‘The others are in the dishwasher,’ Belle informed him, and then added defensively, ‘I’m a single woman living alone, Luc. I don’t have either the space or the need to own a full twelve-place dinner service.’
‘Surely you entertain sometimes?’
‘Not really. I prefer to take business clients out, it’s much easier and more professional. And besides—’ she chewed a little betrayingly on her bottom lip ‘—it isn’t always a good idea to invite male clients into one’s home…’
‘You’ve had problems with men…clients…behaving badly towards you?’ Luc demanded fiercely.
‘Er…it was a long time ago, when we first divorced and it was probably my own fault. I didn’t realise the false message I could be giving inviting a client home.’
‘He frightened you? Hurt you? Who…?’
‘Nothing like that,’ Belle hastened to assure him. ‘It was just that there was a rather…embarrassing episode. A misunderstanding, really, that was all.’
‘You mean one of your clients tried to…?’
‘I’ve told you, Luc, it was all a long time ago, and fortunately he accepted that there’d been a misunderstanding. But after that I made the decision not to invite clients home—not that the way I run my life, either private or professional, is any business of yours.’
‘Don’t you ever find it lonely living alone?’ he asked her, completely throwing her. But before she could make the defensively protective denial that was hovering on her lips he further confounded her by admitting quietly, ‘I know that I do…’
‘You…you live alone…?’ Belle raised her eyes to his face.
‘I’ve lived alone since you left,’ he told her simply.
Belle’s appetite had completely deserted her, and oddly Luc didn’t seem to be particularly hungry either.
‘Belle…’
‘Luc…’
‘I’m glad to see you kept the bedhead,’ he told her huskily, and then he lifted his hand and reached past her to trace the initials and the date he had carved into it. ‘I have to admit it isn’t anywhere near so handsome, though, as the one you brought.’
‘Nor so expensive,’ Belle said quietly, dropping her gaze from his so that he wouldn’t guess that the cost she was referring to was not in terms of the money she had spent on the bedhead, but the reckless wastage, the dreadful continuing payment with increasingly heavy interest she was still having to make in terms of broken dreams and lost love.
‘Belle…’
As he withdrew his hand from the bedhead and straightened up, Belle lifted her head.
His gaze met hers and held it. Her whole body started to tremble, her heart beating far too fast.
Luc started to lower his head towards hers. He was going to kiss her. Belle just knew it. Her heart was racing so fast that she thought it might explode. Automatically she closed her eyes. She could almost feel the warmth of Luc’s mouth against her own, taste the wonderful familiarity of his kiss, breathe in his special scent, feel…
‘I must go…’
Abruptly her eyes snapped open. Luc wasn’t going to kiss her after all.
‘It was very thoughtful of you to call,’ she told him stiffly. ‘I’ll get in touch with Carol and tell her about Great-Aunt Alice’s mistake.’
‘It’s quite a coincidence that your niece and my cousin should be marrying…’
‘Yes…I suppose it is.’
‘Andy was telling me the last time I saw him that he’s applied to finish his training in the same town where Joy has just been appointed a junior registrar at the local hospital.’
Immediately Belle guessed what he must be thinking.
‘And of course you don’t approve of that. No doubt you think she should be the one to follow him?’
‘On the contrary,’ Luc replied evenly. ‘I think that he’s a very fortunate young man to have a woman who loves him so much that she’s prepared to take on the burden of being the major wage-earner until he’s fully qualified. After all, if Andy hadn’t changed his mind about the career path he wanted to follow, he would be qualified himself by now.
‘I still think it’s ironic that it takes longer to train to be a vet than a doctor, but I hope that Andy will appreciate both Joy and her love, and that he doesn’t allow his male pride—’
He broke off and looked away from her. ‘Fortunately his generation has a far healthier and more flexible attitude towards interchanging the traditional roles than ours perhaps did.’
Belle tried to speak, but found that she couldn’t articulate a single word because of the lump in her throat.
This was the first time Luc had ever acknowledged that he could have been wrong. She knew that she had made mistakes, gone about things the wrong way, been rather less careful of his male pride than she might have been, but this was the first time she had felt that Luc, too, might have regrets, doubts about the things he had done, the way he had behaved. ..reacted. Perhaps if she had known that then…if they had sat down together like this then and talked… But Luc wasn’t sitting down now; he was getting up. He was going away—leaving her—his Good Samaritan duties done.
Belle watched as he walked towards the door.
‘Thank you for… for the soup,’ she told him gruffly as he opened it, and then she looked away, closing her eyes, unable to bear watching him go out of her life…again…
When several seconds went by and she hadn’t heard the final click of the door she opened her eyes again, widening them as she saw how close Luc was to the bed. How close he was to her.
‘You don’t have to thank me Belle—not ever—not for anything,’ he told her, and then he did what he hadn’t done before. He bent his head and kissed her.
A brief, non-sexual, amicable little kiss—or so he’d said it was supposed to be, when he’d told her la
ter—but somehow their lips, their mouths, their senses had other ideas, and the brief brush of his cool mouth against hers became something warmer, deeper…longer…and far, far more intimate as their mouths clung together.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not well,’ Luc groaned, but he still took her in his arms, holding her tightly against his heart so that she could feel its fierce thud as he cupped her face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes.
Very tenderly Luc caressed her lips with his. Somewhere in the distance Belle could hear a noise, shrill, intrusive, unwanted. Her telephone was ringing. Reluctantly she broke the kiss.
‘It’s Carol,’ she told Luc as she recognised her sister’s number on the visual display unit.
When she picked up the receiver she could hear her sister’s voice announcing frantically, ‘Belle, something dreadful’s happened. Great-Aunt Alice has sent…’
Belle could see Luc walking towards the door. She wanted to call out to him to stay…not to go…not to leave her. But she was a grown woman, and grown women did not give in to such foolish urges, such foolish emotions.
Covering the receiver, she called out instead, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to let yourself out…’
‘Belle? Belle, is someone there with you?’ she could hear Carol demanding curiously.
‘It was just…an unexpected visitor…’ Belle responded as casually as she could as Luc closed the bedroom door very gently behind himself.
And it was, after all, the truth.
Carol, at any rate, seemed perfectly happy with her explanation, continuing urgently, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but Great-Aunt Alice has only gone and sent your wedding invitation to Luc. Belle! Belle, are you still there?’
‘I’m still here,’ Belle confirmed.
Ten minutes later, after her sister had rung off, Belle warned herself sternly that there was no point in wondering or dwelling on what might have happened if her sister hadn’t rung up, if Luc had continued to kiss her, if she had actually dared to give in to the emotions, the sensations that had been flooding her.