Читать книгу A Very French Affair - Эбби Грин - Страница 16

THE following night they were heading off to India. The next leg of the journey. Sorcha made sure to be one of the first on the plane this time, and chose one of the single seats. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. Last night had made her feel out of control…she’d found herself missing him! As though the set had become a more sinister place without him. Everything had seemed lacklustre…They were barely days into the job and this man was winding her around his little finger with little more than his magnetic presence and one kiss. The thought of which made her squirm in her seat.

She’d tried to see Katie for lunch earlier, but it hadn’t worked out with timing. Romain was insisting that they all stay in the same hotels along the way, in order to bond, so she hadn’t seen her friend once. And she missed Katie’s practical, down-to-earth maternal advice. Although maybe it was just as well that they hadn’t met, as when she’d told Katie about taking the job her friend had seemed to think that it was a good thing. She’d probably have encouraged her to jump into bed with Romain, and that was the kind of advice that Sorcha did not want to hear.

She plucked her eye mask out of her bag and put it on. At least this way she wouldn’t even see if he got on the plane. Because she didn’t care. Liar. She ignored the mocking voice. And then…as if to mock her further…her heart quickened and she felt herself tremble slightly. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck when an all too familiar scent teased her nostrils. He was here. And she knew it without even seeing him arrive. Sorcha knew without a doubt that she was in deep trouble.

Their shooting location in India was the beautiful City of Lakes—Udaipur. It was called the most romantic city in Rajasthan, and Sorcha had to agree, taking everything in the following day as they went by boat from the shore to the Lake Palace. It rose like an eye-wateringly majestic white dream from some Arabian Nights fantasy in the middle of Lake Pichola. She loved the arid heat, the hazy blue sky and the myriad colours everywhere—some so bright that it almost hurt to look at them.

Romain sat beside her on the small seat of the boat, his thigh disturbingly close to hers. In long khaki combat shorts, much like hers, he was managing to look all at once casual and devastatingly attractive. His dark T-shirt clung to hard, defined pectoral muscles that were a wicked enticement to touch and feel. She swallowed.

She’d managed to avoid him on the plane by sleeping most of the journey, and then all the way to the plush, opulent hotel they were staying in on the shores of the lake. But for now she couldn’t. She and Romain were in one boat, Simon and Dominic in another. The four were on their way to the Lake Palace to do a recce for tomorrow’s shoot. The rest of the crew had the day off, to recover, get over jet lag, and they would too—once this was over.

But she couldn’t stop sneaking a furtive glance. Against the backdrop of the ancient Indian buildings he looked like some regal god. And for some reason she felt compelled to speak, her mouth working independently of her brain—because what came out was not what she wanted to say at all.

‘You were busy in New York.’

She could see his brows pull together and cursed herself. What on earth was wrong with her?

‘Is that a question or a statement?’ He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Actually, yes, I was busy. I’m working on a few projects at the same time, and I knew New York would be the last place I’d have any time to spend on them…Tell me, Sorcha, did you miss me?’

She wanted to snort disdainfully, wanted to laugh. Wanted to say something cutting. She opened her mouth, but at that moment all she could see was his eyes. They were luminous in the hazy sunlight, glittering a fierce grey with something so…provocative in their depths that she couldn’t say a word. She wondered with awful futility how he had this power to hold her in such a spell…to make her think of things she’d never considered before.

She was helpless, lost in that look. She wanted to blurt out how she’d been tortured with pictures of him on date after date…even though she knew in reality it had only been one night.

‘I worked late that night, and then I had to take Maud out to dinner. I missed you.’

She couldn’t breathe as something awfully exultant moved through her. How was it that he could read her mind? To her utter horror she heard her voice come out shakily, forming words she’d had no intention of saying. ‘It didn’t seem like that on the Empire State Building.’

A flash of something intense crossed his face, distracting her from her monumental gaffe, and then, as if she’d imagined it, he took her hand, lifting it, bringing her palm to his mouth, where he pressed a kiss to the heated middle. Her fingers curled instinctively, as if to hold the kiss, and all rational thought fled.

‘I told you that next time we wouldn’t be interrupted, and I meant it.’

Sorcha felt her insides quiver, the blood thicken in her veins. How did he know just what to say to make her forget everything he stood for? Everything he represented to her?

The launch arrived at the Lake Palace, and as it gently hit the small jetty wall Sorcha seemed to come to her senses. But still felt cocooned in some sort of dreamlike haze. Simon and Dominic stood waiting for them. Sorcha clambered off the boat and followed the men around. The breathtaking scenery distracted her momentarily from her churning thoughts and emotions. She gazed in wonder at the beauty of the palace, which had once been built for royalty but was now a five-star hotel.

Finished with discussing the main schedule of shots with the other men, Romain turned to look for Sorcha. She’d disappeared. He walked over to the edge of the terrace, where a complicated lattice design in marble formed a wall. And there she was, just on the level below, down a few steps. He felt that annoyingly familiar punch to the gut. With her hair free, in tousled waves down her back, she stood on the terrace below talking to one of the hotel staff. He was pointing something out to her on a carving, and she was bending down, putting on her glasses to take a closer look.

He knew she wouldn’t be faking an interest. And when she turned to look up and smile widely at the man he jealously felt bowled over by her natural beauty. She was dressed simply in shorts, which showed a smooth length of pale, slim leg, and a plain white T-shirt which clung to her breasts far too provocatively for his liking. He vowed to take her, and soon. He couldn’t wait much longer, and the sooner he burned himself free of this desire, the sooner he could get back to normal.

Because, as much as he relished the feeling of boredom being gone, he also conversely wanted it back. In these uncharted waters of insatiable desire he felt rudderless. He wasn’t used to a woman making him feel like this, and the only other time that had happened he’d been too young to know how to deal with it, or the consequences. Not so any more. This time he was equipped. He would take her and then move on to someone more suitable, safer. This was just a temporary madness.

At that moment, as if Sorcha sensed him watching, she turned and looked up. The smile slid from her face and was replaced with a flare in her eyes. Her mouth opened slightly. She wanted him too. He knew it like an immutable truth that stirred in his blood. Though he knew she’d deny it again if he pushed her.

And that was why he found himself tugging her back from getting on the boat as they watched Simon and Dominic go off ahead of them. Now they were alone. No crew around.

Sorcha looked up into Romain’s expressionless face. She was very aware of the fact that they were now alone. On a stunningly beautiful idyllic white marbled palace island. Dominic and Simon’s boat was chugging away in the distance. Their boatman was looking at them expectantly.

‘Have lunch with me here.’

Sorcha’s immediate and first reaction was to shake her head and say no. A strong suspicion assailed her, making her quite sure that he was only asking so he could keep her close, could make sure she stayed out of trouble. Romain saw her hesitation. He smiled, and it looked dangerous and far too seductive.

‘Don’t worry—I won’t ravish you. And you have to eat, don’t you?’

She opened her mouth, and to her utter horror and chagrin her stomach made a sound like water going down a very big, echoing drain. She promptly shut her mouth and blushed.

‘That settles it.’ He took her arm and shepherded her back up the steps and into the main open-air foyer of the hotel.

The feeling of unreality lingered as they were shown to a secluded table in the corner of the magnificent restaurant. There were no walls, only columns, open to the warm air, the hazy blue of the sky and the lapping waters of the lake, intricately carved with complicated mosaics which were echoed in the roof above. It was truly the most breathtaking place Sorcha had ever been in her life.

A waiter materialised and she heard Romain order a bottle of champagne. She stopped him with a brief, light touch on his hand. He looked at her quizzically.

‘I’m sorry but do you mind if we don’t have champagne? It’s just that it gives me a headache…’

She sent a small, hesitant smile to the waiter and then back to Romain, who felt slightly winded.

‘If you don’t mind…what I’d actually really like is a beer.’

He lifted a brow and felt totally nonplussed. It had been pure reflex to order champagne—his first step in any seduction. And she wanted beer? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even drunk a beer, and yet in that instant it seemed to him to be the most desirable drink in the world.

He nodded to the waiter. ‘Two beers, please.’

Sorcha felt embarrassed as the waiter scurried away. ‘Oh, you don’t have to have one just because of me…That is,’ she qualified, feeling awkward, ‘you don’t exactly look like a beer drinking man.’

He sat back. His face was all lean angles, making him look austere.

‘Tell me, what do I look like?’

Like a man who knows how to make love to a woman…

Sorcha’s insides liquefied, and she couldn’t believe how a bubble of sensuality seemed to have enveloped them.

She had to control herself with effort. ‘You look like a vintage champagne type. Or a thousand-euro-a-bottle of wine type.’

He had actually paid that much and more for wine in the past, and it seemed almost crass now. ‘Forgive me. I should have consulted with you before ordering. Though, after seeing you put away half a glass of champagne in one go in New York, I was under the impression that you liked it.’

Sorcha had the grace to smile. ‘I actually hate the stuff. I wouldn’t have had a glass at all, only for Katie giving me one. Maud likes us to look like we’re having a good time at events like that…drinking champagne promotes the stereotype.’

‘And you weren’t having a good time?’ he asked easily.

The beers arrived. Romain held his bottle up and Sorcha clinked hers to his. Without breaking eye contact, they both took a long swallow.

Romain closed his eyes for a second. ‘I’d forgotten how good it tastes—especially in this climate…’ He opened them again, catching Sorcha looking at him with glittering big blue eyes. His body tightened. ‘Go on, you were going to tell me why you weren’t having a good time…’

She was? She had to be careful. To her consternation, she was finding that he was all too easy to talk to. It would be very easy to let something slip out that she wasn’t ready to talk about.

She shrugged minutely. ‘Well, you saw what it was like. A room full of movers and shakers. We were there primarily as adornments. People look at us and think: Models—ergo stupid. It’s all about seeing and being seen.’

She looked out to the lake. ‘In the early days it was all fabulously exciting to be in the same room as the Mayor of New York, or the biggest, newest film star, but really…your illusions get stripped away pretty quickly. Coming from somewhere like Ireland, I think I have a pretty good inbuilt detector for anyone who isn’t genuine. And about one per cent of that crowd are genuine…’

What she said brought back a niggling sense of déjà vu, but before he could dwell on it, pin it down, the waiter returned and took their order. Romain ordered more beers, and Sorcha was surprised to see they’d already been talking for some time. Her eyes took in his relaxed stance, his T-shirt straining across the muscles of his chest. She remembered seeing him emerge from the sea in Ireland. He smiled and she couldn’t breathe. The brown column of his throat looked all too touchable.

It felt as if a silken cord of intimacy was wrapping itself around Sorcha.

She spoke to fill the silence which seemed far too heavy and potent for her, seizing on the first thing that came into her head.

‘I was here before…’ She answered his questioning look, ‘On a backpacking trip with my friend Katie, when we were twenty-one. We’d been on a shoot in Delhi, and decided to do a little travelling before going home. We stayed at a tiny hostel just across the water there somewhere. We used to sit in our window, drinking beers. We’d dream about being over here, having a sumptuous meal, fine wine…’

She couldn’t stop a sudden giggle from rising, and Romain watched her. She didn’t realise how infectious her grin was. She knew part of it was a slightly hysterical reaction to being here in the first place, sharing such an intimate space with this man. At how fast things were moving, changing…

‘I’m sorry—it’s just that if Katie could see me now, she’d be so horrified…’ The giggle crept higher, and Sorcha bit her lip to stop it erupting. But when she saw a twitch on Romain’s mouth she couldn’t help it spilling out.

‘The fact that I’m here in shorts and a T-shirt, fulfilling our fantasy…and drinking beer…’ A tear escaped from her eye and she had to wipe it away, laughing in earnest now. ‘She’d kill me!’

A grin broke out on Romain’s face, and that sobered her up quicker than anything—the sheer masculine perfection of his features.

Her giggles died away with a little hiccup. ‘Sorry…it’s just if you’d seen the place we were staying…If Katie was here, she’d be dignity personified…not like me, swilling beer and corrupting your fine palate. Maybe you should have brought her,’ she said lightly, too lightly.

Romain shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in her.’

Sorcha’s heart pounded uncomfortably into the silence.

‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘you’re good friends?’

Sorcha nodded emphatically. This was easy. ‘The best. She’s been there for me since—’ She broke off, stopping her runaway mouth, and finished, ‘Since for ever. We’ve known each other since we were ten…and got discovered at the same time by a scout from Dublin when we were fifteen.’

At that moment their food was delivered. With relief at finding his intense focus off her for a moment, Sorcha tucked into the food, suddenly ravenous. They shared starters of traditional samosas and spring rolls wrapped Vietnamese-style in rice paper. Then Sorcha had ordered a main dish of steamed sea bass, while Romain had opted for a dish unique to the region, khad khargosh—wild hare.

When his meal was placed in front of him, and he saw Sorcha wrinkle her nose slightly, he asked, with a quirk to his mouth, ‘You don’t approve?’

Horrified to be caught like that, she said quickly, ‘Oh, no. It’s just the thought of the poor little hare…sorry.’

He speared a morsel and ate it, completely unperturbed. ‘But you’re not a vegetarian. You ordered steak that day in Dublin.’

When she’d fled the restaurant like a bolshy teenager…

She looked slightly shame faced and put her fork down for a moment, lifting her eyes to his. All he could see was their luminosity. Her colouring was exotic against this backdrop.

‘I don’t normally run out like that.’

He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. And felt surprised. He was used to women being petulant, yet that day he knew she hadn’t been. Her speedy exit had come from something much deeper. He’d touched on a raw nerve, and he remembered that they’d been talking about her project—the outreach centre. What he’d said then seemed to him to be unbelievably insensitive now. He’d still been labouring under his misapprehension, not believing that she might be different, reformed.

And was she?

Introspection kept him quiet. He was thinking about how professional she was. So far she’d been nothing but pleasant, polite, helpful, quiet…not a hint of divadom at all. All qualities his aunt had professed her to have again when he’d taken her for dinner. A dinner in which he’d had to focus just to get Sorcha out of his head. That was why he’d largely ignored her when Dominic had called him up to the set in New York. He’d known that seeing her would have the potential to scramble his brain. And he was not comfortable with that at all. He’d known her for less than three weeks, and hadn’t even slept with her…yet.

With the last succulent morsel of sea bass dissolving on her tongue, Sorcha sat back and dabbed her napkin to her mouth. ‘That was…amazing.’

Romain sat back too. ‘Yes. And if you want you can tell Kate you had champagne…the works…I’ll back up your story.’

Sorcha grinned and held up her bottle of beer to gently clink it with his in collusion. It was only when she took a swallow and saw some kind of triumphant gleam in his eye that her blood ran cold. What was he doing? Acting as if she and he might be in a situation in the future where they would create this little in joke to share with Katie…or whoever? Almost as if they were a couple.

And what the hell was she doing? This man was the enemy…and yet at this lunch it felt as if he was anything but. She felt shivery and trembly inside. This man was playing with her, that was all.

The plates were cleared away, a clean table lay between them. And then her fears were compounded.

He leant forward, two elbows on the table. Intent. ‘I owe you an apology.’

Sorcha tensed slightly. ‘You do?’

He nodded. ‘That day in Dublin, what I said about your outreach centre, it was unforgivable. I had no right to judge something you’ve been working on—no right to judge your motivations for doing something like that.’

Sorcha floundered. This Romain was way, way more dangerous to deal with than the autocratic, overbearing Romain.

‘Well, thank you.’

Now please drop it, she begged silently.

‘Would you tell me about it?’

Sorcha fought against closing her eyes. Her plea had gone spectacularly unanswered. She thought quickly. What harm could it do to tell him just a little? Surely it wouldn’t really give away anything? She took a deep breath.

Romain had seen the conflict cross her face, the shadows in her eyes again, the effort it was taking for her to open up to him at all. It made him feel a whole host of conflicting emotions, not least the desire to ask himself, what does she have to hide?

Sorcha looked out to the lake, and when she looked back to Romain her eyes were guarded. ‘When my father died…Well, we were very close.’

Romain gave a tiny nod of his head, encouraging her to go on. She looked at him steadily, and he was aware at that moment of something powerful passing between them.

‘He was my best friend, my confidante.’ She shrugged lightly and looked down for a second. ‘I was the ultimate daddy’s girl. He used to happily tell everyone that he was wrapped around my finger…he’d bring me to his office…everywhere. He died suddenly. No warning—nothing. I got the call from my mum while I was at school. My older brother was away with his family…’ She shrugged again, and this time it was jerky, as though she was fighting to keep the emotion down.

‘I kind of went off the rails a bit. I left school that summer, and Katie and I had both been offered work in London. Unfortunately I got involved with a crowd of less than savoury characters, and a guy called Christian. I was still very angry about my father’s death, and hadn’t really dealt with it. At that age there’s not a lot of emotional support unless you get it at home…’

Romain stayed very still and quiet, his eyes holding hers, and when she looked at him they seemed to her to be like beacons. Crazy…but very, very seductive. She kept talking.

‘I guess that’s where the desire came from to do…something. For years I’ve always thought that if there had been some place…somewhere to go…that had offered impartial, confidential advice and support, I might have gone. And I might not have…’ She didn’t finish, and couldn’t look at him any more.

Romain reached across the table and took her hand, covering it with his warmth. Dark against pale. She only realised then that she was shaking.

‘Was Dominic a part of that crowd?’

She looked at him. ‘How…?’

‘He mentioned something at the start about knowing you from years ago. I put two and two together.’

She nodded. ‘Christian was his friend.’

‘Was Christian your lover?’ he asked sharply.

Her sense of danger skyrocketed.

How can I say I’m not sure…? Sorcha thought crazily to herself. She gave a brief, abrupt shake of the head. ‘No. I had a crush…it was all quite innocent…’

He seemed satisfied with that, and Sorcha prayed he’d move away from such dangerous waters.

‘Is that why you did the psychology degree? So you could work at the centre?’ He shook his own head. ‘I only realised when you told me about it that you wouldn’t have had time to come home for any real length of time…again, I’m sorry Sorcha…’