One Night with His Wife(5)

‘Luc…I wouldn’t let anyone harm Emilie in any way!’ Star argued frantically.

‘So why did you introduce her to Juno?’

‘Why wouldn’t I have? Emilie had always wanted to meet her. I could never have dreamt Juno would ask her for a loan, or that Emilie would even consider giving her money!’

Star raised unsteady hands and pressed them against her taut face in a gesture of frustration. Why would Emilie have loaned money to Juno when she knew that Juno was hopeless with money? It didn’t make sense.

‘Do you want to know why Emilie gave your mother that money?’

Star nodded slowly.

‘Emilie thought that if the gallery got off the ground, you would move up to London and live with Juno. Emilie was hoping to see more of you.’

Every scrap of remaining colour drained from beneath Star’s skin. She twisted away on driven feet, her face stricken. She wanted to cover her ears from Luc’s derisive tone of condemnation. She also wanted to get her hands on her irresponsible, flighty parent and shake her until her teeth rattled in her pretty blonde head.

‘I hold you responsible for all of this,’ Luc delivered in cold completion.

Star’s slight shoulders bowed. ‘I honestly didn’t know about the loan—’

‘I don’t believe you. When you first saw me this evening, your guilty conscience betrayed you.’ Luc strolled fluidly towards the door. ‘Since I’m not getting any satisfaction here, I’ll go to the police.’

Star whirled round, aquamarine eyes aghast. ‘Luc…no…please don’t do that!’

Luc shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘“Please” doesn’t work with me any more. I want blood. I want Juno. If you can’t deliver her, I’m just wasting my time, and I don’t like people who waste my time.’

‘If I knew where she was, I’d tell you…I swear I would!’ Star gasped, hurrying across the expanse of worn slate floor that separated them.

‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d protect her. You’d hide her from me—’

‘No…If she got in touch…’ Star snatched in a shuddering breath, her eyes overbright with unshed tears. ‘I’d tell you. I swear I would. I wouldn’t like doing it, but what Juno’s done to Emilie hurts and angers me very much. My mother was in the wrong—’

‘The police can deal with her. I’ve got enough to hang her with.’

‘No…you can’t do that!’ Involuntarily, she stretched out her hand and pulled at his arm in an attempt to hold him back as he opened the door that led into the passageway.

Luc gazed down at her, eyes glittering black and cold as ice in warning. ‘Don’t touch me…’

Her throat closed over. Her fingers dropped jerkily from his sleeve. She trembled in shock, a mortified wave of hot colour sweeping up her throat. For an instant, she sank like a stone into a bottomless pit of remembered rejection. Their wedding night, which Luc had spent with his beautiful mistress. The unbelievable anguish of loving without return. In a split second she relived it all, aquamarine eyes darkening with pain and veiling.

‘I’ll crucify Juno in court and I’ll divorce you,’ Luc murmured with velvet-soft sibilance.

‘Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg?’ Star flung at him wildly.

Luc raised a withering aristocratic dark brow.

‘I’ll do anything—’

‘Begging doesn’t excite me.’

Startled by that husky assurance, Star lifted her head and looked up at him again. Luc gave her a dark smile, brilliant eyes shimmering beneath his lush black lashes. Heat curled low in the pit of her stomach, jolting her. She quivered, drawn like a moth to a flame.

‘But then I like my women tall and blonde and rather more sophisticated,’ Luc completed with dulcet cool.

Star flinched, stomach turning over at that lethal retaliation.

In the simmering silence the door at the foot of the dim passageway was suddenly thrust noisily wide. Rory strode in, carrying several bulging supermarket carrier bags. He came to a halt with a startled frown. ‘Sorry. When you didn’t hear me knock, I tried the door. I didn’t realise you had company.’

Disconcerted by Rory’s appearance, Star breathed in deep. ‘Rory, this is Luc…Luc Sarrazin. He’s just leaving—’

‘Like hell I will,’ Luc incised, half under his breath, still as a statue now by her side.

Not believing her ears at that intervention, Star glanced at her estranged husband in astonishment.

‘Luc…?’ The bags of groceries in Rory’s hands slid down onto the stone floor as he released his grip on them. ‘You’re…you’re Star’s husband?’

Luc ignored him. His attention was on Star. ‘Does he live here?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Rory stated curtly.

Luc turned his arrogant head back to study Rory. ‘Fiches le camp…get out of here!’

‘I’m not leaving unless Star asks me to…’ The younger man stood his ground.

‘If you stay, I’ll rearrange your face,’ Luc asserted with cool, unapologetic provocation.

‘Stop it, Luc!’ Star was aghast at Luc’s unashamed aggression.

Luc angled back his proud dark head and lounged back against the doorframe like a big powerful jungle cat ready to spring. ‘Stop what?’

‘What’s got into you?’ Star demanded in hot embarrassment.

‘This little punk got my wife pregnant and you dare to ask me that?’ Luc launched back at her, his husky accent scissoring over every syllable with raw incredulity.

‘Rory is not the father of my children!’ Star slammed back at him shakily.

Rory shot a thoroughly bemused look at both of them.

Luc had stilled again. His nostrils flared. His breath escaped in an audible hiss of reaction at that news. ‘So how many experiments did it take?’ he derided in disgust.

Star was ashen pale. She said nothing. Turning away, she closed a taut hand over Rory’s arm and walked him back outside. ‘I’m sorry about this, but it’s better if you go for now. Luc and I need to talk, sort some things,’ she explained tightly.

‘Obviously you haven’t told him about the twins yet.’

‘No…but he wants a divorce,’ she heard herself advance, because she was too ashamed to tell Rory what her mother had done to Emilie.

Rory sighed. ‘Probably the best thing in the circumstances. He seems a pretty aggressive character. I couldn’t see you ever being happy with someone like that.’

Happy? She almost laughed. What was happy? Being separated in every way from Luc had been like living in a void. It hadn’t cured her. Forcing a brittle smile, Star said, ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to have a row with you about buying food for us.’

Closing the back door again, she leant against the solid wood, mustering all her strength. She had assumed that Luc had gone back into the kitchen. So as she moved back in that direction she was surprised to see that the twins’ bedroom door had been pressed more fully open.

Luc was poised several feet from the foot of the cots. Venus was curled on her side, an adorable thatch of copper curls screening her tiny face. Mars was flat on his back, silky dark hair fringing his sleep-flushed features, one anxious hand gripping the little bunny rattle which he never liked to get too far from him.

‘They’re what? Five…six months old?’ Luc queried without an ounce of emotion.

After the number of setbacks the twins had weathered, they were still quite small for their age. Star studied her children with her heart in her eyes, thanking God as she did every time she came into this room that they had both finally been able to come home to her, whole and healthy. She glanced from under her lashes at Luc. His bold dark profile was grim.

‘Would you have liked them to be yours?’ she heard herself whisper foolishly.

‘Tu plaisantes!’

You must be joking! Star reddened fiercely at that retort. What a stupid question to ask! Instead of asking it, she should just have told him the truth. Whether Luc liked it or not, Venus and Mars, fancifully christened by Juno, were his son and daughter.

Luc strode out past her. Leaving the door carefully ajar, Star followed him back into the kitchen.

‘In fact, I’m extremely grateful that they are not my children,’ Luc drawled in level continuation as he took up a commanding stance by the hearth, his lean, dark, devastating features cool as ice. ‘It would have complicated the divorce and made a clean break impossible. Considering that we have about as much in common as oil and water, joint custody would have been a serious challenge.’

Star was pale as death now. His reaction shook her to her very depths. All right, so he had never thought of her as his wife. Yet when Rory had walked in Luc had been angry, aggressive, powered, it had seemed, by some atavistic all-male territorial instinct. She had never seen that side of him before, but now she had to accept that his reaction to Rory had simply stemmed from his savage pride.

Didn’t he have any normal feelings at all? How could Luc just stand there telling her that he was relieved and grateful that her babies were supposedly nothing to do with him? In pained fascination, she searched his face, absently noting the very faint sheen of moisture on his dark golden skin, the unyielding blank darkness of his hooded gaze.