Tempestuous Reunion

As first dates went, it had been…different. He had walked her off her feet and treated her to a coffee in an all-night café in Piccadilly. She hadn’t had a clue who he was and he had enjoyed that. He had told her about growing up in New York, about his family, the father, mother and sister who had died in a plane crash the previous year. In return she had opened her heart about her own background, contriving to joke as she invariably did about her unknown ancestry.

‘Maybe I’ll call you.’ He had tucked her, alone and unkissed, into a cab to go home.

He hadn’t called. Six, nearly seven agonising weeks had crawled past. Her misery had been overpowering. Only when she had abandoned all hope had Luc shown up again. Without advance warning. She had wept all over him with relief and he had kissed her to stop her crying.

He could have turned out to be a gangster after that kiss…it wouldn’t have mattered; it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to her feelings. She was in love, hopelessly, crazily in love, and somewhere in the back of her mind she had dizzily assumed that he had to be too. How romantic, she had thought, when he presented her with a single white rose. Later she had bought a flower press to conserve that perfect bloom for posterity…

What utterly repellent things memories could be! Luc didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. He had simply set about acquiring the perfect mistress with the same cool, tactical manoeuvres he employed in business. Step one, keep her off balance. Step two, convince her she can’t live without you. Step three, move in for the kill. She had been seduced with so much style and expertise that she hadn’t realised what was happening to her.

Pick an ordinary girl and run rings round her. That was what Luc had done to her. She might as well have tied herself to the tracks in front of an express train. Every card had been stacked against her from the start.

Glancing at her watch in a crowded street, she was stunned to realise how late it was. Lost in her thoughts she had wandered aimlessly through the afternoon. Without further ado, she headed for the bus-stop.

Drew’s housekeeper, Mrs Bugle, was putting on her coat to go home when Catherine let herself into the apartment. ‘I’m afraid I was too busy to leave dinner prepared for you, Mrs Parrish,’ she said stiffly.

‘Oh, that’s fine. I’m used to looking after myself.’ But Catherine was taken aback by the formerly friendly woman’s cold, disapproving stare.

‘I want you to know that Mrs Huntingdon is taking this divorce very hard,’ Mrs Bugle told her accusingly. ‘And I’ll be looking for another position if Mr Huntingdon remarries.’

The penny dropped too late for Catherine to speak up in her own defence. With that parting shot, Mrs Bugle slammed the front door in her wake. A prey to a weary mix of anger, embarrassment and frustration, Catherine reflected that the housekeeper’s attack was the finishing touch to a truly ghastly day.

So now she was a marriage-wrecker, was she? The other woman. Mrs Bugle would not be the last to make that assumption. Annette Huntingdon’s affair was a well-kept secret, known to precious few. Dear God, how could she have been so blind to Drew’s feelings?

Harriet had been very much against her brother’s desire for a divorce. She had lectured Drew rather tactlessly, making him more angry and defensive than ever at a time when he was already hurt and humiliated by his wife’s betrayal.

Had she herself been too sympathetic in an effort to balance Harriet’s well-meant insensitivity? When Drew chose to talk to her instead, had she listened rather too well? She had felt desperately sorry for him but she hadn’t really wanted to be involved in his marital problems. All she had done was listen, for goodness’ sake…and evidently Drew had read that as encouragement.

What she ought to be doing now was walking right back out of this apartment again! But how could she? After paying Mrs Anstey a month’s rent in advance, she had less than thirty pounds to her name. Peggy had raged at her frequently for not demanding some sort of a wage for looking after Harriet, whose housekeeper had retired shortly after Catherine had moved in. However, Harriet, always ready to give her last penny away to someone more needy than herself and, let’s face it, Catherine acknowledged guiltily, increasingly silly with what little money she did have, could not have afforded to pay her a salary.

And it hadn’t mattered, it really hadn’t mattered until Harriet had died. With neither accommodation nor food to worry about, Catherine had contrived to make ends meet in a variety of ways. She had registered as a child-minder, although, between Harriet’s demands and Daniel’s, that had provided only an intermittent income for occasional extras. She had grown vegetables, done sewing alterations, boarded pets…somehow they had always managed. But the uncertainties of their future now loomed over her like a giant black cloud.

As she unpacked, she faced the fact that she would have to apply to the Social Services for assistance until she got on her feet again. And when Drew returned from Germany, she decided, she would tell him about her past. If what he felt for her was the infatuation she suspected it was, he would quickly recover. Either way, she would lose a friendship she had come to value. When she fell off her pedestal with a resounding crash, Drew would feel, quite understandably, that he had been deceived.

The doorbell went at half-past six. She was tempted to ignore it, lest it be someone else eager to misinterpret her presence in the apartment. Unfortunately, whoever was pressing the bell was persistent, and her nerves wouldn’t sit through a third shrill burst.

It was Luc. For a count of ten nail-biting seconds, she believed she was hallucinating. As she fell back, her hand slid weakly from the door. ‘Luc…?’ she whispered.

‘I see you haven’t made it back to Peterborough yet. Or was it Peterhaven?’ Magnificent golden eyes clashed with startled blue. ‘You didn’t seem too sure where you lived. And you’re a lousy liar, cara. In fact, you’re so poor a liar, I marvel that you even attempted to deceive me. Yet you sat in that car and you lied and lied and lied…’

‘Did I?’ she gasped, in no state to put her brain into more agile gear.

‘Do you know why I let you go this afternoon?’ He sent the door crashing shut with one impatient thrust of his hand.

‘N-no.’

‘If you had told me one more lie in the mood I was in, I would have strangled you,’ Luc spelt out. ‘Where do you get the courage to lie to me?’

It was nowhere in evidence now. Helplessly she stared at him. He was so very tall and, in the confines of a hall barely big enough to swing the proverbial cat in, he was overpowering. He had all the dark splendour of a Renaissance prince in his arrogant bearing. And he was just as lethally dangerous. As he slid a sun-bronzed hand into the pocket of his well-cut trousers, pulling the fabric taut across lean, hard thighs, she shut her eyes tight on the vibrantly sensual lure of him.

But her mouth ran dry and her stomach clenched in spite of the precaution. Had she really expected to be quite indifferent? To feel nothing whatsoever for this man she had once loved, whose child she had once borne in fearful isolation? Now she knew why she had fled his car in such a state, both defying and denying the existence of responses she had fondly believed she had outgrown with maturity.

A woman met a male of Luc Santini’s calibre only once in a lifetime if she was lucky. And forever after, whether she liked it or not, he would be the standard by which she judged other men. She was suddenly frighteningly aware that, in all the years since she had walked out of that Manhattan apartment, no other man had stirred her physically. It had been no sacrifice to ignore the sensuality which had in the past so badly betrayed her. Now she was recognising that facing Luc again had to be the ultimate challenge.

The silence went on and on and on.

‘Cristo, cara!’ The intervention was disturbingly low-pitched. ‘What is it that you think of? You look as though you’re about to fall down on your knees and pray for deliverance…’

Her lashes flew up. ‘Do I?’ It was called playing for time by playing dumb. What was he doing here? What did he want from her? Which lies had he identified as lies? Dear God, did he suspect that she had a child? How could he suspect? she asked herself. Even so, she turned white at the very thought of that threat.

Without troubling to reply, he strode past her to push open the kitchen door and glance in. In complete bewilderment, she watched him repeat the action with each of the remaining doors, executing what appeared to be an ordered search of the premises. What was he looking for? Potential witnesses? Her mythical husband? Or a child? Her flesh grew clammy with fear. In the economic market, Luc was famed for his uncanny omniscience. He noticed what other people didn’t notice. He could interpret what was hidden. If he had ever taken the time to focus that powerful intelligence on her disappearance, he would have grasped within minutes that there was a strong possibility that she was pregnant.