‘No, you’re not,’ Agatha said bitterly.
‘You’re looking for someone who wants to join you with his head in the clouds and that person is never going to be me.’
‘Did you ever care about me at all?’ The question was torn out of her. She set her mouth in a stubborn line and looked at him.
‘Of course I cared about you.’ But his voice was rife with discomfort.
‘You mean you cared about sleeping with me. Maybe I was a complete idiot to think that we could be a significant part of each other’s lives. I just can’t believe that I’ve spent all this time, wasted all this time, falling in love with you!’ Agatha blinked rapidly to clear her vision, which was going a little misty.
‘I never asked you to,’ Luc told her, a dark flush accentuating the dramatic contours of his face. He squashed the treacherous streak of satisfaction her admission generated in him under the ruthless onward march of pure, cool logic.
A woman in love was a responsibility. However great the sex was, he could not and would not encourage her to nurture pointless dreams.
Agatha hung her head.
‘I could pretend that this was what you want, but I won’t, because I’m not that bloody minded.’ Her continuing silence, rather than hastening his departure, seemed to root him to the spot. ‘When…when did you realise that you were in love with me?’ On cue, his body reacted and he turned away abruptly.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No. Understandable.’
‘I didn’t want to. I knew that you weren’t the kind of guy who did commitment. But I started hoping.’
Luc was mesmerised by the lone tear that trickled down her cheek and plopped onto her fingers. He extracted a wad of tissues from the box on the chest of drawers and shoved them into her hand.
‘I should have done that Internet thing. It might have led somewhere.’
Luc didn’t want to get into a conversation about the dangers of Internet dating. Even knowing that she was already slipping into history, he still didn’t want to think of her sleeping with anyone else.
Agatha heard everything his silence was telling her. Yes, she should have done the Internet thing. They had had their fun, but she had a nesting instinct he was incapable of fulfilling. She cringed when she thought of how uncomfortable he must be, standing there while she wept and poured her heart out. It was just the sort of emotional weakness guaranteed to get on his nerves, but she wasn’t able to help herself.
‘It’s regrettable that things have turned out this way.’ Luc dragged his attention away from her and focused on bringing things back down to a level he could understand. ‘But I think it’s important that we get one thing straight: in no way will this impact on your job, so I don’t want you handing in your resignation.’
Her fair hair tumbled over her shoulders and he could just about make out the cartoon logo on the front of the tee-shirt she had dragged on. He cleared his throat and shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘You and your team are autonomous and I will ensure that Jefferies take over immediate supervision. I fully appreciate that, feeling the way you do, it might be difficult having to report directly to me.’
Agatha nodded. She felt she could hear the gentle pity in his voice, but how could she possibly get angry when she had provided him with just cause to feel like that? She took a deep, shaky breath and finally looked up at him.
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly. ‘I appreciate that. I’m really enjoying this project and I think I can make a real go of it.’ She tore the tissue paper into little strips and then continued playing with it, giving her hands something to do and her eyes something to focus on.
‘I don’t know how it happened, but I let things go too far.’ He couldn’t free himself from the savage urge to explain himself to her.
‘I’m not Miranda.’
‘How do you know her name? ‘
‘I just do. I know she must have hurt you dreadfully, but…’ But what? She hated herself for continuing to cling.
‘She taught me a valuable lesson.’
‘She taught you how to become an island.’
Okay, so there was some truth in that statement, Luc recognized. But what was wrong with being an island? It was a damned sight safer to be self-reliant. But something deep inside jarred painfully, like shards of glass scraping through his flesh, and it was too heroic an effort to squash the feeling and to grope his way back to common sense.
Common sense prevailed. He was off-balance because, not only had Agatha laid her cards on the table with a forth-rightness that would have had any man struggling to regroup, but in addition she looked strained, and that was all the more noticeable because he had only seen her laughing and relaxed around him for the past few weeks.
He had become accustomed to her. Of course there would be some guilt involved in causing her suffering. That was what had him feeling so sick to the stomach.
‘It’s because I care about you that I’m walking away, and you would be smart to trust my experience here. I can’t give you the love you want.’ Every word tasted of poison. Had he felt this way with Miranda when the end had finally come? He couldn’t remember. It had been a turning point in his life so why couldn’t he remember? ‘I’m going to go now. Is there anyone you could call up to stay with you?’
Agatha glared at him with undisguised hostility. That, she thought, was really taking the whole pity angle too far!
‘I’m breaking off our relationship, Luc—or whatever you want to call it—because I know you don’t do relationships. It’s not the end of the world. These things happen and I’ll be a stronger person for it. So, no, I don’t need to call up anyone to stay with me. I may have been a complete fool but I’m actually not as pathetic as you think I am.’ She was determined to cling to whatever shreds of dignity she had left. She didn’t blame him for how things had turned out, she blamed herself, and she would pick herself up bit by bit if it killed her in the process.
‘And, yes, I would appreciate it if you didn’t pop down to where I happen to be working if you can help it—although, if you have to, it won’t be the end of the world and I won’t need someone close by to prop me up in case I get a fit of the vapours.’ It had taken everything she possessed to say those words but at least he wasn’t looking at her with that horrible, patronising sympathy she had spotted earlier. She had given him the excuse he needed to drop the condolences on her stupidity, and the accompanying pep talk on how to survive him, and there was a guarded expression on his face now.
She drew in a deep breath. Recovery had to start somewhere, and she could deal with ‘guarded’ a lot better than she could deal with pity.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUC looked across the table to the striking redhead who had smiled coquettishly at him for the duration of the meal, undeterred by his unimpressive range of responses to her forays into conversation. He knew that he could sit there and display all the communication skills of a brick and she would still continue smiling and flirting; free, single and unattached, he was the most eligible guy in town.
Right now, they were winding up an eye-wateringly expensive meal at one of the top restaurants in London. It was game on to return to his apartment, where she would let him have all the assets that had been so conspicuously on display for the course of the very long and very tedious evening.
It wasn’t going to happen. For the past three weeks his libido had been alarmingly unobliging. In fact, it had been non-existent. This was the first time he had actually felt driven to make an effort and he should have been enjoying the well-rehearsed game that would inevitably lead to the bedroom.
Instead, he had looked at his watch five times and was politely now waiting for her to finish her coffee so that he could get the bill and head back to his place. Alone. He had planned his excuse five minutes into their date.
The whole situation was enough to set his teeth on edge, from his lack of interest in the opposite sex to his continuing preoccupation with a w
oman who should have been halfway to being forgotten. She had known from the very start that he just wasn’t the kind of guy who hurtled towards commitment like a kamikaze pilot hell-bent on self-destruction. He had his rules and she had chosen not to play by them at the end of the day.
He should have been breathing a sigh of profound relief at his narrow escape. He was not interested or, for that matter, ready for commitment to anyone. When that time did arrive, it wouldn’t be with someone like Agatha who would expect a fairy tale, with bows and ribbons and a cherry on top.
Instead, she had been playing on his mind with the aggravating persistence of some distant song he just couldn’t quite seem to get out of his head.
Not even the failsafe solution of work had come to the rescue. He had been putting in all the hours God made; indeed, he had been out of the country more often than he had been in it. But he had not been able to avoid infuriating lapses of concentration during which he would catch himself frowning off into the distance while the rest of the world disappeared into temporary oblivion.
And now this. Five foot eleven inches of obliging, drop-dead gorgeousness and he couldn’t care less. He could have spent the last three hours sitting opposite a troll.
‘Are you listening to me?’ Annabel leant forward so that he could all but see the nipples peeping above the low-cut neckline of her dress. Poker-straight hair framed a face that could stop traffic.
‘No, not really.’ He signalled for the bill and felt a twinge of pity for the faltering smile that greeted this slice of unadorned truth. Agatha would disapprove of this level of brutal honesty. ‘I’ve got a heck of a lot on my mind at the moment with work.’ He shrugged and raised both hands in a gesture of eloquent regret. ‘Bad time to be asking a woman out.’ He was vaguely surprised to be going into so much lengthy detail. ‘You’re a very attractive woman, Annabel, but I’m not in the running for any kind of relationship at the moment.’
‘Work?’ That was her way out of an embarrassing situation, and the single word hovered in the air between them until he nodded.
‘My feet are hardly going to touch ground for the next few months and a girl like you deserves a guy who can do her justice.’ He settled the bill, barely registering the outrageous amount.
‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’ Annabel stood up, rescuing her turquoise, bejewelled clutch-bag from the table. ‘But thank you for being honest with me from the beginning. It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway,’ she added, slipping a shawl around her shoulders. ‘I like my men to be a little less stodgy.’
Stodgy? As Eddy drove him back to his apartment, Luc couldn’t help but think that that description might very well have been the highlight of the evening. It was the only time he had felt the inclination to laugh out loud, at any rate.
His road was quiet by the time they pulled into a parking space and the building that housed his penthouse apartment even more so. He let himself in, took the stairs instead of the lift, silently let himself into the apartment and was heading towards the kitchen for a whisky nightcap when the sound of her voice stopped him dead in his tracks.
For a few seconds, Luc had the weirdest feeling that he had become the victim of his own inconvenient imagination. He turned round very slowly and noticed her perched at the end of the sofa, staring up at him with those enormous blue eyes. He should have seen her the minute he entered, because she had switched on the light by the sofa and was making no effort to conceal herself, but his mind had been a million miles away.
‘I’m…I’m sorry. I let myself in. I was going to wait outside. In fact, I did wait outside, but it started getting chilly and it’s so quiet around here. I got a little spooked. I, um, used the spare key you gave me. I forgot to give it back to you when we, um…’ Agatha ran out of words and just looked at him. True to his word, he hadn’t stepped foot in her office since they had broken up. All her dealings had been with one of his henchmen. In fact, he hadn’t been in the country at all, or at least not much. She had found out that much from asking around, even though she had known how silly it was to maintain even that slim thread of interest in his movements.
Now, starved of the sight of him for three weeks, she guiltily drank him in like an addict caving in to just one more hit.
‘What are you doing here? Why the hell didn’t you return the key to me when you found out that you still had it? ‘
Tension ratcheted up in Luc, but alongside that there lurked a perverse feeling of satisfaction, because there could be only one reason she would have dumped all her lofty principles and returned to his apartment. She might have wafted lyrical about love and marriage and the ‘happy ever after’, but three weeks on and she couldn’t do without him or the passion she had been so quick to dismiss. She had underestimated the power of lust and that came as no surprise to him. Nor did the fact that she hadn’t returned the key to his front door. Psychologically, she would have held on to it as a telling reminder of what she needed whether she wanted to admit it or not.
‘I forgot, I guess.’
‘In that case, you can hand it over now.’ He looked at his watch and then stared down at her with a cool, shuttered expression. ‘You’ve effectively broken into my apartment. Now that you’re here, I can’t throw you out onto the streets, but in case you hadn’t noticed you and I are old news. In fact, you should consider yourself lucky that I have work to do tonight, otherwise I wouldn’t have returned alone.’
Agatha’s face turned a shade of mortified pink. Out of the loop, she hadn’t heard a word about Luc’s extra-curricular activities, nor had she glimpsed any headlines in the gossip columns which she had devoured with shameful enthusiasm. Her mind began to stray and she firmly clamped it back into place because this was not the time.
Nerves were tearing through her, sharp teeth that were making a nonsense of any semblance of calm she was trying to project. It didn’t help that he was standing there, looking at her as though she was something noxious that had crawled out from under a bush.
Luc had moved on big time. Was she surprised? No. Like commitment, standing still was something he didn’t do. He wasn’t someone given to pining or even reflection when it came to the women he left behind.
Was she hurt? Desperately. But she took a deep breath and tried not to focus on that.
It had taken a lot to come here.
‘Oh. Yes. Right.’ She wondered whether he had reverted to his leggy blondes. Had she been the exception to the rule? ‘I wanted to tell you this face to face.’
‘I really can’t believe that you have anything to say to me of a personal nature, and anything else can be discussed in my office.’ He turned his back to her and strolled into the open-plan kitchen for the glass of whisky he had promised himself. More than ever, he figured he needed one, although it had to be said that the evening had acquired a certain patina that had snapped him out of his edgy, discontented mood.
Agatha sighed and half-rose from the chair, only to fall back into it. He couldn’t have made it any clearer that he wanted her out of his apartment. Did he think that if she got too close she might stage a surprise attack and fling a ball and chain around his neck before he could escape?
The enormity of what she was doing there hit her like a brick and she swallowed painfully, watching him as he poured himself a drink. It would be whisky. It was the only nightcap he allowed himself, and then only occasionally. He might need more than one tonight.
‘So…?’ Luc turned around, every muscle in his body totally relaxed as he propped himself up against the granite counter that partially separated the kitchen from the open living-area. ‘Say your piece.’ He swirled the ice round in his glass and took a deep mouthful as he continued to watch her intently above the rim of the glass. She looked as nervous as a kitten. Nervous and vulnerable.
The silence lengthened between them until he finally clicked his tongue impatiently and strode towards where she was huddled on the sofa. She couldn’t have been more different from his date
earlier on, who had been the epitome of cool, impeccably groomed, self-assured elegance.
Not the kind of woman who would cling to fantasies of picket fences, rosy-cheeked children and a domesticated husband who couldn’t wait to race back to hearth and home. He hung onto this thought because, even looking like a lost waif and stray, Agatha was still managing to exert a crazy sexual pull that he could do without.
‘Is it about money?’ he demanded, which brought her head up in surprise. ‘Because, if it is, then you’ve got it.’
‘What are you going on about? ‘
‘You’ve come here out of the blue,’ Luc informed her caustically. ‘And I doubt it’s because you suddenly decided on paying me a social visit to discuss old times.’ He felt his eyes drift over her and on cue he imagined her naked underneath the cover-all jacket and baggy clothes. The rebelliousness of his mind made him grit his teeth in rage and frustration.
‘But I wasn’t born yesterday and my knowledge of women is extensive.’ He poured the remainder of his drink down his throat and flung himself on the chrome-and-leather sofa, facing her. ‘We went out—maybe you got to thinking that you really exited the situation before you could retrieve any material benefits.’
Luc shrugged as though his conclusions, cynical though they might be, were to be expected. ‘I don’t have to remind you that you happen to be in an incredibly well-paid job which was tailor-made for you, but I suppose you have seen first-hand how my women are treated when I’m finished with them. Maybe you’ve decided that you deserve your own golden handshake? After all, you did enjoy privileges beyond the norm.’ He glanced around him. Keys to his apartment, for one thing. And then a level of normalcy that, thinking about it now, was really fairly astounding. He chose not to dwell on that.
Agatha, leaning forward with her hands clasped on her knees, couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her mouth had dropped open.
‘I have no problem with that,’ Luc informed her magnanimously. ‘Fair’s fair, after all, and you do need to move out of that dump.’
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