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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.
‘Luc…I—’
‘I was leaving…’ Luc studied his diminutive wife, struggling to distance himself, black fury like a thick, suffocating smoke fogging his usually ordered thoughts. Suddenly he understood why so many unfaithful wives had ended up losing their heads to Madame Guillotine during the French Revolution. Feeling the slight tremor in his hands, he dug them rawly into the pockets of his well-cut pants. Nobody will ever love you as much as I do. Such soft words, such empty promises. He was not a violent man. But he wanted to remind her who she belonged to. No, she did not belong to him, he adjusted at grim speed. He did not want her to belong to him. He had meant every word he had said.
Star moved anxious hands. ‘Could we just talk?’
‘Talk?’ Luc growled, not quite levelly, watching the way the flickering candlelight played over her porcelain-fine skin, accentuating the distinctive colour of her eyes and the full, inviting softness of her ripe mouth.
‘About Juno?’ Star moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and watched Luc tense, his stunning dark eyes welding to her with sudden force.
‘No.’
‘No?’ Colour mantled Star’s cheekbones as the raw tension in the atmosphere increased. Her heart skipped a beat and then began to thump against her ribcage. Her mouth running dry, she tensed in dismay as she felt her breasts lift and swell, the rosy peaks tightening into mortifying prominence.
Luc’s brilliant eyes flamed over her. ‘If you spend the night with me, I’ll let you both off the hook…’
‘I b-beg your pardon?’ Star stammered dizzily.
‘I won’t put the police on Juno’s trail.’ He gazed back at her steadily, not a muscle moving in his lean, strong face. ‘One night. Tonight. That’s the price.’
Her soft full mouth fell open. She closed it again, and tried and failed to swallow. She felt as if the ground had suddenly fallen away beneath her feet. ‘You’re not serious…you can’t be!’
The silence shimmered like a heatwave between them.
Star trembled.
‘Why shouldn’t I be serious?’ Luc angled his well-shaped dark head back, a hard smile slanting his wide, sensual mouth. ‘One night only. Then tomorrow you travel down to London with me to see Emilie. Together we reassure her that she has nothing further to worry about. After that, we never see each other again in this lifetime.’
Her stomach twisted at that clarified picture. ‘But you don’t want me—’
‘Don’t I?’ Luc moved a slow, fluid step closer, dark eyes mesmerically intense as they scanned her bemused face. ‘Just one more time…’
‘You don’t want me. You never did! I’m not your type,’ Star argued, as if she was repeating a personal mantra, a fevered, disbelieving edge to her voice.
‘Except in bed,’ Luc extended without hesitation.
Star stilled in astonishment. Then she jerked in reaction to that revelation. He was finally acknowledging a fact he had refused to concede eighteen months earlier. Luc could find her desirable. The night the twins had been conceived, Luc had genuinely responded to her, not just to the anonymous invitation of a female body in his bed. The following morning, his cold silence on that point had shattered what little had remained of her pride.
Anger and regret now foamed up inside her in a bewildering surge. ‘Couldn’t you just have admitted that to me eighteen months ago?’
‘No,’ Luc drawled smoothly. ‘It would have encouraged you to believe that our marriage had a future.’
The heat still singing through Star’s blood suddenly slowed and chilled. Such cool calculation stabbed her to the heart and unnerved her.
‘But that was then and this is now,’ Luc stressed with syllabic sibilance.
Now, she repeated to herself in reminder. Now, when Luc had knocked her sideways by suggesting that they spend one last night together. Why not? With his customary cool he had already boxed her in with cruel, unfeeling boundaries to ensure that she didn’t misunderstand the exact tenor of his proposition.
He had told her he wanted a divorce. He had told her that after tomorrow they would never meet again.
Star’s throat constricted. Her wretched body might quicken at one glance from those stunning dark eyes of his, but did he really think she held herself that cheap?
‘You don’t want me enough…’ Even as that impulsive contention escaped her Star tried to bite the words back, for they revealed all too much of her own feelings.
Luc surveyed her steadily, devastating dark eyes fiercely intent. ‘How much is enough?’
She wanted him on his knees. She wanted him desperate, telling her that never in his life had he experienced such hunger for any woman. If she couldn’t get into his mind, it would be the next best thing. Hot colour warmed her cheekbones.
‘How much?’ Luc repeated huskily.
‘M-more…’ The current of excitement he generated in her as he moved closer literally strangled her vocal cords.
More? What did that mean? Familiar frustration raked through Luc. He felt like a man trying to capture a dancing shard of sunlight. He felt out of his depth, which infuriated him. He had expected her to grab that offer with both hands. She never looked before she leapt. She was as hot for him as he was for her. He saw it in her, he could feel it in her, only this time she was holding back. Star, exercising restraint? Why? What more could he offer?
‘Cash inducement?’ Luc enquired with lethal cynicism.
Her eyes widened, and then she couldn’t help it. A nervous laugh bubbled from her dry throat.
His superb bone structure snapped taut, hooded dark eyes glittering. He reached out a lean brown hand, closed it over her narrow wrist and tugged her close, so close she stopped breathing. ‘You think this is funny?’
Belatedly, Star saw that he didn’t. He thought she was laughing at him, but sheer disbelief had made her laugh. She gazed up into the night-dark depths of his eyes. The wickedly familiar scent of him washed over her. The faint tug of some citrus-based lotion overlaying warm, husky male. She wanted to bury her face in his jacket and breathe him in like an intoxicating drug.
‘Not funny…sad.’ Star struggled to retain some element of concentration even as his raw magnetism pulled at her senses on every level. ‘I think you’d prefer it if I asked for money.’
He released his breath in a stark hiss. ‘That’s rubbish—’ ‘You could call me greedy then. You could judge me, stay in control.’
‘I’m not out of control.’
‘You like paying for things…you don’t value anything that comes free,’ Star condemned shakily, fighting not to lean into him.
‘Ciel!’ Luc countered with roughened frustration and impatience. ‘Since you and your mother entered my life, everything has had a price!’
At that charge, which had its basis in actual fact, Star paled. Simultaneously from somewhere in the distance there was the most almighty screeching sound, followed by a loud crash. As she jerked back from him, Star’s eyes flew wide with dismay.
Luc swung away with a frown. ‘What was that?’
Star groaned. ‘It sounded like the scaffolding coming down.’
Loosing an impatient expletive in his own language, Luc headed for the door. Star only then recalled that he had parked his car beneath the scaffolding surrounding the tower. Pausing this time to thrust her feet into the leather toe-post sandals lying on her bedroom floor, she hurried outside after him.
When she reached Luc’s side he was poised in silence, scanning the huge heap of twisted metal framing and rotten splintered wooden panels which had come down on top of his gorgeous sports car. The car was all but buried from view on three sides.
‘Pour l’amour du ciel…’ he ground out in raw disbelief, abruptly springing back into motion to stride towards the still accessible driver’s door.
‘What are you doing?’ Star cried in panic, grabbing his sleeve to hold him back.
‘I need my mobile phone!’ Luc launched down at her.
‘Are you crazy?’ Star pointed to the single tier of scaffolding still hanging at a precarious angle above the destruction below. ‘That could fall at any minute!’
‘Oui…I’m crazy.’ Luc flung her a grim slashing glance. ‘When you last looked into your little crystal pyramid, did you put a curse on me?’
Star stiffened until her muscles were as tight as a drum skin. After that derisive response, she resisted the urge to tell him that many people believed in the value of crystal healing. ‘There’s a phone in the kitchen. You’re welcome to use it.’
She walked away, but before she disappeared from sight she stole an anxious glance back. She could see that Luc was still calculating the chance of that last section of scaffolding falling at the exact moment he retrieved his phone from his car.
‘Don’t you dare, Luc Sarrazin!’ Star screamed back against the wind, infuriated by his obstinacy, that indefinable male streak which could not bear to duck a challenge.
And in that split second, with a wrenching noise of metallic protest, the remainder of the frame leant outward and came tumbling thunderously down, forcing Luc to back off fast.
Well, that took care of that problem, Star reflected gratefully, and hurried back indoors again.
Luc followed her into the kitchen and approached the huge built-in dresser where the phone sat. ‘Who owns this Gothic horror of a dump?’ he demanded in a flat tone of freezing self-restraint. ‘I intend to sue the owner.’
‘Last I heard, Carlton was on a Caribbean island repairing boat engines for the locals. He’s poorer than a church mouse,’ Star proffered ruefully.
At that news, Luc breathed in so deep she marvelled at the capacity of his lungs. ‘That structure was in a very dangerous condition—’
‘Yes. An accident waiting to happen.’
His glorious accent was so thick it growled along her nerve-endings like rough tweed catching on the smoothest silk. He was furious, she recognised, outraged by the owner’s irresponsibility, not to mention any circumstance which could maroon him in a dilapidated dwelling at the back end of nowhere. She watched him shoot a granite-hard glance of displeasure at his homely surroundings and the strangest feelings began blossoming in Star.
At that instant, Luc was just so human in his fury and his exasperation he provoked a huge melting tide of sympathetic warmth within her. His control over his emotions was so engrained he would not allow himself to shout and storm like most other men would have done. Yet he would be feeling so much less tense and angry if he let himself go. Of course, he wouldn’t let himself go, she conceded wryly. But such infuriating events as collapsing scaffolding did not figure much in Luc’s life.
He rarely drove himself anywhere. He was a brilliant banker with immense power and influence. A fabulously wealthy but driven workaholic, who had his routine as slavishly organised for him as a prisoner locked up behind bars. His daily existence was smoothed by servants, efficient bank staff, a fleet of chauffeur-driven limos and helicopters and a private jet. In his world of gilded privilege, disaster was invariably kept at a distance, and the irritating, time-consuming repercussions dealt with by someone else.
‘I’m really sorry about this…’ Star sighed heavily.
Luc lifted a candle to enable him to see the numbers on the phone. ‘This is medieval,’ he complained with slashing incredulity. ‘Did the storm bring down the power supply?’
‘No. The lights don’t work in here. The whole place needs rewiring, but Carlton can’t afford to do repairs. However, the phone’s still working.’ That was why the original caretaker had moved out, and the only reason why Star had a rent-free roof over her head.
She watched Luc stab out a number on the phone with an imperious forefinger. He’d be calling for another car. When he walked out, she’d never see him again. Her thoughts screeched to a bone-jarring halt on that realisation. Like an addict suddenly forced to confront the threatening horrors of denial ahead of her, Star was aghast at that reality. That sense of total loss felt so terribly final she wanted to chain him to the wall, to hold onto him for just a little longer. But she didn’t need to chain him, did she? He had already offered her a time extension, a little slot, a ridiculously narrow little slot.
Why had he asked her to spend one more night with him? Was it to be his treat or her supposed punishment? My goodness, she thought headily, that one night at the chateau must’ve been something reasonably acceptable on his terms. For here was the proof she had never expected to receive. Luc was asking to repeat that night, asking the only way he knew how, asking the only way he would allow himself to ask…bargaining from a position of strength and intimidation. Stripping everything bare of emotion, foreseeing every possible future complication but, with a remarkable lack of foresight, risking those same complications. Whooshing tenderness swept over Star like a tidal wave: Luc was acting out of character.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Luc shot at her with a dark, questioning frown. ‘This phone is acting up!’
‘It’s the storm…put the receiver down and try again,’ she advised quietly.
One more night, she bargained with herself. It would be pure and utterly foolish self-indulgence. She would make no excuses for herself. It wasn’t sensible, but then loving and wanting Luc Sarrazin had never been sensible. Tomorrow she would have to face up to the divorce and the fact that they were like two different planets, forever condemned to spin in separate orbits. Just not meant to be.
Luc was now telling someone at the other end of the line that he wanted a limo to pick him up as soon as possible.
