One Night with His Wife(9)

Refusing to give way to that degrading desire, Star sat in the kitchen by the light of one candle. She didn’t trust herself to get back into bed with him. She didn’t even trust herself asleep in bed with him. Around Luc she did things she would not have dreamt of doing with any other man. Of course this time it was only the lure of his sexual magnetism, his heartbreaking good-looks, his lithe, beautifully built body. In other words, sex—and he was very, very good at sex; that was the only reason she was still tempted…



The limousine arrived at eight the next morning. The chauffeur delivered a garment bag and a small case to the door and then retreated back to the car.

By then Luc was already up, although Star had yet to see him. Minutes earlier she had heard the shower running in the bathroom, and had marvelled at Luc’s staying power under that freezing cold gush. Her own record was three minutes, and she always boiled the kettle for hot water to wash her hair. She put the garment bag and the case into the bedroom and went back into the kitchen to wait.

She had already fed the twins and dressed them in their best outfits: Venus in a pink velour top and leggings, Mars in navy dungarees with a checked shirt. They looked cute. At least, Star thought they did. Hopefully, at some stage, a vague memory of the twins looking cute and cuddly would slightly soften the blow of paternity coming Luc’s way. When the divorce proceedings began she would have to get a solicitor. She would then tell her solicitor to tell Luc’s solicitor that Luc was the father of her twins.

Star could see no reason to confront Luc with the fact that he was a father face to face. Luc was going to be furious. Luc was going to feel trapped and resentful. Luc liked everything to go to plan. Only he hadn’t planned on succumbing to her the night she’d sneaked into his bed, and she hadn’t planned as far as him actually succumbing, so she hadn’t taken any precautions against pregnancy. Why should she put herself through a humiliating scene like that? Nothing she could do or say would make the fact of the twins’ existence any more palatable to him, she reasoned painfully. It would be much easier all round if he received the news from a third party.

Just then, she heard Luc’s steps in the passageway. Her tension level shot so high she felt light-headed. She fixed a really bright and friendly smile to her face. Luc strode through the door as immaculate and elegant as if he had just strolled out of the Sarrazin bank in Paris. Charcoal-grey suit, burgundy silk tie, pale silk shirt. He looked spectacular, and very, very intimidating.

‘You should have wakened me earlier,’ he drawled smoothly.

Encountering brilliant dark eyes as cool as ice, Star hung on gutsily to her smile. ‘Do you want some breakfast?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Luc glanced at his watch. ‘If you’re ready, we should leave now for London.’

The horrible silence stretched. But he wasn’t touched by it. Or by her discomfiture. She could see that. Inside himself, Luc was already so far from her he might as well have been back in France. There wasn’t a hint of warmth or intimacy. There was nothing. It was as if last night had never happened. And Star, who had believed herself prepared for whatever he might choose to throw at her the morning after, just could not cope with that complete denial.

‘Do you think I’m going to cling to you now or something?’ she heard herself demand rawly.

Luc froze, but on the way to freezing he winced.

Hot-cheeked with fury and pain, Star stepped forward. ‘I’m over you!’ she launched at him.

‘We haven’t got time for a scene,’ Luc murmured deflatingly.

Star trembled, and her hands squeezed into defensive fists. ‘Saying how I feel is not creating a scene!’

Luc elevated an aristocratic brow. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that I might not be interested in how you feel?’

The angry colour drained from her skin, her expressive eyes shaken.

As Star spun away, Luc gritted his even white teeth. That sunny smile she had greeted him with had filled him with volcanic rage. The Star he remembered would have been self-conscious, shy. Not this one. Involuntarily, he recalled the wild sweetness of her response the night he had consummated their marriage. His body reacted with a surge of fierce arousal, infuriating him.

As a punishment, he made himself focus on the shabby playpen and its tiny occupants. Both babies were watching him with surprisingly intent expressions. The littlest one, with the explosion of copper curls, the colour of which jarred horribly with her pink outfit, gave him a big, gummy winsome smile. That smile was so hopeful and appealing that in spite of the mood he was in he very nearly smiled back. Focusing on the little boy, with his solemn dark brown eyes and slightly anxious air, Luc was astonished to find himself thinking that they were remarkably attractive babies. He looked swiftly away again, but not before he had reminded himself that those children were now his responsibility as well. Who else was there to support them?

Star turned back, determined to stand her ground, no matter how much his attitude upset her. ‘We had a good time in bed last night. It was just sex. I know that,’ she told him fiercely. ‘But it was my way of saying goodbye to you. I will not be treated like some sleazy one-night stand.’

Luc surveyed her with dark, deep eyes and remained maddeningly silent.

Star squared her slight shoulders. ‘Believe it or not, I’m really happy now that we’re getting a divorce. I have someone in my life who cares about me and now I’ll be free to enjoy that relationship. He has a heart, and an imagination…and he talks as well.’

Luc’s narrowed gaze chilled her to the bone. The atmosphere seemed to have dropped in temperature to the level of a polar freeze. ‘Are you finished?’

Star compressed her lips and spun away, wondering why she had bothered to try and get through to him. ‘I’ll get the twins’ car seats—’

Luc frowned. ‘You’re planning to bring them with us?’

Star spun back in bewilderment. ‘What else would I do with them?’

It was clear that it had not occurred to Luc to wonder what else she might do with the twins. But then in his world young children were invariably in the convenient care of a nanny.

‘You just didn’t think, did you?’ she said witheringly. ‘Where I go, Venus and Mars have to go too.’

Luc stilled, his ebony brows drawing together. ‘Venus…and Mars?’

‘Juno christened them in their incubators.’ Star hated the defensive edge she heard in her own voice. ‘I know their names sound a little fanciful, and I may have put Viviene and Max on their birth certificates, but Venus and Mars are names which gave them good luck when they really needed it.’

‘Venus and Mars,’ Luc repeated with a sardonically curled lip.

Cheeks warm with angry colour, Star scooted past him to fetch the car seats from the twins’ bedroom. As she emerged, Luc lifted them from her hands with easy strength. ‘I’ll take these outside.’



As the limousine drove towards London, Star worked hard at not looking in Luc’s direction. But she remained agonisingly conscious of his all-pervasive presence. Their relationship, it seemed, had turned full circle. Once again, Luc was taking her to Emilie Auber and then planning to walk out of her life again. Her mind roamed back to their first fateful meeting eleven years earlier…

Her stepfather, Philippe Roussel, had died when she was nine. In his will he had named Roland Sarrazin as her guardian. Since Philippe hadn’t had contact with the Sarrazins since his own childhood, he could only have chosen Luc’s father in the hope that the wealthy banker might feel obligated to offer his widow and her child financial help.

By then, Juno and Star had been living on the breadline in Mexico. Philippe had been charming, but hopelessly addicted to gambling. Only after his death had Juno shamefacedly admitted that she had fallen pregnant with Star before she’d met Philippe, and that he had not been Star’s real father.

Roland Sarrazin had sent Luc to Mexico to track them down. At the time, Juno had been feeling a failure as a mother.

‘I had no job, no money, no proper home for you, and you were missing out on your education. I thought that the Sarrazins would take care of you until I got my life sorted out. Then I would bring you back to live with me,’ Juno had shared painfully years later, when mother and daughter had finally been reconciled after their long separation. ‘How could I ever have dreamt that it would be nine years before I saw you again?’

Juno was still very bitter about that. Roland Sarrazin had applied to a French court to gain full custody of her daughter.

Luc had only been twenty then, but he had had an authority and a maturity far beyond his years. Star had waited outside their shabby one-room apartment while Luc talked to her mother. Within a couple of hours of that meeting Star had found herself accompanying Luc on a flight back to France.

Luc hadn’t had a clue how to talk to a child, but he had made a real effort to be kind and reassuring. He had also appeared to believe that she was coming to live with his family, and he had described Chateau Fontaine, their fabulous seventeenth-century home in the Loire valley.

But on their arrival there his father’s air of frigid disapproval had frightened and confused Star. Apart from commenting that she was a astonishingly plain little girl, Luc’s beautiful mother, Lilliane, had displayed no more interest in her than she might have done in a stray cat.