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‘I don’t know. Down in Wellington, I suppose, where he belongs,’ he said gruffly. ‘I own a big chunk of Sarron through a loan I made to Atkinson. Hence his lending me his name…’
Her brain was still processing information very slowly. ‘But…we were going to talk business—’
His mouth compressed with impatience. ‘I’ll set up another meeting for you. Meantime, you and I are going to talk some long-overdue business!’ The hand that had been tending her brow moved to plant itself flat on the cushion beside her face as he leaned close enough to snap her back into full awareness.
Her eyes flared with alarm and she licked her peach-glossed lips. ‘I—could I have a drink of water?’ she asked huskily.
But he had seen her eyes dart towards the lift. His jaw clenched. ‘No.’
She noticed her open jacket, revealing her smooth camisole, and reached for her buttons, but he brushed her hands away.
‘No distractions, or evasions. You’re not budging from here until you start giving me some answers…about why you wouldn’t take my calls, for a start! And why you didn’t wait for me to come back from Avignon—I didn’t expect to spend the night, let alone the next day as well, but I had a situation on my hands. I told you I’d explain everything as soon as I could.’
His eyes narrowed into fierce slits, his hand fisting on the back of the couch. ‘But then, it seems you’d rather give everyone but me the benefit of the doubt. I thought that we’d established some rapport, that if you didn’t trust me as a man, at least you respected who I was and you certainly seemed to like being with me, but then—’ His jaw clamped down as he visibly fought the desire to roar, and she could practically see his tail lashing back and forth. ‘God, Veronica—you really thought that I was sleeping with you while trying to hide from the consequences of having knocked up my adulterous lover! And on what evidence—’
‘The evidence of my own eyes and ears!’ she protested defensively. She knew it was weak. She had loved him, but she had lacked the courage, or the self-confidence, to fight for him. In her darkest moments, she had even wondered if the reason he hadn’t rushed to return the engagement ring was because he had been keeping it for that woman…his first love, mother of his child—only, of course, she wasn’t…
‘But from whom? Not me. You didn’t happen to notice that it was Elise who was doing all the talking and not making a lot of sense?’ he echoed her thoughts acidly. ‘I didn’t have a chance to get a word in edgeways. She was hysterical, and working herself up into even more of a state. I thought the stress might hurt the baby if she kept it up—and by that I mean, Foster’s baby, by the way,’ he stressed with an incendiary glare, ‘and she wasn’t in any condition to drive back to Avignon by herself, let alone confront that arrogant son-of-a-bitch who was already roaring drunk when we finally ran him to ground—’
She was stricken with shame, with no excuse but blind, stupid jealousy. ‘I didn’t know—’
‘No, of course you didn’t! Melanie finally managed to get through to me to say you’d left to take up your original TGV booking, but I went to the station but by that time the train had left—’
He had gone to the station! And she had let him down—again—by not being there!
‘I got there early and changed my ticket,’ she admitted. She’d paid the premium gratefully, and then spent the whole six-and-a-half-hour journey in an agony of misery and uncertainty. As her searing hurt had faded she had begun to realise that she should have listened to Melanie’s insistence that they had all got the wrong end of the stick, but then she had convinced herself that it was too late, he would never forgive her for her betrayal, not after all he’d been through.
‘You really were desperate to get away from me, weren’t you?’ he said, his eyes branding her with his burning accusation. ‘You left things in an uproar. Melanie and Miles thought I must have really hurt you to make you run away from me. I could have throttled you for making them think that of me—’
Her hand crept to her throat, though not out of fear. ‘I’m sorry—’ she whispered.
‘About what?’ he pounced.
She drank in the sight of him. In dark trousers and white shirt he looked lean and fit, but there were signs of strain around his eyes and mouth.
‘You look tired—’
‘So I should,’ he said bitingly. ‘I’ve been working like a slave for the past few weeks and spent the last twenty-four hours in the air without a wink of sleep.’
Veronica’s searching eyes paused, and widened.
He tensed. ‘What is it?’
She bit her lip. ‘N-nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing. Start talking to me. It’s the only way you’re ever going to get out of here.’
But what if she didn’t want to ever leave?
Luc was here, in New Zealand. He had gone to all this trouble to set her up for an ambush. Not the actions of a man who was intent on totally wiping her out of his life. Luc, too, needed closure.
‘You have a couple of grey hairs…I never noticed them before,’ she said, daring to touch the spot on his temple.
He recoiled, combing his fingers over the top of his head, almost dislodging the black band at the nape of his neck. ‘That’s because I never had any before. Not until I met you,’ he added savagely. ‘I’ll probably be totally white by the time we’re through.’
She propped herself up on her elbows as she realised what else was different. ‘You’re wearing a tie!’
He loosened the dark red silk self-consciously and unbuttoned his collar. ‘I had a me
