Fire and Ice (17 page)

 Kate smiled broadly. “Those
lights were pretty blinding tonight. And no, it won’t be the musicals. I’m not
that good and besides, I think it’s often a mistake to try to turn your passion
into a money-making venture. It can add stresses and pressures that take the
fun out of it for good.”

Sebastien studied the burgundy
glow of his glass as he held it in front of the low candle on the table before
taking a sip. “That’s very true,” he said at last, with a sigh.

“Don’t you love your job then?”
Kate asked with genuine curiosity. “You seem so intent on it, there must be
some true enjoyment in it.”

“Yes, I enjoy most of it. The
management, the decisions and changes and corporate social responsibility,
trying to move in new directions behind the scenes – I’ve always liked that
part. But the hosting every weekend, the hobnobbing and courting society, being
the face of Pichard watches – it isn’t my scene at all. It spoils my enjoyment
of my winter weekends.”

Kate knew that he didn’t mean
anything personally, but somehow it hurt to hear him say that he wasn’t
enjoying their common efforts to amuse his guests. She had hoped that he was
finding that teamwork as pleasurable as she did. “So you’d rather be holed up
in a board room or hiding away behind your computer on weekends than taking
them to Verbier. And if you had a night off?”  

“I suppose the past couple of
years I’ve often worked through the weekend,” he admitted ruefully. “But I
still like to go out for a beer with a couple of friends now and then, or have
a fondue, something low-key.  The truth is I’m just as happy with an assiette
valaisanne – you know, those plates of cheeses and dried meats and breads – as
with one of those fancy dinners in a posh restaurant, or the clubs and casinos.
I guess I’ve had more than enough of that whole scene.” He shrugged his
shoulders dismissively.

“And tonight?” Kate asked softly.
“The dinner and the opera? Another social chore?” She felt her joy becoming
brittle, ready to shatter into tiny, irreparable shards.

“Tonight was for pleasure, not for
work,” he said firmly, studying her face. Then he leaned across the table and
unclasped her hair, releasing it to fall in its usual wild mane around her
face. “You look fabulous tonight, Michelle,” he told her, leaning back in his
chair and looking at her steadily. “But I think this is the true you.”

A pang of guilt completely took
away the pleasure that his touch and comment would have given her. She realised
that they were having their first real conversation, and yet it was all based
on deceit. She tried to deflect him, to reduce her guilt. “For all you know, I
could be a princess who dresses like this all the time and just plays chalet
girl for a bit of slumming. Haven’t you seen “Roman Holiday”?”

Sebastien raised his eyebrows to
express surprise. “I’m amazed and relieved that you’ve at least seen one real
film that isn’t a musical,” he said teasingly, but then returned to the
subject. Once again Kate was struck by how determined he could be, and how
impossible to divert.

“I saw you like this first,” he
informed her, looking at her flowing hair. “You were just getting off the bus
and meeting your friend in Verbier. I was hoping that I’d cross paths with you
and you showed up on my doorstep. And you were exactly what I’d expected.”

“And what was that?” she demanded
suspiciously.

“The real thing.”

Every word was a dagger to Kate.
He said exactly what she might have dreamed he would say, but in other
circumstances where she was herself, not an imposter. “Hmmm,” was all she
managed, not wanting to acknowledge the obvious complement when it was
unfounded. “Well, you were the opposite of what I expected. And completely
different from the first impression you gave me.”

It was his turn to look
suspicious. “And what exactly would that first impression have been?”

Kate looked directly at him. “Icy
cold. Impersonal. Hard.”

A slow smile spread across
Sebastien’s face. “Nobody except my family ever really dares to tell me what
they think of me anymore,” he said quietly. “You’re different. There’s none of
the posing and pretences, no acting.”

Kate winced inwardly and tried to
hurry the conversation past these conscience-traps. “We were talking about you
there, actually, not me. Now you’re supposed to ask me what my current
impressions of you are.”

“What if they were correct?” he
challenged her, looking serious.

“Then you’ve done a one-eighty,”
Kate replied coolly. “You’ve changed. Or else you’re putting on a good act to
charm an innocent tourist such as myself.”

Sebastien ran his hand along his
jaw line thoughtfully. “I’d say I had changed for a while and now I’m coming
back to myself. You remind me of things that I’d forgotten, things I used to
enjoy.”

“Such as?” she prodded, hoping
that she knew what his response would be.

“Having fun,” he said simply. “Playfulness.”
He paused for a moment, and then looked into her eyes. “Letting go. I suppose
I’d stopped trusting women, letting them get under my skin. But you’ve brought
back that feeling of trust.”

The guilt that had been growing in
Kate throughout the conversation now turned to complete horror. How could she
have let things get this far? There was no excuse for letting him trust her
like this when she knew that eventually her lies had to be revealed. By  now
her fear of betraying his trust was enormous and she had so much more to lose.
But she absolutely had to say something before this went any further.

She felt her hands grow clammy as
her pulse started to race and her mouth went dry. She licked her lips, trying
to select the right words to begin, but before she had uttered a sound he had
leaned over the table and put a finger against her lips, hushing her.

“Michelle, if this was one of your
musicals I’d be singing “Show Me Now”,” he told her, sounding amused but
keeping his finger where it was. “Now is not the time for more words. The
response I was hoping for was more like this.”

He rose to his feet smoothly and
towered over her. “Come with me,” he commanded, pulling her to her feet. He
fumbled in his pocket for his wallet and left a note on the table, then dragged
her toward the door. She was still trying to think how to stop things while he
draped her jacket over her shoulders and led her outside with sudden urgency
into the cold street.  

She looked up into the heat of his
gaze and felt herself burning. It was as if a lion had been lazily socialising
with his pride all evening and now had risen to his feet, stretched and come to
life, ready to hunt. He looked down at her purposefully and she found herself
powerless to speak, unable to do anything but wait helplessly for him to move.

His gaze never left her face as he
took her hands in his, gently but firmly prying loose the opera programme that
she was still clutching. Holding her two hands he pulled her towards him until
she could feel his breath condensing in the night air above her head. Slowly
she raised her face and was drawn by magnetism against his until they froze
just centimetres away.

“Michelle,” he breathed, and for
an agonising instant she was afraid that he wouldn’t kiss her. Then she was
afraid that she would never get enough as his lips descended on hers with an
explosive passion, feeding the hunger that had been building in her for weeks.

She had no idea how long they
stood there, locked in a desperate kiss in front of the little bar. Her entire
world had been reduced to the feel of the man in front of her, holding her
upright as she collapsed into his kiss, letting his strength carry her as she
finally let go of all of her doubts, her guilt, her analysing. Nothing existed
but Sebastien and the heat of his lips against her cold skin.

It was Sebastien who finally broke
away with a moan, staring down at her with animalistic intensity as he devoured
her with his dark eyes, his breathing ragged. Kate came slowly to her senses as
if drunk, the gradual awareness of the empty street around her and her own cold
feet. All she wanted was more, more kissing, more of Sebastien, more of this
moment. She almost whimpered as he pulled himself straight and backed away,
gently releasing her to find her balance again.

He kept his eyes locked on hers as
he raised his hand for a cab. The taxi purred up quietly from where it had been
waiting in the darkness and Sebastien opened the rear door, helping Kate into
the welcome warmth of the interior. As soon as he climbed in beside her, Kate
reached for his face and pulled him to her, surprising herself with her own
ferocity as she continued the kiss.

The taxi ride was far too short. Somehow
Sebastien managed to pay the driver and open the door, never letting go of her
arm, clutching her firmly as if she might disappear. They kissed on the way to
the elevator and in the elevator and in front of his flat while he grappled
with the lock. He was already pulling at her coat and letting his own fall to the
floor as they kissed their way down the hall to his bedroom door.

In one smooth move he bent down
and swept up her legs in his strong arms as he lifted her from the floor and
pushed open the door with his shoulder. He carried her inside, kicked the door
shut behind them and brought her over to the bed, his lips fused to hers the
entire time. 

Chapter Eighteen

Morning light was filtering
through a chink in the heavy curtains when Kate awoke. An enormous smile lit up
her face as she rubbed her eyes sleepily, thinking of the past night. She
rolled over languidly, enjoying the touch of silk sheets on her bare skin as
she remembered the feel of Sebastien’s body against hers. They had barely slept
all night, just drifting off in each other’s arms in the small hours of the
morning, exhausted but ecstatic.

But even a passionate night of
love-making and two hours of sleep hadn’t prevented Sebastien from rolling out
of bed at six in the morning to deal with some business calls to Japan and
India, to compensate for time zone differences. He had kissed her gently and
tucked her in snugly before jumping in the shower and heading out.

“Sleep as long as you like,” he
told her on his way out. “Just remember that Nick and Caro are coming over to
have breakfast with Simon, so you might not want to streak back to your room.”

She noticed that he had
considerately left a bathrobe neatly folded on a chair beside the bed, along
with a note that read “In case you find it a bit too early for that dress. See
you later, love.”

 Kate reached for the note without
getting up, smiling dreamily to herself as she looked at last night’s clothing
strewn across the room and her elegant dress heaped in a pile on the floor.

“I Could Have Danced All Night,”
she warbled, finally sitting up and stretching lazily as she looked around
Sebastien’s room. It was a large corner room with walk-in closets, an en-suite
bathroom and a massive desk in front of windows that ran to the high ceiling.
Apart from the trail of shed clothing, the room was orderly, which didn’t
surprise her.

She was waking up in Sebastien’s
room. The thought made her giddy, and a wave of excited energy replaced her
fatigue. She bounded out of bed and started singing again as she slipped into
the waiting housecoat and pocketed the note because of the joy of seeing that
he had signed it “love”.

She was in love. There was no
doubt, no mistaking the rush of pure joy when she thought of Sebastien. Beyond
the chemistry there was a much deeper connection, that sense of team that she
had enjoyed with him from the start, of belonging together.

She still hadn’t told him about
Michelle, but now she was convinced that it wouldn’t matter, as long as she
told him today. They had spoken a bit in the night, but only sweet nothings as
she lay with her head against his bare chest and he played with her hair. She
could have told him then, she realised now as she considered it, but it had
seemed so unimportant somehow compared to the discovery of each other that they
had been conducting. Their mutual passion had swept everything else away.

It did matter, of course, she
corrected herself as she tied the dressing gown snugly and stared at herself in
a full-length mirror. Her hair was a mass of tangles which would take slow and
painful work with a comb to undo. She ran her hand ineffectively through the
hair on top of her head and stopped when it caught in a knot of snarls.
Catching the movement in the mirror, she grinned at the familiarity of the
gesture, thinking of Sebastien’s distracted habit and the dishevelled mess that
resulted.

Well, there was nothing to be done
about her hair, she decided with resignation. It wasn’t as if anybody would
doubt what had happened between her and Sebastien when they saw her come out of
his room.

And she was fine with that. Proud,
almost, if it didn’t feel like a young man boasting of his conquests to feel
pride in winning somebody’s affections. But Sebastien’s friends had assumed
from the start that they were a couple, she remembered. So she had nothing to
hide.

Nonetheless, she felt a bit
conspicuous as she strolled past the breakfast table minutes later, her bare feet
showing beneath the thick white bathrobe and last night’s dress bundled up
under one arm, her little Italian shoes held in the other hand.

She nodded briefly at the English
crowd sitting around the table, unable to stop a sheepish grin from spreading
ear to ear as she tried to hurry toward her room unobtrusively on tiptoe.

“Michelle!” Carol called happily;
oblivious to the social awkwardness Kate was feeling. “Good morning! Ever since
I met you I was sure I recognised your face from somewhere and I’ve just won a
bet on it. I owe you half my winnings to be fair.”

Kate froze in mid-step as Carol
picked up a newspaper that was lying open on the table and pointed to an
article. “I was certain that I’d seen your face before. I said to Simon, I
never forget a face. But of course you writers use a nom de plume when you
write. Bingo!”