Chapter 11

'Trailing your…?' As she registered his meaning, her incredulity spoke for her.

'Zero for observation, cara. You don't change. You wander around in a rosy dream-state like an accident waiting to happen.' He strolled fluidly into the lounge, his wide mouth compressing as he took open stock of his surroundings. 'No verdant greenery, not a floral drape or a frill or a flounce anywhere in sight. Either you haven't lived here very long or he has imposed his taste on yours. Dio, he had more success than I…'

The last was an aside, as disorientating as the speech which had preceded it. Unwittingly, she went pink as she recalled scathing comments about her preference for nostalgia as opposed to the abrasively modern d;aaecors he favoured. It was an unfortunate reference, summoning up, as it inexplicably did, stray and rebellious memories of baths by candlelight and an over-the-top lace-strewn four-poster bed…

The vast differences between them even on that level were almost laughable. Two more radically differing personalities would have been hard to find. Her dreams had been the ordinary ones of love and marriage and children.

But Luc hadn't had dreams. Dreams weren't realistic enough to engage his attention. He lived his life by a master plan of self-aggrandisement. He achieved one goal and moved on to the next. The possibility of failure never occurred to him. It was, after all, unthinkable that Luc would ever settle for less than what he wanted. As she thought unavoidably of how much less than her dreams she had settled for, bitterness coalesced into a hard, unforgiving stone inside her.

'Feel free to make yourself at home.' Her sarcasm was so out of character that Luc whipped round in surprise to stare at her.

'Don't talk to me like that,' he breathed almost tautly.

'I'll talk to you whatever way I want!' she dared.

'Be my guest,' Luc invited. 'You won't do it more than once.'

'Want to bet?' Her ability to defy him was gathering steam on the awareness that neither Daniel nor any trace of him could betray her in this apartment.

'If I were you, I wouldn't risk it,' Luc responded. 'You have this appalling habit of backing the wrong horse. And the odds definitely aren't in your favour.'

Courageously, she lifted her chin. 'I am not afraid of you.'

'You ought to be.'

Her Joan of Arc backbone suffered a sudden jolt in confidence. 'Are you trying to threaten me?' she asked shakily.

'To my knowledge, I've never tried to threaten anyone.' It was an assertion backed by immovable cool.

She bent her head. 'I've got nothing to say to you.'

'But I have plenty to say to you.'

'I don't want to hear it.' Jerkily she crossed her arms to conceal the fact that her hands were shaking, and moved over to the window, her back protectively turned on him.

'When I talk to people, I prefer them to look at me,' Luc imparted with irony.

'I don't want to look at you.' She was dismayed to realise that she was perilously close to tears. If wishes were horses, she would have been a thousand miles from this confrontation.

'Since I arrived, I've been having a marvellous conversation with myself.' The sardonic criticism of her monosyllabic responses drove much-needed colour into her cheeks. 'Perhaps I should approach this from a different angle.'

Taking a deep breath, she spun back to him. 'I want you to leave.'

An ebony brow elevated. 'The carpet or me?'

She flung her head back, sharp strain etched into every delicate line of her features, but she said nothing, could not trust her voice to emerge levelly or her gaze to meet directly with his.

'May we dispense with the imaginary husband, whose name you have such difficulty in recalling?' Luc murmured very quietly. 'I don't believe he exists.'

'I don't know where you get that idea.' Wildly disconcerted by the question thrown at her without warning, she was dismally conscious that her reply lacked sufficient surprise or annoyance to be convincing.

'I won't play these games with you.' The victim of that hooded dark stare holding her by sheer force of will, she felt cornered. 'I play them everywhere else in my life, but not with you. I saw you with Huntingdon outside the hotel. No doubt you believe that that ring lends a certain spurious respectability to your present position in his life. It doesn't,' he concluded flatly.

Desperation was beginning to grip her. 'You misunderstood what you saw.'

'Did I? I don't think so,' Luc murmured. 'Relax, he's still all in one piece…but he's halfway to Germany in pursuit of a contract he's not going to get.'

Her lower lip parted company with the upper. 'I b-beg your pardon?'