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With an inner smile of triumph she waited for him to come back, upping the price. The room was very still.
‘Sir? One thousand and ten?’
The stranger’s eyes held her own, then with agonizing slowness travelled downwards. Her throat felt as if it was full of cement, and through the panicky darkness that gathered at the edges of her vision she thought she registered the slowly spreading smile on his lips. Then, as if from a great distance, through veils of horror and disbelief Bella saw him shake his head.
Her stomach tightened reflexively, as if she’d just been punched, and all the air was driven from her lungs in an instant. Her mouth opened in shock. Through the swirling haze of horror she was aware only of his eyes. Amusement and triumph shone in their dark depths.
‘One thousand and five pounds, then.’ The auctioneer’s gavel hovered. ‘All finished at one thousand and five…? Going once…’
With contemptuous grace the man levered himself up from the wall and stepped forward. His gaze was still locked on her, but suddenly all the amusement had gone from it.
‘Second time at one thousand and five…’
Bella’s heart raced and her lips felt numb and bloodless. She was suddenly horribly afraid that she might faint, and was just stumbling blindly to her feet when she saw the man give the auctioneer a curt nod.
‘Back with you, sir, at one thousand and ten?’ asked the auctioneer.
He nodded again, and turned away from her. Bella sucked in a wild gulp of air. The sharp rap of the auctioneer’s gavel shattered the bubble of unreality in her head, and broke the spell. Ducking her head, she pushed past the rows of curious onlookers and fled, too shattered by the emotions still rampaging through her to even feel relieved.
Eyes narrowed speculatively, Olivier Moreau watched her leave.
Interesting, he thought grimly. Very, very interesting. On several levels.
Notoriously cynical and quickly bored, he wasn’t a man whose interest was easily captured. But by offering approximately ten times too much for an anonymous painting that could be described, at best, as average, she’d got it.
And the hectic sparks in her wide, dark eyes interested him too. She’d wanted that painting very much—enough to almost lose all sense of rationality in the process. She’d been out of control there for a moment and it had scared her. He’d seen it, sensed it.
The thing that interested him most was why?
She’d been in such a hurry to leave that she’d left her jacket lying on the chair, and on his way out he leaned over and scooped it up. It was of soft black linen, and as he held it he caught a soft breath of jasmine in its folds which caught him unawares and rekindled the spark of desire that had been smouldering in the darkness inside him since the moment he’d first seen her.
At the porter’s desk he handed over his bidding number and a thick wedge of banknotes. Waiting for his receipt, he looked down at the linen jacket in his hand, noticing, with a faint, sardonic smile, the very exclusive designer label in the back. Very grown-up, he thought idly, picturing it lying against the creamy skin of her neck. Very expensive, but disappointingly conservative and predictable. He would have liked to see her in something more individual.
And what an enticing carnival of vivid images that thought introduced…
He crushed the fabric back into one hand, decisively squashing a wicked picture of dark, shining hair against crimson silk as he walked out into the humid London afternoon.
It had been a summer of seemingly endless rain, and once again the sky was low and sullen, but Olivier barely noticed as he stood at the top of the steps. He felt restless and unsettled, as if something momentous was about to happen; something he hadn’t quite planned for.
Maybe it was the painting, he mused grimly. Maybe this was it—the one he’d been looking for all these years.
Or maybe it was the girl.
* * *
Stopping dead in the middle of the pavement, Bella swore succinctly as she realised that she’d left her jacket behind in the auction room.
Knickers.
She was about to turn round when she hesitated. So what if the jacket was Valentino, and it belonged to her grandmother? So what if the heavens were about to open and she was only wearing a flimsy black dress? She should have been home ages ago—Miles always rang to check that she’d got back all right, and he’d worry if she wasn’t there when he called, so really she should hurry…
She didn’t move, paralysed by indecision and by the humiliating realization that her reluctance to go back to the auction house had nothing to do with lack of time and far more to do with lack of courage. Defiantly she turned round and began to retrace her steps as frustration swelled inside her, making the back of her throat prickle and her eyes sting. Now would be an excellent time to burst into tears, but unfortunately crying was another thing she’d given up, along with believing in fate and letting her emotions completely get the better of her.
Well, she’d certainly slipped up there. Big style. Her emotions had just had a field day, and all because of a dark-eyed glance from a good-looking man.
Except it hadn’t been just a glance, had it? It had been an open challenge, a direct invitation, an intimate caress. Remembering it now made the skin on the back of her neck tingle as every tiny hair rose and shivered. She thought of those eyes, the measuring way they had lingered on her face, assessing her, then their speculative swoop over her body. She had felt more alive in that moment than in all the dead days of the past five empty months put together.
Life had felt full of excitement and possibility again.
She squeezed her eyes tight shut, trying to summon up that damned white sandy beach as a vortex of unwelcome emotion opened up in front of her. Instead she saw dark eyes, a full, beautiful mouth. With a harsh sound of frustration she opened up her eyes again.
The image remained. Only now it was even more disturbing for being real.
‘Don’t tell me—you’re trying to remember where you left this?’
The man from the auction room was standing a few feet away from her, a smile of sardonic amusement on his face, her jacket held in his outstretched hand. Bella’s cheeks flamed. How long had he been watching her standing in the middle of the street with her eyes closed? He must think she was a complete headcase.
Which was something she usually preferred to conceal…
Hiding her embarrassment behind a screen of chilly hauteur, she snatched the jacket. ‘I see. Not content with taking my painting, you also want my clothes now?’
It was a ridiculous thing to say. Ridiculous. What Miles would call ‘a Bella classic’. The man laughed.
‘That depends. Were you thinking of taking anything else off?’
Hot, treacherous, forbidden desire instantly shot through the shame, dissolving the carefully assembled shreds of Bella’s self-control like Cinderella’s dress on the stroke of midnight. She opened her mouth to make a stinging retort, but for a split second found herself speechless with resentment that he had managed so effortlessly to disturb her careful equilibrium. And then, of course, sense reasserted itself and she knew that any kind of emotional response would be a mistake.
Waves… White sandy beach…
With a huge effort she swallowed back the tide of wonderful, terrible words that threatened to flood from her and hid them behind a small, cold smile.
‘Of course not. Thank you for picking it up. Now, if you don’t mind I’m late and I have to hurry…’
Without looking up at him again she made to turn and walk away, wanting only to distance herself physically from the disturbing, charismatic pull of his presence and reassemble her defences, regain her comfortable numbness. But as she did so he reached out and took her arm, and the sensation of his fingers against her bare skin was like an electric shock. It ricocheted through her, making her flinch.
‘Wait,’ he said quietly. ‘You said “my painting”. In what way is that painting yours?’
Rigid with discomfort, his fingers still clasped around her arm, Bella looked down. ‘It isn’t,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. The painting’s yours now. I know that.’
‘But you’re not happy about it, are you?’
She didn’t reply. His voice was very low and, even standing in the middle of the street with traffic roaring past them along Piccadilly, disturbingly intimate. He shifted his position slightly, so that he was standing right in front of her, and she could see nothing but the solid wall of his chest. It was hard. Broad. Real. Very real. His fingers were still clasped around her arm; not too tightly, but she felt powerless to break away.
‘You wanted it very much,’ he said quietly. It was a statement, not a question.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’
‘It’s…nice,’ Bella said tonelessly, thinking of calm, neutral things. Not thinking of his mouth, or how it would feel to kiss it.
‘Nice?’ Letting go of her arm, he took a step backwards and made a sharp expression of disgust. ‘The hell it is.’
‘I beg your pardon?
Olivier looked at her narrowly. Close up she had the kind of flawless, upmarket beauty that left him cold: short, glossy hair the colour of cherished old mahogany, skin like vanilla ice cream. Earlier on, in the auction room, he had thought he sensed a rawness and a passion in her which intrigued and excited him, but now he saw he’d been wrong. There was nothing but good breeding and good bones.
‘You don’t have to be an art expert to see that it’s rubbish,’ he said brutally. ‘It’s not worth a quarter of the hugely inflated price I just paid for it.’
That seemed to ignite some spark within her again. ‘Then why did you bother?’ she flared. ‘Whycouldn’tyoujust let me have it? I’m not remotely interested in what it’s worth or how collectable it is. I wanted it for reasons that have nothing to do with money.’
‘Meaning?’
Her chin rose an inch. ‘My grandmother grew up in the house in the picture. That’s why I wanted it.’
The sky had darkened, and a warm breeze shivered through the leaves of the trees in the park opposite as the first drops of rain splashed onto the hot pavement. Everything was suddenly very still, as if the regular spin of the world had faltered for a second or two. Olivier almost wanted to reach out to hold on to something to steady himself as for the briefest moment the iron self-control, the bedrock of his being, shivered and shifted.
He took a slow breath in and summoned a bland smile to his stiff face. It felt like ice cracking on a frozen lake.
‘Really? And your name is…?
‘Bella. Bella Lawrence.’
Lawrence. Hearing the name was like a shot of adrenalin: painful, sickening, but exhilarating. He gritted his teeth, scrutinizing her. ‘Well, Bella, what a…coincidence that you found a picture of it. You must have been thrilled.’
If she noticed the acid in his tone she didn’t react. Nothing disturbed the blankness of that porcelain-pretty face. ‘Yes,’ she said sweetly, ‘particularly since it’s her birthday tomorrow and it would have been a perfect present.’ She flashed him a saccharine smile. ‘Obviously I didn’t bargain on some millionaire city boy coming in at the last minute and paying silly money for it, so I’ll just have to think again.’
Millionaire city boy? She’d underestimated him considerably. And because she was a Lawrence that stung.
She turned to go, but he had no intention of letting her disappear yet.
‘What makes you think I’m a millionaire city boy?’
He didn’t move. He didn’t even raise his voice, but she turned back to him and Olivier felt a lick of triumph. As her eyes skimmed over him he took his phone from his inside pocket, barely glancing at it as he speed-dialled. Bella Lawrence shrugged.
‘The suit. The shoes. The arrogance. Am I right?’
‘Sort of.’ Without taking his eyes from hers, he gestured with a terse movement of his head to a gleaming dark green Bentley that was just pulling up at the kerbside. ‘Can I offer you a lift anywhere?’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘Very impressive,’ she said sarcastically. ‘So you’re half millionaire city boy, half magician. What else can you do?’
He gave her a lethal smile. ‘Unfortunately, Mademoiselle Lawrence, my talents are too numerous to list now, while we’re in grave danger of getting soaked to the skin and I’m late for a meeting. But if you’d like to get into the car I’d be only too happy to enlighten you.’
He opened the car door and stood back. The rain was falling harder now, releasing the scent of hot asphalt and damp earth and making the skin on her bare arms glisten, but she didn’t move.
‘No, thank you,’ she said politely. ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea.’
‘Ri-ight.’ His fingers drummed an impatient beat on the roof of the car. ‘And I suppose you’d argue that choosing to get completely and unnecessarily soaked is a stroke of genius, would you?’ He sighed and stood back. ‘Look, you said yourself that you’re in a hurry—if it makes you feel better you can have the car to yourself. My office is just around the corner in Curzon Street. I’ll walk. Just tell Louis where you want to go.’
He took a couple of steps backwards, still watching her, silently willing her to accept the offer. He would find out where she lived eventually, but it would be so much easier to do it this way. The pavement was virtually empty now, as everyone with any sense had rushed to shelter in doorways or disappeared into the dark mouth of the tube. Bella Lawrence stood beside the open door of the Bentley in her expensive black dress, her hair slick with water.
She frowned suspiciously. ‘Why?’
‘The painting—let’s just say it’s the least I can do. Please.’
She glanced up at the angry sky and hesitated. And then, bristling with resentment and indignation, slipped into the car and leaned forward to pull the door briskly shut. She didn’t look at him.
‘My pleasure,’ he murmured sarcastically to himself as the car drew smoothly away from the kerb and was swallowed up by the Friday afternoon traffic.
Though ‘pleasure’wasn’t quite the right word for it, he reflected as he thrust his hands into his pockets and strode through the rain.
Satisfaction.
That was it.
CHAPTER TWO
GENEVIEVE DELACROIX’S face was pale, delicately tinted with a faint rose-pink blush, as if in the aftermath of passion, and her rosy lips were curved in a lazy smile of repletion. Reclining on the velvet-draped couch, she was completely naked, apart from a large and heavily jewel-encrusted gold cross hanging on a length of red velvet ribbon around her neck.
Her eyes, dark blue and watchful, seemed to bore into Olivier’s back as he stood at the glass wall of his apartment, looking down over the most expensive view in London. Eight storeys below him cars sailed noiselessly along Park Lane, and above him planes bound for Heathrow studded the indigo sky with flashing points of light, outshining the stars. But Olivier noticed none of this. The image of the painting swam in front of him, superimposed on the glittering cityscape in the polished sheet of glass.
His instinct about the ‘charming amateur painting’ in the saleroom had been correct. Although it was unsigned, its subject matter—Le Manoir St Laurien—and the distinctively painstaking style of the brushwork had left him in no doubt that it had been painted by his father.
But Julien Moreau was no amateur. Had things been different he would have been one of the most important painters of his generation.
Olivier took a gulp of cognac from the glass in his hand, draining half the contents in a single mouthful, and then, steeling himself as if against a blow, he turned to face the picture behind him. The one that had lain hidden beneath the other work.
La Dame de la Croix.
For years he had searched for this painting. His contacts in the art world spread across the globe and encompassed all the major auction houses, galleries and collections, but since he knew that the portrait of Genevieve Delacroix was likely to have been concealed behind one of Julien’s flawed, later attempts, his contacts had been of little help. He had tried to keep an eye on the catalogues of smaller salerooms, but it had been like searching for a needle in a haystack. The odds had been impossibly stacked against him.
And yet he had done it. The painting was here, propped up on a tall steel bar chair in front of him, as fresh and vivid as if the paint was still wet.
Olivier Moreau prided himself on his ability to achieve. He was a man who got what he wanted through a combination of intelligence, focus and ruthlessness, but he knew that none of that was enough to have pulled off today’s coup.
That had been down to luck. Or maybe fate, or some long-overdue divine justice. Karma, some people might call it; after all, it was about time the mighty Lawrences were made to face up to what they’d done, and now the painting was back in his possession he could begin the process of exacting retribution.
He took another mouthful of cognac and let his gaze run speculatively over Genevieve Delacroix’s luscious flesh. Hypothetically, in the long years when he had dreamed of recovering this picture, he had always imagined he would simply reveal it, and the shocking scandal behind it, to the world in the most high-profile and damaging way possible.
But now that didn’t seem enough.
In his work Olivier operated on a principle of ‘absolute return’. His success lay in his ability to exact profit—maximum profit—from every available opportunity, and in this instance fate had very kindly presented him with not one opportunity, but two. La Dame de la Croix and Bella Lawrence had both fallen into his lap on the same day. He wouldn’t be the man he was if he let a chance like that pass without exploiting it to the full.
Fate…justice…karma—it hardly mattered what you called it. In truth they were all just euphemisms for revenge. The Lawrences didn’t know it yet, but it was payback time.
An eye for an eye.
A tooth for a tooth.
