Luc flushed darkly. Instinctively, he reared up against the criticism. Not for the first time, he marvelled at the temerity of any woman who had no qualms about stampeding all over the boundaries he had in place around him. Agatha didn’t care a jot about tiptoeing around his sensibilities. She spoke what was on her mind with the forceful directness of a laser-guided missile homing in on whatever target had been set.
His response to that full-on attack should have been immediate, cold withdrawal but that was an option he barely stopped to consider.
He was discomforted by the accuracy of her criticism but he wasn’t going to dwell on that. Right now, his main objective was to get her to calm down, and with that in mind he took a few cautious steps towards her, treading as warily as someone on a mission to disarm a live bomb.
With the memory of that hateful brochure burning brightly in her head, Agatha stood her ground and placed her hands on her hips, leaning forward with glaring hostility.
‘You need to calm down,’ he said soothingly, stopping just short of putting his hands on her arms because there was a very real suspicion that any physical contact might just have the opposite effect and send her into complete meltdown.
‘There’s something I want to show you.’ She turned away abruptly and made for her handbag into which she had stuck the brochure where it could be a constant reminder of his deception—just in case there ever came a time when she found her resolve weakening.
Luc knew exactly what he was looking at the second she held out her hand and he paled.
Watching him through narrowed eyes, Agatha detected that fleeting sign of guilt, and it felt like the death knell to all the hopes she had cherished in varying degrees over the time she had known him.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘It was lying at the top of your briefcase.’
‘You shouldn’t have been snooping around.’
‘I wasn’t snooping around. Your briefcase was wide open. Not that it matters anyway. Why did you lie to me? Why did you tell me that this was a second house? Do you know, I actually believed you. How dumb was I?’
She had promised herself that she would act cool and collected, that she would tell him about the house if he pressed her for a reason for her sudden, pressing need to leave. Which, of course, he would: as she had been foolish enough to hop back into bed with him, he would have been riding high on the optimistic assumption that she was once more his for the asking. When she thought about that, she just wanted to dig a hole, jump in and lie low for a thousand years.
‘Okay. So I led you to believe that this was one of my other homes.’
‘You didn’t lead me to believe. You openly lied to me!’
‘Does it matter?’ He gave a careless shrug while Agatha watched him with jaw-dropping incredulity. He had just admitted lying to her and he still had the nerve to stand there, cool as a cucumber, and act as though it didn’t matter.
‘It matters to me!’ Agatha managed to impart through tightly gritted lips.
‘Why? You were in a fragile state and you needed somewhere to de-stress. I provided that place. Frankly, from my point of view, you should be thanking me.’ Yes, he had been momentarily disconcerted by her attack, but now he was regrouping fast, keeping it all very controlled, speaking in a low, placating voice, trying to find the right words from a vocabulary that seemed strangely limited.
‘I should be thanking you?’ Agatha gazed at him in utter, helpless bewilderment.
‘London was no place for you to be, not when you needed to rest. You would have been tempted to work, go out, alleviate the boredom of being cooped up. My apartment is comfortable enough, but there’s no outside area. You needed a house. Somewhere peaceful. I took that on board and supplied it. What was wrong with that? What was wrong with putting your needs first?’
Agatha thought bitterly that all he needed at this point was the sound of angels and the playing of a harp. At face value, everything he said seemed to demonstrate the actions of a pious, caring guy—but what about all the things that were being left unsaid?
‘You knew I didn’t want to be in debt to you, Luc. You knew,’ she added in a barely audible mumble, ‘that I wanted to get over you…’
With that declaration out in the open, Luc at last felt that he had something to get his teeth into. ‘But you haven’t, have you? ‘ he asked bluntly. ‘What we did upstairs proves that, Agatha, and what’s the point in running away from the obvious?’
‘Did you bring me here with that at the back of your mind, Luc? Did you arrange this whole cottage thing because you knew how I felt about you? Was this perfect dream-house a cynical tool in your plans to seduce me?’ Shamefully, she realised how close she had been to falling back in love with a perfect outcome. He had appealed to her most basic desires by producing a house he had known she would adore. The cruelty of the ruse was a bitter pill to swallow.
There were a thousand ways of answering that question and the most sensible choice, given her present state of mind, would have been a rapid and assured denial—but such a denial seemed suddenly impossible to voice.
‘It crossed my mind that we might just end up back in bed together.’
Agatha balled her hands into fists and shot him a look of pure loathing, before staring down at her feet and counting to ten to clear some of the red mist in her head.
‘I’m being honest here. I…Okay, I really missed you when you were gone. I still want you and I’m not ashamed of that.’
Agatha had an insane urge to burst out into hysterical laughter. He missed her! Missed her so much, she thought, that he had compensated by making sure not to beat a path to her door—in fact to start seeing another woman! He was all too happy to talk about still wanting her—wanting her enough, in fact, to go out and buy a house for a ridiculous sum of money. Anything to ensure that she was well and truly emotionally shackled to him, so that when she was he would then be free to release his stranglehold and pick up where he had left off with other women, knowing that she would find it impossible to replace him.
‘Well, I am ashamed,’ she said, with weariness creeping into her voice. ‘And I’m mortified that I did end back up in bed with you, because you’re no good for me. You’re attractive, Luc, no one’s going to deny that—and I’m only human, after all. But I don’t feel proud of myself sleeping with you. I feel like I’ve let myself down.’
‘Don’t say that!’ A sickening sense of the unreal swept over him like a tidal wave. Plans and expectations were being unpicked by the second but Luc really had no idea how to put a stop to the rapid unravelling.
‘Okay. I won’t. But I want to leave. Will you drive me to the station? Course, you have no idea where it is.’ She gave him a tight, bitter smile. ‘You may have to use your sat nav.’
CHAPTER TEN
SHE planned on going home, back to see her mother, the bearer of unexpected tidings. Of course, Luc was not going to allow her to catch a train.
‘You’ve taken leave of your senses if you think I’m going to let you make that journey on your own on public transport,’ he said determinedly, watching with a peculiar sensation of falling as she carried on flinging the remainder of her possessions into the case sprawled on the bed.
‘You can’t make me do anything, Luc.’
‘I wouldn’t put that to the test, if I were you.’
‘Or else what? ‘
‘I’m not above keeping you here until you calm down.’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’
‘Don’t you know that you should never say something like that to a man like me?’ He shook his head and uttered a strangled, frustrated sound under his breath. ‘Why don’t you have a bath and then we’ll talk?’
‘Talk about what? Talk about the way you engineered this whole situation? ‘ She could feel herself getting heated up all over again and she did the deep-breathing exercise thing and tried not to focus on the humiliation of having been taken for a ride, an easy conquest for a man who was
out to stamp his authority over her bid for freedom.
She was also trying not to feel disappointed at the thought of leaving the house. It was fabulous, and just exactly the sort of place she adored, even if it had been bought as a means to an end.
‘I should have known that you would be the last person on the face of the earth to ever have a house like this!’ she blurted out, her eyes stinging. With a sense of tired defeat, she sat on the small stool by the dressing table and watched guardedly as he took up position on the bed, pushing the open suitcase out of the way.
‘Meaning?’ Luc wondered whether she had any idea just how damned unpredictable she was, like a thoroughbred race-horse prone to spooking at the slightest opportunity. He was watching her very carefully now, his expression unreadable but missing nothing as the bright, feverish flush in her cheeks began to fade slightly.
He had to keep her engaged in talking to him, without the contentious issue of the house acting as a wedge and ramping up her emotions. Retrospectively he wondered whether he should have told her about the house, perhaps allowed her in on the decision-making process, shown her proof positive that he wasn’t going to do a runner. Should he have done that? Unused to questioning himself, he attempted to bolster his decision to do what he had done by reminding himself that he had acted in good faith—and, really, what was wrong in employing all the means at his disposal to facilitate that event? Since when was it a crime to lever the odds in your favour?
‘Since when are you the type to like small rooms, old-fashioned furniture and outdoor space? I must have been a fool to have ever bought in to your story about coming here for weekends. You don’t like getting away from your twenty-four-hours-a-day work days! Why would you need rest and relaxation in a cottage out in the country? You don’t know how to rest and relax! And, if you did want to get away for a few seconds, why would you choose to come to a place like this when you could spend a fortune and go to a hotel somewhere with Internet access and all mod cons?’
Luc gave the question some thought and then raised his eyebrows with a wry, mocking smile. ‘Funnily enough, it doesn’t seem as claustrophobic as I’d imagined.’
‘I just don’t understand how you could deceive me.’
‘I’m going to run a bath for you.’
‘That’s not an answer!’
‘I know. Come on.’
‘I’m not going to have a bath with you around,’ Agatha said, blushing furiously when she remembered just what had got her sitting here, mortified and angry with herself for having climbed back into bed with him again.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’ Although he was pretty sure that, if she did emerge with nothing but a towel around her, neither of them would be able to help themselves. He left her sitting by the dressing table, giving her time to cool down and making sure that the bath was as fragrant and as tempting as possible. He emerged from the adjoining bathroom five minutes later to find her still on the stool, which was highly satisfactory, as a plausible alternative would have seen her trying to lug her case off the bed and transport it to the door. There was very little he would put past her.
‘What are you going to do with the house when I’ve gone?’ was the first thing she threw at him.
‘Talking to you is beginning to resemble walking on broken glass,’ Luc said, holding in his patience with a tight rein whilst simultaneously wondering how it was that this woman could sabotage his ability for self-control without even trying. He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head as though trying to clear his thoughts. ‘Whatever I say, you’re going to interpret in the worst possible light. I’ve done my utmost to take care of your needs. I bought this house because I knew it was the sort of thing you liked. I could imagine you relaxing in the garden a hundred miles away from all the stress and chaos in London. And you do like the house and you do like the garden—so how is it that I’ve suddenly become the villain of the piece? So we made love. You wanted it as much as I did.’ Frustration threatened to boil over.
‘That was before I worked out that everything you did was designed to get me into bed! It’s like you blackmailed me. It’s like…like you took my dreams and manipulated them to get what you wanted.’
‘Agatha, go and have your bath.’ Was that the best he could do? Where was that legendary talent for persuasion when he needed it most? He turned away; she could have thrown something at that dark, lean, handsome head of his. Instead she gave an inarticulate sound of pure resentment and stood up, shaking like a leaf.
‘And when I come out I want to be dropped to the station!’
‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll drive you to your mother’s house.’
‘Good!’ She had made her point and got her own way. So why was she feeling miserable? ‘And I don’t want you hanging around in here while I have a bath!’
‘Fine.’
‘And don’t even think of bursting in on me! There’s no lock on the wretched door.’
‘The down side of some old houses. I won’t burst in on you unless I suspect that you’ve decided to have a snooze. And just for the record, whether you like it or not, or believe me or not, I care about your welfare.’
He cared about her welfare. Agatha swallowed back the pressing temptation to ask how he could be so unemotional while she felt like a volcano on the verge of eruption. But why would she ever suspect that he could be otherwise? His capacity for passion was channelled into work and into sex and he had never pretended that between those two opposing poles there was anything else. He had never said a word to her, ever, about love, affection, need—not even in the heat of the moment when all barriers were down and endearments uttered only to be later sheepishly retrieved. Even when their bodies were entwined, and they were scaling heights that had left her breathless and weak, his inherent self-control was always in place.
How could she still love a man like that? How could she build up all her defences and then allow them to drop the second he laid a finger on her? Where was her pride and sense of self-worth?
Luc, keeping it calm, was angrily aware that somewhere inside there was a seething, whirling pool of turmoil that was threatening every principle by which he ruled his life. He was also aware that he didn’t like it when she retreated the way she was retreating now. He liked her clingy and needy. It was a disturbing notion, and he didn’t know what to do with it, so instead he chose to focus on the practicalities. He would drive her to her mother’s house. It would be a long, arduous and boring trip but it would give him time to come up with a plan B now that plan A had failed so spectacularly. He had no doubt that there would be a plan B because he was nothing if not clever when it came to getting exactly what he wanted.
‘If you don’t mind leaving…’ Agatha said haughtily and Luc shot her a frown from under his lashes, hovering for a few seconds before turning on his heels and striding out of the door. But even downstairs, sitting in the kitchen with his laptop in front of him, he couldn’t concentrate on his reports, updates and emails.
He gave her exactly half an hour and then he headed up the stairs, making sure to make sufficient noise to alert her to his arrival outside her door, which worked, because she pulled it open before he had time to knock. Her suitcase was packed and Luc eyed it with loathing.
‘You said you’d drive me over to Mum’s, but if you’ve changed your mind…’
‘And what? Decided to keep you here under lock and key?’
Agatha didn’t say anything. Her silence was even more unwelcome than her spirited arguing and irrational accusations: those he could deal with.
‘So have you decided not to talk to me? ‘ he ground out, heaving the suitcase off the bed as though it weighed not much more than a feather, and then half-jogging down the stairs to wait for her at the bottom. A weird, restless energy was pumping through him, making him feel as though he was uncomfortable in his own skin.
‘How long will it take to get to Mum’s?’
‘Long enough. Several hours. I’ll ma
ke stops along the way so you can stretch your legs.’ He was beginning to see which way the wind was blowing and he was liking it less and less. So, personal conversation was off-limits—well, that was fine. He needed a bit of silence to think anyway.
But, after nearly three hours, the silence was as oppressive as a pair of handcuffs in a prison cell. She stared out of the window, lost in her own thoughts. On the two occasions when they had stopped at the services to stretch their legs, she had headed for the newsagent’s, not bothering to look back. She had returned with an armful of magazines and some bottled water, and then settled in for the long haul with apparent fascination in the lives of the marginally rich and not-so famous, while he had glared at the road and determinedly tried to engage her in conversation, with no success.
Only when they were finally manoeuvring the familiar streets of their home town did she tear her attention away from the magazines, which she could barely make out in the darkness, and her MP3 player. She had jammed the headphones into her ears, thereby establishing that conversation was out of the question.
‘What are you going to tell your mother?’ It was the first time the silence had been broken in over forty-five minutes, when he had asked her how she was feeling and Agatha had shrugged and said nothing.
She was as tense as a piece of elastic stretched to breaking point and terrified of being lulled into conversation with him. He was too witty, too sexy, too engaging and far too single-minded for her. Just being in the car with him, knowing that she was being ferried to the safety of her mother’s home, made her feel sick with tension. She had hardly given a moment’s thought to what lay ahead. She had been too busy trying to deal with what lay right here in the present.
‘I don’t know,’ she reluctantly conceded, her eyes skittering towards his harsh, forbidding profile and then skittering away again just as quickly. ‘The truth.’
‘It’s always a good beginning.’
‘Mum’s going to be disappointed,’ Agatha couldn’t help saying with a catch in her voice. She rested one hand on her stomach and tried not to dwell on the disappointment angle. She and her mother had always been united against the world, since her dad had died. How was this going to sit with a woman of essentially old-fashioned values? Like a poisoned apple, she predicted.
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