by Julia James
Once it was gone she would feel easier in her mind. The temptation to keep it, against all her conscience, would be gone from her, no longer to be wrestled with. Her eyes shadowed, as they did so often now. And she need no longer wrestle with a temptation so much greater than merely keeping the emeralds.
She heard it echo now in her head—what had called to her so longingly... Tell him—just tell him!
Oh, how she wanted to! So much!
But she knew she was clutching at dreams—dreams she must not have. Dreams Marc had made clear she must not have.
Wearily, she put her thoughts aside. She had been through them, gone round and round, and there was no other conclusion to be drawn. Marc had finished with her and she must not hope for anything else.
Not even now.
Especially not now.
Deliberately she quickened her pace, walking up to the wide, imposing doors. A security guard stood there, very visibly, and as she approached moved to open the electronically controlled doors for her. But just as they opened, someone walked out.
‘Fraulein Tara! Was fur eine Uberraschung!’
She halted, totally taken aback. Hans Neuberger came up to her, pleasure on his kindly face, as well as the surprise he’d just exclaimed over seeing her.
‘How very good to see you again!’ he said in his punctilious manner. ‘And how glad I am to do so.’ He smiled. ‘This unexpected but delightful encounter provides me with an excellent opportunity! I wonder,’ he went on, his voice politely enquiring, ‘whether you would care to join me for lunch? I hope that you will say yes. Unless, of course,’ he added, ‘you have another engagement perhaps?’
‘Um—no. I mean, that is...’ Tara floundered, not really knowing what to say. She was trying to get her head around seeing Hans again, since the last time she’d seen him had been just after that party on the yacht in Cannes, with Celine’s dreadful friends...
‘Oh, then, please, it would be so very kind of you to indulge me in this request.’
His kindly face was smiling and expectant. It would be hard to say no, and she did not wish to hurt his feelings, however tumultuous hers were at seeing him again, which had plunged her head back to the time she’d spent in France. So, numbly, she let him guide her across the street where she saw, with a little frisson of recognition, the side entrance to a hotel that stung in her memory.
This was the hotel where Marc had deposited Celine that first fateful evening...
Emotion wove through her, but Hans was ushering her inside. His mood seemed buoyant, and he was far less crushed than he’d been at Marc’s villa. Getting Celine out of his life clearly suited him.
And so he informed her—though far more generously than Celine deserved. ‘I was not able to make her happy,’ he said sadly as they took their places in the hotel restaurant. ‘So it is good, I think, that she has now met another man who can. A Russian, this time! They are currently sailing the Black Sea on his new yacht. I am glad for her...’
Tactfully, Tara forbore to express her views on how the self-serving Celine had latched on to yet another rich man. Hans’s face had brightened, and he was changing the subject.
‘But that is quite enough about myself! Tell me, if you please, a little of what is happening with you?’ His expression changed. ‘I have, alas, been preoccupied with—well, all the business of setting Celine free, as she wishes to be. But I very much hope all is still well with you and Marc.’
There was only polite enquiry in his question, yet Tara froze. Floundering, she struggled for something to say. Anything...
‘No—that is to say Marc and I—Well, we are no longer together.’
She saw Hans’s face fall. ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ he said. His eyes rested on her and there was more than his habitual kindness in them. ‘You were, I think, very good for Marc.’ He paused, as if finding the right words. ‘He is possessed of a character that can be very...forceful, perhaps is the way to describe him. You were—how can I express this?—a good match for him.’
‘Yes,’ Tara said ruefully. ‘I did stand up to him—it’s not my nature to back down.’
Hans gave a little laugh. ‘Two equal forces meeting,’ he said.
She looked at him. ‘Yes, and then parting. As we have. Whatever there was,’ she said firmly, ‘is now finished.’
Hans’s eyes were on her still, and she wished they weren’t.
‘That is a pity,’ he said. ‘I wish it were otherwise,’
She took a breath. ‘Yes, well, there it is. Marc and I had a...a lovely time together... But, well, it ran its course and that is that.’
She wanted to change the subject—any way she could. Her throat had tightened, and she didn’t want it to. Seeing Hans again had brought everything back in vivid memory. And she didn’t want that. Couldn’t bear it. It just hurt too much.
‘So,’ she said, with determined brightness as the waiters brought over the menus, ‘what brings you to London? Have you been here long?’
Thankfully, Hans took her lead. ‘I arrived only this morning,’ he said. ‘My son Bernhardt will be joining me this evening with his fiancée. They are making a little holiday here. His mother-in-law-to-be is accompanying them. She was a close friend of my wife—my late wife—and, like me, was most sadly widowed a few years ago. We have always got on very well, both sharing the loss of our spouses, and now, with the engagement of our children, we have much in common. So much so that—well,’ he went on in a little rush of open emotion, ‘once my divorce from Celine is finalised, Ilse and I plan to make our future together. Our children could not be more delighted!’
A smile warmed Tara’s expression. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ she exclaimed.
Just as she’d hoped, the kindly Hans would be marrying again—happily this time, surely? Such a match sounded ideal.
He leant forward. ‘You may have wondered,’ he said, ‘why I was emerging from that so very elegant jeweller’s when I encountered you—’
Tara hadn’t wondered—had been too taken aback to do anything of the sort—but she didn’t say so. Anyway, Hans was busy slipping a hand inside his jacket, removing from it a small cube of a box. Tara did not need X-ray vision to know what it would contain.
He held it towards her, opening it. ‘Do you think she will like this?’ he asked.
There was such warmth, such hope in his voice, that Tara could not help but let a smile of equal warmth light up her own face.
‘It’s beautiful!’ she exclaimed, unable to resist touching the exquisite diamond engagement ring within. ‘She will adore it!’ Spontaneously, she reached her hand to his sleeve. ‘She’s a lucky, lucky woman!’ she told him.
And then, because she was glad for him—glad for anyone who had found a happiness that for herself could never be—her expression softened.
‘Let me be the very first to congratulate you,’ she said. And she kissed him on the cheek, an expression of open delight on her face.
* * *
Marc sat in his chauffeured car, frustration etched into his expression. He was burning to find Tara—the imperative was driving him like an unstoppable tide, flooding over him.
He was free. Free to take her back. Free to claim her, to make her his again. There was nothing to stop him, to block him—not any more. Had she been anything like he’d feared she would never have written that letter to him—never have said what she had.
He took it out of his jacket pocket again now, read it again, as he had read it over and over, his eyes alight.
Their expression changed back to frustration. To know that he was free to take her back, to renew what had been between them and yet not to be able to find her...! It was intolerable—unbearable.
But she was not to be found.
He had gone to her flat last night, heading there the moment the private jet from Le Bourget had landed at City Airpo
rt, after urging the car through the traffic, to be told in an offhand fashion by a flatmate that she was away, and they had no idea where.
Thwarted, he had had to repair to his hotel, to kick his heels, and thence to interrogate her modelling agency first thing that morning—only to be informed that she had no modelling engagements that day and that they had no idea where she was and did not care. For reasons of confidentiality they would not give him her mobile number—which he, for reasons now utterly incomprehensible to him, had never known. They would let him know he was trying to contact her, and that was all.
He glowered, face dark, eyes flashing with frustration, as the car moved off into the London traffic. He had occupied himself by calling in on the branch of Banc Derenz in Mayfair, but now he was hungry.
He did not want the manager’s company for lunch. He didn’t want anyone’s company. Only one person.
It burned within him...his sense of urgency, his mounting sense of frustration that he had come to London to find her—claim her. To throw lifelong caution to the winds and to ride the instinct that was driving him now, that her letter had let loose, like a tidal wave carrying him forward...
His car pulled up at his hotel. The very same hotel where he’d deposited Celine the first night that Tara had come into his life.
He’d wanted her then—had felt that kick of desire from the first moment of seeing her, so unwillingly responding to his impatient summons at that benighted fashion show, had felt it kick again when she’d sat beside him in the limo, and yet again creaming in his veins as, with a deliberate gesture, he’d taken her hand to kiss her wrist...to show her that she might be as hostile, as back-talking as she liked, but she was not immune to him, to what was flaring like marsh fire between them...
A smile played at his mouth, as his mind revolved those memories and so many more since then...
And all those yet to come.
Immediately his imagination leapt to the challenge. Their first night together again... The sensual bliss would burn between them as it always had, every time!
His mind ran on, leaping from image to image. And afterwards a holiday—only the two of them. Wherever she wanted to go. The Caribbean, or maybe the Maldives, the Seychelles? The South Seas? Wherever in the world she wanted. Wherever they could have a tropical island entirely to themselves...
Nights under the stars...days on silver beaches...disporting ourselves in turquoise lagoons...lazing beneath palm fronds waving gently in the tropical breeze...
Anticipation filled him, surging in his blood...
The chauffeur was opening his door and he vaulted out. He would grab lunch, and then interrogate that damn agency of hers again. He’d already sent one of his staff from the London branch of Derenz to doorstep her flat, lest she arrive there unexpectedly.
She’s here somewhere. I just have to find her.
Find her and get her back. Back into his life—where she belonged.
He strode into the hotel, fuelled with the urgency now driving him...consuming him. Filled with elation—with an impatience to find her again that was burning in his veins. To have her unforgettable beauty before him once again...
‘Mr Derenz, good afternoon. Will you be lunching with us today?’
The polite enquiry at the entrance to the restaurant interrupted his vision.
‘Yes,’ he said distractedly, impatiently.
His glance needled around the restaurant.
And froze.
The image in his head—the one his eyes had frozen on—solidified.
Tara—it was Tara. Here. Right in front of him. Across the dining room. Sitting at one of the tables.
There was someone with her—someone with his back to him.
Someone that Tara was looking at. Gazing at.
Smiling at, her face alight with pleasure and delight.
He saw the man she was smiling at offer something to her, saw the flash as it caught the sunlight. Saw her lean forward a little, reach out a long, slender forearm. Saw what it was that she touched with her index finger, how the delight in her eyes lit her whole face.
Saw her lean closer now, across the table, saw her bestow a kiss upon the cheek of the man he now recognised.
Saw blackness fill his vision. Blinding him...
Memory seared into his blinded sight.
Marianne across that restaurant, sitting with another man, his diamond glittering on her finger, holding up her hand for Marc to see...
Still blinded, he lurched away.
There was blackness in his soul...
* * *
Just as she brushed her soft kiss of congratulation on Hans’s lined cheek, Tara’s gaze slipped past him.
And widened disbelievingly.
Marc?
For a second emotion leapt in her, soaring upwards. Then a fraction of a section later it crashed.
In that minute space of time she had registered two things. That he had seen her. And that he had turned on his heel and was walking out of the restaurant again as rapidly as the mesh of tables would allow him.
That told her one thing, and one thing only. He had not wanted to see her. Or acknowledge her presence there.
She felt a vice crushing her as she sat back in her seat, unable to breathe. She urgently had to regain control of herself. If Hans noticed her reaction he might wonder why. If he turned he might see Marc leaving the restaurant. Might go after him...drag him back to their table. She would have to encounter Marc again—Marc who had turned and bolted rather than speak to her.
If she’d ever wanted proof that he was over her—that he wanted nothing more to do with her—she had it now. Brutally and incontrovertibly!
The vice around her lungs squeezed more tightly. I’ve got to get out of here!
She didn’t dare risk it! Didn’t dare risk an encounter with him that he so obviously did not want! It would be mortifying.
‘Hans, I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t have time for lunch after all.’ The excuse sounded impolite, but she had to give it. ‘Do please forgive me!’
She got to her feet; Hans promptly did the same.
‘I’m so very pleased for you—you and Ilse.’ She tried to infuse warmth into her voice but she was keeping an eye on the exit to the hotel lobby. Was it clear of Marc yet? If she could just get to the corridor leading to the side entrance Hans had brought her in by she could escape...
She got away from Hans. He looked slightly bewildered by her sudden departure, but it could not be helped. At the door to the restaurant she glanced towards the revolving doors at the main entrance, leading to the street, then whirled around to head towards the side entrance.
Just as a tall, immovable figure turned abruptly away from the reception desk, out of her eyeline.
She cannoned into it.
It was Marc.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE GAVE AN audible cry—she couldn’t stop it—and lurched backwards as quickly as she could. He automatically reached up his hands to steady her, then dropped them, as if he might scald himself on her.
She couldn’t think straight—couldn’t do anything at all except stumble another step backwards and blurt out, ‘Marc—I... I thought you had left the hotel.’
Marc’s face hardened. The livid emotion that had flashed through him as she’d bumped into him turning away from the reception desk was being hammered down inside him. He would not let it show. Would not. He’d been cancelling his reservation for that night. What point and what purpose to stay now? he thought savagely.
He knew he had to say something, but how could he? The only words he wanted to hurl at her were...pointless. So all he said, his voice as hard and as expressionless as his face was, ‘I am just leaving.’
Had she come running after him?
But why should she? She has no need of me now!
The words seared across his naked synapses as if they were red-hot. No, Tara had no need of him now—no need at all!
Savage fury bit like a wolf.
Hans! God in heaven—Hans, of all men! Beaming like a lovesick idiot, offering her that ring...that glittering, iridescent diamond ring! For her to reach for. To take for herself. Just as Marianne had.
Fury bit again, but its savagery was not just rage. It was worse than rage. Oh, so much worse...
Yet he would not let her see it. That, at least, he would deny her!
She was looking up at him, consternation in her face. Was she going to try and explain herself—justify herself? It sickened him even to think about it.
But she made no reference to the scene he knew she had seen him witness. Instead she seemed to be intent on attempting some kind of mockery of a conversation.
‘So am I,’ he heard her say. ‘Just leaving the hotel.’
Tara heard her own words and paled. Oh, God, don’t let him think I’m angling for a lift! Please, please, no!
Memory, hot and humiliating, came to her, of how she had asked to go to New York with him—and the unhesitating rejection she had received. She felt that same mortification burning in her again, that he might think she had come racing after him.
This whole encounter was a nightmare, an ordeal so excruciating she couldn’t bear it. He was radiating on every frequency the fact that seeing her again was the last thing he wanted. His stance was stiff and tense, his expression closed and forbidding. He could not have made it plainer to her that he did not want to talk to her. Did not want to have anything at all to do with her any more.
He wants nothing to do with me! He didn’t even want to come over and say hello—not even to his friend Hans!
Could anything have rammed home to her just how much Marc Derenz did not want her any longer? That all he wanted was to be shot of her?
