His heart seemed to be thumping in his chest as if he’d just done a strenuous workout. As if a crushing weight had been lifted off him. An impenetrable barrier just...dissolved. Gone.
He stared out across the room. The member of staff was standing in the doorway again.
‘Your car is ready, Monsieur Derenz,’ he intoned.
Marc frowned. He wasn’t going to the opera. Not tonight. It was out of the question. A quite different destination beckoned.
The thud of his heartbeat was getting stronger. Deafening him. The letter in his hand seemed to be burning his fingers. He looked across at the man, nodded at him. Gave him his instructions. New instructions.
An overnight bag to prepare, a car to take him to Le Bourget, not the Paris Opéra. Regrets to be sent to his guests. And a flight to London to organise.
As the man departed only one word burned in Marc’s head, seared in his body. Tara!
She had taken nothing from him—absolutely nothing. Not the money she’d earned, nor the couture wardrobe, nor the emerald necklace. Nothing at all! So what did that say about her?
Emotion held in check for so many punishing weeks, so many self-denying days and nights, exploded within him. Distilled into one single realisation. One overpowering impulse.
I can have her back.
Tara, the woman he wanted—still wanted!—and now he could have her again.
Nothing he had ever felt before had felt so good...
CHAPTER TEN
TARA WAS WALKING along the hard London pavements as briskly as she could in the heat. Summer had arrived with a vengeance, and the city was sticky and airless after the fresh country air. She was tired, and the changes in her body were starting to make themselves felt.
She’d travelled up from Dorset by train that morning and gone straight to her appointments. The first had been with a modelling agency specialising in the only shoots she’d be able to do soon, to see if they would take her on when that became necessary. The other, which she’d just come from, had been with her bank, to go through her finances.
Now that she could no longer count on the ten thousand pounds from Marc, it was going to be hard to move to Dorset immediately. Yet doing so was imperative—she had to settle into her new life as quickly as she could, while she was still unencumbered. She would need to buy a car, for a start—a second-hand one—for she would not be able to manage without one, and she still hadn’t renovated the kitchen and the bathroom as planned.
She’d hoped that her bank might let her raise a small mortgage to tide her over, but the answer had not been encouraging—her future income to service the debt was going to be uncertain, to say the least. She was not a good risk.
It would have been so much easier if I could have kept that ten thousand pounds...
The thought hovered in her head and she had to dismiss it sharply. Yes, keeping it would have been the prudent thing to do—even if Marc would never know why—but as he could never know, she could not possibly keep it.
It was the same stricture that applied to her destination now, and her reason for going there. Yes, the prudent thing to do now would be to sell the necklace, realise its financial value, and bank that for all that she would need in the years ahead. But she had resisted that temptation, knowing what she must do. It was impossible for her to keep his parting gift!
Her letter to him, which he must have received now, for she had posted it from Dorset several days ago, had made that clear. Perhaps he was accustomed to gifting expensive jewellery to the women he had affairs with—but to such women, coming as they did from his über-rich world, something like that emerald necklace would be a mere bagatelle! To her, however, it was utterly beyond her horizon.
If he had only given me a token gift—of little monetary value. I could have kept that willingly, oh, so willingly, as a keepsake!
Her expression changed. More than a keepsake. A legacy...
She shied her mind away. She could see her destination—only a little way away now. The exclusive Mayfair jeweller she was going to ask to courier the necklace back to Marc. They would know how to do it—how to ensure the valuable item reached him securely, as she had written to him that it would.
Once it was gone she would feel easier in her mind. The temptation to keep it, against all her conscience, would be gone from her, no longer to be wrestled with. Her eyes shadowed, as they did so often now. And she need no longer wrestle with a temptation so much greater than merely keeping the emeralds.
She heard it echo now in her head—what had called to her so longingly... Tell him—just tell him!
Oh, how she wanted to! So much!
But she knew she was clutching at dreams—dreams she must not have. Dreams Marc had made clear she must not have.
Wearily, she put her thoughts aside. She had been through them, gone round and round, and there was no other conclusion to be drawn. Marc had finished with her and she must not hope for anything else.