‘My first name?’ she said, and he realised he had lapsed into French again. Why did he find it so hard to concentrate around her?
‘Oui, your Christian name.’
‘It’s Cara. Cara Evans... Or, rather, Cara de la Mare, I guess.’ She didn’t sound sure.
‘Cara Evans is a better name,’ he said, oddly pleased by her hesitation.
Bright flags of colour hit her cheeks and the heat in his groin surged—which only confused him more.
‘As you were only married to the old bastard for a few days I think you do not need to take his name,’ he added.
‘Please don’t call him that,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry he wasn’t a good father to you. But Pierre was my friend.’
My friend. What a coy way to describe the man she had a long-term affair with.
‘You do not understand,’ he said, annoyed by the warmth in her voice.
Why couldn’t she get it through her head that he had no need of her compassion? Whatever his father had or hadn’t done to him a lifetime ago had no bearing on who he was now.
‘I did not need for him to be a good father to me, or any kind of father,’ he said, determined to spell it out to her.
He tore off a chunk of the fresh baguette and spread it with Brie, then bit into the snack and let the creamy, salty taste melt on his tongue—determined to look nonchalant if it killed him. He had never spoken to anyone of that time in his life when he had tried so desperately to win Pierre de la Mare’s admiration and affection, not even to his mother.
In some ways he was still ashamed of that boy—how weak and foolish he had been to need validation from a man who felt nothing for him. But Cara Evans needed to know that desperate child was long gone.
‘I survived very well on my own,’ he continued. ‘In fact my father’s decision to deny our connection, to reject me as a boy because I was a bastard and my mother was from a poor family, made me a much stronger man, prepared to fight for everything that is mine—and I will never allow anyone to have what is rightfully mine ever again,’ he finished.
Her eyes widened but, instead of the fear he had hoped to instil with the veiled threat, her gaze filled with that infuriating compassion—even rawer and more intense now than it had been moments before.
‘Pierre rejected you as a child because you were illegitimate?’ she said, clearly having completely missed the point of the disclosure. ‘How dreadful. I’m... I’m so sorry.’
She reached across the table in an instinctive gesture of comfort—and sympathy. The touch of her fingertips was like a naked flame, searing his skin and his pride and making the fire in his loins ignite.
He flipped his hand over and clasped her wrist, preventing her from drawing those incendiary fingertips away again, when she realised her mistake.
‘Do not feel sorry for that boy,’ he said, wanting to revel in the shock and wariness in her expression, but still disturbed himself by the fire that continued to spark and spit as her pulse went wild under his thumb. ‘He is long gone.’
Damn it, he was a billionaire, as far removed from that impoverished, rejected child as it was possible to get. He was rich beyond his wildest dreams now and wielded all the power that boy had been denied, and he was soon to be the master of all he surveyed... Including de la Mare’s ancient vines.
She tugged her hand free and he let her go, infuriated by the blood still pounding in his groin.
He could have any woman he wanted. Why the hell should he want this woman—a woman who had once warmed his father’s bed—so much?
But, even as he asked the question, his gaze landed on her mouth. Her small white teeth dug into her bottom lip and his breathing accelerated at the thought of biting that lush lip too and then soothing the soreness with his tongue, before plunging his fingers into the silky soft hair piled on her head and...
Arrête.
He drew a deep breath into his lungs to halt the erotic visions bombarding him, and fuelling the need to transform the wary heat in her eyes into a raging fire, only to have his whole body intoxicated by the scent of her arousal.
‘It would be a grave mistake to pity the man he has become, Cara,’ he said, but even he wasn’t sure what he was talking about any more.
CHAPTER FOUR
CARA.
The way Maxim Durand caressed her name sounded so intimate, his husky French accent roughening the R in the middle. The intensity in his eyes, though, was as terrifying as it was exciting.
Cara rubbed her wrist where the light touch of his fingers had burned the skin, desperately trying to escape the explosive sensations which had taken her body captive.