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Now she was in precisely the kind of situation she had tried to avoid. Clad only in a skimpy, halter-necked tankini, she was acutely aware of her vulnerability.
‘I think I’ve been in long enough already—my skin is starting to get waterlogged.’ She laughed lightly to cover her unease, lifting a hand out of the water to waggle her slightly wrinkled fingers at him.
He grabbed her wrist, holding it playfully tight as he crabbed closer. ‘Oh, c’mon, you don’t really want to get out,’
he told her confidently. ‘Didn’t I see you playing pool tag yesterday with Sophie—how about a game of that with me?’
‘Sounds a bit too strenuous right now,’ she responded, her skin crawling at the thought. ‘I only came in to cool off. Um, where’s Ashley?’ she asked brightly, looking hopefully past him to the pathway that led from the house.
Her heart sank when his beefy, wet shoulders shrugged. ‘Who knows? She’s in one of her pets because it was her turn to help Zoe around the house.’ His mouth twisted in derision. ‘Can you believe that even after what happened to Melanie they don’t have a full-time housekeeper, just a cleaner who comes in a couple of times a week?’
‘Well, this is a family holiday home, not a full-service hotel,’ Veronica pointed out, using the distraction to twist her arm so that it slid out of his wet grasp. ‘Enjoy your swim!’ she added, attempting to dive around him without waiting for a reply.
But her triumphant relief was short-lived when he threw his body sideways so that she bumped into him, laughing as she surfaced, spluttering.
‘I thought you didn’t want to play,’ he said, starting to rough-house in earnest, taking an almost sadistic pleasure in the unevenness of the contest, his legs tangling with hers as his hands tried to drag her under.
‘I don’t—’ she said, threshing away from him, the back of her neck hitting the tiled edge of the pool, too intent on her furious defence to notice Sophie briefly appear from between the flowering oleanders and drop her towel as she turned to race back towards the house. ‘Go and find Ashley if you want a playmate—’
‘Aw, don’t be like that!’ He chased after her, still laughing, caging her with both arms against the plastered side of the pool. ‘You looked bored floating around by yourself. I just thought a big girl like you might be up for a little bit of fun—’
‘Not with you—’ Too late she realised the revulsion that had leaked into her voice was a direct attack on his vanity.
His laughter congealed into an ugly grin. ‘You suddenly got something better to do? Or should I say someone? You looked keen enough when you saw me dive in. Maybe you thought I was lover-boy—’
Something must have flickered in her eyes because his expression turned malicious as he realised his random spite had hit a mark. ‘You did!’ he crowed, thrusting his face aggressively towards hers to jeer: ‘You can stop acting holier than thou about Ashley and me if that’s what you’re up to. But you’re kidding yourself if you think a freckle-faced hick like you is anything special to him. He’s had more beautiful women than you’ve had hot dinners. Your sister, for one—’
Veronica went rigid. ‘That’s not true!’
‘Oh, yeah? Ask Ash! Melanie emailed her some pictures on their last visit to London, and they show Karen draped all over Ryder at some fancy dinner he took them to … You’re not going to tell me a guy like him is going to turn down a looker like your sister when she climbs into his lap to play kissy-face—’
‘It really isn’t any of my business,’ she said through stiff lips, but Ross had scented blood in the water and ripped into her with a shark-like tenacity.
‘It is if he’s trying to get into your pants as well,’ he snickered. ‘Maybe he gets a kick out of doing sisters. And then there’s that hot-and-heavy ménage à trois he’s got going in London that we’re all supposed to ignore. I don’t suppose he’s dished up all the dirty details to you about that …’ His sneering contempt was mixed with undercurrents of lustful envy.
It took all her control to maintain her frigid front. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
But her coolness only goaded him to greater excess. ‘If he’s such a hot stud you’d think that he wouldn’t have to sniff around after other men’s wives … or run away like a snivelling coward when he got caught, instead of standing up for himself like a real man—’
Veronica had had enough. He thought he could smear her with his vile thoughts with impunity, because she would be too ashamed to repeat them. Perhaps he was right, but that didn’t mean she had to meekly listen to his abuse.
She went to duck under one of his arms, only to have him lower it and say with nauseating menace, ‘Where do you think you’re going, honey?’
She was debating how effective a sharp knee in the groin would be, fearing the water resistance would be too great to land a telling blow, when she heard the slap of feet on the paving.
She looked up to see Luc and Sophie walking around the pool towards them, Sophie pink and slightly breathless in her bright blue swimsuit, Luc in cut-off jeans, shedding his patterned shirt and sunglasses onto one of the stone benches, revealing a sweaty torso and dust streaks on his face as he took a flat, shallow dive directly over their heads, arrowing to the other side and back under the water before popping up beside them with a lazy smile.
‘Hi, you two. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing much,’ said Ross, who had hastily dropped both arms as soon as Luc had hit the water. For all his cast-iron confidence his grin was a trifle nervous, although he must have known that he wasn’t about to be contradicted. ‘Veronica and I were just talking about having a race. I was offering to give her a head start.’
‘That’s not much of a challenge, old man,’ said Luc, casting Veronica a disparaging look that normally would have made her bristle. However she was too relieved by his miraculous appearance to do anything but cling gratefully to the side of the pool as he directed his dark-eyed gaze back to Ross.
‘You were a life-saving champ a few years ago, weren’t you? You’re probably used to the action being fast and furious,’
he said with a man-to-man respect that made Ross’s grin widen, his tension easing. Luc executed a watery somersault and stroked over to scoop up the ball that was sitting by the pool skimmer, swimming back with it spinning on his upraised finger.
‘So why don’t the two of us play some one-on-one instead—no complicated rules, just first one with ten goals in the opposition net wins,’ he said easily.
‘Hey, Soph!’ He raised his voice to call to the little girl who had sat on the edge of the pool, her legs dangling in the water alongside Veronica. ‘Will you get those floating baskets from the pool locker and hook them at the ends of the pool? Ross and I are going to have a game. That’s if you’re not afraid of going mano-a-mano,’ he added in a tone of voice calculated to produce the exact effect that it did. ‘Are you up for it, or not?’
Ross lunged through the water to snatch away the ball. ‘Bring it on!’
What was brought on was a quick, brutal, no-holds-barred confrontation, which ended with Luc scoring his tenth easy goal to Ross’s hard-won five. Veronica had edged around to sit on the steps with Sophie, out of the way of the explosive splashes and leaping collisions, slightly stunned by the grim intensity with which both men played. Although Luc didn’t have Ross’s chunky slabs of gym-sculpted muscle, his lean proportions gave him a better power-to-weight ratio, his lithe speed and supple flexibility enabling him to manoeuvre so quickly he often left his increasingly desperate opponent wallowing in his wake. In fact, Veronica judged that it would have been a complete annihilation except for the fact that Luc seemed to tire abruptly towards the end, allowing Ross to score all of his goals in the last few minutes of the contest.
Ross, of course, immediately proposed a best-of-three, but Luc had already swung himself out of the side of the pool and was sliding his feet into his shoes and thrusting his wet arms into his shirt, squeezing the water out of his sodden pony-tail and briskly rebanding it.
‘No, thanks, I’ve just been digging up a new area of vege garden for Zoe. I think I’ve had enough exercise for one day,’ he said, dropping his sunglasses into his chest pocket. ‘Good game, though,’ he added laconically and Veronica noticed that unlike Ross, who was wheezing heavily, he barely seemed out of breath.
He padded around to unhook a netted hoop and Veronica swam over to get the one from the shallow end, handing it up to him, trying not to notice the way the soaking denim clung to his thighs as he crouched and then stood to hand them to Sophie, who trotted away to drop them back in the locker.
He looked down at her. ‘Had enough?’ he demanded, flicking a glance at Ross, who was still trying to recover his breath, and Veronica realised that beneath his cool front was a banked fury.
She nodded hastily, but before she could turn back to the steps Luc bent, extending his hands, and when she tentatively placed her own in his, he pulled her out of the pool in a single movement, as if she weighed less than a feather, a brief ripple of contraction across the hard abdomen bared by his open shirt the only sign of effort. At close quarters she could feel the full impact of his angry tension.
He stepped back and gave her wet swimsuit a raking look that made her conscious of the high-cut briefs that extended her already long legs and the deep cleavage of the ruched halter top that was designed to support her full breasts, moulding them high against her chest, the double lining not thick enough to hide the outline of her nipples, pebbled by the cool water.
‘Is this yours?’ He moved over to pick up the large striped towel that lay across one of the sunloungers, and when she nodded he shook it out and held it up.
Veronica walked nervously towards him, far too aware of her body. He made her conscious of her essential femininity in a way that Ross’s suggestive leering never could, but she sensed he was in a dangerous mood.
His brown eyes were a fathomless black that made her skin goose-pimple as he dropped the towel over her shoulders, and she quickly wrapped it, sarong-like, around her body.
She didn’t dare object as he escorted her up the path and was relieved when Sophie ran up between them.
‘Luc’s driving Gran and me over to St Didier soon, to see the Jarditrain, and we wondered if you wanted to come?’ she said. ‘It’s a huge model railway this man has built in his back garden, with twenty-five different trains that run all around the track, through all sorts of scenery and tunnels and over bridges and stuff like that …’
‘Sounds fun,’ said Veronica distractedly, and stumbled over an uneven joint in the pavestones as Luc said:
‘Why don’t you run along and get changed, Sophie, while I make sure Veronica is OK?’
‘Oh, sure …’ Sophie paused and turned big eyes up to Veronica. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do, but Luc always knows,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He told me once when I was being bullied at school that if you’re not big enough to beat someone yourself you have to find someone to be your champion.’
‘Sophie didn’t know what you and Ross were doing, but she thought you looked upset, so she ran to get me,’ clipped Luc as the girl peeled off towards the house, pigtails bouncing. ‘You’re damned lucky she decided to look for you at the pool, and that I was working out in the garden. Unless we misread the situation and you were enjoying what he was doing—’
‘Of course I wasn’t!’ Veronica denied fiercely, still feeling shaken by the whole ugly incident. In hindsight it was obvious that Luc and Sophie hadn’t simply wandered onto the scene by chance. ‘I know I have to thank you for distracting him—’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ he muttered grimly, lengthening his stride as they passed under the twin almond trees at the edge of the cottage garden.
‘I’m glad you won when you did,’ she said, wary of his meaning as she hurried to keep up with him. ‘He was scoring so well there at the end I was afraid—’
He halted her with a blistering look. ‘Only because I let him,’ he bit out. ‘Ten-zip would have been more gratifying for me, but it would have been counter-productive. When you beat a man that completely, you don’t humiliate him as well—unless you want to make a bad enemy,’ he said, stepping back to let her precede him into the cottage. ‘I may happen to think Bentley’s a pompous bastard with an over-inflated opinion of his self-worth, but he’s Ashley’s fiancé, so a certain amount of diplomacy is required in getting the message across …’
‘What message?’ she asked, nervously hugging the towel around her.
‘That you’re under my protection,’ he replied, his voice redolent with dark satisfaction.
Her face registered her instinctive objection to the implication and he was swift to strike.
‘You want me to tell him you’re not?’ he invited with dangerous softness.
The consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. She swallowed. ‘I’m sure he won’t try anything like that again—’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘But what? Did he have reason to think you wanted him to try it on with you? Did you and he arrange to sneak off for a watery rendezvous—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I think he’s repulsive!’ she snapped.
‘Then what in the hell did you think you were doing in the pool with him?’ His rage broke loose in a low roar. ‘Damn it, don’t tell me you don’t know what a lecher he is. I’ve seen the way he leers over you when Ashley’s not around. Why the hell did you let him get close enough to grab you—?’
‘I didn’t let him do anything,’ she protested, buffeted by his unleashed fury, trying to persuade herself that his anger wasn’t really directed at her.
His brown eyes smouldered with hostility. ‘You shouldn’t have gone down to the pool alone.’
She blinked, rocked by the accusation. ‘Are you blaming me?’
‘At the very least you could have got out as soon as you saw him coming—’
‘I didn’t see him coming, that was the problem.’ It was her turn to blister him with a look. ‘You are blaming me,’ she said incredulously.
His olive skin darkened and he shifted his feet. ‘That swimsuit fits you like a second skin,’ he muttered.
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s because it’s designed for swimming,’ she pointed out sarcastically. ‘Do you expect me to wear my clothes when I go into the pool? How dare you try and blame me for Ross’s behaviour? His lack of self-control is his own problem, not mine!’ She stepped up to poke him in the chest with an outraged finger as she spoke. ‘He wanted to play a game of tag, obviously as an excuse to feel me up, and I said no. How much clearer could I have been? I never invited him to touch me and I never will. Believe me, Ashley is welcome to the puffed-up sleazebag.’ She ripped off her towel and threw it at him. ‘I won’t apologise for looking like this. Just because I slept once with you does not make me a slut!’ she articulated starkly.
Streaks of colour mounted his hard cheekbones as his hand fisted in the damp towel. ‘I never thought you were,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I’m not that much of a hypocrite—’
‘You virtually accused me of making it easy for him!’ she cried.
‘I didn’t say that. It’s him I don’t trust. I don’t want him anywhere near you,’ he said with sullen belligerence. ‘I don’t like him touching you. I don’t like the way he looks at you. He’s damned lucky I only gave him a few unfriendly taps. If he does it again he won’t be coming up for air again quite so quickly.’
Remembering the flying elbows, head-dunkings and jarring full-body smashes during the lawless one-on-one, Veronica marvelled at his understatement.
Then his words fully sank in and a possible source of his indiscriminate rage suddenly hit her between the eyes.
Her stomach flipped.
Was Luc jealous?
He was certainly acting like the quintessential territorial male, radiating a violent antagonism that signalled his dominance to challenger and female alike.
Or, given his murky recent past, was he just being dog in the manger?
She wished she hadn’t made her dramatic gesture with the towel. Now she had nothing to hide behind. Except words. She stood straight and proud.
‘I’m sure he won’t. After all, he’s already warned me against trusting you—’
He glowered. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She couldn’t back down now. The festering wound would never heal if she ignored it. ‘He told me about you and Karen. He said you were more than just acquaintances—’
‘And you believed him?’ His thick fury almost convinced her, but she had seen the tell-tale shutters go up at the mention of her sister’s name. ‘He lives in Australia, for God’s sake. What the hell would he know?’
‘He said Ashley had photos of you and Karen at a dinner—’
‘A dinner?’ he interrupted scathingly. ‘Is that all? No porno pics of us actually getting down and dirty, then?’ he lashed out, his words dripping with acid. ‘For God’s sake, how could you give credence to anything that cretin says? You said yourself he’s a sleazebag! The only way he can make himself look good is to make someone else look bad!’
She knew he was right, but she also knew that lies were often based in truth, and trust was a two-way street.
‘There’s no smoke without fire.’
The trite phrase seemed to be the last straw. ‘Well, if you’d rather believe him than me, go ahead!’ he exploded. ‘Unlike you I don’t choose to run my life guided by the opinions of muckraking slime!’
He stormed out the door, leaving Veronica’s head ringing as if she had been hit by a stun-grenade. He had never actually addressed the allegation at all, she thought numbly. Instead, all his anger had been directed at the fact that she had taken Ross’s word as gospel.
But she hadn’t … not really. Her own self-doubt had made the idea seem all too credible, but, still, she had harboured the secret expectation that Luc would flatly deny the accusation as a slanderous lie. If he had, she would have believed him in a heartbeat.
That he hadn’t was a sickening blow to her unacknowledged feelings, leaving her fiercely grateful that she had fought the powerful attraction that had tempted her to abandon her pride and her principles to a transient affair.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FORCING herself into motion, Veronica walked into the bedroom, her mind a blessed blank as she undid the ties at the nape of her neck and peeled the clinging-wet bathing-top over her head, dropping it carelessly on the tiled floor beside the bed on the far side of the room. She frowned as she looked around, blinking an annoying blur from her eyes.
‘Looking for this?’
Veronica spun around, rubbing fiercely at her wet lashes.
Luc came into focus as he stepped into the room, holding up her towel. ‘Sorry, I forgot I was carrying it when I flounced off.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘I thought you might need it.’
With a gasp Veronica snatched up the nearest thing from the bed to cover her swaying breasts. Unfortunately it turned out to be a small, decorative cushion barely equal to the task. She hugged it to her chest with both arms.
His eyes didn’t waver from her pale face and suspiciously bright eyes, his smile fading. ‘I’m a little touchy on the subject of personal loyalty right now,’ he said more sombrely. ‘I’m afraid I was making you pay for someone else’s sins. In the circumstances you had every right to ask what you did—and expect a straight answer, even if it’s not a very edifying one. Sometimes a kiss is nothing more or less than a kiss.’
‘W-what?’
‘I’m talking about Karen,’ he said abruptly. ‘That public dinner just after they first came to London was the only time I ever kissed her, although, strictly speaking, Karen was the one doing the kissing. She’d had a few drinks too many and started throwing herself at me. Melanie was embarrassed, so I acted amused, and played along, trying to keep the flirtation light to avoid creating an awkward scene at the table, but Karen took it for encouragement. She developed a bit of a crush on me for a few weeks afterwards—kept ringing me, turning up at my office or on my doorstep, that kind of thing. She made a nuisance of herself until I asked Melanie to have a quiet word with her. I haven’t seen her since.’
