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Luc’s voice was light, but she sensed an undercurrent of steel—as if she was touching on a tender point. ‘I told you—my mother had a breakdown after my father died and I had to cook for me and my sister and her when she came out of hospital.’
Impetuously Jesse asked, ‘How did your father die?’
Luc’s jaw tightened. He drizzled some oil over the fish in the pan and it sizzled.
When he said casually, ‘He killed himself,’ Jesse almost missed it. Before she could say anything Luc was explaining, ‘I told you that my sister has special needs? That she’s verging on autistic?’
Jesse nodded, knowing well enough not to mention his father again. Her heart ached for Luc in a very peculiar way, but her mind skittered weakly away from looking at why too closely. Much as it skittered away from analysing anything of the last couple of days too deeply.
Luc went on. ‘I discovered that cooking calmed her. Getting the ingredients and putting them together seemed to occupy her.’ He grimaced. ‘Of course when things didn’t work out as they should she would fly into a rage, but that just made it more imperative that I learn how to do things properly. The more complicated the recipe, the more it would have an effect on her. She would sit for hours and watch a boeuf bourguignon cooking slowly.’
He looked at Jesse and smiled faintly. ‘She’s now working as a chef for a company that caters for people with special needs. It’s like meals on wheels, and they offer opportunities to people like Eva.’
Jesse’s voice was husky. ‘Eva is a pretty name.’
Then Luc asked, ‘So, what happened after your mother died?’
Jesse blanched and took a hasty sip of wine. She almost resented Luc for skirting so close to dangerous reality.
Very reluctantly she said, ‘I was taken in by the Social Services … I lived in foster homes until I was eighteen.’
Luc looked at her. ‘That must have been rough.’
Jesse shrugged and avoided his eye. ‘It wasn’t easy.’
‘But what about your father? Why didn’t you live with him—despite what he did?’
Jesse realised that Luc must have assumed that her mother and father had been married. The old shame crawled up her spine. ‘My parents weren’t married … My mother was my father’s housekeeper.’ Her mouth twisted with bitterness as she revealed, ‘He was married to a very honourable woman from English society.’
Luc’s hands stilled. ‘So … your mother and father had an affair and you were brought up in the house?’
‘More or less … except it wasn’t so much an affair as my father using my mother whenever he felt like it.’
Luc’s voice was cold. ‘He knew he was your father?’
Jesse nodded and finally looked at him again, not sure how she felt at seeing the condemnation in his eyes.
Before she knew it the words were tumbling out. ‘I went to him one day when he was in his study … I don’t know where I got the nerve … I must have been about six. I was going through a phase where I was missing not having a daddy. And I knew he was my father. So I went and asked him why he didn’t act like the fathers I saw at school …’
‘Jesse—’
But she held up a hand, stopping Luc in whatever he was going to say, and finished. ‘He said nothing at first. He just got up and went and closed and locked the door to his study. And then he took off his belt. He whipped me with it, all down my back and legs, until there was blood on the floor. The buckle broke my skin …’
Luc had left the fish and come round to stand in front of Jesse. When he cupped her face in his hands and lifted it up she was surprised to feel tears running down her face.
‘He told me never, ever to call him my father again, and that if I repeated what I’d said to anyone he’d kill me and my mother.’
Luc shook his head. ‘No wonder you have a thing about locked rooms. Was he violent to your mother?’
Jesse nodded. She felt Luc gather her into his chest and rock her. He felt so solid and strong and warm. Her hands gripped his shirt, holding on tight until she was still.
When he let her go and gave her a tissue she hiccuped. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never told anyone about that before … I don’t usually cry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Is he still—?’
Jesse stopped his words by blurting out, ‘Please—I don’t want to talk about it any more, okay?’
After dinner, and much later that night in bed, Luc asked softly, ‘Those scars on your legs … are they from that day?’
Jesse came up on one arm and looked at Luc. She just nodded. And then, to stop him asking any more questions, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth, slid over him so that her thighs were straddling his hips and her breasts were crushed into his chest.
Luc clamped his hands around her hips and lifted her slightly until she felt him guiding his erection between her legs. And Jesse weakly obliterated everything from her mind except this exquisite moment.
When the storm had passed Jesse curled into Luc’s side, once again claiming him in sleep in a way which should have had him prising her from him, but which was having the opposite effect.
Luc felt more than a little pole-axed. When Jesse had told him about her father earlier a tidal wave of anger had come over him at the thought of her being so abused. And also a feeling of pride … that she’d come through something like that and forged such a successful life for herself.
He sighed deeply and recognised that he was in serious danger of becoming so sidelined by this woman that he’d forget about his primary focus, which was to get off the island and get back in time to deal with O’Brien.
He had Jesse exactly where he wanted her—literally—but he found that instead of exploiting this intimacy he was intent on seducing her some more … and then some more. She was a fever in his blood, and he was very much afraid he wasn’t ready to douse it just yet.
Luc felt the old tentacles of vulnerability reach out to touch him with ghostly memories, but he pushed them aside and damned them all. Jesse was different … this situation was different. He would never be led astray again.
As he fell asleep he reassured himself that he hadn’t lost sight of his goal at all. He was still entirely focused on his endgame, and in complete control of what was happening …
Jesse was sitting on the couch in the den, feeling more sated than she’d ever felt in her life. After waking late, and a lazy, lingering brunch, which had inevitably ended with them back in bed, she’d left Luc asleep upstairs to come down and see to Tigger. Before she’d left the bedroom, though, she’d spent an indulgent moment watching Luc, his big body sprawled in abandon, utterly self-confident even in sleep.
She watched Tigger now, who was valiantly trying to unthread the stunning oriental carpet on the floor with his tiny claws, and deftly lifted him out of harm’s way and onto the couch beside her. He promptly went to the edge and looked down the great distance. He miaowed indignantly, and she smiled at his clear frustration.
She lifted him up and took him into the kitchen saying into his sweet fur, ‘I think it’s milk and nap time for baby cats …’
It was only when she was tucking him into his box and watching him lap greedily at the milk that Jesse realised with a shock just how far into a fantasy world she’d allowed herself to travel.
In the past few days, since everything had become physical between her and Luc, she had somehow begun to imagine that perhaps this was real. That this bubble was not some mad aberration. When the reality was that she’d kidnapped Luc Sanchis to stop him from saving her father … which he must still want to do at all costs. She’d conveniently blocked that out because she’d become far more interested in the physical nirvana Luc promised every time he touched her.
She heard him call her name now, faintly, from upstairs. Galvanised by panic, because she couldn’t have him look at her with that far too perceptive gaze when she felt so exposed, Jesse lurched out of the villa and down a path she hadn’t yet explored. It led to a beautifully soft and sandy private cove. But Jesse was oblivious.
She hugged her arms around herself at the water’s edge, feeling cold. What had she been thinking, allowing Luc to seduce her like this? She mocked herself. More accurately, what had she been thinking, allowing herself to be a full and willing participant in that seduction?
The deadline was in three days’ time. Three days and her father would be ruined. She’d almost lost sight of that goal. If Luc had turned to her that morning as they’d lain in his bed and said to her, I really need to get back to work … Jesse would most likely have tripped downstairs and rung for a jet before she’d even realised what she was doing.
With a little sob of emotion that made her clamp her hand over her mouth, she realised I don’t know who I am any more! The cool shell she’d built up to keep people at arm’s length was well and truly gone. She’d turned into someone who cried at the drop of a hat and was happy to blurt out secrets she’d harboured for a lifetime. Not even the nicest of her social workers or foster parents had managed to get her to reveal what had happened to her, and yet with Luc she’d spilled it all.
How could she trust anything that had happened between them? She imagined Luc waking and remembering with distaste that he had a job to do: to try to make Jesse believe he really wanted her. This whole environment was contrived and false. From the moment she’d forced Luc onto this island she shouldn’t have trusted anything. Or him. No matter how much the weak part of her believed she could or longed to.
She’d seen how her father had charmed people when she was small—only to turn around and stab them in the back with cruel words as soon as they’d gone. And now she knew worse than that: her father had ruined the businesses of people who’d slighted him over dinner. So she knew how easily someone could present a façade when it suited them …
Luc’s words came back to her—words he’d said only days ago: All you’ve done is make yourself a foe for life … I will find out all your secrets and you will pay …
After long minutes of looking blankly at the sea, feeling as if a part of her soul was ebbing away, Jesse went back inside. She found Luc in the den, and valiantly ignored the kick of her heart when she saw him.
He turned from where he’d been looking out at the view, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. His hair was damp from the shower. Incredible pain lanced Jesse, but she ignored that too.
He said to her now, ‘That storm never did materialise, did it?’
Jesse shook her head. Not that storm. But another storm had. It had whipped her up inside so intensely that she knew she’d never emerge as the same person.
Luc squared his body to face her more fully, and Jesse had the uncanny prescience that she wasn’t the only one who’d just faced some revelations.
‘Your name … Moriarty … it’s Irish, isn’t it?’
Jesse nodded, a little blindsided by this observation. ‘Yes, it is … My mother was Irish—from Kerry.’
‘O’Brien is Irish too …’
Jesse went cold all over. Goosebumps broke out on her skin. And then Luc said it out loud.
‘He’s your father, isn’t he, Jesse? Your mother was his housekeeper.’
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_ff965442-495e-524d-8f18-b09881eead3b)
‘HE’S your father, isn’t he, Jesse? Your mother was his housekeeper.’
Luc must have seen the instantaneous reaction of shock on Jesse’s face, because he obviously took it as confirmation.
He continued, seemingly unaware of the seismic reaction within Jesse. ‘What I’d like to know is, after everything he’s done to you, why the hell do you want to save him?’
For a second she thought she might faint. As if sensing it, Luc crossed the distance between them and took her arm; he led her to the couch where he forced her to sit down.
He glared down at her, hands on his hips. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this from the start?’
Jesse felt far too vulnerable where she was, so she scrambled off the couch and went to stand apart from Luc, crossing her arms. ‘I didn’t tell you because it has no relevance to anything.’
Even Jesse winced at those words, and she flinched slightly at Luc’s caustic laugh.
‘Give me a break, Jesse. It has everything to do with this. Why else would you want to save him so badly? Clearly you have some misguided sense of loyalty to the man—’
‘No!’ Jesse reacted viscerally to those words, cutting Luc off. ‘I don’t want to save him.’
He looked at her. ‘Excuse me?’
Jesse swallowed. ‘I don’t want to save him. I want to ruin him. I want him to be finished for ever. And I’m not going to let you be the one to save him. That’s why I wanted to buy you out—so that no one else would come to his aid …’
For a long tense moment they stared at each other across the divide, and then inexplicably Luc threw back his head and laughed. Jesse just stared at him. But he kept laughing. He couldn’t seem to stop. Eventually he had to sit down on the couch. Tears were running from his eyes.
Anger was rushing upwards inside Jesse; she’d completely exposed herself and he was laughing at her.
She stalked over to Luc and stood over him, much as he’d just done to her. ‘What’s so funny about that?’
Luc stood up, sober now, making her move back. He shook his head. ‘What’s so funny about it, Jesse—what’s so ridiculous—is that all this time we’ve been on the same side …’
‘What do you mean?’ Jesse asked faintly.
She found herself wanting to believe Luc so badly. But at that moment he turned away from her and ran his hands through his hair. She couldn’t see his expression, and in the few seconds before he turned back to face her she remembered standing on that small beach just now. She had the stark realisation that no matter what Luc said now she couldn’t trust him fully. She had to remember that or it could all still unravel.
‘What I mean,’ Luc said, when he turned back, ‘is that I want to see him gone too. I was going to wait until the last moment—until I knew no one else could step in to help him—and then walk away from the deal.’
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