Alana took the coffee he handed her and walked away into the living room, holding the cup between suddenly chilled hands. She schooled her features and turned back round to face him, forcing her voice to sound as casual as she could. ‘You really don’t have to say that, you know.’
He took a sip of coffee, his eyes narrowed disconcertingly on her face. She was glad that he was still behind the island in the kitchen.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Alana gave a little laugh, which sounded fake to her ears. ‘I mean, you don’t have to do this … reassurance thing. I really don’t expect you to make me feel like you want me to come back …’ Her words trailed off, diminishing some of the vehemence with which she’d started the statement.
He walked round the island, ridiculously small coffee cup in one hand, his other in the pocket of his jeans. He looked astoundingly gorgeous in a dark sweater. Unconsciously, Alana backed away.
‘Believe me,’ he said throatily, ‘the only thing I want to make you feel right now involves a soft surface and no clothing in our way.’
Alana gulped and took a quick swig of coffee.
‘Look,’ she said weakly, ‘all I’m saying is that I know what this is and I’m fine with that. Really.’
‘And what would that be?’
She shrugged one shoulder; they were still doing a bit of a backward dance around the room, she backing, and he advancing.
‘It’s an affair. A fling.’
His eyebrows raised high. ‘Oh, so that’s what this is?’
Alana winced. No doubt his other lovers were far too experienced and suave to put a name on their experience with him. Suddenly she felt anger rise up. Why was he being so obtuse? Surely she was doing him a favour? She stopped backing away and put her coffee cup down carefully on the low table by the sofa.
She straightened and folded her arms. ‘Look, that’s exactly what it is. We both know that. I’d prefer if we could just be honest about it. What I’m saying to you is that I don’t need to be given any kind of platitudes. I’m not going to be clingy or want anything more. If you said to me right now that this is over, and thanks but goodbye, I’d have no problem walking out of here.’
Pascal had gone very still, his eyes very black. No doubt he wasn’t used to lovers calling the shots, Alana thought cynically. And why did her flip words cause an ache somewhere in the region of her chest? She pushed it aside. The truth was this: Pascal was not a man she could trust in a million years. And she’d vowed to herself never to trust again. Never to be so silly, naïve.
Pascal put down his coffee cup, too, and walked towards her slowly. Alana stood her ground, but had the impression that she’d woken a sleeping dragon.
‘I’ll admit that your honesty is both tantalising and refreshing.’
‘It is?’ she asked.
Pascal nodded. He was close enough to touch now.
‘Yes. We both know that when the time comes, we’ll walk away without a backward glance, happy with what we’ve had.’
‘Exactly.’ Alana nodded vehemently. ‘I don’t mean to sound … crass, it’s just that I’ve been married. I’ve had that experience and I never, ever want to go near it again. Not even in the form of a tenuous commitment—and I know you’re not even offering that.’ She stopped and cursed herself; she sounded like a bumbling idiot. ‘What I’m trying to say is that I’m not looking for anything. I know you’re a playboy.’
His eyes flashed, and Alana’s insides clenched painfully but she ploughed on. ‘I’m not expecting anything more. I can’t begin to tell you how comfortable I am with that.’
‘A no-strings, no-consequences affair—we both walk away when we get bored.’
She nodded. She knew that time wouldn’t be far off. A man of Pascal’s voracious tastes wouldn’t be content with someone like her for long. Not when there were other, more beautiful women waiting in the wings.
He came very close and snaked a hand round the back of her head. His eyes were still dark, unreadable, and his jaw had a rigidity to it that made Alana instinctively want to smooth it, relax it.
‘Well, then, seeing as how it’s doubtful you will ever be back here with me, now that the sands of time are slipping away from us, we should make the most of here and now, n’est-ce pas?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean, Alana—’ his voice had a hard edge ‘—is that we’re wasting too much time talking when we could be saying goodbye to Rome and this weekend in a very satisfactory way.’
He kissed her for a long, drugging moment, hauling her whole body against his. When he pulled back, and Alana fought to regain her breath, she said, ‘But your plane … we have to leave.’
He shook his head, eyes flashing dangerously. ‘That’s the beauty of being a playboy—my crew are very used to last-minute changes.’
Alana felt a knife skewer her inside, so hurt for a moment that she felt winded. And yet this was exactly what she’d asked for. Demanded. And when he bent his head to kiss her again, and started to open her shirt, she couldn’t stop him because if she did he’d know that all of her proclamations were built on a very flimsy foundation.
With the lingering heat of their recent impassioned love-making still in her blood and heavy limbs, Alana’s focus came back to the present. The earth below was an indistinct mass of brown mountains seen through breaks in the cloud. She sighed and let her head fall back against the seat, closing her eyes. She was playing with fire; she knew it. And all the trust issues in the world weren’t going to keep her safe from harm.
As his private jet winged Alana home in style and comfort, the novelty and charmlessness of commercial travel was quickly reminding Pascal how far he’d come. Although, he could never forget his upbringing; it was branded onto his skin like a tattoo. He could remember how close he’d come to being one of the lost youths of the Parisian suburbs: lost to a life of crime and drugs, hopelessness. Until his mother had died and had thus saved him, by ensuring that he would go to live with his grandfather. She had redeemed herself and her woeful mothering by making sure he’d take another path, despite the fact that he’d been a representation of everything that had failed in her own life.
Pascal strode free of the gnarled mass of human traffic in Charles de Gaulle airport and sank into the back of his car which was waiting just outside the doors. Why was he thinking of such things now, when he hadn’t thought of them in years?
Alana.
A woman was making him think of these things, when no other lover had ever done so. He had to concede that no other lover had taken him by the scruff of the neck and rattled him so completely. No other lover had evoked within him a compelling need to obey instinct over intellect. He hadn’t lived like that for a long time. She connected to something within him, primitive and long-suppressed, deep and visceral. He searched desperately to justify this feeling, to rationalise it, but his brain wouldn’t cooperate.
When she’d stood there earlier and had coolly informed him that she was fine with their temporary affair, that above all she didn’t expect commitment, he should have been rejoicing. Wasn’t it a man’s ultimate fantasy? For a man like him, happy to take lovers for a short time until they bored him, or until they started looking for more.
Here he was, being offered this fantasy on a plate, and he well knew that she meant every word she’d said. It wasn’t some kind of devious reverse-psychology. So why had he felt anything but relieved? Why had he wanted to challenge her? Why had that instinct not to let her go