Latin Lovers: Seductive Frenchman: Chosen as the Frenchman's Bride / The Frenchman's Captive Wife / The French Doctor's Midwife Bride. Fiona Lowe

had arranged for everything to be sent straight to the plane and loaded up. Once they were on it themselves, later that day, Jane felt a pang of guilt mixed with fear. Xavier saw the look on her face.

      ‘What is it?’

      She shook her head rapidly. ‘Nothing … nothing at all.’

       Everything!

      She averted her head and looked out of the window. When she thought about the afternoon she had to admit that she had enjoyed it on some level. Who wouldn’t have? Assistants fawning all over her. Well, over Xavier’s credit card, to be accurate. And what on the surface must have looked like a doting husband indulging his new bride. The covetous looks of the other women hadn’t gone unnoticed. At one point she had even felt the old warmth creep up, when one of the women had been particularly sycophantic. Jane had looked to Xavier and caught his identical look, and a bubble of delighted communication had almost transformed her face, made her forget why she was there. But that would be far too dangerous. What they had shared in the summer was not who he really was. She had to remember that.

      Once the small plane was cruising, and the seat belt signs were off, she saw Xavier turn towards her from the corner of her eye.

      ‘Jane, I have something for you.’

      She turned to look.

      ‘More? What could you possibly—?’

      She went silent when she saw him reach into the inside pocket of his jacket and pull out a small box, which he offered her across the aisle. She looked at him and her hands shook slightly as took it. When she opened it she gasped. Nestled in a bed of cream velvet was the most stunning sapphire ring in an antique square setting of tiny diamonds and white-gold. It was beautiful. How could he have picked exactly what she would have gone for herself?

      ‘How did you know …?’

      ‘I remembered something you told me once about sapphires being your favourite stone …’

      She couldn’t help but be touched that he had remembered.

      ‘We can change it if you don’t like it,’ he said stiffly.

      She looked up quickly. ‘I lo—’ She stopped herself and amended her words. ‘It’s beautiful.’

      She put it on her finger with a tremor in her hand. A perfect fit.

      He went back to his papers; she went back to looking out of the window, with the sting of tears in her eyes at the sterility of the exchange.

      They landed at the private air strip on Lézille in the early evening.

      Xavier’s four-wheel drive was parked nearby, and he expertly negotiated his way out of the tiny airstrip and towards the castle, silhouetted on the horizon against a darkening sky.

      This time it wasn’t empty. A retinue of people were lined up to welcome them home. Most of the names and faces were a blur as Jane struggled to hang onto them. A gardener, cook, maid … and at the head of the queue Xavier introduced her with obvious affection to Jean-Paul and Yvette who, he told her, had run the castle since he was a baby. They had the same dark distinctively Spanish features of the rest of the islanders.

      Before she knew what was happening, Xavier had lifted her up to carry her over the threshold. When he put her down again she stood back, trembling and breathing hard … disconcerted. Another tear threatened… .for about the third time that day. She told herself it must be her hormones, emotions too close to the surface. She couldn’t read his face, searching desperately for some indication that his motivation wasn’t ironic. Or an act purely for the staff, who were looking on delightedly. She had to admit that was more likely. But his face was shuttered, expressionless. She controlled her wayward reactions.

      Yvette shyly led Jane upstairs to the master bedroom. It all looked familiar, and exactly how she remembered it. Little had she known that she’d ever be back … married and pregnant. She sank onto the side of the bed and looked around, feeling a little removed from everything. Her life had changed so completely within just a few months, a total one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Goosebumps prickled across her skin and she wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a sudden chill.

      She went to look out of the window. The scenery was as vividly breathtaking as she remembered, just slightly less lush than it had been in the summer.

      A movement out of the corner of her eye made her look round. Xavier had appeared in the door, holding one of her bags.

      With sudden panic and clarity she realised something. ‘Xavier … this is your room.’

      ‘Yes. And now it’s your room too.’

      He walked in, closing the door behind him, coming uncomfortably close. Jane wrapped her arms tighter around herself, forcing herself to remain calm. But it was difficult. The bed in the corner of her eye loomed large and threatening; the memories were rushing back.

      ‘We are not sleeping together.’

      ‘Yes, we are.’ He enunciated each word with chilling softness.

      ‘No.’

      He ran an angry hand through his hair and Jane could feel the energy crackle around them. ‘Jane, we are going to share this room if I have to lock us both in here every night. If the staff see us sleeping separately, word of a fractured marriage will spread before morning. And I will not have that. We may as well not have bothered getting married.’

      Jane threw her hands in the air and moved away jerkily, pacing back and forth. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. If I sleep in the other room I can make sure the sheets are pristine every morning … I’ll—’

      ‘Now you’re being ridiculous. Tell me, Jane … why the great resistance? Don’t you remember how it was between us?’

       Didn’t she remember?

      Her stomach dropped with sudden panic under his narrowed gaze. Resisting him … and this overwhelming desire … was the only way she knew how to protect herself. He couldn’t ever know … and if he started to look at her motives …

      She wouldn’t even contemplate that scenario. She placed a protective hand on her belly. It might as well have been over her heart. She mustered up a look that would have frozen boiling water, her blue eyes chips of ice,

      ‘This baby is the only thing I care about. I’m pregnant, Xavier, I don’t feel those … urges.’

      She hated using the baby like this, but she needed all the armour she could get. Anything that would keep him at a distance. She knew that he would not step over the line …

      unless she gave the word. Which she was determined not to—until she knew she could stay detached, if such a time existed.

      A savage intensity flashed over his face. The hell she didn’t feel those urges. Every part of her quivered lightly before him; she was taut as a bow, just waiting for his touch. His eyes dropped to the hand over her belly, before they took in the rise and fall of her chest. He wanted to walk over and shake her, and call her a liar to her face. He caught her darting a glance to the bed, the slight flush under her skin. He moved closer.