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She straightened and folded her arms. ‘Look, that’s exactly what it is. We both know that. I’d prefer if we could just be honest about it. What I’m saying to you is that I don’t need to be given any kind of platitudes. I’m not going to be clingy or want anything more. If you said to me right now that this is over, and thanks but goodbye, I’d have no problem walking out of here.’
Pascal had gone very still, his eyes very black. No doubt he wasn’t used to lovers calling the shots, Alana thought cynically. And why did her flip words cause an ache somewhere in the region of her chest? She pushed it aside. The truth was this: Pascal was not a man she could trust in a million years. And she’d vowed to herself never to trust again. Never to be so silly, naïve.
Pascal put down his coffee cup, too, and walked towards her slowly. Alana stood her ground, but had the impression that she’d woken a sleeping dragon.
‘I’ll admit that your honesty is both tantalising and refreshing.’
‘It is?’ she asked.
Pascal nodded. He was close enough to touch now.
‘Yes. We both know that when the time comes, we’ll walk away without a backward glance, happy with what we’ve had.’
‘Exactly.’ Alana nodded vehemently. ‘I don’t mean to sound … crass, it’s just that I’ve been married. I’ve had that experience and I never, ever want to go near it again. Not even in the form of a tenuous commitment—and I know you’re not even offering that.’ She stopped and cursed herself; she sounded like a bumbling idiot. ‘What I’m trying to say is that I’m not looking for anything. I know you’re a playboy.’
His eyes flashed, and Alana’s insides clenched painfully but she ploughed on. ‘I’m not expecting anything more. I can’t begin to tell you how comfortable I am with that.’
‘A no-strings, no-consequences affair—we both walk away when we get bored.’
She nodded. She knew that time wouldn’t be far off. A man of Pascal’s voracious tastes wouldn’t be content with someone like her for long. Not when there were other, more beautiful women waiting in the wings.
He came very close and snaked a hand round the back of her head. His eyes were still dark, unreadable, and his jaw had a rigidity to it that made Alana instinctively want to smooth it, relax it.
‘Well, then, seeing as how it’s doubtful you will ever be back here with me, now that the sands of time are slipping away from us, we should make the most of here and now, n’est-ce pas?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean, Alana—’ his voice had a hard edge ‘—is that we’re wasting too much time talking when we could be saying goodbye to Rome and this weekend in a very satisfactory way.’
He kissed her for a long, drugging moment, hauling her whole body against his. When he pulled back, and Alana fought to regain her breath, she said, ‘But your plane … we have to leave.’
He shook his head, eyes flashing dangerously. ‘That’s the beauty of being a playboy—my crew are very used to last-minute changes.’
Alana felt a knife skewer her inside, so hurt for a moment that she felt winded. And yet this was exactly what she’d asked for. Demanded. And when he bent his head to kiss her again, and started to open her shirt, she couldn’t stop him because if she did he’d know that all of her proclamations were built on a very flimsy foundation.
With the lingering heat of their recent impassioned love-making still in her blood and heavy limbs, Alana’s focus came back to the present. The earth below was an indistinct mass of brown mountains seen through breaks in the cloud. She sighed and let her head fall back against the seat, closing her eyes. She was playing with fire; she knew it. And all the trust issues in the world weren’t going to keep her safe from harm.
As his private jet winged Alana home in style and comfort, the novelty and charmlessness of commercial travel was quickly reminding Pascal how far he’d come. Although, he could never forget his upbringing; it was branded onto his skin like a tattoo. He could remember how close he’d come to being one of the lost youths of the Parisian suburbs: lost to a life of crime and drugs, hopelessness. Until his mother had died and had thus saved him, by ensuring that he would go to live with his grandfather. She had redeemed herself and her woeful mothering by making sure he’d take another path, despite the fact that he’d been a representation of everything that had failed in her own life.
Pascal strode free of the gnarled mass of human traffic in Charles de Gaulle airport and sank into the back of his car which was waiting just outside the doors. Why was he thinking of such things now, when he hadn’t thought of them in years?
Alana.
A woman was making him think of these things, when no other lover had ever done so. He had to concede that no other lover had taken him by the scruff of the neck and rattled him so completely. No other lover had evoked within him a compelling need to obey instinct over intellect. He hadn’t lived like that for a long time. She connected to something within him, primitive and long-suppressed, deep and visceral. He searched desperately to justify this feeling, to rationalise it, but his brain wouldn’t cooperate.
When she’d stood there earlier and had coolly informed him that she was fine with their temporary affair, that above all she didn’t expect commitment, he should have been rejoicing. Wasn’t it a man’s ultimate fantasy? For a man like him, happy to take lovers for a short time until they bored him, or until they started looking for more.
Here he was, being offered this fantasy on a plate, and he well knew that she meant every word she’d said. It wasn’t some kind of devious reverse-psychology. So why had he felt anything but relieved? Why had he wanted to challenge her? Why had that instinct not to let her go felt so strong? He’d certainly never aspired to the empty heights of marriage, either; he’d learnt at an early age that searching for that elusive happiness only bred disillusionment and pain. His parents had both proved in their own ways to be prime examples of that. His father had seen him as nothing but a threat to his own marriage, and had rejected him outright because of it.
Yet Alana was making him question the very bedrock on which he’d built his life. His sluggish brain finally kicked into gear: attraction. That had to be it. A rare form of lust. He just hadn’t met a woman who’d taken possession of his body and mind before, that was all. That had to be all. OK, so she wasn’t into anything permanent—well, neither was he. He just wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of the ultimatum, that was all. He relaxed. Their affair certainly wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
‘You know we’re just concerned, love.’
‘I know, Mam, I know.’ Alana sank into her couch, still wearing her coat.
‘He seems like a very nice man. He’s awfully important, isn’t he?’
Alana bit back a rueful smile. ‘Nice’ hardly did him justice. ‘Em, yes, he’s quite important. But, Mother, don’t go getting any ideas, now. It’s nothing special.’ Liar.
Her mother trilled a laugh down the phone. ‘I might not quite understand these new relationships, but, love, I know how hard it was for you when Ryan died. It’s OK to move on now, it’s been long enough. No one would expect you to mourn for ever.’
Alana felt a wave of isolation come over her. Her parents had never really acknowledged the fact that she’d been divorcing Ryan; it had simply been too painful for them to admit that one of their children had failed in their marriage that way. So, when Ryan had died so tragically just before the divorce had come through, Alana had known that in some awful way, it had allowed her parents to believe in the myth of her fairy tale. Was it any wonder she hadn’t been able to confide in them?
After a few more words they finished the conversation, and Alana was relieved that her mother hadn’t mentioned Pascal again. She shook her head and then resolutely turned off her phone before she could get another acerbic call from her sister, Ailish, who would no doubt have seen the same gossip rags as her mother. She and Pascal were all over the press; the reporters had been waiting at Dublin airport. She knew she’d been naïve to think for a second that perhaps people wouldn’t be interested.
Why did she have to go and meet someone who made her feel alive again, someone she couldn’t resist? Someone in the public eye on a level that made Ryan O’Connor seem as if he’d been in the Z-list celebrity pile? It was as if she’d had a list of things to avoid and had blithely ignored each and every one of them. Alana just hoped that she could look at Pascal one day soon and not feel that burning desire rip through her entire body like a life-sustaining necessity.
CHAPTER SIX
THREE heady, passion-filled weeks later, that day was eluding Alana spectacularly as she looked down from her position in the press box to the VIP area in Croke Park. Déjà vu washed over her as she caught Pascal’s eye and made a face before turning her attention back to the game between Ireland v England. Her heart was singing, her breath was coming fast, and her blood was zinging through her veins. She put her intermittent feelings of nausea down to that see-sawing feeling and tried to forget that she’d been compelled to buy an over-the-counter pregnancy test that morning on her way to work after Pascal had said goodbye to her from her own modestly sized double bed.
She wouldn’t think about her late period or the pregnancy test now. It couldn’t be possible. And yet, a small voice niggled, it could. But in the years of her marriage to Ryan, while they’d still been sleeping together, she hadn’t had one scare despite not having used contraception. It had been the source of some of their main problems, and, while Alana had got checked out and been told everything was fine, Ryan had refused, clearly unable to deal with the fear that it could be something on his side.
The match picked up in pace just then and Alana let it distract her. At the end, Pascal found her as the usual scramble started.
‘I’ve agreed to go on the post-match analysis panel to give my opinion on how I think the tournament is going to go. They’re doing it in the press centre here.’
‘OK,’ Alana said, feeling slightly breathless and hating herself for it. ‘I’ve some interviews lined up, and then I’ve got to head back to the studio, so I’ll see you later.’
He nodded and bent close to her ear for a moment. ‘I want to kiss you so thoroughly that you’re boneless in my arms, but I don’t think you’d thank me for that in front of the entire pressbox.’
Alana felt boneless already, and fought the rogue urge to let him do exactly that. She just shook her head swiftly, alternately disappointed and relieved when he stepped away with a cool look on his face.
His tall, powerful frame disappeared down through the seats, taking a little piece of her with him. She sighed. She was in so much trouble, and she was potentially in a whole lot more trouble too. The kind of trouble that Pascal Lévêque wouldn’t thank her for. And yet … She placed a hand on her belly. Right at that moment she thought that, if she was pregnant, it was something she’d always have for herself. A baby, a child.
Just then the cameraman signalled that they were ready to go with the first interview, and Alana gathered up her stuff and hurried down to the pitch.
By the time they were onto the last interview with one of the Ireland players, Alana was feeling exhausted. She glanced up and her stomach contracted painfully when she saw who it was—Eoin Donohoe, one of her late husband’s partners in crime. He was a huge, intimidating presence, one of the biggest players on the team. Like Ryan, he, too, was married, but that hadn’t stopped his own hedonism. Waves of old mutual antipathy flowed between them as Alana prepared to ask the questions. Eoin smiled at her, but it held a nasty edge which she ignored.
They were almost done with the live interview when Eoin said quietly, ‘So, we see that you’re moving on with your life. Poor Ryan’s barely cold in the grave.’
The air went very still around them. Alana fancied she could hear a pin drop. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Everyone knew you couldn’t wait to get rid of him and suck him dry so you could move on, but you’ve got the best of both worlds now, don’t you? You’ve got all of Ryan’s money, and now you’ve got one of the richest men in the world eating out of your—’
‘I beg your pardon, Eoin,’ she cut in quickly, having no doubt he’d not stop at saying something unbelievably crude. ‘My husband has been dead for a year and a half, and it’s no business of yours and never has been what I do with my personal life.’ The vitriol in Eoin’s eyes made Alana quail inside, but something else was starting to rise up, too, something she’d held down for a long, long time—the truth.
Eoin continued with ugly menace in his voice and face. ‘Except that it’s your fault he died, your fault the Irish team never recovered from Ryan’s death. If you hadn’t thrown him out when he was so vulnerable—’
It came up from somewhere deep and reflexive. Alana laughed. She actually laughed. And it felt so good that she kept laughing. She knew it was verging on hysteria, but the truth had risen so far now that she couldn’t help it coming out. She’d had enough of being the scapegoat for Ryan O’Connor.
She stepped forward and pushed a finger into Eoin’s massive chest, emboldened by the fact that he looked distinctly nervous now at her reaction.
‘Let’s get a few things straight here and now, shall we?’ She didn’t wait for an answer; everything was forgotten as she was borne aloft on a wave of something like mad euphoria.
‘My husband was a lying, cheating, womanising, gambling, pathetic excuse of a man. And I’m not the only one who knew it. My only sin was that I helped to perpetuate the myth, that I helped the world to see and believe in Saint Ryan. He made my life a misery. And you were part of that. I know all about you, too, Eoin Donohoe; don’t you think people or even your wife would like to hear about your drunken, whoring binges in—’
‘Shut up, you little bitch.’
His stark language, the threat in his tone and the way his face had twisted, made Alana step back in fright. Someone jumped in and physically restrained Eoin, he looked so angry.
The world came back into focus and Alana was stunned. Had she really just said all that? She looked around at the cameraman wildly. It wasn’t Derek, it was a new guy, young and scared-looking. Derek would have had the sense to stop filming. Her stomach went into free fall.
She said through stiff, cold lips, ‘Please tell me you stopped filming?’
He gulped and went puce, lowering the camera. ‘I—’
Alana raised a shaky hand to her face; her other one was still wrapped around the microphone. ‘Oh God.’
A low, threatening voice sounded near her ear, turning her blood cold. ‘Well done, Cusack. You’ve done it now; you’d better be prepared for the fallout.’
She took down her hand and watched as Eoin sauntered away. He hadn’t even tried to stitch her up. She’d done it all by herself. The minute he’d come out with his first provocative comment she should have wrapped up the interview and that would have been that. It was no worse than some of the barbed comments people had thrown at her since Ryan had died. Yet she’d never felt the need to defend herself till now.
In the temporary studio set up at the other end of the pitch for the after-match analysis, there was a deathly lull as the panel absorbed what had just happened. Luckily they had just cut to a commercial break, but the damage was done. Pascal’s face was like granite.
When she finally let herself into her house later, Alana felt shell shocked, as if she’d been put through a wringer and left flat and limp on the other side. When she’d walked back into the newsroom, she’d been summoned immediately to Rory’s office and had been fired on the spot. The entire slanging match had been aired on national television, in front of the country and in front of the panel of experts discussing the match. And Pascal. Apparently he’d held his tongue on air, but afterwards had voiced his concerns for the image of the tournament, and the image of his bank’s involvement in the face of the rapidly escalating scandal. That was what Rory had told her as he’d all but flung her contract at her.
‘I knew you were liable to be a problem when I hired you!’
‘And yet,’ Alana had pointed out in a desperate bid to try and save herself, ‘I proved myself to be reliable, well informed, and you even told me last week that I was the one you trusted most to do the hard-hitting interviews.’
‘Yes, Alana,’ he’d replied wearily, sitting down behind his desk. ‘But you brought your baggage with you, didn’t you?’
She’d kept it together and had just said quietly, ‘I guess I did.’ Even from the grave her husband was having the last laugh.
As Alana sat on her couch now and thought of everything that had just happened she couldn’t stop the nausea rising. She just made it to the bathroom in time and emptied the contents of her stomach. As she washed her face, she thought of something, and with a fatal air went back out to her bag and extracted the chemist’s bag. She went back into her tiny bathroom.
The day couldn’t get any worse.
And then it just did.
* * *
She tried to ignore the doorbell which was ringing persistently, the door-knocker banging violently. But the thought of her neighbours hearing the commotion finally made her move off her couch and out of the state of shock that had held her immobile for the past few minutes. She opened the door and didn’t wait to see who it was. She knew.
Pascal came in and towered over her, the door shut behind him.
‘What the hell was all that about?’
Alana moved around to her armchair and sat down, because she was afraid she might fall. ‘That was me, finally airing my dirty laundry. In front of the nation, no less.’
Pascal had moved to the centre of the small sitting-room, and glared down at her. ‘And in front of the entire Six Nations public too. I believe the news is hitting the airwaves as we speak. The hotel where the after-match party is being held has had to call for police assistance in dealing with the hordes of paparazzi already camped outside.’
Alana winced.
Pascal grunted something unintelligible and sat down on her couch. She was still a little too numb to react.
‘So? Are you going to tell me what happened?’
Alana shrugged. She looked at him, but didn’t really see him. ‘He pushed me too far. For months people have been making snide comments about how I was so cruel to Ryan—how could I have thrown him out?—and the truth was exactly what I said.’
Pascal drove a hand through his hair. ‘But it’s crazy. The things you said—’
‘Were all true.’ Alana felt life-force coming back into her bones, the shock wearing off. This man and his concern for appearances was the reason she’d just lost her job, and the reality of what that meant was beginning to sink in.
She stood up and crossed her arms. ‘I’m not really in the mood to discuss this actually, would you mind leaving? I think you’ve done enough for one day.’
He stood, too, bristling. He pointed at his chest. ‘Me? I’m not the one that has just ripped the rose-tinted glasses from a nation of mourners. Whatever your husband might have been, Alana, surely there was a more decorous time and place to tell the truth?’
She stepped up to him, shaking. ‘Do you really think I thought it through logically for one second Pascal—and then went ahead thinking it would all be OK?’ She stepped back again, breathing heavily. ‘Of course I didn’t. It just came out. And in all honesty, I probably couldn’t stop myself if it happened again. He provoked me.’
Pascal recalled what Eoin Donohoe had said, and recalled, too, his urge to go and lift Alana bodily out of his way so that he could shield her. He’d been genuinely concerned for her safety as he’d watched her confront the huge man. She’d looked so tiny and fragile, standing up to him. The protective instinct had caught him unawares as the events had unfolded in front of him, but then he’d also had to assess the potential damage as a barrage of calls had immediately jammed the phone lines in the studio.
Pascal couldn’t keep the censure from his voice. ‘He may have provoked you, but you’ve unleashed a storm now.’
He saw how Alana paled dramatically. But his own head was still ringing from the board of his bank wanting to know what on earth was going on, why a storm in a teacup was threatening to reduce the famous rugby-tournament to the level of a sideshow. And what it was already doing to their reputation on Europe’s stock markets.
Alana felt a wave of weariness. ‘It’ll die down soon enough. It’s not as if people are going to be faced with me, anyway; I’ve been sacked.’
Pascal’s head reared back. ‘Sacked?’
She nodded and looked at him, hardening her heart and insides to the way he made her feel, even now. The weariness fled and anger rose, hot and swift. How could he be so cavalier about her life? Her independence was gone, everything she’d built up destroyed. ‘Rory sacked me as soon as I got back. And as it was in part to do with your reaction, you needn’t act so surprised.’
Pascal’s face darkened ominously, features tight. ‘I didn’t know he’d done that.’
‘Well, he did.’ Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.
‘I would have never have advocated that you lose your job over this. To suggest that is ridiculous.’
His words rang with conviction, and he seemed affronted that she thought he would be so petty. She knew she couldn’t blame him for the fact that Ireland was so small that the merest whiff of scandal could run for weeks and weeks and wreck a career overnight. The immediate future lay starkly ahead of her, especially with the brand-new knowledge that she held secret in her belly. The anger drained away and she felt weary again; it was too overwhelming to try and get her head around it. And at the centre of everything stood this man who was turning her upside down and inside out.
She sat down again when a wave of dizziness went through her. Immediately Pascal was at her side, bending down, a hand on her knee. She tried to flinch away, but he wouldn’t release her.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked harshly.
‘Nothing,’ she answered quickly, restraining the urge to place a hand on her belly. Then hysteria rose again. ‘Unless you count the fact that I’m now jobless and about to be homeless, too.’
‘What are you talking about, Alana? You’re not making sense.’
