‘So, tell me how you really learnt to cook.’
Jesse was sitting on a stool with her chin propped in her hand, watching Luc do something very complicated to a fish in a pan. She’d drunk half a glass of wine and felt incredibly mellow. Which most likely also had a lot to do with the fact that this was the evening after their whole day in bed. A bone-deep sense of satisfaction oozed through Jesse’s entire body.
Luc’s voice was light, but she sensed an undercurrent of steel—as if she was touching on a tender point. ‘I told you—my mother had a breakdown after my father died and I had to cook for me and my sister and her when she came out of hospital.’
Impetuously Jesse asked, ‘How did your father die?’
Luc’s jaw tightened. He drizzled some oil over the fish in the pan and it sizzled.
When he said casually, ‘He killed himself,’ Jesse almost missed it. Before she could say anything Luc was explaining, ‘I told you that my sister has special needs? That she’s verging on autistic?’
Jesse nodded, knowing well enough not to mention his father again. Her heart ached for Luc in a very peculiar way, but her mind skittered weakly away from looking at why too closely. Much as it skittered away from analysing anything of the last couple of days too deeply.
Luc went on. ‘I discovered that cooking calmed her. Getting the ingredients and putting them together seemed to occupy her.’ He grimaced. ‘Of course when things didn’t work out as they should she would fly into a rage, but that just made it more imperative that I learn how to do things properly. The more complicated the recipe, the more it would have an effect on her. She would sit for hours and watch a boeuf bourguignon cooking slowly.’
He looked at Jesse and smiled faintly. ‘She’s now working as a chef for a company that caters for people with special needs. It’s like meals on wheels, and they offer opportunities to people like Eva.’
Jesse’s voice was husky. ‘Eva is a pretty name.’
Then Luc asked, ‘So, what happened after your mother died?’
Jesse blanched and took a hasty sip of wine. She almost resented Luc for skirting so close to dangerous reality.
Very reluctantly she said, ‘I was taken in by the Social Services … I lived in foster homes until I was eighteen.’
Luc looked at her. ‘That must have been rough.’
Jesse shrugged and avoided his eye. ‘It wasn’t easy.’
‘But what about your father? Why didn’t you live with him—despite what he did?’
Jesse realised that Luc must have assumed that her mother and father had been married. The old shame crawled up her spine. ‘My parents weren’t married … My mother was my father’s housekeeper.’ Her mouth twisted with bitterness as she revealed, ‘He was married to a very honourable woman from English society.’
Luc’s hands stilled. ‘So … your mother and father had an affair and you were brought up in the house?’
‘More or less … except it wasn’t so much an affair as my father using my mother whenever he felt like it.’
Luc’s voice was cold. ‘He knew he was your father?’
Jesse nodded and finally looked at him again, not sure how she felt at seeing the condemnation in his eyes.
Before she knew it the words were tumbling out. ‘I went to him one day when he was in his study … I don’t know where I got the nerve … I must have been about six. I was going through a phase where I was missing not having a daddy. And I knew he was my father. So I went and asked him why he didn’t act like the fathers I saw at school …’
‘Jesse—’
But she held up a hand, stopping Luc in whatever he was going to say, and finished. ‘He said nothing at first. He just got up and went and closed and locked the door to his study. And then he took off his belt. He whipped me with it, all down my back and legs, until there was blood on the floor. The buckle broke my skin …’
Luc had left the fish and come round to stand in front of Jesse. When he cupped her face in his hands and lifted it up she was surprised to feel tears running down her face.
‘He told me never, ever to call him my father again, and that if I repeated what I’d said to anyone he’d kill me and my mother.’
Luc shook his head. ‘No wonder you have a thing about locked rooms. Was he violent to your mother?’
Jesse nodded. She felt Luc gather her into his chest and rock her. He felt so solid and strong and warm. Her hands gripped his shirt, holding on tight until she was still.
When he let her go and gave her a tissue she hiccuped. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never told anyone about that before … I don’t usually cry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Is he still—?’
Jesse stopped his words by blurting out, ‘Please—I don’t want to talk about it any more, okay?’
After dinner, and much later that night in bed, Luc asked softly, ‘Those scars on your legs … are they from that day?’
Jesse came up on one arm and looked at Luc. She just nodded. And then, to stop him asking any more questions, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth, slid over him so that her thighs were straddling his hips and her breasts were crushed into his chest.
Luc clamped his hands around her hips and lifted her slightly until she felt him guiding his erection between her legs. And Jesse weakly obliterated everything from her mind except this exquisite moment.
When the storm had passed Jesse curled into Luc’s side, once again claiming him in sleep in a way which should have had him prising her from him, but which was having the opposite effect.
Luc felt more than a little pole-axed. When Jesse had told him about her father earlier a tidal wave of anger had come over him at the thought of her being so abused. And also a feeling of pride … that she’d come through something like that and forged such a successful life for herself.
He sighed deeply and recognised that he was in serious danger of becoming so sidelined by this woman that he’d forget about his primary focus, which was to get off the island and get back in time to deal with O’Brien.
He had Jesse exactly where he wanted her—literally—but he found that instead of exploiting this intimacy he was intent on seducing her some more … and then some more. She was a fever in his blood, and he was very much afraid he wasn’t ready to douse it just yet.
Luc felt the old tentacles of vulnerability reach out to touch him with ghostly memories, but he pushed them aside and damned them all. Jesse was different … this situation was different. He would never be led astray again.
As he fell asleep he reassured himself that he hadn’t lost sight of his goal at all. He was still entirely focused on his endgame, and in complete control of what was happening …
Jesse was sitting on the couch in the den, feeling more sated than she’d ever felt in her life. After waking late, and a lazy, lingering brunch, which had inevitably ended with them back in bed, she’d left Luc asleep upstairs to come down and see to Tigger. Before she’d left the bedroom, though, she’d spent an indulgent moment watching Luc, his big body sprawled in abandon, utterly self-confident even in sleep.
She watched Tigger now, who was valiantly trying to unthread the stunning oriental carpet on the floor with his tiny claws, and deftly lifted him out of harm’s way and onto the couch beside her. He promptly went to the edge and looked down the great distance. He miaowed indignantly, and she