Chapter 13

Her stomach executed a sick somersault. Under that exquisitely tailored suit dwelt a predator of Neanderthal proportions, ungiven to anything as remote as an attack of conscience. 'It's absolutely none of your business,' she conceded tightly, 'but I'm not having an affair with Drew.'

'Everything that concerns you is my business.'

It went against the grain to permit that to go past unchallenged, but she was more concerned about Drew. 'Why should you want to damage Huntingdon Components? What has he ever done to you?'

'You ask me that?' It was a positive snarl of incredulity. 'You live in his apartment and you ask me that?'

'It's not what it seems.'

'It is exactly what it seems. Cheap, nasty.' His nostrils flared as he passed judgement.

'Like what I had with you?' She couldn't resist the comparison.

'Cristo!' He threw up both hands in sudden lancing fury. 'How can you say that to me? In all my life, I never treated a woman as well as I treated you!'

The most maddening quality of that assurance was its blazing, blatant sincerity. He actually believed what he was saying. Her teeth ground together on a blistering retort.

'And what did I receive in return? You tell me!' he slashed at her rawly, rage masking his dark features. 'A bloody stupid scrawl on a mirror that I couldn't even read! I trusted you as though you were my family and you betrayed that trust. You stuck a knife in my back.'

She should have been better prepared for that explosion, but she wasn't. His legendary self-control had evaporated right before her stricken eyes, revealing the primitive depth of the anger she had dared to provoke. 'Luc, I—'

'Stay where you are!' The command cracked like a whiplash across the room, halting her retreat in the direction of the door. 'You were with me two years, Catherine. Two years,' he repeated fiercely, anger vibrating from every tensed line of his lean, powerful physique. 'And then you vanish into thin air. In nearly five years, what do I get? Hmm? Not so much as a postcard! So, I look for you. I wonder if you're starving somewhere. I worry about how you're managing to live. I think maybe you've had an accident, maybe you're dead. And where do I find you?' he grated in soaring crescendo. 'In the Savoy with another man!'

Her feet were frozen to the carpet under that searing onslaught. She had never seen Luc betray that much emotion. Dazedly, she watched him swing away from her, ferocious tension etched into the set of his broad shoulders and the angle of his hard, taut profile. She could not quite credit the evidence of what she was seeing, never mind what he had said.

He had worried about her? He had actually worried about her? In her mind she fought to come to terms with that revelation. When she had left him, sneaking cravenly out of the service entrance like a thief, she had foreseen his probable response to her departure. Disbelief…outrage…contempt…acceptance. The idea of his worrying about her, looking for her, had never once occurred to her.

In a strange way which she could not understand, she found the idea very disturbing, and it was in reaction to that that she chose to say nothing in her own defence. One fact had penetrated. Luc had no suspicion of Daniel's existence. That fear assuaged, she could only think of Drew.

'Leave Drew alone,' she said. 'He needs that contract.'

'Is that all you have to say to me?' There was a formidable chill in his dark eyes.

She swallowed hard. 'Losing that contract could ruin him.'

A grim smile curved his lips. 'I know.'

'If you're angry with me, take it out on me. I can't believe you really want to harm Drew,' she confided.

'Believe it,' Luc urged.

'I mean…' she made a helpless movement of her small hands, eloquent of her confusion '…you walk in here and you say…you say you want me back, but there's absolutely no question of that,' she completed shakily.

'No?'

'No! And I don't understand why you're doing this to me!' she cried.

'Maybe you should try.'

She refused to look at him. He had hurt her too much. In Luc's presence she was as fearfully wary as a child who had once put her hand in the fire. The memory of the pain was a persistent barrier. 'I won't try,' she said with simple dignity. 'You're an episode which I put behind me a long time ago.'

'An episode?' he derided incredulously. 'You lived with me for two years!'

'Nineteen months, and every month a mistake,' Catherine corrected, abandoning her caution by degrees.

'Madre de Dio.' A line of colour demarcated his high cheekbones. 'Hardly a one-night stand.'

Visibly she flinched. 'Oh, I don't know. I often used to feel like one.'

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