Читать книгу His Mistress Proposal?: Public Scandal, Private Mistress / His Mistress, His Terms / The Secret Mistress Arrangement - Kimberly Lang, Susan Napier - Страница 9

‘YOU can’t come in!’ Veronica blurted as he straightened up to step inside.

Lucien rested the hilt of his shoulder against the door, thrusting one hand into his trouser pocket, studying the woman who was the first in a very long time to confuse and confound him. Maybe it was the freckles, he brooded. They gave her an erroneous air of innocent playfulness, which his jaded senses had found irresistibly appealing. In fact, she had slipped under his well-protected guard with unsettling ease considering that he had already been on high alert after his nasty brush with notoriety in London. But although that situation had blown up in his face and given him a literal as well as a figurative bloody nose, it hadn’t shocked him to his cynical core—unlike his passionate run-in with the not-so-innocent seductress poised front of him, her body a symphony of curves beneath her summery-thin clothes.

He had the advantage of knowing exactly what she looked like without them … a life model for one of the great painters of sensuous female nudes.

Not Rubens, but Renoir, he decided, his imagination winging back to his Paris apartment to view his impressionistic memory of her reclining against the disordered pillows, her smooth skin rosy with a delicious warmth, her opulent breasts firm with excitement, their soft pink tips peaking with pleasure as he played with them, her lush hips and rounded limbs gilded by the light of the lamp, welcoming the weight of his big body as he wrestled her into eager submission and thrust into her tight, sultry heat.

He felt the hot stirring in his groin with a savage amusement, embracing the surge of predatory lust that powered his male desire to hunt, capture and dominate and refocused his wandering thoughts on his most immediate goal.

‘Why can’t I?’ he challenged, content for the moment to indulge her naïve belief that she was in control, for the sheer anticipated pleasure of proving otherwise. ‘You left your door wide-open, so you must have been expecting me to follow you …’

Veronica’s fingers contracted against her scalp in instinctive rejection of the Freudian possibility that she had wanted him to invade her private space.

‘I left it open for the breeze—’

‘And whatever the breeze blows in,’ he pointed out, his lazy smile belied by his watchful intent. ‘It’s not as if I’m a stranger. As you can see, I’m just the boy from next door.’

His darkening eyes swept over her and Veronica was suddenly made aware of her upraised arms and unconsciously provocative pose. She wrenched her hands down from her head, wincing as they took with them several tangled strands of hair.

‘Or is that the problem?’ he guessed wryly, boosting himself off the door and sauntering inside in brazen defiance of her expressed command. ‘You’re embarrassed to admit that you had a wild sex romp with the boy next door.’

‘You sound like a cheap tabloid newspaper headline,’ she snapped, instinctively jabbing at the place she thought he would be most vulnerable.

‘I’ve just had a crash course,’ he said with a grim smile.

‘And believe me, the tabloids are anything but cheap when they’re shelling out for sleaze.’

‘Well, thankfully that’s outside my experience.’

‘And what’s inside your experience? Picking up anonymous foreigners in bars for—well, what would you prefer to call it … a “torrid night of passion”?’

Veronica clenched her hands at her sides. Did he really think she was that shamefully indiscriminate? ‘I—you—’

‘Yes, you and I,’ he cut through her faltering attempt to fend off his barrage, ‘burning up the sheets together. And now you seem to want to act as if we never met. What frightens you more, Veronica—the fact that I’m a real person and not some obedient sexual fantasy-figure tucked away in your memories, or the fact that I’ve turned out to be someone you can’t just walk away from?’

She hunched her shoulders. It was his bruised male ego talking, she told herself, that was all. ‘I—it should never have happened,’ she said, moving over to pick up the apricot jam she had left by the sink and put it in the small under-bench refrigerator.

‘But it did happen, and I’m a naturally curious person, I want to know why,’ he pressed ruthlessly on her squirming conscience. ‘Why don’t you want to talk about it? Am I breaking some kind of taboo? Do you have some kinky fetish about bedding men who can only use a foreign tongue, so to speak?’

Her cheeks pinkened at his crude innuendo and she grabbed up a cloth and began to wipe down the spotless bench. ‘No! Of course not—I’m not in the habit of bedding anyone—’

‘You mean this was the first time for you?’ he asked cynically, planting his hip against the edge of the bench, effectively preventing her from continuing her pointless busy-work.

‘Yes—I mean, no,’ she added hastily, in case he thought she was trying to claim to have been a virgin. She threw down the cloth and drilled him with a defiant glare. ‘I don’t see why I should have to answer any more of your insulting questions. My love life is none of your business—’

‘Love life?’ His eyebrows shot up and she cursed herself for that unthinking choice of words. ‘Interesting that you find it insulting that I seek to understand how I fit into your … love life. As for questions—well, isn’t there one you’ve been wanting to ask me?’

Her heart began to thud unevenly in her breast, her breathing growing choppy. Questions could sometimes be as revealing as answers.

‘About this, for example.’ He withdrew his hand from his trouser pocket and she uttered a croaky little sound as he opened it to show her the jade pendant lying in his open palm. ‘I’d strung it from the rear-vision mirror of the car, to remind me to steer clear of perfidious jades,’ he said with gentle malice. ‘I found it in my bed in Paris—it has a damaged catch, otherwise I might have been left to wonder if you’d been a figment of my over-heated imagination. Pretty, isn’t it? Yet cruel in what it actually represents—a vicious hook on which to snag an unsuspecting fish and drag the poor, helpless victim to a painful fate.’

She took her eyes off the pendant only long enough to flick him a scathing look—surely he wasn’t implying that he was in any way a helpless victim? Or unsuspecting, come to that!

He watched her as he hefted it thoughtfully in his hand. ‘Quite valuable, too, I imagine …’ he mused with an infuriating smile.

Her hand darted out, but her fingertips barely grazed the delicate chain before his hand snapped shut over his prize, presenting her with an impenetrable fist.

‘Or does its sentimental value outweigh the price of the jade? Perhaps it was a romantic gift from a lover—someone you left back in New Zealand?’

She was unwillingly reminded of the modest diamond chip that Neil had demanded back after their failed engagement—the ring being the only piece of jewellery he had given her during their two-year relationship.

Lucien obviously wasn’t going to give the pendant back until she told him. ‘My parents gave it to me as a twenty-first birthday present,’ she admitted stiffly. ‘I don’t often take it off, so it’s not surprising that I didn’t notice that the catch was worn.’

But instead of handing it over he slipped it back into his pocket under her outraged eyes. ‘It would be a pity to risk losing it in someone else’s bed. They might not be as scrupulous as I am about returning it,’ he said glibly.

‘You haven’t returned it,’ she was stung to reply.

‘There’s no point at the moment, since it’s unwearable. I thought I’d find a jeweller somewhere and get it fixed for you.’

She didn’t believe his innocent look. He was tantamount to holding her pendant hostage to her good behaviour. ‘That’s not necessary—’

‘I know, but I want to do it. Consider it in the nature of an apology.’

‘For what?’ she said warily, mistrusting his silky sincerity.

‘For what I said to you out there on the road, when I thought you were a stalking journalist. I may have gone over the top with some of my remarks—’ He paused, watching as the most memorable of them popped back into her head.

‘The best lay I’ve had in a long, long time …’

Then as she visibly fought down her blush of chagrin he added simply: ‘About you staying away from me.’

That was all, and her blush exploded out of control as she realised what he was, oh, so clearly not apologising for …

‘I should have given you the slap you deserved,’ she choked.

‘Feel free to do it now,’ he invited, spreading his arms and taking another step closer, turning his head to present her with an olive-skinned cheek, his drawn-back hair a sleek backdrop to his neatly moulded ear.

‘It would serve you right if I did,’ she said fiercely, her hand twitching with the temptation to rediscover the feel of that fine-grained skin.

‘Try it—perhaps we both might like it,’ he urged wickedly, slanting his eyes to meet hers. ‘After all, we did have an unexpectedly exciting time together in Paris. It’s just a pity you had to rush off the way you did, before we had a chance to fully explore all the pleasurable possibilities …’

Veronica’s grey eyes widened in part shock, part curiosity. He had more than fulfilled her fantasies. What, precisely, hadn’t they explored …?

He shifted to look her full in the face again. ‘Not that you gave me any hints that you were interested in anything violent or kinky.’ His voice had lowered to that velvety purr she found so disruptive to her thought processes that she didn’t notice he had moved even closer. ‘You were exquisitely responsive to my lightest touch. So what was it that made you select me to be your partner for the night? What do you look for in a man, in a lover, when you go on the prowl?’

‘I wasn’t on the prowl,’ she protested. ‘I—I was excited about being in Paris … I just got carried away and so thought I’d—I’d—’

‘Find out what a Frenchman was like as a lover?’

Not just any Frenchman. You! she wanted to blurt in her own defence, but the knowledge that it was the truth was too dangerous to admit. His ego was already puffed up; there was no need for him to know how elemental her attraction to him had been from the first moment she had seen him sitting in the café. How she had woven richly embroidered dreams and fantasies around him before she had worked up the courage to make her reckless approach.

‘I wasn’t looking for a lover,’ she denied. ‘Just some company for my last night in Paris, and I thought you looked … interesting.’

‘But obviously not interesting enough to stick around for conversation after you’d had your wicked way with me,’ he goaded. ‘You don’t seem to require a very in-depth relationship in your sexual partners.’

‘You can talk! I didn’t notice you turning down the chance of a one-night stand!’ she said hotly.

His eyes gleamed with satisfaction at her response to his inflammatory statement.

‘Is that what it was? I thought it was a mutual coup de foudre. I assumed that after our exhausting revels, we’d wake up together in the morning …’

‘And what? And share a few laughs about how you fooled me into believing you couldn’t understand me?’ she threw at him.

‘Oh, I think that in the heat of the night we understood each other perfectly well,’ he drawled with rock-hard confidence. ‘You might recall I did let slip quite a few extremely fluent English phrases in your ear while I was inside you, and you told me quite explicitly what you liked about my body and what you wanted me to do with it. And when you begged me to make love to you, I certainly didn’t ask for a translation …’

‘Did I? I don’t remember—’ She flushed and turned her back, her arm brushing his body. How and when had she let him get so close?

She realised her strategic error when his arm snaked around her waist, stopping her from walking away.

‘Don’t you?’ His muscled arm slowly contracted, drawing her back against his chest, fitting her bottom into the warm saddle of his hips. ‘Are you sure?’ he murmured, his hard chin sinking into the hollow between her neck and shoulder, anchoring their upper bodies together.

She shivered at the feel of his lips moving against the side of her bare throat as he continued to speak in that dark, sultry tone: ‘I think you’ll find that you remember a lot more than you’re willing to admit.’ His arm was replaced with his big hands spanning the sides of her waist, his fingers slanting down across her hip-bones as he pressed her more snugly against his potent hardness.

‘There’s no need to feel shy, Veronica,’ he whispered with shattering insight. ‘See how wonderfully well our bodies are shaped to fit each other. You don’t have to be ashamed of what we did together. It was entirely natural … a man and a woman freely expressing their mutual desire. Je ne regrette rien …’

She stiffened, wanting to punish him for the accuracy of his perception and at the same time let him know that she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. No matter how glorious it had felt at the time, the aftermath of her flirtation with fantasy had taught her that she wasn’t cut out to be a spontaneous wild-child.

‘I’m not shy. I know it was just a one-time thing, that it didn’t mean anything,’ she said, trying to sound crushingly sophisticated.

His cheek nuzzled against the side of her throat. ‘Are you sure about that?’ His hands slipped under the edge of her top, his palms skimming up over her bare skin to cup her breasts in their silky-fine casing of stretchy fabric. ‘Don’t you remember how good it felt when there was nothing between your skin and mine … when we were naked with each other and I touched you like this …?’ His fingers feathered across the centre of her breasts, circling the betraying tightness of her nipples, drawing them out to prominent points against the seamless tee-shirt bra, and capturing them between thumb and forefinger. He turned his open mouth into her neck and scraped her lightly with his teeth and sucking at the thrilling sting. ‘Don’t you remember saying how you wanted this feeling to go on for ever,’ he said huskily, applying delicate pressure and rolling her throbbing nipples between his fingers, ‘how you moaned when I took these in my mouth and tasted you for the first time, how you melted with pleasure when I showed you just how exquisitely sensitive you are here, how violently responsive to the lightest stroke of my tongue …?’

Veronica shuddered, arching helplessly back against him as his hands contracted, compressing the pleasure into a dangerous thrill of forbidden delight.

His mouth moved up behind her ear, his breath as hot as his words as he confided how much her eager delight had pleased him. ‘It gave me such an incredible rush when I made you come just by devoting myself to your gorgeous breasts, licking and sucking on these sexy, pointed nipples until you went wild in my arms …’

He ignored her choked cry; one of his hands abandoned its lavish attentions and moved down to smooth over her hip and push between their bodies, tracing the generous curve of her bottom to its bisecting crease. ‘And here, where you’re so lush and round and womanly …’ his velvety whisper paused as he sank his teeth lightly into her fleshy ear lobe, his hand adjusting her so that she could feel the thick shaft of muscle lying against her resilient flesh ‘… remember how I kissed my way down your spine to this highly sensitive spot, the one just here … and then …’ Using darkly intense language, he described what he had done with an explicit eroticism that made her squeeze her thighs together in an effort to control the hot pulse of arousal that threatened to melt her into a submissive puddle at his feet.

The involuntary clench of her buttocks gripped him in an intimate clasp, and she felt his groan vibrating from his chest.

‘Oh, yes, you liked that, didn’t you?’ he said thickly, his fingers plunging under the smooth edge of her bra to find her distended nipple while his hips pushed his engorged manhood against the cleft of her bottom, creating an exciting friction in both places that edged her even nearer to a total meltdown. ‘You liked everything that we did to each other,’ he purred, nibbling at the nape of her neck. ‘The trouble was, it was all over so fast we hardly had time to savour it …’ He strung a series of light, teasing kisses to the tip of her shoulder, at odds with the simmering tension in his body. ‘But here there’s no need for us to rush our love-making. We can explore the sensuous side of passion … see if we enjoy slow and lazy as much as fast and furious. Just imagine how much more exciting it could be if we take the time to learn each other’s most erotic, most intimate secrets …’

The mention of secrets made Veronica flinch. Where before the romantic fantasy of a mysterious lover had been thrilling, now she knew that where there was no knowledge there was no trust. The real Lucien Ryder was still an enigma to her; a wealthy, worldly sophisticate, prone to high-risk behaviour and embroiled in some nameless trouble. He might not be the psychotic killer of her foolish fears, but he could still turn out to be extremely dangerous to her emotional health.

Now that he had satisfied himself that Veronica wasn’t a threat to his own security, Lucien had evidently decided to take advantage of the fact that she was convenient and available, and spin out their one night of ‘no regrets’ into a ‘no strings’ holiday affair.

Of course it wouldn’t occur to him that she might not be interested in acquiring the questionable status of his temporary lover, she thought, desperately trying to whip up a defensive anger. He talked very persuasively of passion and exploration, but there was no mention of any desire for emotional intimacy in his suggested affair. While he might be able to retain the necessary detachment, Veronica was less sanguine about her chances of walking away with her heart intact. A few hours in his company had already caused her as much turmoil as pleasure, filling her with conflicting doubts and yearnings. She was afraid that with continued exposure she could very easily fall under the spell of his forceful, charismatic personality and end up with a guaranteed heartbreak when he vanished back to his rarefied world.

If she didn’t murder him first!

She angled her head away from the ravishing series of kisses he was planting on her bare throat and somehow found the strength to wrench herself out of his seductive embrace.

‘I think I asked you to leave—’ she rasped, backing hastily away, her shaking hands pulling her clothing straight as she tried to claw back her composure.

To her fury he looked undaunted by the sharp rejection, if anything a hint of amusement entering his dark, brooding gaze. ‘Are you saying you’re not interested?’

She pushed back her hair, feeling the strands pull where they had clung to the throat he had dampened with his kisses. ‘No—’ She saw the carnal flame leap in his eyes and quickly corrected herself, ‘I mean, yes, I am saying that …’

His gaze fell to her swollen breasts, heaving with each shallow, gasping breath, the tightly furled nipples prominent against the thin cotton. His eyelids lowered, covering the glitter of savage satisfaction.

‘I think your body begs to differ,’ he murmured.

She wanted to wrap her arms over her chest and shield herself from his knowing eyes, but knew it would be seen as an indication of weakness. ‘My brain is what runs my life, my body doesn’t get a vote,’ she said proudly.

His mouth curved sardonically as he took a step forward. ‘Oh, no?’

She threw up a desperate, staying hand. ‘I don’t want you touching me!’

He obediently halted, and looked ruefully down at himself, hooking a casual thumb in the empty belt-loop of his crumpled trousers. ‘Well, I guess you can see what I want …’

In spite of the fact she knew it was an intentional goad, she couldn’t help following his gaze to the bold erection outlined by the white fabric pulled taut over his groin. Just looking at it made her feel hot and dizzy and her lips parted as she sucked in a gulp of sluggish air. To her fevered shock his hand dropped from his belt-loop to adjust the stiffened bulge, easing it to one side of his zip, allowing her to see the outline visibly growing thicker under her fascinated stare.

Cheeks flaming cherry-red, her eyes ripped guiltily back to his face, to find his eyes lying tauntingly in wait.

‘Sorry, but I was afraid I was in danger of permanent damage from the teeth of that zip,’ he said with extravagant insincerity. ‘Of course, if it was your teeth around me I’d consider it well worth the risk. It’s something we never got around to, but I’m anticipating that might change. You were rather looking at me as if you’d like to eat me up …’

Shock nailed her to the spot. ‘I was not! I wouldn’t—I’ve never—’ Her mouth snapped shut as his sultry expression changed to one of electrified curiosity.

‘Never?’

She gave him an excoriating look and stalked to stand beside the door.

When she turned to indicate she was waiting for him to leave he was looking after her with a certain amount of awe, and a sizzling speculation that raised the fine hairs on her arms. He stood for a moment, then reluctantly began to move towards the door. As he came level with her rigid figure he paused to murmur:

‘You’ve really, never—?’

‘Could you leave now?’ Veronica interrupted with clipped emphasis.

‘Have none of your other lovers—?’

She lifted her chin. ‘Will you please get out!’

She could feel his eyes running possessively over her body. ‘Maybe they’ve just been incompetent, because you certainly liked it when I—’

‘Would you just go!’ she hastily cut him off before he started to brag. Men! When you wanted them to talk they were infuriatingly sullen and uncommunicative and when you wanted them to shut up they were relentless!

‘OK, I’m going … but bear in mind I’m the boy next door,’ he reminded her in a husky drawl that was like sandpaper against her frayed nerves. ‘I can be over in a flash if you need me for any reason whatsoever …’

‘I won’t,’ she bit out.

Her defiant certainty earned her a dark chuckle. ‘Wait and see. The nights here are long and hot, especially if you have something on your mind that might make you feel restless and prone to feverish dreams. Feel free to come and get me if you’re tossing and turning sleeplessly in your lonely bed tonight, and decide you want company for a midnight skinny-dip or an intimate friend to run a dripping wet ice cube over every delectable dip and hollow of your hot, naked body …’

And while she was coping with that highly disturbing image he archly informed her that his room was the one over the arched portico they had seen when they walked around by the pool, with a separate entrance up the stone stairway flanked with urns and discreetly placed solar lights.

‘So you don’t have to go tiptoeing in through the house peering into all of the bedrooms to find me,’ he said silkily. ‘Although, come to think of it, tiptoeing out of bedrooms is actually your specialty!’

She was annoyed with herself for letting him get the last word, but she was even more annoyed for allowing him to get under her skin to the extent that she spent a very sweaty, wakeful night, getting up several times to spray cold water on her skin and take a drink from the bottle in the fridge, longing to shed her sprigged cotton boxers and matching singlet top but unable to bring herself to sleep naked when he was crouched in the shadows of her subconscious, poised to pounce whenever she closed her eyes.

How smug he would be to know he had succeeded in making her dream about him, she thought crankily as she showered away the stickiness of the endless night and shimmied into a short, floral-patterned sundress.

The clock-tower tolled a single bell for the half-hour and she decided that six-thirty was possibly a little early to stroll up to the village to buy croissants for her breakfast, so she made herself a cup of tea and drank it out on the patio as she brushed her newly washed hair, listening to the pigeons cooing in the trees, soaking up the gentle warmth of the early sun as it climbed into azure sky.

She debated sending another patient text question to Karen about her plans, even though it would still be the middle of the night on Grand Bahama Island, which was where she was headed last time they communicated. Since her island-hopping sister seemed to be permanently switched to answering-phone mode there was little point in planning a call around the six-hour time difference, and so far Veronica had had to be content with a few intermittent texts from Karen, largely featuring the word ‘cool’.

Of course, once Karen got here Veronica wouldn’t have to worry about Lucien. He wasn’t likely to continue his private game of seduction when she had her sister around to act as a buffer.

He had already met Karen, but perhaps he had forgotten how very beautiful she was, thought Veronica broodingly as she deftly braided her hair into a neat French plait that would fit comfortably under her straw hat. Lucien would probably take one look at the two of them together and realise he was going after the wrong sister.

The idea made her chest tighten. She might try to dismiss his attentions as empty flattery in the pursuit of lecherous self-interest, but some kernel of hope inside her still sheltered the daring notion that he truly found something special about her …

She took her keys but she didn’t need to unlock the gate and realised why as she rounded the corner of the vineyard and saw Melanie and Sophie walking ahead of her, Sophie swinging a large woven basket.

Veronica increased her pace to catch up. ‘Hi, are we both going to the same place?’

‘We’re going to the boulangerie to get our bread while Dad’s making scrambled eggs for breakfast,’ reported Sophie gravely.

‘And Luc’s gone on ahead to the lavoir by the village square to get our drinking water,’ added Melanie, explaining that St Romain was one of the very rare local villages whose historic, spring-fed fountain with its stone clothes-washing trough provided safe drinking water from its horizontal spout. ‘People come from miles around to fill up. Why pay for bottled spring water in the shop when you can get the pure stuff right from the source, absolutely free?’

Totting up the amount she had spent on keeping herself hydrated since she came to France, Veronica made a mental note to bring a couple of empty bottles next time she walked up to the town.

‘You look a bit heavy-eyed. Did the morning bells wake you?’ asked Melanie sympathetically. ‘They used to chime through the night as well, but some newcomers to the village complained about the “noise pollution”—’ she pulled a face to show she disapproved ‘—so after hundreds of years of happy tradition they now only ring the daylight hours. Mum used to say that one of the lovely things about coming here was that, day or night, she always knew the time without having to wear a watch.’

‘I think I was awake well before the sun came up,’ admitted Veronica, thinking of all the times in the night she had pored over the luminous dial of her watch, hoping to see that her ordeal was nearing an end.

‘I know what that’s like,’ sighed Melanie, adjusting the set of her sling. ‘I don’t wear this in bed but if I lie the wrong way on my arm I feel like a knife is jabbing into me.’ She frowned. ‘I hope it wasn’t because your bed was uncomfortable?’

‘I think maybe I haven’t quite recovered my sleep patterns after being sick in Paris,’ said Veronica hurriedly, successfully diverting the older woman from the embarrassing reason for her sleeplessness.

Melanie instantly demanded the details and was aghast at her lonely suffering. ‘Oh, you poor thing. You should have said something … perhaps you’d like to stay up at the Mas until you—’

‘No, really—I’m fine now,’ Veronica interrupted hastily. ‘It’s probably more the heat than anything else.’

‘If you get hot in the night you should go for a swim in the pool,’ said Sophie as they turned the corner to see the sign for the bakery at the top of the main street, next to the bell-tower archway that led to the St Romain Château, now a private medical clinic. ‘That’s what Luc does. He said he had a midnight swim last night.’

Ha! thought Veronica. She hoped it was a case of the biter bit.

‘What did you think of Luc? Did he say anything to you when he walked to the car last evening?’ Melanie startled her by asking.

‘About what?’ said Veronica cautiously.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I just wondered if he seemed all right to you. I never quite know where I am with Luc,’ she confessed ruefully. ‘It seems an awful thing to say but even as a child I found him a bit intimidating. Oh, not that he was a bully, or anything like that,’ she said quickly, on seeing Veronica’s stiffening expression. ‘He was always quiet and polite, so much so it used to worry me. He had a genius IQ, you see, and seemed such a … self-sufficient little boy. He never seemed to really need me for anything, not the way my biological children did …’

Veronica tried to control her fascinated expression as Melanie sketched a brief word-picture of young Lucien, born the son of Melanie’s best friend, who had died in childbirth.

‘Don and I got married straight away so he wouldn’t lose custody of Luc—but we were really only friends, and a pretty ill-matched pair at that.’ She laughed wryly. ‘He was a motorcycle stunt rider, for goodness’ sake! And no way was I ready to be a mother. I think we were both in a state of shock and thought we were doing the right thing for Lucien, but when it wore off we realised we were heading for disaster. The marriage didn’t even last six months. Don kept custody of Lucien and moved to Australia, but when Luc was ten Don was killed in a motorcycle stunt and, since there were no other relatives, Miles and I agreed to take him in.’

They halted outside the narrow little shop and Sophie slipped in through the creaking screen door as Melanie wound up her brief story.

‘We never regretted it, and I made sure he knew he was a welcome part of a loving family, but I always wondered whether I’d failed him as a baby by letting him go with his father, and I think that guilt made it difficult for me to push myself in where I was afraid he wouldn’t want me to go … so I let him be too aloof, respected his privacy too much when I should just have waded in and smothered him with hugs and kisses whether he wanted them or not, as I did the others. Of course, the twins were toddlers then, and sucked up a lot of my energies, and I was starting to write, so Mum looked after Luc after school a lot of the time. If ever I mention it now, Luc claims that Don was a great dad and he was never aware of missing a mother when he was little, but he never could bring himself to call me anything but Melanie in the whole six years he lived with us, so I guess that tells me something. If anything, I think Mum is more of a mother-figure to him than I am. I’ve heard him call her Gran sometimes.’ Melanie looked abashed as she heard her own words. ‘Do I sound a little jealous? Maybe I am. Mum and he just seemed to click with each other from day one …’

‘Perhaps being a grandmother-figure put her at a more comfortable emotional distance for him,’ ventured Veronica. ‘For a boy without a mother the whole concept might have been a bit overwhelming.’

Melanie’s blue eyes lightened with the thought. ‘You know, you just might be right.’

‘You’re not all that much older than he is, so perhaps he looks on you now as a sort of big sister rather than a stepmother,’ Veronica added, holding the screen door open, her mouth watering as the sweet and savoury smells of hot bread and sugary spices wafted out to greet them.

She had spoken seriously but Melanie was still laughing about it when they stepped back out into the sunlight, Sophie’s basket stacked with long loaves and sticky buns and Veronica clutching her bag of warm croissants.

‘Oh, hello, Luc, we were just talking about you!’

Lucien shifted the armful of square plastic containers against his chest, revealing damp patches on the front of his tee shirt and jeans as he chopped back his stride to join their leisurely pace, walking on the cobbled road to leave the footpath free for the three females.

‘Saying something nice, I hope,’ he said, tilting his head in Veronica’s direction as she ducked hastily to the far side of Sophie.

‘Flattering to me, anyway,’ smiled Melanie. ‘Veronica thinks I’m young enough to be your sister.’

‘Well, there’re only two more years between you and I, than there are between me and Sophie,’ he pointed out, with a gentle amusement that suggested to Veronica that she might have been right. She was jolted out of her complacency when he went on: ‘What about your family, Veronica? How do you enjoy being a big sister?’

Lured into the conversation, she was forced to politely respond to his persistent queries until mention of Karen prompted Melanie to break in:

‘What a pity she wasn’t with you in Paris when you were so frightfully ill. Veronica was stranded in the apartment with a bad case of flu for most of her stay and missed out on a lot of what she wanted to see,’ she told Luc, too absorbed in her own thoughts to see the snapping look he sent across to the other side of the footpath. ‘Perhaps she can somehow add a few days onto the end of her holiday and go back and do all the things she’d planned. I don’t think the apartment is booked up—I’ll check on it for you, Veronica. Otherwise … perhaps … I thought she might stay at your place, Luc—?’ she began diffidently.

Veronica could feel herself start to hyperventilate. ‘Oh, no—’

‘Why, yes, for some reason I can quite clearly picture her happily snuggling down there,’ Luc overrode her spluttering protest with gloating smoothness.

‘The poor thing had such a rotten start to her holiday that I’m determined to make it up to her.’ Melanie was on an unstoppable roll now. ‘I was going to get her to drive around and pick up samples and menus and product lists from some of the places in my research file which coincide with the markets that she’ll find useful, but if she’s doing the driving she won’t be able to enjoy the scenery.’ She paused expectantly and Veronica gritted her teeth as Luc obligingly met his cue.

‘That’s very true. You really want someone else behind the wheel … Ashley, or Ross perhaps?’ he suggested helpfully.

‘Lucien! You know Ashley is hopeless with a left-hand drive and she wouldn’t be at all happy if we dragged Ross away from her side. Anyway, it should be someone who knows something about the area so Veronica won’t have to bury her head in maps.’

‘Mmm, I guess it’ll have to be Miles, then.’

‘Lucien!’ Melanie halted at the corner where the footpath gave way to the stony grass verge beside the rows of vines, her frustration turning to the tug of a smile as she realised that his bland response to her heavy-handed hint was a tease. ‘Miles is trying to get the new bathroom done by next week.’ Lucien opened his mouth. ‘And Mum is busy putting the garden to rights!’ she added with a twinkle.

Veronica could only watch helplessly as her destiny was whisked out of her own hands by joint conspiracy.

‘I could learn how to drive if someone could show me how.’ Sophie had cleverly worked out the adult game and joined in, grinning as she broke off a crusty end of one of the bread sticks and stuffed it in her mouth. ‘Luc could teach me. He’s a really good driver.’

‘Yes, I am, aren’t I?’ he said modestly. ‘And I happen to have a rather classy convertible, which is perfect for zipping about the countryside scoping out the scenery. And nothing much to do but sit around and fret over my misfortunes.’

‘So—this way we kill three birds with one stone. Well, that’s settled, then!’ beamed Melanie, wafting her swathed elbow like the wave of a magic wand.

Luc showed a rather terrifying affinity for reading minds as he directed a heavy-lidded look of searing amusement into appalled dove-grey eyes and declared softly:

‘Veronica—you shall go to the ball …’