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Luke thought of the woman who’d been resident in his house for the past few days. He said curtly, ‘Hell, no. Ms Lyttelton has nothing to do with this mess. Keep looking into his background. Work your links and connections—trawl for anything at all that might back up Janna’s allegations. If you find any dirt at all, or if van Helgen arrives, we’ll get both Janna and Ms Lyttelton off the island as quickly and inconspicuously as we can. If his wife’s story is true he’s a very dangerous man.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think she made the whole thing up.’ He paused, then added fairly, ‘No, it’s more likely she’s embroidered a quarrel they had and has now convinced herself that her tale is true.’
His man’s frown showed up his voice. ‘So you just want him watched?’
‘For the time being. Oh, and get your wife to bring out a selection of clothes for Ms Lyttelton tomorrow, will you? She needs everything, so a complete new wardrobe is in order.’ He gave the sizes.
Fleur turned away from the mirror with a grimace. During these past few days she’d spent entirely too much time staring at her reflection. But this morning before Luke left the house he’d sent along a note with the housekeeper asking her to join him on the terrace for lunch, and as Susi had whisked away the shirt and trousers she’d worn before, ‘For cleaning, miss,’ Fleur was forced to wear a pareu.
It showed too much of her skin, she thought critically, and the colours—a mixture of orange-red and periwinkle-blue with a light, clear bold purple—were shockingly flamboyant, but somehow they seemed to bring colour and life to her face, while not clashing with her vivid hair. Perhaps the earthy tans and greens she’d always worn had been wrong for her pale colouring.
Or perhaps it was the spell of the tropics.
When Luke greeted her, she saw his gaze go from her face to her breasts in one swift reconnaissance. He didn’t ogle, but she had no doubt that he approved of her change of clothes. Heat fountained up from some previously inviolable place in her body, and she felt an odd tightening in her breasts.
Holding onto her fragile composure with every bit of her pride, she said as she slipped into the chair, ‘Susi persuaded me to wear this. I hadn’t realised how cool they were.’
Yes, that was fine; her voice was steady, her tone light—only the faint pinkness of her skin gave her away. Nothing less than a shroud would cover that, she thought despondently, wishing she hadn’t inherited her mother’s tendency to blushes.
Her senses seemed supercharged, so that she was vibrantly conscious of the man who seated himself opposite her and acutely aware of the air caressing her skin, and the warmth of the sun, and the delicious scent of some flower.
Rest and good food and rehydration had certainly made a difference, she told herself tartly. She felt more alive than she had for years.
‘Would you like coffee?’ he asked. And when she accepted he said, ‘Could you pour for me, please? Black.’
‘Of course,’ she said brightly. ‘Scorpios always have black coffee. It goes with the sign.’
Luke watched her slim, elegant hands as she poured the coffee. They did odd things to him, summoning reckless images that had no place at the lunch table—images of them stroking slowly over his skin.
He’d spent half his life being chased by women and understood them well. He took it for granted that most were far more attracted to his money than to him, but he’d have been an idiot not to know that the genes responsible for his face and body had their own appeal.
So he recognised the signs of physical response in Fleur, though she certainly wasn’t giving him any obvious signals. A pretence of aloofness to pique his interest? He didn’t think so, but his attention was certainly aroused. Apart from his sympathy for what had to have been a traumatic experience, he wanted to know more about her.
He said coolly, ‘I have to apologise for being remiss—it’s been a busy few days, but now the conference is over things will be back to normal. Or as normal as it ever gets here. And, as you can’t continue walking around in borrowed pareus, I’ve organised a local boutique owner to bring a selection of clothes here this afternoon. Choose what you want.’
Fleur wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. Outrage warring with a demoralising pleasure, she looked up and met hooded iron-grey eyes. ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ she said stiffly. ‘I can organise my own wardrobe.’
‘Relax, I’m not casting aspersions on either your clothes or your taste,’ he said with infuriating calmness, adding to her anger by finishing, ‘And how are you going to organise a wardrobe without money?’
He looked amused, but Fleur sensed a hard will behind the coolly confident exterior.
Well, her mother had always said she was stubborn. ‘If you lend me a small amount of money I can get a selection of sarongs from the market—they don’t cost much and they’re all I need. Then I can return the ones I’ve been wearing to the nurse’s daughter.’
‘Don’t worry about the cost—you must know that I have more money than I can cope with. Think of it as redressing the balance a bit.’
Green fire glittered in her eyes. ‘Redressing what balance? I don’t want to accept anything more from you—you’ve already been far too good to me. In fact, I feel well enough to go home now.’
‘Did Dr King say so?’
She hesitated. ‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly, after a glance at Luke told her that he knew exactly what the doctor had told her. ‘Clearly she has no hesitation in breaking patient confidentiality.’
Luke’s shoulders lifted in a shrug that reminded her of his French great-grandmother. ‘I knew most of it, and guessed the rest,’ he drawled. ‘And if staying here galls you so much, you can earn your keep.’
She froze. ‘How?’ The word came more sharply than she’d intended.
‘Not the way you’re thinking,’ he told her with a hint of hauteur. ‘I’ve never had to pay for sex, and I don’t intend to start now.’
Fleur had always thought that the desire for the ground to swallow some embarrassed soul was weird, one that made her shudder. Now she understood the power of total humiliation. If the ground had cracked open in front of her she’d have leapt into the hole without hesitation.
Scarlet-faced, she said, ‘I didn’t think of anything like that until you…made it obvious what you thought I meant.’ Before she got too hopelessly tangled, she took a deep breath, then ploughed valiantly on. ‘I understand that it wasn’t what you meant, but I’m afraid I don’t have any skills to pay for my board.’
‘Let’s get one thing perfectly clear,’ he said, his gaze metallic. ‘I don’t expect you to pay for anything. What I meant by my offhand comment was that I find myself in somewhat of a bind, and if you’re agreeable, you can help me.’
‘I’d like to,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve been very kind to me and I’m not ungrateful.’
‘I don’t want your gratitude,’ he said, his aloofness setting a boundary between them. ‘The situation I’m in is an unusual one. An old friend of my father’s is arriving to stay soon, and bringing his granddaughter with him to a charity affair we’re all attending. Gabrielle is young, very pretty, and I like her, but she’s suffering a massive crush on me, and it’s becoming embarrassing.’
‘They usually are—to both the crusher and the crushee,’ Fleur said tartly. And she didn’t believe for a second that this was an unusual situation for him.
‘This is sliding over the edge into something that comes just a bit close to stalking for my liking. I’ve just read an interview she gave to a fashion magazine. She implied that she and I are engaged, and that I’m just waiting for her to grow up.’
Rapidly revising her impression of a high school Gabrielle, Fleur asked, ‘How old is she?’
‘Nineteen. She’s a model.’
‘I’m surprised. I’d have thought you’d be able to deal with a situation like this.’
‘Normally I would.’ His voice hardened. ‘But her grandfather is old, and it would hurt him if my lawyers sent her a letter telling her to desist, or if I contacted the press with a denial. And I like the girl—I don’t want to humiliate her.’
‘Somebody must have given her the idea that you were in love with her.’
He paused. ‘Not I.’
Fleur was inclined to believe him. After all, with all the women he could pick and choose from, it seemed unlikely that he’d choose one so young. ‘So how do you think I can help?’
He looked enigmatically at her. ‘You’ve been staying here for several days, and it might reinforce that I am not interested in her as wife material if we convince her that we’re lovers.’
‘Lovers?’ Her voice hit a high, shocked note.
He lifted her hand from the table and got to his feet, bringing her with him. ‘Lovers,’ he repeated calmly, a cynical smile tilting the corners of his mouth. ‘As in sharing a bed.’
‘As in being your mistress?’ Her heart was thumping so loudly she could barely hear her words, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his, gunmetal grey and direct, yet heated in some mysterious way.
‘Mistress? That’s a very old-fashioned word,’ he said with an odd inflexion. Still holding her hand, he lifted his other one to trace the outline of her lips.
His touch was pure fire, lightning in her blood, a fever on her skin.
‘No,’ he said deeply. ‘Apart from that erotic mouth, you’re not mistress material. In fact, Gabrielle is light years ahead of you in sophistication. A mistress she could deal with. I want her to believe that we’re in love, that this is serious.’
One knowledgeable finger smoothed along one cheekbone. Trying hard to muster her thoughts into some coherent form, she muttered, ‘If she’s so sophisticated she’ll know…she’ll know…’
‘What will she know?’ His voice was amused, and when she lifted her lashes she could see that he was watching her mouth with narrowed, intent eyes.
An electric charge shot through her, setting every cell humming in dangerous intoxication. ‘That…that I’m not the right sort of person for you.’
It was so difficult to articulate her tumbling thoughts. She tried to ignore the compelling fascination of his dark voice, that hypnotic glint in his eyes and the slow, sensuous caress across her skin, the touch she felt right down to her innermost core.
Rallying herself, she said, ‘I mean, I’m not the sort of person you’d be attracted to. I blush all the time. It’s my skin—it’s the sort that shows colour—’
She was babbling and she cut back the words, afraid that she was making a total fool of herself. Pull away, she commanded her body. Step back. He’s only holding one hand—he’ll let you go…
His gaze darkened. ‘Ah, but you’re wrong. I find you very attractive—surely you’ve realised? Your skin is like silk, and the blushes you find so dismaying are charming.’
He released her hand, but before she could take the opportunity to leap backwards he cupped her face with both hands and smiled at her.
Even in her dazzled state, Fleur was aware that he was consciously using his charm and compelling male presence to persuade her. She should be angry—but when he smiled at her she felt its erotic impact zing like lightning through her body.
However, he dropped his hands and took the step backwards himself, a touch of colour along his cheekbones reassuring her that he hadn’t been entirely unaware of her as a woman, even if it had been in the most basic way.
He said, ‘Trust me, if you agree, they will believe that we are in love. The men in my family marry for love. And this will be the least painful way—and probably the only one they’d accept—for Gabrielle to find out that her hopes and dreams are nothing more than fairy gold.’
‘Will she be upset?’
Again his broad shoulders lifted. ‘Almost certainly a little,’ he conceded. ‘But surely it’s better that than to waste several years believing she’s in love with me and that we’re meant for each other, or to suffer public humiliation when I make it obvious that I’m not interested in her as a wife.’
‘I suppose so.’ Although every instinct of self-preservation was howling a warning, Fleur said, ‘Very well, I’ll do it.’
It would be one way of repaying him for some of his consideration. And she’d be quite safe, because you couldn’t fall in love so quickly. You had to know someone to love them, and even then, she thought with a shiver of remembrance, love was often based on illusion. She’d live a fantasy life for a short time and then she’d go back to her everyday life without a regret.
Luke didn’t overwhelm her with effusive thanks. His smile was ironic, a little twisted. ‘Thank you. So treat the clothes as a necessary part of your role. And to establish that, tonight I’m hosting a dinner party for twenty. Don’t look so alarmed, I won’t expect you to be the hostess—’
‘Which is just as well, because I’ve never hosted a dinner party in my life,’ she said, terrified at the thought of pretending to be Luke’s lover in front of his friends. ‘Do I have to be there? We don’t have to fool them—I can have dinner in my room.’
‘Like a Victorian governess? Your presence here has been noticed,’ he said, adding with crisp ruthlessness, ‘Of course if anyone asks me where you are I can tell your sad little story.’
She drew in a hiss of breath between her teeth. ‘You fight dirty,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I’ll be totally out of my depth and you know it. I’m sure you’re trying to be kind, but—’
Luke gave a short bark of laughter. ‘I’m not, and you know that. I dislike seeing anyone cut off their nose to spite their face—it’s always seemed a pastime singularly lacking in sense or entertainment value. You don’t need to come to the dinner party but I think you’d enjoy it, just as I’m sure you’ll enjoy the day we plan to spend out on the lagoon tomorrow.’
She flushed. ‘I’m being ungrateful, aren’t I?’
Luke had always chosen sophisticated lovers, sure of themselves and their own attractions, yet he found her pride and her embarrassment endearing. She was fresh and charming and her mouth promised erotic delights untold, but everything about her warned him that she was totally lacking in the worldliness he’d always sought in his women.
Coolly he said, ‘I told you before, I don’t want gratitude. And if you’re wondering whether I’d expect you to indulge in overt displays of affection you needn’t worry—I’m not so crass. I merely thought that tonight would be a test run, and that you might be able to think yourself into the part easier if Gabrielle and her grandfather were not here.’
Chapter Four
FLEUR looked up into Luke’s tough, formidable face. What am I doing? she thought in panic.
But she said, ‘Very well, I’ll come. I just hope nothing goes wrong.’
‘Nothing can,’ he said with supreme self-confidence, and glanced at the watch on one lean tanned wrist. ‘Can you be ready to have a look at some clothes in half an hour or so?’
‘I—yes.’ Of course she could be ready! She had nothing else to do. But she was hugely reluctant.
She spent most of that half-hour wondering why on earth she’d agreed to this crazy idea. A sense of obligation carried to extremes, she decided, feeling another flick of panic. Yet Luke had taken her in and cared for her, and although he hadn’t done any of the actual work, he’d assumed responsibility for her when she was incapable.
The least she could do was help him out in turn.
Susi came to escort her to one of the other bedrooms. A selection of clothing was already waiting on racks, along with a woman dressed in a very up-market version of a pareu.
And Luke.
Did he expect her to parade in front of him like a model? Her whole being cringed at the prospect. She opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing there, only to bite back the words when she met his level, intimidating gaze.
He said easily, ‘Thank you, Susi.’ He waited for the housekeeper to leave before introducing her to the other woman, then said, ‘I’ll leave you to try the clothes on.’
Relieved, Fleur nodded.
Once he’d gone the boutique owner surveyed her with professional expertise. ‘He had the size right. And the colours—clear and warm to complement your astonishing skin and hair. He’s got a good eye, that boy.’
‘Boy?’
The older woman grinned. ‘I’ve known him since he was running around in a faded old lavalava with the other children. He might be almost thirty, but to me he’ll always be a wild kid. Now, let’s see what you like most.’
Given her head, Fleur would have chosen the muted colours she’d always worn, but as she’d tried on the clothes in crisp, clear hues, she realised that Luke had been right; the warm, peachy shades brought her skin and eyes alive, and the crisp peridot-greens turned her eyes into jewels.
Fleur and the saleswoman had a slight, polite tussle over the number of clothes to be purchased. ‘This is enough,’ Fleur said firmly, indicating the small pile she’d settled on.
However much they suited her, she wouldn’t need more than a fraction of the outfits carefully hung on a separate rack. There were no prices anywhere, but she recognised some labels, and the finishing and materials told her they didn’t come from the cheap range.
And then there were the extras—the underclothes and shoes and hats—things she’d only ever wear once or twice.
The older woman said doubtfully, ‘You’ll need more than that. The tropics are pretty tough on clothes.’
‘I can manage,’ Fleur said firmly.
The woman nodded. ‘OK, your decision. Now, can I make a suggestion? Your hair is glorious, but the style isn’t doing it justice. I have a friend who cuts like a genius, and she could come and do it for you now if you want her to. As a favour to Luke.’
Tactfully phrased, but the woman had meant, Your hair looks awful.
Most of the time Fleur kept it tied behind her head in an easy-to-deal-with ponytail, and simply chopped the ends off when it got too long.
She hesitated, and the woman said gently, ‘In a sense, Luke is Pacific royalty. He’s no snob—he’s so completely confident in himself that he doesn’t give a damn for image—but you’ll be judged against pretty high standards. And—forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn here—you’re not like his usual…friends.’ She hesitated a second before the final word, leaving it hanging in the air.
Fleur said as easily as she could, ‘You’re right, of course. Yes, if she can come this afternoon that would be great.’
