He fell silent, helping himself to more caviar and another blini. Arielle looked across the table at him. Her emotions were mixed. It was hard to see Lycos Dimistrios—a man who’d turnedup in evening dress and an uber-flash car, who clearly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, who could win her family home on the casual turn of a card—as that bruised, bodily and emotionally, young boy. Abandoned by his mother. Growing into his teens to look after a violent, alcoholic father. Emotions plucked at her, but she did not know what they were, other than a natural pity for such an upbringing. The pain that must have caused him, even if he hid it now.
He looked across at her again. His face seemed closed now. Harder.
‘So you see, Arielle, why I have limited sympathy for your plight. You may not have the inheritance you’d expected, but you’re not penniless. You’re young. You’re healthy. You’re beautiful. You’re not going to have the life you thought you were going to have, but you can make a new one for yourself. That is, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself!’
‘I’mnot—’ she started heatedly, ripped away from Lycos’s sorry childhood to what consumed her.
‘Yes, you are,’ Lycos contradicted her. He took a breath. ‘Arielle, self-pity gets you nowhere. I should know. But neither does anger and resentment. I know that too. Looking back doesn’t help, only looking forward. Like I’ve already said to you, if this place means that much to you go off and do what I did. Make a fortune somehow, anyhow, and buy it back. It will be for sale for the right price. Everything…’ his voice turned cynical ‘…is for sale at the right price.’
He reached for his wine, took a deliberate mouthful and set back the glass. He looked across the table at her again.
‘OK, subject closed. Let’s move on and enjoy the present. So, do you like caviar?’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Under his scrutiny she took a mouthful of caviar and blini. Testing it out.
She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He smiled. It relaxed all his features. Made him less forbidding, less censorious.
‘Eat up then or I’ll polish it all off! Now, as I was saying, how shall we spend tomorrow? After a day out, my vote is for a lazy day here. Join Maurice and Mathilde in their pool,’ he said good-humouredly.
He reached for more caviar, glancing across at Arielle again as he did. He gave a nod of approval.
‘Yes, I chose well,’ he said satisfied. ‘That shawl becomes you perfectly! How beautiful you are, Arielle. So incredibly beautiful.’
He had not changed his voice as he paid her the compliment, but Arielle could not stop the flush running out into her cheeks. He gave a low laugh. The laugh that told her things she should not want to hear, yet knew she did.
She dropped her head, confused and self-conscious. Her pulse had quickened and the colour in her cheeks was not subsiding. She reached for her wine, looking up as she did. His eyes were resting on her and in the uncertain light there was a glint in them that only made her pulse quicken even more.
The glint of a wolf—
Lycos saw her react to him. It was what he wanted. He wanted her to move on from her endless obsession with her lost inheritance.
Move on to me, to what I want of her. And to what she wants too, if she only admits it.
She was on the way, he knew. Calling her out, as he had just then, seemed to have worked. She had visibly relaxed again and they went on enjoying the delicacies procured in Saint-Clément. For a moment he frowned inwardly. What he had told her about himself he had never told a living soul.
So why tell her?
He brushed the question aside, letting his eyes rest on her instead, feeling a reaction go through him that was becoming increasingly familiar. Increasingly welcome. She really was so very lovely, so very beautiful, so very appealing to him.
He got to his feet, starting to clear the table. Arielle made a move to help, but he stopped her.
‘No. Let me,’ he said.
She acquiesced and he made short work of carrying out the used plates and leftovers to the kitchen, putting the former in the sink and the latter in the fridge. Minutes later he came back outdoors. The night had gathered in earnest now and Arielle was sitting with her back to him, her hair limned with gold from the light of the wall lamp and the glass-sheltered candle on the table. She was relaxed back in her chair, the colourful shawl he’d bought for her gathered around her shoulders, exposing the delicate nape of her neck. He could not resist. He paused behind her and, before she could turn her head, he’d dropped the lightest of kisses on her nape.
He felt her still, heard her breath catch.
He straightened again.
‘I come bearing sweet delight,’ he informed her as he placed on the table a large, square cardboard box, secured with ribbons and bearing the ornate name of thepâtisseriewhere they’d had coffee. He opened it with a flourish.
‘Gâteau St Honoré!’ he announced portentously. Then he frowned. ‘I have no idea how to slice it without making a complete hash of it!’
Somehow, he managed it, to Arielle’s smiling applause, giving them both generous, if slightly messy, portions. He watched as Arielle lifted a full forkful of thegâteauto her lips and took a mouthful. A low moan of bliss came from her and her eyelidsfluttered shut as she relished the experience, her expression transfigured.
Out of nowhere, a dart of arousal possessed Lycos.
