‘ROSS and Ashley got engaged four months ago,’ Melanie was saying as she set out a dish of black and green olives, amongst the tomatoes, roasted peppers and cluster of wineglasses on the blue and yellow striped tablecloth. ‘Ross’s in the finance department of a big international bank. He’s expecting a posting to New York or London in the next few months, so we’ll probably be seeing even less of Ashley than we do now.’
‘Oh, really,’ murmured Veronica, struggling to maintain the minimum of polite interest when all her attention was focused elsewhere, on the tall, dark-haired man emerging from the dimness of the house, one arm slung around the thin, wiry figure of Zoe Main, the other loosely carrying an opened bottle of red wine.
She was hardly aware of Ross Bentley’s winning smile as he shook her hand, or the wheat-blond hair and golden eyes that added the gilt to his chunky good looks. Nor did she notice that the clasp of his hand lingered slightly too long as she failed to flatter him with her full attention, but his sharp-eyed fiancée did.
‘Veronica—perhaps it’s only an optical illusion, but you seem to have grown taller since we last saw each other,’ Ashley drawled from her comfortable seat at the far end of the table, the large diamond ring on her finger sparking in the sunlight as she deliberately moved her wineglass out of a patch of shade thrown by the vines twining the overhead lattice.
‘The taller the woman, the more there is to appreciate,’ Ross Bentley said in a suave murmur, which would have made Veronica cringe if she had actually been listening.
‘I understand that Melanie is insisting we observe local custom, so this is obligatory at the first meeting,’ he raised his voice to add with a smooth laugh, putting his hands on her upper arms and making a charming production of bussing her on both cheeks. Since he was several inches shorter than Veronica it made for a slightly awkward manoeuvre as she remained stiffly upright, staring past his head, only vaguely aware of the moist smear of his lips against her pale cheeks.
Visions of mortification danced in her head as she watched the pair moving away from the house. If only she could faint!
But she had a constitution that was as strong as her build, and although it felt as if much of the blood had drained out of her brain she could still pull together a few rational thoughts.
One being that if she toppled over now, she might well take the hovering golden boy down with her, which would give Ashley even more reason to pout.
She could pretend to feel faint, and blame it on the heat, but, knowing Melanie, she wouldn’t be able to simply totter her way back to the cottage, a handkerchief discreetly pressed to her face, but would be instantly sat down and very publicly fussed over.
Besides, it was too late to avoid the confrontation looming out of the old stone farmhouse, for Lucien was looking right at her—or, more precisely, looking at her and Ross Bentley, his eyes narrowing as they flicked back and forth, his features cast into a dangerously unreadable stillness.
‘Luc, I wondered where you’d got to…come over and meet Karen’s sister.’ Melanie removed the bottle of wine from his hand, giving it to Miles to pour while she one-handedly shepherded her mother and her companion over to where Veronica was standing, shoulders squared as if she were facing a firing squad.
She had a sinking feeling that she knew who he was, far too late for it to do her any good.
Veronica’s grey eyes latched onto Zoe’s bright, bird-like gaze and she concentrated hard on blocking out all knowledge of her impending humiliation.
‘H-hello, Zoe.’ She stumbled to get her clumsy tongue around the innocuous words, pushing them out in a rush. ‘Karen told me your birthday was coming up, but not that it was such a milestone one—’ Another black mark against her sister.
Zoe waved her words away with an acerbic laugh. ‘Oh, please, let’s forget about that until next week when I have to think about it!’
‘No one would believe it to look at you, anyway,’ managed Veronica, trying not to feel the searing heat of a concentrated brown stare lasering holes in her wafer-thin composure.
It was true. Melanie had said her mother was a lifelong golfer and gardener, and she looked the part—a spritely, nut-brown, vigorous woman who rarely permitted any concessions to her age. Even her short, no-nonsense white hair seemed to vibrate with energy.
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me I don’t look a day over seventy-four, which is what this silver-tongued rascal had the nerve to say!’ said Zoe, with a fond frown at the man at her side.
Now there was no more avoiding it. Slowly Veronica turned her unwilling gaze to meet that of her erstwhile lover. He was dressed all in white—crumpled pants and a carelessly buttoned short-sleeved shirt—but his aura was pulsing with ominous darkness.
Stay away from me and mine…
‘Veronica, this is my stepson, Lucien Ryder,’ Melanie was saying with an odd mixture of pride and diffidence. ‘Luc lived with us for a few years before Sophie was born—until he went to Oxford University on a scholarship when he was sixteen. He stayed on in Europe after he graduated, doing as brilliantly at business as he did at university—but for all that he still considers himself a Kiwi at heart!’
Oh, God, she had chosen to have her wild, anonymous fling with Melanie’s stepson!
She had speculated that he might be British or Canadian, but never in a million years had Veronica dreamed that her excitingly exotic Frenchman would turn out to be one of her own countrymen—a common-or-garden New Zealander! Veronica felt an absurd sense of betrayal. How he must have been laughing at her in Paris!
Lucien made no pretence of politely shaking her hand. He went straight for the jugular, sliding his arms around her back and drawing her against his chest, kissing her cheeks with leisurely deliberation once, twice, three times, aiming the light brush of his mouth just below her ear lobe in each case, where he knew from experience she was ultra-sensitive to a caressing touch.
As a greeting it might have borne an outward resemblance to a sexless salute between new acquaintances, but the message transmitted to her senses was far from innocent. The lazy, rubbing motion of his jaw was like being scent-marked by a big cat and Veronica gave a little, soundless squeak, emerging flushed and breathless as he dropped his arms, but remained threateningly close.
Zoe coughed as Melanie continued rather uncertainly with her introduction, ‘Luc, this is Karen’s sister, Veronica, who Karen said very kindly leapt into the breach as soon as she heard about my crisis, and insisted on being my substitute right arm while I’m assembling the research for this new book…’
I did? I am? Veronica was too dazed to question this distortion of the facts, while Zoe’s second cough sounded more like a smothered laugh.
‘Bonsoir, M’mselle Veronica.’ The slow and lazy intonation combined with the gleam of malice in the dark brown eyes set alarm signals pinging all over her body, his use of French setting her teeth on edge, particularly the heavily accented version of her name. So what if he made it sound sinfully sexy?
‘Kia ora, Lucien,’ she pointedly responded with the traditional Kiwi salutation, trying to pitch her voice to the level of casual amusement without letting it tip over into sarcasm.
Melanie rushed in to fill the pause before it threatened to become awkward. ‘We weren’t expecting Luc for another couple of days but he arrived a little while before you did, Veronica—and promptly crashed out on his bed! And no wonder he’s exhausted—this is his first real break in years. He works too hard in my opinion, and, on top of all that high-pressure living, he now has all this added stress—’ She broke off, biting her lip and casting a guilty look at her stepson.
‘Don’t worry, Melanie, I have a tried-and-true method of coping with pressure,’ he interposed smoothly, not taking his eyes off Veronica’s pale face, watching the colour mount her face as he said: ‘You might call it one of man’s most cherished stress-relievers.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve at last taken my advice and started doing yoga—’
‘Don’t be naïve, Mel, he’s a twenty-nine-year-old male in his full-blooded prime—he’s talking about sex,’ cackled Zoe.
‘Oh.’ Melanie looked flustered, and then slightly alarmed. ‘You didn’t—you haven’t been getting yourself any deeper into complications, have you?’ she ventured tentatively.
‘Not the kind you’re worrying about, no,’ he said, to her evident relief. ‘I’ve been out of London for the past few days, remember.’
‘Oh, of course—you decided to forget your flights and come down via Paris instead. So you and Veronica must have been staying there at the same time, Luc—it’s a wonder you didn’t run across each other. It’s because Luc owns an apartment in the building that he heard the short-term rental was coming up for sale and persuaded us to buy it as a good investment,’ she told Veronica, who hadn’t realised that the Reeds owned the Paris apartment themselves. ‘He got it at a marvellous price for us. He’s such a cut-throat negotiator…’
‘And yet he looks so harmless.’ She couldn’t help the sarcastic comment. He was still looking at her with that bone-melting intensity, like a predator contemplating a tasty morsel.
‘I’m just a big pussy-cat,’ he purred at her, as if he could read her mind. ‘Actually, Veronica and I did have a brief encounter in the rue de Birague yesterday,’ he said, with what she briefly mistook for appalling candour. ‘She wanted to know the best place to watch the fireworks…’
‘Oh, what a pity you didn’t tell us about your change of plans, Luc. I could have suggested you take Veronica under your wing,’ said Melanie innocently. ‘It was her first time in Paris, you know.’
‘I rather gathered that from her schoolgirl attempts to communicate.’
Veronica’s lips tightened at the deliberate goad. ‘I thought your stepson was French, and at the time he didn’t see fit to enlighten me.’
While Melanie looked disconcerted at the revelation, Zoe’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘So that’s why you pokered up when he said hello? Don’t take it personally, girl, he was probably just trying to keep an extra-low profile, and that’s not so easy in this day and age. You’d be shocked at the ridiculous lengths some people will go to for money, or their fifteen minutes of fame…’
Oh, no, I wouldn’t, thought Veronica with a little shudder. She could only hope that Neil had lost his bid to drag her into the spotlight to relive the embarrassing lowlights of their relationship by the time she flew home.
‘Come and try this wine that Luc brought with him, Melanie,’ Miles broke in, drawing them over to the table where he sat with Ashley and Ross, sipping at a pale rosé. ‘It’s a local one. I think it might be worth a mention in your book.’
As Ross contributed his opinion as a self-proclaimed expert Luc linked arms with Zoe to escort her to her chair and Veronica jumped as his other hand hooked under her elbow, his sun-warmed arm sliding against hers as he anchored her to his side.
‘Relax,’ he murmured, inclining his head until a loose strand of jet-black hair drifted to cling against the mahogany tresses falling in smooth layers around her face. ‘Don’t be so jumpy, or you’ll make them suspicious.’
She was the one who was suddenly suspicious. ‘I thought you wanted me to rue the day,’ she muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
‘Ah, but that’s when I thought you were some ratbag freelance journalist out to get me.’
‘I’d already got you,’ she couldn’t help retorting.
‘But you weren’t scheming to sell me down the river over it…you really hadn’t looked at that newspaper. You had no idea who I was until just now.’ Even in an undertone his voice was rich with a gloating satisfaction. He took such pleasure in her ignorance that she was perversely annoyed.
‘Didn’t I?’ she murmured unwisely, savouring the way his head snapped sideways as she pulled her arm free and quickly slipped onto the empty chair between Sophie and Melanie. Serve him right for suspecting her in the first place.
To her frustration he waited until she was seated before dragging an empty chair around and squeezing it in between her and Sophie, hitching it forward with little bunny-hops of his legs that had the little girl in giggles as she was shunted into making room for him. Perforce, Veronica had to ease aside also, but not far enough to avoid the constant, casual brush of his shoulder and the not-so-casual shift of his hard calf against hers beneath the hanging tablecloth.
Although Veronica guessed she must not have seen him very often in her young life, Sophie obviously thought the world of Luc, for after a shy start she was soon peppering him with questions, to which he patiently responded.
‘Luc has been sending her regular emails at school,’ Melanie confided to Veronica, ‘ever since she wrote to him a few years ago. I didn’t know if he’d find the time to reply, let alone bother to keep it up, but he’s been absolutely marvellous, even helping her with some of her school assignments…which is more than her sister ever did for her,’ she added, with a pointed look across the table.
‘Luc’s the genius, it’s easy for him,’ said Ashley carelessly. ‘I was never any good at ordinary schoolwork. I’m the artistic type—I work on the visual plane.’
‘You could still find time to write occasionally, and not only to Sophie…’
‘What with having to work in the gallery and studying and constantly working towards my next exhibition—not to mention all Ross’s social obligations—I don’t have any spare time,’ was the plaintive reply.
‘What kind of painting do you do?’ asked Veronica politely.
Ashley gave her a patronising look. ‘I’m not a painter. I don’t restrict myself to revisiting dead conventions; I’m an environmental constructionist—I conceptualise space and remodel it with mixed-media and sculptural forms.’
‘Ashley is an installation artist,’ translated Luc, taking pity on Veronica’s look of confusion. ‘You know the kind of thing—covering objects in bubble-wrap, running hours of looped video in a room with the furniture glued to the ceiling…’
‘Oh, sorry, Ashley, I really don’t know much about modern art,’ Veronica said humbly, thinking it sounded quite ghastly. ‘I did enjoy the Picasso Museum in Paris, though.’
Her attempt to find common ground went down like a lead balloon. ‘Oh, Picasso—he’s accessible to pretty well everyone these days.’ Ashley shrugged.
‘Ashley prides herself on her inaccessibility,’ said Luc, his voice so exquisitely deadpan that Veronica glanced sideways at him, and almost made the mistake of laughing.
Ashley’s pretty face tensed, her blue eyes narrowing in fleeting doubt under the funky fringe of her bleached blonde hair before she decided to take the comment at its face value. ‘The struggle to be understood is part of the challenge of being on the cutting edge of art,’ she declared loftily.
‘Installation art is a hot-button for sponsorship in the Melbourne cultural scene at the moment,’ contributed Ross, pouring himself another glass of wine and reaching for the olives. ‘If you can get yourself noticed you can virtually write your own cheques. If I get posted to London, Ryder, perhaps you might be able to use some of your financial connections to help get sponsorship for an exhibition of Ash’s work,’ he said to Lucien, with an ingratiating smile that suggested he was well aware of the potential value of such contacts to himself.
‘Perhaps.’ Lucien’s voice was pleasant but noncommittal and Veronica, acutely attuned to every nuance of his tone, sensed his instinctive dislike of the other man.
Ashley flushed.
‘Luc’s got billions, he could afford to sponsor me himself, if he wasn’t such a philistine,’ she said, with a careless toss of her head.
‘No, he hasn’t, he’s only a millionaire,’ piped up Sophie. ‘I looked it up on the web. A billion is a thousand million and Luc only has—’
‘Sophie!’ her mother said sharply. ‘It’s rude to talk how much money people have right in front of them.’
‘That’s right, you should be like everyone else and do it sneakily, behind my back,’ grinned Lucien, giving Sophie a wink and making Melanie pinken.
‘Ashley said it first,’ the little girl was emboldened to say, ‘and she made a mistake, so I had to say something. Anyway, that’s what Luc does…he talks to people all the time about how much money they have and how much of his money they need to make their things work. That’s not rude, that’s just business.’
‘She means I’m a venture capitalist,’ said Lucien, catching the flicker of Veronica’s dark lashes. ‘I invest in other people’s ideas.’
He made it sound as simple as putting money in the bank, but Veronica knew that if he was making millions he was either incredibly astute or fantastically lucky…or a combination of both.
‘That’s a very high-risk field, isn’t it?’ she felt compelled to ask, wondering if a controversial investment gone wrong was the reason he was ducking the press.
He shrugged. ‘No risk, no gain—surely you subscribe to that philosophy yourself…’It was a statement, not a question, the sensuality sheathed in his slow smile hinting of things that had nothing to do with finance.
Veronica chose to ignore the sly suggestions. ‘What kind of ideas do you invest in?’
‘Whatever happens to interest me at the time. I’m a maverick.’ His shoulder brushed her arm as he stretched across the table to snag the bottle that Ross had left at his elbow and offer to top up her almost-empty glass.
‘Oh, I don’t know that I should—’ she said weakly, denying the temptation offered by the deliciously chilled nectar. She hadn’t been drunk last night, but she had certainly been uninhibited. She didn’t dare risk the reappearance of the wild, wanton woman she thought that she had left in Paris.
‘Go on, say yes, you know you want it,’ Lucien said silkily, tilting the bottle and emptying it into her glass. ‘Don’t deny yourself pleasure just because you think it might be bad for you. Sometimes bad is very, very good.’
His words shivered over her, something warm and heavy coiling and uncoiling in her stomach. She was beginning to realise that she had made a silly mistake in not instantly acknowledging she’d spent the evening in his company, and laughing it off to the Reeds as just one of those crazy things. That would have been the mature, sophisticated thing to do. Instead, by hiding it, she had made it into something more important than it was, an intimate secret between the two of them, compounding her embarrassment if it ever came out—and handing Luc a licence to torment her for his own amusement.
‘Yes, you’d better have something to wash down the you-know-what,’ Sophie reminded her. ‘Didn’t you say you had something for Veronica, Gran?’ she urged.
‘Ah, yes, the Mas de Bonnard rite of passage,’ intoned Miles, lifting a little covered pottery dish painted in the bright colours of Provence and passing it along the table to his mother-in-law.
‘Fred and I used to come here on holiday every winter for years,’ said Zoe reminiscently as she cradled the dish. ‘We loved it so much we were even talking about buying Mas de Bonnard and retiring here to run a B&B—we ran a motel, you see, and Fred was a cook. He died just before his sixty-fifth birthday, but I knew he wouldn’t want me to stop coming, so I’ve been making it a kind of pilgrimage ever since. We have lots of friends here amongst the locals over the years, which is why we know where to go for the best of everything and dear Fred did love his marinated snails…’
There was evidently no escaping her initiation, and Veronica was the cynosure of all eyes as she took up a toothpick and dutifully paid her tribute to Fred, chewing her way through the small, chilled delicacy, relieved to discover that all she could taste was the spicy marinade, the boiled snail having a texture similar to squid. Out of sheer bravado, because she sensed Lucien thought she wouldn’t, she even ate a second, but hastily waved away his sly offer to fetch her a plate.
‘Now you’re one of us,’ said Sophie, with satisfaction. ‘I bet Karen wouldn’t have done it. She’d have squealed and claimed it was too yucky.’ She obviously remembered how fastidious her former nanny had been about food.
‘Or complained about the number of calories,’ smiled Veronica.
That brought the conversation around to Karen’s foray into modelling and from Melanie’s comments it was obvious that, far from giving her sister a choice, Karen had freely offered Veronica’s services before she had ever arrived in England. It was Melanie who had been dubious about encroaching on Veronica’s holiday and Karen who had earnestly assured her that it was no problem, for Veronica considered it in the nature of a working vacation anyway, and the free accommodation ample compensation for her time.
Veronica saw little point in revealing how Karen had twisted the facts to suit herself. Even if she wanted to turn tail and run at the daunting prospect of seeing Lucien each day, she knew she was well and truly trapped by her own sense of responsibility.
It was the same strong sense of duty that had kept her hostage on her parents’ farm when she had envisaged a very different future for herself.
‘How convenient for Karen,’ Lucien was commenting. ‘You know, you’ll probably have to look for a new assistant soon anyway, if she’s really been bitten by the modelling bug and not just doing it for a bit of fun.’
‘I know, but I don’t even want to have to think about it just yet,’ said Melanie. ‘Karen’s always fitted in so well…but I knew there’d come a time when she’d get restless and want to move on, and the job is changing, too. There’s less personal and more office work involved now, which I know isn’t really her thing…’
But a certain inflection in Lucien’s voice along with the aptness of his observation had brought Veronica’s head around. ‘Do you know Karen?’
His eyelids drooped, thick black lashes veiling his gaze. ‘We’ve met a few times when she’s been in London with Melanie.’ And before another question could form in her mind, let alone her tongue, he added, ‘If you’re here on a working holiday, what is it exactly that you do, Veronica?’
‘I thought you were some kind of accountant for your parents,’ said Ashley languidly, making it sound like a sinecure. ‘Except—didn’t Karen say you weren’t actually qualified?’
‘I’m not a chartered accountant, if that’s what you mean,’ said Veronica evenly. ‘I left school to help Mum and Dad sell fresh produce from their organic farm, and took accounting courses by correspondence so I could handle their bookkeeping. Gradually I started doing the books for other friends and neighbours with rural small businesses as well.’ Because her parents hadn’t been able to afford to pay her, she had had to invent ways to earn herself some money and contribute to the household expenses, inadvertently providing herself with the means and incentive to finally assert her independence.
She had loved school and longed to go on to university, but at the time her parents had been struggling, so she had quietly put her dreams of an independent career on hold and stayed home on the farm. As their first-born it was taken for granted that she would be a pillar of strength. Her sister and brother were years younger and had still had to finish their schooling. Her hard-working parents hadn’t quite known how they had managed to produce such an ethereal beauty as Karen between sensible, brainy Veronica and brawny, down-to-earth John—who was a farmer from the day he could first stick his chubby toddler’s foot in a gumboot. So when the organic food trade had begun to take off and their money problems had eased a little, it was effervescent Karen, scraping through with minimum marks, who had been allowed to go straight from school to university in Auckland, even though she had no real ambition to study, and had dropped out the instant the Reeds had offered her a full-time job looking after Sophie.
‘Now that organically grown food is in such big demand globally, your parents must be glad that they were in the vanguard of the revolution,’ said Melanie knowledgeably, picking up a paper fan to direct a cooling breeze through her gauze sling. ‘Bell Farm has got itself a solid reputation for quality goods.’
‘Karen showed me the website for the farm that you designed. It’s very impressive,’ said Miles, pulling the cork out of another bottle of wine. ‘She said you took all the photographs for it yourself.’
‘It’s a hobby of mine.’ She shrugged, flushing with pleasure at his praise. ‘Bell Farm gets a lot of online orders now, especially for our Christmas gift packs. In fact, that’s what gave me the idea for my new business. Now that my parents have hired a new business manager and my brother has left school to work full-time on the farm, I’m moving up to Auckland to concentrate on a mail-order gift-buying service that I’ve been building up online over the past couple of years.’ Her enthusiasm made her temporarily forget her self-consciousness, her freckled face losing its preoccupied reserve and coming alive with eagerness as Miles urged her on with an interested question while Ashley giggled something in Ross’s ear.
‘It’s for corporate and PR purposes as well as people looking for the individual touch, something small but exclusive, handcrafted and distinctive—the kind of curio you don’t usually find in shops outside the local area of production. It started off New Zealand-themed, but now I have a few friends who live abroad sourcing items for me, and I’ve had enough overseas orders to enable me to look at buying from other markets and launching an international online service.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly done the right thing coming here. You’ll find plenty of ideas at the local markets around the Vaucluse,’ Melanie said, selecting a plump green olive glistening with herb-flecked dressing to pop in her mouth. ‘Of course a great deal of what’s on offer is far too touristy for your purposes, but there’s some really good, genuine craftwork to be had if you strike the right time and place, or go off the beaten track a bit. I’m sure Mum can help you there and, actually, it’ll really fit in with much of what I was going to ask you to do, because my new book is going to be a tour of some of the food markets of France and I had planned to dash thither and yon in the car to pick up information and samples from markets and specialty food producers so that I can decide where I want to focus my research.’
It didn’t sound too onerous, and Veronica’s fears of spending the greater part of the beginning of her holiday in Provence cooped up inside were gratefully dispelled. And besides, Karen would soon be arriving to take back her rightful duties.
‘So you’re going global,’ teased Miles. ‘Are you aiming to be New Zealand’s next dot.com millionaire?’
‘I don’t think that’s really likely,’ smiled Veronica. ‘But I’ve already had some important orders from Kiwi multinational companies.’
‘Guts and money, I suppose you must need equal amounts of both to do what you’re doing,’ Zoe guessed shrewdly.
‘Well, it is a bit scary, but in a good way,’ Veronica admitted. ‘I’ve been planning it for years so I’m fairly confident I’m not over-extending myself. If things work out I’ll probably take on a partner at some point, to free myself up to travel on more buying trips.’
‘If you want expert advice you should talk to Luc,’ said Melanie. ‘He’s in a perfect position to know. He made his first fortune in currency speculation and doubled it backing Internet start-ups.’
Veronica immediately felt her skin prickle with renewed tension. For a few minutes she had forgotten the major complication at her side. He had been talking to Sophie, but his swift answer showed that he was perfectly able to multitask.
‘You forget that I also lost it all the same way,’ said Luc drily.
‘Yes, but you were only twenty. You soon made it all back again, and more,’ said Melanie proudly. ‘Honestly, Veronica, he’s invested in new Internet companies all over the world, so he knows what he’s talking about. And he’s right here, so why not take shameless advantage of his prime area of expertise?’
Veronica thought she already had! Half turned away from him, she heard a smothered laugh that feathered hot breath over her bare shoulder, and was mortified to know that he was thinking the same thing.
‘No, really,’ she choked. ‘Enough people have had their holidays disrupted. I don’t want to disturb him on his break—’
‘I’m already disrupted and disturbed,’ he growled.
‘Oh, go on, Luc, it might help stop you brooding about that—about what’s happened,’ Melanie said, adding in an unfortunate choice of words, ‘and give you a chance to sink your teeth back into something that excites you…’
‘Mmm, that’s very true…’ he mused wickedly, and Veronica didn’t dare look at him for fear her head would explode with the heat of her blushes, her breasts tingling at the memory of the luscious bites he had used to arouse and appease their mutual hunger. She suddenly felt his hand on her upper arm, his knuckles skimming the tender side of her breast as his fingers curled into her warm skin, tugging her inexorably around to meet his dark, taunting gaze. ‘What do you think, Veronica? Do you think you might benefit from a personal demonstration of my…exciting expertise?’
‘You see, Veronica?’ Melanie said happily. ‘Isn’t it lucky that you and Luc are down here at the same time? He’s usually a very difficult man to pin down. It couldn’t have been better if you planned for it to happen this way.’
At her words, Luc’s fingers tightened on Veronica’s soft flesh, his face hardening, throwing his bold nose into sharp relief as his eyebrows lowered over eyes that swarmed with sudden suspicion.
She could read him like a book, she realised in furious exasperation. Now he was actually wondering if it had all been some giant conspiracy on her part.
‘Oh, dear—now I’m found out I suppose I should confess that it’s not your expertise I’m after, just your money,’ she oozed, pouring fuel onto the smouldering fire.
His eyes narrowed and she smiled with lots of teeth.
‘I was going to ask for a few million, but now that I know you’re not the fabulous billionaire I thought you were, I suppose I’ll have to settle for a measly few hundred thousand. If you could make the cheque out to cash,’ she suggested sweetly, ‘I’ll bank it straight into my numbered Swiss account.’
‘Very amusing,’ he grunted as the rest of the table responded to the joke.
She rounded her widely spaced grey eyes and made a show of nibbling on her lower lip. ‘But…don’t you believe me?’
His fingers trailed down to rest in the sensitive crease of her inner elbow, lightly teasing at the nerve endings. ‘I believe you’re playing a dangerous game…and wonder if you’ve considered all the consequences…’
Of course she hadn’t, she had got carried away by the sheer exhilaration of paying him back for his unworthy suspicions. His suggestive threat made her realise that she had just done the equivalent of putting her head in the lion’s mouth and Veronica quickly withdrew it, throwing out a question to Zoe about the St Romain, which turned the conversation general and allowed her to sink back into polite silence.
A little while later she excused herself with the plea of being tired, and agreed to join Melanie for coffee late in the morning to discuss her plans for the next few days.
As she was leaving Zoe pressed on her a jar of fresh apricot jam, which she had made to an old Provence recipe with fruit harvested from the trees in the garden, to have with her breakfast.
‘Oh, are you allowed to pick the fruit?’ said Veronica, thinking of the laden branches of the greengage tree beside the cottage.
Zoe’s sun-creased face split in a rapturous smile. ‘The owners always let me do a bit in the gardens while I was here and take what little I wanted to use for myself, but now I don’t have to even think about it. Luc bought Mas de Bonnard a few months ago and is insisting on signing it over to me as a birthday present, extravagant lad that he is—not that I’ve agreed to accept it, yet…’
‘Liar.’ The extravagant boy grinned, getting lazily to his feet. ‘You’ve already got Miles doing renovations and Melanie planning to set a book here. You’re going to love being able to come and go as you please—you can spend the whole of the New Zealand winter here, if you like—and I’ll bet there’ll never be any shortage of family and friends to keep you company.’
Veronica had thought he was only standing up to be polite, or to stretch his long limbs, but instead he started to turn when she did.
‘I’ll walk down with you. I need to get something from my car,’ he said casually as she opened her mouth to reject the need for an escort.
‘Could you go round by way of the pool?’ said Melanie. ‘I meant to show Veronica where it was. No, not you, Sophie, I want you to help Ashley get the table set and the vegetables ready for dinner, and no face-pulling either of you, you know what the deal is—while I’m in this sling I can’t lift things out of the oven, or chop safely.’
Veronica barely glanced at the inviting blue waters of the big, rectangular swimming pool, walking briskly around the white-paved edge and along the winding path through the shrubbery, past a huge vegetable garden next to a big, stone cistern of water and back onto a recognisable part of the driveway, her nervousness heightened by Luc’s brief directions framed in deafening silence.
She was surprised and relieved when he turned out to have been telling the truth and peeled off towards his parked car, leaving Veronica to quicken her pace and hurry off to the cottage, entering it with a thumping heart, and the feeling that she had just dodged a bullet.
She went into the deep recess of the bathroom and splashed water on her flushed face, leaving the dewy sheen of droplets to evaporate on her skin. Outside the sun was still shining as it dropped lower in the cloudless sky, radiating heat to the baked earth, but the drawn shutters made the interior of the cottage soothingly dim, so that when she first came out of the bedroom raking her hands through her thick hair to lift it away from her hot scalp, she didn’t immediately see the man braced against the frame of the sliding door she had left open to the faint breeze.
She gasped as she saw the shimmer of his white clothes and his brown arms flex as he shifted stance, leaning in across the threshold.
‘Why so shocked? Surely you were expecting me. Did you really think I was going to let you off that easily?’