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.

One Night with His Wife

Lynne

Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘THE account no longer exists…’ Star repeated that shattering announcement shakily under her breath as she walked back out of the bank.

In her hand, she still gripped the cheque she had tried unsuccessfully to cash. Beneath her shining fall of copper hair, her delicate features were stamped with shock, her aquamarine eyes bemused. She climbed back into Rory Martin’s elderly classic car.

‘Why were you so long?’ Rory asked as he drove off.

Twisting round in her seat to check that the twins were still fast asleep in their car seats, Star muttered, ‘I had to see the assistant manager—’

‘That’ll be because you’re a lady of substance now,’ Rory teased, referring to the money which Star had proudly paid into the bank only a few weeks earlier.

‘And he told me that the account no longer exists,’ Star confided abruptly.

At the traffic lights, Rory’s fair hair swivelled. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Juno has closed the account—’

‘Your mother’s done what?’ Rory interrupted incredulously.

‘There must be something badly wrong, Rory.’

‘You’re telling me. How could your mother close your account?’ he demanded.

‘It was her account.’

At that revelation, Rory sent Star a bewildered glance. ‘Why didn’t you have a bank account in your own name?’ ‘Because until last month when I sold those canvases, I wouldn’t have had anything to put in an account of my own,’ Star stressed defensively. ‘Juno was keeping me!’

Looking unimpressed by that argument, Rory pulled away from the traffic lights again. ‘It was still your money in that account, the proceeds of the first couple of pictures you sold—’

His persistence made Star bristle with annoyance. ‘Juno and I work on a “what’s mine is yours” basis, Rory. We’re family. We stick together. If she drew out that money, she must’ve needed it.’ Then a further cause for alarm assailed her. ‘Do you realise that it’s over two weeks since I even spoke to my mother? Every time I call, all I get is that wretched answering machine!’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s simply moved the account elsewhere and just forgotten to tell you about it,’ Rory suggested in a soothing tone. ‘Let’s stop worrying about it. This is my day off. Where do you want to go next?’

Still in a bemused state, Star slowly shook her head. ‘I can’t go shopping without money—’

‘So, I’ll give you a loan to tide you over,’ Rory slotted in with an easy shrug.

‘No, thanks,’ Star told him hurriedly, determined not to lean on him that way. ‘You’d better just take us home again. I need to phone around and try to get hold of Juno to find out what’s happening.’

‘Be sensible, Star. She’s hardly ever at home. Meanwhile, you still have to eat,’ Rory pointed out with all the practicality of a male whose considerable family fortune was built on that same fact of life.

However, Star was immovable. Half an hour later, Rory drew up in the cobbled courtyard of a dilapidated fortified house complete with a tower surrounded by rusting scaffolding. Star lived rent-free as caretaker at Highburn Castle. The owner lived abroad. A friend of Juno’s, he didn’t have the money to maintain his inheritance, or the interest to apply for the grants available to repair a building listed as being of historical significance.

Star detached the belts from the baby seats in the back of the car. Rory unlocked the sturdy rear door of the castle and transported the first twin inside. Venus sighed in her sleep but remained comatose. Mars loosed an anxious little snort and shifted position. Both Star and Rory stilled until her restive son settled again. Mars had yet to prove the perceived wisdom that a baby could sleep through anything.

‘They’re great kids.’ As they entered the big basement kitchen, Rory scrutinised the sleeping babies with the interest of a male who, as an only child, had had little contact with young children. ‘I can never get over how tiny they are. When you think how premature they were, they’re a right little pair of miracles!’

Having noticed the winking light on the answering machine which her mother had installed, Star gave him an abstracted nod. She switched on the tape and a familiar voice broke into speech.

‘Star, it’s me…I’ve got into some real hot water,’ Juno gasped breathlessly into the sudden silence greeting her message. ‘I haven’t got time to explain, but I have to go abroad in a hurry and I had to borrow your money to pay for the flights! I’m absolutely skint. If I’ve left you in a hole, I’m sorry, but maybe you could contact Luc and get him to pay his dues for you and the twins…please, darling—’

‘Who’s Luc?’ Rory demanded abruptly.

Star wasn’t looking at him. She had jerked violently at the sound of that name. Her stomach somersaulting, she turned a whiter shade of pale. With an unsteady hand, she stopped the tape to absorb what she had so far heard and forcibly repressed all thought of Luc Sarrazin…Luc, her estranged husband, and the unwitting father of the twins.

What on earth had happened to the art gallery Juno was about to open in London? Only six weeks ago, Juno had been so confident of success. For goodness’ sake, she had borrowed a small fortune to open that gallery! At the time, Star had been secretly astonished that any bank would give her mother such a large loan. Investing in Juno was a risky venture. Twice before, her mother had set up businesses which had failed.

And now it seemed that once again everything had fallen through. Star sighed. Where Juno was concerned that was nothing new. There was nothing new in her sudden dramatic flight from trouble either. That was vintage Juno, Star reflected sadly. When things went wrong, Juno panicked.

But now she urged her daughter to approach Luc Sarrazin for child support, Star simply cringed. Her mother might be desperate to justify her bahaviour, but that particular suggestion had been way below the belt. Juno knew what a disaster her daughter’s short-lived marriage had been. Hadn’t it been partly her fault that Luc had felt constrained to marry Star in the first place?

‘Star…’ Rory said again more forcefully.

‘Shush! I need to hear the rest of this message.’ Star switched the tape back on.

‘I know you’re trying to tune me out because I’m not saying what you want to hear. Yes, I hate Luc because he’s a Sarrazin, but you made babies with him! He’s got no heart or imagination but he ought to be keeping his own kids.’ Juno paused. ‘You see, I don’t know how long it’ll take to sort this mess out, or even if I’ll be successful. But I promise you that if I am, I’m going to have the most wonderful surprise for you when I get back again!’ she forecast in a bright but not very confident tone. ‘Byee!’

‘Luc…so his name’s Luc,’ Rory continued in a sharp, flat tone unfamiliar to Star’s ears. ‘I’ve never understood why you won’t talk about the twins’ father, but now that I’ve finally got his name, maybe you could tell me who he is.’

‘My husband…well, sort of…’ Star’s voice just petered out again.

Rory’s jaw had dropped. He pushed a dismayed hand through his fair hair, making it stand on end. ‘You’re saying you’re married? But I thought—’

Star gave an awkward shrug. ‘Yes, I know what you thought, but I couldn’t see the point in contradicting you.’

‘You saw no point?’ His suntanned face was flushed, his hazel eyes bemused. ‘There’s a big difference between being a single mother and someone’s wife, Star!’

‘Is there? It wasn’t a proper marriage and it only lasted a few weeks. The twins were an accident…my accident, my mistake,’ Star stressed tautly. ‘It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. It’s something I just want to forget.’

‘But you can’t just forget you’ve got a husband!’ Rory’s dismay at that revelation was unconcealed. ‘My parents will hit the roof if they find out that you’re a married woman!’

It was make-your-mind-up time, Star conceded ruefully an hour later as she settled the twins into the wooden playpen with their toys. She had made a snack for their lunch from the few provisions that remained in the fridge. So where was she going with Rory?

Almost without her noticing, he had crossed the boundary of being just a good mate. But she could now pinpoint the exact date when that subtle change had begun. It had been the day he took her home to meet his family. Even though he had introduced her purely as the casual friend she had been at the time, his wealthy parents had seen her as a threat and acted accordingly. Rory had been embarrassed, and then furious at their behaviour. He was a decent guy, a really decent guy, and he had been a terrific friend.

They had met in the hospital canteen some weeks after the twins were born. The twins had been in the special care unit for a very long while. At the same time, Rory’s beloved grandmother had been seriously ill. When he had realised that Star had to walk miles just to catch a bus to the hospital, he had started synchronising his visits to his grandmother’s bedside and offering Star a lift home.

He’d been twenty-two then, and he had told her he worked in a supermarket. He hadn’t mentioned that it was his year working out to complete a degree in business management, or the even more salient fact that his father owned a vast chain of supermarkets which was a household name in the UK.

When she had angrily accused him of not telling her the truth, he had said straight off, ‘You’ve got a real prejudice against people with money.’

To be fair, she had not been very frank with Rory about her own past. She had told him that she had been a charity child, raised at a rich and reluctant French guardian’s expense. The child had been kept rigorously at arm’s length, lest she contaminate her guardian’s good name and reputation with her unconventional background and questionable parentage.

Luc Sarrazin’s father, Roland, had been that guardian.

And Star had only met Roland Sarrazin twice in her entire life. Once when she had first become his ward, at the age of nine, and the second and final time just over eighteen months earlier, when the old man had been dying. She had flown out to France to stay at the Sarrazins’ magnificent family home, the Chateau Fontaine, and dutifully pay her respects. Her conscious mind now recoiled from remembering the other events which had taken place that winter.

Instead she recalled her years of separation from her mother, Juno Roussel. Nine years of prim and proper imprisonment in a boarding school for a child who had once known what it was to run free. Nine years deprived of even written contact with her mother. She had spent the school holidays in London, as the guest of Emilie Auber, an elderly childless widow related to the Sarrazin family. Only Emilie had given Star affection during those years, but Emilie had also made the appalling mistake of encouraging Star to love Luc Sarrazin.

Dear sweet Emilie, with her sentimental dreams of romance…

‘Luc needs someone like you, but he doesn’t know it yet,’ Emilie had said.

No, Luc definitely hadn’t known. And he hadn’t needed her either. Indeed, Luc had given Star a taste of humiliation which she would never, ever forget.

‘You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with sex. Find a boy the same age and experiment on him!’

As Star stared into space, she shivered and hugged herself. The chill inside her seemed to bite right through to her bones. It had been eighteen months, and she hadn’t yet followed Luc’s advice and experimented. First she had discovered that that single reckless night in Luc’s bed had got her pregnant. Then she had become the mother of two tiny premature babies. The twins’ tenuous hold on life had sentenced her to months of tortured fear and anxiety. But now Venus and Mars were home, safe and healthy, and slowly catching up with their peers. And Rory was still here, being caring and supportive. He loved the twins and he wanted a girlfriend, not just a mate. He wasn’t likely to wait for her to make up her mind for ever…

His kisses were pleasant. They didn’t burn. But then being burned hurt, Star reminded herself fiercely. No more dancing too close to the fire. No more dizzy adolescent fantasising. The guy she loved, the only guy she had ever loved, had spent their wedding night in the arms of his exquisitely beautiful mistress, Gabrielle Joly. As rejections went, it had been pretty final. It had told her all she should have needed to know. But Star had always been a fighter, and stubborn with it. She hadn’t been willing to let go of her dream. Hating Luc, loving Luc, and determined to hang onto him by any means available, she had got down and dirty in the trenches of fighting for her man.

Getting him into bed had felt like a major coup. She had thought she had won; she had thought he was hers; she had thought surrender meant acceptance. She hadn’t really cared how he felt about it. After all, men didn’t always know what was good for them. In fact men could be pretty thick about recognising their soulmate if she came along in an unfamiliar guise. And Luc, even possessed as he was of an IQ of reputedly sky-high proportions, had been a really slow and exceedingly stubborn learner.

‘Look—’

Star glanced up.

Rory was watching her with a rueful smile. ‘I’ve got some things to do. I might call back later this evening.’

For a split second, Star studied him with blank eyes. Then she coloured and finally pulled free of her troubled thoughts. ‘OK…sorry, I was miles away.’

As she saw Rory out, she was conscious of a guilty sense of relief. Thinking about Luc had shaken her up and filled her with angry frustration. But regretting her mistakes was currently an unproductive waste of time. She would be far better occupied worrying about how she was to feed herself and the twins when Juno had left her literally penniless!

* * *

It was going to be a wild night, Luc Sarrazin acknowledged. On the exposed hill road, the wind buffeted his powerful car, forcing him to keep a hard grip on the steering wheel. But the gale-force wind was a mere breeze in comparison to the cold and lethal anger Luc was containing behind his habitually cool façade.

The day before, Emilie Auber’s accountant had flown to Paris to request an urgent meeting with Luc. Robin Hodgson had been the anxious bearer of bad news. Without consulting her accountant, or indeed anybody else, Emilie had loaned practically every penny she possessed to a woman called Juno Roussel.

Luc had been furious. But he had also been grimly amused that even in such trying circumstances Emilie had not admitted the embarrassing reality that Juno Roussel was in fact his mother-in law! The mother-in-law from hell, Luc conceded with a curled lip. He hadn’t been remotely surprised to learn that Juno had since disappeared without repaying the trusting Emilie any of the money she had borrowed.

‘I believe that from the outset of this unpleasant business there was a deliberate intent to defraud your father’s cousin,’ Hodgson had then gone on to contend heavily. ‘Emilie was first introduced to Juno Roussel by a young woman she had known as a child—the Roussel woman’s daughter, Star.’

That information had genuinely shaken Luc. The suggestion that Star might have been involved in ripping off Emilie had turned his stomach; Star had always been so honest.

However, what had truly shattered his legendary nerves of steel during that interview was hearing the entirely incidental news that Star had apparently become the mother of twins. Infants still in hospital at the time of Star’s visit to Emilie last autumn. A mother…Luc’s teenage bride, Luc’s runaway wife. Star had given birth to another man’s children while she was still his wife!

Luc had been incandescent at that revelation. He recalled little beyond that point. And he still felt wild with rage. He wanted to smash something; he wanted blood to flow. How dared Star do something so sordid? How dared she run around sleeping with other men while she was still legally married to him? But then she was faithfully following in her mother’s footsteps, wasn’t she? Juno, whose dangerous influence he had impulsively tried to protect her from. What a fool he had been to have any faith in the daughter of a blackmailer!

No doubt Star currently believed herself safe from retribution. In spite of all his efforts over the past eighteen months, Luc had been unable to find out where his runaway wife was living. But that very morning Luc had obtained entrance to the art gallery which Juno had abandoned. There he had found the address book which the older woman had left behind in her hasty departure…

* * *

That evening, Star had just finished settling the twins into their cots when the ancient front doorbell shrilled noisily on the old servants’ call board in the kitchen. Only a stranger would go to the front entrance, which was hardly ever used. Indeed, the bolts had long since rusted into place. But, even though there was a sign directing all callers to the rear entrance, it was amazing how many people chose to ignore it.

Not in the mood to rush out of the back door and trudge all the way round to the front, Star groaned. The bell shrieked again in two long, ferocious bursts. She tensed, wondering if urgent need lay behind such unreasonable impatience. Perhaps a walker had been injured or a car had crashed out on the road.

She raced out into the teeth of the wind that had been rising steadily throughout the day. It blasted her copper hair back from her brow and plastered her long fringed skirt to her legs, making it difficult for her to move quickly. As she struggled round the wall into shelter, she winced at the racket the scaffolding was making as it rattled in the gale.

The first thing her attention centred on was a stunningly expensive sports car, with a sleek golden bonnet. With disconcertion, her gaze whipped from the car to the tall, dark male positioned by the Victorian bellpull. Luc…it was Luc! But how could it be Luc? With Emilie Auber sworn to secrecy about her whereabouts, how could he possibly have found out where she was living?

The sheer shock of recognition stopped Star dead in her tracks. A wave of disorientating dizziness currented through her. She rocked back unsteadily on her heels and shivered violently in reaction. Registering her presence, Luc strode towards her, his devastatingly dark and handsome face hard as granite.

Huge aquamarine eyes fixed to him as her head tipped back to take in all of him. He was so big. Somehow she had forgotten how big. There he stood, six feet three inches of potent masculine intimidation, exuding a twenty-two-carat sophistication that came as naturally to him as breathing. He was, after all, one of the most powerful investment bankers in the world. He had the sleek, honed elegance of a prowling jaguar and a physical presence that was sheer intimidation.

Eyes dark as midnight glittered down like shards of ice crystal into Star’s. A pulse at the base of her slender throat beat convulsively fast and made it impossible for her to catch her breath.

‘Shock…horror,’ Luc enumerated with a sibilant softness that trickled down her sensitive spine like a hurricane warning. ‘You still wear every thought and feeling on your face, mon ange.’

While he still showed nothing, Star reflected in feverish abstraction, her attention glued to the smooth, hard planes of his lean, strong face. ‘Luc…’ she managed in a choky little voice before the tidal wave of horribly familiar guilt engulfed her and reduced her to squirming silence instead.

‘Oui, your husband,’ Luc drawled, his husky French accent dramatising every syllable with the most incredibly sexy edge.

A tide of colour washed over Star’s triangular face. She shut her eyes in dismay at that last forbidden thought about his accent and struggled to get a grip on herself.

‘Surely you expected me to track you down sooner or later?’

‘Not really, no…’ Star mumbled, eyes shooting wide again to telegraph a look of naked panic. She was trying to picture herself telling him the most unwelcome news he would probably ever hear. That he was the father of twelve-month-old twins.

Luc’s beautifully modelled wide, sensual mouth compressed into a hard line. ‘Guilt is written all over you!’ he ground out in icy disgust.

He knew. He knew about the twins! What else could he be talking about? He must have leant on poor Emilie and browbeaten her into spilling the beans. And he wasn’t wrong about the guilt. At that moment, Star was just eaten alive by that sensation, and at the same time savagely hurt. It had been one thing to imagine how Luc might react, quite another to be confronted with the brutal reality of that rejection.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ALORS!’ Luc slung the noisy scaffolding girding the castle frontage a grim appraisal. ‘Take me inside,’ he instructed in imperious command.

‘The front door doesn’t open…you’ll have to come round the back.’ Alarmingly conscious of Luc powering along beside her, impatiently curtailing his long stride to her smaller steps, Star hurried breathlessly back round to the rear of the castle.

‘I’m so s-sorry, Luc…I really am,’ she stammered truthfully in the dim passageway which led past several doors into the basement kitchen. It was her only reception area, and although daylight was only just beginning to fade she already had candles lit, because it was a dark room, and the place needed rewiring.

One step into the kitchen, Luc surveyed her with dark eyes colder than frostbite. ‘By the time I have finished taking this betrayal out of your useless little hide, you’ll understand the true meaning of what it feels like to be sorry!’

Shaken by such a level of condemnation, Star turned even paler. Did he think that she should have terminated her pregnancy? Was that what he was getting at? Had it been a betrayal of trust to give birth to children he would not have wanted her to have? Her tummy muscles knotted up. ‘Sometimes things just g-go wrong, Luc—’

‘Not in my life they don’t…not once until you came along,’ he completed with icy exactitude.

In the face of an accusation that she was aware had more than a smidgen of truth, Star braced herself with one nerveless hand on the back of the sagging armchair by the range and stared helplessly at him, registering every detail of his appearance. His superb charcoal-grey silk suit sheathed his broad shoulders and the long, powerful length of leg in the kind of fabulous fit only obtainable from extremely expensive tailoring. His luxuriant black hair had been ruffled by the wind, but the excellence of the cut had ensured that the springy dark gleaming strands just fell back into place.

Briefly engaged in sparing his humble domestic surroundings a grim, lip-curling appraisal, Luc turned his attention back to her without warning.

Flash! As Star collided with the long-lashed brilliance of his stunning dark deep-set eyes, it was like finding herself thrust into an electric storm. Heat speared through her slight frame. Feverish pink sprang up over her slanted cheekbones. She trembled, every sense awakened to painful life and sensitivity, an intense awareness of her own body engulfing her to blur every rational thought.

Silence banged thunderously in her ears, her heart thumping a frantic tattoo against her breastbone. A wanting so powerful it left her weak had seized her, dewing her skin with perspiration, stealing her ability to breathe or vocalise. What was it about him? She had asked herself that so many times. The obvious? He was fantastically good-looking. So tall, so dark and beautifully built. His maternal grandmother had been an Italian countess. That heritage was etched in his fabulous bone structure, the blue-black ebony of his hair and the golden hue of his skin.

Was that really the only reason she yearned for him with every fibre of her being and when deprived of him, felt only half alive? It had to be the only reason, she told herself frantically.

‘So you have nothing to say for yourself,’ Luc drawled.

‘I’m still in shock,’ she mumbled truthfully.

Shock. Her shock was nothing to his, Luc decided with sudden ferocity. To find her living like this in abject poverty, candles lighting a room Gothic in its lack of modern conveniences or comfort. She was dressed like a gipsy and thin as a rail. Bereft of the support of Sarrazin money for just eighteen months, she’d clearly sunk without trace. Just as he had expected; just as he had forecast. He studied her bare feet, recalled that she had almost run across the rough gravel, and the most extraordinary ache stirred inside him. Frustrated fury leapt up to engulf and crush it out. Not enough sense to come in out of the rain, Emilie had once said of Star.

Emilie…Luc’s quick intellect zoomed in on that timely reminder at supersonic speed, but his hooded gaze was nonetheless still engaged on roaming up over Star’s veiling skirt with its silky fringe. Memory unerringly supplied a vision of the slender, shapely perfection of her legs. He tensed almost imperceptibly, his appraisal rising higher, finding no escape in the pouting thrust of her small braless breasts beneath her velvet wrap top.

As she flung her head back, his lean, powerful body hardened in urgent all-male response. Her hair glowed in the dimness, bright as beaten copper in sunlight, dancing round her triangular face. Her pallor highlighted exotic eyes, alive with awakening sensuality, and a wide, soft, voluptuously pink mouth.

And this was the woman he had spent over a hundred thousand pounds trying to trace over the past eighteen months? Tiny, skinny, irredeemably different from the rest of her sex. There was nothing conventional in her mercurial changes of expression, her fluid restive movements, her jangling bracelets, her outrageous earrings shaped like cats or her ridiculous clothing. She wasn’t beautiful either. There was nothing there that he admired or looked for in a woman—nothing but the drugging, earthy sexuality that was as much a part of her as her dusty bare feet, Luc told himself with driven determination.

Star had the soul and spirit of a small wild animal, always ready to fight for survival and use whatever she had to get what she wanted. Or trade? Why else was she surveying him with that melodramatically charged look of undeniable hunger? No, there was no doubt in Luc’s mind that Star knew exactly what he was here about. To look so ashamed and desperate, she had to have been involved up to her throat in persuading his father’s elderly cousin to part with her money!

‘How could you have done such a thing to Emilie?’ Luc demanded icily.

A frown line indented Star’s smooth brow. Colliding with his glittering dark gaze, she froze as if an icy hand had touched her heart. Perspiration beaded her short upper lip. Gooseflesh sprang up on her exposed skin. The chill he emanated was that powerful.

‘Emilie…?’ Star’s frown line deepened.

‘The loan, Star.’

‘What loan…what are you talking about?’

‘Si tu continues…’ Luc swore so softly that the tiny hairs at the nape of Star’s neck rose.

It was a threat. If she kept it up, he would get angry. But, Emilie and what loan?

‘I honestly don’t know what—’

Luc slowly spread the long brown fingers of one expressive hand. The atmosphere was so charged she could almost feel it hiss warningly in her pounding eardrums. ‘So that’s the way you’re trying to play it,’ he spelt out, framing each laden word with terrifying emphasis. ‘You’re acting all ashamed because of the two little bastards you’ve managed to spawn while you were still married to me?’

The offensive words struck Star in the face like a blow. She fell back in physical retreat. ‘Bastards?’ she whispered tremulously.

‘Illegitimacy seems to run very much in your family genes, doesn’t it?’ Luc pointed out lethally. ‘Your children…you…your mother—not one of you born with anything so conventional as a church blessing.’

Registering in disbelief that Luc believed that their twin babies had been fathered by some other man, Star gazed back at him with haunted eyes of bewildered pain. ‘No…no, Luc…I—’

‘Surely you don’t think I require an explanation?’ Luc elevated a winged ebony brow, studying her with sardonic disdain. ‘I shall divorce you for adultery and will not pay alimony, I assure you.’

Divorce…divorce! Even in the midst of her appalled incredulity that Luc should believe her capable of giving birth to another man’s children while still legally joined to him, that single word tore into Star like a bullet slamming into her body. And like a bullet rending tender flesh it brought unimaginable pain. Divorce was for ever and final. She stared back at him, eyes shadowing, slanted cheekbones taut with tension beneath her fair skin.

A roughened laugh escaped Luc. ‘You seem shocked.’

The atmosphere sizzled, hot with high-voltage tension. She sensed his rage, battened down beneath the icy façade he maintained. And aching, yearning sadness filled her to overflowing when she saw the grim satisfaction in his hard, dark gaze. Now he had the perfect excuse to be rid of her. But then he’d had excuse enough in any case. Not wanted, not suitable. Too young, too lowly born, possessed of embarrassing relations, unfit to be the wife of the chairman of a bank.

‘You should never have married me…’ Anguish filled Star as she remembered her ridiculous optimism against all the odds. Her manipulation, her manoeuvres, her final desperate attempt to force him to give her a trial as a real wife. What did it matter if he now chose to believe that the twins belonged to some other man? It had to be what he wanted to believe. He didn’t care; he had never cared.

Luc had swung away. His strong profile was rigid. He clenched his hands into fists and then slowly uncurled them again. But he could still feel the violence like a flickering flame darting along the edge of his self-control. She was a little slut. He despised her. In the circumstances, he was being wonderfully polite and civilised. Only he didn’t feel civilised. He wanted to punish her. He wanted to punish her even more when she stood there like a feckless child, who never, ever thought of the damage she might be doing. But he didn’t dare risk acting on that urge.

For eighteen endless months he had had Star on his conscience. He had worried himself sick about her. How she was living, where she was living, even whether or not she was still living. In Luc’s opinion, anyone with her capacity for emotional intensity had to be unstable. She had too much emotion, the most terrifying amount of emotion, and it had all been focused solely on him.

Eighteen months ago, in more anger than he had ever known, he had lashed out and ripped her apart with the force of his rejection. And she had taken off like a bat out of hell, leaving all her clothes behind, not to mention a letter which Luc had considered dangerously close to thoughts of self-destruction. He had had the moat dragged at the chateau, he had had frogmen in the lake day after day…

Sarrazin Bride Driven to Suicide by Unfeeling Husband. He had imagined the headlines. Over and over again, he had dreamt of her floating like the Lady of Shalott or Ophelia surrounded by lilies. He had been haunted by her! Freed of her ludicrous expectations, he should have found peace. Instead, he had got his nice quiet life back, and his freedom, but he had lived in hell!

Star studied Luc with pitying aquamarine eyes and tilted her chin. ‘You weren’t worthy of my love. You were never worthy of my love. I can see that now.’

Luc swung back to face her as if she had plunged a dagger into his strong back. Black eyes cold as charity assailed hers.

‘You’re unreachable. You’re going to turn into a man as miserable and joyless as your father,’ Star forecast with a helpless shake of her copper head. ‘You don’t even like children, do you?’

Luc stared back at her in silent derision, but the slight darkening of colour over his spectacular cheekbones, his sudden tension and the flare of hostility burning from him told her all she needed to know. Oh, yes, some day a recognised son and heir would be born to his next wife, Star reflected painfully. And Luc would naturally repeat all the cruelties of his own lonely childhood. What else did he know? That child would be banished to a distant nursery and a strict nanny. He would be taught to behave like a miniature adult and censured for every childish reaction until he learned not to cry, not to shout, not to lose control…indeed that emotions were messy, unnecessary and unmanly. At least that poor stifled child would not be Mars, Star told herself wretchedly.

‘Emilie…’ Luc reminded Star with icy bite. ‘How could you introduce Emilie to a vulture like your mother?’

Thrown into total confusion by that abrupt and confusing change of subject, Star had to struggle to recall the loan which Luc had mentioned earlier, but she could not stretch her mind to comprehend how anyone could possibly call Juno a vulture. Juno would give her last penny to anyone in need. ‘I don’t understand—’

‘Bon! Cela suffit maintenant…OK, that’s enough,’ Luc incised harshly, his darkly handsome features cold and set. ‘Lies are going to make me even angrier. In fact, lies may just prompt me to calling in the police!’

Lies? The police? The police? Star’s lashes lowered to screen her shaken eyes as she fought to concentrate her wandering thoughts. How much more did Luc expect from her? All right, so he acknowledged few human feelings and therefore could not understand what she was going through right now. But he arrived here without warning, disgustingly referred to their children as having been ‘spawned’, simply assumed that they had been fathered by a lover and then he announced that he wanted a divorce! Wasn’t that enough to be going on with?

‘I don’t tell lies,’ she stated.

‘That should make life simpler. So, you and Juno collaborated to persuade Emilie to loan your mother everything she had—’

‘No…’ Star stepped forward in aghast disconcertion at that charge.

‘Yes. Don’t you dare lie to me,’ Luc intoned in a low, vicious tone she had never heard or thought to hear from him. ‘Yesterday, Emilie’s accountant told me the whole story. Emilie cashed in her investments and gave Juno the money to open up that art gallery.’

Star froze. The pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. Juno had borrowed from Emilie, not from a bank!

‘And now Juno’s vanished. Are you going to tell me where she is?’

‘I don’t know where she is…’ Horrified by what she was now finding out, Star spun away in an uncoordinated movement.

As she reconsidered the message which Juno had left on the answering machine, her temples tightened with tension. Now she knew why her parent had fled the country at such speed. And no wonder Juno hadn’t explained the nature of the ‘hot water’ she was in! Her mother would have known just how shocked and disgusted her daughter would be at her behaviour.

Juno had lied by omission, deliberately concealing the fact that her loan had come from Emilie. Had Star had the smallest suspicion that Emilie was considering backing the art gallery venture, she would have stepped in and stopped it happening. But how could Emilie have been so naive? Emilie was neither rich nor foolish. So why on earth had she risked her own security to loan money to a woman she hardly knew?

‘You’re not prepared to rat on Juno, are you?’ Luc condemned harshly.

‘I’m not in a position to!’ Star protested.

Luc studied her with hard, dark eyes. ‘Emilie has been left without a sou.’

‘Oh…no!’ Distress and shame filled Star to overflowing. She loved Emilie Auber very much. That her own mother should have accepted Emilie’s money and then run away sooner than deal with the fall-out when things went wrong truly appalled Star.

But she had one minor comfort. Luc would not allow Emilie to suffer. He would replace her lost funds without question or hesitation. His reputation for ruthless financial dealing would not get in the way of his soft spot for the kindly older woman. Juno would have known that too, Star reflected bitterly. Was that how her mother had justified herself when she had borrowed money which Emilie could ill afford to offer?

‘If you tell me where Juno has gone, I might begin to believe that you have nothing to do with this disgraceful business,’ Luc murmured very softly.

‘I told you…I don’t know!’ Star flung him a shimmering glance of feverish anxiety. ‘How could I have anything to do with this? How could you even think that I would have encouraged Emilie to loan money to my mother?’

‘Why not?’ Luc dealt her a grim appraisal. ‘Aside of that one visit you made with your mother in the spring, Emilie has neither seen nor heard anything from you since you left France. That doesn’t suggest any great affection on your side of the fence, does it, mon ange?’

Star braced slender hands on the scrubbed pine table and stiffened with instant resentment at that accusation. But she could not admit that she had maintained regular contact with Emilie without christening Emilie a liar for pretending otherwise to Luc.

‘I can’t believe that you think I could’ve been involved in this in any way,’ Star reasserted with determined spirit.

‘You’re not that innocent. How could you be? You’re Juno’s daughter. And living like this…’ Luc cast a speaking glance round the bare kitchen. ‘It must’ve been very tempting to think up a way of hitting back at me.’

‘I don’t think like that—’

‘Your mother does. She hates my family. Emilie may only be a cousin of my late father’s, but she is still a member of my family.’

‘Luc…I wouldn’t let anyone harm Emilie in any way!’ Star argued frantically.

‘So why did you introduce her to Juno?’

‘Why wouldn’t I have? Emilie had always wanted to meet her. I could never have dreamt Juno would ask her for a loan, or that Emilie would even consider giving her money!’

Star raised unsteady hands and pressed them against her taut face in a gesture of frustration. Why would Emilie have loaned money to Juno when she knew that Juno was hopeless with money? It didn’t make sense.

‘Do you want to know why Emilie gave your mother that money?’

Star nodded slowly.

‘Emilie thought that if the gallery got off the ground, you would move up to London and live with Juno. Emilie was hoping to see more of you.’

Every scrap of remaining colour drained from beneath Star’s skin. She twisted away on driven feet, her face stricken. She wanted to cover her ears from Luc’s derisive tone of condemnation. She also wanted to get her hands on her irresponsible, flighty parent and shake her until her teeth rattled in her pretty blonde head.

‘I hold you responsible for all of this,’ Luc delivered in cold completion.

Star’s slight shoulders bowed. ‘I honestly didn’t know about the loan—’

‘I don’t believe you. When you first saw me this evening, your guilty conscience betrayed you.’ Luc strolled fluidly towards the door. ‘Since I’m not getting any satisfaction here, I’ll go to the police.’

Star whirled round, aquamarine eyes aghast. ‘Luc…no…please don’t do that!’

Luc shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘“Please” doesn’t work with me any more. I want blood. I want Juno. If you can’t deliver her, I’m just wasting my time, and I don’t like people who waste my time.’

‘If I knew where she was, I’d tell you…I swear I would!’ Star gasped, hurrying across the expanse of worn slate floor that separated them.

‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d protect her. You’d hide her from me—’

‘No…If she got in touch…’ Star snatched in a shuddering breath, her eyes overbright with unshed tears. ‘I’d tell you. I swear I would. I wouldn’t like doing it, but what Juno’s done to Emilie hurts and angers me very much. My mother was in the wrong—’

‘The police can deal with her. I’ve got enough to hang her with.’

‘No…you can’t do that!’ Involuntarily, she stretched out her hand and pulled at his arm in an attempt to hold him back as he opened the door that led into the passageway.

Luc gazed down at her, eyes glittering black and cold as ice in warning. ‘Don’t touch me…’

Her throat closed over. Her fingers dropped jerkily from his sleeve. She trembled in shock, a mortified wave of hot colour sweeping up her throat. For an instant, she sank like a stone into a bottomless pit of remembered rejection. Their wedding night, which Luc had spent with his beautiful mistress. The unbelievable anguish of loving without return. In a split second she relived it all, aquamarine eyes darkening with pain and veiling.

‘I’ll crucify Juno in court and I’ll divorce you,’ Luc murmured with velvet-soft sibilance.

‘Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg?’ Star flung at him wildly.

Luc raised a withering aristocratic dark brow.

‘I’ll do anything—’

‘Begging doesn’t excite me.’

Startled by that husky assurance, Star lifted her head and looked up at him again. Luc gave her a dark smile, brilliant eyes shimmering beneath his lush black lashes. Heat curled low in the pit of her stomach, jolting her. She quivered, drawn like a moth to a flame.

‘But then I like my women tall and blonde and rather more sophisticated,’ Luc completed with dulcet cool.

Star flinched, stomach turning over at that lethal retaliation.

In the simmering silence the door at the foot of the dim passageway was suddenly thrust noisily wide. Rory strode in, carrying several bulging supermarket carrier bags. He came to a halt with a startled frown. ‘Sorry. When you didn’t hear me knock, I tried the door. I didn’t realise you had company.’

Disconcerted by Rory’s appearance, Star breathed in deep. ‘Rory, this is Luc…Luc Sarrazin. He’s just leaving—’

‘Like hell I will,’ Luc incised, half under his breath, still as a statue now by her side.

Not believing her ears at that intervention, Star glanced at her estranged husband in astonishment.

‘Luc…?’ The bags of groceries in Rory’s hands slid down onto the stone floor as he released his grip on them. ‘You’re…you’re Star’s husband?’

Luc ignored him. His attention was on Star. ‘Does he live here?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Rory stated curtly.

Luc turned his arrogant head back to study Rory. ‘Fiches le camp…get out of here!’

‘I’m not leaving unless Star asks me to…’ The younger man stood his ground.

‘If you stay, I’ll rearrange your face,’ Luc asserted with cool, unapologetic provocation.

‘Stop it, Luc!’ Star was aghast at Luc’s unashamed aggression.

Luc angled back his proud dark head and lounged back against the doorframe like a big powerful jungle cat ready to spring. ‘Stop what?’

‘What’s got into you?’ Star demanded in hot embarrassment.

‘This little punk got my wife pregnant and you dare to ask me that?’ Luc launched back at her, his husky accent scissoring over every syllable with raw incredulity.

‘Rory is not the father of my children!’ Star slammed back at him shakily.

Rory shot a thoroughly bemused look at both of them.

Luc had stilled again. His nostrils flared. His breath escaped in an audible hiss of reaction at that news. ‘So how many experiments did it take?’ he derided in disgust.

Star was ashen pale. She said nothing. Turning away, she closed a taut hand over Rory’s arm and walked him back outside. ‘I’m sorry about this, but it’s better if you go for now. Luc and I need to talk, sort some things,’ she explained tightly.

‘Obviously you haven’t told him about the twins yet.’

‘No…but he wants a divorce,’ she heard herself advance, because she was too ashamed to tell Rory what her mother had done to Emilie.

Rory sighed. ‘Probably the best thing in the circumstances. He seems a pretty aggressive character. I couldn’t see you ever being happy with someone like that.’

Happy? She almost laughed. What was happy? Being separated in every way from Luc had been like living in a void. It hadn’t cured her. Forcing a brittle smile, Star said, ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to have a row with you about buying food for us.’

Closing the back door again, she leant against the solid wood, mustering all her strength. She had assumed that Luc had gone back into the kitchen. So as she moved back in that direction she was surprised to see that the twins’ bedroom door had been pressed more fully open.

Luc was poised several feet from the foot of the cots. Venus was curled on her side, an adorable thatch of copper curls screening her tiny face. Mars was flat on his back, silky dark hair fringing his sleep-flushed features, one anxious hand gripping the little bunny rattle which he never liked to get too far from him.

‘They’re what? Five…six months old?’ Luc queried without an ounce of emotion.

After the number of setbacks the twins had weathered, they were still quite small for their age. Star studied her children with her heart in her eyes, thanking God as she did every time she came into this room that they had both finally been able to come home to her, whole and healthy. She glanced from under her lashes at Luc. His bold dark profile was grim.

‘Would you have liked them to be yours?’ she heard herself whisper foolishly.

‘Tu plaisantes!’

You must be joking! Star reddened fiercely at that retort. What a stupid question to ask! Instead of asking it, she should just have told him the truth. Whether Luc liked it or not, Venus and Mars, fancifully christened by Juno, were his son and daughter.

Luc strode out past her. Leaving the door carefully ajar, Star followed him back into the kitchen.

‘In fact, I’m extremely grateful that they are not my children,’ Luc drawled in level continuation as he took up a commanding stance by the hearth, his lean, dark, devastating features cool as ice. ‘It would have complicated the divorce and made a clean break impossible. Considering that we have about as much in common as oil and water, joint custody would have been a serious challenge.’

Star was pale as death now. His reaction shook her to her very depths. All right, so he had never thought of her as his wife. Yet when Rory had walked in Luc had been angry, aggressive, powered, it had seemed, by some atavistic all-male territorial instinct. She had never seen that side of him before, but now she had to accept that his reaction to Rory had simply stemmed from his savage pride.

Didn’t he have any normal feelings at all? How could Luc just stand there telling her that he was relieved and grateful that her babies were supposedly nothing to do with him? In pained fascination, she searched his face, absently noting the very faint sheen of moisture on his dark golden skin, the unyielding blank darkness of his hooded gaze.

‘Luc…I—’

‘I was leaving…’ Luc studied his diminutive wife, struggling to distance himself, black fury like a thick, suffocating smoke fogging his usually ordered thoughts. Suddenly he understood why so many unfaithful wives had ended up losing their heads to Madame Guillotine during the French Revolution. Feeling the slight tremor in his hands, he dug them rawly into the pockets of his well-cut pants. Nobody will ever love you as much as I do. Such soft words, such empty promises. He was not a violent man. But he wanted to remind her who she belonged to. No, she did not belong to him, he adjusted at grim speed. He did not want her to belong to him. He had meant every word he had said.

Star moved anxious hands. ‘Could we just talk?’

‘Talk?’ Luc growled, not quite levelly, watching the way the flickering candlelight played over her porcelain-fine skin, accentuating the distinctive colour of her eyes and the full, inviting softness of her ripe mouth.

‘About Juno?’ Star moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and watched Luc tense, his stunning dark eyes welding to her with sudden force.

‘No.’

‘No?’ Colour mantled Star’s cheekbones as the raw tension in the atmosphere increased. Her heart skipped a beat and then began to thump against her ribcage. Her mouth running dry, she tensed in dismay as she felt her breasts lift and swell, the rosy peaks tightening into mortifying prominence.

Luc’s brilliant eyes flamed over her. ‘If you spend the night with me, I’ll let you both off the hook…’

‘I b-beg your pardon?’ Star stammered dizzily.

‘I won’t put the police on Juno’s trail.’ He gazed back at her steadily, not a muscle moving in his lean, strong face. ‘One night. Tonight. That’s the price.’

Her soft full mouth fell open. She closed it again, and tried and failed to swallow. She felt as if the ground had suddenly fallen away beneath her feet. ‘You’re not serious…you can’t be!’

The silence shimmered like a heatwave between them.

Star trembled.

‘Why shouldn’t I be serious?’ Luc angled his well-shaped dark head back, a hard smile slanting his wide, sensual mouth. ‘One night only. Then tomorrow you travel down to London with me to see Emilie. Together we reassure her that she has nothing further to worry about. After that, we never see each other again in this lifetime.’

Her stomach twisted at that clarified picture. ‘But you don’t want me—’

‘Don’t I?’ Luc moved a slow, fluid step closer, dark eyes mesmerically intense as they scanned her bemused face. ‘Just one more time…’

‘You don’t want me. You never did! I’m not your type,’ Star argued, as if she was repeating a personal mantra, a fevered, disbelieving edge to her voice.

‘Except in bed,’ Luc extended without hesitation.

Star stilled in astonishment. Then she jerked in reaction to that revelation. He was finally acknowledging a fact he had refused to concede eighteen months earlier. Luc could find her desirable. The night the twins had been conceived, Luc had genuinely responded to her, not just to the anonymous invitation of a female body in his bed. The following morning, his cold silence on that point had shattered what little had remained of her pride.

Anger and regret now foamed up inside her in a bewildering surge. ‘Couldn’t you just have admitted that to me eighteen months ago?’

‘No,’ Luc drawled smoothly. ‘It would have encouraged you to believe that our marriage had a future.’

The heat still singing through Star’s blood suddenly slowed and chilled. Such cool calculation stabbed her to the heart and unnerved her.

‘But that was then and this is now,’ Luc stressed with syllabic sibilance.

Now, she repeated to herself in reminder. Now, when Luc had knocked her sideways by suggesting that they spend one last night together. Why not? With his customary cool he had already boxed her in with cruel, unfeeling boundaries to ensure that she didn’t misunderstand the exact tenor of his proposition.

He had told her he wanted a divorce. He had told her that after tomorrow they would never meet again.

Star’s throat constricted. Her wretched body might quicken at one glance from those stunning dark eyes of his, but did he really think she held herself that cheap?

‘You don’t want me enough…’ Even as that impulsive contention escaped her Star tried to bite the words back, for they revealed all too much of her own feelings.

Luc surveyed her steadily, devastating dark eyes fiercely intent. ‘How much is enough?’

She wanted him on his knees. She wanted him desperate, telling her that never in his life had he experienced such hunger for any woman. If she couldn’t get into his mind, it would be the next best thing. Hot colour warmed her cheekbones.

‘How much?’ Luc repeated huskily.

‘M-more…’ The current of excitement he generated in her as he moved closer literally strangled her vocal cords.

More? What did that mean? Familiar frustration raked through Luc. He felt like a man trying to capture a dancing shard of sunlight. He felt out of his depth, which infuriated him. He had expected her to grab that offer with both hands. She never looked before she leapt. She was as hot for him as he was for her. He saw it in her, he could feel it in her, only this time she was holding back. Star, exercising restraint? Why? What more could he offer?

‘Cash inducement?’ Luc enquired with lethal cynicism.

Her eyes widened, and then she couldn’t help it. A nervous laugh bubbled from her dry throat.

His superb bone structure snapped taut, hooded dark eyes glittering. He reached out a lean brown hand, closed it over her narrow wrist and tugged her close, so close she stopped breathing. ‘You think this is funny?’

Belatedly, Star saw that he didn’t. He thought she was laughing at him, but sheer disbelief had made her laugh. She gazed up into the night-dark depths of his eyes. The wickedly familiar scent of him washed over her. The faint tug of some citrus-based lotion overlaying warm, husky male. She wanted to bury her face in his jacket and breathe him in like an intoxicating drug.

‘Not funny…sad.’ Star struggled to retain some element of concentration even as his raw magnetism pulled at her senses on every level. ‘I think you’d prefer it if I asked for money.’

He released his breath in a stark hiss. ‘That’s rubbish—’ ‘You could call me greedy then. You could judge me, stay in control.’

‘I’m not out of control.’

‘You like paying for things…you don’t value anything that comes free,’ Star condemned shakily, fighting not to lean into him.

‘Ciel!’ Luc countered with roughened frustration and impatience. ‘Since you and your mother entered my life, everything has had a price!’

At that charge, which had its basis in actual fact, Star paled. Simultaneously from somewhere in the distance there was the most almighty screeching sound, followed by a loud crash. As she jerked back from him, Star’s eyes flew wide with dismay.

Luc swung away with a frown. ‘What was that?’

Star groaned. ‘It sounded like the scaffolding coming down.’

Loosing an impatient expletive in his own language, Luc headed for the door. Star only then recalled that he had parked his car beneath the scaffolding surrounding the tower. Pausing this time to thrust her feet into the leather toe-post sandals lying on her bedroom floor, she hurried outside after him.

When she reached Luc’s side he was poised in silence, scanning the huge heap of twisted metal framing and rotten splintered wooden panels which had come down on top of his gorgeous sports car. The car was all but buried from view on three sides.

‘Pour l’amour du ciel…’ he ground out in raw disbelief, abruptly springing back into motion to stride towards the still accessible driver’s door.

‘What are you doing?’ Star cried in panic, grabbing his sleeve to hold him back.

‘I need my mobile phone!’ Luc launched down at her.

‘Are you crazy?’ Star pointed to the single tier of scaffolding still hanging at a precarious angle above the destruction below. ‘That could fall at any minute!’

‘Oui…I’m crazy.’ Luc flung her a grim slashing glance. ‘When you last looked into your little crystal pyramid, did you put a curse on me?’

Star stiffened until her muscles were as tight as a drum skin. After that derisive response, she resisted the urge to tell him that many people believed in the value of crystal healing. ‘There’s a phone in the kitchen. You’re welcome to use it.’

She walked away, but before she disappeared from sight she stole an anxious glance back. She could see that Luc was still calculating the chance of that last section of scaffolding falling at the exact moment he retrieved his phone from his car.

‘Don’t you dare, Luc Sarrazin!’ Star screamed back against the wind, infuriated by his obstinacy, that indefinable male streak which could not bear to duck a challenge.

And in that split second, with a wrenching noise of metallic protest, the remainder of the frame leant outward and came tumbling thunderously down, forcing Luc to back off fast.

Well, that took care of that problem, Star reflected gratefully, and hurried back indoors again.

Luc followed her into the kitchen and approached the huge built-in dresser where the phone sat. ‘Who owns this Gothic horror of a dump?’ he demanded in a flat tone of freezing self-restraint. ‘I intend to sue the owner.’

‘Last I heard, Carlton was on a Caribbean island repairing boat engines for the locals. He’s poorer than a church mouse,’ Star proffered ruefully.

At that news, Luc breathed in so deep she marvelled at the capacity of his lungs. ‘That structure was in a very dangerous condition—’

‘Yes. An accident waiting to happen.’

His glorious accent was so thick it growled along her nerve-endings like rough tweed catching on the smoothest silk. He was furious, she recognised, outraged by the owner’s irresponsibility, not to mention any circumstance which could maroon him in a dilapidated dwelling at the back end of nowhere. She watched him shoot a granite-hard glance of displeasure at his homely surroundings and the strangest feelings began blossoming in Star.

At that instant, Luc was just so human in his fury and his exasperation he provoked a huge melting tide of sympathetic warmth within her. His control over his emotions was so engrained he would not allow himself to shout and storm like most other men would have done. Yet he would be feeling so much less tense and angry if he let himself go. Of course, he wouldn’t let himself go, she conceded wryly. But such infuriating events as collapsing scaffolding did not figure much in Luc’s life.

He rarely drove himself anywhere. He was a brilliant banker with immense power and influence. A fabulously wealthy but driven workaholic, who had his routine as slavishly organised for him as a prisoner locked up behind bars. His daily existence was smoothed by servants, efficient bank staff, a fleet of chauffeur-driven limos and helicopters and a private jet. In his world of gilded privilege, disaster was invariably kept at a distance, and the irritating, time-consuming repercussions dealt with by someone else.

‘I’m really sorry about this…’ Star sighed heavily.

Luc lifted a candle to enable him to see the numbers on the phone. ‘This is medieval,’ he complained with slashing incredulity. ‘Did the storm bring down the power supply?’

‘No. The lights don’t work in here. The whole place needs rewiring, but Carlton can’t afford to do repairs. However, the phone’s still working.’ That was why the original caretaker had moved out, and the only reason why Star had a rent-free roof over her head.

She watched Luc stab out a number on the phone with an imperious forefinger. He’d be calling for another car. When he walked out, she’d never see him again. Her thoughts screeched to a bone-jarring halt on that realisation. Like an addict suddenly forced to confront the threatening horrors of denial ahead of her, Star was aghast at that reality. That sense of total loss felt so terribly final she wanted to chain him to the wall, to hold onto him for just a little longer. But she didn’t need to chain him, did she? He had already offered her a time extension, a little slot, a ridiculously narrow little slot.

Why had he asked her to spend one more night with him? Was it to be his treat or her supposed punishment? My goodness, she thought headily, that one night at the chateau must’ve been something reasonably acceptable on his terms. For here was the proof she had never expected to receive. Luc was asking to repeat that night, asking the only way he knew how, asking the only way he would allow himself to ask…bargaining from a position of strength and intimidation. Stripping everything bare of emotion, foreseeing every possible future complication but, with a remarkable lack of foresight, risking those same complications. Whooshing tenderness swept over Star like a tidal wave: Luc was acting out of character.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Luc shot at her with a dark, questioning frown. ‘This phone is acting up!’

‘It’s the storm…put the receiver down and try again,’ she advised quietly.

One more night, she bargained with herself. It would be pure and utterly foolish self-indulgence. She would make no excuses for herself. It wasn’t sensible, but then loving and wanting Luc Sarrazin had never been sensible. Tomorrow she would have to face up to the divorce and the fact that they were like two different planets, forever condemned to spin in separate orbits. Just not meant to be.

Luc was now telling someone at the other end of the line that he wanted a limo to pick him up as soon as possible.

Awkwardly, barely crediting the decision she had reached and instantly terrified that if she lingered on that decision, she might decide against it again, Star cleared her throat, desperate to commit herself.

‘Tomorrow morning…’ she contradicted hoarsely, her mouth feeling as dry as a bone, her tongue too clumsy to do her bidding. ‘You won’t need the limo until tomorrow morning.’

CHAPTER THREE

LUC was not slow on the uptake.

Tomorrow morning! Star had changed her mind. Or had she? Had she merely been playing games with him all along? His lean, powerful frame tautened. On the phone, his chauffeur was asking for directions. Without any expression at all, Luc gave the details and altered the timing of the arrangement, but his thoughts were already light-years removed from the task at hand. He replaced the receiver in a quiet, controlled movement.

Yet Star tensed like a restive small animal scenting a predator down-wind. As well she might, Luc conceded in febrile abstraction. He wanted to rip her lithe quicksilver body out of those absurd clothes and enjoy the kind of raw, urgent sex he hadn’t fantasised about since he was a teenager. But even as the hot blood coursed to his loins, innate caution held him back.

‘Tomorrow, we part again.’

‘No problem…fresh start for both of us,’ Star pointed out shakily.

It was what she needed, Star told herself urgently. The opportunity to draw a final line beneath her disastrous marriage. The chance to rescue a little of her shattered pride at his expense: he was the one asking, not she. That was a most ironic first in their relationship. All of a sudden, she had power. He had given her that power. Why shouldn’t she use it?

In answer to that defiant question, she tensed as she thought of one very good reason why not for herself. ‘Are you involved with anyone else right now?’ she asked tightly.

‘No,’ Luc murmured drily.

Her eyes veiled, Star let her breath slowly escape again. So his mistress, Gabrielle Joly, who had caused her so many sleepless nights of anguish, had finally got her marching orders. Relief quivering through her, she lifted her head again.

Luc was as poised and still as an ice statue, his dark, devastating features unreadable. As he began moving towards her, her heart thumped like a giant hammer inside her.

‘Tell me…do you sleep curled up in the hearth here, like Cinderella?’ Luc enquired lazily.

‘No…Well,’ Star qualified tensely, ‘I did sleep in here over the winter because my bedroom was too cold.’

He reached for her slowly, as if he was afraid an abrupt movement might startle her into retreat. He wasn’t far wrong, Star admitted to herself. Nervous tension already strung her every sinew taut. It had just occurred to her that there was a vast difference between sneaking into Luc’s bed when he was asleep…and inviting him to her own bed when he was wide awake and fully in control.

‘Luc…?’

‘Don’t talk…’ He lifted a silencing forefinger to trace her parted lips with silk-soft sure delicacy.

She trembled, his merest touch awakening the intense hunger she had fought every day for eighteen months. Aquamarine eyes rested on his lean, dark face with a sudden flare of defiance. ‘I won’t let you hurt me again—’

‘I never meant to hurt you,’ Luc ground out, his dark, deep-set eyes flaring to lambent gold.

But how could he have done anything else when he hadn’t loved her? He hadn’t asked her to love him either, Star reminded herself ruefully.

‘It’s all in the past,’ she swore, as much for her own benefit as his.

Luc curved strong fingers to her exotic cheekbones and tipped her ripe mouth up to his.

As his hands slid down past her slight shoulders to lift her up to him, the sheer power of anticipation made her head spin in a dizzy whirl. He found her mouth, and for the timeless space of a heartbeat she lost herself in the hot, hard hunger of his lips. The most terrifying excitement laced with undeniable greed currented through her slim body. She linked her arms round his broad shoulders and pressed herself against the muscular hardness of his powerful physique, a fevered gasp of urgency torn from her throat.

He set her down on something hard. She wasn’t rational enough to care what or where. All that motivated her was the overpowering need to stay physically linked to him. One kiss and he lit a fever inside her. She burned, heart racing, pulses pounding, as he dug his fingers into the silky tangle of her copper hair. He drove his tongue deep in an intimate invasion as incredibly exciting as it was rawly sexual in intent.

At the height of that explosive passion, Luc dragged his mouth from hers and gazed down at her with smouldering heat. ‘Diabolique…’ he muttered thickly. ‘You’re on a table…’

So what? an impatient voice screamed inside her head. As he lifted his proud dark head bare inches from hers, Star reached for him with determined hands, sinking her fingers into the springy black depths of his hair and forcing him back to her. With a ragged groan of male appreciation, Luc melded his sensual mouth roughly to hers again, his hands sliding to the base of her spine to jerk loose the ties of her wrap top.

Hauling her back up into his arms, he lifted his tousled dark head again, colour scoring the fabulous cheekbones that lent his face such power. ‘Where’s the bedroom?’

Star blinked. She was in another world, in which neither language nor reason existed.

Luc elbowed back the kitchen door. ‘Bedroom?’

‘First right…no, first left!’ Every pulse in her treacherous body was thrumming on a high, making it a challenge to think.

Luc dipped the tip of his tongue in a provocative flicker into the tender interior of her mouth, making her jerk with reaction. ‘You have the most gorgeous mouth, mon ange.’

The sun was going down, intense light flooding through the window to illuminate the small cluttered room. He settled her down on the side of her bed. Her heart was jumping to such an extent she had trouble keeping air in her body. She studied him with passionate intensity. His lean, hard-boned features were half in light, half in shadow. Taut cheekbones, eyes the colour of midnight, straight, arrogant nose, hard, masculine jawline.

She watched Luc cast off his beautifully cut jacket, pull loose his tie and peel off his crisp cotton shirt. He discarded the items with the same controlled cool with which he did everything. Yet she quivered, insidious heat rising from deep within at the sight of his muscular brown chest, the sprinkling of curling black hair hazing his pectorals, the satin-sleek smoothness of the skin over his flat, taut stomach. The strength of her own craving shook her.

‘I just love your body,’ she whispered, knotting her fingers together, nerves and anticipation headily mingling to keep her ferociously tense.

Luc flashed her a slightly uneasy glance. ‘That’s my line.’

Star frowned in dismay, taking him literally. ‘We don’t have to have lines, do we?’

‘We don’t need to talk, do we?’ Evidently even more threatened by that idea, Luc strode forward at speed and raised her upright. The edges of her loosened top fell apart. His hands tightened hard on hers. The silence sizzled. He gazed down fixedly at her bare pouting breasts crested by swollen pink peaks that stirred with her every quickened breath. A tide of colour washed her face as she resisted her own self-consciousness with all her might.

‘Sensational…’ Suddenly, Luc was dragging the sleeves of her top down her arms, freeing her of the garment and backing her down on the bed with a lack of cool that she found intensely gratifying.

‘Say it in French,’ she urged breathlessly. ‘Say everything in French.’

Momentarily, Luc stilled. ‘Try to smother the urge to tell me what to do.’

Star gave him a hurt look of confusion.

He lifted her up against the pillows so that she was level with him. Excitement glanced through her, sharp as a knife, but the pained light in her eyes lingered. He closed a soothing hand over her taut fingers, forcing her to release her death-grip on the corner of the duvet. ‘Just keep quiet,’ he practically begged. ‘Don’t talk…when you talk, you drive me crazy.’

Very slowly, Star nodded.

Eyes burning gold swept over her. He snatched in a ragged breath. ‘You just always say the wrong thing.’

Tears stung her eyes behind her lowered eyelids.

Luc gazed down at her in frantic frustration. She was lying there like a corpse now, still as death in human sacrifice mode. He curved not quite steady hands to her delicate cheekbones. ‘I always say the wrong thing,’ he contradicted in desperation.

Star opened her wonderful eyes and nodded forgivingly.

Without hesitation, he captured her lips again with potent driving passion. She stopped thinking, as if he had punched a switch. He slid lithely down the bed and closed his mouth urgently over one thrusting tender pink nipple. She gasped and jerked, every muscle straining in reaction, and instantly she was on fire again. The tormenting sensitivity of her own flesh made her moan helplessly and melted her quivering body to hot liquid honey.

‘I want to taste you…’ Luc muttered raggedly, wrenching her out of her skirt, his mouth travelling down over her slim, twisting length with a hot, devastating sensuality that overwhelmed her.

There was no escape from the raw force of her own need. Her heart racing, she flung back her head as he found the hot moist centre of her. A low, keening cry of reaction erupted from her. She was out of her mind with excitement, lost in the domination of an expert sensualist and increasingly frantic as the nagging, terrible ache for fulfilment built ever higher. Her fingernails scored his shoulders in a wild passion of impatience.

‘Luc!’ she sobbed in despair.

He came over her then, and slid between her trembling thighs. She couldn’t get him there quick enough. The fire inside her was all-consuming. He sank into her on one powerful thrust, and the pleasure was so tormentingly intense she almost passed out at the peak of it. Nothing had ever felt so good. And there was more and more and more, and she was hugely desperate to hold onto every sensation and make it last as long as she possibly could. Out of control, she let that mad spiral of tormenting excitement gather her up and send her sobbing and mindless to the intense height of a climax that totally wiped her out.

Afterwards, the first thing she was conscious of was the silence. Luc was still holding her, every damp, hard, muscular line of him welded to her smaller, slighter frame. For a moment she luxuriated in that feeling of intimacy and closeness. Then her mind awakened again, and with a sinking heart she recognised her own weakness.

‘Star…’ Luc husked in an indolent tone of satiation. ‘It’s never been like that for me.’

She hoped it never would be again. In fact she hoped she would be a tantalising memory that infuriated him until the day he died. Mustering every scrap of self-discipline she possessed, she forced herself to pull away from him. Unexpectedly, he caught her back to him. In the half-light, dark golden eyes appraised her flushed triangular face, her lowered lashes which betrayed only a wary glimmer of aquamarine.

‘You can talk now,’ he murmured, almost teasingly. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’ Once she would have told him she loved him. And that recollection of her old self now made her cringe.

Luc came up on one elbow, stunning dark eyes level. ‘Star—’

‘We left the candles burning in the kitchen.’ She snaked out of his hold before he could guess her intention. Stretching out a frantic seeking hand for the wrap lying on the chair by the bed, she got up, keen to make her escape.

In the kitchen, she shivered, cold as ice without him, even colder when she looked into the future. Yet her body still thrummed and ached from the glorious possession of his. How dared he make it even better than she had remembered? How dared he tell her that that was the best sex he had ever had? He didn’t have a sensitive bone in his entire body. But then what did that matter now?

She felt anguish beckoning like an old friend, but she turned away from it, older and wiser now. Making a meal of misery wouldn’t change anything. She forced herself to put away the groceries which Rory had brought. The prosaic task dragged her down from the heights, gave her the chance to get a grip on her turbulent emotions.

It was past time that she faced up to the truth she had spent such an impossibly long time evading. Their marriage had been a fake! She had known that from the outset but had stubbornly refused to accept the fact. Luc had never wanted to marry her; Luc had simply felt that he had to marry her, Star acknowledged painfully.

That winter his father had been dying, Star had enjoyed a long-awaited and very emotional reunion with her mother. Only one awkward fact had shadowed that reconciliation: Juno hated the Sarrazin family and had been desperate to persuade Star to leave France. But Star had been head over heels in love with Luc…and quite incapable of choosing to remove herself from his immediate radius.

On an unannounced visit to the chateau, her mother had been genuinely appalled to walk into a room and find Star in Luc’s arms. Accusing Luc of taking inexcusable advantage of her teenage daughter’s naivety, Juno had threatened to create a major scandal. Determined to protect his sick father from the distress of such sordid publicity, Luc had insisted that they get married. It was ironic that Juno had been even more outraged by their marriage.

But Star had entered their marriage of convenience with a hidden agenda the size of a jumbo jet. She had honestly thought that if she prayed hard enough, tried hard enough, she could make Luc love her! Every scrap of misery she had suffered since, she decided, she had brought on herself.

Fortunately, she didn’t love Luc any more, she told herself fiercely. He was her first love. It was understandable that she would never be totally indifferent to him. But here, tonight, she promised herself that she would say goodbye to that humiliating past and move on. When the dawn came in tomorrow, there would be no looking back.

Having got her flailing emotions back under control, Star drifted back to the bedroom and lodged uncertainly in the doorway, striving for a cool stance. In the moonlight, Luc was lying in a relaxed sprawl on his side, his skin vibrant gold against the pale bedding. He looked like an incredibly gorgeous oil painting. Her heart gave a treacherous lurch. She waited for him to lift his handsome dark head and say something. When he didn’t, she moved slowly closer. She couldn’t believe it. He had gone to sleep! But then when had Luc last slept? She swallowed a rueful laugh, bitterly amused by her own intense disappointment. He followed a relentless schedule. He would have had to make time for a trip to England. To do so he might well have worked through most of last night. And now, tension released by a rousing bout of entirely uncommitted sex, he had given way to exhaustion and fallen asleep. How touchingly, uncharacteristically human! It shocked her that she was really tempted to wake him up again.

Refusing to give way to that degrading desire, Star sat in the kitchen by the light of one candle. She didn’t trust herself to get back into bed with him. She didn’t even trust herself asleep in bed with him. Around Luc she did things she would not have dreamt of doing with any other man. Of course this time it was only the lure of his sexual magnetism, his heartbreaking good-looks, his lithe, beautifully built body. In other words, sex—and he was very, very good at sex; that was the only reason she was still tempted…

* * *

The limousine arrived at eight the next morning. The chauffeur delivered a garment bag and a small case to the door and then retreated back to the car.

By then Luc was already up, although Star had yet to see him. Minutes earlier she had heard the shower running in the bathroom, and had marvelled at Luc’s staying power under that freezing cold gush. Her own record was three minutes, and she always boiled the kettle for hot water to wash her hair. She put the garment bag and the case into the bedroom and went back into the kitchen to wait.

She had already fed the twins and dressed them in their best outfits: Venus in a pink velour top and leggings, Mars in navy dungarees with a checked shirt. They looked cute. At least, Star thought they did. Hopefully, at some stage, a vague memory of the twins looking cute and cuddly would slightly soften the blow of paternity coming Luc’s way. When the divorce proceedings began she would have to get a solicitor. She would then tell her solicitor to tell Luc’s solicitor that Luc was the father of her twins.

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