Seduction on the Cards (23 page)

“Do you mind if I sit over here?” she asked, pulling out the furthest dining chair with her free hand. “Pregnancy does strange things to you. Currently I can’t stand the smell of coffee. I made some earlier to see if I was all right yet, but I had to throw it outside.” 

“I could smell it as I came up the steps,” Alex said, placing her paintings back in one careful pile.  

He opened the door and took his coffee with him. “I’ll sit out here if it helps.” He folded his long legs and sat on the top step.

“You don’t have to.”

“I choose to. I can still talk to you from here.”

Kerri acknowledged his thoughtfulness with a brief nod.

“Yes, I think it’s a boy,” she agreed.

“A boy who’ll have a loving mother
and
father—more than I ever had. We’re in this together Kerri, whether you like it or not. This child will have two parents.”

Her hand started to tremble. Before she dropped her mug, she set it down—well away from the paintings. 

She’d expected never to see him again, and now he was only a few feet away, sounding serious and responsible. She couldn’t take it in. Couldn’t believe what he might be suggesting. Didn’t know if he even
was
suggesting it yet.

She cast about for something to fill the thick humming silence.

“He might have great-grandparents, too,” she said. “Have you thought of trying to track them down? Seeing if they’re still alive? Beaufort’s not such a common name in New Zealand.”

Alex drew a deep breath and rasped his finger and thumb to and fro across his chin. He stared into the middle distance, thoughts obviously far away. “Not so easy,” he said. “Beaufort was my mother’s stage name. Isabelle Beaufort. She was really Anne Thompson, daughter of Joan and Snow. They moved from Wellington to Auckland almost forty years ago—about the time my mother came to Paris.” He turned to look at Kerri. “I remember her telling me that much at least, but I never saw her birth certificate. She lived a very haphazard life.” He took a sip of coffee and sighed. “There are two million people in Auckland, and an enormous chunk of the phone-book seems to be Thompsons. ‘Snow’ is only a nickname. He might be Harry or George or Jack—or dead. I’ve no idea.” He ran a frustrated hand through his glossy dark hair, leaving it standing in disarray. “They could be living in Australia, or anywhere else in the world by now,” he added. “So far the investigator I hired has had no luck.”

“So who was ‘Grandmere’ with the cure for hiccups?”

He gave a small grunt of laughter.

“You remembered that? Grandmere Helene? A kind old neighbor who took pity on a hungry child. She made the most wonderful soup, full of haricot beans and vegetables and bone-marrow. It was so good I always gulped it down too fast.”

“And got the hiccups?”

“
Oui, cherie
.” He sipped his coffee again and set the mug down on the step. “If he’s in France, our little boy will never have to go through that. Being fed by strangers.”

“He won’t be fed by strangers here,” Kerri objected. “Don’t you trust me to do this, Alex? I have enough money through my grandparents for a perfectly adequate house. I have a job I can do partly freelance. I have no debts, thanks to you.”

He was quiet for a few seconds, then rose and stepped inside again. He hunkered down in front of her chair so their eyes were level.

“And the other—the gambling?” 

She shook her head sharply. “You really
don’t
trust me, do you? It’s finished. I promised you it would be.”

“It’s not so easy. I’ve seen too much of it—not just my mother, but others who thought they had the problem licked and then got dragged down again.”

“I’m not one of them.”

“Easy to say.”

“Three months, and not even a ticket in the Sevens sweepstake at work!”

“It’s a good start, but I’ve seen people begin so well...full of hope...”

“I bet they didn’t have a new life depending on them,” she snapped, curving a protective hand over her belly.

“My mother did.” His voice carried the huskiness of regret.

In that instant she saw how much he’d been hurt. It wasn’t that his life had been made hard by his mother’s gambling. It was that she’d loved it more than she’d loved
him
. Chosen the lure of the wager over the needs of her son. Thrown his childhood into chaos, and then left him stranded, unprotected and alone in the world.

Kerri reached out and stroked his tousled hair. An instinctive gesture of comfort to someone deeply hurt. She was astounded when Alex covered her hand with his, turned his face up into her palm, and kissed it. She saw his eyes slowly close, heard his indrawn breath, felt the rasp of his whiskers against her skin.

“You want to steal my baby back to France because of that?” she whispered.

He reared up in shock and almost lost his balance.

“I want to steal you
both
back to France. You don’t seriously think I want one of you without the other?”

Her terror abated a little. “I don’t know what you want at all. You haven’t said. Just that the baby will grow up in France.” 

Alex rose, enclosed both her hands in his, and pulled her up from the chair. He drew her over to the sofa and sank down beside her. “You’ve had three months to come to terms with this,
cherie
. I’ve had a bare ten minutes. Forgive me if I’m still trying to find the right words for you.”  

His blue eyes now had huge black pupils, and his gaze on her had become intense.

“Kerri—I want you. That much I know. That much you must know too?
Oui
?” 

He lifted their joined hands and kissed her fingers, eating her up with those hungry eyes. “I couldn’t stay away any longer,” he murmured. “I was lonely without you. I have never said this to anyone before.” He shook his head, as though puzzled by unfamiliar emotions. 

“Anyone at all?”

“Anyone I truly meant it to.” His intense expression relaxed for a moment and his eyes narrowed. “Are you teasing me,
cherie
? Making me pay for leaving you alone?”

Kerri smiled. 

“I
missed
my naughty girl. I invented another business trip to Noumea to have the excuse to travel a little further to see her again.”

“Quite a
lot
further,” Kerri corrected, as she felt her heart-rate increase and her lips begin to tingle.

“To the end of the earth, just for you. I have your photo in my telephone. I look at you a dozen times a day. Your face is always in my mind, even without that. I imagine you with me—like this.”

He released her hands and cupped her face, looking down at her with ferocious possession. Then he lowered his lips to hers, brushing softly at first, and then groaning with relief and need as she responded and they sank deep into pleasure together.  

Finally, he pulled back. “I hear you talking with me, Kerri; arguing with me, challenging me, whenever I’m alone. I want you with me, every way I can have you. I want to look after you, make a family with you, hear you laugh every day. This is ridiculously fast, I know...?”

“Three months?”

“Or four days if you really analyze it. One on the harbor, three in Noumea.”

“It doesn’t need analyzing, you controlling, over-achieving ambitious man. Stop living so seriously.” She poked him in the ribs. “Relax a bit. It’s definitely three months. I know, because I’ve thought of you every single day for the last ninety.”

“Every single day?” One of his dark eyebrows quirked up, and he grinned. “And missed me?”

“And missed you.”

“So you might love me a little bit in return? You might want me after all?” 

Kerri found the hand which had poked him in the ribs had now moved over his T-shirt to settle above the steady thump of his heart. She stroked up and down the centre panel of the tricolor flag. “Did you just say you loved me?” she demanded.

He looked down at her. “Would that be so bad?”

She stared at him and shook her head. “No Alex, it would be wonderful.”

“Then
oui
Kerri—I love you. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered, laying her face on his chest to hide the start of her happy tears. “Me too. And it’s
six
days – because you have to count the day we met and had dinner at Gaston’s, and that naughty Friday lunchtime in your office.”

“Always arguing,” he murmured, sliding both arms around her to draw her close. “But you’re right—we do need to count those. They were amazing days. How could I not include them? I fear this is your journalist’s sharp brain getting all the details right. You like things to be just as accurate as I do. Maybe we agree about more than you think?”

“Whatever else do we agree about?” she asked, nestling more comfortably against his chest.

“My huge odds?”

“Skite!” she teased, and then started to shake with giggles. “Huge odds I’m looking forward to taking a chance on again.”

They lay tangled together in her bed, relaxed as a pair of snoozing cats.

“To make you look part of the crowd I’m going to paint a French flag on each side of your face,” she said, smoothing a tender finger down from his high cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. 

He turned just enough to capture it between his lips. “Then I’ll paint fern-leaves on yours,” he said around her finger.

“They’d look funny with my costume,” she objected.

“No costume. I’m not taking you out in a salami suit to buy your engagement ring.”

“The jeweler would always remember us?”

“The jeweler,” he said, “isn’t going to get the chance. Jeans and face-paint are okay in the middle of this madness, but I’m
not
buying diamonds for a girl disguised as a sausage.” He raised his head far enough to kiss the end of her nose. “Even a sausage who tastes as good as you. This is a serious shopping expedition, Kerri, and I’m doing it only once. We should really dress up nicely instead, and go to Cartier in Paris once we’re home. Make it memorable?”

Her mouth dropped open at that. Was he kidding?

“No,” she murmured, still overcome by his sudden reappearance, and the unexpected new turn in her life. “Today’s memorable. Let’s do it today. I was going to meet Sarah and the others at a cafe for dinner after I’d done some more work on the book. They’ll help us to celebrate.”

“You think they’ll still be standing?”

“Sitting maybe,” she said with a grin. “Come and have a shower before I paint your face.”

The afternoon sun poured into the courtyard behind her flat. Kerri laid out her paints and brushes on the old card-table. She drew her chair very close to Alex’s.

“I’ll do one there,” she said, kissing the side of his face. “And one there.” She kissed the other. “Nothing here,” she added, sneaking a little kiss onto his lips.

Alex suffered the tickling paintbrush as she outlined the tricolor on each cheek. 

“This is what you use for your book illustrations?” he asked, soaking up her expression of rapt concentration, the moist pink tip of her tongue just caught between her teeth, and every dark eyelash outlining her amazing dancing eyes. 

As suddenly as that, he wanted her all over again.

“Mmmm,” she said, turning aside to swish her brush around in the jar of water. “Acrylics. You can dilute them so they look like watercolors, or use them thick like oils. They’ll wash off with a bit of a scrub.”

She loaded the brush with cadmium red, leaned close again, and applied the first careful stripe to each flag. Only the probability of smudging the wet paint stopped him from grabbing her and kissing her. 

She repeated the process with cobalt blue.

“Now you do me,” she said. “I need those to dry for a minute or two before I put the white piece in the centre.”

“I no doubt look absurd?” Alex suggested.

“Pretty damn sexy if you ask me,” she said, surveying him with a grin. She rinsed the paintbrush again and handed it over with the tube of black.

“So—fern leaves?”

“Perhaps just ‘NZ’ each side would be easier for you?”

Alex wiped the brush across the paint and tucked his tongue into his cheek.

Or maybe...?  

He drew a curving stem and added side-strokes until he had a passable imitation of the fern symbol that decorated kiwi sporting uniforms. Yes, there would still be room.

He reloaded the paintbrush and wrote ALEX in tall capitals beside the fern frond. He rinsed the brush out and started again. “Hold still,
cherie
,” he murmured, steadying her chin. 

LOVES ME he added on the other side of her face. 

He handed the brush back. 

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Unforgettable. Worth a photograph.” 

She smiled, suspecting nothing, and reached for the white paint.

EPILOGUE

They walked hand-in-hand down to the river.

“We’d have to put a safety fence here,” he said. “Before Franc can walk.”

“Before Franc can
crawl
,” Kerri corrected.

“I think even a boy as strong and beautiful as this would have trouble covering such a distance on his hands and knees,” Alex murmured, giving his three-month-old son a besotted smile.

The baby lay strapped to his chest in a carry-pack. Alex’s blue eyes gazed down into a matching pair in a much smaller face. All around them leaves dropped, swirling in the late autumn breeze, landing on the riverbank and the gently moving Seine.

“I bet he’ll be walking before his first birthday,” Kerri said.

“So—you like the house?”

She turned and surveyed the mellow stone building now several minutes stroll away.

“I
love
the house. The house, the gardens, the pony paddock, everything. The apartment is wonderful, but this house is heaven.”

“So we’ll buy it?
Oui, cherie?”

“
Oui, Alexandre
. If you really can afford it.”

“For my little family—anything.”

“Not just handsome, but rich as well,” she teased.

He tightened his hand and dropped a kiss on her brow.

“Richer for knowing you,” he said, suddenly serious. “But I have a terrible secret. A huge embarrassing secret I feel I finally have to share with you, Madame Beaufort.”