Exposed: Misbehaving with the Magnate (3 page)

‘I think I need more wine,’ said Simone.

Gabrielle held out her own champagne flute as Simone reached for the bottle. ‘Hit me.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ muttered Simone as she refilled Gabrielle’s glass and then her own. ‘We probably shouldn’t talk about brothers, you and me.’

‘No, we probably shouldn’t.’ Gabrielle smiled faintly. ‘By the way, I saw yours again today. I really thought I’d be able to handle it. Handle
him
. I couldn’t.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Simone. ‘I’ve yet to meet a woman who can. A word of advice, Gaby, from my heart to yours. Luc changed after you left. He grew up, grew tough, and got guarded. He’s not an easy man to know. Not an easy man to love. Believe me, plenty have tried.’

‘Is that a warning?’

‘More a plea to be careful,’ said Simone. ‘You used to be able to turn Luc’s head with a glance and I doubt you’ve lost the knack. Getting him to lay down his heart is a different matter altogether. Just…be careful.’

Gabrielle played with the blades of grass beneath her fingertips. ‘I didn’t come back for him, Simone. I don’t even know if I still want him. I haven’t forgotten what came of wanting him before.’

‘Neither has he,’ murmured Simone. ‘My advice was for if you were still interested in him. If you’re not, then maybe all you need do is talk with him about what happened all those years ago and see if you can both put it behind you. Maybe that’s the way to handle this.’

‘You mean be civilised,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Me and Luc.’

Simone’s lips twitched. ‘Yes.’

‘Civilised sounds wonderful,’ said Gabrielle wistfully. ‘Except for the dredging up the past bit. You don’t suppose there’s a way of being all civilised and restrained without bringing up the past at all?’

‘Well, you could try,’ said Simone thoughtfully.
‘Why don’t you come over to Caverness tomorrow afternoon and take a wander through the gardens with me? You could stay for a meal. Try again with Josien if you’ve a mind to, although I don’t fully recommend it. You could attempt a civil discussion with Luc. See if you can find common ground that isn’t rooted in the past. Ask his opinion on setting up a distribution arm here for your Australian reds. Make him feel useful. Men like that.’

‘Then what?’ said Gabrielle somewhat sceptically.

‘Then you mention your fiancé.’

‘I don’t have a fiancé.’

‘Not sure you need to mention that.’ Simone started grinning and it wasn’t because of the bubbles. ‘All right, forget the non-existent fiancé. Set the boundaries for your relationship with Luc some other way—but set them nonetheless. Maybe Luc will follow your lead.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘Run,’ said Simone, and kept right on grinning. ‘Damn, I’ve missed you. Here’s to hilltop reunions, restraint when dealing with troublesome men, and laying to rest the ghosts of our past.’

‘Hear hear,’ said Gabrielle and lifted her near-empty not-plastic champagne flute to her lips. Where had all the champagne gone? ‘Restraint, you said?’

‘Civilised restraint,’ amended Simone. ‘Nothing to it. More champagne?’

Gabrielle hesitated. ‘Didn’t you just fill my glass?’

‘They’re very little glasses,’ said Simone sneakily. ‘May I remind you we’re talking Chateau Caverness 1955 here? This isn’t just any old champagne.’

Indeed it wasn’t. ‘All right,’ said Gabrielle, and reached for the magnum with what she thought was a great deal of restraint, never mind Simone’s descent into helpless laughter. ‘Maybe just one.’

A
T FIVE
pm the following afternoon, after an evening of laughter with Simone followed by half a day of sleep, Gabrielle drove, yet again, through the entrance to Chateau des Caverness and parked her car in the gravel courtyard next to the servants’ quarters. Ignoring the door to her childhood completely, she switched on her mobile and found the number Simone had keyed into the phone last night.

‘Where are you?’ she said when Simone answered the phone.

‘In the orchard, waiting for you,’ said Simone. ‘And if you’ve waited until now to tell me you’re not coming I’m going to be very
very
annoyed.’

‘I’m here,’ said Gabrielle. ‘I just didn’t want to walk through three acres of garden looking for you, that’s all. I’m not exactly wearing sensible shoes.’

‘Colour me intrigued,’ said Simone. ‘I thought you’d be wearing something restrained.’

‘I am wearing something restrained,’ said Gabrielle. Her square necked knee-length plum-coloured sundress was very restrained. She’d even plaited her
wayward hair and woven it into a heavy bun on top of her head, princess style, and secured it with a thousand pins. She’d followed up with the application of very subtle, very expensive, make-up and only the merest dash of her favourite perfume. She was a walking, talking picture of stylish restraint. ‘Except for the shoes.’

The leather sandals with their delicate straps and flimsy heel were an exercise in idiocy. Idiocy being the word that summed up Gabrielle’s thoughts on accepting Simone’s invitation to tour the gardens and stay for dinner afterwards. Civilised restraint was all well and good in theory. Putting it into practice was hard.

‘Take your shoes off, then, and come around the front way on the grass,’ suggested Simone.

‘That’s not exactly civilised,’ said Gabrielle. ‘It’s a little unrestrained.’

‘Do it anyway,’ said Simone with a snicker. ‘Get all that wild abandon out of your system now so that when you happen across Luc there’ll be none left for him.’

‘You’re making a surprising amount of sense,’ muttered Gabrielle.

‘I always do,’ said Simone as Gabrielle reached the stone wall, slipped off her shoes, and stepped through the archway and into the formal front gardens. There’d been a box-hedge maze in here years ago. A maze that had towered high over her head and had provided endless hours of play for all the children of Caverness; her and Simone as well as Rafael and Luc. To Gabrielle’s delight, the maze was still there, although these days it didn’t tower over her but stood chest high so that a person could see the summer gazebo at its centre.

‘You kept the maze,’ she said into the phone.

‘I kept the maze,’ said Simone. ‘You want to do this tour by phone or are you actually planning to converse face to face?’

‘Picky picky,’ murmured Gabrielle. ‘I brought a few things for the dinner table. I’ll put them on the terrace on the way round. See you soon.’

Sandals in one hand, goody bag in the other, Gabrielle skirted the maze and headed through the formal statuette garden towards the grand entrance to the chateau. Gabrielle’s footsteps slowed when she saw that the terrace was already in use, but then she squared her shoulders and continued on her path. The grey stone steps were cool and hard beneath her feet after the softness and warmth of the summer grass, but she would not linger long, and she did not put her shoes on. ‘Good afternoon,
Maman
, Hans,’ she said to the seated pair. Gabrielle glanced warily at the third person to complete the tableau. Luc wasn’t sitting and didn’t look as if he had been sitting with the others. He looked as if he’d been simply passing by and had merely stopped for a word. ‘Luc.’

Hans greeted her cheerfully. Josien’s greeting was far more subdued but it
was
a greeting and Gabrielle felt pathetically grateful for it. Luc said nothing.

‘I’m just on my way to meet up with Simone,’ said Gabrielle, feeling intrusive and out of place. ‘She’s determined to give me a tour of the gardens.’

Josien’s gaze flickered over Gabrielle, taking in her attire and her hair and the sandals hanging loosely from her fingertips, and Gabrielle smothered the impulse to check herself over for dirt and stains. Yes,
Gabrielle wanted to reconnect with her mother, but not if it meant becoming Josien’s whipping girl again. This was who she was, the woman she’d grown up to be, and if Josien wasn’t satisfied with her appearance or her behaviour then so be it. Gabrielle took a deep breath, set her shopping bag on the wire table beside her mother, and stood a little straighter. Luc still hadn’t said a word. Okay, so their last meeting had been a little…tense, at times, and maybe he didn’t want her here any more than Josien did, but would it have killed him to say hello? How was she supposed to act civilised if he wouldn’t even afford her that small courtesy?

‘Simone took the gardens in hand a few years back,’ said Luc into an increasingly awkward silence. ‘She’s been focussing on the old orchard area of late. Most of the trees have gone to make way for roses. But not all.’

Gabrielle tucked an escapee strand of hair behind her ear with nervous fingers. Finally, a conversation. She could do conversation. Sort of. ‘It sounds lovely.’ She delved into her grocery bag and withdrew a posy of violets, their delicate scent filling the air as she set them carefully on the table. ‘For you,
Maman
. I had planned to leave them with Hans, but seeing as you’re here…’ Gabrielle turned to go before Josien could reject them to her face.

‘Thank you.’ Josien’s reply came to her on the breeze, thready and formal but a reply nonetheless. Gabrielle looked back at her mother and Josien held her gaze but only for a moment before she looked away, her hands folded tightly in her lap. Luc looked stern. Hans was eyeing Josien curiously. With a heavy, deliberate tread Hans rose from his chair, crossed to the
table and picked up the posy. ‘My mother used to like violets too,’ he said in his big gruff voice as he thrust them into Josien’s hand. ‘Pretty little things.’

Gabrielle didn’t stick around to see the result. With the fear of rejection rising up inside her like a tidal wave, she fled.

Luc caught up with Gabrielle towards the bottom of the stairs leading down into the formal knot garden. ‘Mind if I join you?’ he said.

‘No.’ She glanced at him warily.

‘You left your bag on the table,’ he said next. ‘I didn’t know if you meant to or not. I left it there.’

She hadn’t meant to. But there was no going back for it now. ‘I’ll get it later.’ When Josien had gone. What had Simone suggested by way of civilised discussion again? Gabrielle couldn’t remember. Her brain was too busy trying to deny the raw sexual appeal of the man striding alongside her.

Yesterday Luc had been wearing working attire—a suit befitting the head of the House of Duvalier. Today his clothes ran to casual. A blue shirt with a boldly embossed stripe running through it—it was shaped to accentuate the breadth of his shoulders and had tiny tortoiseshell buttons all the way down the front. The size of those buttons was more in keeping with the size of a woman’s fingers than a man’s and made Gabrielle’s fingers dance with wanting to free them from their buttonholes. She ordered those wayward fingers still and dragged her gaze away from his chest and those buttons and concentrated on the rest of him.

Big mistake.

Luc’s trousers and work-roughened boots were more suited to the fields than to the boardroom, but they didn’t look out of place on him, not one little bit. All they did was give his inherent sexuality a dangerously earthy edge.

Luc could do mindless, earthy abandon just as easily as Gabrielle could. She knew it for a fact.

‘How do you like living in Australia?’ he asked her as they started walking through the formal French garden with its neatly clipped hedges. It was a question any acquaintance might ask her, new or old. A civilised question. A question that took her thoughts in a different direction altogether from the place they’d been headed.

Thank goodness.

‘I like it fine,’ she said and summoned a smile. ‘Australia’s a beautiful country. There’s opportunity there. Less of a class system.’ Her smile turned rueful. ‘I wasn’t the housekeeper’s daughter once I reached Australia, I was the sophisticated French girl with the Australian father and a brother who’d just bought a beat-up old winery and renamed it Angels Landing. I could be whoever and whatever I wanted to be. I could be me. It was very liberating.’

‘I can imagine,’ murmured Luc with a swift white smile. ‘Did you run wild?’

‘Oddly enough, no.’ Gabrielle swung her arm as they walked, setting her sandals to swinging like a lazy pendulum. ‘Once there was nothing to rebel against I stopped rebelling.’

‘I bet Rafe was relieved.’

‘Maybe,’ said Gabrielle. ‘And maybe he always
knew that as soon as I’d broken free of this place I would find my way.’

‘You sound as if you hated it here,’ said Luc.

‘I didn’t.’ Gabrielle shook her head and looked around her at the chateau and the grounds surrounding it. ‘I don’t. How can you hate something so beautiful? No, it was my place in the grand scheme of things here that I hated. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted to own Caverness, you understand.’ She didn’t want Luc to think that. ‘I just didn’t want Caverness to own me.’

‘I understand.’ Luc’s eyes had darkened. ‘How do you feel about coming back here?’

‘Conflicted,’ said Gabrielle with brutal honesty. ‘Part of me feels like I’ve come home. The rest of me’s desperate to get away. I know there’s no place for me here, Luc. Not in Josien’s mind and probably not in yours or Simone’s either, although you’re both being very kind.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Luc. ‘There’s room for you here, Gabrielle. Always.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Gabrielle, if ever you need my help with anything,
ask
,’ Luc said carefully. ‘You’ll get it.’

‘Why?’

‘You were driven from your home because of me.’

‘The way I remember it,’ said Gabrielle with a swift sideways glance for his stern profile, ‘there were two of us in that grotto that night. Besides, I may have lost one home but I soon found another and found myself in the process. I know I fought against leaving here initially, Luc.’ Gabrielle winced at the memory of the scene she’d caused—the pleading and the tears, the
utter desolation that had enveloped her and that everyone, Luc included, had been witness to. ‘But it helped me to grow up.’ Grow up strong.

‘And your estrangement from your mother?’

‘Would probably have happened anyway,’ said Gabrielle with a shrug. ‘Lose the guilt, Luc. It doesn’t suit you.’

Luc’s eyes flashed fire. ‘Careful, Gabrielle.’

‘Much better,’ she murmured. ‘All that buttoned-down fire. That’s very you.’

All that buttoned-down fire came roaring to the surface as Luc caught her by the arm and drew her into the secluded shadow of the chateau walls. He stood there, glaring at her in silence as he let the awareness between them build. And build. ‘Why do you
do
that?’ he said at last. ‘You push and you push and then you push me some more. I warn you, but you never seem to
listen.
’

‘I’m listening now,’ she said through suddenly dry lips, and took a step backwards only to come up against solid stone wall. ‘I’m listening very intently.’

‘Good, because I’m choosing my words carefully. Do you remember how it was when I lost control with you, Gabrielle? Do you? Is that what you want from me?’

‘No.’

Yes
, said a little voice that would not be silenced.

‘No,’ she said more firmly. ‘I want us to be civil with one another. That’s all.’

‘Civil,’ he said mirthlessly. ‘Around you?’

‘Yes.’

‘God help me.’

‘You could at least
try
,’ she said darkly. ‘You can’t even greet me properly.’

‘Have you ever stopped to wonder
why
?’ he grated.

She hadn’t. All she’d seen was the lack of what he bestowed on others so naturally.

‘Just remember, this was your idea, not mine,’ he muttered, his voice a dark delicious rumble as he set his palms to the stone wall either side of her and bent his head to hers. ‘You want my greeting, here it is.
Bonjour
, Gabrielle.’ She felt the fleeting warmth of his lips against her cheek and then his lips were gone. The heat in her cheek started to spread. Probably best to ignore it. She pulled back ever so slightly to find him staring down at her, his expression thunderous. ‘See?’ she said tentatively. ‘That wasn’t so bad.’

‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he murmured, and set his lips to her other cheek. He started higher on her cheekbone this time, and lingered longer, tracing a meandering path along her cheek to her mouth where he very discreetly, very deliberately, wet the corner of her mouth with his tongue.

Gabrielle gasped, she couldn’t help it, as an answering burn started low in her stomach.

‘Say “
Bonjour, Lucien
”,’ he whispered, his lips barely leaving hers. Say “
Comment ça va?
” and try to stop your body from aching because you want to feel more of me. Clench your hands into fists all you like, angel, but sooner or later someone’s going to figure out that you’re not angry, you’re just aroused. Under normal circumstances there’d be people around us, watching us, waiting to see what takes place between us. Do you really want them to see what happens next, Gabrielle? Do you?’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘This isn’t going to be civilised, is it?’

Luc smiled briefly. ‘No.’ And brushed his lips against hers with the lightest pressure, the faintest whisper of heat, but it was enough to make Gabrielle close her eyes and tilt her head the better to receive more of him. He settled his lips against hers more firmly and his hand came up to cup her face, cool fingers on heated cheeks before he slid his thumb to her jawbone and his fingers into her hair. His mouth moved over hers, still civilised, but only just. This wasn’t a simple kiss of greeting, nothing like it. There was a question in this kiss. And for Gabrielle there had only ever been one answer. With a shuddering sigh, Gabrielle opened her mouth and let him in.