Chapter 17

It made her feel safe. It made her feel that where there was that much passion, surely there was hope. Only of late she had listened less willingly to another little voice. It was more pessimistic. It told her that expecting even the tiniest commitment from Luc where the future was concerned was comparable with believing in the tooth-fairy.

'I've only forgotten a few weeks, haven't I?' she checked, hastily pushing away those uneasy thoughts which made her so desperately insecure.

'You have forgotten nothing of import.' Brilliant eyes shimmered over her upturned face, meeting hers with the zap of a force-field, and yet still, inconceivably to her, he kept his distance.

'Luc—' she hesitated '—what's wrong?'

'I'm getting very aroused. Dio, how can you do this to me just by looking at me?' he breathed with sudden ferocity. 'You're supposed to be sick.'

She didn't know which of them moved first but suddenly he was as close as she wanted him to be and her fingers slid ecstatically into the springy depths of his hair. But, instead of the forceful assault his mood had somehow led her to anticipate, he outlined her parted lips with his tongue and then delved between, tasting her with a sweet, lancing sensuality again and again until her head was spinning and her bones were melting and a hunger more intense than she had ever known leapt and stormed through her veins.

With an earthy groan of satisfaction, Luc dragged her up into his arms and, although the movement jarred her painfully, she was more than willing to oblige him. Thrusting the bedding impatiently away from her, he lifted her and brought her down on his hard thighs without once removing his urgent mouth from hers.

Excitement spiralled as suddenly as summer lightning between them. Wild, hot and primeval. His hand yanked at the high neck of the white hospital gown, loosening it, drawing it away from her upper body. Cooler air washed her exposed skin as he held her back from him, lean hands in a powerful grip on her slender arms. A dark flush over his hard cheekbones, he ran raking golden eyes over the fullness of her pale breasts, the betraying tautness of the pink nipples that adorned them.

Reddening beneath that unashamed, heated appraisal, she muttered feverishly, 'Take me back to the hotel.'

Luc shook her by saying something unrepeatable and closing his eyes. A second later, he wrenched the gown back up over her again, stood up and lowered her into the bed. Tucking the light covers circumspectly round her again, he breathed, 'Chiedo scusa. I'm sorry. You're not well.'

'I'm fine,' she protested. 'I don't want to stay here.'

'You're staying.' He undid the catch on the window and hauled it up roughly, letting a cold breeze filter into the room. 'You're safer here.'

'Safer?'

'Do you believe in fate, Cara?'

Her lashes fluttered in bemusement and she turned her head on the pillow. Luc, who had been aghast and then vibrantly amused by her devotion to observing superstitions such as not walking under ladders, avoiding stepping on black lines…Luc was asking her about fate? He looked deadly serious as well. 'Of course I do.'

'One shouldn't fight one's fate,' Luc mused, directing a gleaming smile at her. 'You believe that, don't you?'

She had never had an odder conversation with Luc and she was so exhausted that it was an effort to focus her thoughts. 'I think it would be almost impossible to fight fate.'

'I've no intention of fighting it. It's played right into my hands, after all. Go to sleep, cara,' he murmured softly. 'We're flying to Italy in the morning.'

'I-Italy?' she parroted, abruptly shot back into wakefulness.

'Don't you think it's time we regularised our situation?'

Catherine stared at him blankly, one hundred per cent certain that he couldn't mean what she thought he meant.

Luc strolled back to the bed and sank down in the armchair beside her, fixing dark glinting eyes on her. 'I'm asking you to marry me.'

'Are you?' She was so staggered by the assurance that it was the only thing she could think to say.

He scored a reflective fingertip along the line of her tremulous bottom lip. 'Say something?' he invited.

'Have you been thinking of this for long?' she managed jerkily, praying for the shock to recede so that she could behave a little more normally.

'Let's say it crept up on me,' he suggested lightly.

That didn't sound very romantic. Muggers crept up on you; so did old age. A paralysing sense of unreality assailed her. Luc was asking her to marry him. That meant she had been living with a stranger for months. That meant that every disloyal, ungenerous thought she had ever had about him had been wickedly unjustified. Tears welled up in her eyes. Lines of moisture left betraying trails down her pale cheeks.

'What did I say? What didn't I say?' Luc demanded. 'OK, so this is not how you imagined me proposing.'

'I never imagined you proposing!' she sobbed.