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To her surprise Karen had sheepishly confessed to her idiocy over Luc with little prompting, although casting herself more as a dazzled innocent than a seductive man-chaser. Veronica generously forgave her the face-saving explanation, although they both knew that Karen was very far from being an innocent—having been sexually active much earlier than her older sister, often teasing Veronica for her old-fashioned attitudes about love and romance.
As usual, Karen had got her way—she was going to stay in Nassau before linking up with Melanie about where and when to resume her job.
But this time Veronica, too, was getting exactly what she wanted: freedom to make her own choices, unfettered by responsibility for her sister.
If only she could work out what those choices were.
In the frustrating two days since Luc had seen her with Sophie’s scrapbook she hadn’t had a chance to speak to him alone. Now, whenever they ventured out on some Melanie-inspired jaunt, either Zoe or Sophie were invited along.
Veronica was beginning to get an inkling of what the tabloid press meant when they called him ‘elusive’. Even when he was physically present Luc had an infuriating ability to make himself inaccessible—to withdraw into himself while remaining seemingly relaxed and sociable. He had also taken to vanishing into his room for long sessions on his laptop, although Melanie saw nothing unusual in his behaviour.
‘Luc claims he’s much more laid-back than he used to be, but he can never stay away from work for long,’ she had sighed to Veronica when they encountered each other on the regular morning trek to the boulangerie. ‘He’d be lost without that computer of his—it’s practically grafted onto his body.’
‘And I wonder where he gets that from!’ humphed Zoe from her daughter’s other side. ‘You’re supposed to be on a break, too, and yet here you are sneaking in all this “research” and look at Miles and that bathroom—talk about a busman’s holiday!’
So it was only Veronica who saw anything dramatically different in Luc’s manner over the past two days.
He was being polite to her…and she hated it!
She was also bewildered. She understood that Luc might not have wanted to say anything upsetting in front of Sophie, but later she had expected him to be angry or acidly defensive—or at the very least to laugh off that newspaper cutting as the toxic piece of gutter journalism it was, but instead he had arrogantly declined to react at all, leaving Veronica suspended in an emotional limbo.
Veronica picked up the sterling silver pen that lay beside the laptop, noting the engraved initials on the side of the barrel. It must have been a gift, she mused, because, given his love of privacy, she couldn’t imagine Luc buying himself anything that advertised his identity, even via a discreet monogram.
The pen was heavy and cool in her hand, the ballpoint already extended for work. She could picture Luc at the desk, his clever face taut with concentration, his strong fingers cradling the monogrammed shaft as he made the spiky, closely written notes on the lined pad next to the computer. In a silly impulse worthy of Karen, she couldn’t resist tearing off the top sheet of a small, square memo pad and bending over to write a few experimental words with his expensive pen, enjoying the smooth, sensuous glide of the fine black tip.
‘Leaving me a note?’ The clipped question was punctuated by another blinding flash out the windows and instant clap of monstrous thunder.
Veronica jerked upright, choking off her scream as she saw Luc kick the outer door closed and dump an armload of clean laundry obviously rescued from the clothes-line on a nearby chair. He was barefoot, wearing pale chinos and a faded grey Oxford University tee shirt spotted with a few drops of rain. When he bent to pick up a fallen shirt Veronica quickly thrust the little square of blue paper into the back pocket of her snug white denim shorts.
‘Or perhaps you were searching my room for something else,’ he said, heavily sarcastic. ‘Some compromising piece of information that might confirm your worst opinions about me? Or something you might be able to hawk to the tabloids—I understand they’re offering substantial sums for tell-all stories about me, and you could sell them a whopper, couldn’t you?’
His toxic sarcasm was music to her thunderstruck ears. Finally, she had caught him sufficiently off-guard to get past that cool barrier of politeness and the connection between them was suddenly back, full-force, awareness of his seething energy slamming into her with the power of a physical blow.
‘No, actually I was looking for you. I called out, but there was no answer—’
His insolent sneer was reflected in the sullen rake of his dark eyes. ‘So you came in anyway.’
If that wasn’t calling the kettle black! thought Veronica.
‘I wanted to get in out of the storm—I’ve always hated thunderstorms…’ She shivered as white light strobed through the gap in the half-drawn shutters. ‘I thought you might be in the bathroom. I…I was just trying out your pen,’ she said lamely, holding it up. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It was a graduation present, given to me when I got my first degree.’ He raised his voice over the next roll of thunder as he strolled over to pluck it from her hand.
‘Aren’t you going to ask who gave it to me?’ he challenged with sharp antagonism.
She sensed a trap and decided that there was no avoiding it. She shrugged, her shoulders sliding against the thin silk of her short-sleeved blouse. ‘Elise Malcolm?’
His black brows snapped down over his quarrelsome eyes. ‘How the hell could you possibly know that?’ he demanded furiously.
She tossed her head, the fie
ry glints in her hair sparking defiantly in the artificial glow from the uplights. ‘I didn’t—it was just a lucky guess. That newspaper said you’d known each other a long time.’
He glowered at her mention of the tabloid. ‘We were at Oxford together.’
‘Really?’ Veronica held his gaze steadily, even though her heart stuttered at the taut statement. ‘Together’ had a totally different connotation from ‘at the same time’.
‘Well, all I can say is that she obviously has good taste.’
