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Bitch! Faithless to him—to me!
Faithless. Worthless.
Hatred of her seared through him. It had to be hatred. He would permit nothing else. Acknowledge nothing else. She had deceived and manipulated both himself and Armand, taking them both for fools. Faithless to both. Treacherous to both.
Yes, hatred was all he must feel for her.
Nothing else.
Lissa was keying sales figures and product prices into a spreadsheet. It required intense concentration to put the right data into the right fields, and she was glad of it. It kept her mind channelled, focussed. Occupied.
It was essential to keep her mind occupied. Busy. Full. Focussed. Every synapse that fired had to do so only on permitted topics. The work she was doing. The food she was buying. The cleaning she was doing. The book she was reading. The programme she was watching. The street she was walking along. Each activity taking up all her mind. Allowing nothing else in. Nothing at all.
Because if for a single moment, a single second, she failed to keep her mind occupied in such a way, it would arrive.
Memory. Bringing dreams that were even more of a lie than the reality had been. That were as false as Xavier Lauran had been.
How can I bear it?
The question sounded in her head—meaningless, pointless. She would bear it because she must.
She went on typing. Tap, tap, tap at the keyboard. Keeping focussed, keeping busy.
The subdued buzz of her mobile was scarcely audible. She had it turned down to the lowest setting, for the office she was currently working in did not like staff to use their mobiles on personal calls during working hours. But Lissa ignored that particular rule. She needed to have her phone on.
Hurriedly, she slipped the mobile out of her desk drawer, clicked it to silent, and slipped it into her sleeve. Then she got up and headed for the Ladies. As she gained the wash-basin area, memory scythed into her mind.
> She had stood like this, at that insurance company, and phoned the number of XeL to get in touch with Xavier Lauran, to tell him that she was available for an affair with him after all.
Fool that she had been.
She took a breath, harsh and punishing, and crushed the memories away. Then she answered her phone. The tone had stopped, but it had been a text anyway. She opened it.
‘Wedding this weekend all arranged. Air ticket to you by courier. A’
She clicked off the phone. Savage satisfaction seared in her face. He had destroyed so much, Xavier Lauran, but this—this he could not destroy.
This at least was safe from him. And he could do nothing about it—nothing at all!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
XAVIER pulled at the seat belt straps in the helicopter, and fastened them with a swift movement. Then he nodded at the pilot and reached for his headphones, to silence the deafening roar of the rotors as the machine lifted off the ground at Nice airport. It was only a short hop, but every moment counted.
He had been in Seoul when the call had come through from his mother. She herself had been phoning from the Maldives, where she and Lucien, her husband, had been holidaying. She had sounded breathless, excited, and almost inaudible over the connection. But what she had told him had stopped him in his tracks.
‘My darling, you must come home in time for it. It’s completely out of the blue, and I could shake him for doing this. But Lucien and I will be on the next flight, and you must be, too. He says they’ll be there for Saturday—can you manage that? Oh, it’s so little time. I could shake him, I really could. To throw us like this at the last moment. I haven’t even met the girl. And now he tells me the wedding is all arranged. How can it be? I have made no arrangements whatsoever. There are dozens of people to invite, but the wretched boy says he wants no one—just family. He says his bride wants a quiet wedding. But he doesn’t say why. And, Xavier, darling, this is what worries me most—he says that although she may not be the ideal woman I would have wanted for him, he loves her. What can he mean by that? What’s wrong with her that I wouldn’t want her to marry Armand? Oh, Xavier, darling boy, please be there in time—promise me you will.’
He had given her his promise.
Grimly, with a face as dark as night.
It was still dark.
The helicopter soared up over the azure waters of the Mediterranean, heading east towards Monte Carlo and beyond. Towards his mother and stepfather’s house in Menton.
Let him be in time! Let him just be in time to stop it!
How had she slipped his guard? Met up with Armand? Had his security’s surveillance operations grown sloppy over the weeks?
