well working them out the last time, had he?



The muslin drapes at the window fluttered softly in the light breeze coming in off the Mediterranean. From her bed, Star was watching the sun sink down below the horizon in a crimson blaze of splendour and listening to the soft rush of the surf.

There had been no tears; she felt totally hollow. It was the end, the literal end. Luc’s every response eighteen months ago had been prompted by guilt and compassion. She had done all the running; she had always done all the running with Luc. Now she was facing the consequences—just as much as he was, she affixed, with a guilt that made her feel even more wretched. Two innocent children were involved now.

As the bedroom door opened, she was jerked out of her reverie. Moonlight glimmered over the paleness of Luc’s shirt. Highwire tension was etched in his taut stance just one step inside the door.

‘You’re right,’ he drawled with staggering abruptness, his accent thick as molasses. ‘I was jealous of Rory…I was so jealous I felt physically sick. You were ecstatic to see him and you touched him. Pour l’amour du ciel…I wanted to beat him up and throw him in the moat!’

Stunned by that blunt confession coming straight at her without warning, Star mumbled. ‘Oh…’

‘But I did not recognise that I was jealous at the time…’ Luc thrust driven fingers through his tousled black hair. ‘I thought it was your over-familiarity with him that was making me angry, but when I think back, you might not have done anything I liked with him, but then neither did you do anything wrong.’

Star nodded very carefully, as if she was willing him to continue.

Luc moved his hands in an odd jerky motion and then lunged back against the door, to slam it in a clear burst of frustration. He thrust his dark head back, hands coiled into fists. ‘I am very, very possessive of you. I know that’s not right, but that seems to be the way I am…’

He sounded really ashamed of that admission. Suddenly needing to see him better than moonlight allowed, Star sat up to switch on the bedside lamp. She collided with staggeringly defensive dark eyes, and her heart ached for him as if he had squeezed it.

‘I was very relieved to realise that you and Rory had never been lovers. But that wasn’t right either…’

That this was the guy who had told her to go off and experiment with boys her own age was silently acknowledged by the self-derisive twist of his wide, sensual mouth.

‘So you’ve got a dog-in-the-manger side to you,’ Star muttered tautly.

‘I haven’t thought about that…’ A flash of dismay showed distinctly in his serious gaze, and even in that tense atmosphere she almost smiled. He looked slightly panicky, as if she had moved off his authorised script and he wasn’t equipped to handle it.

‘What else have you thought about?’ she asked thickly.

‘That I interpreted certain events in the manner that suited my view of myself best,’ Luc admitted. ‘I think I married you because I knew that sooner or later I would lose control and end up in bed with you.’

‘But, Luc, when you got me, you didn’t want me. I was your wife for six weeks—’

‘And I said at the outset it wasn’t to be a real marriage. I’m stubborn,’ he grated with sudden impatience. ‘If I slept with you, then it was a real marriage, a serious commitment…a commitment I hadn’t even considered making at that stage of my life.’

‘So you thought, If I sleep with her, I’ll be stuck with her…and that was enough to keep me in a bed at the foot of the corridor,’ Star said with flat bitterness. ‘Thanks for clarifying that.’

‘It was for your sake as much my own. And will you for once acknowledge that that entire six weeks was spent waiting for my father to die…and then burying him?’ Luc demanded starkly. ‘I know you think I’m unfeeling and cold, but I had a lot more on my mind than my own physical needs!’

Hot, shamed colour washed up over Star’s startled face. She lowered her head, unable to comprehend how she could possibly have overlooked that harsh background to those weeks for so long. But then she hadn’t loved Roland Sarrazin. He had been a distant stranger to her, a grudging guardian, a man with precious little interest in her. ‘Yes…’

‘I was under a lot of stress, and you were very appealing, but I didn’t want to use you just for…comfort,’ he bit out very, very low.

At that, Star lifted her head, aquamarine eyes swimming with tears. ‘So you used Gabrielle Joly instead…’

Luc studied her in complete shock.

‘Yes…I knew about Gabrielle,’ Star confirmed, recognising that that really was a surprise to him.

Striding over to the bed, Luc sank down beside her. ‘How did you find out about Gabrielle?’ he demanded thickly.

She ignored that question. ‘I thought you were finished with her…until our wedding night, when I heard you on the phone to her,’ she shared chokily.

Luc lifted his hand and pushed her tumbled hair off her cheekbone, stunning dark eyes full of regret but also considerable bemusement. ‘And yet you said nothing…you, who could talk up a storm over a leaf falling, said nothing about something so much more important?’

‘You spent our wedding night with her.’

‘Don’t be stupid…’ Luc groaned. ‘How could you be that stupid?’

‘I heard you say you were coming over—’

‘To return my set of keys to her house…’ Unsurprised, it seemed, by Star’s incredulous frown, Luc expelled his breath in a hiss of annoyance. ‘That’s all the excuse I’ve got. It was crazy…and she was certainly very surprised to see me on that particular night. But that night I just needed to get out and I seized the first flimsy excuse I could come up with and acted on it.’

‘To return keys?’ Star repeated in disbelief. ‘On our wedding night? You didn’t come home that night…do you think I don’t know that?’

‘I fell asleep in the car by the riverbank…I never entered her home. I dropped off the keys and realised how open to misinterpretation my call was,’ he shared with palpable discomfiture. ‘I left again immediately.’

Fell asleep in the car? Luc, within a quarter-mile of a home possessed of thirty-odd bedrooms? Luc dropping off keys that he could have had returned without going anywhere near Gabrielle? It was so unlikely a story that Star simply stared at him wide-eyed.

Dark colour overlaid his fabulous cheekbones. ‘It was a mad impulse, foolishly acted on because I didn’t trust myself within reach of you that night. I knew you would come to me…’