One Night with His Wife (19 page)

After an hour’s wakeful twisting and turning in a bed which seemed far too big and far too empty for her, Star sat
up with the sense of having finally penetrated the mystery of Luc’s behaviour with an explanation that was very slightly less humiliating. For goodness’ sake, what an idiot she was! She remembered him admitting that he hadn’t planned to marry until he was at least fifty. Now she knew what was wrong. All of a sudden Luc had felt
trapped
, twenty years ahead of his time. In presenting him with two children she had deprived him of the freedom and female variety that all young, sexually active males supposedly cherished. An extra twenty years was a long term to serve for not using contraception, she allowed miserably.

Seated at his desk, Luc sank a brandy in one long, unappreciative gulp. And she called
him
insensitive! He had never been the sensitive type, but Star was getting to him on levels he did not wish to explore. He saw that wistful, yearning expression on her face afresh. His anger got colder and deadlier. Or was it anger? He realised in some surprise that he felt bitter. He felt very, very bitter.

* * *

From below her lashes, while pretending to still be asleep, Star watched Luc emerge from the bathroom the next morning.

Stark naked, he was towelling dry his hair. A sensation akin to a tightening knot tugged low in the pit of her stomach. Feeling like a voyeur, she shut her eyes tight in shame. She recalled telling him that there were a lot more important things than sex and decided it was time she learned to practise what she preached. She didn’t know what time Luc had finally come to bed. By that stage she had given up hope of him ever appearing and she had dozed off.

‘I know you’re awake,’ Luc remarked lazily.

Her lashes practically hit her eyebrows.
‘How?’

A vibrant smile curved Luc’s mouth. ‘I spoke and you took the bait!’

She laughed, but it was a challenge. At that instant, his dark, vibrant magnetism just took her breath away.

Wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, Luc strolled across to the bed and sank lithely down on the edge, all bronzed skin, rippling muscles and tangible energy. He handed her a gold credit card and a fat wad of francs. ‘You need to do some serious shopping today.’

‘Why?’

‘Surprise…’ His dark eyes gleamed. ‘But shop for somewhere hot.’

She sat up with a jerk. ‘Are we going away?’

‘Late afternoon. You, me, the twins.’

Very slowly Star nodded; she was totally stunned. Luc had once had the same view of holidays as Scrooge had had of Christmas. What was making him so volatile? Why all these inexplicable changes of mood? Last night he had been grim as hell when he’d turned away from her in a very hurtful rejection, and now? Like a guy on a mission, he radiated charisma and smiles.

‘For a couple of weeks,’ Luc added casually.

‘What about the bank?’

‘I’m tearing myself away from it…but I have to go in today to tie up a few loose ends…OK,
mon ange
?’ Lowering his dark head, Luc crushed her parted lips with hungry brevity beneath his, and then rose with unconcealed reluctance again.

‘OK…’ she said breathlessly.

As he got dressed, Luc listened with the utmost contentment to Star singing off-key in the shower. To think he had actually been apprehensive about the reception he might receive! Storming off last night had been a major misjudgement, he acknowledged. If she had done the same thing to him, he would have been ready to strangle her. Fortunately, Star was happily distracted by the idea of a holiday.

And around dawn Luc had finally seen the error of his ways. Under no circumstances was he prepared to wait until the end of the summer to discover their ultimate fate as a family. And the solution to that problem was so simple that
Luc could not credit he had taken so long to see it. He had to
make
Star fall in love with him again. Then a nuclear bomb wouldn’t shift her from his side…

* * *

Star spent the morning shopping in Nantes.

In a medieval side-street, she found a fabulous baby shop, and kitted Venus and Mars out with substantial new wardrobes. When cost didn’t have to be considered, she discovered to her delight, she could shop at supersonic speed. She bought lingerie by the handful, swimwear and new toe-post sandals in five different colours. In quick succession she went on to purchase T-shirts, two short skirts, five long floaty ones she couldn’t choose between, three new dresses and canvas shoes. Stocking up on suncream, a new straw hat and a pair of leopard print sunglasses completed the trip.

With Bertille’s organisational ability to hand, and the wonderful knowledge that she could pack the kitchen sink if she so desired, Star had closed the last suitcase and had changed into a fashionably short lemon lace-lined skirt, teamed with a sequinned white T-shirt, when the internal phone rang to inform her that she had a visitor waiting to see her, a Mr Martin. Rory…Rory was here in
France
?

Star flew down the stairs like the wind. Rory was in the hall, looking amazingly elegant in white jeans and a designer T-shirt with a striped cotton sweater casually knotted round his slim shoulders.

As Luc strolled through the imposing front door of his ancestral home, wondering who owned the Porsche with the British registration parked out front, he was just in time to see his wife hurl herself joyously into Rory’s arms.

‘What a brilliant surprise!’ With the ease of long friendship, Star gripped the young blond man’s arms, stretched up to kiss his cheek and then held him back from her to subject him to a long, exaggerated appraisal before sounding a low wolf-whistle of admiration. ‘Wow! Love those sexy white jeans…don’t you look like a really cool dude?’

Rory grinned. ‘I brought the Porsche Cabriolet too—’

‘Poser!’ she mocked, her aquamarine eyes dancing. ‘And to think you made me travel round in an ancient old rust-bucket because you didn’t want your workmates to know that you were a rich kid.’

‘Now, come on, Star…the Morris is a classic British car.’

‘I have definitely missed you. Why are you skiving off work and over in France?’ she demanded cheerfully.

‘I’m supposed to be checking that my parents’ villa at Cap d’Antibes is in order for the end of the month…I was worried about you and the twins,’ he admitted abruptly.

‘Didn’t I tell you you didn’t need to worry?’ Star sighed guiltily. ‘Luc and I are—’

‘Deliriously happy,’ Luc’s heavy accented drawl slotted in to spell out.

Star whirled round with a huge but surprised smile. ‘Luc, you’re home! Come and meet Rory
…properly
this time! He’s got to be my best friend in the world.’

From a distance of ten feet, Luc stared bleakly at the young blond man. Rory advanced half a step and then stilled again, acknowledging his host’s presence with an uneasy nod.

Star focused on Luc. It struck her that he was remarkably pale, his slashing cheekbones taut. ‘Luc, are you—?’

‘Look, I’ll call in on the way back from the Cap on Sunday.’ Rory began.

Star grimaced. ‘Oh, heck, we won’t be here, Rory. In fact—’

‘In just under ten minutes we have to leave,’ Luc advanced without the slightest shade of regret.

‘Gosh, it’s a good thing I got my packing done so quick,’ Star muttered in surprise, and some embarrassment. ‘We’re going away for a couple of weeks, Rory.’

‘Possibly even longer,’ Luc qualified.

Star glanced at him in bewilderment. ‘But, Luc…what about the bank?’

‘With a computer, I can work anywhere,’ Luc asserted with sardonic bite.

Rory glanced uncomfortably at Star. ‘Could I just say hi to the twins before I go?’

‘Of course you can!’ Star headed for the stairs. ‘I feel so awful that you can’t stay longer.’

‘Luc is a very possessive guy,’ Rory whispered on the landing. ‘He really doesn’t like me being here—’

‘Nonsense,’ Star said loyally. ‘Luc was just surprised to see you, that’s all.’

‘You seem so happy…’

‘I am. So you shouldn’t be worrying about me.’

‘I went on the pull, like you suggested. I’m going clubbing with a brunette this week,’ Rory informed her.

Star grinned approval. ‘You could never do anything like that with me because I had the twins…’

‘And you’d never agree to a babysitter,’ Rory added with a thoughtful frown.

After a brief visit with Venus and Mars, Star walked Rory back out to his Porsche.

‘I’ll call back at the end of the month. Hell, I nearly forgot…Yesterday, Juno phoned me at work in a real panic because she had left a couple of messages and you hadn’t called her back. So I gave her your mobile phone number—’

‘Well, she hasn’t called yet. Where
is
she?’ Star demanded.

‘Switzerland…your mother didn’t tell me that, but I checked the number after she’d rung off,’ Rory admitted.

‘Switzerland…what the heck is she doing there?’ Star groaned. ‘Did you tell her where I was?’

‘Yeah…and she got really upset. Then she just hung up again. I’m sorry.’ Recognising Star’s anxiety, Rory reached for her hand and squeezed it in consolation. ‘Do you want that Swiss phone number?’

Star nodded ruefully.

Rory wrote it down and passed it to her. Star dug the piece
of paper into the back pocket of her skirt and wandered very slowly back into the chateau.

* * *

Preoccupied as Star had been with concern for her missing mother, she really only noticed how coolly Luc was behaving towards her once the jet had taken off.

‘I haven’t even asked where we’re going,’ she muttered guiltily.

‘Corsica…’

‘Oh, I haven’t been there…well, I haven’t been
most
places!’ she adjusted.

His lean, strong face empty of even a pretence of fleeting amusement, Luc rose to his feet.
‘Excuses-moi
,
mais
…I have work to do,’ he drawled glacially.

A heart-stopping vision of French masculine elegance in an unstructured lightweight suit in palest grey, Luc strode off to vanish into the office area of the jet.
Cool?
Luc was acting like the beginning of a new Ice Age. Confused, Star sat on a moment or two before following him. Longing for the light-hearted mood he had been in earlier that day, she perched on the arm of the seat across the aisle from him.

‘I appreciate that I’ve been a bit of a drag since Rory visited—’

Luc kept his attention on the screen of his laptop, but his bold profile hardened.

‘I’ve been worrying about Mum,’ she confided.

For a split second a pained light flashed in Luc’s narrowed gaze. She wasn’t just a poor liar: she was a hopeless one. Having lit up with pure joy at one glimpse of Rory Martin, Star had sunk into silent misery the instant her former lover had departed in his boy-toy car.
Friendship?
All right, so he himself had never had time for close friends, but who did she think she was kidding? She couldn’t act for peanuts either. If swarming all over that skinny little twerp in his girly jeans was her idea of friendship, she would be very lonely
in the friendship stakes in the future, Luc promised himself wrathfully.

Star cleared her throat awkwardly.

Luc still couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

‘Juno called Rory from Switzerland and I tried the number, but it was a guesthouse and she’d already moved on without leaving an address,’ Star volunteered tautly. ‘I know you think she’s a…a foolish woman at best and a schemer at worst, but I love her and naturally I’m concerned about her.’

‘Naturally,’ Luc echoed flatly. ‘But to be frank…your mother has a healthy survival instinct. If she’s in Switzerland, she must have a good reason for being there.’

‘I can’t think of any connection, except that that’s where she fell pregnant with me,’ Star confided.

Luc hadn’t known that, but he kept his attention rigidly on the screen.

‘You just want me to run along and play…don’t you?’ Star gathered tightly as the silence stretched.

‘Vraiment!’
Luc flung his arrogant dark head back and subjected her to a sizzling and derisive appraisal. ‘After the performance you put on with Rory this afternoon, what more do you expect?’

Her throat caught as she recognised his anger. ‘Performance?’

‘I have no wish to discuss it further,’ Luc ground out harshly.

Star contemplated his rigid profile and it was as if an alarm bell went off inside her head. ‘You were jealous…’ she whispered, in the tone of one making a fascinating discovery.

Luc slammed his laptop shut with such force it bounced on the desk. He sprang upright. Scorching dark eyes assailed hers in a look of rebuttal as physical as an assault.
‘Zut alors!
What do you think I am? An adolescent? I found the sight of
my
wife being so familiar with another man very offensive! That is not jealousy.’

He was so much taller than she was that it took courage
not to be intimidated. But Star was now angry too. Rising to her feet, she squared her slight shoulders. ‘Whatever you say…but when you’re annoyed with me, you’d better learn to face me with it. I won’t put up with the deep-freeze treatment. And by the way, if you saw anything offensive in my behaviour with Rory, it was in your own mind.’

‘You flaunted your intimacy with him,’ Luc condemned fiercely.

‘I’ve never been intimate with him…not intimate in the way
you
mean!’ Star returned tartly, infuriated with him. ‘And, since you’re not jealous…I wonder how it was that you
imagined
you saw sexual intimacy where it has never existed!’

Luc froze, shimmering dark eyes suddenly welding to her flushed face. ‘Never…?’

Turning on her heel, Star utilised the words he had used with her only a minute earlier. ‘I have no wish to discuss it further.’

A lean hand closed over her shoulder to stay her.
‘Star—’
Star pulled away. ‘No! I’m really annoyed with you. Why can’t you just admit that you have normal human emotions like everybody else? Instead you tried to put me down as if I’d done something wrong! That’s what I can’t forgive.’

Leaving silence in her wake, Star returned to the twins, happily dozing in their seats like twin angels. Well, their father is no angel, she thought furiously.