is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and

bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant

success with readers worldwide. Since her first

book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a

chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare

treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may

have missed. In every case, seduction and passion

with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

The Frenchman’s Love-Child
Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

A QUESTIONING frown in his keen dark eyes, Christien Laroche studied the portrait of his late great-aunt, Solange. A quiet woman who had never made a wave in her life, Solange had nonetheless startled her entire family with the contents of her will.

‘Extraordinary!’ a cousin commented with fierce disapproval. ‘What could Solange have been thinking of?’

‘It grieves me to say it but my poor sister’s mind must have weakened towards the end,’ an aghast brother of the deceased lamented.

‘Vraiment! To leave a piece of the Duvernay estate away from her own family and favour a foreigner instead…it is unbelievable!’ another exclaimed in outrage.

In a more laid-back mood, Christien would have been struggling not to laugh at the genuine horror that his relatives were exhibiting. Wealth had not lessened their passionate attachment to the family estate for that atavistic link back to the very land itself still ran deep and strong in every French soul. But they were all overreacting for the bequest was tiny in terms of monetary worth. The Duvernay estate ran to many thousands of acres and the property in question was a little cottage on a mere patch of ground. Even so, Christien had also been angered by a bequest that he considered both regrettable and highly inappropriate. Why had his great-aunt left anything at all to a young woman she had only met a few times several years earlier? That was the biggest mystery and one he would have given much to comprehend.

‘Indeed, Solange must have been very ill for her will is a terrible insult to my feelings,’ his widowed mother, Matilde, complained tearfully. ‘That girl’s father murdered my husband, yet my own aunt has rewarded her!’

Lean, strong face grim at the speed with which his parent had made that unfortunate connection, Christien remained by the elegant windows that overlooked Duvernay’s glorious gardens while the lady who acted as his mother’s companion comforted the weeping older woman. Although almost four years had passed since his father’s death, Matilde Laroche still lived behind lowered blinds in her huge Paris apartment, wore the dark colours of mourning and rarely went out or entertained. Christien was now challenged to recall that his mother had once been an outgoing personality with a warm sense of humour. Indeed in the radius of her unending grief he felt helpless for neither counselling nor medication had managed to alleviate her suffering to any appreciable degree.

At the same time, it was only fair to acknowledge that Matilde Laroche had suffered a devastating loss. His parents had been childhood sweethearts and lifelong best friends and their marriage had been one of unusual intimacy. Furthermore, his father had only been fifty-four when he died. A prominent banker, Henri Laroche had rejoiced in the vigour and health of a man in the very prime of life. However, that had not protected Christien’s father from a cruelly premature and pointless death at the hands of a drunk driver.

That drunken driver had been Tabitha Burnside’s father, Gerry. In all, five families had been shattered that appalling night by just one car accident and Henri Laroche had not been the only casualty. Gerry Burnside had also managed to kill himself, four of his passengers and leave a fifth seriously injured, who later died.

That fatal summer, four English families had been sharing the rambling farmhouse situated just down the hill from the imposing Laroche vacation home in the Dordogne. His late father had remarked that he should have bought the property himself to prevent it being occupied throughout the season by a horde of noisy holiday-makers. Naturally no Laroche would have dreamt of mixing with tourists, whose sole idea of amusement seemed to rest on getting sunburnt, drunk and eating too much. However, his parents had only stayed at their villa on a couple of occasions that summer and most weeks, aside of visits from his friends and initially from his lover at the time, Christien had been left in peace to work.

There had been three Burnsides in the large party staying at the farmhouse: Gerry Burnside, his youthful second wife, Lisa, and his daughter from his first marriage, Tabby. Before Christien had met Tabby, he had only ever seen the two young women at a distance and would not have been able to distinguish one from the other. Both Lisa and Tabby had been shapely blondes and, not only had he initially assumed that they were sisters he had also assumed that they were of a similar age. He had had no idea whatsoever that one of them had been still only a schoolgirl…

Of course, even at a distance, Tabby had had promiscuous tramp written all over her, Christien conceded wryly, his wide sensual mouth curling with disdain. Like most young males in the grip of rampant lust, however, he had still been an eager participant in all that had followed. Tabby’s nude nightly swimming sessions in the gîte’s underwater-lit pool could only have been staged for his benefit. He would not have stayed home specially to watch her, but, on the evenings that he had enjoyed a glass of wine on the villa terrace, her provocative displays of her full breasts and deliciously curved bottom had provided him with considerable entertainment.

He didn’t blame himself for enjoying the view. Any guy would have got hot and hard watching her flaunt her charms. Any guy would have decided that, at the first opportunity, he would take immediate advantage of so obvious an invitation. Of course, it had not occurred to Christien then to wonder why Tabby so often stayed at home while the rest of the party dined out every evening. Only with hindsight had he appreciated that she must have been targeting him all along. Of course, she had first seen him in the village and would soon have found out who he was and, perhaps more crucially, what he was worth. Realising that the Laroche villa overlooked the pool at the farmhouse, she had guessed that sooner or later he was certain to catch a glimpse of her bathing naked.

That from the outset Tabby should have set out to entrap him surprised Christien not at all. Even as a teenager, he had learnt that women found his sleek, dark good looks irresistible and were capable of going to extraordinary lengths to attract his attention. But he had never been vain about his phenomenal success with the female sex. He was well aware that sex and money together provided a powerful draw. He had been born very, very rich. He was an only child, born to two wealthy only children and, as an adult, he had become even richer.

Blessed with the Laroche talent for making money and sensational entrepreneurial skills, Christien had dropped out of university at the age of twenty. Within nine months, he had made his first million in business. Five years on from there, sole owner of an international airline that was breaking all profit records, and suffering from a certain amount of burn-out from working a seven-day week, Christien had been getting bored. That summer, he had been ripe for something a little different and Tabby had more than satisfied him in that department.

Tabby had played no games and she had come to him on his terms. He had had her on the first date. Six weeks of the wildest sex he had ever experienced had followed. He had been obsessed with her. Her strange insistence on not staying the night in his bed and keeping their entanglement a secret from her family and their friends had added an illicit thrill to their every encounter. What he would never, ever forget, however, was that after only six weeks of explosive sexual fulfilment he had been ready to propose marriage so that he could have access to that fabulous body of hers at all hours of the day.

Marriage! Christien still shuddered at that degrading recollection. His meteoric IQ rating had not done him much good while the urge to indulge his powerful libido had overruled every other restraint. The shattering discovery that he had been making love to a schoolgirl had blown him away. A schoolgirl of seventeen, who was a compulsive liar!

While Veronique had been agonising over how best he might protect himself from the threat of a horrendous scandal, Christien had still been so lost in lust that he had decided that he could cope with a teenage wife whom he would teach to tell the truth and keep in bed most of the time anyway. But, the next day, he had seen his potential child bride behaving like a slut with a spotty youth on a motorbike and, all rage, disbelief and disgust aside, he had immediately broken free of his obsession…

‘If that Burnside girl sets foot on Laroche soil, it will dishonour your father’s memory!’ Matilde Laroche protested.

Drawn from his brooding recollections with a vengeance, Christien almost winced at the tearful note in his mother’s overwrought exclamation. ‘There is no question of that happening,’ he asserted with soothing conviction. ‘She will receive an offer to sell the property back to the estate and she will naturally accept the money.’

‘This matter is so unpleasant for you to deal with,’ Veronique remarked in a sympathetic and discreet murmur at his side. ‘Allow me to take care of it for you.’

‘As always you are generous, but in this case there is no need.’ Christien surveyed the beautiful, elegant brunette he planned to marry with open appreciation.

Veronique Giraud was everything a Laroche wife should be. He had known her all his life and their backgrounds were similar. A corporate lawyer, she was an excellent hostess as well as being tolerant of her future mother-in-law’s emotional fragility. But neither love nor lust featured in Christien’s relationship with his fiancée. Both of them considered mutual respect and honesty of greater importance. Although Veronique was naturally willing to give him children, she had little enthusiasm for physical intimacy and had already made it clear that she would prefer him to satisfy his needs with a mistress.

Christien was quite content with that arrangement. Indeed the knowledge that even marriage would not deprive him of that valuable male freedom to essentially do as he liked, when he liked, had very much increased his willingness to embrace the matrimonial bond.

In little more than a month, he would be over in London on business. He would pay Tabby Burnside a visit and offer to buy the cottage back from her. No doubt she would feel flattered by his personal attention. He wondered what she looked like some years on…faded? At only twenty-one? He almost shrugged. What did it matter to him? But he also smiled.

A house in France, Tabby reflected dreamily, a place of their own in the sun…

‘Of course, you’ll sell the old lady’s cottage for the best price you can get,’ Alison Davies assumed on her niece’s behalf. ‘It’ll fetch a healthy sum.’

Fresh, clean country air in exchange for the city traffic fumes that she was convinced had made her toddler son prone to asthma, Tabby thought happily.

‘You and Jake will have something to put away for a rainy day.’ Her aunt, a slender brunette with sensible grey eyes, nodded with approval at that idea.

Lost in her own thoughts, Tabby was still mulling over the extraordinary fact that Solange Roussel had left her a French property. It was fate, it had to be. Of that latter reality, Tabby was convinced. Her son had French blood in his veins and now, by an immense stroke of good fortune and when she least expected it, she had inherited a home for them both on French soil. Of course that was meant to be! Who could possibly doubt it? She looked into the small back garden where Jake was playing. He was an enchanting child with mischievous brown eyes, skin with a warm olive tone and a shock of silky dark curls. His asthma was only mild at present, but who could say how much worse it might get if they remained in London?

The same day that the letter from the French notaire had arrived to inform her of her inheritance, Tabby had begun planning a new life for herself and her child in France. After all, the timing could not have been more perfect: Tabby had been desperate to come up with an acceptable excuse for moving out of her aunt’s comfortable town house. Alison Davies was only ten years older than her niece. When, in the wake of her father’s death, Tabby had been left penniless and pregnant into the bargain, Alison had offered her niece a home. Tabby was very aware of how great a debt of gratitude she owed to the other woman.

But, just a week earlier, Tabby had overheard a heated exchange between Alison and her boyfriend, Edward, which had left her squirming with guilty discomfiture. Edward was going to take a year out from work to travel. Tabby had already known that and she had also been aware that her aunt had decided not to accompany him. What Tabby had not realised, until she accidentally heard the couple arguing, was that Alison Davies might be denying herself her heart’s desire sooner than ask her niece to find somewhere else to live.

‘You don’t need to use up your precious savings! Thanks to your parents you own this house and you could rent it out for a small fortune while we were abroad. That would cover all your expenses,’ Edward had been pointing out forcefully in the kitchen when Tabby, having returned from her evening job, had been fumbling for her key outside the back door.

‘We’ve been over this before,’ Alison had been protesting unhappily. ‘I just can’t ask Tabby to move out so that I can offer this place to strangers. She can’t afford decent accommodation—’

‘And whose fault is that? She got pregnant at seventeen and now she’s paying for her foolish mistake!’ Edward had slammed back angrily. ‘Does that mean we have to pay for it too? Isn’t it bad enough that we’re rarely alone together and that when we are you’re always babysitting her kid?’

Tabby was still terribly hurt and mortified by the memory of that biting censure. But she regarded it as justifiable criticism. She felt that she ought to have seen for herself that she had overstayed her welcome in her aunt’s home. She was appalled that Alison should have been prepared to make such a sacrifice on her behalf, for her aunt had already been very generous to her. Indeed, all that Tabby could now think about was moving out as soon as was humanly possible. Only then would Alison feel free to do as she liked with her own life and her own home. At the same time, however, she did not want the other woman to suspect that she might have overheard that revealing dialogue.

‘I’m afraid I still can’t stop wondering why some elderly French lady should have remembered you in her will,’ Alison Davies confided with a bemused shake of her head.

Dragged out of her own preoccupied thoughts by the raising of that topic yet again, Tabby screened her expressive green eyes and looped a stray strand of caramel-blonde hair back behind one small ear. Some things were too personal and private to share even with her aunt. ‘Solange and I got on very well—’

‘But you only met a couple of times…’

‘You’ve got to remember that what she’s left me can only be a tiny part of what she owned because she was very well off,’ Tabby muttered in an awkward attempt to explain. ‘I’m over the moon that she’s left me the cottage but I suppose in her eyes…it was just a little token.’

Tabby was reluctant to admit that, on each of the occasions she had met Solange Roussel, she had connected with the older woman on a very emotional level. The first time she had been bubbling with happiness and quite unafraid to admit that she adored Christien. The second time she had been a lot less sure of herself and she had not been able to hide her fear that Christien was losing interest…and the third and final time?

Months after that fatal French holiday that had torn apart so many lives, Tabby had travelled back to France alone to attend the accident enquiry. She had been desperate to see Christien again. She had believed that the passage of time would have eased his bitterness and helped him to acknowledge that they had both lost much-loved parents in that horrendous crash. However, she had soon learnt her mistake for, if anything, the intervening months had only made Christien colder and more derisive. Even Veronique, who had once been so friendly towards her, had become distant and hostile. As Gerry Burnside’s daughter, Tabby had become a pariah to everyone who had lost a relative or been injured in any way by that car crash.

On the day of that enquiry Tabby had finally grown up and it had been almost as cruel and life-changing an ordeal for her as the aftermath of that car accident. Even though the previous months had been a nightmare struggle for Tabby to get through, and she had had to borrow money from her aunt just to make that trip back to France, she had still been full of naive hopes and dreams of how Christien would react to the news that he was the father of her newborn baby boy.

But on the day of that official hearing, her dream castles had crumbled into dust. In the end she had not even got to tell Christien that she had given birth to his son, for she had baulked at making that announcement in front of an audience and he had refused her request for a moment’s privacy in which to talk. Devastated by that merciless refusal to accord her even the tiniest privilege in acknowledgement of their past intimacy, Tabby had fled outside sooner than break down in tears in front of him, his relatives and friends. Out there in the street a hand had closed over hers in a comforting but shy gesture. In disconcertion, Tabby had glanced up to meet the look of pained compassion in Solange Roussel’s understanding gaze.

‘I’m sorry that the family should have come between you and Christien,’ the older woman had sighed with sincere regret. ‘It should not be that way.’

Before Tabby had been able to respond and admit that she suspected something rather less presentable than family loyalties might ultimately have led to her having been dumped by Christien, Solange had hurried back into the building where the enquiry was being held. His great-aunt had doubtless been fearful of being seen to show sympathy to the drunk driver’s daughter.

‘You are planning to sell this French property…aren’t you?’ Alison pressed without warning.

Tabby drew in a deep breath in preparation for breaking news that she knew would surprise the brunette. ‘No…I’m hoping to keep it.’

Her aunt frowned. ‘But the cottage is on Christien Laroche’s Brittany estate…isn’t it?’

‘Solange said that Christien rarely went to Duvernay because he much prefers the city to the country,’ Tabby volunteered stiffly, for even voicing his name out loud was a challenge for her. ‘She also told me that the estate was absolutely enormous and that her little place was right on the very edge of it. If I keep myself to myself, as I plan to do, he’s not even going to know I’m there!’

Alison still looked troubled. ‘Are you sure that you aren’t secretly hoping to see him again?’

‘Of course, I’m not!’ Tabby grimaced in embarrassment. ‘Why would I want to see him again?’

‘To tell him about Jake?’

‘I don’t want to tell him about Jake now. The time for that has been and gone.’ Tabby tilted up her chin for if Christien and his snobby, judgemental family had been affronted even by the sight of her at that accident enquiry, her son’s very existence would surely only further offend and disgust them. ‘Jake’s mine and we’re managing fine.’

Alison said nothing, for she was not convinced and she knew just how vulnerable Tabby could be with her open heart and trusting nature. She had always felt very protective towards her late sister’s only child and she was well aware of the dangerous effect that her niece appeared to have on the opposite sex. Tabby had blonde hair the colour of streaky toffee, green eyes, dimples and an incredible figure that bore a close resemblance to an old-fashioned hourglass. The one quality that Tabby had in super-abundance was the sort of natural sex appeal that caused havoc.

When Tabby walked down the street, men were so busy craning their necks to get a better look at her luscious curves that they had been known to crash their cars. In actuality misfortune did seem to follow Tabby around, Alison conceded ruefully, thinking of the amount of bad luck that had shaped her niece’s life in recent years. Yet, Tabby would still rush into situations where angels feared to tread and, even though the results were often disastrous, she remained an incurable optimist.

Reminding herself of that fact, Alison rested anxious grey eyes on the young woman seated opposite her. ‘I hate to rain on your parade, but…I suspect you haven’t considered how expensive it would be to maintain a holiday home in another country.’

‘Oh, I’m not thinking of the cottage as a holiday home! My goodness, is that what you thought?’ Tabby laughed out loud at the very idea. ‘I’m talking about a permanent move…about Jake and I making a new life in France—’

Startled by that sudden announcement, her aunt stared at her. ‘But you can’t do that—’

‘Why not? I can do my miniature work anywhere and sell what I make on the internet. I’m already building up a customer base and what could be more inspiring than the French landscape?’ Tabby asked with sunny enthusiasm. ‘I know that to start with things will be tight financially, but, because I own the cottage, I won’t need much of an income to get by on. Jake’s at the perfect age to move abroad and learn a second language as well—’

‘For goodness’ sake, you’re making all these plans and you haven’t even seen this cottage yet!’ Alison exclaimed in reproof.

‘I know.’ Tabby grinned. ‘But I’m planning to go over on the ferry next week to check it out.’

‘What if it’s uninhabitable?’

Tabby squared her slight shoulders. ‘I’ll deal with that when I see it.’

‘I just don’t think that you’re being practical,’ Alison Davies said more gently. ‘Going to live abroad may seem like an exciting proposition, but you have Jake to consider. You’ll have no support network to fall back on in France, nobody to help out if you need to work or you fall ill.’

‘But I’m looking forward to being independent.’

At that declaration, her companion looked taken aback and then rather hurt.

Steeling herself to press home that point, Tabby swallowed hard for she knew it was the most convincing argument that she could put forward. ‘I need to stand on my own feet, Alison…I’m twenty-one now.’

Her cheeks rather flushed, her aunt got up and began clearing away the supper dishes. ‘I can understand that but I don’t want you to burn your boats here and then find out too late that you’ve made an awful mistake.’

Tabby sat there and thought about all the mistakes she had made. Jake came running in the back door and ran full tilt into her arms. Breathless, laughing and smelling of fresh air and muddy little boy, he scrambled onto her knee and gave her a boisterous hug. ‘I love you, Mum,’ he said chirpily.

Her eyes stung and she held him tight. Most people were too polite or kind to say it, but she knew that they all thought Jake was her biggest mistake so far. Yet when Tabby’s life had fallen apart only the prospect of the baby she’d carried had given her the strength to keep going and trust that the future would be happier. Christien had been like the sun in her world and it literally had felt like eternal darkness and gloom when he had gone from it again.

A frown still pleating her brows, Alison turned from the sink to study the younger woman again. ‘Before you moved in here I worked with a guy called Sean Wendell,’ she confided. ‘He was mad about France and he moved to Brittany and set up an agency managing rental property. I still hear from Sean every Christmas. Why don’t I phone him and ask him to give you some support while you’re over there?’

As Tabby emerged from her preoccupation to give her aunt a look of surprise the brunette grimaced. ‘I know, I know…I shouldn’t be interfering but, for my sake, let Sean help out. If you don’t, I’ll be worrying myself sick about you!’

‘But exactly what am I going to need support with?’ Tabby enquired ruefully.

‘Well, for a start you’ll have to deal with the notaire and there’s sure to be a few legalities to sort out. Your French is fairly basic and might not be up to the challenge.’

Tabby knew that her linguistic skills were rusty but was dismayed by the prospect of being saddled with a stranger. In truth, though, at that moment it was hard for Tabby to focus her mind on what was only a minor annoyance because the past had a far stronger hold on her thoughts. As she helped Jake get ready for bed, memories that were both painful and exhilarating were starting to drag her back almost four years in time to that summer that already seemed a lifetime ago…

For all of her childhood that she could remember, the Burnside family and their three closest friends—the Stevensons, the Rosses and the Tarberts—had gone to the Dordogne for their annual holiday and either rented gîtes very close to each other or found accommodation large enough to share. The Stevensons had had a daughter called Pippa who was the same age as Tabby and her best friend. The Ross family had had two daughters, Hilary, who was six months younger and her kid sister, Emma and the Tarberts had had one daughter, Jen. Way back when Tabby, Pippa, Hilary and Jen had been toddlers, the girls had attended the same church playgroup and their mothers had become friendly. Even though their respective families had eventually moved to other locations and much had changed in all their lives, those friendships had endured and the vacations in France had continued.

But in the autumn of Tabby’s sixteenth year, the contented family life that she had pretty much taken for granted had vanished without any warning whatsoever. Her mother had caught influenza and had died from a complication. Gerry Burnside had been devastated by his wife’s sudden death but just six short months later, and without discussing his plans with anybody, he had remarried. His second wife, Lisa, had been the twenty-two-year-old blonde receptionist who had worked in his car sales showroom. Tabby had been as shattered by that startling development as everybody else had been.

Almost overnight her father had turned into an unfamiliar stranger, determined to dress like a much younger man and party and behave like one too. He had no longer had time to spare for his daughter, because his bride had not only been jealous of his attention but also prone to throwing screaming tantrums if she hadn’t got it. To please Lisa, he had bought another house and spent a fortune on it. From the start, Lisa had resented Tabby and had made it clear that her step-daughter had been an unwelcome third wheel.

Lisa had certainly not wanted to go on the traditional French holiday with her husband’s friends that summer, but for once Gerry Burnside had stood his ground. Full of resentment, Lisa had made no attempt to fit in and had gloried in shocking her besotted husband’s friends with her behaviour. A helpless onlooker suffering from all the supersensitivity of a teenager, Tabby had died a thousand deaths of embarrassment and had avoided being in the adults’ company as much as she’d been able.

At the same time, unfortunately, Tabby had also felt like a fish out of water with Pippa, Hilary and Jen. Her friends, with their stable homes and loving parents still safe and intact, had seemed aeons removed from her in their every innocence. In addition she had been too loyal to her father to tell anyone just how dreadfully unhappy and isolated she’d been feeling. And then she had seen Christien and all her own petty anxieties and the rest of the world, and indeed everyone in it, had no longer existed for her.

It had only been the second day of their vacation. Mulling over the humiliation of having been called a ‘nasty little bitch’ and sworn at by Lisa in front of Pippa’s aghast parents at breakfast time, Tabby had been sitting on the wall under the plane trees in the sleepy little village below the farmhouse. A long, low yellow sports car had growled down the hill and round the corner like a snarling beast and had come to a throaty, purring halt a little further down the street.

A very tall, well-built male wearing sunglasses had climbed out and sauntered into the little pavement café. Clad in an off-white shirt with the cuffs carelessly turned back and beige chinos of faultless cut, he had sunk down at a table and tossed a note to the owner’s son, who had run into the shop next door to fetch him a newspaper. He had been so cool she had been welded to his every move.

The bar owner had greeted him with pronounced respect and had polished his already clean table. The coffee and the ubiquitous croissant had been delivered with an understated flourish and a moment later the newspaper. The little scene had been so French she had been fascinated. Then Christien had hooked his sunglasses into the pocket of his shirt. She had found herself staring at that lean bronzed face, the black hair flopping over his brow, the stunning dark-as-midnight eyes that seemed to glint gold in the sunlight, and her heart had hammered so fast it had been quite impossible for her to breathe.

For a heartbeat in time, Christien had looked back at her and she had been mesmerised, entrapped, taken by storm. That one look had been all it had taken. Un coup de foudre, love like lightning striking fast and hard. He had turned his attention to his newspaper. She had feasted her eyes on him, quite content just to stare and admire and marvel at his lithe bronzed perfection. Eventually he had strolled back across the pavement and swung back into his equally beautiful car and driven off again…slowly, certainly slowly enough to get a good look at her from behind his tinted car windows.

‘Who is he?’ she had asked the sullen youth who cleaned the pool at the farmhouse.

He had not recognised her enraptured description of Christien, but he had recognised the car she had described. ‘Christien Laroche…his family have a villa up the hill. He’s richer than a bank.’

‘Is he married?’

‘You must be joking. He has a string of hot slick chicks. Why? Do you fancy your chances? You’d only be a baby to a bigshot businessman like him!’ he had mocked.

On that recollection Tabby forced her thoughts back into the present, but she was annoyed with herself for thinking about Christien. Solange’s legacy had tempted her into looking back to events that had no relevance except insofar as they had taught her a few much-needed lessons. She tucked Christien’s son into bed and smiled down at him with tender appreciation. Whether she liked it or not, even at three years old Jake was his father in miniature, for his looks and height were pure Laroche and he was much too clever for his own good. But, if Tabby had anything to do with it, Jake would never, ever regard women as numbers to be scored off on some sexual hit list.

The following week, Tabby sold the one valuable item that she still possessed: a diamond hair clip that Christien had once given her. It did not hurt to part with it as she had not worn it since the night he’d given it to her and she did not live a life where diamond hair clips were of any use. She was delighted to discover that the clip was worth a great deal more money than she had ever appreciated. Indeed, with careful handling the proceeds of the sale enabled her to buy an old van to use for transport and left her with enough cash to meet the other expenses entailed in moving across the English Channel. Alison had persuaded her to make her first trip to France alone and Tabby planned to leave her son in her aunt’s care over a long weekend. The cottage was certain to need a good clean and clouds of dust would only leave poor Jake coughing and wheezing.

One week before her departure, Tabby had just got back from taking Jake to nursery school and was in the midst of eating her breakfast when the doorbell sounded. A piece of toast in her hand, she went to answer the front door. When she had to tip her head back to get a proper look at the tall dark male in the charcoal-grey business suit poised on the step, her toast fell from her nerveless fingers.

‘I would have phoned to tell you that I intended to call, but your aunt’s number is unlisted,’ Christien murmured, smooth as glass.

The breath feathered in Tabby’s constricted throat. His fabulous accent purred down her spine like the tantalising promise of something dark and forbidden. Her senses snapped onto instant alert and she could not drag her bewildered gaze from his lean, dark, exotic features. Without even knowing she was doing it, she backed away, reacting to a subconscious feeling of being under threat. Exciting threat, though, delicious threat, the kind of threat that appealed to all that was weak and wanton in her nature. But he was even more irresistible than she remembered and, no matter how much she hated herself for it, her heart was already thumping like a road drill inside her.

Yet she could not really believe that Christien Laroche stood in front of her again, that he should be on the brink of entering Alison’s home or that he should even deign to speak to her. How could that feel real?

Tabby trembled, dilated eyes green as emeralds pinned to him. At their last meeting, he had regarded her with a derisive distaste that had pierced her like a knife, and there might as well have been poison on that blade for the pain had not ended there. She had hated herself for loving him, loathed herself for the craving she could not suppress and despised her sorry self for striving to trace Christien’s features in her son’s innocent baby face.

‘What are you doing here?’ Tabby breathed shakily.

His brilliant dark eyes narrowed and a slight curve that only hinted at a smile softened the line of his wide, firm male mouth as he thrust the door shut in his wake. He dominated the space she was in and shrunk the hall of Alison’s house to claustrophobic proportions. He was much taller, broader and more powerfully impressive than she had ever allowed herself to recall. Breathtakingly good-looking too, and very well aware of the fact. He was the type of guy she should have run a mile from. That she had not had the wit to run, that she had to her own everlasting shame ended up in his bed within hours of first meeting him, was a continuing source of deep mortification to her.

‘I’ve come to make you an offer you can’t refuse.’

‘Oh, I can refuse, all right…there isn’t anything you could offer me that I wouldn’t refuse!’ Tabby launched back at him as wildly as though he were offering her the seven deadly sins all packed together in one handy bag.

Unmoved, watchful, Christien studied her, his attention travelling from the tumbling mane of her caramel-blonde hair to her bright eyes and the freckles scattered across her slanted cheekbones. But his gaze lingered longest on the soft, vulnerable fullness of her mouth. He only had to look at her ripe pink lips to remember how the caress of them had once felt against his skin. As his body betrayed him by hardening in instantaneous response and he recalled that no other woman had since given him that much pleasure, but that she had gone behind his back with some lout on a Harley-Davidson, raw anger seized Christien without warning.

‘You want to take a bet on that, chérie?’ he demanded in his sexy, whiplash drawl.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I DON’T bet on a certainty and I didn’t ask you to come in!’ Beneath the insolent onslaught of Christien’s appraisal, Tabby’s rounded face was burning like a furnace.

Nobody, but nobody, could do insolence as well as Christien Laroche did. Arrogant dark head high, he could elevate one satiric brow and make people feel about an inch tall. It was a talent that came from being the latest in the line of several hundred years of ancestors, every one of whom had thought of themselves as an exceptional being. Self-assured to a degree that was intimidating, Christien knew himself to be superior to most in intelligence and it could not be said that that knowledge had made him humble.

‘But then you were never very good at saying no to me, ma belle,’ Christien countered with silken sibilance.

Tabby flinched. Her hands snapped into small fists while he continued to look her over as though she were human flesh adorned with a sale board. His bold scrutiny lingered on the firm jut of her full breasts below the faded red T-shirt she wore and Tabby got even tenser. Beneath her bra, her own body was letting her down by reacting to his visual attention. As her tender nipples pinched into straining prominence, Tabby spun round and headed fast into the sitting room.

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 know,’ he contradicted with a harsh edge to his rich drawl. ‘That you’re a compulsive liar—’

‘No, I’m not. I just told a few fibs. You never asked me what age I was!’ Tabby argued, feverish colour mantling her cheeks as she surged to her own defence.

Christien aimed a look of raw contempt at her. ‘That you can’t even take responsibility for your own actions—’

‘Shut up!’ Tabby suddenly hurled at him, half an octave higher.

‘And you still lose your head when you are confronted with your flaws—’

‘And you think you’re so perfect?’ Tabby hissed at him, rage jumping up and down inside her.

‘No, I wasn’t perfect, ma belle,’ Christien conceded in a black velvety purr, scorching golden eyes locked to her outraged face. ‘But even when I was at my most rampant I never ran two lovers at one and the same time. Sleeping with the lout on the Harley-Davidson while I was in Paris was sordid and sluttish…and not a trifling offence I felt I could overlook!’

The silence was charged with hard, hostile vibrations.

Tabby was staring at his lean, strong face with wide eyes of appalled disbelief. ‘Say that again…I mean, I didn’t…I didn’t do what you just said I did with any lout on a Harley!’

‘En voila` une bonne…that’s a good one! The compulsive liar bites again,’ Christien derided with a curled lip.

Grim at that degrading recollection, he strode past her back into the hall.

In a daze at what he had just let drop, Tabby halted in the sitting-room doorway. ‘Did you really think I’d been unfaithful? How could you think that?’

‘If you were easy with me, why shouldn’t you be equally easy with someone else?’ Christien lifted and dropped a shoulder, smouldering animosity laced with contemptuous dismissal in his insolent appraisal. ‘And let us be honest…five days was a long time for you to go without sex, chérie.’

‘I won’t forgive you for talking to me like this—’

‘I don’t want forgiveness.’ In fact, Christien felt forgiveness of even the most minor variety might be very, very dangerous to his own interests.

Tabby Burnside was nothing but trouble. She had no morals. That that should appeal to him was not a trait within himself that he ought to encourage. She would accept the cheque. Of course she would accept the cheque. However, if there were any further negotiations required, he would leave the matter in the hands of his English solicitor. After all, he was to marry to Veronique, who was a fine woman. Beautiful, honest, trustworthy. She would make an excellent wife. Eventually he would become a father and a grandchild might well lift his mother’s spirits a little. Was that not what had prompted him to become engaged in the first place? Wild, hot sex, fights and seething attacks of emotion would never feature in his alliance with Veronique. That was good, Christien told himself.

For a long time after Christien had departed, Tabby stared into space. The lout on the Harley-Davidson? Could he have been referring to the English student, Pete? Pete and two of his mates had been staying nearby. Pippa and Hilary had become friendly with them and Tabby had gone out with Pete on his bike one evening when Christien had been in Paris. But that had been all. Why had Christien accused her of sleeping with Pete? How could he have believed that she would have behaved like that? Why would he have believed that when she had been so patently crazy about him?

Once more time was sliding back for Tabby and she was reliving that summer. After that first ennervating sighting of Christien in the village, Tabby had lived in a daydream inhabited only by her fantasy of Christien and herself. Her stepmother had become noticeably less unpleasant when Tabby had opted to stay behind at the farmhouse most evenings while everybody else had gone out. Tabby had gloried in the quiet and the privacy and the daring freedom of bathing naked in the big blue-tiled pool. She still remembered the wonderful cool of the water on her overheated bare skin. At the outset of the second week while she’d still been in the water swimming, the electricity had cut out.

Wrapped in a towel, she had been attempting to find her way through the rambling farmhouse back to her bedroom when she had heard a car pulling up outside. Assuming everyone had come back early, she had gone to the door, but it had been Christien out on the front veranda with a torch.

‘I saw the lights go out and I guessed you’d be here alone. Join me for dinner, chèrie,’ he murmured.

‘But there’s a blackout—’

‘We have a generator.’

She stood there, teeth chattering with nerves, hair dripping round her. ‘I’m all wet—’

‘You would like me to dry you?’

‘I’ll need to get dressed.’

‘Don’t bother on my account.’ In the light of the torch, mocking tawny eyes set below the lush black fringe of his lashes rested on her hot face. ‘Are you sure you’re not too warm in that towel?’

‘You don’t even know my name. It’s—’

‘Not important right now.’

‘Tabby,’ she completed shakily, taken aback by the intensity of his appraisal.

‘You don’t look at all like a little brown cat. You’re smaller than I thought you would be, too,’ Christien confided, inspecting her with the torch beam. ‘But you have fabulous skin. Don’t bother with make-up. I hate it.’

For Tabby, his appearance was her every dream come true and she was terrified that he would disappear while she was getting dressed. Giving her the torch, he told her he would wait in the car.

‘I don’t know your name,’ she said when she climbed into his car.

‘Naturellement…of course you do,’ he contradicted with disturbing confidence.

‘All right…I asked one of the locals who you were,’ Tabby mumbled.

‘Don’t waste your best lines on me. I’ve heard them all before and honesty is fresher.’

‘I don’t know you…I shouldn’t have got into a car with you,’ Tabby exclaimed, because she was suddenly feeling very much out of her depth in his company.

‘But I feel I know you so well already, ma belle. Every night of the past four I have watched you strip off and cavort naked in the pool down here.’

At the news that her swimming sessions had not been as private as she had believed them to be, Tabby gasped in shock. ‘I beg your pardon—?’

‘Don’t be coy. I respect nerve and enterprise in a woman. I also admire a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it,’ Christien breathed with a husky intimacy. ‘And the simple ploy was remarkably effective…here I am.’

Her aghast embarrassment fought with her recognition of his apparent respect for what he had interpreted as an adventurous campaign to attract his attention. The temptation to pose as an enterprising go-getting woman triumphed over all common sense. She did not angrily demand to know how he could possibly have seen her bathing in a pool surrounded by a wall or ask him how on earth he could have sunk low enough to spy on her. She did not contradict his outrageously self-satisfied assumption that she had been breaking her neck to get off with him and, as mistakes went, hiding behind that fake image was her first mistake with Christien.

There was no great mystery about why she ended up in Christien’s bed on their very first date either. She was so excited at dining alone with him in the incredibly opulent villa that she barely ate a mouthful but she did drink three glasses of wine. Nor did she have a prayer of resisting a guy with his seductive expertise. In fact she was a lost cause from the first kiss for nobody could kiss like Christien could.

‘Zut alors…I am crazy for you,’ Christien intoned with ragged emphasis, sweeping her off her feet in high romantic style as if she were not a healthy lump frequently scorned by her stepmother as being on the larger side of overweight. For that alone, for his simple ability to lift her without grunting with effort, she would have loved him.

‘You enchant me,’ Christien swore, so that she felt generous enough to try and hide the fact that the first time he made love to her and she lost her virginity without him noticing, it hurt. And when he seemed to suspect that things hadn’t gone quite as well for her as he seemed to have expected, she pretended to go to sleep because she was so embarrassed.

So for her, it was not sex, it was never just sex, because the first night she went to sleep in his arms, she very much hoped that he would not want to do what they had just done very often. In the middle of the night, she crept out of the bed and he sat up and switched on the light. ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.

‘Er…back down the hill,’ Tabby muttered, worried sick that Pippa would have reported her absence from the bedroom they shared.

‘I don’t want to let you go but…Ciel!’ Christien groaned. ‘What was I thinking of? To keep you this late was madness. How liberal are your family?’

Her father would have taken a shotgun to him without hesitation, but it would have been the opposite of cool to admit that. He was very disconcerted when she refused even to let him take her back in the car. She was even more dismayed when he insisted on walking her down the road to the very entrance of the farmhouse. ‘Can I see you tomorrow morning for breakfast?’ he asked.

‘I’ll try to make lunch—’

‘You’ll try? Was I that bad?’ In the moonlight, Christien gave her a rueful grin that had so much charismatic appeal, it physically hurt her to leave him.

When she climbed in the window of the bedroom she was sharing with Pippa, Pippa was wide awake. ‘Have you gone crazy?’ the other girl hissed furiously. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t realise that you’ve been out all night with that guy in the flash sports car?’

‘How did you find out?’

‘I just watched you snogging him from an upstairs window! I’m been going out of my head worrying about you and wondering whether I ought to tell our parents you were missing,’ Pippa censured angrily. ‘What’s got into you? Don’t ever put me in a position like that again!’

What had got into her that summer? Tabby wondered with shamefaced regret. Mercifully, it had been a recklessness that had never touched her again. Disturbed by Tabby’s unfamiliar behaviour with Christien, Pippa had moved into Jen’s room instead. Tabby had been upset by her friend’s defection, but not upset enough to turn her back on Christien. Her need for him had been all-consuming, her love total, and nothing and nobody else had mattered to her. Only living and breathing for him, she had slept through the daylight hours she’d often been away from him like a vampire in a coffin who only came into real being and secret life after nightfall.

Angry tears stung Tabby’s eyes as she stared down at the cheque that Christien had left behind him. With hands that were all fingers and thumbs she tore it up into lots of little pieces. She had not even looked at it to see how much he had been prepared to pay for the cottage. He did not want her in France, but she had already made all her arrangements. How dared Christien assume that he could buy her off and make her do things she didn’t want to do? How dared he call her easy to her face? He had betrayed her, but then he had never given her any promises of fidelity, had he? Nor, she noted, had he mentioned his staggeringly beautiful blonde Parisienne girlfriend.

She would go to Solange’s cottage and she would use it for as long as she wished. It would be a mark of her respect for a sweet woman, whom sadly she had never got to know well. Perhaps at the end of the summer she would take stock on whether or not anywhere in the vicinity of Duvernay was the best place for her to embark on a new life with her son. But as for Christien Laroche, who had already caused her so much grief, he had better steer clear of her from now on!

CHAPTER THREE

A SLIM blond male of around thirty with steady blue eyes and an attractive grin, Sean Wendell walked Tabby back to the town car park. He groaned out loud when he realised what time it was. ‘I’m going to have to rush off and leave you here…I have an appointment with a client.’

‘No problem. You’ve been a terrific help and thanks for the coffee,’ Tabby told him warmly, for her aunt’s former work colleague had proved to be a positive goldmine of local knowledge.

Regardless of the fact that he was already running late, Sean followed her across to the ancient van packed high with possessions. He continued to hover while she climbed back into the driver’s seat. ‘Look, don’t try to unload the van on your own,’ he urged. ‘I’ll come over this evening and give you a hand.’

‘Honestly, that’s very kind of you but I loaded it up, so I should be able to unpack it again.’ Colouring at the continued heat of Sean’s admiring appraisal, Tabby closed the van door and drove off with a wave. She liked him but wished that he had taken the hint that, while she was always happy to have another friend, nothing more intimate was on offer.

It was four o’clock on a warm June afternoon. She had made good time from the ferry port and Sean’s linguistic prowess had speeded up her dealings with the notaire. Now, she was barely twenty kilometres from her final destination. However, as Tabby drove out of Quimper again a glimpse of a shop window full of colourful faience pottery sent her thoughts winging back to her childhood. Her late mother had collected the elegant hand-painted pottery for which the cathedral city was famed and every year a fresh piece had joined the display on the kitchen dresser. Shortly before their move to a new and much bigger house, Tabby’s stepmother, Lisa, had disposed of the whole collection, along with everything else in the household that had reminded her of her husband’s first wife. After her father’s death, it had hurt Tabby to have no keepsakes with which to highlight her memories of her parents.

But on the day that she travelled through Brittany to claim her inheritance, it would have been impossible for her to forget that her mother’s biggest dream had always been to own a house in France. Indeed, by the time that Tabby finally identified the half-timbered one-and-a-half-storey cottage that was screened from the quiet country road by a handsome grove of oak trees, she was very much in the mood to be excited and to be pleased with all that she saw.

The front door of her new home opened straight into a big room with a picturesque granite fireplace and exposed ceiling beams. It was full of character and Tabby smiled. Her smile dimmed only a little when she glanced through a doorway at a kitchen that consisted of a stone sink and an ancient range that did not look as though it had been lit in living memory. The washing facilities were equally basic. However, the final room on the ground floor came as a delightful surprise for it was an old-fashioned sun room with good light, which would make a wonderful studio for her to work in. Up the narrow twisting oak staircase two rooms lay under the eaves. She unlatched stiff windows to let in the fresh air before strolling back downstairs and out of doors.

The garden rejoiced in splendid countryside views, an orchard and a pretty little stream. It would make a wonderful adventure playground for Jake, Tabby reflected cheerfully. Having seen all that there was to see, she endeavoured to take sensible stock of her inheritance. Christien’s description of the property as a ‘glorified summer house’ had been infuriatingly accurate for there was no central heating, no proper kitchen or bath. She had also rather hoped that there would be some furniture to supplement what little she had of her own, but apart from a couple of wicker chairs in the sun room the cottage was bare to the boards. On the other hand, the roof and walls seemed sound, her utility bills would be tiny and, once she was bringing in a decent income, she would be able to add a few frills.

Her good mood very much in the ascendant, Tabby sat down under a tree and took advantage of the provisions she had bought on the outskirts of Quimper. Her hunger satisfied by half a baguette spread with tomatoes and ham and washed down with water, she changed into shorts and a T-shirt in preparation for cleaning the room where she planned to stay the night. An hour later, every surface scrubbed, she unloaded her bed from the van. As the head and footboards were made of wood, getting them up to the bedroom was no mean task, but she persevered and indeed was finally struggling with what was left of her energy to drag up the mattress as well when a knock sounded on the ajar front door.

Having got the unwieldy double mattress squashed round the bend in the staircase, Tabby was lying across it to keep it there while she tried to catch her breath again. Determined not to let go of the mattress, she attempted to twist her head round and peer down to see who was on the doorstep, but it was an impossible feat. ‘Yes?’ she called, praying that it would be Sean Wendell arriving as promised to offer his male muscle.

‘It is I…’ A dark-timbred masculine drawl imparted with accented clarity and awesome cool. ‘Christien…’

She was unable to see him and taken badly by surprise; dismay provoked Tabby into loosing a rather rude word. It was ironic that it was a word that she had never said out loud in her life before and she cringed at her own lack of control over her wretched tongue. In fact she just wanted the ground to open up and swallow her and a fiery blush enveloped her complexion. Had he tried, Christien could not have chosen a worse moment to spring a visit on her.

Entering the cottage, Christien angled his proud dark head back and wondered if she had a man upstairs with her. ‘Are you planning to come down and speak to me any time soon?’

Feeling trapped and foolish, Tabby flipped over and struggled to wedge the mattress in place while she stretched forward as far as she dared in an effort to see Christien. But that movement was all that it took for the bulky item to spring free of her hold. The weight of the mattress against her back dislodged her feet from the step and as the mattress forced its passage back down the stairs at shocking speed it carried her with it. In dismay, she cried out but it was too late: the edge of the heavy mattress hit Christien hard on the knees, destroyed his balance and toppled him before he could move from its path.

Christien fell and he only managed to partially break that fall by bracing strong hands on either side of her startled face. Tabby was winded by the sheer impact of a well-built six-foot-three-inch male hitting the mattress and momentarily crushing the life out of her lower body.

‘Zut alors!’ Christien raked down at her with furious force.

For an instant as she careened down the stairs like a cartoon character on board a novel flying carpet the world had swum scarily out of focus, but now it had righted itself again and Tabby found herself gazing up into dark golden eyes as bright as gemstones in a masculine face handsome enough to take any woman’s breath away. Her slight body stilled taut as a bow string beneath the heavy imprint of his. Something as powerful as it was emotionally painful swelled inside her chest and her throat tightened, her mouth running dry. Physical memories were engulfing her to a level beyond bearing for her senses had gone off on a rollercoaster ride of rediscovery.

The clean, evocative aroma that was unique to Christien flared her nostrils: hard male heat braced with a faint exotic hint of citrus. The very scent of his skin was so immediately familiar to her that she was shaken by the leap of her own recognition even at that most primitive level. She searched his lean dark features, her attention lingering on his level ebony brows, straight nose, blunt cheekbones and stubborn jawline, and then she connected with his amazing eyes again and felt a deep, slow pulse begin a slow, dangerous beat way down low in her pelvis. Below her T-shirt, her nipples swelled and tightened into sudden embarrassing prominence. She didn’t want to feel like that, indeed she could barely credit that she could still react to the primal charge of his raw masculinity to such an extent, but it was as though a chain reaction of response had kicked off inside her and, once started, there was no stopping it.

Tabby trembled, her hips succumbing to a tiny, involuntary upward shift and her slender thighs sliding a little further apart to better bear his weight in a movement as old as history itself. That wicked throb at the heart of her could not be denied even while she struggled to recapture her ability to think.

‘What the hell do you think you are playing at?’ Christien demanded wrathfully as in fierce, fervent denial of the burning heat of his own arousal, he began to lever himself up and back from her.

It was those words of his that were Tabby’s ultimate undoing. The mere suggestion that she might somehow have choreographed a mattress to surf down the stairs and knock him off his feet was sufficient to send Tabby into a sudden helpless fit of giggles. Recalling how chillingly impressive Christien’s air of grave authority had been before the mattress intervened, she was in stitches.

‘You think this is funny…huh?’ Christien growled with savage incredulity.

‘I-Isn’t it?’ she prompted chokily.

A split second later, his hot, hungry mouth swooped down to possess hers and killed her near-hysterical amusement at source. He was pure erotic temptation. For the first time in almost four years, electrifying excitement seized Tabby. Her head spun and air rasped in her tortured throat. The explicit intrusion of his tongue in the moist interior of her mouth sent a wave of delirious hunger currenting through her slight body. Her last grip on reality snapped: suddenly she was reaching up to him and no longer a passive partner. Her arms locked round his lean, hard frame, her hands rising to shape his broad shoulders before her fingers snaked higher and delved deep into the black silk luxuriance of his hair to hold him to her.

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