Chapter 12

'You are not, I believe, hard of hearing.'

Unbearable tension held her unnaturally still. 'What have you got to do with that contract?'

'Influence alone,' Luc delivered. 'And influence will be sufficient.'

'But why? I mean, Drew?' she whispered strickenly.

'Unfortunately for him, this is his apartment.' Luc sent her a glittering glance, redolent of unashamed threat. 'And when a man trespasses on my territory, it must hurt. If it does not, who will respect the boundaries I set? Surely you do not expect me to reward him for bedding my woman?'

CHAPTER THREE

CATHERINE went white. Luc was hitting her with too much all at once. It was as if she were drowning and unable to breathe. Shock was reverberating with paralysing effect all the way down from her brain to her toes.

Luc surveyed her without a tinge of remorse. And this time she could sense the savage anger he was containing. A dark aura that radiated violent vibrations into the thickening atmosphere. It was an insidiously intimidating force, for Luc had never lost his temper with her before. Luc rarely unleashed his emotions. People who let anger triumph invariably surrendered control of the situation. Luc would not be guilty of such a gross miscalculation. Or so she had once believed…

She tried and failed to swallow. The tip of her tongue nervously crept out to moisten her dry lips. 'I am not your woman,' she said unsteadily.

Black spiky lashes partially screened a blaze of gold. 'For two years you were mine, indisputably mine, as no other woman ever has been. Some things don't change. In the Savoy, you couldn't take your eyes off me.'

Catherine was so appalled by the accusation that she momentarily forgot the threat to Drew. 'That's nonsense!'

'Is it?' She was reminded of a well-fed tiger indulgently watching his next meal at play. His brilliant gaze was riveted to her. 'I don't believe it is. And why should we argue about it? You have the same effect on me. I'm not denying it. A certain je ne sais quoi, unsought and, on many occasions since, unwelcome, but still in existence after six and a half years. Doesn't that tell you something?'

A furrow between her brows, Catherine was struggling to follow what he was telling her, but every time she came close to comprehension she retreated from it in disbelief.

'Plenty of marriages don't last that long,' Luc pointed out smoothly. 'I want you back, Catherine.'

In the bottomless pit of the silence he allowed to fall, she was sure she could hear her own heartbeat thundering fit to burst behind her breastbone. Her throat worked convulsively but no sound emerged, and that was hardly surprising when he had deprived her of the power of speech. Shock had gone into counter-shock, and her capacity to think straight had gone into cold storage.

'You have to be the most incredibly modest woman of my acquaintance. Do you really think I would go to these lengths for anything less?' Strolling over to the table, Luc uncapped one of the decanters, lifted a glass off the tray and poured a single measure of brandy.

'I can't believe that you can say that to me,' she mumbled.

'Console yourself with the reflection that I have not said one quarter of what I would like to say.' Luc slotted the glass between her nerveless fingers, cupped them helpfully round to clasp it, the easy intimacy of his touch one more violently disorientating factor to plague her. 'I feel sure that you are grateful for my restraint.'

Dimly she understood how a rabbit felt, mesmerised by headlights on the motorway. Those golden eyes could be shockingly compelling. The brandy went down in one appreciative gulp and she gasped as fire raced down her throat. It banished her paralysis, however, and retrieved her wits. 'You…you actually think that Drew is keeping me?' she demanded with a shudder of distaste. 'Is that what you're insinuating?'

'I rarely insinuate, cara. I state.'

'How dare you?' Catherine exclaimed.

Luc dealt her an impassive look. 'I find it particularly unsavoury that he should be a married man, old enough to be your father.'

Restraint, she acknowledged, was definitely fighting a losing battle. Fierce condemnation accompanied that final statement. 'There's nothing unsavoury about Drew!' she protested furiously. 'He's one of the most decent, honourable men I've ever met!'

'Only not above cheating on his wife with a woman half his age,' Luc drawled in biting conclusion. 'A little word of warning, cara. After tonight, I don't ever wish to hear his name on your lips again.'

Catherine was too caught up in an outraged defence of Drew to listen to him. 'He wouldn't cheat on his wife. He's been separated from her for almost a year. He'll be divorced next month!'

'I know,' Luc interposed softly, taking the wind from her sails. 'He should have stayed home with his wife. It would have been safer for him.'

'Safer?' she whispered, recalling what he had said some minutes earlier. 'You threatened him—'

'No. I delivered a twenty-two-carat-gold promise of intent.' The contradiction was precise, chilling.

'But you didn't mean it, you couldn't have meant it!' she argued in instinctive appeal.

Dark eyes lingered on her reflectively and veiled. 'If you say so.' A broad shoulder lifted in a very Latin shrug of dismissal. 'We have more important things to discuss.'