The Night That Started It All (7 page)

The flight she booked was transferable, just in case anything came up where she was required to stay longer. If Luc Valentin got over his disgust at the way she’d spoken to him on the phone, he might feel forced to take her to dinner, or something. She should probably accept, for the family’s sake, although she’d be reserved, even rather chilling.

She took steps to ensure she had something decent to wear to the ceremony. Luc might have a low opinion of her morals and her self-regard, but she would give him no opportunity to sneer at her clothes. Rémy had often declared that a Frenchmen could only ever feel distaste for the woman who was careless of projecting her beauty.

It had never been any use explaining to him how easy it was for an author/artist to forget to change out of her pyjamas for twenty-four hours when in the grip of her muse. Even Emilie had wrinkled her nose when she found out her guilty secret. Shari doubted Luc would be any different.

Just as well she wouldn’t be there long enough to get found out. She would establish a lasting impression of herself there as a woman of faultless grace and dignity.

Taking Emilie’s advice, Shari stuffed the corners of her suitcase with scarves. A woman could get away with much in Paris, Em promised, so long as she wore a scarf. Along with the scarves Shari included a massive pack of tampons. When her period finally, blessedly, did eventuate, it was bound to be Niagara Falls.

The moment arrived when, braced for every kind of horror, she boarded the flight.

By the time she disembarked at Charles de Gaulle mid-evening twenty-five hours later, among other things she was feeling rather wan. An hour before landing, a minor bout of turbulence had made her lose her dinner. Fear, no doubt, combined with motion sickness.

She cleaned herself up as best she could, scrubbed her teeth and sponged her neck, but her hair was lank, her clothes wrinkled and her breasts felt tender and vulnerable.

At least no unwelcome man loomed up in Arrivals to witness her failure to project her beauty at the airport. One thing she never wanted to give Luc Valentin the chance to see was Shari Lacey in transit. He’d seen more than enough.

Soon she was in a taxi being whisked incognito through the streets of the City of Light.

Though it was officially spring, Luc’s home turf must have been suffering a cold snap. A drizzly rain obscured its fabled beauty and chilled Shari to her soul. When she alighted from the cab, her teeth chattered.

She glanced around her, pursing her lips. So this was Paris.

Drawing her thin trench coat around her, she regarded the hotel with grim misgiving. Its façade was imposing, in keeping with the surrounding palaces on the grand boulevards.

But a smiling porter strolled out to take her bag and usher her through the revolving doors, and inside, thank the Lord, the lobby was warm, the people surprisingly welcoming.

Feeling empty after her mishap during the flight, Shari planned to order a snack from the restaurant. But once settled in her airy room with its long, graceful drapes at the windows, all she had energy for was the hot shower she’d craved the last five thousand miles. Then, clean, warm and comforted, she slipped between the sheets.

S
HARI
woke to the pale grey light of a Paris dawn. Straight away the horrors of the day ahead sprang into her mind and her stomach swam in total rejection.

Naturally. There wasn’t a lot to look forward to.

Rémy, in his c
—situation
. Luc Valentin on his home turf. Remembering his last view of her. Judging her. Looking the way he looked in her dreams. So damned sexy.

She dressed with gentle movements so as not to antagonise her insides. It struck her that every garment she donned was doubly appropriate. Funereal, for mourning, and sinful, sultry and black for her wicked, whorish nature.

Emilie had lent her a beautiful, elegant silk suit from her pre-pregnant days. Shari had to suck in her breath to close the skirt zip, but at least the cinched-in waist flattered her curves, especially her breasts in the new lacy C-cup she’d bought to accommodate the recent rise in volume.

With sheer black stockings and high heels, she judged the overall effect satisfactorily black, and possibly more elegant than she’d ever achieved to date. Now for the hat.

She’d managed to prevail on Em for a loan of her wide black organza Melbourne Cup number with the luxuriant velvet rose adorning its brim. Shari loved the gorgeous thing. All it lacked was a veil.

Positioning it carefully over the simple chignon she’d managed to achieve, she had the wistful sense it still made something
of a disguise. None of her friends would have recognised her. Perhaps Luc wouldn’t.

Though she’d smoothed on some make-up, her strain shone through. Staring at herself in the mirror, she understood breakfast wasn’t even a remote possibility. Lucky for her the bar-fridge offered a convenient bottle of the blessed black fizz, among other things. She crammed it into her shoulder bag for later. Just in case.

All too soon the dreaded moment came. With a dry mouth, Shari took the lift down and asked the concierge to find her a taxi. The guy obliged by strolling out to the kerb and summoning one with a piercing whistle. Normally that would have delighted an Aussie girl from Paddo. Not today.

Shivering, she climbed into the taxi like a serving wench into a tumbril. Neil and Emilie had provided her with all the details she needed. Rémy, her former lover, fiancé and abuser, was to be buried at Père Lachaise.

With her feet pressing an imaginary brake through the floor, Shari was carried inexorably through the cemetery gates. The car followed a winding street through a city of stone. At the very end loomed a domed chapel.

Her heart lurched. Gathered in front was a small congregation of mourners, all garbed in black. But superimposed on her vision of all of them was Luc. He was standing a little apart from the others looking grim and inaccessible. Her stomach clenched itself nastily.

It was the crunch of her tyres on gravel that dragged Luc from his reverie.

He turned and narrowed his gaze against the grey glare, attempting to make out the taxi’s occupant. The graceful curve of cheek and neck he glimpsed beneath the hat brim looked youthful and extremely feminine. Surely …

No, it couldn’t be Manon. She wouldn’t have the gall to come
here
, flaunting her condition.

Shari got out, not sure she could trust her legs to support
her. As the taxi drove away she stood on the stone apron before the chapel, an alien in a foreign land. All eyes turned to stare at her.

Shari
felt
the instant Luc recognised her. A tremor jolted through his tall frame that communicated itself to her at a deeply visceral level. For whole seconds he stared at her, the curious intensity blazing in his dark eyes paralysing her where she stood.

He started towards her.

Shari’s heart accelerated, far too fast. It was the first time she’d seen him in daylight. How could she have forgotten how—how he was? He looked powerful and autocratic, the expression of his strong, lean face grave and intent. As he neared she tried not to focus on the stirring lines of his mouth. Oh, Lord. This was hardly the time to be reminded of how it felt to be kissed by that mouth, but as he approached her insides roared into a mad, uncontrollable rush.

‘Shari.’ He searched her face, then bent formally to kiss each of her cheeks.

She’d mentally prepared herself for this. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t allow him to touch her, kiss her, even brush her cheek with his roughened jaw, let alone touch her with his gorgeous lips. But when it came to the crunch …

‘
Bonjour
,’ she breathed, barely able to stand on her marsh-mallow knees. She felt the backs of her eyes prick and was possessed by a despicable longing to cling to his lapels.

Though gentle, his dark velvet voice seared her nerves like a bow drawn across the strings of a cello. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’

‘Oh. Oh, yes. Thanks. I know. It’s dreadful, isn’t it? Same—same to you, of course.’

Amber glowed in the depths of his dark eyes as they searched hers. With chagrin she supposed he was looking for traces of the bruise.

‘You must be desolated,’ he said.

Was he serious? Was this more mockery?

He continued. ‘I did not expect … When did you arrive? Why did you not say? Who are you with? Where are you sleeping?’

Beneath her silken finery her breasts all at once felt indescribably tender. Some of the insulting assumptions he’d made during their previous encounter flooded back with raw immediacy, and she found herself breathing rather fast.

‘Perhaps you mean with whom.’

His eyes glinted.
‘Comment?’
He tilted up one thick black brow. ‘
Vraiment
, it’s coming back to me. How you are.’

How she
was
, though, seemed to wholly concentrate his attention, because he devoured her from head to toe, raking her ensemble with a wolflike, smouldering curiosity that eliminated the rest of the world from her awareness. At the same time, the smoothness of his deep voice was having its old hypnotic effect. She might have been walking with him through the shrubbery on a summer’s night.

‘You are very pale. Your
lips
are pale.’ He examined them with an intense interest. ‘And you are thinner.’ His gaze swept over her, lingering a second longer than was necessary below her throat. ‘Though not too thin, fortunately.’

Scandalously, her overly sensitive breasts swelled to push the boundaries even of this new bra, and she began to feel almost aroused.

Inappropriate.
Thoroughly
inappropriate.

All these conflicting sensations were making her giddy, but somehow she stayed upright and said things. Some things, at least.

As if in a dream she inclined her head. ‘I’m sure you mean that as a compliment, though I have no idea what you expected. It’s only been a couple of weeks.’

She realised she’d made a gross tactical blunder when the ghost of a smile touched his mouth and she caught a glimpse of his white, even teeth. ‘Five weeks and three days, to be exact.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said crushingly. ‘I haven’t been counting.’

She had the disconcerting feeling that the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth signalled satisfaction. But what did he have to be satisfied about? Why did he think she’d come here? For him?

He gestured then to the fascinated onlookers, in particular to a couple of elderly women who were circling to view her narrowly.

‘
Maman, Tante Marise, c’est Shari,’
he said. ‘
La
fiancée de Rémy.’

‘
Ex
-fiancée,’ Shari corrected hurriedly, but her words were lost in the babble as family members closed in around her and subjected her to a gamut of curiosity. Only thing was, their questions, arguments and observations were all for each other, not for her.

Not that she’d have understood them anyway. Their French was so rapid and idiomatic she could scarcely pick up a word.

Except for the term
fiancée
. That was being bandied about quite furiously.

The next thing she knew someone patted her, though stiffly. Then someone else murmured something to her about Rémy and gave her a kindly nod. More people spoke to her, some with increasing warmth until everyone, including a hearty uncle with a face not unlike a truffle, seemed to be hugging her, kissing her and calling her
ma pauvre
and
ma puce
.

S
HARI
had visualised herself sitting in the rear of the chapel, alone, concealed perhaps by a marble pillar, a remote, mysterious, but essentially inconspicuous ghost. That wasn’t how it went.

For one thing the ghost space was heavily occupied. Once inside that chapel, the passing of a life cut short was uppermost, whether or not Luc Valentin was present, overwhelmingly attractive and closely scrutinising her every move. As for being inconspicuous, the aunts had hustled Shari into the second front pew, across the aisle from Luc.

She’d always been far too emotional in stressful situations, and Rémy was all too powerfully present for comfort. And when Luc rose to deliver a brief eulogy, mainly in French, and a couple of people on her side of the aisle snivelled, Shari couldn’t help shedding a couple of polite tears in sympathy.

The trouble was her tears took on a life of their own. It was so ridiculous. Once started they wouldn’t stop. She cried so much about Rémy’s stupid, selfish conceit, the agony he’d caused her and the humiliating things she’d let him get away with, that she filled up bunches and bunches of tissues. Though she tried to keep it as quiet as possible, her sobs probably sounded pretty heartbroken, when she wasn’t
at all
. Face it, she wasn’t all that sad.

But Rémy’s family assumed she was. Those nearby patted and consoled her. Aunts, cousins, even the uncle shuffled
seats to get near her and murmur comforting things until she gave in, laid her head on the truffle’s shoulder and cried all down his suit.

Luc kept halting his speech to glower at her with a brow as dark as thunder. She could hardly blame him. When the worst of the embarrassing paroxysm had passed, he lowered his austere gaze to his text and continued on in English with a rather biting courtesy.

Shari supposed she should appreciate the consideration, although she doubted Rémy
was
the finest flower of the French nation, cut down in his prime by a heartless fate. She knew damned well what Luc meant to imply by that. A heartless
whore
.

And when he said a man was known by the quality of those who’d loved him, and went on to describe Rémy as a man who’d been possessed of earthly treasure and looked directly at her, she glared incredulously back through her tears. Oh, come
on
.

The man was a hypocrite. If she hadn’t been so weepy and trembly from stress and the lack of a breakfast, she might have jumped up and said a few very gracious, dignified though at the same time rather terse things.