by Julia James
But what had just happened had gone beyond that.
Why? How?
He asked the questions, but his rational mind could find no answer. No reason. He was in unknown territory, that was all he knew. A place he had not been before. He tried to put it into words. As his mind searched, as he stared up into the darkness, he could feel the soft warmth of her body curled against him.
The reality of her presence in his arms, his bed, swept over him. What did anything matter compared with that? It was all that was important—all he would allow himself.
He shifted his limbs to ease them a moment. As he did, the weight of her soft, warm body shifted, too, bearing down on him more. He heard her murmur in her sleep, her dream. She lay so peacefully in his arms. So naturally.
She felt good to hold. Good to lie with.
Good to fall asleep beside.
He felt his focus dissolve, the drowsiness of post-coital satiation wash up over him. His eyes started to feel heavy and close, his breathing slowed. Instinctively for one second his arms tightened around her, checking she was still there. He let his body relax, his mind, too.
He slept in her embrace, embracing her.
It felt very good.
CHAPTER NINE
SUNLIGHT, AND THE smell of fresh, fragrant coffee stirred the senses of Lissa’s sleeping mind, luring her to wakefulness. As she surfaced from slumber she wondered why she felt so wonderful—and then she remembered. Her eyes flew open.
She was alone in the bed, but Xavier was sitting on the edge, clad only in a short white bathrobe that accentuated the fabulous golden tan of his skin and exposed—she gave a silent gulp—the smooth muscled surface of his chest and forearms. Her eyes flew to his and clung.
He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the mouth.
‘Bonjour, cherie.’ He smiled.
She felt her heart melt into a puddle inside her. Her eyes lit.
‘Xavier.’
A huge, joyous smile broke across her face.
It had been true, not a dream. A wonderful, blissful truth that made her breathless with delight. Xavier had swept down on her and scooped her up and borne her away to Paris, the most romantic of cities, to make her his. Her smile deepened and her eyes drank in the beautiful planed face of the man looking down at her, amusement and bemusement glittering in his eyes in equal measures.
Long, silky lashes swept down over his eyes.
‘Would you like coffee?’ he asked.
The aromatic, heady fragrance tickled at her nose again. ‘Oh— Please,’ she answered.
She started to sit up and then remembered, with a little thrill, that she wasn’t wearing a stitch. Sudden confusion and embarrassment swept over her, and she clutched the rumpled duvet to her breasts as she sat herself up. Xavier leaned around her and propped up the pillow. The silk of his hair brushed against her jaw as he did so, and her heart melted again. As he straightened and she leaned back against the head of the bed, she pushed back her own tumbled hair with fingers that trembled suddenly.
‘Black or white?’
His hand hovered over a jug of hot milk that stood on the coffee tray on the bedside table.
‘Oh— White, please—thank you.’
Her voice sounded breathless, even to her, and suddenly she was too shy to look him in the eye. She took the grande tasse and raised it to her lips for a tiny sip of hot, pale coffee, glad he had busied himself pouring his own cup and then settling back, one leg crooked under him on the wide bed, to drink it. As he did so she stole a look at him, feeling that thrill go through her again.
Her face opened into a huge, joyous smile of delight and wonder.
‘Did it really happen?’
The words came from her before she could stop them. Dark eyes lifted and looked into hers.
‘I thought it might all have been a dream,’ she said haltingly, her eyes meeting his, only to drown in their depths. ‘It was just so wonderful!’
A smile played at the corner of his sculpted mouth, and again there was that mixed look of amusement and bemusement in his dark eyes.
‘It was my pleasure,’ he murmured. his French accent making her insides quiver.
‘Mine, too,’ she blurted. ‘Heaps and heaps—’ She cut off dead, and, biting her lip, made a face. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being— What’s the French term? Jejeune? Is that it? Or—’ she made another face ‘—maybe just naïf. Anyway.’ She swallowed, ‘Um, er— Well.’ Hastily she drank some more coffee, dropping her head so that her tumbled hair covered her embarrassment at behaving like an idiot.
Fingers gently touched the side of her head.
‘Look at me,’ Xavier said.
She made herself do so. He leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead. And suddenly it was all right, just fine, and not embarrassing at all, and she gave a wide smile again. Happiness filled her like a warm balloon, and she felt that familiar feeling of starting to float up from the ground.
She met his eyes, and now it was all right—more than all right. It was fine and lovely and—right. That was the word for it. Not that she wanted to think about words just at the moment—or about anything, really. She just wanted to go on feeling as if she was lighter than air, and happy and floating. Sunlight filled the room—bright sunlight from drawn-back curtains—sending golden dust motes shimmering through the air.
‘Everything is good, cherie,’ he told her softly, ‘because you are here with me.’ He lowered his mouth to brush hers lightly, lingeringly. Then he drew back, nodding towards the coffee she still held.
‘Drink up,’ said Xavier, that half smile at his mouth again. It made his mouth even more beautiful, thought Lissa dreamily.
Obediently, she took another mouthful of coffee, the fragrance and taste of it carrying with it all that was France—pavement cafés and sunlit balconies. She watched Xavier drink from his own cup, and everything about the gesture registered as if in ultra-focus—the way his hand was splayed under the saucer, holding the weight of the cup, the elegant turn of his wrist as he lifted the cup, the fall of his hair as he lowered his head slightly to drink. Dreamily, she took another draught.
Then, ‘Ça suffit.’ It was decisively spoken, and then Xavier was setting down his cup, and removing hers from her grasp. For a moment, just a moment, Lissa’s eyes widened in alarm and anxiety. Was he going to send her packing now? Politely, of course, and charmingly, but packing all the same. Put her on a plane back to London, and get on with his own life.
But as he straightened and turned back to her she realised, with a dissolving stomach, that sending her packing was the last thing on his mind. That decisiveness had not been about getting on with his busy day, but about—
His kiss was long and slow and warm, and dissolved not only her stomach but every cell in her body. She gave herself to it, to the soft, sensuous delight of it. Her hands slid of their own volition across the smooth wall of his half-bared chest, her body sliding down into the bed. His mouth caressed hers, and she gave herself, wholly and entirely, to the soft, sensuous delight that was Xavier Lauran making the most beautiful love in the world to her.
They stayed one day in Paris.
‘I must clear my desk, hélas,’ he told her ruefully. ‘But tomorrow morning we can leave.’
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘You’ll see,’ he answered, a half smile playing on his face.
He knew exactly where he was going to spend this time with her. The season was a little early, but it was better than the heat of summer, and there would be no crowds to get in their way. It was a place he never took his amours to, but Lissa was different. Different how, exactly, he still did not ask—or answer. He only knew that the kind of affaire he was used to would not work with her. Lissa was not someone to leave in his apartment while he kept up his daily routine of business meetings and high-pressure work, spending only evenings with her in restaurants, or at the theatre or the opera, or social engagements, as had been his custom wi
th Madeline and her predecessors over the years. No, he wanted Lissa to himself twenty-four-seven—safe by his side, in his bed. He had thought her forever forbidden to him—and now that fate had given her to him after all he would not neglect her.
So it was well worth breaking his neck all day, driving his PA and directors as if the devil were chasing them, in his attempt to clear his desk of all essential tasks. Some were impossible to complete, and those he could not postpone he undertook to do remotely. A couple of hours a day on the laptop, in communication with his office, would be the maximum he would commit to.
Besides, he argued to himself, when had he last taken a holiday? He gave an ironic grimace—the French took more holidays than most other nationalities, and his staff, like all sensible people, made the most of them, but he, running the whole company, seldom took time off.
Well, now he would. Now, with the woman he had thought never to have beside him, he would for once play hooky.
Even as he formed the thought, another plucked at his mind.
What about Armand? Should he not contact him? Find out how it was that he and Lissa had parted?
He blocked it out. It didn’t matter what had happened between them—all that mattered was that Lissa was not bound to his brother anymore, and was free to come away with him instead. After all, hadn’t Armand asked him not to interfere in his affairs of the heart? And hadn’t he learned—almost at a cost that chilled him to contemplate—that it would have been wiser by far to have done just that? Instead he had blundered in, intent on doing his best for his brother, guarding him from making a mistake that would cost him dear. No, this time around he would do nothing. Armand’s life was his own—whatever had happened between him and Lissa was not his concern. All that was his concern was that the woman he had so catastrophically desired when she was his brother’s intended wife had now, wonderfully, been set free for him to claim.
Had Lissa been in love with Armand? No, that was impossible. There was not the slightest vestige of a broken heart, or any such thing. If he had not known what Armand had been to her, he might never have guessed at the recent presence in her life of any other man.
For a brief moment a flicker of, not unease, but perhaps uncertainty glimmered in his mind. He blocked it out. Appearances had been deceptive when it came to Lissa—none knew that better than he. His first sight of her had made him think her a cheap putain. How wrong he had been. It had been a mask, that cheap, tacky appearance—a costume necessary for her job. And though he naturally would have preferred that she had never worked at the casino, that was all over now anyway. Besides, she had been prepared to lose her job rather than compromise herself morally. So that, again, was another mark in her favour.
And she had turned him down because of her commitment to Armand.
That was what had convinced him about her. She had resisted him because of her brother.
Memory flickered in his mind again.
Someone very important to me …
That was how Lissa had described Armand to him—not knowing that she was talking about his own brother.
Was Armand still important to her?
No—he could not be. Certainly not emotionally—he had established that already, and her very presence in his bed confirmed it. Financially, then? Perhaps—he had to consider the possibility. Seeing inside the grim place she lived had brought home even more forcibly just how impoverished her life was. He could understand Armand, with his wealth and social position, being a temptation to her. And while—as was obvious—she had not loved Armand as a wife should love her husband, still that did not mean she had not held him in regard. Certainly enough to turn down another man. Even when she had responded to his desire for her she had still said no.
Besides, Armand’s e-mail had said he hadn’t yet proposed to her. She might not even have realised he was in love with her, wanted to marry her—yet she had still turned him down that night because of Armand’s presence in her life.
Whatever had changed Armand’s mind about her—or even hers about him—there was only one thing of importance now. Whatever Armand might have wanted—might still want—it was too late.
She is with me—that is all I care about. She is free to come to me. I have claimed her, and she is mine.
He would think no more than that.
‘Xavier, no! I can’t accept—I really can’t.’
For answer he waved an impatient hand. ‘I insist,’ he said.
Her mouth looked mutinous for a moment. ‘I won’t let you buy me clothes.’
Xavier took her hands in the middle of the formidably chic salon of one of the top French couture houses, where he had taken her after breakfast the morning they were due to leave Paris.
‘Do it for me, cherie. To keep me happy. I want to see your beauty set off to perfection.’
She bit her lip. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It isn’t right.’
He gave a Gallic shrug. ‘Then why not regard them as a loan—nothing more—as you did the dress at the hotel?’
She frowned a moment. ‘What did you do with it, anyway? That dress?’
He shrugged again. ‘I believe I gave it to the maid. She was very grateful.’
Lissa’s eyes widened. ‘That was very generous—it cost a fortune. But not—’ she grimaced, looking about her in this bastion of high fashion ‘—as much as anything here will cost.’ She looked at him straight. ‘Xavier, it’s not just that I can’t accept you buying clothes for me, but it’s because I don’t want you spending your salary like this. I’m not sure how senior you are at XeL, but even so—’
There was the very slightest cough from the stick-thin, scarily chic vendeuse, hovering at a discreet distance. At least, it might have been a cough, or possibly more like a smothered choke. It certainly drew a forbidding glance from Xavier. Then he looked back at Lissa.
‘Let’s just say I buy clothes here at cost.’ He paused minutely. ‘XeL has a cross-holding with this particular design house which allows that. I get a discount.’
Lissa looked at him suspiciously. ‘How much of a discount?’
‘A substantial one,’ he answered smoothly.
It seemed to do the trick, and she gave in, contenting herself with merely stipulating that she would let him buy her—loan her—no more than three garments. As she selected them and went to try them on Xavier pondered whether to tell her that not only was XeL a co-owner of this couturier, but that his salary was that of chief executive and majority shareholder.
He decided against it. She had shown little interest in his work, or XeL—her initial description of XeL as a posh luggage company still rankled slightly—and so far as he was concerned that was all to the good. But he still wanted to see her in decent clothes.
Even though they would be for his eyes only. Where he was taking her would not be in the public eye.
Was it deliberate? Keeping her away from the world he moved in? It could well be, he acknowledged. Was it the last streak of caution or suspicion in his ultra-rational French soul? Not letting her see just how glittering his lifestyle could be? Or was it that he wanted her attention exclusively on himself—and his on her? That was more plausible.
Or was it even, he mused, that Lissa Stephens did not seem to be a woman impressed by displays of wealth? She really had seemed averse to his buying that dress for her in London, and now her objections here, where he’d actually had to trot out some rigmarole about getting a discount—clearly to the amusement of the vendeuse, who knew exactly who he was, of course, and had all but choked when Lissa had worried about whether he could afford such largesse.
Speaking of which …
A few short instructions to the vendeuse sorted the matter. Lissa might think she was only setting out with three paltry outfits, but Xavier had other plans. Now that the vendeuse had her measurements, she could easily provide the rest of her wardrobe. True, where they was going she would not require a large range of formal attire, but she would still need a lot more than th
e three outfits she was letting him buy. Satisfied, he then dedicated his attention to viewing the first outfit Lissa had emerged to model for him.
Half an hour later everything was complete. Lissa was wearing not the chainstore skirt and blouse she had arrived in, but an impeccably cut dress and jacket that finally did justice to her beauty.
Tucking Lissa’s hand proprietarily into his arm, leaving the salon staff to load the boot of his car waiting outside, he made his exit. The airport was their next stop, and then Nice. But not to the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur. To somewhere far more private—where he and Lissa could be quite alone together.
Xavier lounged back in a padded chair on the small stone terrace, and let himself be diverted from the market report he was skimming through more out of a sense of duty than any real interest. Though he had, perforce, brought work with him, it was not holding his attention.
But then, nothing during the last two weeks had held his attention—except Lissa.
She fitted in perfectly here. What doubts he might have had had been dispelled the moment he’d helped her into the launch waiting for them at the marina after their flight from Paris had landed at Nice.
‘Where are we going?’ she’d asked, eyes wide.
‘I have a villa,’ he’d told her. ‘But it is not on the mainland. Have you heard of the Îles de Lérins?’
She’d shaken her head.
‘They are a short distance from the coast, near Cannes. In the high season the two main ones, the Île St Honorat and the Île Ste Marguerite, are popular for daytrippers, but this early in the year less so. Besides, my villa is on the smallest of the islands, Île Ste Marie—barely more than an islet.’ He’d smiled down into her eyes. ‘I hope you will like it.’
She had loved it.
As she had exclaimed with pleasure at the simple stone-built villa, hidden beneath fragrant pine trees on a secluded promontory of the tiny island, facing the setting sun, Xavier had felt a last knot inside him dissolve. He had bought this place on impulse, several years ago. He already owned an apartment in Monte Carlo, but that was for entertaining only—for occasions when he had to be on show as the head of XeL, at fashionable events such as the Monaco Grand Prix. This small villa could not have been more of a contrast from the modern, opulent duplex in Monte Carlo, with its panoramic views over the harbour. Though he seldom had time to come here, whenever he did he always wished he could stay longer. Though only ten minutes by fast launch from the mainland, it was a world away on these unspoilt, rural islands.
