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Feeling numb and hurt beyond belief at the man Luc had morphed into, she said, ‘I should have left you there as soon as I’d got you into the villa.’
He came closer to her but she couldn’t move. He touched her jaw with a finger and then smiled. ‘Ah, but then you would have missed all that bedroom fun.’
Jesse jerked back as if he’d slapped her. And he might as well have.
‘Get out, Sanchis. You’ve overstayed your welcome.’
She heard a miaow then, and saw Tigger at Luc’s feet, front paws on one shoe. For a second the breath faltered in Jesse’s throat. She saw Luc bend down and pick up the kitten, stroke him with those long fingers. It made her think of the frantic coupling that had just taken place with little or no finesse, just heat.
She hastily found the clasp at the back of her dress and did it up. She held out her arms for the kitten, demanding, ‘Give him to me.’
Luc didn’t look at her for a long moment, and Jesse had the awful suspicion that he might just walk out with him. But then Luc all but thrust Tigger into her arms.
He said, with a rough quality to his voice, ‘I think he’s hungry.’
And then he was at the door, where he stopped and looked back. ‘I’ll be in touch, Jesse.’
The door opened and he was gone.
For a moment, when he’d handed Tigger back to her, Jesse could have sworn she saw something piercing through the cold shell of the man he was now, but it had to have been her imagination.
Luc sat in the back of his car and stared sightlessly out of the window. He moved, and the scent of Jesse rose up to tease his nostrils. It had an immediate effect on his body, hardening it.
He scowled and ordered his driver to raise the privacy partition. He felt raw. When he’d seen the kitten at his feet, looking up at him just now, it had flung him back to the island, and the cool composure he’d somehow managed to pull around himself so that he could stand there and say those things to Jesse had threatened to crack.
But it hadn’t, and he couldn’t let it. The island had been an illusion. All along she’d been planning on leaving him there. When he thought of how confident he’d felt after he’d told her the truth about her father he felt the burning wash of humiliation. But not again. He wanted her, and he would take her. He wasn’t going to go through with the pretence of seduction when there was no need. This time they both knew exactly where they stood.
Luc was aware that not even with Maria had he felt this ruthless, or been this ruthless. Despite the accusation Jesse had flung at him in her apartment. It reminded him of the the lurid tabloid headline: Sanchis ex-lover tries to kill herself! Accompanied by a story equally lurid, about how his ex-lover had betrayed him with a rival architect and he’d set out to get his revenge, driving her to the brink.
The truth was that it had been pure professional espionage. Maria had been the business partner and lover of a man whose company was a rival bidder for a lucrative architect contract. She’d set out to seduce Luc for her lover, purely to get his ideas and pass them on—which she had … And then Luc had lost the contract and a million euros’ worth of investment.
It had almost been a killer blow, coming at a crucial stage in his career, just when he’d been on the cusp of achieving real respect. It had meant more long years of gruelling graft, building himself up again, building trust. The stain of infamy had lingered.
When Maria had returned to her lover to find him in the arms of another woman she’d gone on the attack and sold stories of her breakdown to the press—each one more lurid than the next—in a bid to make her lover take her back. She’d even staged a suicide attempt … and everyone had assumed Luc was the cause.
He shook his head now, as if to shake free of the memory. He didn’t like to be reminded that he’d found it relatively easy to walk away from Maria after her betrayal, even though he’d never forgotten it. But with Jesse … He saw her and he wanted to possess her with something bordering on the obsessional.
He would have her, and this time it would be entirely on his terms. When this all-encompassing lust burnt out he would walk away. And then he would be free of any ghostly memories and her image plaguing him in his dreams every night.
The following day Jesse was on a conference call with her colleagues in Silicon Valley in California. She was gritty-eyed with lack of sleep and trying to force her foggy brain to try to keep up with the fast-flowing conversation.
She became vaguely aware of a kerfuffle of some sort outside her glass-walled office, and craned her neck to try to see what it was. When she did she almost dropped the phone. Luc was striding towards her office holding a huge box with a big pink ribbon around it, and her assistant Georgia was running after him, clearly trying to stop him from barging into Jesse’s office.
Jesse almost felt sorry for Georgia, who had a look of awe mixed with lust mixed with fear on her face.
And then there he was, standing in her office, grinning at her. But Jesse could see the ice in his eyes. So nothing had changed there.
She said into the phone, ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, something has come up. I’m going to have to reschedule this call.’
She put down the phone and got up and went to the door.
Georgia was outside, blushing. ‘I’m really sorry, Jesse, he just—’
Jesse stopped her. ‘It’s fine. I’ll handle it.’
She closed the door and turned to face Luc, who was looking around her office with interest. Jesse wasn’t unaware of lots of eyes checking them out, and cursed the fact that she’d insisted on glass-walled offices to foster a sense of openess.
She went back to her desk and sat down, trying to assert her authority—which was laughable. She had no authority around this man. He came over and put the box down on her desk. He leant over it and Jesse fought not to slink back into the chair, or let her eyes dwell on his hard-boned face.
