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SUMMER SINS

Three sizzling seductions Three smoulderingly sexy heroes One wickedly-hot summer of sin!

SUMMER SINS

BEDDED, OR WEDDED? JULIA JAMES

WILLINGLY BEDDED, FORCIBLY WEDDED MELANIE MILBURNE

THE MEDITERRANEAN BILLIONAIRE’S BLACKMAIL BARGAIN ABBY GREEN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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BEDDED, OR WEDDED?

JULIA JAMES

About the Author

JULIA JAMES lives in England with her family. Mills & Boon^® were the first ‘grown up’ books she read as a teenager, alongside Georgette Heyer and Daphne du Maurier, and she’s been reading them ever since. Julia adores the English and Celtic countryside, in all its seasons, and is fascinated by all things historical, from castles to cottages. She also has a special love for the Mediterranean—”The most perfect landscape after England!”—and considers both ideal settings for romance stories. In between writing she enjoys walking, gardening, needlework, baking extremely gooey cakes and trying to stay fit!

Don’t miss Julia James’s new book, From Dirt to Diamonds, available in August 2011 from Mills & Boon^® Modern™

CHAPTER ONE

XAVIER LAURAN, chief executive, chairman and majority shareholder of the XeL luxury goods company, whose ornate logo graced so many of the expensive possessions of the rich and famous, scanned down the e-mails on his desktop PC. The words of Armand’s e-mail from London leapt from the screen in front of him.

… she’s the woman of my dreams, Xav—she doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to marry her!

Xavier’s jaw tightened. For a moment he brooded darkly, staring out over the darkening Paris skyline, the Arc de Triomphe visible from the windows of the XeL headquarters, overlooking the Place d’Etoiles. He should, right now, be leaving his office and going back to his apartment to change, ready to escort Madeline to the opera—and thereafter back to her apartment for their usual mutually enjoyable end to the evening. The arrangement suited him. Madeline de Cerasse, like all the women he selected for his leisure hours, knew what he wanted from a relationship and provided him with it—sophisticated companionship at the many social events his position required him to attend, and then, in private, equally sophisticated pleasures of an intimate nature. Physically intimate. Emotional intimacy was something Xavier neither sought nor desired. He was not, he knew with candid self-awareness, someone who let his heart rule his head.

Unlike his brother.

Xavier’s expression darkened. Armand always let his heart rule his head—and the last time it had happened it had been a disaster. With complete lack of judgement, he had fallen into the clutches of a woman who had taken unscrupulous advantage of his good heart, deviously trotting out some rubbish about having to keep her frail grandmother in an expensive nursing home, as well as wringing his heart with tales about the charity for African orphans she’d claimed to work for. Armand had responded generously—until Xavier, with his habitual protectiveness of his younger brother, had had the woman checked out. Only to discover she had been lying through her teeth in order to win Armand’s sympathy and money for herself.

Armand had been duly disillusioned. But his faith in the general goodness of people—and especially women—was undiminished. And now he was talking about marriage.

To whom? Who was this ‘woman of his dreams’? Armand had said nothing about who his intended bride was. Swiftly Xavier scanned the remaining lines of the e-mail.

This time I’m being cautious, Xav, the way you like me to be. She doesn’t even know that I’ve anything to do with you or XeL—I deliberately haven’t told her. I want it to be a wonderful surprise!

But any initial relief that Armand was showing signs of thinking with his head dissolved into deepest foreboding as he finished the e-mail.

I know there will be problems, but I don’t care if she isn’t the ideal bride you think I should have—I love her and that has to be enough …

Grimly, Xavier stared at the screen. This was not good—not good at all. Armand was admitting upfront there would be problems and that his bride was not ideal.

Yet he was still talking about marriage.

Alarm speared through Xavier. If this woman turned out as disastrously as the last one had, extricating his brother would be far more difficult if he married her.

And expensive, too—Armand was not the type to consider a pre-nup. OK, so Armand was only his half brother, and had therefore not inherited the company founded by Xavier’s grandfather, another Xavier Lauran. A company which was riding high—and very lucratively—as one of the world’s most recognisable global brands of luxury goods. The exclusive XeL logo giving cachet and social status to anyone possessing any of the myriad extortionately expensive items, from watches to suitcases, which the company produced. But not only was Armand a very highly paid director of XeL, but his father, Lucian Becaud, whom Xavier’s mother had married after her early widowing when Xavier was a small child, was comfortably wealthy in his own right. Armand would be a rich catch for any woman in search of a moneyed husband.

Was that what Armand’s intended bride was? Armand clearly did not think so. The final lines of his e-mail were adamant.

Xav—this time around, trust me. I know what I’m doing, and you can’t change my mind. Please don’t interfere this time—it’s too important to me.

Xavier sighed harshly. He wanted to trust Armand—but what if his brother were wrong? What if another unscrupulous woman had succeeded in blinding him to her true nature? There would be heartbreak for his brother down the line—not to mention the expense of an acrimonious divorce and the distress to Armand’s parents.

No, he could not take the risk. Not with his own brother’s happiness. He needed to find out who this woman was, and whether his brother was safe with her. Reluctantly, but with grim determination, he reached for the phone on his desk. He would make some discreet enquiries. The company’s security team answered to him alone—and if he required them to keep his brother under surveillance for a short while they would simply assume it was for Armand’s protection. Not that his movements might reveal the identity of this woman so worryingly far from being ‘the ideal bride’, whom he’d already conceded would come with ‘problems’.

As he waited for his head of security to answer, Xavier could feel the thoughts forming in his mind. Maybe he was overreacting. Worrying unnecessarily.

He hoped so—he really hoped so.

But within twenty-four hours he knew that his hopes had been in vain. As he gazed grimly down at the dossier in front of him, freshly delivered by his security team, he knew that without a doubt there was definitely—very definitely—a problem.

Armand had been right—this girl was not ‘the ideal bride’. Xavier’s mouth thinned. But then who in their right mind would think that of a girl who worked as a hostess in a Soho casino?

That she was just that was indisputable. Armand had been followed leaving the London HQ of XeL at the end of the working day, and taking a taxi to a part of South London no one would live in by choice. There, he had been granted entry to a ground-floor flat in a rundown tenement block by a young woman who had welcomed him warmly. He had stayed until mid-evening, when the woman had seen him out. Whereupon Armand had embraced her on the doorstep and spoken earnestly to her. The young woman had then been kept under surveillance herself, and within half an hour had left the flat. She had been followed to Soho, to the casino named in the dossier, where enquiries had confirmed she was employed as a hostess.

Xavier dropped the baldly written report down on his desk. His stomach clenched. This was the woman Armand intended to marry? To bring home to his family, be the mother of his children?

Was he completely mad?

With a harsh intake of breath, he ripped open the envelope marked with a single name: Lissa Stephens.

Then he slid out a photo, and stared at it. Just what was it that Lissa Stephens possessed by way of charms to entrap his brother?

As he stared, Xavier’s disbelief mounted. As did his bleak dismay. The girl had been photographed at the casino, presumably covertly, by one of his security team’s agents. She could hardly have looked worse.

Blonde, backcombed hair, make-up a centimetre thick, a scarlet slash of a mouth and a skimpy satin low-cut dress. Crudely … blatantly … displayed.

What the hell did Armand see in her?

Revulsion shot through him. How could Armand possibly want a woman like that?

Xavier’s eyes narrowed. Did his brother even know she was a casino hostess in London’s infamous red light district, Soho? He felt the blood run cold in his veins. And was that revelation merely the tip of the iceberg?

He could feel his own revulsion mount in him, and with deliberate effort he contained it. It was essential—to his brother’s happiness, and his parents’—that the right call be made on this Lissa Stephens. Reason demanded that there was a chance—however slim—that appearances were deceptive. Reason, not emotion.

Could it possibly be that the girl was not as bad as she looked?

His eyes went to the photo again. Disbelief shot through him—could this really be the woman his brother wanted to marry? The very thought of Armand marrying such a female, presenting her to their mother, his father, seeing her making herself at home in the beautiful Riviera villa in Menton, watching his brother be first besotted and then bitterly disillusioned, was anathema.

He looked down at the two-dimensional image of Lissa Stephens, trying to see beyond it. He could read nothing from her expression, her make-up was like a mask, but one aspect of her appearance she could not mask.

Her eyes.

They were hard. The eyes of a woman who would see his brother’s good heart as a weakness to be taken advantage of. Armand’s words sounded in his mind.

I know what I’m doing …

Did he? Or did he just think he did—as he had before, until he’d had the truth presented to him? A harsh, heavy sigh escaped Xavier. He couldn’t take that risk. If the woman that Armand wanted to marry was what she looked to be, then he had to protect him from her.

But how to know that?

Slowly, he got to his feet and walked across the large office, with its beautiful mouldings and high ceilings, and gazed out of the wide windows. The never-ending swirl of traffic around the Arc de Triomphe blurred before his eyes.

He had not steered XeL to the pinnacle it now stood upon without being able to make good judgements, shrewd decisions. His cool, analytical mind was capable of assessing anything from the optimum time to launch a new range of goods in any particular line to which overseas markets would prove the most profitable in the near to mid-term, and which of the many women of his acquaintance eager to become his next chère amie he would choose.

Now, faced with what could well be the debacle of a misalliance that would devastate his brother and appal his mother and stepfather, Xavier knew he must apply the same detached, rational assessment to Armand’s situation. And in the end, for something this important, this crucial to his brother’s happiness and his family’s peace of mind, a bare investigative report and a photo were not enough. Nowhere near enough.

He would have to check her out. See for himself. Judge her for himself.

It was a task that had to be done. He might not want to do it, but he must. Whatever was required he would do.

His brother deserved no less.

As for Lissa Stephens … His eyes darkened to slate. Well, he would find out, personally, just exactly what it was she deserved. His brother as her husband—or something quite different.

CHAPTER TWO

LISSA surreptitiously smothered a yawn, then, by force of will, turned it into a smile and murmured some facile pleasantry to the two men sitting at the table with her. Tiredness washed over her in a debilitating wave. Dear God, when would she get enough sleep ever again? She knew she had to be grateful for this job—even though what she was doing was demeaning, soul-destroying, morally dubious and grated on every last shred of sensibility in her.

Her face hardened momentarily. Well, tough. She needed the money. She needed it badly. Badly enough to put in a day’s secretarial work temping in the City, and then work here until the early hours. The only other night job would have been cleaning—and it simply didn’t pay as well.

Money, she thought grimly. It just came right back down to that—no escape. She needed money. She needed to earn as much as she could, in as short a time as she could, and that was all there was to it. No escape, no let up. And none likely, either.

Or was there? Through her weariness of body and spirit, a familiar, dangerously alluring thought flickered.

Armand.

Armand and his money could make it all happen so, so quickly. For just a few tantalising moments she allowed herself the luxury of daydreaming—how easy everything would be.

No—she must not allow herself to think about that. To allow herself hope. He had been out of touch for several days now, and she simply had to allow for the very real possibility that she had only been imagining his interest. That whatever hopes he had left behind, he was just not coming back.

Her throat tightened—disappointment was cruel, but she had always had to face the possibility that his interest was only temporary, a novelty. She could not, must not, rely on it. Rely on him. She stiffened her spine—it was pointless to expect anyone to wave a magic wand and make everything miraculously better.

She made herself focus on the two businessmen. At least they were engaged in talking to each other now—something about sales figures—rather than paying attention to her. Her gaze wandered off again.

And halted in mid-sweep.

Someone had just entered the casino’s bar area. Someone who, she could instantly see, stood out from the rest of the punters here the same way a racehorse stood out from a field of hacks. Lissa’s eyes widened.

He should be somewhere seriously flash—Monte Carlo, Marbella, one of the top West End hotels like the Ritz or the Savoy.

It was his whole appearance—from the superbly cut tuxedo that must have been handmade to sit so perfectly on his body, to the glint of gold at his pristine white cuffs and the razored perfection of his haircut.

And the tan. Nothing artificial or overdone about his skin tone—his was the real thing. Part nature, part thanks to a Riviera lifestyle.

He looked—rich. Seriously rich. Her stomach gave a little skip. The way Armand did sometimes. With a casual, inbred elegance that could never be put on. That you had to be raised with to show it the way Armand and this guy did.

He had something else in common with Armand—he wasn’t English. That was obvious. No Englishman had the kind of svelte elegance that fitted like a smooth, flawless glove over bone-deep masculinity. But although Armand, too, possessed those rich continental looks, there was a very clear distinction between him and this man.

Armand’s face was pleasant-looking, with an open, friendly expression. The man who had just walked in—her stomach gave a skip that turned into a full-scale 360 degree flip—was the most devastating male she’d ever set eyes on.

It was the tall, lean body, the tanned, planed face with its thin blade of a nose, the high cheekbones, perfectly contoured jaw-line, sculpted mouth. And the eyes. Dark, shadowed, with etched eyebrows that just for a moment gave the set of his face a saturnine expression.

Her stomach flipped again, and she could feel a sudden pulse at her throat. She tried to subdue it. She’d seen handsome men before. Why make such a fuss over this one?

The answer came to her. Because she’d never seen a man like this before, that’s why.

The pulse beat at her throat again.

Annoyed with herself now, she made to pull her eyes away. What on earth did it matter that she’d never seen a man as devastating as that before? He was a punter, that was all. And, as a punter, the only interest anyone working here in the casino would have in him was in parting him from as much money as they could.

Even as the thought formed in her mind she saw the casino manager gliding forward. His eyes must be glinting, Lissa thought, at the prospect of such a fat fish arriving in his net. Through lowered lashes she watched the byplay of the manager fawning on the new arrival. Then, with a swift, searching glance around the bar, he beckoned for a hostess. The best in the house. Lissa was not surprised. Tanya was a voluptuous Slavic blonde, and she sashayed towards the newcomer, bestowing a sultry smile on him. The new arrival glanced at her, eyes narrowing very slightly.

Then Lissa’s attention was diverted. A hand came down on her bare arm.

‘I feel like dancing,’ one of the two men at her table announced.

Hiding her reluctance, Lissa smiled as if delighted, and got to her feet. Just beyond the bar was a small dance area where the music was coming from. She was grateful it was upbeat and fast, requiring little more than jerky gyration. But two minutes later the music segued into a slow number, and her escort slid his hands around her waist. She tried not to flinch, though she hated close dancing with punters.

Then, abruptly, there was someone else there.

Xavier let the blonde hang on his sleeve, but he took no notice of her. His attention was entirely focussed on his mark.

Lissa Stephens.

In the flesh. And no different from the photo in the dossier. Blonde hair, backcombed and sprayed for volume, far too much make-up, and a figure moulded tightly in a cheap satin dress. For a moment a stab of black rage speared him that such a blatantly tarty female could embroil his idiotic brother. What the hell did Armand see in her?

‘I adore dancing,’ the hostess at his side gushed breathily.

Xavier could hear her accent—Polish, Russian, something in that region. Presumably she’d come to London in the hope of a better life than she would have at home. He felt a flicker of compunction. For so many of the former Eastern Bloc life was tough, and he couldn’t blame such women for trying to improve their economic circumstances, even if in distasteful ways such as being a casino hostess, or worse. Then his eyes hardened again. That allowance might be made for immigrants, but could it extend to someone like Lissa Stephens? She’d grown up with the advantages of a free education, free health care and, if necessary, free housing. So what need was there for her to work in a place like this—unless she chose to? And what did it say about a woman who wanted a job like this?

Time to move in on Lissa Stephens and take her measure close up.

He walked to where she was dancing in a clinch.

‘My dance,’ he said.

The man swivelled his head belligerently. Xavier dealt with him first.

‘Trade?’ he invited.

The man looked past his shoulder at the blonde Slavic beauty hovering, who clearly outshone his existing dance partner. Instantly his belligerence vanished.

‘Deal,’ he said, his voice only slightly slurred. He dropped his current partner and pasted a big smile on his face at the woman at Xavier’s side, sweeping her off into a dance. Judging by her peeved expression, the girl hadn’t wanted the trade—but Xavier couldn’t care less. He turned his attention to his target.

In the dim, flashing light she looked no different close up, except for her slight air of being taken aback.

‘Shall we?’ he said, and not waiting for an answer took her into his arms.

She stiffened like a board.

Surprise flickered in him—it was an out-of-place reaction for her to make. Instinctively, he eased back a little, drawing some distance between them.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Something moved in her eyes, then it was gone. A smile stretched her mouth.

‘Hi—I’m Lissa,’ she said, her voice husky, ignoring his comment.

The smile widened. Or did it strain, rather, as if it were an effort? Xavier dismissed the momentary speculation. His hands rested on her waist, and through the cheap satin he could feel the curve of her body. His eyes surveyed her face.

There was no hardness in her expression now. Instead there was only blankness. Close up, her make-up was atrocious. Layered on over her skin, cracking already around her nostrils, her eyes caked in shadow and her lashes in thick mascara. And as for her mouth—

Her crimson lipstick was like jam, sticky and thick.

Revulsion shimmered through him. No woman of his acquaintance—and his acquaintance with women was extensive—would ever have done what this girl had done to her face! The women in his world, Madeline and her friends, were all chic, elegant, and their make-up was immaculate. They were from a different species than the woman he was dancing with. Disdain edged his eyes.

Then, catching himself, he concealed it. It would not serve his purpose to let it show. Deliberately making himself relax, he looked down into her face.

‘So, Lissa—do you think you’ll bring me good luck at the tables?’

He smiled encouragingly. Again, just for a moment, she seemed to stiffen in his arms. Then it was gone.

‘I’m sure you’ll be lucky,’ she said. Once more the smile seemed to stretch right across her mouth.

‘Fine by me,’ Xavier answered. ‘Let’s go.’

He dropped his hands from her, and just for a second she seemed to sway slightly. He ignored it, and started to usher her from the dance floor, effortlessly guiding her forward, across the bar area and into the gaming rooms. He could just about feel the manager’s eyes on him, greedily eyeing him up. A cynical twist pulled at his mouth. Well, he would oblige the proprietors of this third-rate establishment and lose sufficient money to be sure of a welcome return.

Should one be necessary, of course.

Although he very much doubted it would be. His eyes narrowed, focussing on the over-laquered hair bouncing on Lissa Stephens’s bared shoulders, on her derriere, swaying as she walked in front of him on her high heels. Already, his worst assumptions were being confirmed. Lissa Stephens looked to be exactly what he had feared she was—a woman he could never permit his brother to marry.

Lissa all but collapsed on a high-perched chair at the blackjack table. What on earth was going on? Her heart was slugging in her breast, and with her dress as tight as it was that was a bad idea. Her stomach was churning and she was breathless to boot. Desperately she tried to get her head together—and failed completely. All she could do was cling to the chair and try and keep going.

But it was hard—horribly hard.

Two realities had just slammed into each other, and the result was carnage. She could cope with one reality, but not both. The sordid reality of having to work in this place, looking so tarty, having to smile at complete strangers and coax them to buy extortionately priced bad champagne, was only bearable so long as she could mentally dismiss each and every punter that she had to ‘be nice’ to. She couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t, let any of them get to her—for any reason whatsoever.

But the man who was now coolly picking up his cards got to her all right—slamming into her with a reality that had a physical impact on her. Got to her in the same way as being run over by a bus got to you. Knocking every breath of air out of your lungs so that all you could do was swallow and gaze helplessly.

Except that gazing was the one thing she knew, with every last shred of effort, she must not do. Yet the urge to do so was overwhelming. His physical presence at her side was overwhelming. When he had walked up to her on the dance floor and disengaged her from her partner, with a single line in a continental accent that had curled inside her, it had been overwhelming, and when he had slid his hands around her waist and drawn her towards him she had completely frozen. Yet her heart had been thumping like a trip hammer, her whole body as tense as a board with awareness of the man.

As her fingers tightened now on the ornamental arms of the chair she felt a wave of reaction go through her. This was all wrong. Wrong and horrible, and … Well, just wrong and horrible. Because to have a man like that—who just took your breath away—paying attention to you, any attention at all, in a place like this, when you looked like a cheap trashy tart, was just excruciating. She wanted to run, bolt, hide with mortification.

With a sharp, painful inhalation of breath she forced some composure into herself. What the hell had she to be mortified about? OK, so the guy was as out of place here as a diamond on a rhinestone necklace. But he was here, wasn’t he? So that meant that, however fancy he was, he was still just a punter. So what the hell did it matter that he was the most incredible-looking male she’d ever set eyes on outside a movie?

And anyway … Another harsh truth hit her squarely in the face. She’d been so preoccupied trying to come to grips with the impact the man had on her that she was only now registering it.

Whatever the reason he’d swapped Tanya for her, it was not because he wanted to eye her up. There had been nothing in his expression to indicate that he found her attractive.

Her mouth tightened momentarily. Good God, how on earth should a man who looked like he did find a woman who looked the way she did right now attractive? Only the sleazeballs here ever made eyes at her—a man like the one beside her now wouldn’t look twice at some tarty hostess with bad make-up and worse hair.

Just for a second, a pang went through her.

If he could only see her the way she could look.

She slammed the thought shut. The girl she had once been, with the time and the joie de vivre to make the most of the looks she had been born with, to find fun in flirtation and dating, didn’t exist any more. Hadn’t done since the screech of tyres and the sickening shock of metal impacting upon metal had destroyed everything she had so blithely taken for granted till then. Now life had reduced itself to the hard, cruel essentials, to the unrelenting grind to try, so desperately, to achieve the one goal to which she had now dedicated her life.

As for her looks—well, they had got her this job, and she could be glad of that at least. And she could be glad, she knew, that the cheap, tacky, tarty look she had to adopt here was actually a protection for her. Any man who leered or letched over her looking the way she did now would be the very last to appeal to her. Her hostess image was almost like armour against the sleaziness of her job.

A job she had to do, like it or not. So there was no point wishing she could just walk out of the door and never come back. Steeling her spine, she deliberately let her gaze go to the blackjack table, watching the play.

Fast as the cards moved, she could see that the man at her side was not playing the odds, and was therefore losing repeatedly. She frowned inwardly. The guy did not look like a loser. Just the opposite.

She gave a mental shrug. So what if the guy dropped money as if it was litter? What did she care? Her only job was to get him to buy as much champagne as she could and stay the distance until her shift was over, then she could finally get home. And sleep.

‘I’m sure some champagne would turn your luck,’ she ventured purringly, forcing her voice into a kind of caressing simper. Even as she spoke she felt revulsion shimmer through her. God, this was a sordid job all right. Crass and tacky and vulgar.

Well, tough—the familiar litany bit through her: she needed money and she just couldn’t be too fussy about how she got it, so she must just get on with it and do it.

She stretched her mouth in its usual fake smile, and tilted her head invitingly. From the corner of her eye she saw Jerry, one of the waiters who circulated endlessly with trays of ready-filled champagne glasses.

The man at Lissa’s side straightened slightly, and turned to look at her. For just a second she felt she was being bored right through by a laser beam, and then, just as abruptly, it was gone. Now there was only a veiled look in the dark, long-lashed eyes that she could not look into.

He gave the slightest shrug.

‘Why not?’ he responded, and, glancing past her, beckoned Jerry with a single flick of his index finger, relieving him of two foaming glasses and handing one to Lissa. Carefully she took it, ensuring she did not touch the man’s fingers. Even so she felt her stomach tighten yet again.

‘So, do you think I should try the roulette table?’

His Gallic-accented voice quivered down her spine, upsetting all the toughly held defences she needed in a place like this. Oh, hell—why, oh, why, was this happening? It was just all wrong—all out of place. A man like this, and her in a place like this, looking the way she did, acting out this distasteful farce. She took a gulp of champagne as if it would help her steel her nerves. Forcing herself, she made herself smile at him.

Don’t look at his eyes. Look at him, but don’t see him. Look through him. Pretend he’s just one of the regular punters. Pretend it’s all just normal, perfectly normal.

She could feel her jaw aching with the tension in it as she held her bright, false smile, her gaze, by supreme force of effort, not quite meeting his.

‘Oh, good idea!’ she exclaimed vacuously. ‘I’m sure you’ll win at roulette.’ She lifted her glass. ‘Here’s to Lady Luck,’ she toasted brightly, and took another gulp of champagne. She drank as little as she could while she was working, but right now she felt she needed all the help she could find to get through this excruciating ordeal.

As she lowered her glass it registered that he hadn’t actually drunk anything at all. Given the quality of the champagne, she was hardly surprised—but then why buy it? For the dozenth time she gave a deliberate mental shrug. Nothing, nothing about this man who for some bizarre and inexplicable reason was in this casino, and for some even more bizarre, even more inexplicable reason was keeping her by his side, was of the slightest concern to her. He was a punter—her sole task was to get him to spend money, and that was all.

Carefully, she slid off the high chair, trying not to wince as her tired, sore feet hit the floor.

Roulette proved just as much of an ordeal as blackjack had. Yet again she had to sit beside him, too close, and watch him reach forward, to place his chips on the squares. This time, because roulette was more random—though the odds were always, as ever, stacked in favour of the house—he did win from time to time. But he played carelessly, as if it didn’t bother him in the slightest whether he won or lost. Opposite, Lissa could see Tanya making eyes at him—to no avail.

Finally, when the last of his chips were gone, and with a slight shake of his head he’d countered the croupier’s offer of more, he turned to Lissa.

‘Tant pis.’ He gave a shrug to dismiss his losses.

She made herself smile.

‘Bad luck,’ she said. It was inane, but expected.

An eyebrow rose. ‘Do you think so? I think we make our own luck in life, n’est ce pas?’

Something shadowed in Lissa’s eyes. Did you make your own luck in life? Or was it external, arbitrary—cruel? Did luck turn in the blink of an eye, transforming happiness to tragedy in the space of a few moments?

The swerve of wheels, the speed of a car, minute seconds of inattention. And instant, devastating tragedy—destroying in moments the happiness of everyone. Destroying more than happiness … so much more.

Her eyes hardened.

Xavier saw the change in her expression—the hardness in it suddenly. It stirred an answering hardness in him. Lissa Stephens, like the Russian girl, or any of the others here, would be a woman who made her own luck—and it would be at the expense of men.

But not—his expression darkened—at the expense of his vulnerable, good-hearted brother.

His eyes flickered briefly over the girl’s face. All his forebodings were proving true—the very thought of Armand entrapped by this excuse for a woman in any way whatsoever was abhorrent. As his own revulsion at the vulgar, tarty image the girl presented impacted in his mind, so, too, did the conviction that his brother could not possibly know what this ‘woman of his dreams’ did for a living.

Well … Xavier’s eyes hardened again momentarily. This was exactly why he’d interrupted his own business schedule—why he’d despatched Armand to visit XeL’s key retailers in Dubai, with instructions to fly straight on to New York from the Emirates to do likewise there. So that he would have the opportunity to make a dispassionate, deliberate investigation into what Lissa Stephens was.

And, whilst he was grimly convinced that he now had all the evidence he needed to condemn the girl as fulfilling the worst of his fears, he would, nevertheless, move on to the next stage as he had planned. He shot back his cuff and glanced at his watch.

‘Hélas, I must go. I have an early morning meeting tomorrow. Bon soir, mademoiselle—and thank you for your company.’

He bestowed a smile on her, somewhere between perfunctory and courteous, and moved off. Lissa watched him go. Wearily, she brushed her forehead. A tight band was pressing around it. Tiredness swept over her in a wave—tiredness and depression.

What was the point of her responding to a man like that? None at all. Even if she hadn’t been working in a place like this, looking like a cheap tart, she still would have had no business registering anything about him. Her life had no room, no time, for anything other than what filled it now.

Guilt shafted through her. Oh, God, how could she dare complain about her lot when she had nothing worth complaining about? Nothing whatsoever compared with—

She shut her mind off. The incredibly disturbing Frenchman had achieved one good thing. He had mopped up the rest of her time here, and now she could go home at last.

A bare ten minutes later, back in normal clothes again, hair vigorously brushed free of backcombing and lacquer, face stripped of its caking make-up, she plunged out into the London night.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS chill and raw and spattering with rain, but she didn’t care. After the smoke and cheap perfume and the smell of alcohol in the casino, the dirty London air smelt fresh and clean in comparison. She took a lungful, lifting her face into the drizzle, hands plunging deep into her padded jacket pockets. She was wearing jeans and a comfortable jumper, and flat heeled ankle boots good for walking briskly. Her long hair, in need of a wash after all the lacquer, was brushed off her face into a high ponytail that dipped down her back as she lifted her face. Like one released from prison, she strode off along the narrow alleyway the back of the casino opened onto and made for the more brightly lit street beyond, where her bus stop was.

She walked swiftly—not just because looking sure and purposeful was one of her safety precautions at this time of night in this part of London, but also because she was cutting it fine to catch the night bus she needed to take her south of the river at this early hour of the morning. If she missed the bus it would be well over half an hour until the next one.

As she headed briskly towards the bus stop, a hundred metres away on the other side of the road, the rain intensified. The few cars heading along the road threw up water as they passed, but just as she paused at the kerbside to dart across the road to the stop, impatient to cross because she could see her bus approaching, a large car came right past her, too close to the kerb. Its rear wheels caught a puddle that had formed and water sprayed up at her, soaking into her jeans. She gave a start of annoyance, jumping back instinctively. But what annoyed her even more was that the car, a sleek, black expensive-looking saloon, had promptly stopped dead. It was blocking her path across the road, and she could only, with a mutter of exasperation, dodge around the back of the car, wait for another car to swoosh past, and then hurry across the road. The bus was almost at her stop. She wasn’t going to get to the far side in time to flag it down, and unless someone happened to be using that stop—which they never did—it would just sail by.

Which was exactly what it did, just as Lissa had reached the traffic island in the middle of the roadway.

Damn, damn, damn.

She stared, tight-mouthed, after the departing bus. Her shoulders sagged in depression. Over thirty minutes to wait in the cold and wet—and she wouldn’t get home for well over an hour now. And she was so tired.

‘Mademoiselle?’

Her head swivelled as she turned abruptly. The door of the car that had sprayed her and then blocked her crossing was open, and someone was half leaning out from the rear seat.

It was the Frenchman from the casino.

Even as her stomach gave an automatic, treacherous flip, the rest of her body stiffened.

The car door opened more widely, making a passing car swerve slightly. The Frenchman was getting out, crossing over to her as she stood, marooned, on the traffic island. He was wearing a black cashmere overcoat, superbly tailored, making him look even more of a knockout, and Lissa’s stomach gave another flip at the image he made.

‘It is … Lissa … is it not? I almost did not recognise you.’

Dark eyes flicked over her, registering the completely different appearance she now had. There was surprise in them. Open surprise. And something more. Something that had not been in them before.

‘I hope you will forgive me—were you trying to catch the bus that has just gone?’

‘Yes,’ answered Lissa tersely. Annoyance and exasperation were still uppermost in her emotions. But another emotion was welling up in her—an emotion she didn’t want and pushed back down hard. It had to do with the expression in the cashmere-coated Frenchman’s eyes.

‘Je suis désolé. First my car splashes you—now I have caused you to miss your bus. I hope, therefore, that you will permit me to offer you a lift instead?’

His voice was smooth. Far too smooth beneath the regret he professed to be feeling at what he had done to her.

Her eyes flashed.

‘Thank you, no. There will be another bus shortly. Excuse me.’ She turned her back and strode across the remainder of the road to the bus stop. The rain had got heavier, and the bus stop had no shelter. She hunched her shoulders and tried not to shiver. The wet material of her jeans felt cold on her shins. She did not look at the Frenchman.

At the traffic island, Xavier looked after her for a moment. Her reaction had surprised him. But right now surprise was too mild a word for what he was experiencing. Shock would be more appropriate.

And understanding. Belated, but like a punch through his system.

At last it made sense why Armand was bewitched by this girl.

Stripped of the casino hostess outfit and the gross make-up and hairdo, the girl was quite simply a knockout, even making no attempt whatsoever to look good. He could see at a glance what the layers of overdone, tarty make-up had so successfully concealed. She had a beauty to catch and hold every male eye.

Emotions twisted inside him. Contradictory, powerful—unwelcome.

He pushed the emotions aside. They were unnecessary, and getting in his way. He must not pay them attention—all his focus now must be on the next stage of his agenda for dealing with Armand’s bombshell. The incident just now had been carefully timed and executed, with one of his security men reporting exactly when Lissa Stephens had left the casino, to allow his driver the precise amount of time to make the manoeuvre he just had.

He crossed back to the car and climbed in.

‘Circle to the bus stop,’ he instructed.

He folded himself into the deep interior, bracing himself slightly as the car moved forward in a tight turn to draw up again on the other side of the street. Once more he opened the door, this time to the pavement. To his satisfaction, the rain was now falling steadily in heavy rods. She would be soaking wet in minutes if she didn’t get in the car.

He leaned forward, holding the car door open invitingly.

‘Please accept my offer of a lift, mademoiselle—this is not the weather to do otherwise.’ He made it sound as though she were being childish in her refusal.

A stony glare was cast in his direction for his pains.

‘I’m afraid I don’t get into cars with complete strangers,’ Lissa answered shortly.

Wordlessly, Xavier slid his hand into his inside jacket pocket and extracted a business card. It was a calculated gamble. Armand had told him he had said nothing to his intended bride of his connection with XeL. Now would be the moment when he would find out whether that was indeed true—and whether the ambitious Mademoiselle Stephens had been doing any checking of her own into just how rich a fish she had caught. Would the card, with its simple ‘Xavier Lauran—XeL’, without any title or position added, register with her?

Covertly, he studied her reaction as, reluctantly, she took the card and studied it in the orange glare of the streetlight.

All her face revealed was a slight frown.

‘XeL—is that the posh luggage company?’ she asked, as she lifted her eyes from the card.

Xavier felt a flare of annoyance at the casual description.

‘Among other items,’ he replied, in the same dry voice. ‘Mademoiselle, I do not wish to appear impatient, but do you intend to accept my offer of a lift or not?’

For a moment, he could tell—and the knowledge sent another flare of annoyance through him—she hung in the balance. Then, abruptly, she spoke.

‘Oh, all right, then. I might as well.’ It was hardly a gracious acceptance, and once again Xavier felt a flare of annoyance go through him. She started forward, and Xavier moved to the other side of the back seat. She settled herself into the vacated space and yanked at the seat belt, turning to him as the car started to pull out into the road.

‘If it’s not too much out of your way, could you let me out at Trafalgar Square? There are more night buses from there.’ She spoke sharply still—the result of frustration at having missed her bus, annoyance with herself for succumbing to the temptation of the lift, and of a reason she had absolutely no intention of acknowledging. Not sitting this close to him. Her sharpness was a defence she needed right now.

Xavier lifted an eyebrow. ‘You do not wish to be driven home all the way?’

‘I live south of the river,’ she answered, in the same short tone. ‘It’s miles out of your way.’

‘C’est ne fait rien.’ He spoke with indifference. ‘It is of no consequence.’

She looked at him. Her expression was acidly sceptical. ‘You said in the casino you had an early meeting—you will hardly want to go careering across London at this hour of the night.’

Xavier cast her a caustic look again. ‘I said that merely because I wanted to leave—and I did not want any persuasions to change my mind.’

Was there a flash in her eye? He could not tell in the dim light. What he could tell, though—and he was still coming to terms with the knowledge—was that she had a bone structure that was still impacting on him. And that he did not need, for reasons that he did not want to think about at this moment, when his sole focus must be on the task in hand.

But even though he was trying to suppress it, to his intense annoyance he realised that a seismic shift was taking place inside his head. Some mental fault line was realigning—realigning in a way that made him want to do nothing more right now except study in detail the extraordinary metamorphosis performed on the woman in front of him. How could he possibly have known how different she would look without the gross make-up and the hostess outfit? The question was rhetorical, and he knew it—but knowing it made no difference. He still felt as if he’d been hit on the head with a blunt object.

Urgently he fought back—fought back not just against the seismic shockwave that had crunched through him, but against what it brought in its wake. He knew the name of what that was, but he would not, could not acknowledge what it was. Could not admit it even to himself.

It doesn’t matter. This transformation alters nothing. All it does was explain how she’s managed to fool Armand. He’d obviously only seen the image she was currently presenting—not the image of the evening.

Because, he reasoned harshly, slamming down that iron control even more tightly over his reactions, it was the putain version of Lissa Stephens that was the one he had to remember—the one that was endangering his brother, the one that made her completely unsuitable to marry him. So what if she suddenly, out of nowhere, had turned everything he’d taken her for on its head? It changed nothing.

But even as he forced the words into his mind he knew them for a lie. Knew that the shock to his system was still ricocheting through him even as he fought to catch and control it.

‘If your driver goes down Piccadilly, he can cut through to Trafalgar Square.’

The girl’s voice cut through Xavier’s thoughts.

‘It is no problem to drive you to your home,’ he answered.

Again, as he spoke, Lissa’s back went up almost automatically. ‘Nevertheless,’ she said stonily, ‘I would prefer to be let out in Trafalgar Square.’

She eyed him suspiciously. She was already regretting her impulsive action in climbing into the car. OK, so he’d shown her a business card—but so what? Xavier Lauran of XeL might be some fancy French businessman, in a league that was light years from the kind of businessmen that frequented the casino, but he was still just another punter for all that. No way was she prepared to let him drive her home. It wasn’t even a public taxi—God knew what he and his driver might have planned for her. Unease prickled over her skin.

For a moment, in the uncertain light of the streets, she thought she saw a momentary expression in the man’s eyes. Then it was gone.

He gave a slight shrug. It seemed a very Gallic gesture.

‘Comme tu veux—’

‘Yes, I do wish—thank you.’ Again, her voice was clipped.

For a moment the dark eyes rested on her. Their expression was unreadable.

He was too close. Too close in this car—too …

Intimate. That was the word. In the confines of the car he seemed far closer than he had in the casino. That was because in the casino, even though she might be crushed up next to a punter at a table, or perched beside him at the gaming table, or even dancing with him, the place was so public. The ambience was so off-putting that she never felt any real physical proximity.

But this.

Automatically she coiled back into her corner of the seat. It made no difference. He was still far, far too close.

And he was looking at her.

Worse than looking. He was seeing her. Seeing her as she really was. The real person, not the facsimile of a cheap hostess she had to be at the casino.

If only she still had her make-up on. She might look like a tart with it, but it served as a mask, a protective mask. Hiding her, the real her, from the punters and the other girls at the casino.

Hiding her from this man who had made her stomach flip full circle in the first moment of registering his appearance.

But she couldn’t hide from him now. Now, in the shadowy confines of this car he’d picked her up in, she was completely, absolutely exposed to him. An invisible shiver went through her—trepidation, alarm, and something quite, quite different. For a moment longer she went on looking at him, feeling her eyes widen, her focus start to blur. Dear God, he was just so incredible to look at …

‘Tu parles Français?’ His voice had sharpened.

‘Oui, un peu. Pourquoi?’ retorted Lissa, taken aback by the sudden question. And all too aware, with the same disturbing mix of resentment and that other reaction she would not acknowledge, that he had used the tu form of address—the one reserved, when it came to adults, to indicate either superiority or intimacy.

His response told her exactly which form he had intended—and it was like a cold shower of water. ‘Because foreign language skills are unusual in girls like you. Unless they are foreign to begin with,’ came the blunt answer.

Lissa felt a spike of antagonism go through her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Girls like me? I see.’ Her voice was flat. ‘You mean girls too thick to do anything other than work as a hostess?’

‘Thick?’ There was a slight frown between his eyes.

‘Bête,’ Lissa supplied helpfully, with a tight, humourless smile. Resentment curdled in her. Oh, Xavier Lauran might be God’s gift to the discerning woman, but he was as full of prejudice as any other male when it came to the assumptions he made.

‘Enfin, if you are clever enough to speak a language foreign to you, why do you do the work you do?’ The cool challenge of his voice made Lissa’s chin lift. There was something else in his voice as he spoke, but she was too resentful to identify it.

‘I might as well ask why a man of your evident intelligence and background chooses to patronise the kind of place I work in?’ she countered sharply.

His face shuttered. Oh, she thought nastily, he doesn’t like it when some tarty little casino hostess dares to question his behaviour.

‘Why do you work there?’

The question shot at her. Quite ignoring the one she’d just thrown at him.

‘It’s a job,’ she answered flatly.

She looked away. It was an instinctive gesture. She didn’t want to see the expression in the man’s eyes. She knew it would be condemning. And that in itself would worsen the curdling mix of resentment and self-revulsion she always felt whenever she had to face up to how she earned money.

I don’t have any choice! She wanted to yell at him. But what was the point? A familiar wave of weariness and depression washed over her. Then, as it passed through her, she became aware that the car was already at Trafalgar Square, and was turning to go under Admiralty Arch and down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace.

‘You’ve gone too far,’ she exclaimed, her head twisting round to the Frenchman again before she leaned forward to get the attention of the driver.

‘I said I would take you home,’ came the reply, and yet again Lissa got the feeling the man was not used to being questioned.

‘No.’

Her voice was flat. Adamant.

Xavier looked at her. Curious, he registered. There was something more than negation in that voice. Something that was more akin to …

Fear. That was what it was. His pupils pinpricked as they rested on her face.

Yes, that was what was flaring in her eyes right now. There was not doubt of it. And more than fear, too. He had seen it momentarily in the casino, and he had seen it again just now, when she’d turned her face from him. It jagged an emotion in him—one that had absolutely no place in the situation. But it was there all the same.

What he had seen in her face was there again now, taut behind the fear flaring in her eyes.

Tiredness.

Quite evident, quite unmistakeable, exposed in the gaunt contours around her eyes. The girl looked exhausted.

‘Mademoiselle, it is no trouble to conduct you to your flat. There is little traffic at this hour, and the detour will not be significant. It is because of me that you missed your bus—permit me to make amends.’

Lissa sat back, looking at him. His voice was different. She couldn’t tell why, but it was all the same. It was kinder. For some strange, unaccountable reason she felt her throat tighten. She didn’t want this man being kind to her. He was just a stranger. A man who frequented the casino she had to work in because she had no choice—a man who was, therefore, nothing more than a punter. She didn’t want him being kind to her, doing her favours.

‘It really isn’t necessary,’ she began stiffly. ‘I couldn’t impose on you.’

He silenced her objection. ‘It is no imposition,’ he returned, and now the kindness was gone. There was only an impersonal indifference. ‘I need to make several phone calls now to the USA. Whether I make them from my hotel or from this car is irrelevant.’

As if to prove his point, he slid a long-fingered hand inside his luxurious overcoat and withdrew a mobile phone, flicking it open with an elegant twist of his wrist.

‘Give my driver your address,’ he instructed. Then he started up the phone and proceeded to punch a stored number.

For a moment Lissa just went on looking at him uncertainly. Outside, the tall trees lining the Mall flashed past with the expensively smooth ride the flash car afforded, and then they were circling around the Queen Victoria monument, wheeling past the illuminated Victorian baroque splendour of Buckingham Palace.

Xavier Lauran lifted the phone to his ear and started to talk. His French was far too rapid for Lissa even to attempt to follow it. He was clearly absorbed in the conversation. For a moment she allowed herself the pleasure of listening to his beautifully timbred voice, fluent in its own language.

Then the chauffeur was twisting his head briefly.

‘If you give me your address, Mademoiselle?’ His accent was French, too, but it did not shiver down her nerves like that of his employer.

Lissa gave in. Surely she was safe enough? Would a man who was evidently some kind of senior executive in a prestigious international company really risk any kind of scandal?

Resignedly, she gave her address, and then sat back. As the car headed down Victoria Street towards Parliament Square and the River Thames, she leaned back farther in her seat. The leather seats were deep and soft. Across from her the devastating Frenchman was paying her no more attention than if she was a block of wood, his mellifluous voice rising and falling rapidly, letting her catch nothing more than the briefest word every now and then. Outside, the flickering lights of an almost deserted London strobed in her vision. She closed her eyes to shut it out. Weariness swept down over her. She was so tired she could sleep for a thousand years and not wake.

The warmth of the car stole through her. Her breathing slowed.

She slept.

In the opposite corner of the passenger seat, Xavier paused in his interrogation of his west coast sales director. His eyes rested on her.

His thoughts were mixed. Contradictory.

The sharp shadows of her face in the streetlight set her cheekbones into relief. Long lashes swept down over her pale cheeks. In repose, her tiredness seemed to have ebbed, leaving nothing behind except the question as to why Lissa Stephens should look so tired when she had all day to sleep.

And another question, as well. Far more troubling.

Why did he feel a stab of pity at her being so tired—and why did the exhaustion in her face merely emphasise the extraordinary beauty of her bone structure?

He wanted to go on looking at her—just looking.

Then his sales director was telling him the next set of figures. With a mixture of reluctance and relief Xavier resumed his conversation. Deliberately he looked away from the girl.

Inside him, the same confused flux of emotions continued to recycle.

Emotions that were completely, absolutely, out of place when all that was required was the cool, analytical application of reason.

Yet they continued to circle all the same—to his irritation and displeasure.

‘I believe we have arrived.’

The words, murmured without expression, stirred Lissa to wakefulness. She felt dopey, her mind blurred and unable to focus. Then, with a little shake, she roused herself fully from the torpid slumber the warmth and motion of the car had induced in her.

She sat upright with an effort. The car had paused by the kerb just outside a rundown Victorian apartment block, built in the nineteenth century as social housing for the labouring poor. Unlike many parts of South London, this area had not gentrified, but the virtue of that was that it made the rent of the one-bedroom flat affordable to her. The last thing she needed was to squander money on accommodation.

She blinked. ‘Thank you. It was really very kind of you.’

Her voice was slightly husky with sleep, but she made herself look at the man who’d insisted on driving her home. As her eyes lifted to his face, she felt the same catch in her breath she’d had when she’d first set eyes on him. Weakness flushed through her, and a sense of disbelief that she was really here, sitting in the same car as him. For a self-indulgent moment she just went on looking at him. His face was slightly averted from her, glancing out of his window at the locality. Did his expression tighten? She didn’t know—only knew that the shadows of the car’s interior only served to accentuate the incredible contours of his face.

Then his head turned fully towards her, and his eyes came to meet hers.

Her stomach hollowed. In her still-dopey state she could not tear her own gaze away. She felt her eyes cling to his, in a moment of exchange that was like a bolt through her.

Then, ‘Mademoiselle?’

The cold draught of air at her side and the polite voice of the driver made her realise that the passenger door had been opened. They were waiting for her to get out, the chauffeur and the flash Frenchman.

She broke eye contact and got out.

‘Thank you for the lift. It was very kind of you,’ she repeated, her voice stilted. As she got out her key, she allowed herself one more glance back at the car. It hovered by the side of the road, sleek and dark and expensive. Like the man inside.

She could not see him now—he was just a darker shadow in the dark interior. Something pierced inside her. That was it, then. The last time she’d see him. That moment before she’d got out of the car. Already the driver was climbing back into his seat, closing his own door. Jerkily, she turned away, and opened the door and went inside.

Behind her, she heard the car glide away into the night.

Xavier stared unseeingly ahead of him. The street was scruffy and rundown, with litter blowing around and the dank, bleak dreariness of poverty. Not a good place to live. No wonder Lissa Stephens was eager for a way out of here.

His eyes darkened. But not at the expense of his brother.

He waited for the stab of anger to come—but instead all that came was a repeat of that sense of jarring disconcertion he’d felt when he’d set eyes on her by the bus stop and almost failed to recognise her as the same woman he’d deliberately singled out for his attention in the casino.

How could she look so different? The question sliced through him again, and once more he could give no rational explanation for the difference it made to him. It shouldn’t make a difference.

Yet it did.

And another thought was intruding—where it had no business to be.

If she looked that good without even trying, what would she look like if she were properly dressed and presented?

Immediately, without volition, his mind was there. That long blonde hair, loose but sleek, flicked back off her face, make-up subtle but enhancing the natural beauty she possessed, and her slender body gowned as a beautiful woman should always be gowned.

The image hovered in his mind. Vivid. Powerful. Alluring.

No. He would not sit here fantasising about what Lissa Stephens might look like if she were done up the way she would be if he were inviting her to spend the evening with him.

More than the evening.

No. Again he slammed the harsh, forbidding negative down across his wayward thoughts. The only reason he had anything at all to do with Lissa Stephens was to assess whether she was suitable to marry his brother. It had seemed in the casino an open and shut case. Picking her up in the street as he’d done should only have confirmed it. She should have been eager to be picked up—eager for the interest and intention of someone so obviously rich. She should have batted her thickened eyelashes at him and come on to him.

Instead, she’d shown every reluctance at getting into his car, and when she had she’d fallen asleep.

He frowned. It didn’t make sense. It was irrational. Lissa Stephens in the casino and Lissa Stephens asleep in his car seemed two quite different people, both in appearance and in behaviour.

As the car drove on, back into the brightly lit affluent West End, a world away from the dreary bleakness of south London’s poorer districts, Xavier knew he could be sure only of one thing. That he could not yet be sure about Lissa Stephens.

His investigation, he had to accept, was very far from over.

But what, precisely, should be his next step?

Well … He shifted his shoulders as if to release a sudden tension. He had the rest of the night to decide.

The rest of the night to think about Lissa Stephens.

As she stood outside the door to her ground-floor flat, Lissa paused a moment. Her emotions were strange. She was still feeling blurred from interrupted sleep. But that was not the reason.

The reason was even now driving away down the street.

Why did he do it? Why did he offer me a lift and go out of his way to drive me back here, miles away?

Any wariness that he might have had less than honourable intentions had been completely unfounded. He hadn’t made the slightest attempt to make a move on her, and certainly her own attitude had scarcely been inviting.

Deliberately so. Because what, dear God, would have been the point? Even without any of the complications in her life, the guy was still a punter, and therefore completely out of bounds. He might be like something out of Continental movie in terms of looks, but if he’d actually thought he might pick her up sexually, knowing her to be a casino hostess, it would only have been because he himself was a sleazeball.

But he wasn’t that.

Apart from that moment when he’d shown surprise that a woman working as a hostess could possibly be capable of learning a foreign language, he hadn’t actually dissed her at all. In fact, if she’d had to describe his attitude towards her she would have had to say it was one of civility and nothing more.

She frowned again. So why had he offered her a lift? Some kind of Gallic gallantry after making her miss her bus? If so, it had been an over-the-top gesture, and she’d responded appropriately by asking to be let out at Trafalgar Square. He could have done that and gone on his way.

But he hadn’t. He’d insisted on driving her all the way back here. But why?

Impatiently she brushed the question from her head. It was pointless asking it—she wasn’t going to get an answer. And the answer didn’t matter anyway.

Xavier Lauran was not someone she was going to encounter a second time after all.

For the briefest moment, as she inserted her key into the lock and turned it quietly, she felt a pang go through her. He had walked into her life—and out again. The most incredible-looking male she’d ever seen. A man to take her breath away, stop the blood in her pulse, hollow out her stomach.

Gone.

The pang bit again. Her eyes clouded. Then, with a tightening of her chin, she let herself inside her flat. Xavier Lauran had been and gone in her life, and that was that. And it was just as well.

There was no room in her life for him. None at all.

No room for anyone except—

‘Lissy, you’re home.’ The voice that spoke out of the darkness was soft, and very slightly slurred.

Lissa walked into the bedroom. Her life closed around her. Familiar, loving, but cruel and bleak.

Xavier stood by the uncurtained windows of his hotel suite and moodily nursed a cognac glass between his fingers. He looked down at the silent street below.

He should go to bed. Go to sleep. But he didn’t feel tired. There was a restlessness pacing in his veins. A question circulating in his head.

What was he going to do about Lissa Stephens?

He’d thought it would be cut and dried. That the trashy casino hostess gushing over him was all the evidence he needed that she was the last person he should allow his brother to marry. The carefully orchestrated offer of a lift was merely supposed to have given the girl the opportunity to do what any of her co-workers would surely have done.

But she hadn’t.

Why not?

The cynical answer was that a woman with sufficient—if unexpected—intelligence to have learnt a foreign language was also one that was too smart to jeopardise what she had going with another wealthy man—his brother—to risk a fleeting interlude with anyone else. And maybe that was the reason she hadn’t given him the come on.

But maybe it was for a quite different reason. Logic demanded that he consider that possibility. One that was at odds with the woman he had thought she obviously was. Maybe Lissa Stephens simply wasn’t the kind of girl the evidence said she was.

The slow, unconscious swirling of the cognac in his glass halted abruptly.

He had to know for sure.

And there was, Xavier knew, with a sudden clenching of his stomach, an obvious way to find out.

Spend more time with her.

Conflicting emotions flashed through him as he articulated the thought—and neither was welcome. Emotion seldom was. But he had to recognise it, all the same. One was extreme reluctance—reluctance for a reason that was troublingly evident in the second emotion flaring in him. An emotion that was completely and absolutely inappropriate to the situation. But it was there, all the same—and he could do nothing about it.

Anticipation.

With a sudden lift of his hand, he raised the cognac glass to his lips and took a mouthful of the fine, fiery liquid. He might as well face it—he wanted to see the girl again. Wanted to spend more time with her.

And it was not just to check her out for his brother.

The kick of the cognac to his system seemed to release something in him. A hot pulse through his veins.

He wanted to see her again all right.

Danger prickled on his skin.

He shouldn’t do this.

The cool, analytical voice of reason spoke inside his head. It was the voice he always listened to. The voice he ran XeL with, ran his life with—the voice he listened to which had advised him to disentangle his brother from his previous mésalliance. It was the voice with which he selected the women for his bed. Suitable women, appropriate women, who moved in his world, who were part of it, and knew the rules by which he conducted his affairs. Women quite unlike the likes of Lissa Stephens, with her confusing double image—one moment a cheap casino hostess and the next.

He shouldn’t have thought of Lissa Stephens. Shouldn’t have remembered that second image of hers, the one that had come like a blow out of nowhere in a rain-wet London street in the bleak fag end of the night.

But it was too late. It was in his head, etched like a diamond against murky smoke. The pure, bare, unadorned beauty of her profile turned away from him. The long fall of pale hair from its high plume. The upturned collar of her cheap jacket that nevertheless framed the crystal contours of her face.

Of its own volition his hand lifted the glass to his mouth again, and he took another mouthful. He wanted to see that image again. Wanted to look at it. At her.

He needed to know.

The words formed in his mind.

He needed to know. Was she, against all evidence, a fit woman to marry his brother? That was what he needed to find out.

Nothing else. That was, after all, the only question on the table. The only question that could be on the table.

Sharply, he turned away. There was nothing else he needed to know about Lissa Stephens.

As he deposited, with a jerkier movement than was necessary, the cognac glass on a table as he passed it, by heading to his bedroom, he screened out the word that had formed in his consciousness.

Menteur.

Liar.

Lissa lay, staring at the ceiling unseen above her. From time to time, through the muffling of the bedroom door, she could hear a train rattling along the tracks that ran past the rear of the poky flat. From beside her, on the next pillow in the double bed, came the rhythmic rise and fall of slightly stertorous, drug-induced breathing.

She gazed upward into the dark.

For all her extreme weariness she could not sleep. Even though she knew she had to be up again in a few hours, her mind was wide awake.

Thinking. Remembering.

And—worse still—imagining.

About one single face. One single man.

Angrily, she tried to force the image from her mind.

What was the point in thinking about him? None—none at all. So why was she doing it?

Because her mind would not go anywhere else.

Would not even think about the one thing that, above all else in her life, she always thought about. The one person she always had to think about.

Guilt drenched through her. Oh, God—how low could she stoop? Even thinking it with a note of resentment, however faint. Automatically, as if to assuage her own guilt, she reached out a hand to let it rest lightly on the sleeping form beside her. A wave of love and pity welled in her.

If only she could wave a magic wand. If only she could make it somehow instantly better. If only she could …

But she couldn’t. Bleakness chilled in her throat. There was no magic wand. Nothing like that. Only a tiny sliver of hope. And even to seize that meant that all her waking hours had to be dedicated to one thing and one thing only—earning money. Saving money. Little by little. Slowly, oh, so slowly.

Unless Armand …

The chill intensified.

He hadn’t phoned. She had hoped against hope that tonight he would, but there had been nothing. That made it three nights in a row, not hearing from him.

He’s gone.

The grim words tolled in her brain. She might try to dispel them, but they would not disappear.

Gone.

A single word, extinguishing hope—hope she should not have allowed herself.

Against her will the image formed in her mind of sable hair and dark eyes and a sculpted mouth.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘LISSA, the manager wants you. In his office. Sharpish!’

Lissa swivelled her head from her cramped place at the vanity unit in the crowded dressing room that she and the other hostesses changed in. She had only just arrived, and was about to start on her make-up.

She frowned at the command, issued by one of the staff from the door.

‘What for?’

A shrug was her only answer, and with a sigh Lissa got to her feet again and made her way out of the dressing room. A couple of the other girls looked at her curiously.

The manager’s office overlooked the casino floor, which was currently thinly populated.

‘You wanted to see me?’ said Lissa. She was wary and tense. It was seldom good news when the manager wanted to see a hostess. It was usually to reprimand her for not having brought enough custom to the bar. Maybe, thought Lissa tightly, the manager thought she hadn’t got the rich Frenchman to buy enough last night.

Damn, she didn’t want to be reminded of him. She’d done her best all day, all through the long slog into the City, and the long, tedious hours working in the office her temping agency had currently assigned her to. All through the crowded rush-hour journey home, sardined in the Tube train with all the other commuters until they’d been disgorged at the South London underground station closest to her flat. And certainly all through the brief time she’d had at home before setting out for her evening’s work here at the casino.

The manager, short and rotund and far from pleasant, eyed her up. Lissa stood impassively.

‘Private hire,’ he told her. ‘You’re to go straight there. There’s a car waiting outside.’

Lissa stood very still.

‘I’m afraid I don’t do private hires,’ she said quietly. ‘I did make that clear when I started.’

The manager narrowed his small eyes.

‘You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. And you’re lucky you made a hit last night. The guy who’s booked you is that fancy Frog who dropped a ton at the tables. He’s paying premium price for you, so make sure you give value for money, all right?’

Lissa swallowed. So Xavier Lauran had not been the type to stoop to coming on to her last night after offering her a lift home? No, he was just the type who liked the euphemism of a ‘private hire.’

‘Maybe Tanya would—’ she ventured.

‘He’s booked you, all right? And you deliver—understand? Or you walk—permanently.’

Lissa understood. Schooling her face into immobility, she nodded and got out. She felt sickened, more than sickened. It just wasn’t something she’d thought of the man last night.

Somehow she got herself back downstairs again, picked up her things and left the casino.

Just as last night, the rain was coming down heavily. She shivered, but not because of the wet. She had just lost her job. She knew it. Knew the manager would sack her instantly as soon as he found out she had no intention whatsoever of accepting a ‘private hire.’ Worse, she wouldn’t even get the wages she was owed for this week’s work.

Anger and intense depression mingled venomously inside her. Avoiding the front of the casino, she made her way with rapid, urgent footsteps to the main road. At least there were plenty of buses at this time of night, and the Tube was still running. Another thought struck her. What reason could she give for getting home so early? She didn’t want to say she’d lost her job because she’d been offered one she wouldn’t take.

Well, she would think up something on the way home. She would have to. That was the least of her problems.

Acid still curdled in her stomach, and more than acid. Anger, gall and bitterness. More even than that. But she would not give it words. Instead she found other words.

Creep. Jerk. Slimeball.

She said them in her head, over and over again, pounding them down on the pavement with each hurrying step.

A car pulled on to the pavement ahead of her.

She recognised it instantly. Equally instantly she swerved out on to the roadway in automatic avoidance.

‘What are you doing?’

The voice was a demand, wanting an answer. She didn’t even look around.

He strode up to her, catching her arm as she tried to plunge through the traffic.

‘You’ll kill yourself!’

She tried to tear herself free, but he was strong, the grip around her forearm unyielding.

‘Let go of me, you total creep.’ She tugged again, just as ineffectually. Rain was streaming into her eyes.

‘Comment?’ The surprise in his voice snapped something in her. She wheeled on him.

‘I said let go of me, you creep! You pig! How dare you try and buy me like that? My God, I might work in that fleapit, but the only work I do is to get jerks like you to buy rip-off drinks. You’ve got no right to think I do anything else. So take your bloody “private hire” and—’

He said something in French. Abrupt. Basic. Very basic.

His grip tightened on her arm as she stood struggling at the kerbside behind his chauffeured car.

‘I do not know what you have been told, but clearly you have been misinformed.’

His voice was icy. Formal. Lissa glared round at him, anger still boiling in her—and still that unwanted awareness of him.

It was a mistake to look at him. Even as she did so she felt again the incredible blow that went right through her solar plexus. The streetlight etched the planes of his face, and the sudden hardness in them, in his eyes, sent an unwilling thrill of reaction through her.

She fought against it.

‘Oh, do me a favour,’ she threw at him scornfully. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. When I get told that you’ve paid “premium price”—’ she emphasised that heavily ‘—for a “private hire”—’ she emphasised that even more heavily ‘—I don’t damn well need it spelt out in neon lights. Nor do I need the creep running the casino to spell it out for me that I either do it or get fired.’

The icy expression in his eyes changed suddenly. Devastatingly. Lissa felt her insides dissolve.

The grip on her arm loosened, but he did not relinquish her. Instead, he guided her up onto the safety of the pavement again.

‘Don’t—’ She hustled back at him, but he ignored her. Then he turned her to face him.

‘You take insult,’ he informed her, ‘where none is intended. At least not by me.’ He took a sharp breath. Something changed in his eyes as he looked down at her. Then they were veiled. He dropped her arm. She should have bolted, but she didn’t. She just stood there, in the pelting rain, blinking at him. She didn’t know why, but she did all the same.

‘I wanted to see you again,’ said Xavier Lauran.

Her face didn’t change, but something else did, deep inside. She went on blinking at him. Staring at him.

‘I wanted to see you again,’ he repeated—as if, she thought, he was confirming it to himself.

‘Why?’ Her question was blunt. Unforgiving.

There was a slight alteration in his features, a lift of his eyebrow.

‘Why? Because …’ he paused. ‘Because when I gave you a lift home yesterday night I …’ He fell silent a moment. Then he spoke again. ‘You were different,’ he said bluntly. ‘A quite different woman from the one you had been at the casino. A woman I wanted to see again.’

‘What for?’ she demanded witheringly. ‘Some “private hire” entertainment?’

‘For dinner,’ he answered simply.

Lissa blinked.

‘I wanted to invite you for dinner,’ said Xavier Lauran. ‘I knew you worked, and I did not know when your night off was. I have limited time in London, so I did not want to waste it. I phoned the casino and asked if it was possible to arrange, as you term it, a “private hire.” By that I meant that I would pay the casino for your time, so they would not lose out, and it would free you to accept my invitation to dinner.’

Emotions were churning through her.

‘Dinner.’ Her voice was flat.

‘Just dinner.’ His voice was flatter.

She stared up at him. Rain washing down her face.

‘Why?’ she asked bluntly.

Again, something changed in his eyes, but she didn’t know what—not in this uncertain light, with the rain streaming down on both of them. A smile crooked at his mouth. Not much of a smile, but a smile all the same. A touch sardonic. A touch wry. A touch humorous. A touch indulgent.

‘Don’t you ever look in the mirror, Lissa? Not in the casino, but at home. When you haven’t got all that mess on your face. If you did, you’d have your answer. The reason I want to see you again. The reason I’m inviting you for dinner.’

‘Dinner,’ she said again. The mouth quirked more.

‘I’m a Frenchman,’ he elaborated, with that same wry, sardonic touch. ‘Dinner is important to me. Tonight I’d like you to share it with me. Just dinner,’ he added. ‘Does that reassure you?’ An eyebrow lifted, as if indulging her.

Reassure her? It stunned her. There wasn’t another word for it. No word, either, for the hollowing in her stomach as she stood there, frozen, motionless, staring up at Xavier Lauran who had not, after all, thought she was a—

‘So, will you accept my invitation? Now that you know what it is. And what—’ his voice bit suddenly ‘—it is not.’

‘You really mean just dinner?’ She could not hide the doubt, the suspicion.

He nodded gravely. ‘And, although I do not wish in any way to harass or hurry you, it would, peut-être, be considerably appreciated if you would give an imminent answer. On account, you understand—’ his eyes glinted ‘—of the inclement English weather we are currently experiencing.’

She stared at him still. His sable hair was completely wet. So were the shoulders of his cashmere coat. Rain glistened on his eyelashes. They were ridiculously long, she thought abstractedly. Far too long for a man. They ought to make him look feminine, but … Her stomach gave one of the flips it did whenever she stopped blocking out all thoughts of this man who had nothing to do with her life. But feminine was the very last thing they made him look. They simply made him look …

Sexy.

That awful, cheap word. Overused, trashy, tabloid.

And true.

Completely, undeniably true.

She felt her stomach dissolve, gazing up at him, at the way the rain made his hair glisten like a raven’s wing, the way it perfected the incredible planes of his face. she just wanted to go on gazing, and gazing and gazing.

He was guiding her towards the car. She hardly registered it. Then the chauffeur was there, opening the passenger door, and she was being ushered inside. She sank back, boneless, into the deep leather seat.

What am I doing?

The question sounded in her mind, but she didn’t pay it any attention. She couldn’t. She just sat there, capable only of feeling that suddenly she was out of the rain, still soaking wet, but at least not with rain shafting down into her face. A moment later Xavier Lauran had climbed in on his side of the car, and the chauffeur was reclaiming his driving seat.

‘Seat belt,’ he reminded her, as the car moved off, and his voice, in the confines of the car, suddenly sounded very French.

Very sexy.

No, she mustn’t think that word. Not now—not with this man who had walked back into her life when she had thought he never would, never could. And whom up till two minutes ago she had had every reason to think a total jerk, a creep, a slimeball, a—

Punter.

Numbly her eyes flew to him as she fumblingly did up her seat belt. He was currently pulling down his own seat belt with an assured, fluid movement. She wanted to watch him. Wanted to watch him doing anything, everything. Because.

Because she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Because he made her stomach go hollow. Because he stopped the breath in her lungs. Because—

He’s a punter.

The thought pulled her up short. One of those men who thought spending an evening in a two-bit casino being fawned over by women, drinking third-rate champagne and throwing money around pointlessly on stupid gambling was a good time.

She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be here. It was wrong—all wrong.

‘What is it?’ He’d paused in the act of fastening the seat belt. His eyes focussed on her intently. Questioningly.

‘Why did you come to the casino last night?’

Her question was stark.

For a moment he stilled. Then he answered.

‘Why do you ask?’

She brushed some raindrops from her hair.

‘It’s hardly your kind of place, is it?’

He didn’t bother to disagree.

‘I was bored. I was passing. I’d been to a play in Shaftesbury Avenue I hadn’t liked, so I walked out. I didn’t feel like going back to my hotel. The casino was an impulse, nothing more, just to pass some time.’ His voice was offhand. Then it changed. So did the expression in his eyes.

‘But I’m glad I did go in. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have met you. And I will tell you, in complete honesty—’ he levelled his gaze at her ‘—that until I saw you at the bus stop last night your appeal to me was precisely zero. But then …’ He paused. ‘It was unexpected,’ he said.

His eyes swept down over her, washing away her guard. She shouldn’t let it be washed away, but it was gone all the same.

‘It made me want to see you again.’

Simple words.

Doing very unsimple things to her.

He was still looking at her, with that same disarming expression. ‘Would it be so very hard to have dinner with me?’ he said. There was a quizzical, amused cast to his eye.

Her eyes were uncertain, confused.

She shouldn’t do this. She should make him stop the car, get out, go home. Back to her real world. She shouldn’t let herself be taken away like this, by a man who did things to her insides that made it impossible to think straight, to think logically, rationally, coolly, sensibly, sanely.

The litany trotted through her head, every word a compelling, urgent argument to tell him to stop the car and let her out. Then into the litany another thought arose, inserting itself into her mind.

If she didn’t get out it would mean she’d keep her job at the casino. They wouldn’t know she’d just gone for dinner.

But did he really mean just dinner? Was she an idiot to believe him?

‘Dinner? That’s all?’ Her voice was sharp.

‘Exactement. In the public dining room of my hotel. It will be very comme il faut, je vous assure.’ There were undertones to his voice, but she could not identify them. She was focussing on the words.

He had used ‘vous’ to her. The formal mode of address, implying not familiarity or superiority—but courtesy.

A knot inside her that she hadn’t even been aware of untied itself.

But another one still remained. One that was much harder to untie. Impossible.

She should go home. She should not do this. If she wasn’t working, she should be at home.

Because there was no point, no point at all, in having dinner with this man.

But it would be worth it if only for the memory.

She took a breath—and made her decision. Looking straight at him.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Il me fait un grand plaisir de vous accepter, m’sieu,’ she enunciated carefully. Then she looked at him uncertainly. ‘Was that correct?’ she asked.

His mouth quirked. Tension seemed to have gone out of his face.

‘It will do perfectly,’ he said.

He relaxed back into his seat, his shoulders easing.

‘Where did you learn French?’

‘At school,’ she volunteered. She, too, sat back into the contours of the seat. ‘Same as everyone else, really. I can just about get my way around France, but that’s all. I can’t really have a proper conversation, or read novels or watch TV or anything demanding. It always seems a bit bad, really, that the British—and the Americans, too, I suppose—can get away without knowing another language fluently. English is de rigueur, presumably, in business circles outside France?’

She was babbling, she knew, but it seemed important to her somehow to have an innocuous conversation—one that had nothing to do with where she worked, or what she’d thought he’d hired her for. A conversation she could have had with anyone.

‘English now is very much the lingua franca, it’s true, but I also speak Italian, Spanish, and some German, as well.’

Her reply was another burble.

‘Well, I can say café con leche, por favor in Spanish, and dov’e il cattedrale in Italian, and I think that’s about it. As for German, it’s just Bitte and Danke. Oh, and I can say epharisto in Greek. But that’s really my lot.’ She gave a self-deprecating smile.

The long eyelashes swept down over his dark eyes. There were no more raindrops on them, but his hair was still clearly wet. So was hers. She could feel water trickling down her back. Another thought struck her. She could hardly dine in a hotel restaurant looking like a drowned rat. But maybe there would be powerful hand dryers in the Ladies, and she could at least get her hair dry. She could try and style it a bit, too, though it was probably best left in a tight pleat. But she could put a bit of makeup on, though—she had enough in her handbag after all. It was the clothes that were the main problem, however. She was just wearing jeans and a jumper—would that really do? Well, it would have to. Anyway, her thoughts raced on, it obviously didn’t bother him, or he wouldn’t have asked her out in the way he had.

Why had he?

The question stung through her thoughts, scattering them instantly. Then into her head his words sounded. Don’t you ever look in the mirror?

A quiver went through her. Was she really the kind of woman a man like him was interested in? She knew she could look good—knew she had been blessed with a face and figure that many women would envy her for. But a man like Xavier Lauran, rich, sophisticated and French, would move in circles where every woman was beautiful and chic, groomed from top to toe in exquisite designer clothes.

Doubt trickled through her. Then she put it aside. A man like Xavier Lauran would know his own mind. If he thought her beautiful enough to interest him, then that was that. He had, after all, no other reason to spend his time with her.

A warm glow began to spread through her. It might only be dinner, but in the evening ahead she would enjoy all she could of it.

She gave a silent mental shrug. Even if she had to do it in jeans and a jumper.

Fifteen minutes later, she realised she’d got that bit as wrong as everything else about the evening. She was being ushered across the huge, marble-floored lobby of a West End hotel, and guided distinctly towards the left-hand side.

‘The hotel boutique is still open—I am sure they will have something suitable for you there.’