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Jesse grimaced. ‘I knew she was very ill. She’d been sick for days but hadn’t gone to the doctor … I went to get help, but he wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘You mentioned your father just now … Was it your father you asked for help?’
Jesse nodded. She felt numb inside. ‘He was hosting a dinner party that night. He was drunk and didn’t want to be disturbed. He took me back to the bedroom and told me to stop bothering him. When I went after him again he locked me in …’
Jesse remembered her father lurching unsteadily over to her mother in the bed and feeling her clammy forehead before declaring, ‘She’s fine. It’s just a cold.’
She looked at Luc, needing to erase that memory of her father.
‘By the time morning came and someone opened the door she was dead—had been for hours …’
Luc frowned. ‘Where was your father?’
Jesse shrugged. ‘At work …’
Luc frowned, and then he said, ‘But earlier you locked the door to the study …’
Jesse blushed. ‘I just pretended to lock it.’
Luc’s mouth tipped up wryly. ‘I didn?
??t even think to test it.’
Something infinitely delicate seemed to stretch between them at that moment.
Luc gripped Jesse’s hands tighter. ‘I’m sorry for locking you in. If I’d had any idea—’
Jesse put her hand over his mouth, and took it away again quickly when his warm breath feathered against her palm. ‘You weren’t to know. I didn’t know I’d react like that.’ She ducked her head. ‘It’s embarrassing.’
Luc tipped up her chin and looked at her. ‘No, it’s not embarrassing. Your father was a monster, Jesse, to do that to you and your mother.’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘Is that why you told me you didn’t know who your father was? Because you don’t like to talk about him?’
Jesse felt guilty. ‘Something like that.’
To her surprise Luc stood up, and Jesse blushed when she registered what part of his anatomy her eyes were on a level with.
He stepped back and said lightly, ‘You must be tired. You should get some rest.’
Jesse stood up too, some of those tendrils of icy panic reaching out for her again at the prospect of Luc walking out. Without thinking she put out a hand, curling it around his wrist. It felt vital and alive beneath her palm. His pulse was strong and powerful. She suddenly knew that she needed this, needed him, as she’d never needed anything before in her life. Right in that moment she trusted him implicitly.
Huskily she said, ‘Please don’t leave me alone.’
He stopped and turned to face her directly. ‘What are you saying, Jesse?’
She looked up at him, feeling as if she was stepping out into a void. ‘Please stay with me tonight.’
Jesse could see Luc’s jaw clench.
Carefully he said, ‘If I stay with you we share a bed, and if we share a bed we won’t be doing much sleeping.’
Wild excitement rushed through her, obliterating the awful memories and the fear that had gripped her. She stepped closer to Luc, his wrist still in her hand. ‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say …’
In some dim and distant recess of her mind Jesse couldn’t believe she was being so forward, but for the first time in her life everything felt right. This man, this moment. The past few days, everything that had happened, the way he’d reacted just now and the moments when he’d shown her real gentleness—she had come to trust him on some very deep and vulnerable level, but she couldn’t really acknowledge that now. She could only act on it.
Luc said, ‘Are you sure?’
