The Secretary's Scandalous Secret (18 page)

Mostly she was utterly confused at the thought of what happened next.

How could she pull back now and start preaching about being just friends? How could she get sniffy and talk about being adults, pretending that what had happened had just been a little oversight?

In a state of utter turmoil, she left him in the bedroom and wandered downstairs to the kitchen, switching on lights as she went and distracted from her train of thoughts by her real appreciation of the house. It was a house designed for someone who enjoyed exploring, because the rooms were small, quirky and quaint and all invited inspection. Rich, expensive rugs interrupted the polished parquet-flooring and there were a number of open fires in various rooms. In the depths of winter, she could imagine curling up with a book
on one of the big, comfy chairs with a log fire burning, the world safely locked out.

But she realised that none of that was going to happen. She was a temporary visitor to this idyll. She didn’t even know how long she would be here. A date for departure hadn’t been mentioned but she was stronger now and fast approaching a time when she would be able to return to London and, to work part-time at least, if not full-time. She wouldn’t need Luc around keeping his beady eye on her to make sure that she didn’t do another falling-asleep-in-the-bath routine. Should she just go with the flow while she was here? Give in to the disastrous craving to be touched by him and then establish the necessary distance when she was back in London and away from his stifling presence?

She feverishly wondered whether she should have accepted his offer of a marriage of convenience when he had first made it instead of deluding herself into thinking that she was worth more than that. If she couldn’t get a grip on her responses to him, if she was destined to lead a life in thrall to a man who didn’t love her, then shouldn’t she just have stuck the ring on her finger and legalised her foolishness?

And then there was the problem of her mother, whom she had yet to tell about the pregnancy. What was she going to say about her daughter going it alone when she had been given the option of financial stability and security from a guy who was—in her mother’s eyes—perfect husband-material?

The whole chaotic mess swirled round and round in her head as she browsed through the fridge for food, finally deciding on chicken salad and some bread.

And then, more because there was no sound of Luc coming downstairs rather than nosiness, she walked through the kitchen and into the room behind it which he had told her he used as his office.

It was a honeycomb rather than a traditional office-space; yet again she was struck that he could be as at home in surroundings like that as in his own super-modern offices in London.

Everything needed for work was housed in the biggest of the spaces, a square room that overlooked the garden through a massive bay-window. Dominating the room was his desk, which was old, large and so highly polished that she could practically see her reflection on its surface when she gazed down.

A quick glance told her that there was also a sitting room, comfortably furnished with a little sofa and a couple of chairs. It was saved from having the look of a waiting room by the opulence of the Persian rug in the middle and a low sideboard that looked astronomically expensive. A bathroom completed the series of rooms. Impressed with what she saw, she was about to leave to check the food when Luc’s open briefcase caught her eye; on the very top, screaming at her, was what resembled a brochure.

Agatha was not nosy by nature; she didn’t pry into things that didn’t concern her. But, the very second she spotted that brochure, she knew that she had to look at it because, really, what would Luc be doing with brochures? If he wanted a holiday, he had people who sorted it out for him. He only had to snap his fingers. In fact, if he wanted a cup of coffee he had only to snap his fingers. So why would he bother doing something as mundane as sourcing a travel brochure to anywhere?

Was he, maybe, going to surprise her with a trip somewhere? She squashed that treacherous thought before it could take root and guiltily took the brochure from the case.

It took a few seconds, then the dull pain of recognition washed through her.

There, on page two of the brochure, in all its glory, was
the house in which she was now standing. The estate agent was effusive about all the wonderful things that charming corner of Berkshire had to offer—and was even more effusive in its praise for the only-just-refurbished period house recently on the market which was, it would seem, a jewel. She stared down at the little snapshots of the various rooms which she had been admiring only minutes earlier.

She had had difficulty imagining Luc ever being at home in a house like this. He was a man born to live in the fast lane; a charming little place in the middle of nowhere would have been anathema to him.

Yet, even knowing this, she had still chosen to side-step

the obvious and give him the benefit of the doubt, convince herself that his choice of second home showed a side of him that was calmer, more laid back and less aggressively fuelled for the cut and thrust of running an empire.

She must have been self-delusional! The house had been bought for a purpose and the purpose had been just what she had feared all along: Luc didn’t want
her,
he wanted his baby, and the fastest way to ensure total control without the messiness of a marriage he had rapidly decided against was to make sure that she remained in his power. Like a complete fool, she had danced to his tune and how hard had he had to try? He knew which buttons to press when it came to her, and he had ruthlessly used that knowledge to break down her defences. Dream house, dream garden… bingo.

She hesitated and then, with the throb of an impending headache behind her eyes, she clasped the house details and quietly headed back up to her bedroom, turning off the stove on the way.

It was a relief to find her bedroom empty. Luc had either disappeared back to his own room to change or else to make his precious phone calls.

Having dithered about what she was going to do, how
she was going to break free of the power he had over her, Agatha was now calmly aware of what she needed to do.

She needed to leave; finding that brochure had clarified everything in her head. Luc didn’t love her and he never had. Being tempted into bed with him wasn’t just a sign of weakness, it was a suicide mission as far as her heart went, not to mention her chances of moving ahead with her life.

Having had him walk in on her in the middle of a bath, she was reluctant to have another, so instead she pulled her suitcase out and began stuffing her clothes inside.

She was in the middle of clearing out her meagre supply of cosmetics and cramming them into a little flowered bag when the bedroom door was pushed open and she stilled, her hand hovering above the bag, before she shoved the mascara in and slowly turned to face him.

His hair was still damp from his shower and he had changed into some black jeans and a black tee-shirt which, combined, gave him the look of a pirate. He exuded sexiness, lounging against the door frame with his arms folded and his deep-green eyes shuttered.

All over again, Agatha felt that burning, frightening response that rebelled against all her efforts to put it away. Prickles of awareness shot through her body and she stuck her hands behind her back and twined her fingers nervously together.

‘What’s going on?’ It emerged as less of a question than a demand for information in the face of what was utterly incomprehensible.

For some reason, she had frozen him out, but Luc had convinced himself that it was a passing mood swing; he had returned to the bedroom, having first checked the kitchen, with his fine spirits fully restored. He had made his calls and had decided to put work on the back burner for the remainder of the day. He might, he had thought with a mixture
of surprise and amusement, even consider taking a little break altogether. After all, the house had not come cheap, so why not take some time out to explore all the nooks and crannies of the town with which he was supposed to have at least a passing acquaintance? All in all, it was an enjoyable prospect.

‘I’m leaving.’

Shock lanced through him but he was determined to keep that overblown response to himself.

‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘You’re not.’

‘Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do! I’m sick of it. I’m sick of you thinking that you can do whatever you please because you think that you’re always right!’

‘I know what’s best for you, and getting all worked up isn’t.’

On that score, Agatha grudgingly conceded to herself that he was right. She breathed in deeply and tried to gather her scattered emotions. ‘No, Luc, you don’t know what’s best for
me,
you know what’s best for
you
and you’ll do anything within your power to make sure that you get what’s best for you. That’s just the way you’ve conditioned yourself to approach life. You treat human beings like pieces on a chess board that you can move around, like life is just one big game and you get to control how it’s played.’

Luc flushed darkly. Instinctively, he reared up against the criticism. Not for the first time, he marvelled at the temerity of any woman who had no qualms about stampeding all over the boundaries he had in place around him. Agatha didn’t care a jot about tiptoeing around his sensibilities. She spoke what was on her mind with the forceful directness of a laser-guided missile homing in on whatever target had been set.

His response to that full-on attack should have been immediate, cold withdrawal but that was an option he barely stopped to consider.

He was discomforted by the accuracy of her criticism but he wasn’t going to dwell on that. Right now, his main objective was to get her to calm down, and with that in mind he took a few cautious steps towards her, treading as warily as someone on a mission to disarm a live bomb.

With the memory of that hateful brochure burning brightly in her head, Agatha stood her ground and placed her hands on her hips, leaning forward with glaring hostility.

‘You need to calm down,’ he said soothingly, stopping just short of putting his hands on her arms because there was a very real suspicion that any physical contact might just have the opposite effect and send her into complete meltdown.

‘There’s something I want to show you.’ She turned away abruptly and made for her handbag into which she had stuck the brochure where it could be a constant reminder of his deception—just in case there ever came a time when she found her resolve weakening.

Luc knew exactly what he was looking at the second she held out her hand and he paled.

Watching him through narrowed eyes, Agatha detected that fleeting sign of guilt, and it felt like the death knell to all the hopes she had cherished in varying degrees over the time she had known him.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘It was lying at the top of your briefcase.’

‘You shouldn’t have been snooping around.’

‘I wasn’t snooping around. Your briefcase was wide open. Not that it matters anyway. Why did you lie to me? Why did you tell me that this was a second house? Do you know, I actually believed you. How dumb was I?’

She had promised herself that she would act cool and collected, that she would tell him about the house if he pressed her for a reason for her sudden, pressing need to leave. Which, of course, he would: as she had been foolish
enough to hop back into bed with him, he would have been riding high on the optimistic assumption that she was once more his for the asking. When she thought about that, she just wanted to dig a hole, jump in and lie low for a thousand years.

‘Okay. So I led you to believe that this was one of my other homes.’

‘You didn’t
lead me to believe.
You openly lied to me!’

‘Does it matter?’ He gave a careless shrug while Agatha watched him with jaw-dropping incredulity. He had just admitted lying to her and he still had the nerve to stand there, cool as a cucumber, and act as though it didn’t matter.

‘It matters to
me
!’ Agatha managed to impart through tightly gritted lips.

‘Why? You were in a fragile state and you needed somewhere to de-stress. I provided that place. Frankly, from my point of view, you should be thanking me.’ Yes, he had been momentarily disconcerted by her attack, but now he was regrouping fast, keeping it all very controlled, speaking in a low, placating voice, trying to find the right words from a vocabulary that seemed strangely limited.

‘I
should be thanking
you?’
Agatha gazed at him in utter, helpless bewilderment.

‘London was no place for you to be, not when you needed to rest. You would have been tempted to work, go out, alleviate the boredom of being cooped up. My apartment is comfortable enough, but there’s no outside area. You needed a house. Somewhere peaceful. I took that on board and supplied it. What was wrong with that? What was wrong with putting your needs first?’

Agatha thought bitterly that all he needed at this point was the sound of angels and the playing of a harp. At face value, everything he said seemed to demonstrate the actions
of a pious, caring guy—but what about all the things that were being left unsaid?

‘You knew I didn’t want to be in debt to you, Luc. You knew,’ she added in a barely audible mumble, ‘that I wanted to get over you…’

With that declaration out in the open, Luc at last felt that he had something to get his teeth into. ‘But you haven’t, have you?’ he asked bluntly. ‘What we did upstairs proves that, Agatha, and what’s the point in running away from the obvious?’

‘Did you bring me here with that at the back of your mind, Luc? Did you arrange this whole cottage thing because you knew how I felt about you? Was this perfect dream-house a cynical tool in your plans to seduce me?’ Shamefully, she realised how close she had been to falling back in love with a perfect outcome. He had appealed to her most basic desires by producing a house he had known she would adore. The cruelty of the ruse was a bitter pill to swallow.