Things have changed … completely … at my end. Something very unexpected … My former commitments are … finished. I’m no longer … So, if he wanted …
If the words were true it could mean only one thing.
She and Armand were finished.
It was blunt, it was brutal—but if, if it really were true, then—
One thought and one alone burned in his mind. I can have her.
Triumph surged in him. If his brother no longer had a claim on her, then those damning words of hers—I can’t—no longer mattered. Were no longer true.
If.
So small a word, so much hanging on it.
It must be true. Why else would she have phoned?
He needed to know. Right now. Frustration stabbed at him again, poisonously mixing with hope.
Why wouldn’t she open the damn door?
As if he’d spoken the words aloud, there was a sudden ping from the door and the lock yielded. He pushed it open instantly and strode inside. There was a narrow corridor, lit only by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Stairs led away up from the central area. Everything looked bleak and bare. But he had eyes for none of it—only for the woman standing in the doorway of the ground-floor flat, clinging on to the doorjamb.
He went to her. He caught her to him. Dropped his mouth to hers.
His kiss was urgent, possessive, putting his brand on her. She collapsed against him, boneless. Triumph surged in him. He let her go, slipping his hands either side of her face, tilting it up to him. Her eyes were huge.
‘Why did you phone me?’
His voice sounded fierce, and he saw her pupils distend even more.
‘I … I …’ Her voice was faint, her body still weakly collapsed against his, held upright only because of the strength in the palms of his hands, holding her face as he looked down at her, towering over her.
‘I need to know,’ he said, and his voice was still fierce. ‘I need to know if you are free to come to me.’
There was a soft rasp in her throat. And then, as if a dam had broken inside her, she suddenly flung her arms around him and crushed her face against his shoulder. His hands slid around her back automatically, cradling her.
‘Is that a yes, cherie?’ The edge was still there, but something else, as well. His hands began to stroke up and down the length of her spine. She lifted her face away from him. Her eyes were shining like a rainbow. Something leapt in him.
Then she breathed a word—a single word.
‘Xavier.’ It was a sigh, it was an exhalation, it was all he needed to hear.
Very slowly, he brought his mouth down on hers again.
Exultation flowed like a rich, deep tide.
Lissa Stephens was his.
He did not mention Armand. He did not need to. There was no point. Whatever had happened between Lissa and his brother, it was over. All he knew was that he, Xavier, had done the honourable thing—he had walked away from a woman who was forbidden to him, no matter what it had cost him to do so.
And it had cost him—no doubt of that. Now, as he held her tight against him, feeling the warmth of her body in his arms, it slammed home to him just how much it had cost him, thinking that he was forever barred from her.
Relief poured through him. He could make Lissa his, and that was all he cared about. Whatever had happened between her and his brother was immaterial—it was over, and that was all that mattered. He would not think about it, would shut it out of his mind, would only tighten his arms around the woman he wanted and now had. There was only one centre of focus in his whole being—and she was in his arms. He would ask no questions, either of her or his brother. He would just accept, with relief and gratitude, that there was nothing standing between them. The tide that had started to flow so powerfully, so overwhelmingly, that moment when he had walked into the cocktail bar and seen Lissa as she truly was, could flow now unchecked until it reached the satiation it craved.
But not right here, or right now.
Reluctantly, he drew away from her glancing past her, into the interior of the wretched flat she lived in. Then his eyes came back to hers. The blast of radiance in them shook him.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. He kissed her lightly, possessively. ‘And bring your passport.’
Lissa was floating. Floating on a bubble of bliss that lifted her feet right off the ground. He had come for her. Xavier Lauran had come for her—wanted her so much that he had flown here from Paris the moment he’d got her stuttering message.
A glow filled her, sweet and intense and radiant. As she dashed around the flat—throwing things into a small valise, hastily changing into something less frumpy than a tracksuit, turning off the hot water, unplugging electrical appliances, leaving a brief voice mail for the agency to say she was taking time off at short notice—one of the few perks of temping—gathering her purse and passport, mobile phone and anything else she knew she must take with her—she could hardly think straight.
She had gone from dejection and resignation—from forcing herself to face up to accepting that Xavier Lauran was not for her, that her chance had gone, that he was not going to come back into her life, that all she would have of him was a brief memory, a jewel kept in a secret place whose colour would slowly dim and drain away—gone from that to its complete opposite. From dejection to elation. From resignation to radiance. From monochrome to glorious colour, like a rainbow just for her.
She could feel her heart leap as she glanced up from throwing underwear helter-skelter into her valise. He filled her vision. Dear God, he just looked so breathtakingly handsome standing there, his eyes fixed on her as he leaned, with effortless elegance, against the doorjamb of the bedroom, watching her pack, watching her with that half smile of his dancing in his eyes, playing about his beautifully shaped mouth. Recalling for her the memory of the night he’d taken her to that magical dinner at his hotel.
Were they going there now? Or, if not, then where? He had said passport, so did that mean he was taking her to France—but when? For how long? She didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything—only that she would go with him wherever he took her.
I’m going to take this moment. Take it and relish it. I know he’s only a fantasy made flesh, but for the time he wants me I will be with him and have him.
She wouldn’t think about the reality of what she was doing—that was for later, not now. All she would do now was allow herself the thrill and bliss of the moment, with her feet floating off the ground, all courtesy of Xavier Lauran—here, live, freshly flown in from Paris just to claim her, waiting to take her with him.
She zipped up the valise and picked it up, along with her handbag.
‘Ready?’ he asked, and strolled towards her, taking her valise from her. She nodded, heart racing. It was all she could do.
‘Yes,’ she said.
He held out his hand to her, and she went to him.
Lissa stood in Xavier Lauran’s bedroom in his apartment in Paris. It was gone midnight, and she had to pinch herself to believe that only a few hours ago she had been cleaning her drear and dingy flat in South London. Now she was in a high-ceilinged grand appartement, its décor a stunning mix of ancient and modern, occupying the first floor of an old courtyarded hotel which, a century ago, had been the town house of a wealthy Second Empire financier to Napoleon III—or so Xavier had informed her when they’d arrived. She’d been stunned to realise that Xavier intended to fly straight back to Paris that very night, whisking her right to Heathrow in the waiting car outside.