Inside him, the same confused flux of emotions continued to recycle.
Emotions that were completely, absolutely, out of place when all that was required was the cool, analytical application of reason.
Yet they continued to circle all the same—to his irritation and displeasure.
‘I believe we have arrived.’
The words, murmured without expression, stirred Lissa to wakefulness. She felt dopey, her mind blurred and unable to focus. Then, with a little shake, she roused herself fully from the torpid slumber the warmth and motion of the car had induced in her.
She sat upright with an effort. The car had paused by the kerb just outside a rundown Victorian apartment block, built in the nineteenth century as social housing for the labouring poor. Unlike many parts of South London, this area had not gentrified, but the virtue of that was that it made the rent of the one-bedroom flat affordable to her. The last thing she needed was to squander money on accommodation.
She blinked. ‘Thank you. It was really very kind of you.’
Her voice was slightly husky with sleep, but she made herself look at the man who’d insisted on driving her home. As her eyes lifted to his face, she felt the same catch in her breath she’d had when she’d first set eyes on him. Weakness flushed through her, and a sense of disbelief that she was really here, sitting in the same car as him. For a self-indulgent moment she just went on looking at him. His face was slightly averted from her, glancing out of his window at the locality. Did his expression tighten? She didn’t know—only knew that the shadows of the car’s interior only served to accentuate the incredible contours of his face.
Then his head turned fully towards her, and his eyes came to meet hers.
Her stomach hollowed. In her still-dopey state she could not tear her own gaze away. She felt her eyes cling to his, in a moment of exchange that was like a bolt through her.
Then, ‘Mademoiselle?’
The cold draught of air at her side and the polite voice of the driver made her realise that the passenger door had been opened. They were waiting for her to get out, the chauffeur and the flash Frenchman.
She broke eye contact and got out.
‘Thank you for the lift. It was very kind of you,’ she repeated, her voice stilted. As she got out her key, she allowed herself one more glance back at the car. It hovered by the side of the road, sleek and dark and expensive. Like the man inside.
She could not see him now—he was just a darker shadow in the dark interior. Something pierced inside her. That was it, then. The last time she’d see him. That moment before she’d got out of the car. Already the driver was climbing back into his seat, closing his own door. Jerkily, she turned away, and opened the door and went inside.
Behind her, she heard the car glide away into the night.
Xavier stared unseeingly ahead of him. The street was scruffy and rundown, with litter blowing around and the dank, bleak dreariness of poverty. Not a good place to live. No wonder Lissa Stephens was eager for a way out of here.
His eyes darkened. But not at the expense of his brother.
He waited for the stab of anger to come—but instead all that came was a repeat of that sense of jarring disconcertion he’d felt when he’d set eyes on her by the bus stop and almost failed to recognise her as the same woman he’d deliberately singled out for his attention in the casino.
How could she look so different? The question sliced through him again, and once more he could give no rational explanation for the difference it made to him. It shouldn’t make a difference.
Yet it did.
And another thought was intruding—where it had no business to be.
If she looked that good without even trying, what would she look like if she were properly dressed and presented?
Immediately, without volition, his mind was there. That long blonde hair, loose but sleek, flicked back off her face, make-up subtle but enhancing the natural beauty she possessed, and her slender body gowned as a beautiful woman should always be gowned.
The image hovered in his mind. Vivid. Powerful. Alluring.
No. He would not sit here fantasising about what Lissa Stephens might look like if she were done up the way she would be if he were inviting her to spend the evening with him.
More than the evening.
No. Again he slammed the harsh, forbidding negative down across his wayward thoughts. The only reason he had anything at all to do with Lissa Stephens was to assess whether she was suitable to marry his brother. It had seemed in the casino an open and shut case. Picking her up in the street as he’d done should only have confirmed it. She should have been eager to be picked up—eager for the interest and intention of someone so obviously rich. She should have batted her thickened eyelashes at him and come on to him.
Instead, she’d shown every reluctance at getting into his car, and when she had she’d fallen asleep.
He frowned. It didn’t make sense. It was irrational. Lissa Stephens in the casino and Lissa Stephens asleep in his car seemed two quite different people, both in appearance and in behaviour.
As the car drove on, back into the brightly lit affluent West End, a world away from the dreary bleakness of south London’s poorer districts, Xavier knew he could be sure only of one thing. That he could not yet be sure about Lissa Stephens.
His investigation, he had to accept, was very far from over.
But what, precisely, should be his next step?
Well … He shifted his shoulders as if to release a sudden tension. He had the rest of the night to decide.
The rest of the night to think about Lissa Stephens.
As she stood outside the door to her ground-floor flat, Lissa paused a moment. Her emotions were strange. She was still feeling blurred from interrupted sleep. But that was not the reason.
The reason was even now driving away down the street.
Why did he do it? Why did he offer me a lift and go out of his way to drive me back here, miles away?
Any wariness that he might have had less than honourable intentions had been completely unfounded. He hadn’t made the slightest attempt to make a move on her, and certainly her own attitude had scarcely been inviting.
Deliberately so. Because what, dear God, would have been the point? Even without any of the complications in her life, the guy was still a punter, and therefore completely out of bounds. He might be like something out of Continental movie in terms of looks, but if he’d actually thought he might pick her up sexually, knowing her to be a casino hostess, it would only have been because he himself was a sleazeball.
But he wasn’t that.
Apart from that moment when he’d shown surprise that a woman working as a hostess could possibly be capable of learning a foreign language, he hadn’t actually dissed her at all. In fact, if she’d had to describe his attitude towards her she would have had to say it was one of civility and nothing more.
She frowned again. So why had he offered her a lift? Some kind of Gallic gallantry after making her miss her bus? If so, it had been an over-the-top gesture, and she’d responded appropriately by asking to be let out at Trafalgar Square. He could have done that and gone on his way.
But he hadn’t. He’d insisted on driving her all the way back here. But why?
Impatiently she brushed the question from her head. It was pointless asking it—she wasn’t going to get an answer. And the answer didn’t matter anyway.
Xavier Lauran was not someone she was going to encounter a second time after all.
For