* * *
‘What’s the plan for this afternoon?’ Tara enquired casually as, quite some time later, they settled down to the delicious al fresco lunch awaiting them on the vine-shaded terrace.
‘What would you like to do?’ Marc asked indulgently.
His mood was good—very good. Their refreshing shower had done a lot more than refresh him...
Have I ever known a woman like her?
The question played in his mind and he let it. So did the answer. But the answer was one that, unlike the question, he suddenly did not care to consider. Did he really want to accept that no other woman in his life had come anywhere close to how Tara made him feel? Accept how she could elicit his desire for her simply by glancing at him with those amazing blue-green eyes?
How long had this idyll here at the villa been so far? A fortnight? Longer still? The days were slipping by like pearls on a necklace...he’d given up counting them. He did not wish to count them. Did not wish to remember time, the days, the month progressing. He liked this timeless drift of day after day after day...
‘You choose,’ Tara said lazily, helping herself to some oozing Camembert, lavishing it on fresh crusty bread.
She must have put on pounds, she thought idly, but the thought did not trouble her. She didn’t care. Didn’t even want to think about going back to London, picking up on the last of her modelling assignments, giving notice on the flat-share, clearing her things and heading west to move into her thatched cottage and start the life she had planned for so long.
It seemed a long, long way away from here. From now.
Her eyes went to Marc, her gaze softening, just drinking him in as he helped himself to salad, poured mineral water for them both...
He caught her looking at him and his expression changed. ‘Don’t look at me like that...’ There was the familiar husk in his voice.
She gave a small laugh. ‘I haven’t the strength for anything else but looking,’ she said. Her voice lowered. ‘And looking at you is all I want to do...just to gaze and gaze upon your manly perfection!’
There was a lazy teasing in her voice and his mouth twitched. He let his own gaze rest on her—on her feminine perfection...
Dimly, he became aware that his phone was ringing. Usually he put it on to silent, but he must have flicked it on when he’d attempted—so uselessly—to knuckle down to some work.
He glanced at it irately. He didn’t want to be disturbed. When he saw the identity of the caller his irritation mounted. He picked up the phone. He might as well answer and get it over and done with...
Nodding his apologies to Tara, he went indoors. Disappeared inside his study. Behind him, at the table, Tara tucked in, unconcerned, turning her mind to how they might amuse themselves that afternoon.
But into her head came threads of thoughts she didn’t want to let in. She might not want the time to pass, but it was passing all the same. How long ago had she flown out here from London? It plucked at her mind that she should check her diary—see when she had to be back there, get in touch with her booker. Show her face again...
I don’t want to!
The protest was in her head, and it was nothing to do with her wanting to quit modelling and escape to her cottage. It was deeper than that—stronger. More disturbing.
I don’t want this time with Marc to end.
That was the blunt truth of it. But end it must—how could it not? How could it possibly not? How could anything come of this beyond what they had here and now—this lotus-eating idyll of lazy days and sensual nights...?
She shifted restlessly in her chair, wanting Marc to come back. Wanting her eyes to light upon him and him to smile, to resume their discussion about how to spend a lazy afternoon together...
But when he did walk out, only a handful of moments later, it was not relief that she felt when her eyes went to him. Not relief at all...
She’d wondered when this idyll would end. Well, she had her answer now, in the grim expression on Marc’s face—an expression she had not seen since before the routing of Celine. It could presage nothing but ill.
She heard him speak, his voice terse.
‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to leave for New York. Something’s come up that I can’t avoid.’ He took a breath, throwing himself into his chair. ‘One of my clients—one of the bank’s very wealthiest—wants to bring forward the date of his annual review. I always attend in person, and it’s impossible for me to get out of it. Damned nuisance though it is!’
Tara looked at him. She kept her face carefully blank. ‘When...when do you have to leave?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow. I should really leave today, but...’
‘Oh,’ she said. It seemed, she thought, an inadequate thing to say. But the words she wanted to say, to cry out to him, she could not. Should not.