by Lynne Graham
‘That’s not quite what I meant. When I mentioned how you feel about me…hmm…’ Tabby steeled herself to forge ahead and rise above all mortification because it was very clear that he was not about to give her any help.
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Er…love.’ Tabby finally got it out.
Instantly, Christien recoiled. ‘What’s love got to do with it?’
Tabby’s heart sank. Rarely did anyone receive an answer that bristled with such clarity. Talk about slamming the door shut on her dreams! One reference to love and he backed off six feet and could not conceal his revulsion. Even so, he had proposed…after a fashion. Instincts she was ashamed of urged her to accept first, get smart with him about terms later. But he was being so shallow about something that she took very seriously. She wanted her marriage to have the best possible chance of lasting until she was old and grey.
‘The civil ceremony will take ten days to organise,’ Christien commented.
‘I haven’t said yes.’
Emanating confidence, Christien bent mocking dark golden eyes on her. ‘I’ll make the arrangements…now come here.’
Christien began to pull her inch by inch back to him, his hungry gaze devouring her. Tabby breathed in deep. She knew that she was facing a definitive moment in her relationship with Christien. She had never planned anything with him, had never demanded anything from him either. Loving him from the first, she had let her heart rule her head and had then suffered the consequences.
But now Jake had to be considered. Christien himself had stressed that their son’s needs should be placed ahead of their own more selfish desires and doubtless that was why he had decided to propose. Unhappily, Tabby could not bring herself to believe that their marriage would last six months on so shallow a basis as sex. If Jake was not to be torn apart by a divorce, Christien would have to be prepared to make more effort.
‘Right at this minute, I’m not actually saying yes to marrying you,’ Tabby told Christien tautly.
Black brows pleating, Christien jerked back from her again. ‘Then what are you saying?’
‘I’d like to say yes but I just don’t think I can. We don’t have enough going for us—’
‘We have a son and dynamite sexual attraction!’
‘If it doesn’t work out, it will hurt Jake most of all…a lot of husbands and wives end up hating each other when they split up—’
‘Are you always this optimistic?’ Christien asked very drily.
‘I’m putting Jake first like you said we should.’ Tabby thrust up her chin. ‘If I did marry you, I know I’d try hard to make it work. But I’m not convinced you would do the same—’
Christien was getting riled. ‘Why the hell not?’
‘You’re spoiled. Life’s a breeze for you. You’re good-looking, rich and successful and you’re just not used to having to make an effort in relationships—’
Christien’s stubborn jawline was at an aggressive angle. ‘But naturally I could make that effort if I had to.’
‘Dragging me into the nearest bed wouldn’t count,’ Tabby returned in some embarrassment, but she knew it needed to be said.
‘Since when did I have to drag you?’ Christien derided silkily. ‘We’re talking in circles here, ma belle.’
‘No, we’re not, you’re not listening to what I’m saying. I want to marry you, but not if it’s likely to end in tears so that Jake suffers for my having made the wrong choice—’
‘I can’t offer you some miracle guarantee—’
‘If you’d loved me, I wouldn’t have needed any more.’
‘I can make you happy without love,’ Christien murmured with immense assurance.
‘How far would you be prepared to go to make me happy?’ A germ of an idea had occurred to Tabby.
‘I’m no quitter.’
At least, she consoled herself, in the radius of his father’s unquestioning confidence Jake was highly unlikely to suffer from low self-esteem.
‘You said it would be ten days before we can get married. So you’ve got that amount of time to persuade me that I should marry you—’
‘Persuade?’ Christien frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘You’ve got from now until the ceremony to convince me…while we occupy separate beds,’ Tabby hastened to add.
The silence pulsed like a live thing.
Christien angled a sardonic scrutiny over her. ‘This is a joke…right?’
Tabby stiffened. ‘No, it’s not a joke. You see, we’ve never had a normal relationship—’
“‘Normal” is defined by separate beds?’
‘The very fact that that is the first thing you home in on proves that—’
‘I’m a guy and honest enough to admit that separate beds have zero appeal?’ Christien slotted in darkly.
‘I’d just like us to spend time together, go out to dinner and stuff…I’ve never had that.’ Tabby compressed her lips on that grudging admission. ‘Not with anyone. Before I met you, I went around with a crowd but it wasn’t really dating and then I fell pregnant.’
Christien had gone very still. ‘What about after Jake was born?’
Dully amused at how little he understood about how much parenthood had changed her life, Tabby released a rueful laugh. ‘Single mothers aren’t high on the hot list of babes in the eyes of male students. I didn’t have time to date anyway. I was studying, looking after Jake and working several nights a week to bring in some cash.’
Without the smallest warning, Christien was feeling gutted by guilt and a reluctant awareness of the privileged existence that he took quite for granted. He could easily imagine how he would have felt being saddled with the care of a baby as a teenager and he almost shuddered. She had had to be responsible way beyond her years. Jake’s conception had deprived her of all freedom and fun. That she had still got through college was a tribute to her.
‘Don’t think that I didn’t get asked out, because I was asked!’ Tabby wanted him to know that.
‘So why didn’t you go?’
Tabby grimaced. ‘Blokes tend to assume you’re a sure thing if you already have a baby. After I got that message, dating seemed more trouble than it was worth.’
His lean, strong face was taut. ‘You don’t have to answer this…but have you ever been with anyone but me?’
Glancing up in surprise, Tabby collided with his intent gaze and blushed to the roots of her hair before uttering a sheepish negative.
Something in his chest tightened and he dragged in a deep, ragged breath. He swung away. His son had been as good as a chastity belt. He was ashamed that he was pleased that she had never been to bed with any other guy. After all, self-evidently, he had wrecked her life at seventeen. Ironically that had been the one and only time that he had ever chosen to rely on a lover to take precautions. Why? In certain situations condoms were inconvenient and he had thought of his pleasure rather than her protection.
‘D’accord…’ Christien squared his wide shoulders like a male ready to assume an unpleasant duty. ‘So I demonstrate that I can make you happy without sex…I hope you’re not expecting me to be happy too.’
‘You might be surprised.’
‘Not that surprised,’ Christien drawled.
They lunched with Jake at a polished table in a grand dining room lined by rather gloomy ancestral portraits. Even so, she did recognise that the men were a pretty fanciable bunch. After the meal, he informed her that they were flying to Paris.
‘Don’t be annoyed with me…Jake has an appointment with a specialist this afternoon,’ Christien imparted.
‘That was quick.’ Tabby had no desire to question anything that might benefit her son’s health. ‘Money talks—’
‘Not in this instance. The specialist concerned is a family friend.’
Her face flamed with embarrassment. They called in at the cottage so that she could pack, for he had suggested they stay the night in the city. Zipping shut the bag, suppressing a
groan at the noisy sound of Jake spilling his Lego bricks over the tiled floor, she turned round to see Christien watching her from the bedroom doorway. He looked incredibly tall and dark and lethally attractive. Her mouth ran dry, tummy muscles tightening.
‘You’re never going to live here,’ he commented.
Tabby tried to shrug as though she didn’t care either way.
‘I always play to win…’ he murmured silkily.
Her lashes lowered over her eyes as she evaded the stunning directness of his gaze. A ripple of awareness ran down her spine in the heavy silence. The sexual buzz in the atmosphere was intense and her heart was thumping like mad. She drew in a quivering breath. Her nipples were pushing in stiff little points against the lace of her bra cup and a wave of hot pink washed her face.
She watched his brilliant eyes darken and shimmer. He extended a lean brown hand and she grasped it, let him tug her forward.
‘We shouldn’t,’ she said shakily.
‘What’s a kiss, ma belle?’
Downstairs she could hear Jake making ‘vroom-vroom’ sounds while he played with his cars. Christien leant down. His breath warmed her cheek. She was so excited she stopped breathing. Without laying a hand on her, he tasted her lips, suckled them, savoured the eagerness with which she opened the moist interior to him. She strained up to him, electrified by the penetrating sweep of his tongue, the greedy ache stirring between her thighs in response.
‘Christien…’ she whimpered shakily.
‘Stop acting like a hussy…this is our first date—’
‘A first date?’ Tabby parroted.
Crhistien frowned. ‘You asked me for what you called a normal relationship—’
Tabby was nonplussed. ‘I did?’
‘A request which was in effect a direct challenge for me to redo what I seem to have got very wrong the first time around four years back—’
‘It…it was?’
Christien laughed. ‘So you had better learn how to say no…loud and clear. It takes two to play this game and I need all the help I can get.’
Bemused chagrin warming her face, she dropped the heavy bag at his feet and preceded him downstairs. Her body felt heavy on the outside and tight and achy on the inside. In her mind separate beds had already fallen in stature from being a common-sense precaution to being a rather naive and narrow-minded embargo. It was slowly dawning on her that on that score she had no right to feel superior to him: she might love him but, when it came to the lust factor, she was as guilty as he was.
CHAPTER NINE
TABBY and Christien went to Paris with the nursemaid, Fanchon, in tow. The specialist, an expert in the field of childhood asthma, gave Jake a brief examination and booked him in for tests the following day.
Christien owned a seventeenth century town house on Ile St-Louis. It had an incredible location on a picturesque tree-lined quay overlooking the Seine. Admitting that he had several calls to return, he left her to dress for dinner in a guest room. She put on a slender white dress with a plaited brown leather belt that hung low on her hips, and when she tucked their son into bed he wished her goodnight in careful French.
Sleek and handsome in a designer suit, Christien came forward to greet her when she walked into the imposing drawing room. A portly older man stood smiling beside the trays of glorious rings spread out in front of the windows to catch the best light.
Christien curved a light arm to her spine. ‘I want you to choose your engagement ring.’
‘Wow…you’re being so conventional,’ she mumbled to cover her delight and surprise with a little cool.
‘Maybe it’s too conventional…If you prefer we can scrap the ring idea,’ Christien countered very seriously.
‘Don’t be daft…I was only teasing.’ Having registered that facetious comments could get her into trouble, she hastened over to the rings and fell madly in love with a diamond in a wonderful art deco setting.
‘Take your time,’ Christien censured, distrusting impulses.
‘No, this is it…this is the one,’ she insisted. ‘It’s my favourite era.’
He took her to an exclusive restaurant for dinner.
‘This is how it should have been the first night…I should have waited,’ Christien conceded. ‘But I couldn’t keep my hands off you—’
‘Let’s not talk about stuff like that.’ Tabby was getting short of breath just looking across the table at his lean dark features and the aura of sexy confidence he exuded.
‘I want to marry you,’ Christien said harshly. ‘I really do want to marry you.’
‘But I don’t want it to be just because of Jake or…’ But she bit back the word ‘sex’ for suddenly she could see how unfair she was being. He didn’t love her, but she was pushing as if she thought pressure might somehow change that and, of course, it wouldn’t. If lust and his son were all she had to hold him, maybe she was just going to have to come down to earth and get used to that reality.
She scarcely knew what she ate at that meal. She saw other women glancing at him, admiring that hard bronzed profile, the grace of the lean hands he used to express himself while he talked. An intensity of love that was almost terrifying filled her.
‘Shall we go to a club?’ he asked over coffee.
‘Not in the mood.’ She didn’t trust herself to look at him in the cab. She wanted him. She wanted him so badly it hurt to say no to herself. He followed her into Jake’s room. From the floor he retrieved the worn white stuffed lamb that Jake had slept with since he was a baby. He slotted it in beside their son and straightened his bedding.
‘Bon Dieu…I can’t believe he’s ours,’ Christien confided huskily. ‘When I think about him or look at him I have that same sense of wonder I used to have as a child at Noël…at Christmas.’
Her eyes prickled. ‘Thank goodness…I thought it was only me who could get soppy about him.’
In the corridor, Christien paused, lean, powerful face taut. ‘If I had known you were carrying my baby, I would have been there for you,’ he asserted in a driven undertone. ‘But that day at the accident enquiry, I didn’t trust myself to be alone with you—’
‘But why?’ she whispered, breaking into that emotive flood.
‘I was angry as hell. I believed that you’d two-timed me with the biker. I’d let that conviction destroy even the good memories I had of you,’ he admitted grimly. ‘I was still very bitter. I didn’t want you to know what I was feeling.’
He had freed her from the fear that he had rejected her that day because she was Gerry Burnside’s daughter. She knew how strong his pride was, but he had told her more than he probably realised. All those months later, he had still been furious and bitter over her supposed betrayal. The longevity of those emotions suggested to her that she had meant something rather more to Christien Laroche than a casual summer lover.
‘But I can see that you thought I was cruel. That was never my intention. I didn’t appreciate that I had the power to hurt you that day,’ Christien completed.
She stretched up on tiptoes, linked her arms round his neck and raised shining eyes to his. ‘I know. Thank you for my gorgeous ring.’
With infuriating control, Christien set her back from him again. ‘We have an early start tomorrow.’
It was a warm night and she wasn’t in the mood to go to bed. Earlier in the evening, Christien had given her a tour of the apartment and there was a pool in the basement. She descended the stairs and used the atmospheric lighting to illuminate the glorious pool shaped like a lake. Never had she seen a stretch of water look quite so enticing.
Stripping where she stood, she padded down the Roman steps and sighed with appreciation as the cool, silky water washed her overheated skin. She swam a length and then let her eyes drift shut while she floated.
‘You’d better vacate the water if you don’t want to be ravished,’ Christien’s husky drawl warned.
Her eyes flew wide and she flipped over with an ungainly splash. He was hunkered do
wn by the side of the pool, bronzed hair-roughened chest bare. He vaulted upright again.
‘This is my equivalent of a cold shower,’ he told her bluntly. ‘You’re looking at a guy on the edge, mon ange.’
Her face suffused with colour as she noticed the bulge of male arousal delineated by the tight black denim. He unsnapped the waistband, undid the zip with obvious difficulty. Again she noticed the silky furrow of black hair that ran down over his flat, taut stomach. Dragging her half-embarrassed, half-appreciative attention from him, she swam for the steps. Only as she emerged from the water did she appreciate her own nudity and how provocative it must seem to Christien that she had not even set out a towel with which to cover herself.
Christien was stopped in his tracks by the sight of her. Her hair was a thick, damp tangle round her animated face and her skin had the luscious glow of a sun-ripened peach.
‘I swear I didn’t know you were coming down here,’ Tabby muttered feverishly. ‘I swear it.’
‘Stand up…drop your hands…show me what I want to see.’ Christien’s rich dark accented drawl was bold and rough-edged.
She met burning golden eyes and her heartbeat quickened and her head swam. She arched her spine, let her hands fall to her side, listened to the indrawn hiss of his breath with an inner stab of feminine satisfaction. ‘It’s our first date,’ she reminded him.
‘So I’m a sure thing, ma belle.’ His gaze clung to the creamy swell of her voluptuous breasts and lingered on distended pink nipples still beaded with water. A groan broke low in his throat. ‘In fact, I’m a pushover…I’m the sort of guy who gives his all on a first date.’
‘Are you?’ Tabby shivered although she was not cold. She was, however, very wound up. She knew she ought to run like hell. He was putting out vibes like placards: go…or else. She had to be a wanton hussy because just the thought of his knowing hands on her left her giddy and weak. Standing there naked in front of him while he looked her over, she felt shameless, but it was very exciting too.
He reached for her in one sudden movement. He took her mouth with sexual savagery, penetrating fast and deep between her lips with an urgency that sent the blood drumming in a crazy beat through her veins. Trembling with desire, she let herself be carried over to the padded bench by the wall. He spread her there and knelt to lick the crystalline water droplets from her breasts and toy with her pointed pink nipples. He tipped her back and spread her thighs to trace the lush, swollen flesh below the soft curls that crowned her womanhood.
