She caught a glimpse of a couple strolling hand in hand, naked as the day they were born. “You have a nude beach here?”
“Four natural beaches, all private, and all reserved before-hand by the guests.” A hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Tops are optional on the public beach. We are very European here.”
“I’m too British to appreciate it.”
“You’ll learn to enjoy it.”
Never. Unlike her mother, she didn’t flaunt her body.
Kira closed her eyes to the beauty around her as the ugliness of her past tried to intrude. No, she wasn’t like her mother at all. She slid a hand over her belly. The past was just that—past. This baby was her future.
The utility vehicle whirred past another lane leading to another cottage and sped up an incline beneath a canopy of trees alive with birds. Through the light flickering through the foliage Kira caught a glimpse of the big house, nestled into the hillside.
She gripped the handrail and swallowed the panic building in her chest. He couldn’t mean to move her into his dwelling.
But as the vehicle emerged from the trees into an area cleared behind the old plantation house, she was certain that was his intention. Living on his island would be taxing enough. But to stay in his home and endure his temper? Impossible.
“I’d prefer my own quarters.” Away from him and temptation.
“The cottages are for paying guests.” He stepped from the cart and pocketed the key.
“Fine. I’ll pay,” she said, craning her neck to see where he’d gone. “I won’t live with you.”
“You don’t have a choice, ma chérie.”
She whipped around to find him at her side. One arm rested on the top of the canopy and the other gripped the support pole.
At first glance his was a casual pose. But one look at his white knuckles, at the corded muscles in his arms and the grim set of his mouth, dispelled that thought.
“I won’t be your mistress,” she said.
“I didn’t offer you the position.”
It was true. He hadn’t said a word about her being his lover. She should feel relieved, not disappointed. What was wrong with her?
His enigmatic gaze held hers another long moment before he straightened and extended a hand to her. “It has been a taxing journey. Come. I’ll help you inside.”
“I can manage myself.” Kira swung her legs out and stood.
Her sensitive feet settled onto the crushed shells and her breath hitched, but she was determined to walk into his house under her own power.
“Mon Dieu!” André stepped forward and swept her up in his arms again. “Are you always this stubborn?”
She planted her hands on his shoulders to force a minute distance between their bodies. “Are you always this domineering?”
“Only with you.”
Kira didn’t believe that for a moment as he strode up the walk, his shoes crunching the walkway. She resisted the urge to rest her head against his shoulder, refused to relax against the comforting wall of his chest.
He climbed the two steps to the front terrace with ease. The temperature was refreshingly cooler beneath the roofed porch. His housekeeper stood at the open door, the white ruffle on her peasant blouse and the hem of her orange floral skirt fluttering in the breeze that filtered through the house.
A smile wreathed her face. “Bonjour, Monsieur Gauthier.”
“Bon après-midi, Otillie.” André shouldered through the door with Kira in his arms, speaking rapidly in the island patois which sailed right over Kira’s head.
Otillie volleyed back with what sounded like affronted questions, and stepped in front of André, bringing him up short.
After a few choice words from him, Otillie tossed her hands in the air and quit the living room, muttering under her breath.
“What was that about?” Kira asked.
“Otillie is annoyed with me for not telling her I was bringing a guest home.”
“You should have let me rent a cottage.”
“I should have kicked you off my island when you first came here to play out your vengeance.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, refusing to be baited into the same argument about her reasons for coming here.
“Because you intrigued me.”
That feeling had been mutual. She’d never met a man like André. Never felt such a strong connection to another man. It had been more than sex to her, yet she suspected that was where their similarities ended.
He climbed the steps with apparent ease and continued down a hall swathed in shadows. Her blood heated and her heart quickened, for she knew there were only bedrooms on this level.
And she knew exactly which room was his.
Tingles of awareness streaked through her, sending her heart into a crazy rhythm. Was that where he was taking her? Would she be a prisoner in his bed?
Surely not? Even André couldn’t be that barbarous. Yet he’d taken her from the Chateau and brought her here. She was on his island. In his house. At his mercy.
Mercy? She gave in to a shiver. He had none.
He was a ruthless corporate pirate and a master of seduction. She might not be a match for him in business, but she’d proved she was his carnal equal. In that they were well suited.
That admission terrified her more than anything, for she was fatally attracted to him—like a moth to a flame. She’d been burned once by tumbling into his bed. The next time the flames of desire would consume her—if his quest for vengeance didn’t destroy her first.
He passed the door to his chamber without pause—the room where they’d made love, the room where the world had intruded on their ideal, the room she’d fled in anger and shame.
She shook off those memories as he shouldered open a louvered door midway down the hall, and pushed into a cool, dark room. A gorgeous canopied bed dominated the space, its mosquito netting rippling in the refreshing breeze that filtered through the room.
André headed straight toward the bed, his features so hard and unyielding they looked carved from stone. Yet he laid her on the bed gently, his touch lingering a telling moment.
Instead of pouncing on her, as she’d half expected he’d do, he stood back and stared at her with cold derision. She sensed he waged a war within himself, and a part of her commiserated, for she was fighting her own private battle to remain unmoved by him. It had been so good between them that one glorious night.
Though her heart pounded louder than the drums that had greeted them on their arrival, she sat up and faced him. And waited for him to break the tense silence.
“I’m a private man,” he said, pacing before the foot of the bed. “I guarded my business and my private life. But in one night you stripped me bare and invited the world as witness.”
“I had nothing to do with that swarm of paparazzi.”
He sliced a hand through the air. “Of course you would deny your part in that.”
“What about you?” she asked, having learned after Edouard’s death that André wasn’t a man to be crossed—or trusted. “You’re as much to blame for the dissolution of your engagement.”