One Night with His Wife(35)

‘Luc…’ A female voice interposed uncertainly.

Luc swung round and then lowered his gaze to focus on his tiny mother-in-law. He froze.

‘If Star says you didn’t carry on with that Gabrielle on your wedding night, that’s good enough for me.’

‘We agreed you weren’t going to say that,’ Bruno groaned from behind Juno.

‘But Luc needs to know that I don’t believe that any more, and that I intend to like him from now on!’ Juno argued.

‘Thank you, Juno,’ Luc murmured hurriedly.

Her mother gave him a big hug and almost squashed Venus in the process. Hovering in the background, Bertille offered her assistance.

Cradling Mars in one arm, Bruno smiled and extended his other hand to Luc. ‘I’m sure you appreciate my daughter.’

‘Even more since you brought her home,’ Luc completed levelly.

Minutes later, Luc closed an arm back round Star. ‘You look totally ravishing and gorgeous in that dress, mon ange.’

Her heartbeat quickened as she collided with his eyes and she just smiled and smiled.

While drinks were being served, Luc introduced her to loads of people. Star saw Emilie in the crush, but didn’t get the opportunity to do more than exchange a brief hug and the promise of conversation at some later stage. A wonderful buffet meal awaited them, delightfully informal and unfussy, just as Star preferred things. Luc stayed by her side all the time. In fact he was like superglue, and her mother had to be quite pushy to manage to share a private word with her.

‘I just want to say that I’m sorry that I browbeat Bruno into spiriting you and the twins away from Luc at the church,’ Juno confided then worriedly. ‘When I saw how distraught Luc was when we brought you back, I was really very ashamed. I never thought he had it in him to really love you as he so obviously does.’

Well, he loves the kids certainly, Star conceded inwardly, too used to her mother’s love of exaggeration to credit that viewpoint. As Emilie waved at her, Star passed on from her mother to settle down on a seat beside the older woman.

‘I’m overjoyed to see Luc and you together like this,’ Emilie told her warmly.

‘By the way, that wedding night thingy I thought happened with Gabrielle…’ Star whispered urgently. ‘I misjudged Luc. It never happened.’

‘I’m relieved to hear that, because I always did find it rather difficult to believe,’ the older woman admitted gently. ‘At the same time, I was very much to blame for what happened between you and Luc that winter.’

Star gave Emilie an amazed look. ‘What on earth are you saying?’

Emilie sighed. ‘I tried to be a matchmaker and I encouraged you to love Luc. But you were far too young, and Luc was too upset by Roland’s illness to concentrate on his own feelings. I should have waited at least another year. I’m a terrible old plotter and planner, Star.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Star told her.

‘The main reason I gave Juno all that money was…oh, this is dreadful to have to confess,’ the older woman whispered guiltily. ‘Star, I knew there was a fair chance that the art gallery would fail, and I was praying that if it did it would bring you and Luc and the children together. You have no idea how wretched he was after you left him.’

Star’s ears pricked up. Shaken though she was at what Emilie had revealed, her reference to Luc being wretched superceded all other things. ‘Wretched?’

‘And not being able to tell him where you were seemed so cruel, but I had given you my promise and you had been badly hurt. However, Luc was dreadfully unhappy as well.’

‘Was he? He was worried, of course. I was very childish, not getting back in touch—’

‘Star…’ Luc intervened from several feet away. ‘We get to open the dancing with a waltz.’

‘Dancing too?’ Star gasped, jumping up and then freezing. ‘How do you waltz?’

‘You can pick it up.’

‘In front of three hundred people?’ she yelped. ‘Can you jive?’

‘No—’

‘Fancy picking that up in front of three hundred people?’

‘You do have a way of making a point, ma femme.’ Luc framed her face and kissed her softly, tenderly on her surprised lips. ‘I want everybody to go home so that I can be alone with you.’

‘Party pooper,’ she teased, a shiver of such powerful physical awareness gripping her she blushed. ‘OK…I’ll try to waltz, but we go slow.’

They drifted round the magnificent ballroom, so enveloped in each other that Star never even noticed what her feet were doing. And when they finally came off the floor, a long while later, Rory appeared with an attractive blonde by his side and apologised for his late arrival. Star was really delighted that Luc had thought to invite him.



Late evening, with only family members remaining, Star and Luc went upstairs. She snuggled up against him and whispered happily and without even thinking about it, ‘I still love you so much…’

Luc stopped dead outside their bedroom door. ‘No, you don’t,’ he countered. ‘I’m still working on that.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded.

A faint furrow drew his ebony brows together. ‘You said still…are you saying you never stopped loving me?’

‘Didn’t I tell you I was going to love you all my life?’

‘But then you ran away,’ Luc pointed out flatly. ‘Stayed away. I had to make threats to get you back, and you didn’t exactly grab at the chance to stay married to me—not that I can blame you for that, but—’

‘Oh, Luc, I have done a number on you…’ Star said guiltily as she opened the bedroom door, thinking that the corridor wasn’t the best place to be staging such a personal dialogue. ‘I was just trying to be cautious for both our sakes, and I was scared of being hurt again.’

‘I don’t need to hear you saying you love me again until you can really mean it…’

‘I mean it now.’

‘But how can you?’ His dark eyes were very strained. ‘I messed up everything eighteen months ago. I didn’t even know what was going on in my own mind, never mind yours! I drove you away. If I had set out to make a hash of our marriage I couldn’t have done better than I have done so far.’

‘But you’re doing just great…’ Star protested.

‘I have been trying,’ Luc acknowledged—rather touchingly, she felt. ‘I took your love for granted when I had it. I liked having you loving me. You were spot-on when you said that. But even when you had gone, and I was bloody miserable, I still didn’t grasp why! I just thought I was worried about you.’

‘I’m here now, and I still love you very, very much,’ Star repeated soothingly.

‘I had this nightmare last night…and that’s how I realised…finally…that I love you,’ Luc delivered jerkily, a dark rise of colour highlighting his cheekbones.

Star was a little confused. ‘A nightmare?’

Luc shrugged, studied his feet. ‘It was stupid. I dreamt that Bruno and Juno would take you away. Juno never took to me, so there was no reason why he should—and, believe me, if your father wanted you to vanish, he’s got the power to do it. It made me feel…sick, knowing that—’

‘Oh, Luc.’ Star sighed painfully, decided never, ever to tell him that there had been the smallest risk or chance of her vanishing in case he hated her mother for ever.

‘So when you got into their car outside the church…and then I saw that the twins were gone too…that’s the moment I registered that I loved you…when I thought I had lost the lot of you—my whole family!’ he grated, lifting his arrogant dark head and studying her with such powerful emotion that her heart tipped over inside her. ‘And I hadn’t even told you how I felt.’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t just panic?’

Luc loosed a reluctant laugh at that question. Casting off his jacket, he closed his arms slowly round her. ‘I’ve been in love with you for a very long time—’

‘You can tell me anything,’ Star encouraged.

He swept her onto the bed and pulled her close. ‘First, I lost interest in Gabrielle. Then I just liked you…you fascinated me, and I suppose that’s where I should have grasped that I was feeling something I’d never felt before. But I didn’t grasp it. You have no idea how devastated I was when you left me. It was like the light went out of my life. So I just blamed you for making me feel that bad.’

‘Typical…’ she said, softly kissing the corner of his beautiful mouth, cherishing that phrase about her being a ‘light’.

‘And everything with you was always devastating.’

‘The enemy tank syndrome?’

‘Thinking the kids were some other man’s, thinking I’d lost your love, not even knowing why I wanted you to still love me and then feeling really bitter—’

‘I told you love was messy.’

‘Then I seized on the twins as an excuse to hang onto you, so I didn’t have to work out how I really felt.’ Star removed his tie and began unbuttoning his shirt.