White Lies (16 page)

She didn't dare say why she was upset. Wickedly he nuzzled her ear and murmured his intentions while she tried to stop his hands from wandering all over her body, but he laughed and continued his bold exploration of each rib, each bone in her hips, the softness of her buttocks. 'Pascal!' she groaned, feeling her body reach meltdown as he lifted her into the air.

Slowly he brought her down and eased into her, watching her expression all the time. In despair she allowed her body to rule her mind again. It would be the last time, she promised herself. The very last time.

P
ASCAL'S
leisurely caresses made Mandy feel beautifully languid, until a vibration that had an intensity she could hardly bear began to curl through her. There would never be anything like this again—only the misery and the terrible emptiness of her life would be left.

Together they climaxed with such abandon that they toppled over into the water, rolling instinctively to where the waves lapped their trembling bodies.

Pascal held her till she stopped sobbing, though when she'd begun to cry she didn't know, only recognising that now there was no more emotion left inside her. And then he picked her up, staggered, recovered himself, and took her across the beach to a small, open-sided summer house where he gently laid her on a bed and came to rest beside her, drawing up a soft linen sheet to cover them both.

She was dimly aware of someone murmuring outside, calling his name, and he drowsily muttered,
'Entrez!'
Mortified, Mandy hastily buried her head under the sheet. She heard the clatter of cups, his casual thanks and a soft reply. 'She's gone,' he said with lazy affection after a while. 'Want some breakfast?'

She lifted a hot and flushed face. 'Your staff don't seem surprised by what they see! How often do you do this?' she asked weakly, and thought how possessive she sounded. Her lower lip wobbled.

He kissed it gently and teased a strand of her rich brown hair. 'Only when I have to,' he said quietly.

Mandy gasped. She was one of many? That wonderful sex had been something repeated several times with other women? She wasn't special at all. And that realisation filled her with a searing, agonising pain. She went cold when the reason for that dawned. Somewhere along the line she'd mistaken lust for affection.

It had been different for her—a uniting of two people who shared common tragedies, who understood each other and had found solace and release in sharing themselves. For Pascal she was just a necessary outlet!

How many women? she wanted to ask, shaking with the vicious stabs that lanced through her. She was jealous! Worse than that; she was teetering on the brink of imagining that she'd been half in love. Ridiculous. But last night had been so perfect. Pascal had been a dream companion, a dream lover. Too good to be true.

'You brute!' she muttered miserably. 'I'm leaving! I'm going to find your father—'

With a quick curse under his breath Pascal gripped her wrist, his narrowed eyes searching hers. 'You can't go to him after me! Do you imagine he's any better than me in bed?'

- 'Pascal!' she cried in horror. 'You—you're crude, disgusting—!'

'You of all people can't call me names!' he roared, some terrible anguish racking him and making his voice crack. 'You were prepared to suck up to my father, crawl on your knees to him,
for
him—'

'Stop it! I might have said I was desperate, but not that desperate!' she yelled.

'So you'd have stuck to normal sex with him?' he snapped.

'No! I-'

'Perhaps a few tricks to amuse him?' he scathed.

Mandy felt paralysed, shocked beyond measure at what he was suggesting. He had it wrong. But she couldn't speak for her horror.

'Well, he's off the scene for a while, so you don't have much choice, do you? At least with me you'd be protected,' he snarled.

'Protected!' she gasped.

'Sure. With him you'd be ostracised. The staff at his house would serve you, but they would feel nothing but contempt for you. You say you like people. Living with my father would mean that you'd have to make do with the company of one ageing and dissipated man who is bitter and bad-tempered and hates the world and who's loathed in return—'

'Pascal! What are you saying?' she croaked.

'Forget my father. What guarantee do you have that he won't turn you out after a month or two, when your services are no longer required? You know you're not the first! Why do you think you might be the last? Plenty of others have been willing to lie in my father's bed—'

'Wait a minute!' she cried, grabbing Pascal's arms and shaking him frantically till he stopped his rasping tirade, her hair falling all around her face in a tumble of rich chestnut silk. She tossed it back angrily. 'What are you talking about?'

'All I know is that you asked me to take his place,' he said tightly, 'as your lover instead of him.'

'What?'
she gasped hoarsely.

'I need...' he looked away from her luminous eyes '... sex. You provide it. And I keep you in comfort.'

Sex, she thought bleakly. That was what he'd arranged with her. A hot rush of shame washed through her. If he thought she'd willingly agreed to such a dreadful suggestion, no wonder he held her in contempt; no wonder his staff thought she was some cheap little tramp who wasn't worthy of their smiles.

'You've misunderstood what I meant,' she began in despair.

'No,' he said viciously. 'You won't play the innocent with me now. We've been too far for that. The minute I saw you I wanted you,' he growled. 'Even now every time I look at you I remember I'm a man, and I haven't felt like that for a long time. I need sex, Mandy. I don't want a relationship, only sex. And, to keep it exclusive, I'm willing to pay for it. Especially if it's always as wild as last night and this morning. But, if I keep you, you must stay away from other men—especially my father. Is that perfectly clear?'

'No!' Needing some kind of barrier between them, she drew the sheet up to her face, peering at him over the embroidered edge. 'There's been a genuine mistake—'

'He advertised for you,' he reminded her.

'Yes! So?' She raised her eyes to the ceiling, impatient that he should be so obtuse. 'I answered the advert which led me to a solicitor in London who said I wasn't to get my hopes up but I might be lucky. Obviously things don't always work out in these cases—'

Pascal grunted. 'You're right. Father didn't even see some of the women in the flesh. He'd wait for a photograph and the solicitor's assessment,' he said contemptuously. He looked down his nose at her, running his eyes over her body. 'And the best,' he said softly, 'he bought. Some very lovely women have passed through his hands.'

Mandy shook her head impatiently. 'You've got the wrong idea entirely!' she said hotly. 'He was helping those women! He wanted to help me! The last thing I want is to go to bed with your father! It's perfectly ridiculous, Pascal! I've never met the man! Besides, I won't ever get over Dave. Casual sex, a long-term relationship, love... they're all beyond my capabilities. My interest is dead,' she added in a shaky voice, suddenly, frighteningly, needing to convince herself.

These were the words she'd said so often to boyfriends. They'd become automatic. But this time they weren't true. Pascal had exploded her world of mourning and of clinging to the past. It would never be the same again.

'Last night?' he challenged. 'Wasn't that casual?'

She winced. How could he treat last night as if it had been casual? To her it felt momentous—a release of her suppressed sexuality, a miraculous fusing of two people in heart, mind and body. Deep within her she'd known with a woman's instinct that this could be the man for her. Of course she couldn't tell him so. But if she agreed that it hadn't been anything special, then he'd think that she'd indulged in casual sex! She couldn't win!

'I don't know how that happened,' she said honestly. 'I was emotional. I felt relieved that you were going to step into your father's shoes and help me! I've been hoping for so much, yearning to find someone here who j cares about me! That's why I answered the advert, don't you see?' she cried passionately. 'I need someone of my own. Someone who can share my life. Companionship—'

'For God's sake!' he cried impatiently. 'Are you that naive? Did he pull the wool over your eyes so easily? I The other women who came here knew what was expected of them. Do you honestly think my father brought you over here and paid all that money so you could be his
friend!'

'No! I'm
not
stupid! I know it was a business arrangement and—'

'You are the most cold-blooded of all the women he's ever taken on!' said Pascal contemptuously.

Mandy gulped. Did he mean the other women that Vincente St Honore had helped in the past? Had the solicitor
really
demanded sexual favours for finding long- lost relatives? 'He hasn't bought me!' she protested shakily.

'He sent you air tickets—'

'Your father was only the intermediary,' she argued, 'acting on behalf of his client as any solicitor would.'

'Give me strength! My father's not a solicitor!' i scoffed Pascal.

Mandy blinked, her eyes enormous. Her hands lowered the sheet and she clutched at her thudding heart. 'Not.. .a solicitor? Then... what is he?' she asked in confusion.

'A lecher. A spoiler of women,' grated Pascal. 'The St Honores don't take up professions. The land is our life. Or it was, till Father decided sex was more fun.'

It was a moment before that sank in. And when it did she stared at him mutely, her whole body frozen to ice as the full implications began to reach her dulled mind. 'Then... the—the advert was...'

'For a mistress,' provided Pascal brutally, watching her with an unnerving intentness.

'A—a..
.mistress!
That can't be right!' she breathed. 'He—he knew my name and my birth date!' Her mouth began to tremble at the thought that it might have been a terrible mistake. 'He knew where I was born! It was in the advert, along with my date of birth, the name of the nursing home and the children's homes where I spent my first eighteen years,' she cried, gaining confidence. 'That doesn't sound as if he's looking for a mistress, does it? Pascal... your hatred of your father has led you to misunderstand—'

'I have evidence,' he said coldly.

'So have I!' she countered. 'Mr Lacey handed me an airline ticket to St Lucia, said my proof of identity was in order and that I'd be contacted by Vincente St Honore and learn something to my advantage.'

'And what did you think that was?' he enquired, lifting a disbelieving eyebrow.

'Surely you know? I thought you had all the details of my case! I was expecting to make contact with my parents!' she explained in exasperation.

Pascal's brows snapped together. 'Parents? What the hell do you mean?'

'I thought...' She swallowed. 'I thought your father was a solicitor, acting for someone in my family who'd finally traced me,' she mumbled, pain beginning to darken her eyes. 'I imagined that all the secrecy was connected with the fact that I could be illegitimate, a love-child of someone important—or perhaps married— and that it was a delicate matter to be handled carefully.

'Oh, Pascal,' she said plaintively, 'you must believe me! I thought I'd find my family! It's everything I've always wanted—that's why I came here! And—and I did so want to find out about my mother!' she finished jerkily.

He was very still, his chest rising and falling imperceptibly with his shallow breathing. 'Well, I'll be damned!' he muttered.

'I'd been searching for years,' she said unhappily, 'putting adverts in papers—'

'There you are,' he said gruffly. 'Father must have read one of them and decided you were a likely victim. Did you put in all the details about yourself, like your birth date and so on?' She nodded miserably. 'That's your explanation,' he growled. 'He used your own information to attract you. Defenceless, desperate women are his speciality.'

Her mind seemed to go dead. Pascal had found the solution. She'd been fooled in the cruellest way possible. Enticed by a lecherous old man halfway around the world, passed on to his equally sex-hungry son...

That she could cope with. But not with the fact that it had been a wild-goose chase. No relatives. Nobody to love, or to love her back unconditionally, no blood relation to share her life. Nothing but ashes in her mouth and a hole in her heart.

Cold shivers ran down her spine as she remembered with horror her earlier conversations with Pascal and realised that everything he'd said and done had been coloured by his belief that his father was in line to be her sugar-daddy. Now she knew what kind of woman he'd thought she was. A woman willing to share her body with an ageing man in return for a comfortable life.

A mail-order mistress.

She blinked away the tears which were beginning to form. Self-pity was a luxury she couldn't afford. She had to get out of this mess. 'I thought—I thought...' Bravely she rallied herself and tried to be optimistic. There could be a mix-up. Only meeting his father would reveal the truth. 'You could be wrong!' she said slowly, putting hope before logic. 'Maybe your father
does
know who my parents are—'

'I'm sorry, Mandy. I'd like to think so but it's highly unlikely,' Pascal said, sounding sympathetic. 'Father hasn't been off his plantation for the last thirty years—'

'Visitors?' she suggested in a small voice.

'None. His overseer keeps them at bay. He doesn't see anyone other than the women who come over from England or France to keep his bed warm for a fee.'

Grim-faced at the thought of his father's lifestyle, Pascal swung his legs off the bed and walked naked to the small table, pouring coffee for them both and handing her a cup before he settled on the bed again. His arm came around her and she was grateful for that. He evidently wasn't entirely driven by his sex urge.

'How does he meet these women if he doesn't ever leave his land?' she asked in a small voice.

'By advertising. I always suspected something like that was going on. When Father became ill and the overseer sent for me I sorted out the mass of correspondence and bills littering Father's desk.'