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She lifted one shoulder in a small movement, scared of that flat, emotionless look in Luc Sanchis’s eyes. With his tie rakishly askew and his shirt open he might have been a pirate. He spat out words contemptuously, taking Jesse by surprise.
‘Women like you make me sick. You’re more ruthless than any man. In light of your determination to succeed in this matter I don’t doubt you’d buy and sell a family member to get what you want.’
Jesse was unaware of how she paled in that instant, or of how Luc Sanchis’s eyes narrowed on her. She stepped back abruptly avoiding his eyes, more than aghast at how easily he’d cut her to the quick. It was because of treacherous family that she was in this position. That she even knew what ruthlessness felt like.
‘Let me show you around the villa.’
Tension quivered between them, and Jesse knew that Luc Sanchis was realising he simply had no option right now except to do as she said. She walked around him and up some steps into the main hall.
The house throughout was white, with exposed stone walls, bright and comfortable furnishings. The main hall floor was marble, but the rest of the ground level had wooden floors, softened by faded oriental rugs. It was truly a home, loved and tended by its owners—a Greek billionaire named Alexandros Kouros, his wife, Kallie, and their three children.
Jesse had done some business with Kouros in the past, and he’d told her about his island and villa and suggested that she use it if she ever felt like getting away, if it was free. She’d automatically said thanks but no thanks; leisure was not something she indulged in.
She’d remembered the island when she’d thought of this audacious plan to stop Luc Sanchis, and had wondered where on earth she could take him.
She gestured to the vast expanse of a plush living room, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along one wall and comfortable couches and chairs. ‘This is the main living area. There’s a TV and DVDs in the cabinet …’
His voice dripped sarcasm. ‘You mean I’m allowed to move freely throughout the house? You’re not locking me in the tower with only a daily bowl of gruel to keep me alive?’
Jesse tensed at his dark humour. She was surprised … she’d not been sure what to expect. In her experience billionaires and titans of industry could be petulant when things didn’t go their way. And Luc Sanchis so far had barely balked at his fate … he was very angry, yes, but not disconcerted. As if he was merely biding his time, getting the lie of the land.
She didn’t fool herself into believing she could be complacent. Luc Sanchis was preternaturally intelligent and cunning. She wouldn’t trust for a second that he wasn’t looking for a way out, or a way to manipulate her.
She turned around to face him, struck all over again at his immense physicality. She didn’t like how it made her feel weak. He had to understand how futile any attempt on his part to leave would be.
‘There is a perimeter fence around this villa that is permanently electrified and alarmed with infra-red sensors. That airstrip is the only way on and off the island.’
Jesse crossed her fingers behind her back, because she knew there was a small boathouse tucked away on the southern tip which held a speedboat. She didn’t like the way Luc Sanchis’s eyes narrowed on her contemplatively.
He crossed his arms, legs spread. Supremely comfortable in his skin even now. ‘I’m a champion swimmer.’
Why am I not surprised? Jesse thought caustically.
She crossed her arms too. ‘The waters here are treacherous, known for their volatile currents. I checked the weather forecast and a storm is possible. Even if you did make it through the perimeter fence, no matter how good a swimmer you are you’d never last.’
Luc cast a glance through the open French doors and the gently billowing white curtains. The scene outside was idyllic, but even as he thought that the faintest whisper of a cool breeze whistled through the room. He knew only too well from his experience as a seasoned sailor how the weather could change in an instant.
He looked back down into those serious grey eyes and had a fleeting thought: why so serious?
He shook his head, as if that would obliterate the insidious question. ‘How did you persuade my pilot to change course?’ He had been wondering about that. He had still been on the phone when he’d embarked on the plane, right up until they’d been about to take off. Undoubtedly that had added to the ease with which they’d carried out their subterfuge.
Jesse avoided his eye again, looking down for a moment, blushing furiously. ‘I … ah … sent his company an e-mail too. From you … explaining that you wanted to change your flight plan from Switzerland to here. And that you didn’t want to discuss it once you got on board … because the trip was of a romantic nature.’
She looked back up. ‘I contracted the steward separately and paid him to administer the sleeping aid, and he took your things as well,’ she admitted. ‘It was all done under the impression that it wasn’t serious but for a romantic …’ Jesse’s voice trailed off with embarrassment, but then she got herself together. ‘I also said that you’d inform them when you wanted to book your return flight.’
Luc gritted his jaw so tightly it hurt. She’d simply but effectively re-routed his entire schedule—and with the best anti-hacking software protecting his systems who would assume for a second the messages weren’t coming from him? He was hoist by his own petard because, exactly as she’d pointed out, his staff were used to his last-minute changes. She’d obviously sent all these missives at the last possible moment, and worded them in such a way that they didn’t encourage discussion. Something he was apt to do when he wanted to focus on something.
Jesse had no idea what was going on in his head now, but she was sure it wasn’t pretty and had a lot to do with hating her. She backed away towards the stairs, which led up to the upper rooms and away from the living space. After a few taut seconds she heard Luc Sanchis sigh and come after her.
A carpeted runner led up the stairs to a corridor on the first level that had rooms leading off in each direction. Jesse stopped outside one and opened the door, standing aside so Sanchis could look inside.
She’d felt funny about using the Kouroses’ master bedroom, so she’d picked the next largest for Luc Sanchis and taken a modest one for herself, instinctively feeling more comfortable in less opulent surroundings. Although, she thought wryly, modest in this villa meant a palatial bedroom with plush carpets and a queen-sized bed. Her huge en suite bathroom had a decadent sunken bath, and led out to a balcony with a stunning view of the Mediterranean Sea.
She walked into the bedroom she’d assigned for Luc Sanchis, her feet sinking noiselessly into the carpet. The view from this room and its en suite bathroom were even more spectacular than that from Jesse’s room.
She was cursory when she spoke, suddenly uncomfortable here with this man in such luxurious surroundings. ‘This is the main bedroom with en suite bathroom. It’s stocked with all the necessary toiletries.’
Jesse fought not to flinch when Luc Sanchis joined her in the bathroom and inspected the shelves, picking things up and putting them down again. She noticed that he must have dropped his jacket and tie somewhere. A minute ago the rooms had felt enormous. Now Jesse felt positively claustrophobic. All she could see were those big hands and long fingers making everything look tiny.
She backed out into the bedroom and noticed the jacket and tie strewn on the bed. She looked away hurriedly, suddenly hot when she thought of him ripping that tie off.
She walked over to the doors leading into a walk-in closet. She could sense Luc Sanchis and his bristling energy close behind her, and hated the little shiver of something she felt inside.
With the doors open wide she indicated to where a vast array of clothes was laid out. Suits, trousers, shoes. Casual clothes, pyjamas. Luc Sanchis stepped up to the door and his mouth opened … and closed again. Eyes flashing he looked at Jesse and muttered grimly, ‘I suspected you might be gay, but not if these belong to the last gigolo you brought here.’
Jesse’s face flamed and she fought for control. He thought these were for her lovers? The idea would have been laughable if Jesse had been in the mood to laugh. And she was stung somewhere very vulnerable to think that he’d assumed she was gay.
Luc watched Jesse. Myriad expressions chased across her face—uppermost something looking like shock. He was surprised at this prudish aspect of her but then recalled the buttoned-up look she’d sported in his office. She was more casual now, but equally unrevealing. He didn’t like to admit to the stab of something incomprehensible in his gut when he thought of these clothes belonging to another man.
She got out in a slightly strangled-sounding voice, ‘They’re all new. For you. I knew your meeting was only for a couple of hours and you wouldn’t have clothes with you … so I ordered some.’
Luc walked into the space and fingered some of the clothes. There was enough to dress him for a month, encompassing the entire spectrum of casual to formal wear.
Jesse said hesitantly from behind him, ‘Mr Sanchis, I know I’ve brought you here against your will, but it really is my intention to let you go … just as soon as I’m assured you won’t be in a position to resurrect your deal with O’Brien …’
Sounding more hopeful than he’d ever heard her, she went on, ‘If you could tell me now that you’re willing to sign a contract stating that you’ll walk away from the deal then I can have a plane or a helicopter here within the hour.’
Luc held the material of a black tuxedo jacket between thumb and forefinger. He stopped himself from gripping the material in his fist and squeezing with all the strength in his body. He looked at her.
‘No way.’
And then he dismissed her by looking back to the clothes. Most disturbingly, they were all in his exact size.
‘Don’t tell me—you hacked into my assistant’s brief on what to order from my tailor?’
Luc could hear Jesse shift uncomfortably.
‘The information was easy to find. I wanted to make sure you’d be as comfortable as possible, Mr Sanchis.’
Luc dropped the jacket and stalked towards Jesse. He placed an arm above her head against the doorframe and saw how her eyes widened. Her cheeks flushed and her breathing grew more rapid. Interesting. Much to his chagrin, his own breathing felt a tiny bit more laboured.
Disgusted with himself, Luc dropped his arm and said curtly, ‘I think we’ve skipped enough levels of social niceties to earn first-name status don’t you? Luc is my name.’
Jesse felt as if she was floundering badly. When he’d stalked over to her just now she’d felt a drowning sensation. Her insides had tightened while simultaneously feeling as if they were melting. And her nipples were as hard as bullets against the lace of her bra.
Before she could react he was stalking away from her and out of the room. Jesse started after him, calling, ‘Where are you going?’
He said, without turning around, ‘To find a phone so I can call someone and arrange to get off this godforsaken island and away from you. This ridiculous charade has gone on long enough.’
He stopped abruptly at the bottom of the stairs and Jesse almost careened into his back. She stopped herself just in time. He was looking from left to right and then he strode off, opening and closing doors to various rooms. Jesse’s heart was thumping, and she held her breath when he came to the door of the study. He opened it and went in, and she winced when she heard a very crude curse.
He came back out, hands on hips, expression thunderous. ‘You’ve removed any means of internet communication—I take it the landline too?’
Jesse nodded slowly. She’d locked everything securely into the villa’s safe. She had her own phone, of course, but that was safely tucked away where Sanchis couldn’t find it.
He came close to Jesse and she fought to hold her ground—even when he came so close that all she could smell was his scent and she had to tip her head back to look at him.
‘You will pay for this, Jesse … you know that, don’t you? I’ll do whatever it takes to get off this island.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_c07ef79e-bba2-57e4-b9a6-f5687f2477b9)
THE threat in Luc’s voice was explicit, but disturbingly all Jesse felt was a coil of tension low down in her belly at hearing him use her name for the first time. It made her want to squirm.
She refused to acknowledge that physical reaction, or let him intimidate her, and said, ‘I know that my actions will have consequences, and I don’t care.’
Because all she did care about was making sure that her father faced up to the consequences of his actions and was rendered impotent. Finally.
Luc looked so deeply into Jesse’s eyes for such a long moment that she literally started to feel dizzy, and then finally he stepped back. She breathed out. Abruptly he turned and started to stalk away from her, clearly looking for something else. After a moment Jesse hurried after him again.
She found him in the kitchen at the back of the villa, which had French doors opening out onto a terraced area and a lush garden, where a pool and pool house were tucked away behind artful foliage. It was stupendously idyllic, but unfortunately completely wasted on Jesse and her very reluctant guest.
Luc was opening and closing doors and cupboards. He acknowledged her presence without turning around. ‘There’s enough food here for an army.’
Weakly, because she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the way his trousers were stretched across hard buttocks, Jesse said, ‘It’s enough to last about two weeks, actually.’
He straightened up and turned around and Jesse averted her gaze upwards guiltily.
Luc placed his hands on the island in the centre of the kitchen. ‘Two weeks?’
Jesse swallowed. ‘Just in case of any unforeseen eventualities.’
‘What kind of eventualities, Jesse?’
Jesse’s insides felt funny again at hearing him say her name. In a rush she said, ‘Like a storm, or something out of our control, extending our stay longer than I’d planned.’
Luc turned away again with a muttered curse. He started taking things out of the fridge and cupboards, laying them out on the counter.
A little redundantly Jesse asked, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Making myself something to eat—as if it wasn’t glaringly obvious.’
His sarcasm bounced off Jesse. She was more than surprised to see how dextrous he was at whipping up a delicious-looking sandwich in minutes. He pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, and then after a second reached in again and took out a chilled bottle of wine. With an economy of movement he pulled the cork from the bottle with a corkscrew, and then put the water under his arm and the wine and sandwich in respective hands.
He completely ignored Jesse and made his way back out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the bedrooms.
Jesse followed him and asked, ‘Where are you going?’
Luc stopped at the top of the stairs and sighed. He turned around. ‘I’m going to my room to eat and drink and get away from you—which seems to be about the only thing I can do at the moment.’
Jesse saw one very large hand clamped around the wine bottle and her throat felt dry. ‘Don’t you need a glass?’
‘No,’ came the curt reply, ‘I don’t need a glass.’
And with that he turned and disappeared. A couple of seconds later she winced as she heard the slamming of a door.
Jesse turned around and sank down onto the bottom stair. The enormity of everything that had happened hit her then, and she lifted a hand to her head. It was trembling from the adrenalin. The main front door was still open, and she looked out blankly at the benignly beautiful view.
She had managed to incarcerate Luc Sanchis on this island. She was now alone, for the next ten days at least, with one of the world’s most powerful men and a potentially lethal enemy. She recalled how he’d turned on the stairs, his entire body moving with innately masculine grace, and heat pooled in her lower belly. He was six feet four of hard, muscle-packed, angry testosterone, and the look in his eyes just now had been murderous.
Luc sat in a chair on his private balcony. The Mediterranean stretched out as far as the eye could see, with not another piece of land or a boat in sight. The threat of a storm appeared to have passed for the moment and the glorious view mocked him. His hand was still wrapped around the neck of the wine bottle and he lifted it to his mouth and took another healthy slug, noting that he’d managed to demolish half of it already.
Disgusted, because he was usually more than abstemious when it came to alcohol, he slammed it down on the table beside him, alongside the half-eaten sandwich. He’d taken the wine from the fridge on a whim and had relished Jesse’s wide-eyed response to him pulling it out.
Damn her anyway, this pixie-sized, short-haired witch.
He still couldn’t quite believe what she’d managed to do to him—and with such ease. That perhaps was worst of all, when he thought of it. How he’d happily walked right into her trap. The modern-day communications that everyone took so much for granted had allowed her to rearrange his schedule with no questions asked. He grimaced. It was all thanks to the fact that she was effectively a computer nerd. Although when he pictured a nerd he saw a twenty-year-old weedy guy in glasses. Not a petite and annoyingly vulnerable-looking blonde-haired elf. He snorted. Vulnerable? As if.
Luc grabbed the wine bottle again almost rebelliously; the more wine he drank, the more her image in his head grew blurry, so he took another gulp.
He sat forward with the bottle dangling from his fingers, completely unaware of the rakish image he presented, with his shirt buttons ripped apart, exposing the top of his chest.
He could almost laugh. But it wasn’t funny in the slightest. Only last week his secretary had enquired solicitously as to whether he’d thought about scheduling any holiday time for the rest of the year. She’d probably be assuming right now that he’d taken her concern as advice. And he knew she wouldn’t question his apparent change of direction when it came to the O’Brien deal, because she was used to him changing his mind and not explaining why. It rankled bitterly now. He didn’t know Jesse Moriarty from Adam and yet she seemed to have read him like a book.
And the two people in the world who cared about him most were currently at sea on a two-week cruise. Only this morning he’d told his mother and sister with affectionate mock severity that he didn’t want to hear from them unless there was a serious life-or-death crisis.
He smiled mirthlessly at the irony. In normal circumstances his mother started panicking if she didn’t get her habitual daily phone call—even though she’d become much more relaxed since marrying her second husband, George, the previous year.
For the first time since Luc could remember his mother and sister didn’t need him in quite the same all-encompassing way, and he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with that. Responsibility for them was so ingrained in him that it had pervaded outwards to every facet of his life, influencing every decision because what he did affected them.
Ever since his father had died when he was twelve, he’d been inured with a hyper-awareness of his duty. He could still remember the way people had looked at him sadly at his father’s funeral and told him that he was the man of the family now.
Coupled with that later betrayal, which had cemented cynical distrust onto his psyche, Luc had become accustomed to being surprised by little. But he was surprised now. And he was angry. Because Jesse Moriarty was thwarting long-cherished plans to—
Luc heard a sound and the cacophony of thoughts in his head stopped abruptly. It had come from below him, out on the terrace which led down to the idyllic pool just visible through the trees.
He rested the wine bottle on the ground beside him and stood up, putting his hands on the railing surrounding his balcony. And then he saw her, walking onto the grass and down towards the trees.
She was wearing a short robe, and his eyes were drawn to slender but shapely pale legs. She carried a towel in one hand and disappeared into the trees. Her purpose became apparent when Luc heard the faint sound of a splash, and he could just make out the movement of arms scissoring in and out of the water through the greenery.
His hands curled tight around the railing and a coil of tension came into his belly. With a growl of disgust, because he found himself wondering if she was wearing a bikini or a one-piece, and how she might fill it out with that petite, lithe form, Luc turned back into his room, away from the view.
He paced back and forth, anger rising in him like a tide at witnessing her acting so unaffected—taking a nonchalant swim as if she hadn’t just kidnapped him! What the hell was he doing, wondering what she was wearing, when he didn’t even find her attractive? He ignored the betraying heat in his blood that contradicted him.
He recalled the way her face had tightened and she’d shut down in his office when he’d asked her about her reasons for wanting to save O’Brien. Clearly conversation wasn’t going to be an option now, if she hadn’t revealed her reasons then.
Think, man, think, he remonstrated with himself, cursing the mild fog of wine now. So far she’d executed his kidnap with the minimum of fuss and fanfare. It had been utterly simple but so effective—which made it galling. Luc would have almost preferred it if he’d been hit over the back of the head and knocked unconscious. At least that way he’d feel less culpable …
He shook his head. He had to deal with the fact that he was here now, and he needed to get off this island as soon as possible.
