Exposed: Misbehaving with the Magnate

Gabrielle felt the sting of bitter tears welling in her own eyes but she blinked them away, and made herself speak even though her words would come out ragged and choked. ‘Hello, Maman.’

‘You shouldn’t have come.’ Josien kept her face averted.

‘So people keep telling me.’ Luc’s face, when Gabrielle glanced his way, was as hard and unyielding as the stones from which the chateau had been built. ‘I hear you’ve been unwell.’

‘Ce ne’est rien,’ said Josien. ‘It’s nothing.’

It didn’t look like nothing. Luc had been right. Her mother looked frail. ‘I brought you a gift.’ Gabrielle reached into her bag for the album of photos she’d put together so painstakingly. Rafe would kill her if he knew how many photos of him she’d included in the mix, but he didn’t know and she wasn’t about to tell him. ‘I thought you might like to know what Rafe and I have been doing these past seven years. We bought a broken vineyard, Maman, and brought it back to life. We’ve done so well. Rafe’s a brilliant businessman. You should be proud of him.’

Josien said nothing and Gabrielle felt her lips tighten. So what if Rafael had eventually gone as far away from Josien and this place as he could get? That was what people did when raised on a diet of scathing criticism interspersed with icy indifference. Rafe had never deserved any of the treatment Josien had dealt him. He really hadn’t. ‘I’ll leave it here on the end of the bed in case you want to look at it some time.’

‘Take it and go.’

Yeah, well. That was what you got when you believed in tooth fairies, happily ever after, and mothers who actually cared. ‘I’ve taken a room in the village, Maman. I’ll be in the area these next few weeks. I know you’re tired right now but maybe when you’re feeling better you could give me a call. Here.’ She fished a business card from her handbag. ‘I’ll leave you my number.’ Gabrielle’s words were met with more silence. Gabrielle bit her lip—praying for one pain to subdue another, but Josien’s rejection had cut too deep. She should never have come here. She should have listened to Rafe and to Luc instead of listening to her heart. ‘So…’ Gabrielle felt the world sway, and then Luc’s hand was beneath her elbow, fragile purchase against the darkness threatening to engulf her.

‘Jet lag,’ murmured Luc. It wasn’t jet lag causing her to sway and they both knew it, but he afforded her the courtesy of an excuse for her body’s reaction and Gabrielle seized it.

‘Yes. It’s been a long day.’

‘Wait for me outside,’ he said as he gently shepherded her towards the door. ‘It’s about to get longer.’

Luc waited until the door clicked closed behind Gabrielle before turning to the woman in the bed. Josien Alexander was an enchantingly beautiful woman and always had been. Coolly unfathomable, she ran the housekeeping staff at the chateau with an iron fist and no second chances. She’d raised her children the same way. Luc had bowed to Josien’s will all those years ago because he’d seen the sense in sending Gabrielle away, but he saw no sense in Josien’s actions now. All he saw was pain.

Josien’s eyes were still closed as Luc strode back towards the bed but he didn’t need her eyes, only her ears. ‘My father told me of our duty to you before he died,’ he said grimly. ‘I’ve done my utmost to honour it. I’ve tried my damnedest to make allowances for your behaviour, Josien, but, so help me, if you don’t make time for your daughter while she’s here you can pack your bags and leave this place the minute your health allows it. Do you hear me, Josien?’

Josien nodded, tears tracking noiselessly down her cheeks, and Luc struggled to contain his frustration and his fury. ‘You’ve never been able to see it, have you? No matter how badly you wound them or how hard you try to push them away…you just don’t get it.’ He looked at the photo album and his roiling emotions coalesced into a tight ball of anger directed squarely at the woman in the bed, no matter how fragile or beautiful she was. ‘You’ve never been able to see how much your children love you.’

Luc caught up with Gabrielle halfway along the hallway. He needed a drink. The thorn he’d never quite managed to extricate from his side looked as if she needed one too. ‘In here,’ he told her, and ushered her into the library that doubled on occasion as his formal office space, usually when he entertained clients and wanted to impress. ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked as he headed for the bar, reached for the brandy and poured generously.

‘In the village,’ she replied, careful not to let her fingers brush his as she took the half full glass from his outstretched hand and downed it in a single gulp. ‘Thanks.’ Her gaze went to the label on the bottle and her eyes widened. ‘What…? For heaven’s sake, Luc! This stuff has to be at least a hundred years old and expensive enough to make even you wince. You might warn a person before you handed it to them. I could try tasting it next time.’

‘Where in the village?’ He poured her another shot. She could taste it now.

‘I took a room above the old flour mill.’

‘I’ll have someone collect your bags,’ he told her curtly and downed his own brandy before setting the glass back on the counter somewhat more forcefully than necessary. Gabrielle flinched at the sound. She looked jittery, strung out. She looked like he felt. ‘You can stay here,’ he told her. ‘There’s room enough.’

But Gabrielle shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said with a stubborn tilt to her chin that he remembered of old. ‘You heard her.’ Gabrielle smiled bitterly and swirled the brandy in her glass. ‘She doesn’t want me here.’

‘When last I checked,’ he said, his voice deceptively mild, ‘Luc, not Josien, was master of Caverness. There’s room for you here. There’s no need for you to stay in the village. Simone, I’m sure, will be glad of your company.’

‘And you?’ Gabrielle lowered the glass from her lips, and pinned him with a grey-eyed gaze that held more than a hint of pain. ‘Will you be glad of my company too? There was a time when you couldn’t wait for me to leave.’

‘You were sixteen, Gabrielle. And if you don’t know the reason behind my encouraging you to finish growing up elsewhere then you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were. One more week and I’d have had you naked beneath me. In your bed or mine or halfway up the stairs, I wouldn’t have cared,’ he said bluntly. ‘And neither would you.’

He’d surprised her. Shocked her. He could see it in her eyes. ‘Well, then…glad we cleared that up.’ She took another sip of her brandy and set her glass carefully on the bench, as if even that small motion took up all of her control. ‘I suppose I should thank you.’

But she didn’t.

‘I lost my virginity to a handsome Australian farm boy when I was nineteen,’ she said in a low, ragged voice. ‘He was charming, and funny, and he made my pulse race and my body ache for more of him. He was everything a girl could wish for when it came to her first time, and it still wasn’t enough.’ Gabrielle headed for the door. Luc stood rooted to the spot. ‘I’ll be staying at the old flour mill for the next three weeks. If you could send word to me if my mother’s condition changes, I’d be very grateful.’

‘Why wasn’t it enough?’ Luc’s throat felt tight, the words came out raspy, but he had to know. ‘Gabrielle, why did he disappoint you?’

He didn’t think she was going to answer, but then she turned as she reached the door and speared him with a glance that held more than its share of self-mockery. ‘I really don’t know. Maybe he just wasn’t you.’

Luc waited until she’d shut the door behind her before he let his curses fly. He was a man who took pride in his self control. He’d worked hard for it; fought against his deepest nature to secure it. Only one woman had ever made him lose it. The results had been disastrous for all concerned. Josien had been hysterical, his father aghast, and Gabrielle…innocent, trusting Gabrielle had been exiled.

She’d lost her virginity to a handsome Australian.

Fury roared through him as he picked up his glass and flung it at the fireplace, his temper only marginally appeased when the glass exploded in a burst of glittering crystal shards.

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU shouldn’t have said that.’ Gabrielle had a habit of talking to herself whenever she felt stressed. She’d been talking to herself ever since she’d set foot back in France. Her footsteps made a crunching sound as she hurried across the gravel courtyard towards her hire car, every step taking her further away from Caverness and the people in it. She needed to leave before she broke down completely. She needed to leave this place now.

Gabrielle made it back to the village without mishap. She drove on the correct side of the road and didn’t lose her way. She even observed the speed limit. And when she got to the old mill house she locked herself inside her room before finally giving in to weariness and sinking back on the bed with her forearm across her eyes, as if by blocking her sight she could block out the memory of her conversation with Lucien. ‘You should not have said that.’

It had been seven years since she’d last seen Luc. Seven years of complete indifference on his part. No phone calls, no letters, no contact. Not once. A sixteen-year-old girl had deduced from Luc’s actions that he’d simply been playing with her when he’d kissed her all those years ago. That the housekeeper’s daughter had meant nothing to him.

Not once, not once, had it ever occurred to her that Luc had been trying to protect her from a relationship she’d been nowhere near ready for.

Still wasn’t ready for if her recent reaction to him was anything to go by.

So she had money behind her now, and self-esteem, and a good deal more to offer a man on an intellectual level. That still didn’t equip her to deal with the likes of Luc Duvalier. Luc, whose brooding black gaze could make her forget every ounce of self-preservation she’d ever learned.

How many minutes in his company had it taken her to test the strength of her physical reaction to him? Two minutes, or had it been three? How long had it taken her to lay herself bare for him? Telling him that her first lover had been a disappointment to her. Gabrielle groaned and rolled over onto her side, burying her head in a pillow and pulling the blue chenille bedspread around her for comfort. What kind of woman told a man that?

A woman who’d never quite forgotten the ecstasy and the agony of a single stolen kiss, said a voice that would not be silenced.

A woman who’d known all along that no one at Caverness would bid her welcome and mean it.

A fool.

Luc didn’t usually wait impatiently for his sister to return home from her work, but this day he did, seeking Simone out in the kitchen, never mind the box of fresh fruit and vegetables in her arms or the fact that she hadn’t yet managed to put the box down.

‘Bonjour, brother of mine,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I come bearing good food and even better news. The sales figures are finally in and we,’ she said, setting the bags on the counter with a flourish, ‘had a very good quarter.’

‘Congratulations,’ he said, but something in his voice must have alerted Simone to his turmoil for she turned sharply, set the box down on the bench, and took her time looking him over.

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said warily. ‘What is it?’

‘Josien had a visitor this afternoon.’

‘Who?’

‘Gabrielle.’

Luc watched his sister’s face light up with wry resignation. Simone and Gabrielle had been close as children. Closer than sisters, never mind the huge gap in social standing between them. ‘Gaby is here?’ asked Simone. ‘Here as in here at the chateau? Where?’