One Night with His Wife (7 page)

‘Do you think I’m going to cling to you now or something?’ she heard herself demand rawly.

Luc froze, but on the way to freezing he winced.

Hot-cheeked with fury and pain, Star stepped forward. ‘I’m
over
you!’ she launched at him.

‘We haven’t got time for a scene,’ Luc murmured deflatingly.

Star trembled, and her hands squeezed into defensive fists. ‘Saying how I feel is not creating a scene!’

Luc elevated an aristocratic brow. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that I might not be interested in how you feel?’

The angry colour drained from her skin, her expressive eyes shaken.

As Star spun away, Luc gritted his even white teeth. That sunny smile she had greeted him with had filled him with volcanic rage. The Star he remembered would have been self-conscious, shy. Not this one. Involuntarily, he recalled the wild sweetness of her response the night he had consummated their marriage. His body reacted with a surge of fierce arousal, infuriating him.

As a punishment, he made himself focus on the shabby playpen and its tiny occupants. Both babies were watching him with surprisingly intent expressions. The littlest one, with the explosion of copper curls, the colour of which jarred horribly with her pink outfit, gave him a big, gummy winsome smile. That smile was so hopeful and appealing that in spite of the mood he was in he very nearly smiled back. Focusing on the little boy, with his solemn dark brown eyes and slightly anxious air, Luc was astonished to find himself thinking that they were remarkably attractive babies. He looked swiftly away again, but not before he had reminded himself that those children were now
his
responsibility as well. Who else was there to support them?

Star turned back, determined to stand her ground, no matter how much his attitude upset her. ‘We had a good time in bed last night. It was just sex. I
know
that,’ she told him fiercely. ‘But it was my way of saying goodbye to you. I will not be treated like some sleazy one-night stand.’

Luc surveyed her with dark, deep eyes and remained maddeningly silent.

Star squared her slight shoulders. ‘Believe it or not, I’m really happy now that we’re getting a divorce. I have someone in my life who cares about me and now I’ll be free to enjoy that relationship.
He
has a heart, and an imagination…and he talks as well.’

Luc’s narrowed gaze chilled her to the bone. The atmosphere
seemed to have dropped in temperature to the level of a polar freeze. ‘Are you finished?’

Star compressed her lips and spun away, wondering why she had bothered to try and get through to him. ‘I’ll get the twins’ car seats—’

Luc frowned. ‘You’re planning to bring them with us?’

Star spun back in bewilderment. ‘What else would I do with them?’

It was clear that it had not occurred to Luc to wonder what else she might do with the twins. But then in his world young children were invariably in the convenient care of a nanny.

‘You just didn’t think, did you?’ she said witheringly. ‘Where I go, Venus and Mars have to go too.’

Luc stilled, his ebony brows drawing together. ‘Venus…and Mars?’

‘Juno christened them in their incubators.’ Star hated the defensive edge she heard in her own voice. ‘I know their names sound a little fanciful, and I may have put Viviene and Max on their birth certificates, but Venus and Mars are names which gave them good luck when they really needed it.’

‘Venus and Mars,’ Luc repeated with a sardonically curled lip.

Cheeks warm with angry colour, Star scooted past him to fetch the car seats from the twins’ bedroom. As she emerged, Luc lifted them from her hands with easy strength. ‘I’ll take these outside.’

* * *

As the limousine drove towards London, Star worked hard at not looking in Luc’s direction. But she remained agonisingly conscious of his all-pervasive presence. Their relationship, it seemed, had turned full circle. Once again, Luc was taking her to Emilie Auber and then planning to walk out of her life again. Her mind roamed back to their first fateful meeting eleven years earlier…

Her stepfather, Philippe Roussel, had died when she was
nine. In his will he had named Roland Sarrazin as her guardian. Since Philippe hadn’t had contact with the Sarrazins since his own childhood, he could only have chosen Luc’s father in the hope that the wealthy banker might feel obligated to offer his widow and her child financial help.

By then, Juno and Star had been living on the breadline in Mexico. Philippe had been charming, but hopelessly addicted to gambling. Only after his death had Juno shamefacedly admitted that she had fallen pregnant with Star
before
she’d met Philippe, and that he had not been Star’s real father.

Roland Sarrazin had sent Luc to Mexico to track them down. At the time, Juno had been feeling a failure as a mother.

‘I had no job, no money, no proper home for you, and you were missing out on your education. I thought that the Sarrazins would take care of you until I got my life sorted out. Then I would bring you back to live with me,’ Juno had shared painfully years later, when mother and daughter had finally been reconciled after their long separation. ‘How could I ever have dreamt that it would be nine years before I saw you again?’

Juno was still very bitter about that. Roland Sarrazin had applied to a French court to gain full custody of her daughter.

Luc had only been twenty then, but he had had an authority and a maturity far beyond his years. Star had waited outside their shabby one-room apartment while Luc talked to her mother. Within a couple of hours of that meeting Star had found herself accompanying Luc on a flight back to France.

Luc hadn’t had a clue how to talk to a child, but he had made a real effort to be kind and reassuring. He had also appeared to believe that she was coming to live with his family, and he had described Chateau Fontaine, their fabulous seventeenth-century home in the Loire valley.

But on their arrival there his father’s air of frigid disapproval had frightened and confused Star. Apart from commenting
that she was a astonishingly plain little girl, Luc’s beautiful mother, Lilliane, had displayed no more interest in her than she might have done in a stray cat.

‘My parents are very busy people.’ Luc had hunkered down to Star’s level to explain when she’d looked up at him with big hurt eyes welling with tears.

‘They don’t w-want me,’ she had sobbed helplessly. ‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘My father is your legal guardian.’

‘What about my mum?’

‘Right now your mother can’t look after you the way you need to be looked after, and she wants you to catch up with your schooling.’

The following day, Luc had flown her over to Emilie in London. She had been greeted with open arms and homemade lemonade and biscuits.

Of course, how
could
Luc have explained that his father had been outraged at being landed with responsibility for her? A formidably correct man, with immense pride in his own respectability, Roland Sarrazin had had a pronounced horror of scandal. Years earlier, Philippe Roussel had disgraced his own family. The circumstances in which Star and her mother had been living, not to mention the discovery that Star was
not
Philippe’s child, had convinced Roland Sarrazin that to protect himself from any further embarrassment he should ensure that Star’s mother, Juno, was kept out of her daughter’s life.

Emerging from the memory of that cold-blooded and entirely selfish decision, Star glanced at Luc. He had a desk in his limo: that really said it all. He was using a laptop computer while simultaneously talking on the phone. They had shared not a word of conversation since the journey began. The twins, initially eager to attract Luc’s attention, had finally given up on him and dozed off.

Star found herself watching the way stray shards of dimmed sunlight flickered through the tinted windows, glinting
over the springy luxuriance of his black hair, shadowing a hard cheekbone and accentuating the lush length of lashes longer than her own. One lean brown shapely hand rested on the edge of the desk. Dear heaven, even his hands were beautiful, she thought, suddenly stricken to the heart and sucking in a steadying breath so deep it left her dizzy.

A phone buzzed. Luc lifted his arrogant dark head, a slight frown line etched between his winged brows as he recognised that the phone ringing was not, in fact, his. Star dug into her capacious bag to produce the mobile which Rory had given her for her recent birthday, thinking how unfortunate it was that she had never got the chance to give her mother the number of her mobile phone.

‘Star, where
are
you?’ Rory demanded anxiously. ‘I drove up and saw that car buried under the scaffolding. I was afraid that you’d been hurt!’

‘Oh, no, I’m fine…really I am, Rory.’ Star smiled with determination, grateful for anything capable of distracting her from Luc’s intense visual appeal. Just like the night they had shared, such reactions belonged in the past now, she reminded herself doggedly. It was Rory she should be concentrating on. Rory, who was steady and caring. Rory, who would probably never seek a mistress who resembled a supermodel…

‘Luc’s taking me to visit Emilie. I was sort of rushed out the door and I forgot to call you.’ Star faltered on that last enervating recollection of Gabrielle Joly.

‘When will you be home?’ Rory prompted.

‘Soon…’ Looking up to meet Luc’s eyes, which were as cold and dark as the river Styx, reputed to lead into the underworld, Star swallowed with difficulty. ‘Look, I’ll call you when I get back. I’ll make a meal,’ she proffered on the spur of the moment.

The boyfriend was history, Luc decided without hesitation. A relationship in which neither fidelity nor loyalty appeared to figure was very bad news for Star. And if she couldn’t
work that out for herself, it was obviously
his
job to do it for her. What Star needed was a fresh start. For that reason, he would make his own generous financial support conditional on Rory’s exit from her life. A case of being cruel to be kind. For her own good, and that of her children, Star would have to learn to like a quieter, more conventional lifestyle, he reflected with grim satisfaction.

But she had changed. Last night he had been waiting for her to tell him she still loved him. He could not understand why her failure to do what he definitely hadn’t wanted her to do should have irritated the hell out of him. Quite deliberately, Luc dredged up purgative memories of their six-week marriage. Star calling him every hour on the hour…Star reading poetry out loud over breakfast…Star waiting for him every night when he came home, even if it was the next morning…Star, outrageously sensitive and vulnerable but as subtle as an army tank, and yet so loving, so incredibly loving and giving…

His hooded gaze chilled on that final reflection. Over the last eighteen months she had been loving and giving with how many
other
men?

At that moment, the limo pulled in at the tiny mews house where Emilie had lived for over forty years.

‘Is Emilie expecting us?’ Star asked awkwardly.

‘Bien sûr
…I contacted her before I arrived with you last night.’ Luc watched Star lean forward with the evident intention of undoing her daughter’s seat restraint. ‘Why don’t you leave the children sleeping? My chauffeur will watch over them. I don’t expect this to be a long visit.’

Star frowned. ‘But—’

‘Indeed, I imagine that you will be relieved when this meeting is at an end.’

Star stiffened. ‘I’m very fond of Emilie. I may be upset and embarrassed about what’s happened, but I’m still looking forward to seeing her.’

Luc looked singularly unimpressed by that claim. Star
tilted her chin. Emilie was already waiting at her front door, a tall, spare woman with soft white hair and a remarkably fresh complexion for a lady of seventy-two years.

‘I was delighted when Luc told me that he would be bringing you with him.’ Emilie greeted Star with a warm and affectionate hug and whispered, ‘Thank goodness you’ve finally told him about the twins.’

While Star reddened at that misapprehension on the older woman’s part, Emilie went to peer into the limo at the slumbering babies. ‘I do hope they wake up before you have to leave.’

In the pretty sitting room, Star sat down opposite Emilie.

‘I was most annoyed when I found out that my accountant had dragged you into this, Luc,’ Emilie confided, disconcerting both her visitors.

‘I wasn’t dragged, Emilie…and Hodgson was only doing his job.’

‘But he completely misread the situation. I
offered
Juno my money; she didn’t ask me for it and she didn’t want to accept a loan from me. I persuaded her to accept my help. Now that the gallery had failed—through no fault of hers, I might add—I will not have the poor woman hounded as if she’s a criminal!’

That spirited defence of her mother took Star entirely by surprise. Luc’s dark, devastating features betrayed no reaction whatsoever.

‘Juno’s a kind and decent woman who’s had a very difficult life and more than her fair share of bad luck.’ Emilie proclaimed in determined addition.

Tears stinging her eyes in a hot, emotional surge, Star reached across and grasped Emilie’s hand with very real gratitude. ‘My mother means well…she always means well…but nothing ever seems to go right for her,’ she agreed shakily.

‘Or for anybody else in her vicinity,’ Luc completed in a gritty undertone.

‘I
know
that she shouldn’t have run away like this,’ Star acknowledged tautly, ignoring that comment.

‘But Juno didn’t run away. She came to see me first.’ Emilie’s smile of recollection was wry. ‘Full of crazy ideas about how she might rescue us both from ruin…bless her heart. She does try
so
hard!’

‘Bless…her…heart?’ Luc studied his father’s elderly cousin much as he might have studied someone intellectually challenged.

‘A well-known artist had agreed to exhibit at the gallery opening night,’ Emilie explained with a sigh. ‘But last month he pulled out. I’m afraid the other artists backed out then too. By then, all the money had been spent on setting up the gallery and funding the advance publicity. It really wasn’t her fault.’