Ross lunged through the water to snatch away the ball. ‘Bring it on!’
What was brought on was a quick, brutal, no-holds-barred confrontation, which ended with Luc scoring his tenth easy goal to Ross’s hard-won five. Veronica had edged around to sit on the steps with Sophie, out of the way of the explosive splashes and leaping collisions, slightly stunned by the grim intensity with which both men played. Although Luc didn’t have Ross’s chunky slabs of gym-sculpted muscle, his lean proportions gave him a better power-to-weight ratio, his lithe speed and supple flexibility enabling him to manoeuvre so quickly he often left his increasingly desperate opponent wallowing in his wake. In fact, Veronica judged that it would have been a complete annihilation except for the fact that Luc seemed to tire abruptly towards the end, allowing Ross to score all of his goals in the last few minutes of the contest.
Ross, of course, immediately proposed a best-of-three, but Luc had already swung himself out of the side of the pool and was sliding his feet into his shoes and thrusting his wet arms into his shirt, squeezing the water out of his sodden pony-tail and briskly rebanding it.
‘No, thanks, I’ve just been digging up a new area of vege garden for Zoe. I think I’ve had enough exercise for one day,’ he said, dropping his sunglasses into his chest pocket. ‘Good game, though,’ he added laconically and Veronica noticed that unlike Ross, who was wheezing heavily, he barely seemed out of breath.
He padded around to unhook a netted hoop and Veronica swam over to get the one from the shallow end, handing it up to him, trying not to notice the way the soaking denim clung to his thighs as he crouched and then stood to hand them to Sophie, who trotted away to drop them back in the locker.
He looked down at her. ‘Had enough?’ he demanded, flicking a glance at Ross, who was still trying to recover his breath, and Veronica realised that beneath his cool front was a banked fury.
She nodded hastily, but before she could turn back to the steps Luc bent, extending his hands, and when she tentatively placed her own in his, he pulled her out of the pool in a single movement, as if she weighed less than a feather, a brief ripple of contraction across the hard abdomen bared by his open shirt the only sign of effort. At close quarters she could feel the full impact of his angry tension.
He stepped back and gave her wet swimsuit a raking look that made her conscious of the high-cut briefs that extended her already long legs and the deep cleavage of the ruched halter top that was designed to support her full breasts, moulding them high against her chest, the double lining not thick enough to hide the outline of her nipples, pebbled by the cool water.
‘Is this yours?’ He moved over to pick up the large striped towel that lay across one of the sunloungers, and when she nodded he shook it out and held it up.
Veronica walked nervously towards him, far too aware of her body. He made her conscious of her essential femininity in a way that Ross’s suggestive leering never could, but she sensed he was in a dangerous mood.
His brown eyes were a fathomless black that made her skin goose-pimple as he dropped the towel over her shoulders, and she quickly wrapped it, sarong-like, around her body.
She didn’t dare object as he escorted her up the path and was relieved when Sophie ran up between them.
‘Luc’s driving Gran and me over to St Didier soon, to see the Jarditrain, and we wondered if you wanted to come?’ she said. ‘It’s a huge model railway this man has built in his back garden, with twenty-five different trains that run all around the track, through all sorts of scenery and tunnels and over bridges and stuff like that …’
‘Sounds fun,’ said Veronica distractedly, and stumbled over an uneven joint in the pavestones as Luc said:
‘Why don’t you run along and get changed, Sophie, while I make sure Veronica is OK?’
‘Oh, sure …’ Sophie paused and turned big eyes up to Veronica. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do, but Luc always knows,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He told me once when I was being bullied at school that if you’re not big enough to beat someone yourself you have to find someone to be your champion.’
‘Sophie didn’t know what you and Ross were doing, but she thought you looked upset, so she ran to get me,’ clipped Luc as the girl peeled off towards the house, pigtails bouncing. ‘You’re damned lucky she decided to look for you at the pool, and that I was working out in the garden. Unless we misread the situation and you were enjoying what he was doing—’
‘Of course I wasn’t!’ Veronica denied fiercely, still feeling shaken by the whole ugly incident. In hindsight it was obvious that Luc and Sophie hadn’t simply wandered onto the scene by chance. ‘I know I have to thank you for distracting him—’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ he muttered grimly, lengthening his stride as they passed under the twin almond trees at the edge of the cottage garden.
‘I’m glad you won when you did,’ she said, wary of his meaning as she hurried to keep up with him. ‘He was scoring so well there at the end I was afraid—’
He halted her with a blistering look. ‘Only because I let him,’ he bit out. ‘Ten-zip would have been more gratifying for me, but it would have been counter-productive. When you beat a man that completely, you don’t humiliate him as well—unless you want to make a bad enemy,’ he said, stepping back to let her precede him into the cottage. ‘I may happen to think Bentley’s a pompous bastard with an over-inflated opinion of his self-worth, but he’s Ashley’s fiancé, so a certain amount of diplomacy is required in getting the message across …’
‘What message?’ she asked, nervously hugging the towel around her.
‘That you’re under my protection,’ he replied, his voice redolent with dark satisfaction.
Her face registered her instinctive objection to the implication and he was swift to strike.
‘You want me to tell him you’re not?’ he invited with dangerous softness.
The consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. She swallowed. ‘I’m sure he won’t try anything like that again—’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘But what? Did he have reason to think you wanted him to try it on with you? Did you and he arrange to sneak off for a watery rendezvous—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I think he’s repulsive!’ she snapped.
‘Then what in the hell did you think you were doing in the pool with him?’ His rage broke loose in a low roar. ‘Damn it, don’t tell me you don’t know what a lecher he is. I’ve seen the way he leers over you when Ashley’s not around. Why the hell did you let him get close enough to grab you—?’
‘I didn’t let him do anything,’ she protested, buffeted by his unleashed fury, trying to persuade herself that his anger wasn’t really directed at her.
His brown eyes smouldered with hostility. ‘You shouldn’t have gone down to the pool alone.’
She blinked, rocked by the accusation. ‘Are you blaming me?’
‘At the very least you could have got out as soon as you saw him coming—’
‘I didn’t see him coming, that was the problem.’ It was her turn to blister him with a look. ‘You are blaming me,’ she said incredulously.
His olive skin darkened and he shifted