Kitabı oxu: «His Mistress Proposal?: Public Scandal, Private Mistress / His Mistress, His Terms / The Secret Mistress Arrangement»

His Mistress Proposal?

Public Scandal,

Private Mistress

Susan Napier

His Mistress,

His Terms

Trish Wylie

The Secret Mistress

Arrangement

Kimberly Lang

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Public Scandal,

Private Mistress

Susan Napier

About the Author

SUSAN NAPIER is a former journalist and scriptwriter who turned to writing romantic fiction after her two sons were born. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her journalist husband, who generously provides the on-going inspiration for her fictional heroes, and two temperamental cats whose curious paws contribute the occasional typographical error when they join her at the keyboard. Born on St Valentine’s Day, Susan feels that it was her destiny to write romances, and, having written over thirty-five books for Mills & Boon, she still loves the challenges of working within the genre. She likes writing traditional tales with a twist, and believes that to keep romance alive you have to keep the faith—to believe in love. Not just in the romantic kind of love that pervades her books, but in the everyday, caring-and-sharing kind of love that builds enduring relationships. Susan’s extended family is scattered over the globe, which is fortunate as she enjoys travelling and seeking out new experiences to fuel her flights of imagination.

Susan loves to hear from readers, and can be contacted by e-mail through the website at www.harlequinpresents.com

CHAPTER ONE

SHE could always blame Paris.

Glorious, graceful, flagrant and flamboyant, tantalising, Paris …

City of lovers, whose very air was romantic intoxication to breathe—a potent brew that ravished the senses and excited the blood. Just to be in Paris was a heady invitation to recklessness.

And Paris on Bastille Day was even more of an enticement to shed the shackles of convention and be bold, free-thinking and daring. Celebrating the spirit of rebellion, the entire city had been in a euphoric mood, the sweltering summer heatwave adding a sultry edge to the holiday atmosphere, tourists and residents alike thronging the streets and partying far into the steamy night. Behaving with reckless abandon and getting swept away in the passion of the moment had seemed to be an essential part of the whole experience.

Oh, yes, Paris was definitely to blame. After all, what defence did a lone, inexperienced Kiwi traveller have against the sophisticated wiles of the most seductive city in the world?

Veronica Bell slowly eased open the French doors that screened off the bedroom from the rest of the small apartment and tiptoed across the polished oak floorboards, clutching her strappy sandals and gossamer-fine crocheted wrap against her chest. At a shade under six foot, and of queenly proportions, she was acutely aware that she wasn’t built for stealth. She could feel her heart skittering nervously beneath the thin silk of her camisole top as she paused to orientate herself and received her second major shock of the morning: her purse was no longer where she had left it.

Or, rather, where she thought she had put it down.

Veronica had to admit that her exact recollection of events was somewhat scrambled by the mind-blowing climax to her last night in the French capital. She raked sleep-tangled mahogany locks away from her damp forehead, forcing down a fresh surge of panic at the thought of the outrageous risks she had taken.

Right now she needed to focus on the most urgent problem—which was getting out of here with her dignity intact.

It was barely dawn, faint streaks of pale light only just beginning to creep in around the edges of the heavy, cream-coloured drapes drawn across the row of double-glazed windows facing out over the street. She was starting to think that she might have to risk turning on a light when she suddenly caught a sight of a tell-tale glint in the thick pile of the shaggy floor rug. She crouched and fished out the slender, black-sequinned shoulder bag, which had fallen from the side arm of the low-slung couch and was half hidden behind the chunky square leg.

Her anxious fingertips traced the reassuring shape of her passport and folded money-belt through the pliant exoskeleton of overlapping sequins.

Thank God! She banished the mortifying vision of trying to explain how she had come to lose all her travel documents and money to a cynical gendarme, or some smirking official at the New Zealand Embassy.

Rising to her feet, she added the bag to the top of the bundle in her arms and began tiptoeing the last few metres to the apartment door.

A whispery rustle behind her, accompanied by a low, throaty sound, like the warning purr of a dangerous predator, made her freeze to the spot.

She looked back with a thrill of apprehension.

A gap in the curtains had thrown a long, pale yellow finger of light across the floor, pointing to the source of the sound. Through the square glass panes of the French doors she had left slightly ajar, Veronica had a slanting view of the king-sized bed and the big, rangy, suntanned male body sprawled face-up in a tangle of white cotton sheets.

The throaty rumble sounded again and she watched with guilty fascination as lean, muscled limbs thrashed free of the entwining sheets, flashing rippling shoulders, bulging biceps and hard flanks, glistening with perspiration. No wonder he was hot—with no air-conditioning the apartment was stiflingly warm—but temperature wasn’t the only reason the word came to mind.

Stripped, he really was incredibly gorgeous, she marvelled with a renewed sense of awe. Even more attractive than he had been in his stylishly scruffy jeans and white designer tee shirt.

It was hard to believe that she had succeeded in snaring such a prime specimen for a starring role in her rosy, romantic fantasy of a love affair in Paris. Only it had been lust rather than love, she reminded herself sternly, which had directed the script. Her frothy romantic comedy had unexpectedly turned into an adrenalin-spiked action-adventure … and the hero had more than lived up to his billing!

His dark head jerked on the pillow, and Veronica’s pulse kicked into overdrive. Heat pumped through her veins, her body tightening with defensive tension, her mouth going dry as she tried to think of something to say that was in character with the woman she had pretended to be, something witty and insouciant, and appropriate to the occasion …

But what?

Unfortunately, all her former boldness had deserted her the moment she opened her eyes and reality sank in. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep. Her private fantasising had always stopped short of the uncomfortable practicalities of the morning after.

Her brief flare of panic faded as she realised his restless movements were only a prelude to him turning over in a long, shuddering, stretch and roll of the impressive body, which left her staring at his naked back, his sleepy grumble muffled into silence as he laced his arm under the empty pillow beside him—still bearing the blurred imprint of her head—and drew it to his chest, burying his face in its billowing softness. His thick mane of silky-straight jet-black hair fanned out across the top of his hunched shoulders, his powerful musculature rippling under tawny skin as he melted back into stillness like a lazy, well-satiated lion, totally secure in his innate supremacy.

The animal comparison brought a flush of memory to Veronica’s cheeks, an invisible souvenir to sigh over when she was old and grey, or even a month hence, when she was back in wintry-wet Auckland, struggling to make a success of her ideas, and in need of proof that she had the courage and audacity to make her dreams come true.

She scurried to the deadlocked door, grimacing at the metallic clunk made by the weighty bolt as she finally wrenched it open.

She couldn’t resist a final, fleeting peek over her shoulder, however, and carried off a vivid image of bare, male buttocks erotically framed in a twisted skein of sheet, the superbly toned muscles pulled taut by his drawn-up knees, revealing a sexy hint of dark fluff on the underside of the smoothly sculpted globes where they curved into the tops of his strong, hair-roughened thighs.

Distracted, she let the heavy door go too soon, and it shut with a bang that reverberated up and down the empty stairwell.

The sound was magnified by her twanging nerves into a sonic boom and she plunged down the stairs, her bare feet slapping against the wooden treads. Reaching the second-floor landing, she dug blindly into her bundled-up purse and, miraculously, the small metal key with its numbered tag fell straight into her hand, but her fingers were shaking so much that she had difficulty trying to slot it into the door of her rented apartment. She cursed under her breath, her ears alert for prowling footsteps from above.

She didn’t want to risk him finding out where she was staying. He had no idea that the holiday rental she had referred to with deliberate vagueness at the start of the evening as being ‘in the Marais’ was literally right under his very nose.

She had bubbled with secret amusement when he had swept her back to his lair in the early hours of the morning, but thankfully a tiny, remaining spark of common sense had kept her from blurting out her startled recognition as he had paused to punch in the keycode at the entrance to a graceful old building in the historic rue de Birague.

Still on a champagne-fuelled high, and abuzz with excitement after their thrilling escape from the near-riot a few blocks away in the Place de la Bastille, she had embraced the fantastic coincidence as kismet … a serendipitous sign that they were fated to fulfil a passionate destiny.

Of course, in the sober light of day, the coincidence seemed a great deal less karmic given the fact that they had first encountered each other in the tiny Latin American bar just across the street from the apartments—the kind of place that was more of a hang-out for local residents and workers than a magnet for the passing tourist trade.

Once inside the apartment, her knees turned to water, and she slumped limply back against the door, biting back a giggle of semi-hysterical relief, her hand instinctively going to the small pendant of New Zealand jade, carved in the shape of a stylised Maori fishhook, that she always wore around her neck. To her dismay the reassuring touch of home was no longer there. Her fingers spread over her bare breastbone as she realised with a sharp pang that it must still be somewhere in Luc’s apartment, lost to her for ever, for there was no way she was going back for it.

She was certainly racking up a lot of memorable firsts in the first week of her trip: first time on a plane, first visit to London, first experience of being sick and alone in a country where she didn’t speak the language …

First time she had woken up with a sexy stranger.

She quickly pushed the alarming notion aside. ‘No regrets’ was what she had decided in the heat of passion, and she intended to stick to her bargain.

Besides, he wasn’t a complete stranger, she corrected herself, instantly breaching her self-imposed ban. In spite of the language barrier they had worked out a way to communicate.

Lucien.

Luc.

The intimate shortening of his name made her shiver. She remembered laughing it when he had first kissed her in the jam-packed Champs-de-Mars from where they had watched the elaborate fireworks display at the Trocadéro, and sighing it during their scorching embrace behind a pillar in the Place des Vosges.

Her dreaming dove-grey eyes suddenly caught sight of the digital glow of the clock on the microwave in the kitchen alcove and she gave a squawk as she confirmed the time with a horrified glance at the watch on her winter-pale wrist.

She scrambled around the one-bedroomed apartment, flinging her scattered possessions into the open suitcase on the floor. She wasn’t even going to have time for a lightning shower, she realised, swapping her skirt and top for khaki cargo shorts and a yellow ribbed singlet and scooping up her toiletries from the bathroom. She ducked to look in the rectangular mirror, positioned annoyingly low on the wall, and gasped at the sight of her haystack hair, the powdery black smudges of mascara under her eyes and sprinkle of freckles shining through the patchy foundation on her forehead and shiny nose.

Another reason to be thankful that Lucien was a heavy sleeper! she thought, using a tissue to scrape off a hasty application of cleanser and following it up with a quick swipe of SPF moisturiser and lipstick.

She brushed her hair with a ruthless speed that brought tears to her eyes, gathering the subtly layered strands into a simple pony-tail high on the back of her head, the ends skimming the bare skin at the top of her spine.

Just over an hour later she was pelting down one of the long, outside platforms at the Gare de Lyon to join the rapidly vanishing queue for the first high-speed train of the day to Avignon with only a few minutes to spare, her wheeled suitcase jouncing along behind her, the strap from her heavy cabin bag biting into her shoulder as she held out her ticket to be checked.

Predictably for the way her morning was going, her carriage turned out to be almost at the front of the extra-long train, and her leg muscles began to pull as she increased the pace of her fast trot.

The train was already packed, the annual summer exodus of Parisians out of the city having obviously begun, and Veronica had trouble finding a space in the baggage racks when she hauled her suitcase up the narrow stairs to the upper compartment and finally sank gratefully into her seat. Travelling alone could be extremely stressful, she was discovering, even when you were fiercely determined to enjoy every moment of it. Unfortunately she had no one with whom to share the highs and lows of travel, the awe and excitement of being out in the big, wide world after years of merely dreaming about it.

She looked at the unoccupied window-seat beside her, and shifted into it. If Karen had been with her, as planned, they would have been laughing about being late for the train, instead of worrying about it.

Part of her was still furious with her younger sister for wrecking their holiday plans.

When she had flown into Heathrow a week ago from Auckland, Veronica had been confidently expecting twenty-year-old Karen to be at the airport to greet her with a hug, full of plans for a fun weekend in London before they boarded the Eurostar to Paris for the start of their French holiday together.

Instead, she had hung around for forty minutes in the arrivals hall before getting anxious. Used to Karen’s chronic lateness, she had suddenly remembered to switch on her cell phone, but when the prepaid global roaming had finally chosen to glom onto a compatible network, there were no messages showing, so she had texted off a hopeful ‘where r u?’ in case they were simply missing each other in the ebb and flow of the airport.

The reply, when it came, had turned her eager anticipation to weary disappointment.

‘Sorry. Can u get taxi? Wil explain when u get here.’

It had better be a good explanation, Veronica had brooded. After twenty-six hours of so-called ‘direct’ economy-class flight, which included two drawn-out stopovers in featureless transit lounges, and a few more free glasses of wine on the plane than she ought, she had been feeling extremely washed out. However, she had boosted her flagging energies with the cheering knowledge of good times ahead, and had geared herself up to make her own way to the serviced flat in Kensington where Karen’s employer, who had departed on holiday the previous day, had left her assistant to enjoy the last weekend of the expiring lease.

Typically for Karen—who consistently spent more than she earned—she hadn’t factored cost into her blithe suggestion of a taxi. It probably hadn’t even occurred to her that her sister might be on a strict budget, Veronica had thought, her accountant’s soul cringing as she mentally translated the quoted fare into New Zealand dollars. In spite of her creeping jet lag, she had decided to take the cheaper option of the underground, emerging battered but triumphant from the thick of the morning rush hour, within walking distance of the address marked on her pocket map.

When her sister had thrown open the door of the flat and welcomed her with the much-delayed hug, all petty annoyances had fled … for a while.

‘At last!’ Karen declared, her green eyes bright with suppressed excitement as she helped carry in the bags. ‘What took you so long?’

‘It’s rush hour,’ Veronica pointed out wryly.

‘I meant to fly from Auckland,’ laughed Karen. ‘You should have come via Los Angeles, the way we did, instead of making all those stops … no wonder you look like a limp dishrag!’

Veronica immediately felt the savage burden of her twenty-four years.

‘It was the best deal I could find,’ she said mildly, knowing that her sister would naturally have been flying all-expenses-paid, in business class.

She collapsed on the soft couch in the light and airy living room, and gratefully slipped her shoes off her aching feet as she accepted the offer of a cup of tea.

Karen, of course, was looking as beautiful as ever—her stretchy tube-top and denim miniskirt accentuating her concave belly and long, skinny legs as she chattered around the kitchen. Not having seen her for nearly a year, Veronica wondered when she had become so sophisticated. No one looking at her now would guess she had been born on a farm.

Although they had both grown up to be exactly the same height, curvaceous Veronica had always felt like an ungainly giantess when she stood beside her little sister. Karen’s body was wafer-thin, supple and graceful, her flawless skin without a single, disfiguring freckle, her artfully streaked hair falling halfway down her back in a smooth and shining blonde waterfall. Her long, oval face could have come straight from a painting by Modigliani, her fly-away eyebrows and high cheekbones giving her a haughty look, which dissolved into elfin mischief when she smiled.

People were willing to forgive her a lot to be on the receiving end of that smile. It was no wonder she had lived something of a charmed life, and had consequently ended up a little spoiled and thoughtless.

How thoughtless Veronica discovered a little later, when, the welcoming flurry of greetings and family news dispensed with, Karen admitted the reason for her non-appearance at the airport.

She was busy packing, all right, just not for France!

‘The Caribbean?’ Veronica was thunderstruck. ‘Leaving on Sunday?’ she repeated dumbly. ‘B-but—that’s the day before we go to Paris!’

Karen flipped her hair back over her shoulders, her brilliant smile a mixture of defiant excitement and shamefaced guilt. She pressed her manicured, be-ringed hands together in an exaggerated mea culpa.

‘I know! I should have told you about it, but it was only confirmed in the last few days, and you had already prepaid for everything by then and were practically on your way … but, oh, Ronnie, isn’t it fantastic?’ she gushed, as if her sheer enthusiasm could roll back her sister’s bewildered shock.

‘I … didn’t even know that you were interested in modelling,’ Veronica said hollowly. She felt physically sick with disappointment, the light-headedness that had dogged her since her flight increasing exponentially, until she felt as if her head were a hot-air balloon, floating off her shoulders.

Karen was gabbling now: ‘I met someone who said I should give it a go, so I had my portfolio done in Auckland and I’ve been taking it around the agencies here on my days off. I even managed to get a couple of little jobs—just a few hours each. Do you know how hard it is to get a break into the modelling scene in London? Especially the fashion side of things—so this is, like, a chance in a zillion! Ronnie, it’s a week in the Bahamas for a series of fashion spreads, not just once in one magazine! I’m substituting for a girl who broke the terms of her contract by putting on too much weight—which I guess makes it my big, fat break,’ she joked with artless cruelty, skipping swiftly on when she saw it didn’t raise a smile.

‘The agent said that the clients said that if they’d seen my portfolio before, they would have picked me over the original girl in the first place. They wanted an unknown for a totally new look and I’m it!’ She ran her hands down over her hips in a self-consciously preening gesture, which Veronica watched with dazed grey eyes.

‘But you already have a job,’ she murmured blankly.

Since she was seventeen, her sister had worked for internationally successful New Zealand food author, Melanie Reed, first as a child-minder, then full-time nanny to her youngest daughter—graduating to live-in personal assistant when nine-year-old Sophie had gone off to boarding school. Melanie and her husband had a lavish home-base in Auckland, but, to Veronica’s great envy, Karen had travelled extensively with her employer, and for the last two months had been staying in London while Melanie had been working on a new book deal, researching, and taping segments for a television lifestyle programme.

The Reeds had planned a four-week family break in the South of France following Melanie’s London engagements, and, when they heard that Veronica was thinking of flying over to holiday with her sister, had offered Karen cheap rent on their Paris apartment and free use of a small lodge in the grounds of their villa in Provence.

‘I thought you enjoyed working for Melanie,’ Veronica added, thinking of all the other generous perks and privileges that Karen had taken advantage of over the years.

‘I did—I do, but it’s not what I want to do for the whole rest of my life,’ Karen declared. ‘I mean, I never really chose it, did I? It just sort of happened. And it’s not as if I’ve got a lot of choices—I’m not clever like you—’ the way she tossed off the compliment made it sound almost like an insult ‘—but, well—modelling—I know could do that, and it’s got to be loads of fun. I might become a famous supermodel and make wads of cash!

‘Oh, Ronnie, this is my dream—like, like going to France has always been your dream!’ she burst out, seeming not to see the irony in her words. ‘I’m not going behind Mel’s back, she’s totally OK with it—you wouldn’t want me to turn down my big chance, would you?’ She pinned a mournful expression on her long face as her shoulders slumped.

It was such a patently silly thing to say that Veronica rolled her eyes. Of course she wouldn’t selfishly stand in the way of her sister’s newly minted ambitions—and Karen knew it!

‘Stop looking so tragic,’ she ordered, and Karen instantly obeyed, obviously sensing victory in the snappish words.

‘Don’t be mad at me,’ she begged earnestly. ‘I know it’s incredibly bad timing, but when destiny calls, what can you do?’

Veronica was tempted to roll her eyes again, but controlled herself. Her head had now recovered from its weird floating sensation and had settled to a painful throb.

‘You were the one who persuaded me it was such a great idea for us to spend our holiday together—’ She sighed, thinking of the whirlwind weeks of excited organising that had followed her late-night phone call to London on her sister’s birthday.

‘Yes, but you were the one who first brought it up,’ Karen pointed out. ‘You wanted me to persuade you, and once France was mentioned there was no stopping you. You said it would be a great chance for you to pick up some ideas and contacts for your little gift thing.’ Her voice became bubbly and teasing again: ‘You also had a pret-ty good reason for wanting to be out of New Zealand right now, if I remember rightly—’

‘Well, that’s all irrelevant now, isn’t it?’ Veronica cut her off hurriedly. The ‘little gift thing’ that Karen dismissed so lightly was the new business she was starting up—a corporate and personal gift-buying service, which she was intending to expand from what had been until now a thriving sideline into a fully-fledged company.

She throttled another upsurge of choking disappointment as she faced the full impact of her sister’s defection. ‘What are we going to do about all our bookings?’

But Karen had it all worked out. She didn’t care about losing her half of the expenses—she was going to make all that and more from her modelling, she said. Since everything was prepaid, Veronica should simply stick to the plan—go to Paris for five days, then on down to Provence. When Karen got back from her week or so in the Bahamas, she would get a cheap flight down to Marseilles—and join her sister for the rest of the holiday.

And when Veronica expressed reluctance about imposing herself on the Reeds, Karen scoffed.

‘Oh, don’t talk rot! They’re already down there and expecting you to turn up. It’s a self-catering cottage in the garden, not a guest suite in the villa. You’ve met Melanie and Miles before, and others are just family, so it’ll be all very laid-back and casual. Mel likes you, you know she does. She thinks your working for Mum and Dad’s organic farm business makes you a kindred spirit. I’ve been to France before, so it was more for your sake than for mine that she made the offer … after I told her all about your secret passion for all things French and how you drooled over her books set there—’

‘Oh, you didn’t?’ Veronica groaned, not fooled by her sister’s innocent look. Had Melanie recognised the manipulative ploy? ‘That just makes it even more awkward—you made me sound as if I was a freeloader, angling for an invite. Maybe I should at least suggest some kind of payment—’

‘Oh, well,’ said Karen meekly, instantly raising Veronica’s suspicions. ‘I suppose there is something you can do that they’d appreciate much more than money …’

Melanie, it transpired, had broken her right elbow in a fall on the day of her arrival in Provence, and was going to be wearing a sling for the next four to six weeks. Consequently, she had rung to warn Karen that she might be asked to do a little bit of work during her holiday stay. Of course Karen had agreed, but with her arrival delayed, perhaps Veronica offering her help would be a clever way to repay the Reeds for their generosity without risking offence? Melanie might not take her up on it, after all she had her family there for all her personal needs, including her widowed mother, but if she did require assistance on something relating to her work, it was bound to only be the occasional errand or bit of note-taking—the sort of thing that Veronica could dash off in a jiffy without even breaking a sweat!

Melanie hadn’t been the only one who had ended up being manipulated in that little scenario, Veronica thought wryly as she looked out the window at the late-comers to the first-class carriage hurrying to board before the doors began to close.

As for sweating—plenty of that had broken out when what Veronica had dismissed in London as a bad case of jet lag and tried to sleep off with regular doses of paracetamol had been diagnosed as a nasty case of flu by the emergency doctor she had called in a panic when she had staggered into the apartment in rue de Birague with a raging temperature and only a hazy memory of her trip through the Chunnel.

Fortunately the information sheet in the apartment had provided a number that guaranteed a home visit within thirty minutes, but, regretfully, all the sympathetic doctor could do for ‘la grippe’, he explained in broken English that was far better than her French, was to prescribe double-strength paracetamol to bring down the fever. She had spent two days languishing in her sickbed, alone, miserable, and heartily sorry for herself.

It was no wonder she had gone crazy when she had finally recovered enough to venture out!

She turned her flushed forehead against the cool glass of the window, and when she opened her eyes she saw the last of the stragglers heading towards the front carriages. One of them was a man carrying a laptop, accompanied by a porter wheeling his suitcase on a trolley. Probably heading for one of the other first-class carriages, she deduced with amusement, since everyone else seemed to be carrying all their own luggage.

He was tall, and walked with a loose-limbed stride, which looked lazy, but which had the stout porter trotting to keep up. A white panama hat with a turned-down brim covered most of his head, but it was the short black pony-tail, almost invisible as it tucked down inside the loosely flicked-up collar of his shirt, along with a certain set of his shoulders, that suddenly caught her eye and made her heart jump into her throat.

No. No, it couldn’t be!

There were millions of dark-haired men in Paris, and any number of them with hair long enough to be worn in a pony-tail.

She leaned forward, her own pony-tail tickling her collarbone, her gaze fixed on the back of his head, but he continued to look straight ahead, giving her not even a hint of a profile.

Her scrutiny shifted, drifting down over the loose, dark olive shirt hiding the waistband of his straight-legged jeans, to settle on the tight backside encased in the faded denim, throwing a sexy hitch with every striking stride.

It was absurd to think that she recognised it.

She only had a brief moment to judge its familiarity before he suddenly turned and stepped up onto the train. She wrenched her eyes back up to his face just in time to see a hawkish nose and unshaven jaw flash out of sight.

Veronica pushed back in her cushioned seat, sliding her hips forward so that her head sank below the height of the row. She wasn’t hiding, just getting comfortable for the trip, she told herself.

Of course it wasn’t Lucien. Maybe it was just someone who looked a little bit like him, and her guilty imagination had sketched in the rest.

She turned her eyes back to the window as the train slid smoothly out of the station. It was the country she had come to see, and she intended to sit back and enjoy every single moment of her ride to Avignon!

CHAPTER TWO

HER sexy, dark-haired Frenchman was there again.

Veronica knelt on the window-seat and peeped down at the bar across the street, keeping back at the edge of the curtains so that if he glanced up he wouldn’t see her face at the open window.

Not that it was likely. He was sitting at his usual table against the wall, just inside the bank of glass doors that had been folded back to open up the quirky little bar to the street, his back to the strip of pavement shaded by the green canvas canopy, his neat pony-tail a glossy black comma on the white collar of his shirt. A half-full glass of beer sat by his hand, and he was dividing his attention between his newspaper and the attractive brunette polishing glasses behind the bar, who was having a lazy disagreement with the Patron re-stocking the bottles.

Business was slow, with only one other customer further inside. The bar didn’t really hot up until after dark, then it would be jammed with people and throbbing with Latin American music until exactly midnight, when the shutters went up and the patrons were shooed away in a chorus of happy farewells—much to Veronica’s relief, for in the narrow rue de Birague the trapped sound was funnelled upwards on the hot air, and she had found that without the windows open the second floor apartment was unbearably hot, especially for someone suffering a 101-degree temperature.

Her first two days in Paris had been an exercise in frustration. Confined to her apartment except for brief, wobbly forays to la pharmacie around the corner and the tiny convenience store a few doors up from the bar, Veronica had had little to do but swallow pills, sleep, drink gallons of water, watch the wonderful world of cable television and gaze out her window at her truncated view of Paris.

Her wistful eye had first spied the sexy, dark stranger after she had returned from a cautious, exploratory expedition to test her recovery. He had been sitting at the same table he was at now, lounging sideways in his seat, sipping a bowl of coffee, idly turning the pages of a French newspaper, a pair of wraparound sunglasses dangling from the chest pocket of his polo shirt.

He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties, suntanned, fit and healthy, and she had envied him as she had leaned against the side of the window, gulping down the fruity yoghurt that had been all her stomach could handle for the past few days. As she had brooded on his slashing profile she had also felt a purely feminine tug of attraction, a sexy little tingle that had followed her down for her nap.

She had quickly realised the futility of trying to compress a week’s worth of sightseeing into her remaining few days, and had pared down her meticulously planned schedule to simply hit the highlights on her wish-list, but as her appetite and energy had returned in full measure she had ramped up her expectations and thrown herself wholeheartedly into the pursuit of Paris, hungering for more even as she gorged herself on the sights and sensations.

And every time she had passed the bar in rue de Birague, or looked out the apartment window, she couldn’t help glancing at a certain table with a little flutter of anticipation.

She hadn’t really expected to see him again, but he had been there several times now, usually in the morning, with a coffee, and at various times of the afternoon or early evening with a beer, or glass of wine and a newspaper. She didn’t think he was a tourist, she never saw him with a camera, or water-bottle or pocket guidebook—those ubiquitous supplies that every visitor to Paris had grafted to their person—and he seemed to prefer facing away from the street, uninterested in the passing parade. Yet, given the different times of the day she had seen him there, he didn’t seem to work, either … at least, not regular hours, anyway. And he was always alone.

Like Veronica …

Her palms dampened as she contemplated what she was about to do.

Bastille Day was her swan-song in Paris and she wanted to see it out in style. Last night she had danced with the thousands at the official party in the Place de la Bastille. This morning she had joined the crowds watching the traditional military parade along the Champs Elysées, and paid her respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior under the Arc de Triomphe. She had lunched in the Latin Quarter and strolled home across the Île de la Cité.

But she had done it all alone, while at every turn she had been confronted by couples of one kind or another … lovers oblivious to those around them, husbands and wives bickering in the blazing heat or strolling hand in hand, parents running after their children, mutual companions sharing a good time …

And now, with late afternoon drifting into evening, she was feeling defiant.

She picked up her bag and checked herself in the mirror one more time, spinning to watch the multi-panelled silk and gauze-chiffon skirt swirl and cling around her long thighs, and adjusting the strap on the filmy black camisole top that daringly showed off the exquisite, embroidered, French lace, strapless bra she wore beneath—all bought in an expensive fit of madness the previous day.

Then, at the last minute, just as she was going out the door, she snatched up a lightweight wrap to throw across her bare shoulders, a security blanket in case her courage failed her.

She walked across the street and straight into the interior of the narrow, rectangular bar, exchanging a casual ‘bonjour’ with the pair behind the high, polished counter. The object of her obsession had skewed his seat against the dark-panelled wall and now sat facing out into the room, one elbow on the table, jeaned legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, so Veronica confidently chose the small table for two diagonally across from him, turning the chair sideways to sit down with her back against the opposing wall.

He took a swallow of his beer, frowning down at his newspaper, seemingly ignoring her when everyone else had turned to watch her settle at her table, but she had seen—and felt—the lightning-swift appraisal he had accorded her when she had crossed the periphery of his field of vision. A woman as tall as she was always attracted at least one look.

His eyes were dark. She added that to the list of things she knew about him, her gaze going quickly to his right hand to also tick off the fact that he wore no wedding ring. A little of the nervous tension holding her spine rigid relaxed, and she crossed her legs, slanting them aside in what Karen had informed her during their short time in London together was the most slimming of poses.

When the waitress sauntered over Veronica was ready with her order. She would have actually liked a thirst-quenching beer, but didn’t think that that would project the image she was looking to create—although: ‘I’m having what he’s having,’ might have been an ice-breaker. However, at the moment he appeared to be more granite than ice. Whatever he was reading in the paper was putting a scowl on his face. It wasn’t L’Equipe, which she had seen him reading before, but the French equivalent of scandal-mongering weekly tabloid, so it probably wasn’t simply a matter of his favourite tennis player being knocked out of a tournament.

‘Un Kir, s’il vous plaît,’ she murmured to the waitress.

The chilled glass was placed before her a few minutes later accompanied by a friendly burst of rapid French. Veronica spread her hands, palm up, with a rueful smile.

‘Excusez-moi, mais je ne comprends pas,’ she said carefully, in her phrase-book French.

‘Ah! Anglaise,’the girl instantly pounced on her accent.

Veronica shook her head, setting fiery sparks dancing in the graduated layers of red-brown hair falling thickly down to her shoulders on either side of her central parting.

‘Nouvelle Zélande,’ she said, hoping a European might find that exotic, since in the intimate confines of the small premises the man across the way would be able to hear every word she said, even if he was ostensibly not listening.

Veronica took a delicate sip of her drink, enjoying the crispness of the white wine mingled with the sweet tang of crème de cassis. She looked brazenly at her quarry.

At close range his face was a series of bold lines, his sun-kissed olive skin fine-textured and smooth except for the bloom of dark re-growth along his jaw. His arched black brows were lowered, sensuous lower lip pushed out as he brooded into the dregs of his beer.

Eyes fixed on his face, she took another hasty sip of liquid courage, and the stem of her glass clicked loudly as she put it down a little too hard on the table.

His long, thick lashes flew up and she suddenly found herself pinned by a fierce black look. Even if he had been studiously ignoring her he had obviously been aware of her concentrated stare.

She didn’t make the mistake of smiling. She sensed that was what he was expecting her to do, and didn’t want to give him the opportunity to snub her even before she had got to open her mouth, so instead she simply held his gaze coolly, her wide grey eyes drifting slightly out of focus as if she weren’t really seeing him at all, but absently thinking of something—or someone—else.

She might not be very experienced at seduction—her ex-fiancé had been very conservative in the bedroom—or have the advantage of her sister’s spectacular beauty, but she was intelligent and well-read, and she knew that there were more subtle ways to tease a man’s interest. Some of the most famous, and infamous, seductresses in history had been women who had more wit than beauty. Attraction started in the brain, after all.

She saw his eyelids flicker and his lower lip tighten. Her lack of reaction had disconcerted him, disclosing a dichotomy in his nature. He might not want attention, but neither did he like to be ignored, she decided. He was used to it being his choice as to whether or not he interacted with people.

He leaned back in his chair, picking up one foot to rest the heel of his high-end athletic shoe on his opposing knee, his pre-stressed designer jeans whitening along the seams at his crotch, his thighs splayed towards her in a stark display of male insolence.

Was he partially aroused already, or just more generously endowed than the classical male? she wondered naughtily, mentally comparing him to all the nude statuary she had perused in the last few days.

Now she allowed herself a small, reminiscent smile as she toyed with her drink, her pale fingers sliding delicately up and down on the long stem of the glass.

He picked up his paper from the table and snapped it open in front of his face with a sharp rattle, but Veronica noticed with a small sizzle of satisfaction that he was holding the top of it just below the level of his eyes. He was covertly observing her, just as she was studying him.

Her lashes lowered, and she saw a tiny teardrop of condensation weeping down the outside of the curved bowl of her glass. Acting on a primitive instinct, she chased it back up to the rim with her forefinger, lifting the captured little pearl of liquid away on the tip of her finger and inspecting it before placing it inside her mouth and sucking off the distilled droplet. She noticed the side of the newspaper crinkle under his tightened grip, and, alarmed by her own boldness, she polished off the rest of her drink in a single toss of her head and ordered a second Kir.

Almost immediately, he signalled for another beer.

Veronica almost fainted with nervous relief. He wasn’t just going to get up and leave! Although at this rate they were going to drink each other under the table before they said a word to each other, she thought with an inward gurgle of amusement.

For a while she was content to sit and bide her time, listening and occasionally being drawn in by the general comments about the heatwave and the state of the city that the Patron periodically offered around the bar—in heavily accented English to Veronica, Spanish to the waitress and French to the man barely pretending to read his newspaper, who replied with concise, but perfectly amiable comments in both of the Romance languages.

How appropriate … the whispered thought brought a husky laugh to Veronica’s lips, the unusually deep voice, which had often embarrassed her as a teenager, suddenly an advantage as it drew dark eyes snapping to her face.

This time she was ready for him. She let her laugh die to a natural throaty chuckle as she held his gaze, picked up her drink, and walked the three steps to his table.

‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ she asked, her resonant voice warm with the remnants of laughter.

He tilted his head back to look up at her and folded his arms across his chest, the open paper lying forgotten across his splayed knees.

‘Non!’ The uncompromisingly curt answer was delivered like a flung gauntlet.

His eyes weren’t black, as she had first thought, but brown, like the darkest of dark chocolate, the best and most expensive kind … intense, slightly bitter at first but delivering the most delicious sensory thrill.

At the moment they were veiled and enigmatic, not giving a hint as to his thoughts as he waited to see how she would handle the flat rejection.

‘Oh.’ She sank into the chair on the other side of his narrow table. ‘Je ne parle pas bien française.’

Her trusty little French phrase book was tucked in her purse, but tonight wasn’t a night for going by the book.

He shrugged, pushing out that sullen lower lip to indicate his unspoken contempt. Trying to look unruffled, she took a leisurely sip of her drink. She knew he spoke some Spanish, but that was no help as far as she was concerned.

‘Italiano?’ she tested, although she only spoke a basic word or two herself.

His stony expression didn’t change. ‘Non.’

‘Hmm …’ She eyed the angle of his chin, and understood that he was going to stick stubbornly to French, whatever she said. But she could be stubborn, too. It was one of her greatest strengths … and her biggest flaw, according to Neil, her ex-fiancé.

‘Te reo Maori?’ she threw in mischievously, seriously doubting that he would be of the minority speakers of New Zealand’s second language, especially when he didn’t even speak the first—English.

Or did he?

She detected a dark glimmer in the back of the brown eyes as his mouth compressed. Was that a tiny quiver of amusement at the down-turned corner? She felt a surge of elation.

She decided to let go of her security blanket and allowed her wrap to slide from her shoulders, turning to drape it across the back of her chair, her twisting movements drawing attention to the whiteness of her lightly freckled shoulders against the blackness of the chiffon top.

As she turned back she almost blushed to feel the nervous rise and fall of her breasts, cupped in their luxuriant nests of embroidered tulle, against the sheer silk. Every breath felt like a wanton act of provocation.

And naturally he looked … he was a man, after all … with a thoughtful expression that was somehow more stimulating than a leer, and Veronica was thankful for the strategic pleats of tulle when she felt the tips of her breasts begin to tingle and harden into betraying little points.

‘Russian? Icelandic?’ A slight breathlessness made her voice even more husky as she resumed their game.

His gaze fell back to his newspaper and for a shattering moment she feared that she had overplayed her hand. She looked around for inspiration, glancing over at the owner of the bar, who had been following the progress of their encounter with frank interest. To her chagrin he grinned and gave an expressive shrug, as if to indicate the hopelessness of her case.

‘Sprechen Sie Deutsches?’

Veronica’s head whipped back to find the chocolate-brown eyes waiting for her, banked with a taunting amusement, the roughly folded newspaper wedged down the side of the table.

The wretch!

‘Nein,’ she said, giving him look for look. ‘Je parle anglais seulement,’ she stressed, admitting her language deficiency with a defiant tilt of her chin.

A slow, sexy smile trawled across his mouth.

‘Je suis désolé,’he said, placing a mocking hand across his heart.

She understood that, but chose to turn his mockery back on him: ‘Et je suis Veronica,’ she replied pertly.

He laughed and inclined his head. ‘Lucien.’

Effervescent emotion bubbled up inside her. She offered him her hand across the table. ‘Pleased to meet you, Lucien.’

‘Enchanté,’he murmured, and she shivered as she felt the warm slide of his palm against hers, his thumb caressing up over her knuckles, his breath warm on the back of her hand as he lifted it to his mouth, holding her gaze as his lips brushed lightly over her skin.

It was a ridiculously over-extravagant cliché of a gesture, as they both well knew, but it still made Veronica feel hot all over, and when she disengaged her hand she wrapped it quickly around her glass in a vain attempt to cool off.

Noticing that his beer-glass was almost empty, she tried to buy some more time by ordering another round, but he protested when she tried to get herself another Kir and she became even more flushed at the idea that he thought she was drunk. But no—by word, gesture and helpful translation from the bar-owner, she divined that he was changing her order to a Kir Royale, and putting it on his own bill.

It was, she discovered, made with champagne rather than still white wine, and was an altogether more superior drink. Judging from her peep of the Champagne label on the bottle that the barman had discreetly turned away to pour, it was also a great deal more superior in price. Her dark-haired companion, then, was obviously not a poor man … something she had already deduced from the expensive labels on his casual clothes.

The champagne went immediately to her head, and banished her former nerves and with them any remaining doubts about the wisdom of what she was doing. You didn’t need to speak the same language, she discovered, in order to have a good time—in fact, in some ways it was more liberating not to have to make sense!

The language differences made deep conversation impossible, but neither of them was in a mood to be serious, so over the course of the evening they invented their own way of communicating.

Across the twin barriers of language and a mutual reluctance to touch on personal subjects, they established the important basics: the fact they were both single, over twenty-one, and currently alone in Paris—she in need of a knowledgeable guide to the best places to be in Paris on Bastille Night, and he … well … her feeble French wasn’t up to questioning his motives even if she had wanted to. It was enough that he found her an entertaining diversion from whatever it was that had had him brooding darkly over his newspaper.

When her stomach gurgled an embarrassing message, he paid their shot at the bar and whisked her around a few corners to the Brasserie Bofinger, where they sat on plush banquettes under the spectacular art nouveau glass dome, and gorged themselves on oysters and champagne. He was amused at their pantomimed tussle over the bill and sulked at her iron-willed insistence on paying it with her credit card, but, catching the devilish gleam in his eye, she suspected he was putting on a great deal of his outrage, and that he enjoyed messing with her head, much as she had enjoyed toying with his expectations, playing to the hilt his role of volatile and moody, but ultimately charming, Frenchman.

At times during the rest of the magical night she had reason to suspect that he might not even be French, and that he definitely understood more English than he was letting on—but neither mattered, for the mystery was all part of the fun.

All that mattered was that he knew Paris—inventive enough to slip them past hotel security for a peek at a glittering masquerade ball and persuasive enough to talk them into the exclusive nightclub of her fancy.

He was also strong enough to muscle their way through the crowds and quick-thinking enough to rescue them when they emerged from the Métro at the Bastille, where they had agreed to say their farewells, to be caught up in a furious scuffle between a flying wedge of riot police and a rowdy mob of political protesters intermingled with drunken youths looking to encourage the fight.

‘Luc!’ she cried as she received a stray elbow in the kidney that almost knocked her to the ground.

‘This way!’ Lucien yelled in her ear, hooking his powerful arm around Veronica’s waist, swinging her away from the moving wall of riot shields and flailing batons, and ducking and diving with her amongst the fleeing crowds being herded away from the centre of the action.

Cutting left down the rue de la Bastille with several dozen others, they ran past the familiar long red awning of Bofinger and right at the next corner, Lucien’s arm falling away to grab her hand, and Veronica blindly trusted herself to his lead, breathlessly running helter-skelter in her flimsy sandals at his side, past the rows of parked cars, and tooting traffic, quickly outstripping the other scattering runners who slowed when the police turned their attention to easier prey. She began to laugh helplessly, for the sheer absurdity of it: Veronica Bell, budding businesswoman and long time goody-two-shoes, on the run from the cops through the night streets of Paris!

They cut left again, and suddenly they were in a place she recognised—the open-sided pedestrian arcade surrounding the Place des Vosges, their running footsteps on the stone paving echoing off the vaulted ceiling. Lights were on in some of the apartments in the seventeenth-century, red-brick buildings facing out onto the square, but the restaurants and cafés and art galleries in the arcade below were closed. Here the shouting and the tumult seemed a long way away, little traffic turning through the square, the park gates locked and the fountains turned off, the neatly clipped row of linden trees around the edge of the park casting ghostly shadows onto the crushed white walkways inside the iron railings.

‘You spoke English,’ Veronica accused, tugging at his hand as she slowed down, her chest burning, her free hand pressing against the slight stitch in her side.

She gasped as a police car slid past the end of the square and Lucien spun her behind one of the square pillars that supported the arched ceiling of the arcade, backing her up against the cool stone, his hands sliding around her back to protect her silk top from the roughened surface as his body pressed her deep into the inky shadow. Their panting breath intermingled and she could feel the rapid beat of his heart kicking against her breast and the fear and excitement tangled up inside her until she had to struggle to think.

‘Back there,’ she whispered hoarsely, ‘I heard you—’

He muttered something that could have been French or English or any language under the sun, because by then he was kissing her and nothing mattered any more but the intoxicating taste of his mouth, the spicy scent of his skin filling her nostrils and the feel of his arms tightening around her, crushing her soft breasts against his hard chest. The brush with danger had been arousing and now there was another way to feed their inflamed emotions and ramp up the heart-tingling excitement. Adrenalin spiked in her veins as Lucien bit her tender lip and forced his way into her mouth, his tongue spearing hotly into the silky depths as his hips ground into hers, flattening her bottom against the cool stone. It was pure, plundering, passionate savagery—nothing, nothing, like the light, teasing kisses he had given her earlier at the fireworks … nothing like any kiss she had ever had before in her life!

Veronica hadn’t known what she was missing, but she did now, her inhibitions swept away by his maddening skill. Surrounded by his embrace, her arms trapped at her sides, her hands could only grip at his flanks, her fingers curving under the rise of his buttocks, her short nails digging demandingly into the tight denim weave as she squirmed against him, causing him to shudder and groan her name, plunging deeper into her mouth. The sound of other voices echoing within the arcade wrenched them back into an awareness of their surroundings, but only long enough to acknowledge the raw urgency of their desire.

‘Come …’ was all he said, in a smouldering voice, thick with promise, and she would have followed him to the moon. But heaven wasn’t even further than the next street. He kissed her from pillar to pillar, all the way along the arcade, and once out into rue de Birague he managed the pretence of control just long enough to get her into his apartment, Veronica hugging her delicious secret as they passed her door on the way up the stairs.

She had never thought of herself as wildly sexy until she saw herself through Lucien’s eyes. He wanted her and wasn’t afraid to let her see it, made demands of her that unlocked the secret desires that she didn’t even know that she possessed. And never had a man undressed for her the way he did … slowly, sensuously stripping off his clothes without taking his eyes off her face, watching her watch him reveal his body’s flagrant readiness for love-making, seeing the hectic flush of passion turn her pale, freckle-flecked skin to rose-pink, her grey eyes widen then darken in a shocked fascination that revealed more than she knew, her kiss-swollen mouth parting in luscious anticipation of tasting his tawny flesh, her awed appreciation when he prowled naked towards her making him chuckle, his healthy male ego basking in the flattery.

And then it was her turn, the sultry stroke of his admiring gaze appeasing her shyness, telling her without words how magnificent he found the lavish proportions of her tall body as he unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the floor, tantalisingly delaying the thrilling moment when he slid his palms under her silk camisole, skimming her swollen breasts in the sexy lingerie as he raked it up over her head, bending his worshipful mouth to the lush, creamy slopes bared by the scalloped lace edge of the lavender bra. His hands were as skilful and busy as his mouth and Veronica closed her eyes as sheer, unadulterated, sensual bliss began to roll over her in waves …

One of which dashed cold water in her face!

Veronica’s eyes flew open, her flush of arousal turning into an embarrassed blush as she registered the gentle rock of the TGV, and realised that a little girl in a pink dress had tripped on her unsteady progress up the aisle and splattered her with chilled water from the open bottle in her hand. Avoiding her innocent young face, Veronica hoped that her X-rated memories weren’t emblazoned on her pink forehead as she accepted the scrambling apologies from the girl’s American mother, assuring her with a cheerful smile that mineral water was excellent for the complexion.

She patted the water into her hot skin as they continued on their progress, chagrined to realise that she had nodded off—although that wasn’t surprising in view of her lack of sleep—and had been reliving her intensely erotic encounter in vivid Technicolor instead of paying attention to the fascinating parade of French towns and villages popping up into sight as the train whipped past the rolling fields of the French countryside.

And now it was too late. According to the multilingual announcement broadcast through the carriage, the high-speed train was slowing down on the approach to the outskirts of Avignon. She would have to make certain she paid attention on the return trip, Veronica lectured herself.

Someone had discarded a newspaper on the floor beside Karen’s empty seat and she automatically leaned over to pick it up, grimacing as she noticed that it was the same one that Lucien had been reading in the bar. She idly flicked through it, only able to pick out a few words and phrases here and there. Much of the centre of the paper was illustrated with typical paparazzi shots of the usual set of international celebrities caught in embarrassing situations, and Veronica skipped over them, uninterested in the misdoings of minor royals and rock stars going into rehab, or the big Exclusivité—a string of photos of a notoriously volatile actor having some kind of punch-up in a London hotel. On impulse she tucked it into her bag. She would throw it away later, she promised herself—she didn’t need any proxy souvenirs of her night on the town!

As she manhandled her case down the long flight of concrete stairs to the group of glass boxes housing the rental car agencies outside the Avignon TGV station, Veronica was glad that she had had the forethought to buy herself a wide-brimmed straw hat at a Paris market. The heatwave that was baking Paris had also tightened its relentless grip on the South of France, and the aching blue sky was adazzle, the temperature already in the mid-thirties, even though the sun wasn’t yet at its height.

There was a long queue for the rental car, but it moved surprisingly quickly and she was soon stepping back out into the blazing sun nervously clutching the key to her VW Golf. Setting out for the car park, she glanced over towards the adjacent rental agencies and stopped dead, oblivious to the flow of people around her, as she saw a man leaning against one of the counters, laptop and suitcase at his feet, panama hat in hand, joking with the girl handing him a sheet of paper.

It was Luc! The man in the olive shirt and jeans from the Gare de Lyon … Absolutely, unmistakably him!

Snapped out of her stunned trance by a cranky, sunburnt tourist trying to get his suitcase between a concrete bollard and her stalled luggage, Veronica hurried on her way, her thoughts whirling.

Surely this was one spooky coincidence too many, she thought as she quickly shovelled her possessions into the boot of her shiny blue compact and got behind the wheel.

Had he followed her? She remembered telling him at some stage that she would be spending most of her holiday in the South of France, although she hadn’t specified when or how she was leaving. At the time he had gone into a long, and hilariously incomprehensible, rhapsody about the Côte d’Azur, and from the questions she had tried to ask about the famous beaches there he might have thought that was where she was headed.

If he had been talking about his own imminent plans to travel down to the Mediterranean coast then perhaps this could just be shrugged off as another of life’s little strange twists. At the time, it might have amused him to think that they could conceivably run into each other on a beach in Nice or Cannes.

Her pleasure in the thought curdled as her imagination continued to flourish. But what if he had somehow managed to track her down for some sinister purpose of his own? What if he was a stalker? she fretted. Or some kind of conman or kinky killer whom she had thwarted by sneaking off before he could achieve his evil aims?

She suddenly laughed at her wild speculations. In reality, she and Lucien had been ships passing in the night, and all either of them had expected to carry away from their brief encounter was the memory of a good time!

There was a perfectly innocent explanation for them to be crossing paths again. Luc had been carrying a laptop, so perhaps he had come down to Avignon on business. He was probably self-employed, like Veronica, and could pick and choose his working hours.

She was nervous enough about driving on the right-hand side of the road for the first time, as well as doing her own navigation, without adding the paranoic fear that she was being trailed by a psychotic serial killer!

CHAPTER THREE

VERONICA sighed with contentment as she sat at her table under a spreading plane tree in the tiny village square and sipped her cup of coffee, enjoying the faint breeze that feathered warmly around her bare neck and riffled the end of her pony-tail.

Karen had said the Reeds wouldn’t expect her to arrive at their villa, Mas de Bonnard, on the outskirts of the little village of St Romain-de-Vaucluse, until mid-afternoon. As a direct drive, it was only about forty minutes north-east of Avignon, so she had decided to take it slowly, avoiding the larger roads and towns and following the meandering scenic route that Melanie had recommended as being the one they preferred as the prettiest. She had even suggested this very café as worthy of a stop.

Veronica cut another sliver from her glistening pastry and popped it into her mouth, savouring the intense burst of apricot on her tongue.

A sleek silver convertible with red upholstery slid into the cobbled square, following the lone street that passed through the village. As it drew level and slowed almost to a stop for a scamper of children chasing a small dog, the driver lazily took a survey of his surroundings. His eyes were masked by wraparound sunglasses, but Veronica saw his glossy black head jerk in a rapid double take. His jaw visibly dropped, then tightened with a snap and the car braked to an abrupt halt. A long arm was slung across the top of the empty passenger seat as the driver twisted to look over his shoulder and backed sharply in to park parallel with the kerb, springing out of the car without bothering to open the door.

In a few ground-eating strides he was standing in front of her, his black shadow stamping his presence on the sun-dappled tablecloth.

‘Well, isn’t this a cosy little reunion!’

Coffee slopped into her saucer as she flinched at the sarcastic drawl. She looked up into Lucien’s blazing brown eyes, his wraparound sunglasses pushed up on top of his head unmasking his hard expression, his hands planted on his hips, legs astride, male aggression oozing from every gorgeous pore.

Her brain went into panic mode as every female cell in her body rioted with delight at his proximity.

‘What are you doing here? Are you following me?’ she blurted, half in hope, half in horror.

There was a brief pause, as if he was taken aback by the response. The shock on his face when he had seen her from the car had been completely spontaneous, she acknowledged wretchedly, her hands clenching as she fought to control her humiliation.

‘Are you going to stab me with that if I don’t give you the answer you want?’ he asked warily, and she lowered her eyes to see that she was gripping the knife she had used to cut her pastry, holding it defensively in front of her body. She hastily let it clatter back onto the plate. She could always scream if he tried anything violent. They were in a public place, after all.

Unlike last night.

The last time she had spoken to this man they had both been naked in his bed, making hot, passionate love!

She blushed, and the predatory light that had been banked in his eyes flared into renewed life.

He hooked out a chair from the adjacent table with a swipe of his foot and spun it around to sit astride, folding his arms along the top. Through the thin vertical slats of the back of the chair she could see that the sides of his olive shirt hung open revealing a white singlet, the circular discs of his flat brown nipples clearly visible against the thin fabric.

‘Lost for words, Veronica?’ he asked with an insolent smile. ‘You had plenty to say last night … c’est vrai?’

The taunt jerked her flustered eyes back to his expectant face as recognition of his true perfidiousness hit her like a blow.

‘And you’re very fluent in English all of a sudden,’ she said acidly. ‘You don’t even appear to have any accent.’

‘I’m a certified genius,’ was his sardonic reply. ‘I learn fast.’ From his taunting grin she knew he didn’t expect her to believe him, his teeth lethally white against his tan. He spoke English like a native—a man who was aware of every subtlety and nuance of the language.

‘You’re no more French than I am!’ she spluttered, desperately trying to remember what betraying words she might have whispered to him in the throes of ecstasy, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t understand a word.

‘I never said I was.’ He shrugged.

‘You never said you weren’t, either,’ she said bitterly.

His mouth twisted. ‘I thought that was the deal: don’t ask, don’t tell … because you certainly made no attempt to question who or what I was. But now I think it’s because you already knew who I was before you even walked into that bar. That was no chance meeting between us, was it, Veronica?’

Her grey eyes slid evasively away from his darkly accusing gaze as she remembered spying on him from her apartment window.

‘It wasn’t like that—’

‘Oh, what was it like?’ he pressed.

She shuddered at the thought of trying to explain, and attempted to fall back on her simmering grievance. ‘There was no need for you to pretend you didn’t speak a word of English,’ she said weakly.

‘Like you claimed you didn’t understand French,’ he shot back.

She blinked. ‘That’s because I don’t—’

‘Then how do you explain your choice of reading material?’ He bent over and plucked out the tabloid newspaper sticking up from her canvas carry-bag, which was leaning against the leg of the table by her sandalled feet. ‘Or are you going to claim you just bought it for the pretty pictures?’ he added with a sneering emphasis.

‘I haven’t read it—it’s not mine,’ she said quickly, unwilling to admit to the foolish impulse that made her pick it up—the desire for some sort of continuing connection with him, however tenuous. ‘Someone left it on the train,’ she muttered. ‘I meant to throw it away, I just forgot about it …’

‘That’s convenient—there’s a rubbish bin over there by the corner,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ll dump it in there right now, shall I, and save you the bother of doing it later?’ And under her startled gaze he jumped up and suited his actions to his words, stuffing the paper well down into the depths of the bin, and walking back towards her, dusting off his hands with an air of grim satisfaction.

He had just made certain that whatever in the paper that he so savagely objected to was now beyond the means of her finding out, she realised, watching him in wide-eyed wariness as he straddled his chair again, waving away the waiter who approached to ask for his order.

He rested his darkly stubbled chin on his folded arms. ‘Now, what were we talking about? Oh, yes, our mutual charade last night. Did you rifle through my things, by the way, before you left?’

She stiffened. ‘Why would I? I’m not a thief!’

He straightened, shedding his air of mocking insolence. ‘What else was I supposed to think when I woke up to find you’d done a moonlight flit? And here I thought that Kiwis were a flightless bird.’

‘It was morning—there wasn’t any moon.’ She wasn’t going to tell him that it was inexperience and embarrassment that had caused her to panic. ‘I—I had things to do.’

‘And people to call?’ he suggested. He tilted his head, a shaft of sunlight through the branches of the plane tree turning his eyes to polished bronze.

‘One or two,’ she admitted, puzzled by his sudden tension. She had rung her parents for a quick check-in before the next leg of her trip, carefully avoiding any mention of illness, and had texted her sister without much hope of an informative reply.

‘Including your employer, perhaps?’ Lucien murmured, to her added bewilderment. ‘In London …?’

Veronica’s dark brown eyebrows snapped together. ‘I don’t have one as such; I’m self-employed. And I told you, I’m from New Zealand—’

‘You’re freelance?’ he cut her off, with a disparaging look down his hawkish nose that raised her hackles.

‘I prefer to call myself an independent businesswoman,’ she told him.

His face hardened. ‘Well, whatever you call yourself, my advice is to stop throwing yourself into my path because I don’t like being harassed, and French privacy laws happen to be quite strict in that respect. You might find yourself being tossed out of the country on your plush white bottom. I think your opening line in this conversation was rather ironic considering the way you’ve been carrying on!’

Her mouth fell open. ‘You think I’m following you?’ she said, her deep voice rich with scorn. She started to laugh, then stopped when she realised from his tight-lipped expression that he was actually serious. ‘That’s crazy! How on earth could I have followed you, when I was the one who got here first?’ she pointed out triumphantly.

‘Only because I had one or two things to pick up in Avignon before I left,’ he countered. ‘Did you think I didn’t notice you lurking around while I was renting my car? What did you do? Go back and bribe the girl on the desk to tell you where I said I was going so you could take the same road?’

Veronica gasped. ‘I wasn’t lurking,’ she said. ‘I was picking up my own rental. I didn’t even realise you’d seen me,’ she added stiffly, not realising it could be interpreted as a guilty admission.

‘Oh, come on. There aren’t that many towering redheads around that you didn’t stand out like a beacon—’

‘Then I obviously wasn’t lurking, was I?’ she snapped. ‘And my hair isn’t red.’ Being a strapping, six-foot tall female had made the teasing bad enough at high school, without accepting the added stigma of being a ‘ginger’.

His eyes followed the movement. ‘It certainly burns bright under the Provence sun. Why do you think all those famous painters came down here to produce their masterpieces? Because of the special quality of the light, and the way it affects the human perception of colour.’

‘Is that why you’ve come here? You’re a painter?’ she said. A volatile artistic temperament might go a long way to explaining, if not excusing, his behaviour. Maybe that tabloid he had been so furious about had given a rotten review of his work.

He stood up. ‘Nice try, Veronica,’ he said cynically. ‘Those big, bemused eyes are a convincing touch, but it’s a little late to feign innocence.’

He bent, angling his torso across the narrow table and bracing his hands flat on the crumb-strewn cloth on either side of her unconsciously bunched fists, and thrusting his face close enough for her to feel the heat of his menacing purr.

‘This is your first and last warning, Veronica—stay well away from me and everything that’s mine or I’ll make you rue the day you ever came to France.’ He jerked slightly, as if to leave, but then settled back, one hand moving up to cup her jaw, firmly tilting her pale, freckled face to his. ‘And by the way, just off the record, between the two of us—’ he rocked forward on his toes and kissed her square on her stunned mouth, taking his own, sweet time over it before he pulled back to conclude ‘—thanks for the memories. You were great last night, a real handful in more ways than one—the best lay I’ve had in a long, long time …’

And he walked down to the kerb, jumped into his car and was gone in a rumbling roar of exhaust fumes before she could recover sufficiently to throw her empty coffee-cup at his arrogant head. Her hand went to her bare throat and she realised that in the turmoil of their exchange she had never thought to ask about her pendant. Perhaps she should have accused him of being the thief!

Hours later as Veronica did another careful circuit of the narrow roads on the outskirts of St Romain-de-Vaucluse she was still festering over his insolence and inventing the clever comebacks that had escaped her at the time.

Thanks for the memories? The best lay. They ranked alongside the ‘plush bottom’ remark for sheer, face-slapping gall.

If she ever saw him again, she decided, she would slap his face.

She lifted her foot off the accelerator, slowing down as she approached the intersection of two roads leading out of the village in different directions where, according to Karen’s roughly sketched map, Mas de Bonnard was supposedly located.

She recognised the main route by which she had first entered the village and, not wanting to go further out in the wrong direction, she did a U-turn, and came back to park on a rough grass verge beside a large, open acreage of vines stretching away in parallel rows from the roadside with nary a sign of a fence or hedge marking out the edges of the property, very unlike the farms and vineyards of home. She sighed and rested her elbow on the open driver’s window while she sipped at her lukewarm bottle of water, looking towards the church steeple and clock-tower she could see rising above the tops of the venerable plane trees that lined the narrow main street, and had made it such a challenge for her to negotiate. It seemed to still be siesta-time, for there were few people moving about. Heat lay like a blanket over the countryside, the cream and brown houses of plaster and stone in the historic village looking as if they had grown up out of the rocky land itself. It was an idyllic scene, incredibly peaceful—if you discounted the ceaseless chorus of the cicadas, loudly quacking away in the trees like a flock of miniature ducks.

As if to contradict her, the bell-tower chimed the half-hour and two teenagers on motor scooters buzzed past the corner shouting catcalls to each other.

Maybe if she made the five-minute drive around the village one more time she might be able to better orientate herself to the wiggly lines on the map. Or she could buy herself something at one of the little shops or cafés in the main street and lower herself to actually ask for directions. She wasn’t really in any hurry, so it didn’t matter if she took all afternoon to trace her hosts.

She heard a metal creak and turned to see a man coming out of a large, barred double-gate in the high stone wall on the other side of the tar-sealed road.

‘Are you just browsing around the area, or looking to buy that particular vineyard?’ he inquired with a smile as he sauntered up to her open window.

Veronica smiled back. ‘I wish! Just browsing, thanks, Miles—and sitting here trying to make head or tail of this map of Karen’s! I didn’t realise I was right on top of you.’

Miles Reed’s weathered face creased in a chuckle. ‘Hello, Veronica. We weren’t sure it was you at first. We watched you whiz past a few times before Melanie thought she recognised that reddish hair—’

He didn’t notice her flinch as he continued, ‘Don’t blame your sister—everyone gets confused. The roads are very wiggly-waggly around here. If you turn around, I’ll open up the gates for you. Bear left when you come in and you’ll see the parking bay where you can leave your car.’

The paved driveway sloped gently down and curved around a profusion of tall, flowering shrubs and clusters of cherry, apricot and almond trees before splitting into two—one broad section turning right towards the large, two-storeyed stone house overlooking a cobbled courtyard and the other, narrower drive terminating in a vine-covered pergola next to the windowless back wall of a small, rectangular cottage with rough-plastered walls painted the colour of clotted cream and deep-set windows covered by blue shutters.

Miles followed her down on foot and handed her two keys on a small ring. ‘One for the gate, one for the cottage,’ he told her as she opened the boot of her car. ‘Let me help you take these bags around—Melanie should be along in a minute to show you all you need to know about the cottage. She was just trying to drag Sophie out of the pool.

‘I hope you had a good trip from Paris,’ he said, swinging out her larger case as if it weighed no more than a feather and reaching in for the soft roll-bag. For a man in his early sixties he had the vigour and energy of a much younger man, perhaps because of his very physical lifestyle, being very much of a hands-on builder, according to Karen. ‘And you found your way to St Romain with no nasty little surprises on the road from Avignon.’

Just one big one! Veronica bent over to refasten the buckle on the side of her case and when she straightened her face was excusably pink.

‘It was a very interesting drive,’ she admitted with perfect truth.

She followed Miles down the steps and around onto a sunny, paved patio edged with flowering plants at the front of the cottage, where he put down her bags beside a wrought-iron table and chairs.

‘I’m very grateful to you both for allowing me to stay,’ she added shyly, looking around the walled garden with its wonderful profusion of plants and trees, a white, crushed-stone pathway leading off between two stone pillars to join the sweeping curve of the main driveway. Only just, through the tracery of leaves and branches, could she make out an occasional glimpse of the clay-tiled roof of the main house.

Miles ran his stubby, carpenter’s fingers through his healthy thatch of iron-grey hair. ‘We’re the ones who’re grateful, Veronica. After all, your holiday is just as important as ours.’

‘Uh, yes, well … thank you,’ murmured Veronica, not quite sure what he meant. ‘I was sorry to hear about Melanie’s accident …’

‘Aren’t we all!’ he said, pulling a face. ‘It threw a real spanner in the works. She’s been planning this big get-together for so long she was furious at being told she’d have to curtail her activities and wear a sling—particularly the bit about not being able to drive!’

Big get-together? Veronica felt a ripple of dismay. ‘How many are coming? I was sure that Karen said it was only going to be your family …’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean big in terms of numbers, there’s only seven of us,’ he explained, to her relief, ‘but the kids are so rarely all in the same place at the same time any more, that it’s a Very Big Deal for Melanie, especially since it was planned around her mother’s seventy-fifth birthday …’ He gave her a long-suffering roll of his hazel eyes. ‘No family holiday is complete without the old ma-in-law tagging along, right?’

Veronica laughed, because she had seen them together, and knew that he and Zoe Main got on extremely well. She also knew that two of their three offspring were no longer ‘kids’ in the strict sense of the word. The twenty-one-year-old twins might object to being put in the same grade as their much younger sister.

‘And, of course, Melanie’s stepson from her first marriage has agreed to come too, so that makes it even more of a VBD as far as she’s concerned,’ Miles said.

‘Oh, I didn’t even know she’d been married before,’ she murmured in surprise.

‘Long ago and very briefly,’ said Miles, with a brevity of his own that spoke volumes. ‘But it’s good for Melanie that he still considers himself part of the family—’

He broke off as his wife came down the crushed-stone pathway, accompanied by a plump little girl in a blue swimsuit with a thin towel wrapped around her waist, her wet plait dripping down over her shoulder, her round spectacles glinting in the sun.

‘Veronica—how wonderful to see you!’ Melanie’s clear voice rang out across the garden as she approached in a characteristic rush of enthusiasm, her cool, floral dress fashionably smart on a matronly figure that attested to her love of good food. She ruefully flapped her right arm helplessly in its blue sling and threw her left arm wide, going on tiptoes to offer a welcoming half-hug, laughing at the great disparity in their statures that forced Veronica to bend her knees.

‘Oh, but we must do this the French way,’ she said, and gave Veronica a brief kiss on both cheeks, and then another peck on the left. ‘The third one demonstrates that you’re an extra good friend—’ her blue eyes twinkled as she backed off, her ash-blonde hair framing a face whose rounded contours were cheerfully unadorned, and remarkably girlish for a woman of nearly fifty ‘—which you most definitely are, Veronica, to step into the breach like this … poor Karen was terrified I was going to ask her for the ultimate sacrifice! Can you believe my horrendously rotten timing? I tripped over a silly kerb, of all things, when I was running after something I’d left in the bally car, and hit my elbow on a bollard. I’d just met Miles and Mum and Sophie at the airport. Poor Sophie saw me go shooting past her like a speeding bullet, didn’t you, Soph?’

‘A speeding bullet smacking into a wall,’ the girl said with ghoulish accuracy as her mother paused for a breath. ‘Hi, Veronica.’ She held out a slightly damp hand, and Veronica politely shook it, hiding her smile as she looked down into the solemn little face.

‘Hello, Sophie. It’s been ages, hasn’t it? I don’t think I’ve seen you more than once or twice since you went off to boarding school and that was—what—nearly two years ago? I hear you got an extension of your school holidays to come to France?’

‘Yes, but I still have to do the work, and have it marked when I get back. I don’t mind, really—I don’t want to fall behind the others.’

‘That’s not likely—Sophie’s way out on top of her class,’ said Melanie smugly. ‘My late baby is a very early bloomer!’

‘Congratulations,’ Veronica said to Sophie, who didn’t look the least bit smug, just ever so slightly anxious at her mother’s boasting. ‘One of the burdens of brightness, huh, having to constantly beat off all that praise?’

Sophie’s air of gravity lifted at the dry comment, dimples forming in her plump cheeks as she grinned at Veronica with approval, her eyes bright behind their glass shields.

‘Obviously the school has worked out well, then,’ Veronica commented to Melanie, recalling the anguished soul-searching that Karen had reported going on in the Reed household when the idea was first mooted.

‘Yes, but it was Sophie who was determined to go,’ said Miles, giving her soggy braid a squeeze. ‘I don’t think our feeble brains were providing her enough of an intellectual challenge at home.’

‘Oh, Dad!’ the girl groaned at his teasing.

‘Come on, Shrimp, you can’t go dripping all over the cottage. Let Mum show Veronica around, and perhaps you can see her again later.’

‘Oh, yes—you will come over and have dinner with all of us tonight, won’t you, Veronica?’ said Melanie confidently.

‘Uh, ah, well …’ She immediately felt the awkwardness that she had feared would shadow her visit. Did Melanie think that she had to invite her over because she was by herself? ‘I really wasn’t planning on much dinner. I had rather a big lunch …’

‘Oh, but—’

‘Melanie,’ her husband cut her off with laughing affection, ‘give the girl some breathing room. Veronica would probably appreciate a little time to settle in, and maybe relax and do her own thing on her first night …’

‘Oh, of course, how thoughtless of me—we’re going to be pestering enough of you as it is.’ Melanie was instantly apologetic as her husband and daughter retreated along the path.

‘But you must at least drop over for a pre-dinner drink and a few nibbles, so I can give you all the gen about the area and the village opening hours and best places to eat—say, about six?’ she suggested, opening the glass door to the cottage. ‘It’s a tradition at the Mas when anyone rents the cottage, so Miles can’t claim I’m putting undue pressure on you, and it’ll give you a chance to say a casual hello to whoever’s around.’

Although there was no air-conditioning, it was cooler inside the cottage than out, which Melanie attributed to the traditional, thick-walled construction of the cottage, although it was of relatively modern vintage. To keep the temperature more or less constant she advised Veronica to leave the windows open with the shutters loosely folded across them to provide maximum ventilation and protection from the sun’s penetrating heat. ‘They’ve all got insect screens on them, so you can leave the windows open all night, too,’ she added.

The well-equipped kitchen and the rustically furnished living area were part of the same large square room, the pale walls and sloping, beamed ceiling high overhead adding to the illusion of space, even though the area was quite compact. Large, dark orange terracotta tiles were cool underfoot and led through to the large bedroom with its matching twin beds and adjoining bathroom, which also housed a washing machine.

‘I’ve left you some milk in the fridge, and there’s tea and coffee sachets in the basket on the bench,’ Melanie said as she headed back out the door a few minutes later. ‘If you do want to go up to the village, it’s only a two-minute walk turning right at the end of the vineyard and you’ve got a butcher, two groceries and three bread shops, so plenty of choice.’ She suddenly halted. ‘Oh, I just remembered the pool—feel free to use it whenever you like … follow the driveway down to the house and then turn left through the stone archway.’ She beamed at Veronica. ‘Just wander up around six and you’ll find us sitting out in the kitchen courtyard, under the vines. Or shall I send Sophie?’

‘To winkle me out?’ Veronica raised her eyebrows and Melanie laughed.

‘You needn’t feel shy,’ she said. ‘You know most of us already, although not everyone’s turned up yet. Ashley’s here, of course … she arrived a few days ago with her fiancé—she’s been working at a gallery in Melbourne while she continues her art studies. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you again—and to have another young woman around.’

Veronica smiled noncommittally. She had never particularly warmed to the younger girl on the few occasions they had met, but perhaps she had outgrown her snootiness.

‘And Justin?’ she asked of Ashley’s twin, who had always been the opposite—very amiable and easy to like.

‘He’s getting the train up from Rome in a few days—he’s been working as a chef in a restaurant there. Oops—listen how time flies,’ she said as the village bells performed their full carillon followed by the striking of the hour. ‘Must go back and see how Mum’s getting on with the apple tarts.’ Her ‘see you later’ and ‘don’t bother to dress up’ wafted behind her on the sun-soaked air.

After she had unpacked, Veronica made herself a cup of tea and sprawled on the sunlounger under a leafy tree in the walled garden, leafing through the stack of tourist brochures that had been left in the cottage. She had been intending to cool off with a swim but she fell into a doze and when she woke up it was nearly five o’clock so she decided to walk into the village and stock up on something for breakfast next morning as well as for dinner … not that she was particularly hungry after the trout with almonds she had eaten for lunch at a shady, riverside restaurant beside a giant waterwheel.

The little grocery in the main street had everything that she needed, so she bought sun-ripened melon, warm fuzzy apricots and tiny raspberries to go with her yoghurt in the morning, and a sampling of local fresh cheeses for her dinner along with a bottle of wine, stopping last at the boulangerie nearest the cottage to buy a small loaf of crusty bread.

When it was approaching six she had a silky-cool shower and washed her hair, confident it would dry within minutes in the heat, and, hoping that she could take Melanie at her word, slipped into a sleeveless green top and loose white muslin pants and thrust her feet into a pair of good old Kiwi Jandals.

When the clock-tower began to ring she was just stepping onto the driveway and Sophie trotted into view from the direction of the big house, wearing a tee shirt and baggy shorts. ‘Mum said I had to wait for the bells to start before I came,’ she said, pink-faced from her jog. ‘Wait ‘til you see what Gran brought back from her friend’s place for you.’