Читать книгу Summer Sins: Bedded, or Wedded? / Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded / The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain - Эбби Грин, Julia James - Страница 12

‘I’VE got a booking for you at an insurance company.’

The temp agency girl’s voice was brisk and businesslike. Lissa forced herself to concentrate. It was punishingly hard. For a start she was tired—but that was nothing new. Her late nights at the casino always left her tired. She should be grateful, though, that she still had a job there. She had so very nearly lost it.

But what was new, horribly, bleakly new, was this sense of the world having had all the colour drained out of it. Everything was grey.

Only one single place had colour in it—only one place was bathed in radiant, luminous light. Her memory of that evening—that precious, unforgettable evening which shone like a jewel in the secret, private place she kept it.

Yet it was a jewel with facets that were razor sharp, piercing her with pain whenever she permitted herself to remember that night.

But she had made the right decision—the only decision. There was nothing else she could have done.

Even as she told herself that, a small, treacherous voice would whisper in her inner ear.

You could have had one night … one hour … that, at least, you could have had …

But she knew she could not have done that. Knew that if she had succumbed to that exquisite temptation, the pain she felt now would be nothing in comparison. One night, one hour in his bed, would have only created a longing in her for more that she could never assuage.

He was not for her. He couldn’t be. She had duties and obligations elsewhere. Commitments.

And more, so much more than that—she had love. Love and responsibility and care. She couldn’t abandon them. Not for a night, not for an hour, not for a minute.

But it was hard—however much she reminded herself that it was impossible to indulge her desire for the man who had, out of nowhere, suddenly transformed her life. She knew she had to forget him but the longing could not be suppressed. Only repressed. Shut down tightly into the box of ‘might have beens.’

Well, there were a lot of ‘might have beens’ in her life. And they had all ended with that hideous, bloody mess of twisted metal and broken bodies.

Except her body.

Guilt, survivor guilt, seared through her. As she stood up from the chair in the agency, her legs strong and healthy, her body strong and healthy, she felt guilt go through her. Guilt and resolution.

Keep going—keep going. Work, by day and by night, work and earn and save.

But would she ever have enough?

Into her mind, the treacherous thought came again.

If only Armand.

But it had been days now, days after days, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Hope had drained out of her. Just as colour had drained out of her life.

She got to her feet, ready to set out for the insurance company’s offices. At least temping gave her higher rates than permanent work, and it was flexible enough for her needs—like the days she had to get to the hospital.

Guilt stabbed her, as it always did whenever she fell into self-pity or resentment. She had no right whatsoever to either emotion.

She had walked out of the crash without a scratch.

In her mind’s eye formed, as it always did, the image that haunted her, tormented her. The hospital chapel, the two cold, still bodies.

And one more body, still alive, but broken, still broken.

Pain choked her. And guilt. Not just guilt for having walked out of the crash that had destroyed so much, but guilt now for wanting even more from life than what she already had.

Wanting Xavier Lauran.

Whom she could never have.

Xavier sat at his desk, his eyes resting on the unopened e-mail on his screen. It was from Armand. His expression tightened. He did not want to open the e-mail. Did not want to read it. He didn’t want to think about Armand, and most of all he did not want to think about the woman his brother wanted to marry.

Not thinking about Lissa Stevens was essential. He had spent every day since that night at the hotel not thinking about her. He had spent every night battling not to remember her.

A bitter smile twisted his mouth. The saying was true—the road to hell was paved with good intentions. He’d had only good intentions when he’d made the decision to check out the woman Armand had talked about wanting to marry. His only thought then had been to save his brother from a disaster that, on past performance, was a real risk. But his good intentions had turned on him.

At some point he knew, with that cool, rational brain that he’d used to live his life by, he would have to think about Lissa Stephens. He would have to come to terms with the disaster that had befallen not his brother but himself. He had fallen, head first, into a pit of his own making. A pit he could not escape but which he had to find a way of dealing with.

Just how he was going to deal with it, however, was at the moment completely beyond him. His eyes shadowed. He had wanted Lissa Stephens that fateful night with an intensity that had shocked him as much as it had enthralled him—and he still wanted her. Wanted her more than ever. She was a presence he could not rid himself of, a memory he could not burn out of his mind. Though he refused to let himself think of her, that did not mean she was not there.

He wanted her.

He wanted her, and he did not care that she worked in a casino, did not care that he still did not know whether she was or was not fit to marry his brother, did not care if she was going to marry his brother.

It did not stop him wanting her.

What was he going to do? How could he meet her again, on Armand’s arm, and know that she was never going to be his?

The thought tormented him, the harsh, brutal knowledge that she was forbidden to him. Never before in his life had any woman he’d wanted been forbidden to him. He had never looked at married women, and none who were unmarried, with whom he’d decided to embark on a liaison, had ever turned him down. Why should they have? He had always been able to have the women he wanted. It had never been an issue, never been something he’d thought deeply about, never had cause to. He’d selected women from the many available to him with the same rationale he brought to bear on everything in his life. She would be beautiful, chic, well educated, well-bred, an habituée of the circles in which he moved. She would be experienced in the art of love, and she would want exactly what he wanted—a sensual, suitable sexual and social partner who would fit the space in his life which he allocated for that purpose. And when the affair lost its flavour, as it always did at some point, then she would agree with him that it was time to part, without rancour or regret.

But now he had been given a poisoned chalice by fate.

I desire my brother’s bride …

With tight, heavy emotion he clicked on Armand’s e-mail. His eyes scanned the words rapidly. It was just about his upcoming business schedule in the USA. Nothing about marriage plans.

Why not?

The question hung in Xavier’s focus. Why had Armand gone so quiet on a topic he’d written so enthusiastically about only a short time ago? Xavier’s mouth tightened. Was Armand’s reticence now because he did not trust his brother not to interfere, even though he’d asked him not to? Did he suspect that being despatched to the Middle East and America had been a deliberate ploy on his part?

A heavy rasp escaped Xavier. What did it matter? From now on he was out of it—he had to keep a very, very long distance from Armand and his plans to marry Lissa Stephens. It was the only safe thing to do—the only rational thing.

Lissa Stephens could never be his.

However much he wanted her.

It had been a long, tiring day, and Lissa had to force herself to walk briskly out of her local Tube station in the rush-hour crowds. She carried bags of grocery shopping bought from one of the City supermarkets. It meant lugging the bags home, but there was no supermarket near her flat—only a dingy convenience store near the entrance to the station, stocking overpriced groceries and sad looking fruit and vegetables. This part of London depressed her. Here in the tatty concrete wilderness around the Tube station, an unsuccessful urban regeneration project of the fifties and sixties, where the only people were those who could not afford anywhere better, her spirits never failed to droop.

But, however depressing the area, her flat did nevertheless have advantages. Not only was it social housing, so the rent was low for London, but it was also on the ground floor, and only a quarter of a mile away from St Nathaniel’s Hospital, which made her mandatory weekly visits there blessedly easier.

Her expression changed slightly as she rebalanced her shopping bags and continued to trudge homeward in the dusk.

It had been on one of her weekly visits to St Nat’s that she had first met Armand. He had been visiting a colleague who had collapsed with a heart attack, so he’d said later, but it had taken only a single look as they’d waited for the elevator together for him to smile, so warmly, so appreciatively.

And that was how it had started.

If only—

No. Automatically she cut off the pointless hope. There was no purpose in holding on to it. It was folly to hold out for the happy-ever-after ending that she dreamed of, where Armand’s magic wand would make everything all right. In the end there was only herself to rely on. Even as she forced herself to recall that, a thought came to her.

Xavier …

Xavier Lauran is rich …

No.

It was impossible and out of the question. She must not let her thoughts stray in that dangerously tempting direction. She must not let her thoughts stray to him, period. Doing so was like poking a wound with a stick, just to see the blood run.

She reached the old Victorian tenement and got out her keys. Her spirits low, battered on all fronts, she told herself she had to keep on at the task ahead of her. She could do nothing else. All her strength, her focus, her time and her will-power, had to be bent to that purpose only.

Work, earn, save. No let up, no reprieve. For as long as it took.

As she opened the door to the flat, she froze. There were voices inside, and they were not coming from the television. One was familiar, but the tone was not familiar, at all. It was excited, happy, with no trace of either the thread of pain or the drug-induced slurring. The other voice was also familiar but hearing it made her surge disbelievingly into the living room and stop dead. A figure unfolded from the battered sofa. Lissa’s face lit.

‘Armand,’ she cried.

She went into his outstretched arms.

‘Xavier, have you been listening to anything I’ve said?’

The voice beside him was light, with a teasing note, but Xavier had to force himself to pay attention. He’d had to force himself to pay attention to everything that Madeline de Cerasse had said to him all evening. He’d taken her out to dinner. It had been a deliberate gesture on his part. Completely rational. He needed, he knew, to pick up his normal life. He needed, he knew even better, to have sex as soon as possible. With another woman. And since he was, he realised, technically still regarded as her lover, at least by her, he knew it would have to be Madeline.

There was only one problem. He had absolutely no desire whatsoever to take Madeline to bed.

His eyes rested on her a moment. Her beautifully styled brunette crop set off a face of piquant allure, matched by a chicly elegant body that she was well skilled in using to sensual advantage in bed. He had every reason to desire her.

Yet he did not. He did not want her.

He only wanted one woman.

And he couldn’t have her.

Abruptly, knowing he was breaking his own first rule of affaires with his selected partners, he set down his fork. He was always considerate and tactful when the time came to end a relationship, letting his partner have sufficient time not just to accustom herself to the dissolution of their affair, but also to arrange an alternative partner for herself, to make the parting easier. This time he was neither.

‘I have something to say to you,’ he announced brusquely.

Five minutes later he was sitting at the table on his own. Madeline had gone. He was not surprised. He had tried to soften the blow, but it had been difficult to do so at such short notice. She had reacted by assuming the role of offended woman. He had allowed her to do so, letting himself appear the brute it comforted her to cast him as.

Well, perhaps he was a brute. There was certainly anger burning in him. Anger at himself. He should not have interfered in his brother’s life. He should have left his marriage plans well alone. He should have—

He tossed down his napkin and got to his feet abruptly. It was irrelevant what he should or should not have done. It was too late.

Too late for regrets. Too late for everything.

Lissa Stephens was not for him and never could be, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do about it.

How could the world change so much, so swiftly? The question swirled in Lissa’s head like a carousel, making her giddy with happiness. It had all happened so quickly—dizzyingly quickly. Armand had flown in from Dubai and done what Lissa had prayed that he would—and feared so much that he would not. He had waved his wonderful, miraculous magic wand and transformed everything. He had made all the necessary arrangements—that was what he’d been doing when he’d gone so quiet, so it would be a wonderful surprise, he’d said, his face lit from within with a glow that had made Lissa curl with happiness.

Now, a mere twenty-four hours later, it was done. America next stop.

She didn’t mind being left behind—understood the reason for it and rejoiced in it. As she made her way back from the airport even the damp and derelict street she lived in suddenly seemed bathed in glorious sunshine. Everything was radiant.

It took her another twenty-four hours, so suffused in happiness was she, for the realisation to come to her. When it did, her breath caught with the impact of it. She had three weeks to herself—the time the trip to America would take.

Three whole weeks.

Her breath stilled in her lungs.

A name distilled in her mind.

Xavier.

Do I dare? Do I really dare?

Her lips parted as she slowly exhaled.

Why should she not dare? She had three precious weeks to herself, and even a day, a single night, would be treasure more than she had ever thought to have.

A shadow fell across her face. But what if he no longer wanted her?

She’d probably been just a passing fancy—an impulse of the moment. Why should she have been anything else?

She told herself that in all probability Xavier Lauran, after accepting she would not spend the night with him, had simply returned to Paris and never given her another thought. For a man like him, with looks like his, there would be a queue around the block of women—all those beautiful, elegant, chic Parisiennes he was surrounded by—lining up to try and tempt him.

Yet a temptation of her own circled endlessly in her mind. What if he did still want her? And if he did, then now—now she had a golden opportunity. So, did she dare—did she really dare—get in touch with him?

Her stomach churned. It was not just a question of whether Xavier Lauran wanted her still. It was also a question of whether she really should go ahead and do this. Have an affair—a fling— call it what she would—with Xavier Lauran. But even as the doubt voiced itself, a protesting cry seemed to come from deep within her. There would never, she knew, be another man like Xavier Lauran in her life! A man who could stop the breath in her body. Who turned her knees to jelly and set the blood racing in her veins. No, there would never be another man like him. Nor would an opportunity like this ever come again. This chance to have, even for a brief time, something she would remember all her life would never come twice. It was now or never.

She couldn’t bear it to be never. She could tell herself all she liked that all she could have was a brief affair—a passing fling. Maybe only a single night. If that. But to let it go just for want of being brave enough to dare—she could not do that. Would not.

For another sleepless night she tossed and turned on it, wanting it so much, yet not daring to dare. All morning, as she did her work at the insurance company, she brooded on the number for the London branch of XeL she’d looked up. But did she dare, did she really dare, to phone him?

By the time she took her lunchbreak she was a bag of nerves. She took her mobile phone and went to the Ladies, forcing herself to key in the number.

How can I do this—phone him up and tell him … Tell him I’m available …?

She almost cut the call—and then it was answered.

‘XeL International, may I help you?’

For a moment Lissa’s voice froze, then she made herself speak.

‘Er—I’m trying to get in touch with Xavier Lauran.’ Her heart was thumping like a hammer.

‘Putting you through.’ There was a pause, then another ring tone, sounding foreign. A woman answered, speaking French. Lissa completely failed to catch what she said. So she simply repeated what she’d said to the UK switchboard, sticking to English. There was a pause. An audible one. Then the woman spoke again, in English.

‘What name, please?’

‘Er—Lissa Stephens.’ Lissa’s voice was breathless with nerves.

There was another pause. Then the woman spoke again. Smoothly and fluently.

‘Monsieur Lauran is in conference. I’m so sorry.’

Lissa swallowed. ‘Um—can I leave a message for him?’

‘Of course.’ The French-accented voice was as smooth as cream, but Lissa suddenly realised that she was simply being treated as someone to get off the line as soon as possible. Was Xavier really ‘in conference’ or just not available to women who phoned him out of the blue? But she wasn’t going to hang up without at least doing what she’d been nerving herself to do all night and all morning.

‘Thank you.’ Her voice sounded strangulated, but she made herself go on. Because it was, after all, now or never, and she would never be able to summon the nerve to do this again. ‘Could you just tell him, please, that Lissa says …’ she took another breath ‘… things have changed … completely … at my end. Something very unexpected…. my former commitments are, um, finished … I’m no longer. So, if he wanted….’ Her voice trailed off into nervestruck incoherence.

She rang off, unable to complete the call in any rational manner. She screwed her eyes shut in mortification. Oh, God, she’d sounded like a demented halfwit. She’d wanted to come across as cool—sophisticated, even—the kind of woman who could phone up a man like Xavier Lauran and suggest an affair.

Her cheeks burned. There was no one to witness her embarrassment, but that didn’t make it any easier.

Perhaps the secretary in Paris won’t pass the message on—perhaps she’ll just think it so stupid she’ll bin it, or not even have written it down.

She hoped it were so—the very thought of Xavier being solemnly handed her incoherent stutterings was too humiliating to contemplate.

Her expression tightened. Well, it was probably for the best. It had been self-indulgence, stupid and fantastical self-indulgence, to think that she could turn the clock back. She’d had her chance with Xavier Lauran, that solitary, magical evening, and she’d had to turn it down—turn him down. Men like him didn’t give second chances—and now that she’d gone and displayed herself as some kind of gibbering moron with that demented message, if he was given it by his secretary, the only thing he’d feel would be relief that he hadn’t taken her to bed that night after all.

Forcibly, she made herself turn away and walk back to her desk. As she sat down at her PC again, a wave of flattening despair crushed down on her. Xavier Lauran would not be walking back into her life again. He had gone, and he would stay gone.

Once more the world seemed drained of colour.

After Armand’s whirlwind descent, the flat seemed even more dreary than usual. And so very quiet. Even though Lissa could only rejoice at the reason, her spirits that evening were made even lower by the quiet. At least, blessedly, the evenings were her own now. That nightmare job at the casino had been the first to go after Armand’s miraculous reappearance.

That was what she should focus on. Everything was wonderful now—thanks to Armand. And she had no business wanting even more.

She should never have tried to get in touch with Xavier Lauran. It had been greed, nothing more—and self-indulgence, wanting yet more good fortune on top of all that had been showered down on her.

It was not to be. She must accept that and let it go. She’d forget him soon—he was just a fantasy. A daydream. Nothing more than that.

It was easy to say, however—far less easy to heed her own advice.

She must think of Armand instead—of the miracle he had wrought, and all that was happening now in America. She longed to phone him—but she had promised to wait for news.

Please let it be good news.

He would phone her, he had promised, when there was something to tell—but until then she must be patient. He would take care of everything and take care especially of—

The piercing shrill of the doorbell shattered her thoughts in that direction.

Who on earth?

Anxiety bit at her suddenly. Surely it was not Armand? It couldn’t be—it mustn’t be.

The doorbell rang again. Urgent and imperative. On suddenly trembling legs she hurried to the door and unhooked the entryphone. There was no way she was opening the front door to the street without checking first to find out who was there.

‘Hello?’ She made her voice sound brisk and businesslike. Not like a home alone female.

The voice at the other end was distorted, but as it penetrated her ear, faintness drummed through her.

It was Xavier Lauran.