ISABEL NEEDN’T HAVE WORRIED. There was no time for chatting at breakfast with Mr Incubator doing all the talking. No chance to catch up over lunch as she’d been cordially invited to the speaker’s special VIP luncheon. Then after her presentation she’d been whisked away on a tour of the Sacré-Coeur followed by dinner and a show in Montmartre, which, it appeared, Sean, or rather Jacob when he’d registered, hadn’t signed up for. And after all that French flavour she was good and ready for bed. To sleep on her own.
And no late-night visits. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
Turned out there was rather more of the latter than she expected.
The next day flew by with more meetings—one a real success with the promise of a hefty discount on some new high-tech monitors—and interesting talks all round. She only had one more day to dodge Sean’s questioning eyes, then he’d be heading back home and she’d have a couple of free days to shop. The French baby clothes were so gorgeous and chic, she just knew Isla would adore them; Isabel had no problem hanging on to spend time perusing and indulging her new nephew.
Right now, though, she was spruced up ready for the gala dinner and surveying the majestic ballroom for someone to hide behind. And yup, no Sean as yet. Thank goodness. She still had no idea what to say to him. But if she zipped towards the medical-rep crowd she might be able to get stuck in a conversation before he arrive—
‘Wow, Isabel. You look amazing.’
Too late. His hand was on her waist as he drew in close and pecked French un-deux-trois kisses on her cheeks. She closed her eyes briefly at the sensation of his touch on her cheek, his aftershave mingling with his sunshine and sex scent. Goddamn, the man was irresistible.
But she was measured in her response. He couldn’t hike out of her room after sex without an explanation. She needed to know what was going on in his head.
Hers was a lost cause.
‘Oh, this old thing? Just something I threw on at the last minute.’ She looked down at the midnight-blue silk shift dress that had cost the best part of a week’s salary but, hell, it had been too beautiful to resist with its teeny shimmery jewels round the halter neckline and the cutaway back. She eyed her favourite sparkly silver sandals, then her gaze strayed onto him and she almost lost her balance. The man was drop-dead hot in a black tuxedo.
Worse, she knew how hot he was out of it too. And so that wasn’t helping her equilibrium, not at all.
‘Well, you’re just too damned beautiful. Drink? Because I need one if I’m going to spend all evening looking at you, not allowed to touch you.’ He took her elbow and steered her towards the bar. ‘And I get the feeling you’re avoiding me because every time I turn around you’ve disappeared.’
She drew her arm away. ‘Oh, trust me, I know that feeling. Wham, bam and suddenly you’re gone.’
‘What are you talking about?’ He leaned over the bar and gave the barman his order, then turned back to Isabel, his eyes widening as the penny dropped. ‘Oh. You’re cross because I left you to talk to your sister in private? Really? Or are you cross because I didn’t come to your room last night?’
‘Shh … people will hear.’ Not that there were many people in earshot, but … well, really.
‘I don’t care who hears. Did you want me to come to you last night? Should I have?’
She looked down at the mahogany bar because that was safer than looking into those dark eyes and saying one thing but thinking the opposite. Yes, she’d wanted to sleep with him again. Had lain awake for hours imagining him naked in bed, the wall between them a barrier she hadn’t been able to bring herself to cross.
Because she didn’t want to want him so much, and put her world into free fall again. She didn’t want to hand over that part of herself that she’d kept safe for so long, the memories and emotions locked away. She didn’t want to feel anything. And right now she was feeling a lot of things. Mainly hot and bothered and very turned on. But more, complicated things she didn’t want. ‘Mmm.’ That should do it. Nonchalant and undefined.
‘Mmm? What the hell does that mean? Listen, Izzy, the truth is, I thought, seeing as we hadn’t spent any time together talking, that it would be … I don’t know, to use an old-fashioned word, unchivalrous to expect a booty call. But that was what you wanted? Yes? You wanted me to be unchivalrous?’ His mouth tipped up, the grin widening as his hand smoothed round from her waist to the back of her neck, sending ripples of desire through her. His mouth was close to her throat. ‘Go on, admit it. You wanted me.’
‘No.’ Yes. She couldn’t help the smile. How had it gone from complicated to sex? From difficult to downright easy? Was it that straightforward? To stop thinking and start doing? She made sure she looked right at him. ‘No.’
‘Next time, say it and mean it. You wanted a booty call?’ He nodded and smirked. ‘Noted, naughty girl.’ Then he handed her a glass of bubbles. French. Yummy. ‘So, we’re celebrating?’
‘Sorry? Why?’
‘Isla’s baby? Boy? Girl? All’s well?’
‘Sorry. Yes, a boy. Called Geo, apparently … both doing fine. She’s emailed me some photos and he’s desperately cute.’ She took out her phone and flicked through the photos, trying to stop tearing up, because Geo was so, so gorgeous and Isla looked as deliciously happy as she deserved to be. Alessi, indeed, so proud. And far from feeling jealous, Isabel just felt her heart filled with happiness for them.
Sean tilted her chin and looked at her. ‘You miss them.’
She looked away because he saw the truth inside her as if he knew her too well. ‘Yes. Of course. They’re my family. It’s my home. My place. Coming here was only ever temporary.’
He took a drink of the champagne. ‘You’re not enjoying it?’
‘Oh, yes. The people are really friendly, I’ve had some fabulous work opportunities, like this conference. Job satisfaction is high.’
He smiled. ‘The sex is pretty good too.’
‘Exceptional, yes.’ Her cheeks bloomed hot. She was still so new to this, she didn’t know the art of flirting, but Sean made it easy today. Maybe she’d misunderstood his frown the other night or the reason he’d left. Maybe he had just been giving her space. Maybe he’d forgiven her?
Forgiving was one thing, but forgetting? She imagined that would take him a whole lot longer. It would always be there between them. Wouldn’t it? God, if only she could thrash this out with Isla, the only person who knew everything.
Apart from Sean now, of course.
They walked towards a table, so beautifully decorated with silver tableware on a crisp white linen cloth and a small silver and white Christmas tree centrepiece. He nodded to the other guests sitting there, pulled out an empty chair and indicated for her to sit. ‘So tell me, Isabel, why did you really come to the other side of the world? All this way away from your family?’
She sat. ‘To develop my skills and knowledge. To take part in an international study and hopefully open a new Australian strand of it when I go back to MMU.’ That was what she’d told them over the video interview anyway. There’d been no mention of running away from her ex because his questions made her uncomfortable. Made her remember things she’d prefer to keep under lock and key.
‘So you’ll be going back when your exchange has finished?’
‘If my job’s still there—I get the feeling that Darcie might want to stay in Melbourne. Apparently she’s hooked up with Lucas.’
He grinned. ‘Really? Now that’s something I’d never have predicted. They’ll keep your job open for you too, though, surely?’
Isabel sighed. ‘Yes, I hope so. That was one of the conditions of the exchange. I’m ready to go back, to be honest. I’ve had my year of living dangerously.’
‘Not nearly dangerously enough.’ His eyebrows peaked and his smile was as dirty as could be mustered at a dinner shared with two hundred delegates. ‘There are a few things I have in mind that you could do. Only takes a bedroom. Well … not even that really. A willing mind.’
Her body was willing, it was her closed-off mind that she was having trouble with. To stop herself from slapping a kiss on that smirking mouth she desperately tried to keep the conversation on a civil track. ‘And you? Will you stay here or move on somewhere?’
He shrugged. ‘I haven’t decided yet. My contract runs for a couple more months … then I’ll make some decisions. I’m registered with a locum agency in London, so I may just stay in the UK for a while, perhaps see what Edinburgh’s like. I’m happy moving around for now but I guess at some point that’ll grow old. I like the challenge of new places, meeting new people. I like not having to commit to one place. There’s a lot more to the world than Melbourne.’
Her heart began to hammer a little uncomfortably. ‘You’ll want to settle down at some point, surely? Family?’
And she didn’t even know why she was asking him such a question … it wasn’t as if that kind of life was anything she’d been working towards. She was happy being on her own, making her own decisions, living the single life. Wasn’t she? At least she had been. A bit lonely, perhaps, but nothing serious.
Maybe that tiny ache in her gut that she’d tried to ignore was a reaction to Isla having a baby. Yes, that was it. Isabel decided she was a little unsettled by that, that was all.
The food arrived, and even though it might have seemed a little rude to ignore the other diners Isabel just wanted to sit and listen to Sean; his voice was lyrical and smooth. ‘My parents have hinted about grandchildren. No, make that, my parents ask about potential wives and babies every time I phone or email. It’s like something out of the eighteenth century. Neither of my brothers look like they’re settling down either, so I’m in the firing line.’
‘Your parents are lovely. How are they these days?’
‘Same as ever, working hard on the business. Dad’s still in accounting and Mum’s still doing his paperwork, but she craves grandkids and won’t leave me alone.’
Isabel laughed, remembering the not so subtle hints her father had been dropping about continuing the Delamere line. ‘Mine too. So hopefully they’ll be appeased by Isla’s bub and leave me alone now.’
Sean looked surprised. ‘You don’t want that for yourself?’
And risk the chance of losing everything again? ‘No.’
He paused to eat some of the amazing chicken pâté and bread, then continued with a frown, ‘But you always used to talk about having kids—a whole mess of them, I think you said. You wanted to be a different parent from yours, you were looking forward to chaos.’
‘You remember things I don’t remember saying. And anyway, people can change, can’t they?’
He put his knife down and turned kind eyes towards her. ‘Not that much, Izzy. You can’t give up on a dream because of one knockback. You help women achieve that dream every day—you can’t tell me that things have changed so irrevocably for you?’
The food was tasteless now, a lump in her throat. ‘A knockback? Is that what you call it?’
‘No. That’s not what I meant.’ His voice grew darker. ‘I could call it a lot of things. And I’m trying to deal with it … but damn it—’
‘I’m sorry, Sean.’
‘I know you are and so am I.’ He shook his head, his fists tightening around his crystal wineglass stem. ‘I promised I wouldn’t hark back to it because just thinking about it makes me angry.’
He probably would never get over it—she hadn’t, not really. But he had to deal with her lies as well as the loss. ‘I’ve given you my reasons.’
‘I’m trying hard not to be angry with you. I understand why you kept it from me. I’m angry about the whole sad scenario, Izzy. But you can’t let it scar you for ever.’
‘I’ve told you, I’m not Izzy, not any more.’
‘And I don’t know who you’re trying to kid, but I’m not buying it. Older, yes. Wiser, definitely. More confident in lots of ways … apart from intimacy, which is a shame. Because that would be cool—you deserve to have that in your life. I’m betting that inside you’re still the same girl who desperately wanted a family. A husband. The things everyone wants. And I bet that it’s worse now that Isla has it. You’re Izzy the girl, in here where it matters.’ Touching just above her heart, he seemed to resettle himself, shake the demons away, and she envied him that. Or maybe he was just better at sorting his head out? ‘Don’t think for one moment that I’m belittling anything. I’m not. I know what you went through. I can’t imagine what it was like to have it happen so young … so alone.’ His hand covered hers now and the feel of him there … just there … made everything seem so much better. ‘You said yourself, it happens. You have to look forward.’
She didn’t want to be that frightened girl any more; she’d worked hard to be someone else. But yes, he was right about the intimacy—she didn’t know how to let herself go, not on many levels. She hadn’t dared. As far as she was concerned intimacy led to heartbreak. She knew it because she’d lived it. ‘As it happens, I am trying to move forward and let go … that’s the real deep-down reason I came to England in the first place. I needed to get out and breathe a little. Get away from you.’ She nudged him playfully. ‘But then you keep turning up like a bad penny and bringing me right back to the beginning.’ Creating the same wild feelings she’d had when she was a teenager. Only this time they were more intense, more enduring. More potentially painful.
‘You think? A beginning?’ He frowned. ‘Is that what you want to do? Start again?’
She rubbed her fingers across strong, skilled hands that had brought so much life into the world. ‘I have no idea. I haven’t dared want anything. It’s too painful to risk going through all that again.’ But he almost made her feel as if she could take a chance. She looked up into eyes that seemed so understanding and she felt as if she could pour her heart out to him. But that would surely send him running to the hills. So she deflected. ‘What do you want?’
She didn’t know what she wanted him to answer. She just hoped it was somehow in sync with what her heart was telling her. That maybe, just maybe, she could work things out with Sean. Start afresh. If they both had enough courage. At least for a little while, they could have some fun and then she’d be gone and so would he.
He laughed. ‘Hell, Isabel, it’s messed up. I’ll be honest with you and say I’ve gone round in circles. I’ve worked back and forth across the world, travelling thousands of miles just to get you out of my head and each time I end up back with you. I can’t tell you straight up that I’m one hundred per cent okay with any of this. But I do know what I want right now, right this second. That’s the best I can do.’
‘Oh, yes? What do you want?’ But she had a feeling she knew already. Just one look at the gleam in his eyes …
He paused as a gentleman stepped up to the stage and said something in French. The room hushed. There was applause while another man walked up to the microphone, all big smiles and wide arms as if giving the room a warm hug. She looked across to the woman opposite her and laughed when she laughed. Hopefully at some point there’d be a translation. But all Isabel was aware of was Sean next to her. The heat. And her unanswered question.
There was a break in proceedings as the microphone screeched, a brief technical hitch, and an embarrassed smile from the compère. Suddenly Sean’s voice was in her ear, warm and deep. ‘I want to peel that dress off you … very slowly. I want you and me naked.’
‘Huh?’ She swallowed, with difficulty. Her mouth was suddenly very dry. If she turned her head she’d be mouth-to-mouth with him and the temptation to kiss him was overwhelming. Where Sean was concerned there were no half measures, no light feelings; it was intense and deep and raw.
‘I want to be inside you again. I want you, Isabel Delamere, with every ounce of my being. I want to kiss every inch of your stunning body.’ He withdrew his hand from hers and placed it on her thigh. The heat and tingles arrowed in waves straight to her belly as he circled his fingertips towards her core. ‘I don’t understand what that bloke’s talking about on stage. I don’t understand much of the stuff that’s in my head because it’s like a washing machine all churned up. But I do know that I want you. Now. And I don’t think that feeling’s going to go anywhere for a while.’
She turned and whispered back, barely able to form words. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’
Suddenly her heart began to thump in anticipation. Adrenalin surged through her veins and fired her nerves. Two people. That was what they were, just two people taking what they needed. No one was going to get hurt. She’d built that protective barrier around her heart over the last years; it was strong and sturdy; she knew what she was doing just fine. He was thinking of going travelling, she was thinking of going home. It was just two people taking what they wanted while they had the chance. They’d missed out on so much already. She dared to reach out and put her hand on his thigh too and felt the contraction of muscle at her touch. Heard his sharp intake of breath.
He growled. ‘It’s very, very bad. And yet somehow we keep ending up here. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending and accept reality. This isn’t stopping any time soon. There’s nothing either of us can do.’ He wrapped her hand in his and pushed it further up to his groin. Her fingers made contact with his growing erection. ‘Hell, Izzy, it’s bigger than both of us.’
‘Good lord, it’s very big indeed.’ She knew he was fooling around, but she didn’t want this to end. It was like a dream, a fantasy. ‘Maybe when you go back to Cambridge and I stay here for a few days things will get back to normal again.’
‘What exactly is normal? At each other’s throats? Not speaking? Shouting? Not seeing you for too many years? Not sure I want to go back to any of that. I do, however, want to go back to bed, with you. Or, not bed … I have an idea.’ He leaned in close and whispered, ‘How about now? A night together. Then, what say we play hooky tomorrow? Have some fun in Paris?’
‘We’re supposed to be working.’ Okay, so she said it out loud just for the record, but she didn’t mean it. The last thing she wanted was to be sitting in a stuffy conference room when she could be playing with Sean.
‘Who will know? You always were such a goody-two-shoes.’
He slid his hand up inside her dress, stepped fingers towards the inside of her thigh. Here in the middle of a gala. What the hell? Daddy would freak. ‘And you always were such a tearaway.’
‘No wonder your father didn’t like me. Miss Delamere, this is not how you behave at dinner.’
‘I was thinking the exact same thing.’ He was hot and hard for her. ‘Besides, I don’t care what he thinks.’
‘I wish you’d said that seventeen years ago.’
‘Okay … I’m not apologising any more for stuff that happened a long time ago. Let’s plan forward.’ Her raging heart was thumping so hard she wasn’t sure she could breathe properly. Or make much sense past take me now. But for the benefit of others on the table—if they could hear—she tried to sound normal. ‘I’d really like to go on the field trip to the homeless perinatal clinic in the morning … but then? Maybe we could duck out after?’
He nodded. ‘I’d like to take you on a boat ride down the Seine—we could have lunch. Then visit the Louvre … Dinner in the ninth arrondissement, I know a place …’ As her hand wrapped around him he tensed, eyes fluttering closed. ‘Okay. I can’t take any more. Let’s duck.’
‘Now?’ His hand was still over hers as she stroked him.
He looked as if he was in pain, or at great pains not to show any reaction at all. ‘You want to spend the next two hours listening to a man droning on about maternal care in Limoges, that’s fine. But I’d like to get some hot sex. S’il vous plaît.’
She almost choked on her champagne. ‘Mais oui. Since you asked so nicely.’
‘Okay, so stay close, no one needs to see this.’ He pulled her up and held her in front of him as they sneaked out the back way, then half walked, half ran to the lift. As he hit the down arrow he turned to her. His hand was on her thigh, warm through the thin layer of silk as he dragged the old-fashioned outer metal lift door to a close. Then the inner one. It jerked, then started to descend. ‘You have any preference in venue?’
‘None whatsoever.’ She threw her head back and laughed, feeling the rasp of his stubbled jaw on her neck. The lift smelt of old leather and Paris. Of daring and adventure. Of the exotic and sophistication. ‘How about here?’ So she wanted to get dirty with him in the lift. That was new.
‘Great minds think alike.’ He jabbed the lower-floor-car-park button then pushed her against the mirrored glass, kissing her deep and hard. She pressed against him, feeling his hardness between her thighs. His hands skimmed her body, palming her breasts, thumbs flicking gently against her nipples. Next thing, he’d untied her dress at the neck, it fell to her sides and his mouth took over from his hands, slanting over her hardened nipples.
When they hit the empty dark cavern he reached out and grabbed the metal car park sign and jammed it in between the lift doors so they wouldn’t shut. The lift wasn’t going anywhere. Neither were they. Pulling him towards her by his now unravelled black tie, she breathed, ‘Smooth move, Dr Anderson. Very smooth indeed.’
‘I like to think so.’
Then, feeling the most turned on she’d ever been in her life, she wrapped a leg round his waist. ‘So, come put that clever mouth to good use.’