predominantly male, all wearing business suits, or the occasional less-formal-but-still-expensive-looking casual wear.
A waiter came up to her, attentively asking her what she would like to drink.
‘Oh, mineral water. Sparkling, please. Um, thank you,’ she got out. Silently, she hoped Xavier Lauran was intending to show up. She didn’t like to think what even mineral water cost in a place like this. More than she’d want to pay, certainly. The waiter returned almost instantly, but there was nothing so unsubtle as a tab accompanying the bottle and glass, with its sliver of lemon and chunks of ice, and the little bowl of expensive dry nuts set down on the small round table in front of her.
Nervously, she took a sip of the water poured out for her, then set the glass down again, still staring at the entrance. Twenty minutes was up—she’d rushed to make it on time. Rushed through the process of accepting the first dress that the woman in the boutique had proferred, and shoes and stockings to go with it, then being directed to the lavish Ladies’ Cloakroom where there was ample room not just to change, but to do her make-up and style her rain-wet hair courtesy of the hairdyer the attendant had provided for her.
She took another sip of water and contemplated whether to start on the nuts. But she didn’t want to get her fingers salty.
Her nerves jangled. She didn’t let herself think. Didn’t let herself think about what she was doing. Too late to change her mind now. And besides, she couldn’t. The heavy truth of it was unavoidable. Being here, tonight, was the way she was going to keep the job she didn’t want, but needed to keep.
And she wanted the memory, too. Just the memory. Of an evening spent with the most debonair man she had ever met—an evening far removed from the responsibilities of her everyday life. A daydream that just this one night was a reality.
And, oh, the reality.
He was walking into the lounge. She saw him instantly.
Her stomach hollowed. Faintness drummed in her ears. He was walking towards her, coming closer.
His eyes had gone to her. Seeing her as instantly as she had seen him. And in those eyes was something that simply sent her reeling.
It was a punch to his guts. He could feel it impacting. Like a fist. Blasting right through him.
He went on walking towards her, but he had absolutely no awareness of his surroundings. His entire focus was on the woman he was walking to. The woman who was blasting a hole right through him.
She looked—breathtaking. Stunning. Incredible.
Every last gram of speculation he’d entertained about just what she might look like when she had the right clothes, the right make-up and hairstyle, was confirmed. In spades.
His rapid expert gaze took in the whole package at a single glance. Hair—sleek, long, blow-dried back off her face. Face—every pure, perfect line set off by make-up that was simply another universe away from the garish layers she used at the casino. Now, subtle shadows accentuated the luminosity of her eyes, contoured her cheekbones, and then, finally, a rich sheen of lipstick perfectly delineated the delicate but sensuous curve of her mouth.
As for the dress—he gave a silent salute to the boutique saleswoman. Or was it Lissa Stephens herself who’d chosen that simple, but superbly cut coffee-coloured sleeveless silk shift that went so perfectly with her fair colouring? He didn’t know, didn’t care. Knew only that at last he was seeing Lissa Stephens as he had wanted to see her from the moment he had got out of the car the night before to offer her a lift home after purposely preventing her from catching her bus.
Why had he done that? Stopped her getting her bus so he could offer her a lift? He’d had a good reason, but right now he didn’t recall exactly why. There wasn’t room inside his head for that. For anything. Anything at all except to close in, the way he was doing, on the woman sitting there as he walked up to her. He stopped dead in front of her, looking down.
‘Incroyable.’
His voice was a husk. It turned Lissa inside out and back again. Her lips parted as she tilted her head to gaze up at him.
‘Incroyable,’ he murmured again. His eyes were washing over her, full force, working over every iota of her appearance, sweeping down over her, then back up again, to hold her own helpless, breathless gaze.
‘I knew you would look good, but this…. this is beyond all my expectations.’
For one moment longer his eyes held hers in that incredible, heart-stopping gaze, and then suddenly, like a switch going on, he smiled. She reeled again.
Gracefully, he lowered his lean frame into the adjacent chair, without taking his eyes off her. Immediately, claiming his attention in the most unobtrusive fashion, was the waiter who had served her. As Xavier Lauran’s eyes left her, she felt at last the air returning to her lungs. Then, a moment later, with the waiter disappearing, it left them again. Xavier Lauran turned back to her.
‘You look simply fantastic,’ he told her. His voice was warm, and melting. Melting through her like honey.
She couldn’t say anything. She was bereft of words. She had known in the first moment of seeing him, when he’d walked into the casino last night, that this man was like none she had ever known. But until this moment the full force of his power to render her breathless and helpless had not been turned on her. Now it was. Now, in a heady, incredible rush to her head, she knew that for the first time he was responding to her, and that responsiveness was making his own attractiveness totally lethal.
What was happening to her?
It was a pointless question. She knew with every shimmering cell in her body that what was happening to her now was making her reaction to him of the night before seem like the palest shadow of awareness.
It was like being carried away on a flood-tide—a flood-tide of heady awareness that was making her feel weightless and floating. Floating towards a destination she had no control over.
‘Your champagne, sir,’ said a voice.
She started, realising that the waiter had returned, and that he was bearing a tray with a bottle of champagne nesting in an ice bucket, smoky fumes curling from its opened neck. She watched as he carefully poured a little into one of the flutes on the tray, then proffered it to Xavier Lauran, who inhaled the bouquet and took a considering mouthful.
He nodded, and the waiter proceeded to pour out her glass, then fill the remainder of the other one. Then he was gone. Xavier picked up her flute and offered it to her, retaining his own. She took hers gingerly.
‘Salut.’ He clinked his glass against hers.
She took a sip simultaneously with him, then lowered the glass.
Xavier glanced at her. ‘A little better than last night’s, non?’ he said. There was amused irony in his voice, and in the lift of his eyebrow.
A smile broke from her. ‘It’s not even champagne, is it? What they serve there?’
‘Méthode champenoise,’ he agreed, with all the disdain of a Frenchman, for sparkling wine produced anywhere but in the élite Champagne region of France. ‘And atrociously done at that. This, however, is champagne. Not one of the most famous houses, but all the better for that, I believe.
