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Luc was beside her instantly, arms around her. ‘What is it?’
Jesse felt herself responding helplessly and emotion surged dangerously. She pushed herself free, terrified Luc would see how much it was affecting her to be back here.
She backed away from him, eyes huge. ‘Is this some kind of elaborate sick joke, Luc? The last laugh is on you because you’ve managed to kidnap me?’
He shook his head. His eyes were intense. ‘No, it’s not a joke, Jesse. I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.’
Suddenly Jesse blurted out, ‘Stop it—stop making me think that—’ She couldn’t finish. She turned and fled the kitchen, needing to hide her raw emotions from Luc.
But he followed her to the den, to the couch where he’d first made love to her. It sat between them, reminding her, making that emotion crack open even more.
‘Making you think what, Jesse?’
She swallowed, desperately clinging on to whatever flimsy control she had left. ‘What are we doing here, Luc? Why did you do this? More punishment? You weren’t satisfied that I’d quite got the message?’
He winced, and his face took on a slightly ashen hue. ‘Jesse, if I could go back in time to when we met again, to that last night in particular, and change what I did and said, I would. I was unforgivably cruel and a coward.’
Jesse put her hand to her belly, feeling sick to remember it. ‘You didn’t have to bring me all this way just because you feel bad about how you ended it, Luc, or bad about what happened. I knew it was never going to be anything more.’
He smiled then, but it was bleak. ‘Did you, Jesse? Then you knew more than me—even though I told myself I knew what I wanted, knew what I was doing.’
Jesse was getting confused. Luc looked almost sad now.
‘I brought you here, Jesse, because this is where it ends … if it has to end.’
Jesse’s heart spasmed. ‘I thought it had ended.’
To her surprise Luc said, ‘That night when we first met, over a year ago. You were there because your father was there, weren’t you?’
Jesse nodded. ‘It was the first time I’d seen him since I was a child. I’d gone there because I needed to know what I was up against.’
Luc ran a hand through his hair, tousling it. His eyes speared her to the spot. ‘It started between us that night, Jesse, and then afterwards when you came to my office. It’s so ironic that we wanted the same thing, yet both of us were so used to trusting only ourselves we didn’t even think to consider that option.’
Jesse grimaced. ‘The evidence pointed towards us each believing the other wanted to go into business with my father … I couldn’t afford to let you know my motives because I didn’t want anyone to know about my relationship with him.’ She bit her lip. ‘It felt like such an ugly part of me … How could I articulate that? Or why I wanted to destroy him?’
Luc was shaking his head. ‘After you left here … left me here … I spent those two days devising every torture possible to inflict upon you when I saw you again. And then when I learned that O’Brien was really gone, that you’d got him, I realised that I wasn’t even angry about that—after years of wanting to avenge my father. O’Brien had stopped being a priority for me around the same time as I got off that plane and realised you’d kidnapped me. That’s how quickly you made me forget nearly everything. I was angry about something else entirely. Angry at how easily you’d managed to make me forget everything I’d believed was important. Angry at how hurt I was that you couldn’t trust me.’
Luc continued before Jesse could interject.
‘So to cope with that knowledge I simply blocked you out completely. I shut down. If I could have had an operation to erase you from my memory bank I would have, because I knew how dangerous you were to me by then. I dated a different woman every night in some kind of effort to feel normal again, and within five minutes of meeting each woman I wanted to claw my own eyes out from sheer boredom.’
Shakily Jesse said, ‘That’s a pretty strong reaction.’
‘Yes.’ Luc was grim. ‘Because pretending you hadn’t ever existed was slowly driving me insane—and then I saw you, at that function … To try to avoid how I was really feeling about seeing you again, I told myself I wanted revenge for what you had done. But really I wanted revenge for how you made me feel. For making me relegate everything that had been important in my life to the periphery—like my mother and sister. You waltzed into my office like a tiny tornado, wreaking havoc, and I should have known then that I was in trouble.’
Jesse needed to sit down. Her legs felt wobbly. She looked behind her and saw a chair and sank into it. Luc came closer and she was glad she was sitting down. He pulled the matching chair close and sat down too. Jesse found it hard to breathe.
She needed to speak, to say something. ‘You said that there was no trust between us because there was no relationship.’
Luc just looked at her, searching her face as if for a clue. And then he said heavily, ‘I wanted to hurt you in return for not trusting me, so I said that. But it was cruel and untrue …’
Jesse forced herself to be strong, not to let her heart take flight to a place that might not even exist, no matter how mesmerising Luc’s eyes were. ‘I know you just seduced me to try to manipulate me, though. You can’t deny that.’
Luc shook his head. ‘No, I can’t deny it. But I soon forgot why I’d wanted or needed to seduce you in the first place. That’s why it hurt so much when you left that night. It hadn’t even occurred to me that you might not trust me …’
Feeling threatened and exposed, Jesse sprang up and started to pace. Luc was too close, too distracting.
She turned around. ‘That day … the day you realised the truth about my father … I felt like I was coming to my senses. It terrified me how much I’d lost track of everything and to realise how close I’d come to trusting you completely when you still had the power to save my father. I was afraid you were making everything up.’
