Already she could barely think straight. Christien had always had that effect on her but she was also feeling humiliated. How could she argue with him? She had never managed to say no to him, had never wanted to. She had been enslaved. Even though she had been a virgin when they had met, from somewhere inside her he had somehow brought out a secret slut whom she had never dreamt existed. He was the one male in the world whom she should never have met, for with him she had discovered she was without defence.
Christien would not allow himself to take further note of the effect of that faded red cotton stretching across her lethally bountiful chest. Expelling his breath on a slow, pent-up hiss of annoyance as he found himself wondering how she would react if he just reached for her as he had once done without thought, he planted himself several feet away from temptation. She was not beautiful, he reminded himself. Her nose was a little too large, her mouth a little too wide and she was way too short for elegance. But, for all that, put the whole lot together, throw in the freckles and the dimples that had once laced her glorious smile and he had wanted to veil her like an Arab woman and lock her up in a turret at Duvernay, to be seen, relished and enjoyed solely by himself. Remembering the fierce possessiveness she had once inspired him with, he was gripped by rare discomfiture.
‘I would like to buy back the property which my great-aunt left you in her will,’ Christien imparted coldly.
Even as he spoke Tabby lost colour. She studied the laminated wood floor, fighting valiantly to overcome a ridiculous sense of hurt and rejection. For what other reason would he have come to see her after so long? He could not even stand for her to own one miserable little piece of what had once been Laroche land and property. Well, that was his bad luck, Tabby thought with sudden anguished bitterness.
‘I’m not interested in selling,’ Tabby said tightly. ‘Obviously, your great-aunt wanted me to have the cottage-’
‘Mais pourquoi…but why?’ Christien asked her. ‘That still makes no sense to me.’
Tabby had no intention of telling him that she believed that his great-aunt had felt sorry for her because he had broken her heart! Or that, in her opinion, for the older woman to have felt so sympathetic she must once have suffered a similar experience of her own. ‘I expect it was just a whim…she was a lovely person,’ she framed tautly, for she very much wished that she had had another chance to meet the older woman.
‘In France,’ Christien drawled in his deep, dark voice, ‘it is not the done thing to leave even a small portion of ground to someone outside the family. I am willing to pay well over the market price to ensure that the cottage remains a part of the estate.’
Raging, hurting resentment flared through Tabby, although she was trying very hard to stay calm. Unhappily, discovering the purpose of Christien’s visit had only made that an even greater challenge. Three years ago, Christien had icily rejected her pathetic pleas for even a moment alone with him and she did not believe that she would ever forgive him for that. But now the same incredibly wealthy and privileged male was willing to approach her over the head of a cottage that his great-aunt had only used for summer picnics! His behaviour struck Tabby as being horribly cruel and unfeeling.
In any case, she might be an outsider but her son had rather more claim than she had to the property, Tabby reminded herself doggedly. Jake’s illegitimate birth might have placed him outside their precious family circle but, regardless of that reality, her son had Laroche blood in his veins and he was entitled to a home on French soil. In addition, Solange Roussel had not left Tabby that cottage on the expectation that she would sell it straight back to Christien sight unseen. To Tabby, the very idea of immediately disposing of her inheritance seemed ungrateful and horribly disrespectful to Solange’s memory.
‘I’m not selling.’ Forcing her head up, Tabby connected with his scorching tawny gaze. That fast, a sensation of heat sprang up low in her pelvis and lit every sensitive inch of her flesh with a burning physical awareness of his masculinity that was a pure torment to bear.
‘Take a look at the cheque first,’ Christien invited, the words thick with his accent, slightly slurred, faint colour accentuating the hard angle of his bold cheekbones.
Blinking in surprise, mouth running dry, Tabby only then noted the cheque he had tossed down onto the dining table in front of the window. Her mind was a complete blank.
‘Take the cheque and I’ll take you out to lunch.’ Christien was aching for her and wondering if he would even make it out of the house without giving way to the megawatt sexual vibes filling the atmosphere.
Where had she heard that before? In her time with him, how many lunches and dinners had she never received? They had not been able to resist each other long enough to reach the restaurant. Once they had ended up in a lay-by. Another time he had done a U-turn in the middle of the road, cursing and laughing at the strength of his desire for her. During their affair, she had lost a stone in weight and had felt lucky to get the chance to rifle the villa’s fridge while he’d been asleep.
‘I’ll try to take you out to lunch…’ Christien rephrased, golden eyes a smouldering gleam below sensually lowered lashes, his vibrant smile suddenly flashing out to chase the gravity from his sculpted mouth, for he was recalling that U-turn as well.
When he smiled that stunning smile, it brought back so much remembered pain for Tabby that it hurt her to look at him. Having won her release from his spellbinding gaze, she shivered, folded her arms tight in front of herself, suddenly cold and scared inside.
‘No, thanks…please take your cheque and leave,’ she told him unevenly.
‘You don’t mean that…you don’t want that,’ Christien purred with immense confidence, all caution thrown to the winds in the face of his own hunger.
No, but she knew that she would never forgive herself if she did not resist him. He had taught her that a level of wanting that went beyond the bounds of common sense or pride was destructive. That he was being his typical arrogant self also helped. He sauntered back into her life after years away and just assumed that she would be as eager for him as she had been at seventeen. But she was, wasn’t she? And he could feel that in her too, she conceded with a sinking heart, for when had he not been able to read her like a book?
Filled with fear of her own weakness, Tabby said abruptly, ‘Is Solange’s cottage close to your home at Duvernay?’
Christien frowned. ‘Non…miles by road.’
‘Do you go there often?’
In answer, Christien growled with impatience. ‘No. I want you to sell. If it is your wish to own property in France, I will instruct an agent to find somewhere more suitable for you.’
‘You have no right to demand that I sell!’ Tabby snapped in sudden furious denial of all the frightening raw feelings that his very presence was making her relive. ‘And who are you to decide what’s suitable for me?’
‘I can’t imagine what you could want with a dwelling in the remoter depths of the Breton countryside. I doubt if it is even habitable. It has been almost half a century since the property was used as anything other than a glorified summer house!’ In a raw gesture of impatience, Christien raked long, lean brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘Why won’t you see sense? Only a Laroche belongs on the Duvernay estate!’
Paling, Tabby turned her head away, wondering why she was letting him make her feel as if she were something less than he was.
‘In any case,’ Christien murmured in scornful addition, having read a message of poverty in her faded T-shirt and worn jeans, ‘You look like the money would be a lot more use to you.’
‘How do you know that? You know nothing about me now!’ Tabby flung back fiercely, furious that he was putting her down like that. ‘What I want…what I need, anything!’
Christien dealt her a brooding appraisal, anger at her unexpected stubbornness driving him, for once she had done exactly as he wished without hesitation. ‘Au contraire, I know many things about you that I would rather not kno