Bought for His Bed: Virgin Bought and Paid For / Bought for Her Baby / Sold to the Highest Bidder!

She’d become rigid again, holding herself away from him, and he was surprised at the irritation he felt at her subtle withdrawal.

Deliberately he drew her close, smiling down into her face, his lashes drooping so that only she could see the determination in his eyes. She stiffened a second, then relaxed, her slender body pliant in his arms.

She felt strangely right there, he thought, nodding to Guy Bagaton across the dance floor.

Fleur was fighting back a pang of frighteningly bitter jealousy. Just what was his relationship to this Janna person? Past lovers? Almost certainly.

She followed him through a particularly complex manoeuvre, then the music wound up to a triumphant conclusion, and everyone clapped and began to leave the floor.

After that Fleur danced with the other men of their party, sat out the energetic ones with the Princess—who was amusing, interesting company—and shared more dances with Luke, where they playacted for everyone to see. She pretended not to watch when Luke danced with Gabrielle, but she realised that Luke had been right; the girl was definitely possessive about him.

A little later she came across Fleur in the ladies’ room and said graciously, ‘I hope you are enjoying yourself.’

‘Very much,’ Fleur replied with a smile.

Gabrielle looked at her with raised brows. ‘You are not his usual sort of woman.’ She flashed a smile that was close to feline. ‘Do you realise he is using you?’

Unprepared for such an open attack, Fleur turned on the tap and let cold water play over her wrists. ‘My relationship with Luke is nobody’s business but ours.’

Gabrielle stiffened. ‘You are wrong. I am telling you this because I like you, but if you are hoping that this liaison is more than a temporary fling you will be wrong, because eventually he and I are to be married. Did you know that?’

How on earth did she deal with this? Fleur said, ‘Do you really think Luke would flaunt a lover in front of the woman he’s engaged to?’

The younger woman sketched a very Gallic shrug. ‘You are a romantic, so naturally you don’t understand our way of conducting marriages. This has been decided for ever—it is a matter of honour to both families, and of course there is a lot of money tied up in it, too. My dowry will be my grandfather’s business interests—Luke is already in charge of them, but when we marry they will become his. Luke is more French than English in his attitude towards such things.’

Fleur turned off the tap and said neutrally into the silence, ‘It sounds very pragmatic.’

It also sounded very possible. Luke hadn’t mentioned anything about business interests when he’d persuaded her into this charade. And she’d agreed to it without thought—because she trusted him.

No, she thought, her mind working furiously. Why on earth would he have suggested the masquerade if he planned to eventually marry Gabrielle and her inheritance? It would make him a horrible man…

Perhaps he was.

Gabrielle finished applying lipstick and smiled. ‘We are a pragmatic race. But it will be a good marriage, and there will be no divorce. Our children will have a happy home life. Of course he will probably always enjoy chasing little redheads and, yes, I will mind a little, although I will always know that such adventures mean nothing. You have no chance of marrying him. He is a Chapman; his great-grandmother was descended from the old aristocracy of France. He knows what is due his position.’

And it’s not some insignificant New Zealander with no family and no money, her tone implied.

Fleur bristled, but to her great relief the Princess’s arrival put an end to the conversation. Nevertheless, it left Fleur with a nasty taste, especially when she saw Gabrielle flirting skilfully with the film star as they danced. She certainly didn’t look as though her heart was touched by Luke’s supposed betrayal.

Apart from that the evening was an enchantment. Fleur looked around thinking wryly that no cliché had been forgotten; the moon shone with unadulterated glory over the island, rollers crashed onto the reef with muted thunder and the perfumes of the tropics suffused the soft night air.

Supper was served on the beach, a magnificent spread of local and imported foods, champagne flowed, and after supper a group of Fala’isian young people danced for them—starting with a war challenge done with flaming torches, and ending in a wild, erotic hula that sent a buzz of interest through the guests.

Heated applause followed the entertainers as they undulated into the darkness, and then the band struck up again, and Luke held out his hand to Fleur. ‘What do you think of our dancers?’

‘They are gorgeous—and they dance brilliantly.’ She moved into his arms with more confidence now. The lights had dimmed, and around them people were drifting into slow easy steps. ‘The challenge was great, and the hula was superb.’

‘You understand Maori, I gather?’ At her surprised glance he expanded, ‘I think you and Guy were probably the only other off-islanders who realised the show was a parody, a campedup version of what tourists expect to see. I saw you laugh at one place.’

‘I have a working knowledge of Maori, and although there are substantial differences between that and Fala’isian I can sort of pick up the gist of a conversation as I go along. So, yes, I got some of the allusions. Can you speak it?’

‘Of course.’ He sounded surprised. ‘My sisters and I grew up speaking three languages—French with our great-grandmother, the local tongue with everyone else, and English with our parents.’

‘You were fortunate.’

His wide shoulder lifted in a shrug beneath her hand. ‘Children learn languages quickly. According to my mother, the trick is to make sure they stick to one at a time. When my sisters and I were small we used to speak a mixture of all three until my parents made quite strict rules. If you started a conversation in one, you had to keep to it and finish it in that language. It made life simpler.’

‘You have two sisters, don’t you?’

He didn’t exactly pause, but she had the feeling he didn’t want to talk about his sisters. ‘Yes, one older and one younger than me.’

‘Do they live here?’

‘One’s in Paris and the other in New York at the moment.’

Rebuffed, she said lightly, ‘I’d have loved siblings.’

‘We get on well,’ he said.

Fleur envied him that simple, confident assertion.

He steered the subject away from his sisters. ‘I understood you to say that your father has another family in Australia.’

‘I don’t even know where they are,’ she told him. ‘When my parents broke up my father told me that if I didn’t go with him I’d never see him again. I stayed with my mother, so that was it. The only reason I know about his other child is that when the divorce came through he wrote to tell my mother that he and his new partner had already had a son.’

Luke’s mouth hardened. ‘Do you have any other relatives—cousins?’

‘In England,’ she said evenly. ‘We exchange Christmas cards.’

He hugged her, a swift contraction of his arms with no sexual implication at all. Oddly touched by his swift response, she smiled mistily up at him. Luke had everything—money, power, a family he loved, outstanding physical attributes, yet he had enough empathy to understand how very lonely it could be sometimes when you had no one.

Fleur felt a quiver in the air—as though something deep and basic had changed between them. His gaze dropped to her mouth and darkened, then flicked up to hold hers. For several seconds they danced slowly and more slowly, until a raucous male voice broke the spell.

‘Hey, Luke, mate, get off the floor if you don’t want to dance.’ A tall, balding man grinned openly as both Luke’s and Fleur’s heads swung around.

Heat burned Fleur’s cheeks. The man’s partner waved at them, her smile sympathetic and slightly envious, and Luke laughed quietly and pulled Fleur close to him, guiding her away.

After a few seconds he said, ‘Time to go home, I think.’

Fleur nodded. ‘The Princess will be pleased.’ Yes, that was fine—her voice was cool and colourless. ‘She’s looking a bit tired, and she hasn’t got up for the last two dances.’

He gave her another sharp look, but didn’t hold it. ‘She’s probably a bit jet-lagged.’

Sure enough, no one objected to the idea of leaving, though Gabrielle gave the film star a regretful glance or two when she and her grandfather got into the second car, driven by a chauffeur.

Luke drove through the silent night. No one said much as the road wound beneath palm groves by the sea, and then over a spur of the central mountain range and down into the bay where Luke’s house sprawled in its exotic garden.

Fleur gazed blindly into the moonlight, every sense alert and tense with a useless anticipation that wouldn’t be squelched, however hard she tried.