‘I don’t sleep with them,’ Luc had dismissed her accusations, but still it had hurt. She had looked into the mirror that day and seen her own inadequacy reflected, and she had never felt the same about herself since. It was agonising to be judged and found wanting without ever being aware that there had been a trial.
The door opened abruptly. Luc entered with the consultant in tow. Sunk within the capacious armchair, tears shimmering on her feathery lashes, she looked tiny and forlorn and defenceless in spite of her expensive trappings.
Luc crossed the room in one stride and hunkered down lithely at her feet, one brown hand pushing up her chin. ‘Why are you crying?’ he demanded. ‘Has someone upset you?’
If someone had, they would have been in for a rough passage. Luc was all Italian male in that instant. Protective, possessive, ready to do immediate battle on her behalf. Beneath the cool fa;alade of sophistication, Luc was an aggressively masculine male with very unliberated views on sexual equality. His golden eyes were licking flames on her in over-bright scrutiny. ‘If someone has, I want to know about it.’
‘I seriously doubt that any of our staff would be guilty of such behaviour.’ Mr Ladwin bristled at the very suggestion.
Luc dropped a pristine handkerchief on her lap and vaulted upright. ‘Catherine’s very sensitive,’ he said flatly.
Catherine was also getting very embarrassed. Hastily wiping at her damp cheeks, she said, ‘The staff have been wonderful, Luc. I’m just a little weepy, that’s all.’
‘As I have been trying to explain to you for the past half-hour, Mr Santini,’ the consultant murmured, ‘amnesia is a distressing condition.’
‘And, as you also explained, it lies outside your field.’
Catherine studied the two men uneasily. The undertones were decidedly antagonistic. Ice had dripped from every syllable of Luc’s response.
Mr Ladwin looked at her. ‘You must feel very confused, Miss Parrish. Wouldn’t you prefer to remain here for the present and see a colleague of mine?’
The threat of anything coming between her and the wedding Luc had described so vividly filled Catherine with rampant dismay. ‘I want to leave with Luc,’ she stressed tautly.
‘Are you satisfied?’ Luc enquired of the other man.
‘It would seem that I have to be.’ Scanning the glow that lit Catherine’s face when she looked at Luc Santini, the older man found himself wondering with faint envy what it felt like to be loved like that.
Mr Ladwin shook hands and departed. Luc smiled at her. ‘The car’s outside.’
‘I can’t find my passport,’ she confided abruptly, steeling herself for the disappearance of that smile. Luc got exasperated when she mislaid things.
‘Relax,’ he urged. ‘I have it.’
She sighed relief. ‘I thought I’d lost it…along with my credit cards and some photos I had.’
‘You left them behind in New York.’
She smiled at the simplicity of the explanation. Her usual disorganisation appeared to be at fault.
‘Why were yo
u crying?’
She laughed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, but she did. ‘Has someone upset you?’ he had demanded with a magnificent disregard for the obvious. Nobody could hurt her more than Luc and, conversely, nobody could make her happier. Loving Luc put her completely in his power and, for the first time in a very long time, she no longer felt she had to be afraid of that knowledge.
A brown forefinger skimmed the vulnerable softness of her lower lip. ‘When I’m here, you don’t have to worry about anything,’ he censured.
Since meeting Luc, worry had become an integral part of her daily existence. The sharp streak of insecurity ingrained in her by her rootless childhood had been roused from dormancy. But it wasn’t going to be like that any more, she reminded herself. As Luc’s wife, she would hold a very different position in his scheme of what was important. Depressingly, however, when she struggled to picture herself in that starring role, it still felt like fantasy.
‘Why do you want to marry me?’ Her hands clenched fiercely together as she forced out that bald enquiry in the lift.
‘I refuse to imagine my life without you.’ He straightened the twisted collar of her silk blouse and tucked the label out of sight with deft fingers. ‘Do you think we could save this very private conversation for a less public moment?’ he asked lazily.
Catherine made belated eye-contact with the smiling elderly couple sharing the lift with them and reddened to her hairline. She had been too bound up in her own emotions to notice that they had company. Catherine Santini. Secretly she tasted the name, savoured it, and the upswell of joy she experienced was intense.
‘Life doesn’t begin with “once upon a time”, cara, and end “and they all lived happily ever after”, Luc had once derided. But, regardless, Luc had just presented her with her dream, gift-wrapped and tagged. Evidently if you hoped hard enough and prayed hard enough, it could happen.
As she crossed to the limousine, the heat of the sun took her by surprise. Her eyes scanned the climbing roses in bloom at the wall bounding the clinic’s grounds and her stomach lurched violently. ‘It’s summer,’ she whispered. ‘You had the flu in September.’