by Penny Jordan
'Gramps would never agree to anything like that,' Louis? laughed, her face breaking into a wide grin as she pictured her irascible grandfather's reaction to the news that his sister wanted to turn the stable block of his large mansion into homes for the area's single mothers and their babies.
'No, I know, and so, of course, does Aunt Ruth. I sometimes suspect that the only reason she pretends to Gramps that she's serious about it is because she knows how much he loves to have something to get angry over and to fight about. He's just not been the same since Uncle David disappeared...'
'No. He hasn't,' Louise agreed, and for a second both of them were silent as they thought about their father's twin brother.
'Do you think we will ever hear anything from him again?' Katie asked Louise slowly, eventually.
'I don't know. I suspect that for Gramps's sake, if nothing else, Dad hopes that he will get in touch, and it must be strange, too, for Olivia. Her mother has another man in her life, and Olivia only sees her when she and Caspar go down to Brighton to stay with Olivia's grandparents. David doesn't even know that Caspar and Olivia are married, never mind that they've got two children.'
'I know... I can't imagine what it would be like not to have Mum and Dad, can you?' Katie asked.
'No. I can't,' Louise agreed.
Katie suddenly interrupted their discussion about their family life to ask her with unexpected urgency, 'Lou... It isn't bothering you too much... about... about Gareth Simmonds being there in Brussels is it?'
'No. Of course it isn't,' Louise denied. 'Obviously I would have preferred not to have had him working in the same arena, but because the Commission is so closely interwoven the fact that he is working here would have meant that we would have been bound to run into one another sooner or later, even if he hadn't been heading the same committee that Pam is on. After all, why should it bother me? I don't like him, it's true, but I can live with that.'
There were some things too private to discuss even with someone as close to her as her twin was, and her real feelings about Gareth Simmonds and his presence in Brussels was quite definitely one of them.
'Look, I've got to go,' she told Katie. 'There's a big official dinner this evening, and I've got some reading up I need to do.'
These official Commission dinners, which in the early stages of her new job had filled her with such trepidation and seemed so daunting, had now become boringly familiar.
The dinner-table talk would be all the usual gossipy stuff, unleavened by anything genuinely worth talking about, Louise decided later, as she quickly showered and got herself ready, automatically pulling on the first of her wardrobe's three smart black dresses which she and Katie and Olivia had chosen on a weekend shop in London before Louise had taken up her new post.
The dresses, two of which had been bought as a bargain from a designer shop in Bond Street in its end-of-season sale, had more than paid for themselves, and in fact drew compliments every time she wore them. In matt black jersey, they were easy to wear and even more practical. They could actually be washed—a bonus indeed in view of the number of times Louise had to wear them. The one she had chosen to wear tonight was sleeveless, with a wide slashed neckline, the fabric fitting sleekly to her body and draping flatteringly over one hip.
Her urchin-short haircut needed little attention other than a fiercely expensive reshape every few weeks, and she had never favoured more than a minimal amount of make-up—eyeshadow in subtle smoky shades to emphasise the shape and depth of her eyes, blusher, and lipstick which discreetly played down the fullness of a mouth that caused members of the male sex to stop and look again with speculative interest.
Both she and Katie had inherited their father's lean, elegant frame. Louise had never minded being tallish, but she had on occasions during her teens wished that her body was a little more curvaceously rounded. Time had granted her that wish, and although she was still enviably slender, according to her female friends, she had the kind of distinctly feminine curves that made the black jersey cling to her body with loving fervour.
Black shoes and a handbag large enough to hold a small notebook and a pen—things she never went anywhere without—and she was ready, with five minutes to spare before the car arrived.
Irritatingly her last thoughts as she stepped into the waiting car were not of her recent conversation with her twin, and Katie's promise to fly over to Brussels, or even of the conversational pitfalls she might be called upon to face regarding this morning's committee meeting at tonight's dinner, but instead were focused ominously and exclusively on the man who had headed that committee meeting.
Gareth Simmonds. Hadn't she already wasted enough, indeed far too much emotional energy on him?One of the first things she had done when she had originally come here to Brussels to work was to tell herself that she was not going to allow any events from her past to cast dangerous shadows over her new life—and one of the darkest and most dangerous shadows in her life then had been the one cast by her ex- tutor...her ex...
Her head jerked up as she instinctively fought to deny even allowing herself to mentally frame the word 'lover'. They had not been lovers. Not in the true sense. Not as she interpreted the word.
Was there a woman in his life now? Pam, her boss, had made mention of the fact earlier that he was a single man, and as such would no doubt be in great demand socially.
'And not just single either,' Pam had commented admiringly. 'He's stunningly attractive and hunky with it...'
'Is he?' Louise had retorted in a clipped, short voice. 'I really hadn't noticed...'
Not noticed. When her brain had already faultlessly recorded and remembered the sheer thrill of female awe she had felt that first time she had seen him fully naked.
The car had stopped and the driver was, she realised belatedly, waiting for her to get out.
CHAPTER SIX
HOLDING her hand over her still half-full glass of wine, Louise shook her head at the circulating waiter, refusing his offer of a fresh glass.
It paid to keep a clear head at these affairs, and she had never been very good with alcohol.
Formal affairs such as this reception and the dinner which would follow it were really very much more Katie's strong suit than her own, and it had been brought very sharply home to her, not long after her original arrival in Brussels, that despite the fact that everyone close to her, including herself, always thought of her as being the stronger and more independently minded of the two of them it was Katie who had that nice degree of social confidence and easiness. She, as her twin, had developed the habit of allowing Katie to attend to all the social niceties that attended such conventional gatherings for both of them.
It had brought her rather sharply down to earth and humbled her a little to recognise how much she had depended on her twin in formal social situations, and indeed how much she had abused Katie's willingness to chat politely to ancient aunts, indeed to anyone whom she personally had deemed dull or boring, leaving her free to behave with unrepentant selfishness and very much please herself as to who she talked to and who she didn't.
A few months in Brussels had very quickly changed all that, and now Louise was adept at simulating interest in even the dullest of subjects—which didn't mean that she enjoyed it any more, she acknowledged ruefully as she directed a polite social smile towards the Commissioner paying her heavy compliments before excusing herself by saying that she thought her boss would be looking for her.
Louise made her way over to where Pam was deep in conversation with a fellow British Euro MP.
'Hello, Louise.' Pam welcomed her to her side.
'How is your aunt Ruth keeping, Louise?' the man Pam was in conversation with asked warmly. 'The last time I saw her she gave me the most fearful lecture on the damage she believes is threatening the British countryside from the volume of articulated lorries we're getting.'
Louise laughed. She knew John Lord quite well, since, in addition to being a Euro MP, he was also one of their close neig
hbours.
'Aunt Ruth is campaigning vigorously for a bypass for Haslewich, and she does have a point,' she conceded. 'The new business park outside the town has brought in an increased volume of traffic.
'I was just at home for the weekend, and my younger brother, Joss, was full of the fact that an Italian lorry driver had missed his road and got his artic stuck right in the middle of town, wedged solidly in between two listed buildings. Apparently it took the police five hours to unblock the traffic and get things back to normal.'
'It is a problem, I know,' John Lord agreed. 'The town does need a new bypass, and under one of the new EC agreements community funds should be provided to help pay for it.'
The conversation moved on and Louise excused herself to go and circulate. It wouldn't do any harm to pick up as much feedback as she could after this morning's meeting.
Ten minutes later, just as she was discreetly checking her watch to find out how much longer it would be before they went in for dinner, she heard a familiar and very sensual voice behind her.
'Aha, there you are cherie...'
'Jean Claude.' She turned round immediately to smile up at him. He really was the most wickedly handsome-looking man, but oddly enough his almost film starish good looks did very little for her in any personal sense. Jean Claude was the kind of man who, while laying siege to one woman, would always be secretly looking over her shoulder to check out another potential victim. Louise suspected that her knowing this, realising that for him sex, seduction, relationships were all simply part of a very enjoyable but never serious game that he revelled in playing, automatically protected her, and prevented her from taking him too seriously.
'When are we going to get together?' he whispered to her as he skilfully drew her slightly away from everyone else. 'I have some leave owing to me. We could spend it together,' he suggested meaningfully. 'I could take you to Paris, show you things that only a person with experience could show you.'
Louise laughed and shook her head.
'Impossible, I'm afraid...'
'Ah, you are no doubt busy rushing to find laws to protect your cold northern seas. They are almost as cold as your heart, cherie…'
'And both are very well protected,' Louise informed him firmly, then smiled at him. This situation over fishing rights had never been one it was going to be easy to resolve, but she knew better than to respond to the lure that Jean Claude was trailing in front of her.
He might be a man who very much wanted to take her to bed, but he was also a Frenchman, with a vested interest in seeing his own country increase its allocation of the existing fishing rights. She wasn't powerful or important enough to influence the outcome of the newly formed committee in any shape or form, but it would be very easy for a woman who was emotionally vulnerable or not quite wary enough to be tricked into giving away information which might be useful to an opposing party, and Louise was very much aware of that fact.
Several yards away Gareth, who had been adroitly and very determinedly annexed by Ilse Weil virtually from the moment he'd arrived, frowned as he saw the way Jean Claude's hand lay possessively on Louise's arm, his body language making it plain that he would permit no other man to break into their intimate conversation.
Ilse, following his glance, raised her eyebrows.
'Oh, dear, I see Jean Claude is up to his tricks. It is well known here in Brussels what he is about,' she told Gareth with a dismissive shrug. 'And it is also rumoured that one of the reasons the French are so well informed is because of Jean Claude's skill in persuading his lovers to confide in him.'
She gave Gareth an arch look and made a purring sound deep in her throat as she told him, 'I'm afraid when I'm in bed with a man I lose myself so completely in the sex that the last thing I want to do is to talk politics...'
'I know what you mean,' Gareth agreed gravely. 'I too have a rule about never mixing business with pleasure...'
He was saved from having to say any more by an announcement requesting everyone to go in for dinner. Louise, he couldn't help noticing, seemed particularly reluctant to end her conversation with her companion.
'Louise.'
Louise tensed as she heard Gareth saying her name. The dinner had finished ten minutes ago, and she had hoped to slip away early, but now Gareth was bearing down on her, making it plain that he wasn't going to allow her to escape until he had said whatever it was he wanted to say to her.
'Gareth.' She acknowledged him curtly, glancing politely at her watch and then at the door.
'I saw you talking to Jean Claude le Brun earlier,' Gareth informed her, equally pointedly ignoring her attempts to show him that she was anxious to leave. 'You may not be aware of it, but it seems that he has something of a reputation in Brussels.'
Louise stared at him, her hackles immediately starting to rise as she caught the drift of Gareth's warning.
'A reputation for what?' she challenged him angrily. 'For being a good lover? What is it exactly you're trying to ask me, Gareth? Whether or not it's well deserved?'
'What I was trying to warn you against was the danger of putting yourself in a position where you might inadvertently discuss certain sensitive subjects,' - Gareth corrected her grimly.
Louise's eyes widened and then darkened, first with disbelief and then with anger, as she drew in a sharply outraged breath.
'Are you seriously trying to suggest that Jean Claude is trying to lure me into some kind of sex trap, like...like someone out of a James Bond film?' she demanded scornfully. 'How ridiculous and how typical of you, Gareth. There are men who want to go to bed with me simply for the pleasure of doing so,' she informed him with angry scorn. 'They aren't all like you, and—'
Abruptly she stopped, mentally cursing herself for allowing her emotions to get the better of her. But it was too late. Gareth had quite obviously heard her and equally obviously wasn't going to let her escape.
'They aren't all like me and what?' he challenged her silkily.
Furious with herself, and with him, Louise immediately took refuge behind the ploy of quickly changing the subject.
'My private life has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with you,' she informed him, and then added for good measure, 'You have no right, no right at all, to dare to suggest to me that—' She broke off, and then continued furiously, 'How would you like it if I suggested to you that you should take care not to be lured into bed by Ilse Weil? After all, your position as head of the committee into the fisheries question surely makes you far, far more vulnerable a target for someone to try to influence your decision than me.'
She had a point, Gareth had to admit, but what he couldn't admit—at least not to her—was the fact that it wasn't merely concern for matters of diplomatic delicacy that had prompted his warning to her...
'You have no right to dictate to me how I live my private life,' Louise continued fiercely. 'You're not my tutor now, Gareth. You have no control over my life or my future. You might have been able to punish me for what you decided...for loving Saul, but—'
'To punish you?' Gareth interrupted her sharply. 'Louise, I promise you I—'
'You what?' she interrupted him shakily. 'You weren't responsible for the fact that I didn't get my first? It wasn't because of you that I—'
'You're not being fair.' He stopped her quietly. 'And neither are you being very logical. I wasn't your tutor and I—'
'No, you weren't,' Louise agreed. 'But...' She stopped. How could she admit to him that it had been because of her confused feelings for him, her fear of what those feelings actually were, that she hadn't been able to give her full attention to her work for her remaining time at university—that her thoughts of him had come between her and her work, that the sheer effort of denying them had drained her of the energy she needed for her study?
She was, she discovered, shamingly close to tears. The sheer intensity of the anger she was feeling was unblocking memories she had thought locked safely away.
Not once during her years at school h
ad it occurred to her that she wouldn't always be the praised, clever student, and the shock to her pride and her self- esteem, never mind her plans for her future, when her work had been criticised had been very hard for her to come to terms with.
Yes, maybe now, with hindsight in a very small corner of her mind, she was just about beginning to admit that the life she was making for herself, the cut and thrust of the European scene, was far better suited to her passionate nature than the much more sterile atmosphere of the upper echelons of the British legal system would have been. But it was a very, very reluctant admission, and certainly not one she was prepared to share with Gareth Simmonds.
'I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing,' Gareth began quietly. 'I was simply trying to warn you.'
'Why warn me? What makes you think that I'm particularly in need of that kind of warning? Or can I guess? Just because I made the mistake of...of loving the wrong man...' She stopped and swallowed, and then told him bitingly, 'The relationship I choose to have with Jean Claude—whatever that relationship is—is no one's business but mine.'
'In one sense, no,' Gareth agreed. 'But in another... You don't need me to tell you that Brussels is a hotbed of gossip, and—'
'No, I don't,' Louise agreed tautly.
She had had enough of listening to Gareth lecture her. More than enough. Abruptly she turned on her heel, walking smartly away from him before he could say or do anything to stop her.
She was still seething over her run-in with him over an hour later, back in her flat, as she read through some notes while preparing for bed.
What right had he to dare to question the wisdom of her relationship with Jean Claude?
But it wasn't so much his assumed right to warn her that was making her so furiously angry—and not just with him but with herself as well—as the thinking she knew lay behind it. No doubt he was remembering her as the girl who had fallen so foolishly in love with a man who didn't want her, and who had then recklessly compounded her folly by inciting another man, who also didn't love her, to relieve her of her virginity—another man whom she had realised too late that she—
