‘What do you like most about me?’ Tabby asked Christien dreamily one evening.
‘How do you know I like anything?’ Christien laughed out loud when she mock punched his ribs before saying with striking seriousness, ‘You never try to be something you’re not. What you see is what you get with you and I really appreciate that…’
She was all smiles until it finally dawned on her that what he had just admitted ought to strike cold fear into her veins, because a male who prized honesty and sincerity was unlikely to be impressed by a teenager who had told him a pack of lies in an effort to seem more mature and sophisticated than she was. During those final days she was feeling very insecure because Christien had become quieter and more distant with her, making her suspect that he was getting bored with their relationship.
‘I think he’s going off me,’ she confided brittily to Solange on that second visit to the older woman’s villa further up the valley.
‘Christien has a very deep and serious nature,’ his great-aunt soothed. ‘Complex men are not easy to understand, especially when they’re young and hot-headed.’
When just a few days later the embarrassing truth of Tabby’s true age was ‘accidentally’ exposed by Veronique, Christien hit the roof and unleashed a temper that Tabby had never realised he had. Perhaps, however, her worst moment of humiliation occurred when, without any forewarning whatsoever, Christien came down to the farmhouse determined to finally meet her relatives. Lisa wandered in topless from the pool to flirt with him and a drunken argument then broke out between her father and her stepmother. Christien was excessively polite and reserved. Agonisingly aware of the distaste he was concealing, Tabby shrank with shame on her family’s behalf.
‘Do I still consider myself dumped?’ she asked in desperation as Christien climbed back into his elegant car.
‘I went into this too fast. I need to think,’ he ground out, capturing her willing mouth for a breathless instant that blew her away and then peeling her off him again with a grim look of restraint etched on his lean, strong face. ‘Without you around.’
‘Don’t expect me to sit around waiting for you!’ she warned him shakily, suddenly very, very scared at the new distance she sensed in him and the tough self-discipline he was now exerting in her vicinity.
Christien sent her a truly pained appraisal that made her squirm. ‘You sound so juvenile. I can’t believe it took someone else to point out what I should have seen for myself.’
He went to Paris and he neither phoned nor texted her. Veronique implied that he was heading for a reunion with Eloise, who had spent most of the summer working in London. Tortured by his silence, Tabby was thrown back into the company of her friends for the first time that holiday. She did her utmost not to parade the reality that her heart was breaking. She never dreamt that the next time that she would see Christien, it would be in a hospital waiting room in the immediate aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy that left no space whatsoever for personal feelings or dialogue…
A towel knotted round his lean hips and still damp from the shower, Christien gazed unseeingly out the tall bedroom windows that gave the vast frontage of the Château Duvernay such classical elegance.
The mere awareness that Tabby was only a few fields away on the edge of the rolling parkland that surrounded his ancestral home was making him restless. Thinking about her unshaven caller, Sean, it was finally dawning on Christien that he had just walked out and left Tabby alone with a strange man. A strange man with the hots for her as well. Wasn’t there something weird about a guy who went visiting with a tool-kit clutched in one hand? And might not some men misinterpret Tabby’s naturally playful friendliness as a come-on? Mon Dieu, why hadn’t it immediately occurred to him that Tabby might be at risk? He had left her at the mercy of a smirking handyman who might be a real sicko! Discarding the towel, Christien began pulling on clothes.
Dim light could be seen burning both upstairs and downstairs in the cottage. Swinging out of his car, Christien walked up the path and then paused beside a gnarled tree to check out the hole in the trunk. He drew out a dusty key and then with a frown returned it to its hiding place again. Strong jawline at a determined angle, he made loud and clear use of the door knocker…
CHAPTER FOUR
W HEN the knocker sounded, Tabby was curled up dozing on the w
icker chair that she had brought through from the sun room.
Startled into wakefulness, she almost leapt out of her skin. Who the heck would come calling after midnight? Ought she to answer the door so late? Snatching up the bright patchwork crochet blanket she had draped over the chair, she wrapped it round herself, for she was only wearing a camisole nightdress.
It was Christien, black hair tousled by the faint breeze, brilliant golden eyes locking to her. Thud, bang, crash went her heartbeat, while her tummy see-sawed as though the floor had dropped away below her. Eyes glinting a glorious green from below a feathery fringe of tumbling hair the colour of honey, she stared out at him, soft, full mouth damp and pink.
‘Why have you come back?’ Tabby whispered unevenly.
Christien did not even need to think about that. He had come back because he could not stay away. He closed the door behind him. He reached out and detached her fingers from the colourful blanket. Thick black lashes cloaking his gaze, he slid the blanket slowly down from her narrow shoulders.
‘Christien…?’ she queried unsteadily.
His breath rasped in his throat as he scrutinised her lush, inviting curves. Unquenchable lust gripped him in a hold tougher than any vice. White cotton moulded her high, full breasts and the fabric was too thin to hide the rosy prominence of her nipples. He wanted to touch her, taste her, drive her insane with the same desire that burned in him. ‘If Sean had still been here with you…I think I’d have ripped the bastard limb from limb,’ he confided not quite levelly.
Tabby whipped the blanket back up round her again but her hands were shaking. ‘I don’t sleep around…I never have and I never will. You had no reason to think he’d still be here, but even if he had been it would be none of your business-’
‘But I’d have made it my business, ma belle.’
Although she knew she should not, she looked up at him. The smouldering intensity of his dark golden gaze set off every sensual alarm bell she possessed but she moved not an inch. Indeed, she felt incapable of moving. For almost four years she had concentrated all her energies on being a loving mother to Jake and studying for her degree at art college. She had had to push herself very, very hard to cope as a single parent and a student, who also needed to work a part-time job. There had been little space for dating in her gruelling schedule, but then that had not really been a sacrifice when no ordinary male could dislodge Christien from her mind. Christien with his black hair falling over his bronzed brow, danger flashing gold in his stunning eyes, not a single note jarring the sheer, riveting perfection of his hard, all-male beauty. Christien, the ultimate of impossible acts to follow.
Dry-mouthed, she settled her focus back on the real live male in front of her. ‘Why do you want to make me your business again?’
‘I don’t know.’ A rough, humourless laugh was dredged from Christien. ‘It’s madness…but I’m still here.’
It shook her that Christien should say it was madness to be with her again and yet stay. He was mere inches from her, drop-dead gorgeous and virile and, that close to him, she felt boneless.
‘You should leave-’