by Sara Wood
Ellen felt as if he’d hit her. They had been in love. Hadn’t they? She had. Surely he… Suddenly she registered that he was waiting for a comment from her. Opting for self-preservation, she gave a brilliantly casual laugh.
‘True!’ she acknowledged, a small part of her heart dying with the admission. ‘It’s an all-too-common mistake.’
There was a small shrug of his elegant shoulders. ‘Not to be repeated.’
It was a clear message. Yes, they still aroused one another, but he was damned if he’d let his desires drive his mind. She glanced up, but he was refolding his newspaper slowly and deliberately and she couldn’t see the expression in his eyes.
‘Gemma. What about Gemma?’ she asked as casually as she could. ‘Shall we give it a go?’
He stared at the tablecloth, absently tracing the flower pattern with his long forefinger. ‘I’m not sure. She’s very sensitive at the moment—’
‘I’ll be careful. Luc, please, if she wants this…!’ she cried, terrified he’d dash her hopes. He looked up, and seemed shocked by the passion in her face. Blinking back an upswell of tears, she managed to give him a lop-sided smile. ‘If we can do nothing else, we can make her happy, can’t we?’
‘I would want to check up on you,’ he said slowly, almost slurring his speech. But Ellen was too much on tenterhooks to wonder why. He scowled and she held her breath, but he said, ‘If you should let me down—’
‘I won’t!’ she cried, beaming with delight at the grudging capitulation in his tone.
His scowl deepened. ‘I’m taking a big chance here. She’s the most precious person in my entire life and I’d protect her to the death. Hurt her in any way,’ he warned softly, ‘and I’ll make you suffer so much that you’ll wish you’d never set eyes on either of us. Capis’?’
Chills flashed down her spine. He meant every word of that threat. Her huge eyes flinched at his piercing stare and she let her terrified gaze drift down in alarm. Unfortunately, she found herself focusing on his broken nose, which reminded her forcibly of his rough childhood, the background which had forged him into the man he now was. Fights and vendettas had filled his childhood in Naples. Revenge was in his soul.
But suddenly she allowed herself a little wry smile. He’d never need to carry out his threat. She was home and dry. Her whole body straightened and she began to breathe more easily.
‘Understood,’ she said, feeling triumphant. ‘When will this be?’
A wild joy started to creep through her. She wanted to dance because she hadn’t lost her final chance at motherhood after all. Overwhelmed with an urge to sing, to yell aloud, do somersaults all around the café, nevertheless she remained demurely on her chair. She couldn’t believe it! Her daughter had asked for her! Miracle of miracles!
‘Tonight,’ Luc said, delivering his bombshell.
Ellen’s mouth gaped open. ‘But…you know I’m working!’ she cried in dismay. It was too short notice! How dared he walk in and expect her to drop everything—?
‘You said.’ He was cool and businesslike again. ‘I have a breakfast meeting early in the morning. It must be tonight. What time do you finish?’
‘Ten!’ Too late, she thought, and wanted to wail. Gemma would be asleep by then. She’d lose her chance…
Luc grunted. ‘I’ll tell her what’s happening when I return to the hotel and she’ll go to sleep quite happily, I’m sure. I’ll wrap her up and bring her to you. All you’ll need to do is to put her to bed—she’ll be in her nightdress already.’ He angled his head speculatively. ‘This is a rather short working session, isn’t it? Whatever—?’
‘Luc, I have to go,’ she said, interrupting before he could ask what she could be doing in such a brief time. The main thing was to keep him from discovering where and how she lived. Delighted that she’d coaxed him round, she said decisively, ‘Look, bring her here, to the café. I’ll order a taxi home.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘That’s ridiculous. I can drive you.’
‘No.’ She set her mouth in a stubborn line.
‘Something there I shouldn’t know about?’
‘My sense of independence,’ she retorted, meeting his suspicious stare boldly. ‘Don’t try to take that away from me, Luc.’
He looked at her doubtfully and she felt afraid again. She couldn’t stop trembling. If she had any sense at all she should tell him he was asking the impossible. Changing her shifts at the supermarket would be a nightmare, and she risked losing her job. But how could she turn down the opportunity to make friends with her daughter? Quivering with nerves, she decided to leave him no option.
‘Gemma’s used to the arrangement. We do it every time. Help! I’m late,’ she said, needing to jump up and release some tension. ‘I don’t want to overrun. Look at it like this: you want a favour from me. You want me to take time off work at a moment’s notice and I will, but we do this my way. I’ll see you here at ten. All details then, yes?’
Anxious to escape, she scrambled out of the chair with a clatter and he made no attempt to stop her. She’d done it!
Luc’s eyes followed her all the way. She knew that because she hardly knew how to walk. Her legs seemed to be made of wool. But her head was definitely floating above Cloud Nine!
It would be make or break time. This time she’d pull out all the stops and show Gemma that she loved her—even if it meant risking another rejection, breaking her heart. Perhaps she could explain simply that she’d left because she’d been ill… She sighed, chewing at her lower lip. It wouldn’t be easy. But something would come to her.
‘Bye, Ell!’ called Tracy.
‘Bye!’ Ellen grinned at the girl’s theatrical wink and swept out, tingling all over.
She stepped off the pavement in a dream. Unfortunately the traffic didn’t take any notice of her rosy aura, and drivers swerved, cussed and hooted at her as she crossed the road. Brought down to earth, she scuttled to the safety of the opposite side, throwing apologetic looks in all directions.
She couldn’t resist taking a quick glance over at the café, to see if Luc had watched her stupid jaywalk. And of course he had. His unmistakable dark figure stood at the plate glass window in a pose of utter disapproval.
She’d blown it again! He’d think she was stupid and irresponsible! She contemplated giving him a little wave, but thought that would make her seem even more frivolous. Her only hope was that he’d be too anxious to please Gemma to cancel the arrangement out of pique.
He wouldn’t do that to her, she told herself. He couldn’t be that cruel. And she danced happily up the steps of the community centre, certain that she and Gemma were about to begin a wonderful new relationship.
CHAPTER THREE
IT HAD taken all of Luc’s will-power not to hurry after Ellen and persuade her to play hookey from work that night. From the moment she’d turned her seductive, smoky eyes on him he’d wanted her with a suffocating and overwhelming passion. In an alarmingly short time this had grown almost into an obsession, while he sat there like a stuffed dummy and pretended to be as indifferent as a eunuch.
He allowed himself a small, self-deprecating grimace. She’d captured him, just as she had that first time he’d seen her in that sassy little skirt on the road to Windsor.
Amazingly, she was her old self again: assured, strong-willed and incredibly beautiful. All the time he’d found it hard to keep his mind on what they were discussing. He’d had an irresistible urge to leap over the table at her and pin her to the floor.
A small voice inside him said that she’d wanted him too, and what would it matter if they both indulged their physical needs and had a one-night stand? He glared at the busy street, empty of life and colour now she’d gone.
It was inconceivable that she hadn’t had lovers. Yet she’d been so insistent on that fact that he’d believed her against all the odds. Whatever the truth, he felt sure she’d behave herself for the duration of Gemma’s short visit. His threat had scared her and so it should. One foot out
of line and he’d give her hell.
‘More coffee?’ called the girl behind the counter.
‘No thanks.’ Turning with a polite smile of farewell, he picked up his paper and then hurried back to his hotel to give Gemma the good news.
Once inside the community centre, Ellen allowed herself to give way to her feelings. Laughing and running in an uncontrollable surge of sheer happiness, she felt suddenly fired up with optimism. Gemma wanted her! The most wonderful words she’d heard since Luc had asked her to marry him.
A tinge of wistfulness shadowed her eyes and then she shook it off. OK, she couldn’t have everything. The old Luc had gone for ever and she’d never get him back. But this little piece of good fortune must be cherished and nurtured.
She and Gemma had a future after all!
Greeting everyone joyfully, she apologised for her lateness and scurried to the back room to change, emerging in her briefs and with a towelling gown around her. Behind the discreet screen, she arranged herself on the satin-covered dais and draped a length of satin over her body.
‘OK, Paul, ready,’ she called.
She lay with her eyes closed, posing in a blissful dream, oblivious of everyone and everything as she planned what she and Gemma would do, who she could call on to do her shifts, how she could make her week’s money stretch to feed two.
After her ten-minute break, spent admiring photos of one woman’s new grandson and happily joining in the chatter about babies, she resumed her pose.
Some people, she mused, seeing her now, would presume her to be wanton. But it was years since she’d felt sexy or wanton. Immediately Luc came to mind and she remembered vividly. Total surrender. Fusion of bodies. A wild celebration of the difference between man and woman. Tenderness in the aftermath, sweet kisses, sweet nothings, the glorious, unmistakable taste and smell of a man…
Her mouth became full and hungry, as if she’d recently been pleasured. Her whole body took on the glow of a woman in love as her muscles remembered and relaxed. The throb of her pulses sounded in her brain, the rhythm at once primitive and insistent.
Her heavy black lashes fluttered lazily. She turned her head slightly to one side, looking into the room but seeing nothing, her mind absorbed with the rare sense of passion coursing through her.
Outside, Luc tapped impatient fingers. She was late. And he waited for no one.
‘Momento,’ he threw back to Donatello, waiting in the back of the car with the sleeping Gemma. ‘Torno fra dieci minuti.’
The building was emptying. ‘I’m looking for Ellen Maccari. Can you help me?’ he said to the woman at the enquiries desk.
She looked at him oddly. ‘Room 2.’ She pointed. ‘They’re overrunning. You can’t go in—’
But he was in a hurry. Ignoring the ‘No Entry’ sign on the door because he refused to wait any longer, he pushed it open. The door swished silently back and he found himself struck dumb with astonishment at the scene which met his eyes.
A near-naked woman sprawled alluringly on a sheen of black satin, its gleaming darkness contrasting strikingly with her ivory skin.
Ellen.
He inhaled in silent wonder. She slept. But wicked thoughts were filling her dreams because her mouth had become plushly soft and an air of languid pleasure surrounded her. He felt his heart beat rapidly as his hot gaze absorbed and coveted everything he saw.
This was what he’d dreamed of, night after night. This was the image which had woken him, sweating and swearing, because he hated himself for wanting something so worthless. This was what he still wanted. Perhaps he was a masochist, he thought darkly.
Or he’d gone so long without sex that his body was beginning to rebel. Yes. That was it.
Scheming little minx! Surely she’d done this deliberately! He examined this line of thought. Everything added up: arranging for him to hand over Gemma in the café, being late, letting him see her like this… But why? To make him jealous? To point out what he was missing? Or…to entrap him, perhaps, as Donatello had warned?
He gazed at her, emotions tumbling over themselves. Hatred, anger and desire. She had flung her arms back in abandon, her firm round breasts lifting beneath the satin as if offering themselves to a lover’s hands.
Bleakly he imagined feasting on each dusky soft nipple, and his tongue moistened his dry lips as he pictured kissing those sleepy peaks and bringing them back to life till they were hard to his tongue and tantalising the highly sensitive parts of his mouth.
Stifling a groan, he raked the rest of her body with glittering eyes, mentally placing his hands on her small waist, stroking her smooth silken thighs and…
He swallowed, passions smouldering within him. His breath hissed out painfully, and as people in the room turned, startled at the unexpected sound, he suddenly sprang into action.
Ellen woke with a start to find Luc was bearing down on her, his face contorted with rage. Before she could sit up—or even work out where she was and what she was doing—he was upon her, the sound of clattering easels and loud protests echoing in his wake.
Yards of satin were being gathered around her body and wrapping it like a cocoon, and then she was being lifted in Luc’s arms while he muttered fiercely at her in Italian—words which were beyond her limited vocabulary.
‘Luc! Put me down!’ she spluttered, as he bore her unerringly towards the open door of her small dressing room.
‘How could you do this?’ he fumed, glaring down at her. ‘So this is how you spend your so-called boring evenings! Displaying yourself to—’
‘It’s an art class!’ she protested in astonishment.
‘Put her down!’ ordered Paul from somewhere behind her.
Breathing hell-fire and brimstone, nevertheless Luc let her slither down his body, still trussed up like an Egyptian mummy. She couldn’t speak for a moment because she was reeling from the erotic sensation of his hard warmth against her yielding flesh. And… She quivered, thrown into a trembling confusion. He was intensely aroused, and that fact alone made her feel weak.
Her startled eyes met his. And she saw him fighting his desire, hating himself for wanting her.
‘Get dressed!’ he snarled.
‘Is it time to finish, Paul?’ she asked, haughtily ignoring him.
‘Ye-es, I suppose it is,’ Paul said, clearly nonplussed by Luc’s interruption. ‘But—’
‘But! Butt out!’ snapped Luc. ‘I’m her husband.’
Paul’s eyes widened. ‘Ellen,’ he said in concern. ‘Do you need our help?’
‘No, I can deal with this, thanks,’ she said, pink with mortification.
The infuriated Luc caught hold of her around the waist and lifted her in the air, carrying her trussed and upright body into the little room, where he kicked the door shut and set her down again. Reaching up to the hook on the wall, he pulled down the hanger holding her top and skirt and held it out for her.
‘Dress!’
Her mouth twitched with an irrational urge to laugh. The whole scenario was quite ridiculous! There she was, trussed up in black satin and incapable of moving, and he wanted her to dress! She tried ineffectually to escape from the cloth around her. The satin slipped and slid erotically over her body but somehow neglected to free her arms.
‘You’re out of the Ark, you know that?’ she commented, concentrating on de-mummifying herself. ‘There’s nothing wrong in what I’ve been doing, so calm down. It’s my job.’
‘Letting men draw you, leer at you?’ He lifted a scornful eyebrow.
Not to be outdone, she lifted one of her own. ‘Men and women. My friends. They’re artists!’ she pronounced, marking him down as a Philistine.
‘Artists or not, the men must have found you sexually attractive—’
‘As you do?’ she murmured sweetly, before she could stop herself. Oh, curse her big mouth, she thought in exasperation.
Luc drew in a harsh breath. Then he turned the key in the door. To Ellen’s horror, he flung her clothes to the floor, too
k a step closer and pulled her against his body, slowly, deliberately releasing her satin wrapping and letting it drop in a sensual caress down her hips and thighs till it rested like a dark liquid at her feet.
‘Is this what you’ve been deliberately provoking me to do?’ he muttered.
Her half-naked body was pressed against his. She was incapable even of breathing. Spirals of excitement were rising uncontrollably within her. It was as if she had no control over herself at all. A tremor ran through her, and he gave a shuddering intake of breath in response but kept his eyes fixed resolutely on hers.
‘Of…course n-not!’ she squeaked in alarm.
‘Afraid at what you’ve unleashed? Or do you have a problem with your throat now?’ he mocked.
Her face flamed. He was no gentleman to notice! ‘Don’t be perverse! Let me dress!’ she pleaded, aghast at how pathetic she sounded.
‘I marvel at your logic. A few moments ago you were allowing strangers to examine you inch by inch—’
‘That’s different!’ she protested, wriggling. And she stopped, quickly, because he’d groaned involuntarily at her movement.
‘Why is it different?’ he rasped.
‘You—you know why! That was impersonal; this isn’t. And…we’re…touching!’
‘You’re lucky I’m not beating your backside and shaking the life out of you!’ he said grimly. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it sure as hell has backfired!’ he seethed. ‘If you thought to entrap me by flaunting yourself—’
‘No way!’ she cried vigorously. ‘I wouldn’t lift my little finger to beckon you if you were the—’
‘Last man on earth, yes—’
‘In the entire Galaxy!’ she snapped. ‘I’d go on a date with a Martian first!’
‘Don’t protest too strongly,’ he said with contempt. ‘It makes me suspicious. Whatever your intentions, you were playing me for a sucker. You had actually convinced me that I’d misjudged you, that you were honest and decent—’
‘I am!’ she insisted, too numb, too stunned to struggle. Waves and waves of desire were softening her body and enfeebling her. It seemed her brain had turned to mush along with her power to move.
