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There was no time to be lost. The day after tomorrow, Peggy would be driving down to London. How did she tell him? The enormity of the announcement she had to make sunk in on her, another razor edge to hone her nerves. She would tell him on the flight to London…it wouldn’t be very private, though. She would tell him whenever they arrived at their destination, wherever that was. But the more she dwelt on the coming confrontation, the more panic-stricken she became at the prospect.
‘You’re very pale.’
In the limousine, she didn’t feel up to that narrowed, probing gaze. How would Luc react? That was all she could think about. Yesterday she had been telling herself that he was cold, callous and calculating in an effort to shore up her reluctance to tell him about Daniel. Yesterday she had been determined to hate him, determined to see him as a threat to Daniel. Now she had come down out of the clouds again, but the view was no more encouraging. She had deceived him. She had lied by omission. Those who crossed Luc lived to regret the miscalculation. Since she had never put herself in that position before, how could she possibly predict how he would react?
‘And very quiet,’ Luc continued.
She gulped. ‘I was just thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘Nothing in particular.’ She veiled her troubled eyes in case he did what he had done before and read her mind. Do it now, do it now, she urged herself. You know what you’re like. The longer you leave it, the bigger mess you’ll make of it. ‘What time do we arrive in London?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? The air-traffic controllers in Rome are having a twenty-four-hour stoppage,’ he imparted with the utmost casualness. ‘We fly to London early tomorrow morning.’
‘We’re not going to the airport?’ she gasped.
‘A friend has offered us the use of his villa overnight.’
Her hands clenched convulsively together. Reprieve, the coward in her thought. An opportunity to be alone with him and tell him, her conscience insisted. The limousine was already turning through tall gates.
A housekeeper greeted them on the steps. When Luc refused the offer of supper, they were shown upstairs to a bedroom suite. It was full of mirrors and exotic silks and the most enormous bed. This was her wedding night, she reflected in despair. How could she tell him tonight? It would ruin the whole day, she reasoned weakly.
He came up behind her and buried his mouth hotly against the soft, sensitive spot where her shoulder met her throat, and her knees buckled. ‘We should have supper,’ she managed shakily.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Well—’
‘Supper wouldn’t satisfy my hunger either,’ he breathed approvingly. Slowly, heart-stoppingly, he turned her round. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he enquired, completely without warning.
‘W-wrong?’
‘You have the look of a murderer caught burying the body,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘Or is that my imagination?’
‘Your imagination.’ Avoiding his far too perceptive eyes, she tried to sidetrack him by reaching up and starting to undo his tie.
‘My imagination rarely plays tricks on me.’ He watched her struggling with his tie. With an expressive sigh, he covered her small shaking hands with one of his. ‘You don’t trust me, do you? I won’t hurt you ever again, bella mia. I promise you that.’
Unbearably touched and suddenly rent with guilt, her eyes clouded over.
‘I was only twenty-seven when I met you.’ He ran a questing fingertip along the taut curve of her cheek. ‘And I didn’t want to meet someone like you. I set out to get you on my terms and I knew it wasn’t what you wanted or what you deserved. You loved me too much, cara. You let me get away with murder. So, I took you for granted.’ His superb bone-structure was prominent beneath his suntanned skin, his eyes very dark. ‘I thought you would always be there. And then one day you were gone and I realised that even you had your breaking point. I realised that a little too late for it to make any difference.’
‘Luc, I—’
He brushed his fingers in a silencing motion against her lips. ‘I don’t want to talk about the past now. It casts shadows. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, hmm?’ he cajoled. ‘But not tonight.’
She turned her mouth involuntarily into the warm palm of his hand, tears wet on her cheeks. He appealed to her for understanding and Luc was not given to appeals. Strain clenched his dark features. The break with the tradition of keeping his own counsel hurt.
He trailed his tie off, shed his jacket with a lithe twist of his shoulders and pulled her into his arms, emanating now all the raw self-assurance that came so naturally to him. ‘I scarcely slept last night,’ he admitted softly. ‘And I intend to keep you awake all night as punishment.’
His breath warmed her cheek and then his tongue slid between her lips, thrusting them apart to explore the moist interior she so freely offered him. The floor under her feet seemed to fall away, and she clung to him while he took her mouth again and again with a stormy intensity that stirred a dulled ache in the pit of her stomach. Her silk dress pooled on the carpet without her even being aware that he was expertly removing it. Lean fingers slid caressingly over her hip, encountering lace, and, disregarding the fragile barrier, he made her jerk and moan beneath his marauding mouth.
He laughed soft and deep in his throat, ceasing the provocation only to pick her up and carry her over to the bed, following her down in fluid motion, reacquainting her with every sleek line of his lean body. His shirt had come adrift and she ran her hands up over his smooth brown back, feeling every muscle tauten to her reconnaissance. He ground his hips sensuously slowly into hers, and for mindless seconds she was ruled by the hunger he could evoke and completely lost.
He looked down at her, dark eyes aflame with gold satisfaction and desire. ‘Remember that first night in Switzerland?’ he whispered huskily. ‘You were so exquisitely shy.’ He strung a line of kisses across her delicate collarbone. ‘So innocent. I was a bastard, bella mia. It should have been our wedding night.’
‘I pretended it was.’
