Читать книгу His Mistress Proposal?: Public Scandal, Private Mistress / His Mistress, His Terms / The Secret Mistress Arrangement - Kimberly Lang, Susan Napier - Страница 5

SHE could always blame Paris.

Glorious, graceful, flagrant and flamboyant, tantalising, Paris …

City of lovers, whose very air was romantic intoxication to breathe—a potent brew that ravished the senses and excited the blood. Just to be in Paris was a heady invitation to recklessness.

And Paris on Bastille Day was even more of an enticement to shed the shackles of convention and be bold, free-thinking and daring. Celebrating the spirit of rebellion, the entire city had been in a euphoric mood, the sweltering summer heatwave adding a sultry edge to the holiday atmosphere, tourists and residents alike thronging the streets and partying far into the steamy night. Behaving with reckless abandon and getting swept away in the passion of the moment had seemed to be an essential part of the whole experience.

Oh, yes, Paris was definitely to blame. After all, what defence did a lone, inexperienced Kiwi traveller have against the sophisticated wiles of the most seductive city in the world?

Veronica Bell slowly eased open the French doors that screened off the bedroom from the rest of the small apartment and tiptoed across the polished oak floorboards, clutching her strappy sandals and gossamer-fine crocheted wrap against her chest. At a shade under six foot, and of queenly proportions, she was acutely aware that she wasn’t built for stealth. She could feel her heart skittering nervously beneath the thin silk of her camisole top as she paused to orientate herself and received her second major shock of the morning: her purse was no longer where she had left it.

Or, rather, where she thought she had put it down.

Veronica had to admit that her exact recollection of events was somewhat scrambled by the mind-blowing climax to her last night in the French capital. She raked sleep-tangled mahogany locks away from her damp forehead, forcing down a fresh surge of panic at the thought of the outrageous risks she had taken.

Right now she needed to focus on the most urgent problem—which was getting out of here with her dignity intact.

It was barely dawn, faint streaks of pale light only just beginning to creep in around the edges of the heavy, cream-coloured drapes drawn across the row of double-glazed windows facing out over the street. She was starting to think that she might have to risk turning on a light when she suddenly caught a sight of a tell-tale glint in the thick pile of the shaggy floor rug. She crouched and fished out the slender, black-sequinned shoulder bag, which had fallen from the side arm of the low-slung couch and was half hidden behind the chunky square leg.

Her anxious fingertips traced the reassuring shape of her passport and folded money-belt through the pliant exoskeleton of overlapping sequins.

Thank God! She banished the mortifying vision of trying to explain how she had come to lose all her travel documents and money to a cynical gendarme, or some smirking official at the New Zealand Embassy.

Rising to her feet, she added the bag to the top of the bundle in her arms and began tiptoeing the last few metres to the apartment door.

A whispery rustle behind her, accompanied by a low, throaty sound, like the warning purr of a dangerous predator, made her freeze to the spot.

She looked back with a thrill of apprehension.

A gap in the curtains had thrown a long, pale yellow finger of light across the floor, pointing to the source of the sound. Through the square glass panes of the French doors she had left slightly ajar, Veronica had a slanting view of the king-sized bed and the big, rangy, suntanned male body sprawled face-up in a tangle of white cotton sheets.

The throaty rumble sounded again and she watched with guilty fascination as lean, muscled limbs thrashed free of the entwining sheets, flashing rippling shoulders, bulging biceps and hard flanks, glistening with perspiration. No wonder he was hot—with no air-conditioning the apartment was stiflingly warm—but temperature wasn’t the only reason the word came to mind.

Stripped, he really was incredibly gorgeous, she marvelled with a renewed sense of awe. Even more attractive than he had been in his stylishly scruffy jeans and white designer tee shirt.

It was hard to believe that she had succeeded in snaring such a prime specimen for a starring role in her rosy, romantic fantasy of a love affair in Paris. Only it had been lust rather than love, she reminded herself sternly, which had directed the script. Her frothy romantic comedy had unexpectedly turned into an adrenalin-spiked action-adventure … and the hero had more than lived up to his billing!

His dark head jerked on the pillow, and Veronica’s pulse kicked into overdrive. Heat pumped through her veins, her body tightening with defensive tension, her mouth going dry as she tried to think of something to say that was in character with the woman she had pretended to be, something witty and insouciant, and appropriate to the occasion …

But what?

Unfortunately, all her former boldness had deserted her the moment she opened her eyes and reality sank in. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep. Her private fantasising had always stopped short of the uncomfortable practicalities of the morning after.

Her brief flare of panic faded as she realised his restless movements were only a prelude to him turning over in a long, shuddering, stretch and roll of the impressive body, which left her staring at his naked back, his sleepy grumble muffled into silence as he laced his arm under the empty pillow beside him—still bearing the blurred imprint of her head—and drew it to his chest, burying his face in its billowing softness. His thick mane of silky-straight jet-black hair fanned out across the top of his hunched shoulders, his powerful musculature rippling under tawny skin as he melted back into stillness like a lazy, well-satiated lion, totally secure in his innate supremacy.

The animal comparison brought a flush of memory to Veronica’s cheeks, an invisible souvenir to sigh over when she was old and grey, or even a month hence, when she was back in wintry-wet Auckland, struggling to make a success of her ideas, and in need of proof that she had the courage and audacity to make her dreams come true.

She scurried to the deadlocked door, grimacing at the metallic clunk made by the weighty bolt as she finally wrenched it open.

She couldn’t resist a final, fleeting peek over her shoulder, however, and carried off a vivid image of bare, male buttocks erotically framed in a twisted skein of sheet, the superbly toned muscles pulled taut by his drawn-up knees, revealing a sexy hint of dark fluff on the underside of the smoothly sculpted globes where they curved into the tops of his strong, hair-roughened thighs.

Distracted, she let the heavy door go too soon, and it shut with a bang that reverberated up and down the empty stairwell.

The sound was magnified by her twanging nerves into a sonic boom and she plunged down the stairs, her bare feet slapping against the wooden treads. Reaching the second-floor landing, she dug blindly into her bundled-up purse and, miraculously, the small metal key with its numbered tag fell straight into her hand, but her fingers were shaking so much that she had difficulty trying to slot it into the door of her rented apartment. She cursed under her breath, her ears alert for prowling footsteps from above.

She didn’t want to risk him finding out where she was staying. He had no idea that the holiday rental she had referred to with deliberate vagueness at the start of the evening as being ‘in the Marais’ was literally right under his very nose.

She had bubbled with secret amusement when he had swept her back to his lair in the early hours of the morning, but thankfully a tiny, remaining spark of common sense had kept her from blurting out her startled recognition as he had paused to punch in the keycode at the entrance to a graceful old building in the historic rue de Birague.

Still on a champagne-fuelled high, and abuzz with excitement after their thrilling escape from the near-riot a few blocks away in the Place de la Bastille, she had embraced the fantastic coincidence as kismet … a serendipitous sign that they were fated to fulfil a passionate destiny.

Of course, in the sober light of day, the coincidence seemed a great deal less karmic given the fact that they had first encountered each other in the tiny Latin American bar just across the street from the apartments—the kind of place that was more of a hang-out for local residents and workers than a magnet for the passing tourist trade.

Once inside the apartment, her knees turned to water, and she slumped limply back against the door, biting back a giggle of semi-hysterical relief, her hand instinctively going to the small pendant of New Zealand jade, carved in the shape of a stylised Maori fishhook, that she always wore around her neck. To her dismay the reassuring touch of home was no longer there. Her fingers spread over her bare breastbone as she realised with a sharp pang that it must still be somewhere in Luc’s apartment, lost to her for ever, for there was no way she was going back for it.

She was certainly racking up a lot of memorable firsts in the first week of her trip: first time on a plane, first visit to London, first experience of being sick and alone in a country where she didn’t speak the language …

First time she had woken up with a sexy stranger.

She quickly pushed the alarming notion aside. ‘No regrets’ was what she had decided in the heat of passion, and she intended to stick to her bargain.

Besides, he wasn’t a complete stranger, she corrected herself, instantly breaching her self-imposed ban. In spite of the language barrier they had worked out a way to communicate.

Lucien.

Luc.

The intimate shortening of his name made her shiver. She remembered laughing it when he had first kissed her in the jam-packed Champs-de-Mars from where they had watched the elaborate fireworks display at the Trocadéro, and sighing it during their scorching embrace behind a pillar in the Place des Vosges.

Her dreaming dove-grey eyes suddenly caught sight of the digital glow of the clock on the microwave in the kitchen alcove and she gave a squawk as she confirmed the time with a horrified glance at the watch on her winter-pale wrist.

She scrambled around the one-bedroomed apartment, flinging her scattered possessions into the open suitcase on the floor. She wasn’t even going to have time for a lightning shower, she realised, swapping her skirt and top for khaki cargo shorts and a yellow ribbed singlet and scooping up her toiletries from the bathroom. She ducked to look in the rectangular mirror, positioned annoyingly low on the wall, and gasped at the sight of her haystack hair, the powdery black smudges of mascara under her eyes and sprinkle of freckles shining through the patchy foundation on her forehead and shiny nose.

Another reason to be thankful that Lucien was a heavy sleeper! she thought, using a tissue to scrape off a hasty application of cleanser and following it up with a quick swipe of SPF moisturiser and lipstick.

She brushed her hair with a ruthless speed that brought tears to her eyes, gathering the subtly layered strands into a simple pony-tail high on the back of her head, the ends skimming the bare skin at the top of her spine.

Just over an hour later she was pelting down one of the long, outside platforms at the Gare de Lyon to join the rapidly vanishing queue for the first high-speed train of the day to Avignon with only a few minutes to spare, her wheeled suitcase jouncing along behind her, the strap from her heavy cabin bag biting into her shoulder as she held out her ticket to be checked.

Predictably for the way her morning was going, her carriage turned out to be almost at the front of the extra-long train, and her leg muscles began to pull as she increased the pace of her fast trot.

The train was already packed, the annual summer exodus of Parisians out of the city having obviously begun, and Veronica had trouble finding a space in the baggage racks when she hauled her suitcase up the narrow stairs to the upper compartment and finally sank gratefully into her seat. Travelling alone could be extremely stressful, she was discovering, even when you were fiercely determined to enjoy every moment of it. Unfortunately she had no one with whom to share the highs and lows of travel, the awe and excitement of being out in the big, wide world after years of merely dreaming about it.

She looked at the unoccupied window-seat beside her, and shifted into it. If Karen had been with her, as planned, they would have been laughing about being late for the train, instead of worrying about it.

Part of her was still furious with her younger sister for wrecking their holiday plans.

When she had flown into Heathrow a week ago from Auckland, Veronica had been confidently expecting twenty-year-old Karen to be at the airport to greet her with a hug, full of plans for a fun weekend in London before they boarded the Eurostar to Paris for the start of their French holiday together.

Instead, she had hung around for forty minutes in the arrivals hall before getting anxious. Used to Karen’s chronic lateness, she had suddenly remembered to switch on her cell phone, but when the prepaid global roaming had finally chosen to glom onto a compatible network, there were no messages showing, so she had texted off a hopeful ‘where r u?’ in case they were simply missing each other in the ebb and flow of the airport.

The reply, when it came, had turned her eager anticipation to weary disappointment.

‘Sorry. Can u get taxi? Wil explain when u get here.’

It had better be a good explanation, Veronica had brooded. After twenty-six hours of so-called ‘direct’ economy-class flight, which included two drawn-out stopovers in featureless transit lounges, and a few more free glasses of wine on the plane than she ought, she had been feeling extremely washed out. However, she had boosted her flagging energies with the cheering knowledge of good times ahead, and had geared herself up to make her own way to the serviced flat in Kensington where Karen’s employer, who had departed on holiday the previous day, had left her assistant to enjoy the last weekend of the expiring lease.

Typically for Karen—who consistently spent more than she earned—she hadn’t factored cost into her blithe suggestion of a taxi. It probably hadn’t even occurred to her that her sister might be on a strict budget, Veronica had thought, her accountant’s soul cringing as she mentally translated the quoted fare into New Zealand dollars. In spite of her creeping jet lag, she had decided to take the cheaper option of the underground, emerging battered but triumphant from the thick of the morning rush hour, within walking distance of the address marked on her pocket map.

When her sister had thrown open the door of the flat and welcomed her with the much-delayed hug, all petty annoyances had fled … for a while.

‘At last!’ Karen declared, her green eyes bright with suppressed excitement as she helped carry in the bags. ‘What took you so long?’

‘It’s rush hour,’ Veronica pointed out wryly.

‘I meant to fly from Auckland,’ laughed Karen. ‘You should have come via Los Angeles, the way we did, instead of making all those stops … no wonder you look like a limp dishrag!’

Veronica immediately felt the savage burden of her twenty-four years.

‘It was the best deal I could find,’ she said mildly, knowing that her sister would naturally have been flying all-expenses-paid, in business class.

She collapsed on the soft couch in the light and airy living room, and gratefully slipped her shoes off her aching feet as she accepted the offer of a cup of tea.

Karen, of course, was looking as beautiful as ever—her stretchy tube-top and denim miniskirt accentuating her concave belly and long, skinny legs as she chattered around the kitchen. Not having seen her for nearly a year, Veronica wondered when she had become so sophisticated. No one looking at her now would guess she had been born on a farm.

Although they had both grown up to be exactly the same height, curvaceous Veronica had always felt like an ungainly giantess when she stood beside her little sister. Karen’s body was wafer-thin, supple and graceful, her flawless skin without a single, disfiguring freckle, her artfully streaked hair falling halfway down her back in a smooth and shining blonde waterfall. Her long, oval face could have come straight from a painting by Modigliani, her fly-away eyebrows and high cheekbones giving her a haughty look, which dissolved into elfin mischief when she smiled.

People were willing to forgive her a lot to be on the receiving end of that smile. It was no wonder she had lived something of a charmed life, and had consequently ended up a little spoiled and thoughtless.

How thoughtless Veronica discovered a little later, when, the welcoming flurry of greetings and family news dispensed with, Karen admitted the reason for her non-appearance at the airport.

She was busy packing, all right, just not for France!

‘The Caribbean?’ Veronica was thunderstruck. ‘Leaving on Sunday?’ she repeated dumbly. ‘B-but—that’s the day before we go to Paris!’

Karen flipped her hair back over her shoulders, her brilliant smile a mixture of defiant excitement and shamefaced guilt. She pressed her manicured, be-ringed hands together in an exaggerated mea culpa.

‘I know! I should have told you about it, but it was only confirmed in the last few days, and you had already prepaid for everything by then and were practically on your way … but, oh, Ronnie, isn’t it fantastic?’ she gushed, as if her sheer enthusiasm could roll back her sister’s bewildered shock.

‘I … didn’t even know that you were interested in modelling,’ Veronica said hollowly. She felt physically sick with disappointment, the light-headedness that had dogged her since her flight increasing exponentially, until she felt as if her head were a hot-air balloon, floating off her shoulders.

Karen was gabbling now: ‘I met someone who said I should give it a go, so I had my portfolio done in Auckland and I’ve been taking it around the agencies here on my days off. I even managed to get a couple of little jobs—just a few hours each. Do you know how hard it is to get a break into the modelling scene in London? Especially the fashion side of things—so this is, like, a chance in a zillion! Ronnie, it’s a week in the Bahamas for a series of fashion spreads, not just once in one magazine! I’m substituting for a girl who broke the terms of her contract by putting on too much weight—which I guess makes it my big, fat break,’ she joked with artless cruelty, skipping swiftly on when she saw it didn’t raise a smile.

‘The agent said that the clients said that if they’d seen my portfolio before, they would have picked me over the original girl in the first place. They wanted an unknown for a totally new look and I’m it!’ She ran her hands down over her hips in a self-consciously preening gesture, which Veronica watched with dazed grey eyes.

‘But you already have a job,’ she murmured blankly.

Since she was seventeen, her sister had worked for internationally successful New Zealand food author, Melanie Reed, first as a child-minder, then full-time nanny to her youngest daughter—graduating to live-in personal assistant when nine-year-old Sophie had gone off to boarding school. Melanie and her husband had a lavish home-base in Auckland, but, to Veronica’s great envy, Karen had travelled extensively with her employer, and for the last two months had been staying in London while Melanie had been working on a new book deal, researching, and taping segments for a television lifestyle programme.

The Reeds had planned a four-week family break in the South of France following Melanie’s London engagements, and, when they heard that Veronica was thinking of flying over to holiday with her sister, had offered Karen cheap rent on their Paris apartment and free use of a small lodge in the grounds of their villa in Provence.

‘I thought you enjoyed working for Melanie,’ Veronica added, thinking of all the other generous perks and privileges that Karen had taken advantage of over the years.

‘I did—I do, but it’s not what I want to do for the whole rest of my life,’ Karen declared. ‘I mean, I never really chose it, did I? It just sort of happened. And it’s not as if I’ve got a lot of choices—I’m not clever like you—’ the way she tossed off the compliment made it sound almost like an insult ‘—but, well—modelling—I know could do that, and it’s got to be loads of fun. I might become a famous supermodel and make wads of cash!

‘Oh, Ronnie, this is my dream—like, like going to France has always been your dream!’ she burst out, seeming not to see the irony in her words. ‘I’m not going behind Mel’s back, she’s totally OK with it—you wouldn’t want me to turn down my big chance, would you?’ She pinned a mournful expression on her long face as her shoulders slumped.

It was such a patently silly thing to say that Veronica rolled her eyes. Of course she wouldn’t selfishly stand in the way of her sister’s newly minted ambitions—and Karen knew it!

‘Stop looking so tragic,’ she ordered, and Karen instantly obeyed, obviously sensing victory in the snappish words.

‘Don’t be mad at me,’ she begged earnestly. ‘I know it’s incredibly bad timing, but when destiny calls, what can you do?’

Veronica was tempted to roll her eyes again, but controlled herself. Her head had now recovered from its weird floating sensation and had settled to a painful throb.

‘You were the one who persuaded me it was such a great idea for us to spend our holiday together—’ She sighed, thinking of the whirlwind weeks of excited organising that had followed her late-night phone call to London on her sister’s birthday.

‘Yes, but you were the one who first brought it up,’ Karen pointed out. ‘You wanted me to persuade you, and once France was mentioned there was no stopping you. You said it would be a great chance for you to pick up some ideas and contacts for your little gift thing.’ Her voice became bubbly and teasing again: ‘You also had a pret-ty good reason for wanting to be out of New Zealand right now, if I remember rightly—’

‘Well, that’s all irrelevant now, isn’t it?’ Veronica cut her off hurriedly. The ‘little gift thing’ that Karen dismissed so lightly was the new business she was starting up—a corporate and personal gift-buying service, which she was intending to expand from what had been until now a thriving sideline into a fully-fledged company.

She throttled another upsurge of choking disappointment as she faced the full impact of her sister’s defection. ‘What are we going to do about all our bookings?’

But Karen had it all worked out. She didn’t care about losing her half of the expenses—she was going to make all that and more from her modelling, she said. Since everything was prepaid, Veronica should simply stick to the plan—go to Paris for five days, then on down to Provence. When Karen got back from her week or so in the Bahamas, she would get a cheap flight down to Marseilles—and join her sister for the rest of the holiday.

And when Veronica expressed reluctance about imposing herself on the Reeds, Karen scoffed.

‘Oh, don’t talk rot! They’re already down there and expecting you to turn up. It’s a self-catering cottage in the garden, not a guest suite in the villa. You’ve met Melanie and Miles before, and others are just family, so it’ll be all very laid-back and casual. Mel likes you, you know she does. She thinks your working for Mum and Dad’s organic farm business makes you a kindred spirit. I’ve been to France before, so it was more for your sake than for mine that she made the offer … after I told her all about your secret passion for all things French and how you drooled over her books set there—’

‘Oh, you didn’t?’ Veronica groaned, not fooled by her sister’s innocent look. Had Melanie recognised the manipulative ploy? ‘That just makes it even more awkward—you made me sound as if I was a freeloader, angling for an invite. Maybe I should at least suggest some kind of payment—’

‘Oh, well,’ said Karen meekly, instantly raising Veronica’s suspicions. ‘I suppose there is something you can do that they’d appreciate much more than money …’

Melanie, it transpired, had broken her right elbow in a fall on the day of her arrival in Provence, and was going to be wearing a sling for the next four to six weeks. Consequently, she had rung to warn Karen that she might be asked to do a little bit of work during her holiday stay. Of course Karen had agreed, but with her arrival delayed, perhaps Veronica offering her help would be a clever way to repay the Reeds for their generosity without risking offence? Melanie might not take her up on it, after all she had her family there for all her personal needs, including her widowed mother, but if she did require assistance on something relating to her work, it was bound to only be the occasional errand or bit of note-taking—the sort of thing that Veronica could dash off in a jiffy without even breaking a sweat!

Melanie hadn’t been the only one who had ended up being manipulated in that little scenario, Veronica thought wryly as she looked out the window at the late-comers to the first-class carriage hurrying to board before the doors began to close.

As for sweating—plenty of that had broken out when what Veronica had dismissed in London as a bad case of jet lag and tried to sleep off with regular doses of paracetamol had been diagnosed as a nasty case of flu by the emergency doctor she had called in a panic when she had staggered into the apartment in rue de Birague with a raging temperature and only a hazy memory of her trip through the Chunnel.

Fortunately the information sheet in the apartment had provided a number that guaranteed a home visit within thirty minutes, but, regretfully, all the sympathetic doctor could do for ‘la grippe’, he explained in broken English that was far better than her French, was to prescribe double-strength paracetamol to bring down the fever. She had spent two days languishing in her sickbed, alone, miserable, and heartily sorry for herself.

It was no wonder she had gone crazy when she had finally recovered enough to venture out!

She turned her flushed forehead against the cool glass of the window, and when she opened her eyes she saw the last of the stragglers heading towards the front carriages. One of them was a man carrying a laptop, accompanied by a porter wheeling his suitcase on a trolley. Probably heading for one of the other first-class carriages, she deduced with amusement, since everyone else seemed to be carrying all their own luggage.

He was tall, and walked with a loose-limbed stride, which looked lazy, but which had the stout porter trotting to keep up. A white panama hat with a turned-down brim covered most of his head, but it was the short black pony-tail, almost invisible as it tucked down inside the loosely flicked-up collar of his shirt, along with a certain set of his shoulders, that suddenly caught her eye and made her heart jump into her throat.

No. No, it couldn’t be!

There were millions of dark-haired men in Paris, and any number of them with hair long enough to be worn in a pony-tail.

She leaned forward, her own pony-tail tickling her collarbone, her gaze fixed on the back of his head, but he continued to look straight ahead, giving her not even a hint of a profile.

Her scrutiny shifted, drifting down over the loose, dark olive shirt hiding the waistband of his straight-legged jeans, to settle on the tight backside encased in the faded denim, throwing a sexy hitch with every striking stride.

It was absurd to think that she recognised it.

She only had a brief moment to judge its familiarity before he suddenly turned and stepped up onto the train. She wrenched her eyes back up to his face just in time to see a hawkish nose and unshaven jaw flash out of sight.

Veronica pushed back in her cushioned seat, sliding her hips forward so that her head sank below the height of the row. She wasn’t hiding, just getting comfortable for the trip, she told herself.

Of course it wasn’t Lucien. Maybe it was just someone who looked a little bit like him, and her guilty imagination had sketched in the rest.

She turned her eyes back to the window as the train slid smoothly out of the station. It was the country she had come to see, and she intended to sit back and enjoy every single moment of her ride to Avignon!