and the hairs on her arms standing to attention. Boom. Once more with feeling. Boom boom and boom.
But the door did not open. No footsteps echoed along the dark and narrow hallway Gabrielle knew was behind that door. She turned from her mother’s quarters to stare across the courtyard at the chateau proper. She really didn’t want to go knocking on any of those doors.
Josien had pneumonia; that was what Simone Duvalier, childhood playmate and current mistress of Caverness, had said in her phone message. What if Josien was too ill to get out of bed? What if she tried to answer the door and collapsed on the way?
Muttering a prayer to a God she barely believed in, Gabrielle dug in her handbag until her fingers closed around the key she sought. Smooth and cold, it both beckoned and repelled. She had no right to unlock this door—this wasn’t her home any more. Caution pleaded with her not to slide the key in the lock but caution never had been Gabrielle’s strong point.
Wilful, her mother had called her on more than one occasion.
Headstrong.
Fool.
The key turned easily, smoothly, and with a click and a slight nudge on her part the door swung open. ‘Maman?’ Gabrielle stepped tentatively inside the darkened hallway. ‘Maman?’ A flash of red caught her eye—red where there’d never been red before. A blinking row of little red lights and a no-nonsense square panel, the kind that signalled state-of-the-art alarm systems that summoned large men with flat top buzz cuts and firearms to the door. ‘Maman?’
And then the cacophony began. No discreet beeping for this alarm system, it was air-raid-klaxon loud and could doubtless be heard for miles. Uh oh. Gabrielle ran towards the blinking lights and wrenched the casing open, staring in dismay at a keyboard containing both letters and numbers. She punched in her birth date. The ear splitting noise continued. She keyed in Rafael’s name and date of birth next, but Josien was clearly not the sentimental type. She tried entering the year that Chateau des Caverness had been built, the name and year of its most successful champagne vintage, the number of ancient Linden trees lining the sides of the lane leading up to the chateau, but the alarm just kept on screaming. She started pressing buttons at random. ‘Shiste. Merde. Bugger!’
‘Nice to hear you’re still multilingual,’ said a midnight-smooth voice from close behind her and Gabrielle closed her eyes and tried to stop her already racing heart from doubling its tempo yet again. She knew that voice, the deep delicious timbre of it. A Champagne voice, a voice of Rheims, it was there in the lilt and the texture of the words. A voice that conjured up forbidden thoughts and heated yearnings. She’d heard it in her dreams for years.
‘Oh, hello, Luc.’ If he could do deadpan, so could she. Gabrielle turned slowly and there he stood, looking every inch the head of a Champagne dynasty in his tailored grey trousers and crisp white business shirt. Gabrielle could have spent a lot longer staring at Luc Duvalier and cataloguing the changes time had wrought in him but circumstances and a healthy respect for her eardrums dictated moving right along. ‘Long time no see. I don’t suppose you could help me turn this thing off?’
He brushed past her, long, strong fingers moving swiftly over the panel. ‘Cinq six six deux quatre cinq un.’
The alarm cut out abruptly and silence cut in. A loud, ringing kind of silence.
‘Merci,’ she said finally.
‘You’re welcome.’ Lucien Duvalier’s perfectly sculpted lips tightened. ‘What are you doing here, Gabrielle?’
‘I lived here once, remember?’
‘Not for the past seven years, you haven’t.’
‘True.’ Now that quiet had been restored, Gabrielle could look her fill. She studied the tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed man standing before her, trying for detachment and failing miserably. Luc had been twenty-two when she’d last seen him and even then the promise of tightly leashed power and outrageous sexuality had hovered about him like a velvet cloak. Night, the household staff had called him. And Rafael, Luc’s childhood partner in crime, with his fair hair and his teasing blue eyes, had been Day.
‘Sorry about setting the alarm off,’ she said with an awkward shrug. ‘I should have known better than to use the key.’
Luc said nothing. He never had been one for small talk. But it was all she could manage. Taking a deep and steadying breath, Gabrielle tried again. ‘You’re looking well, Lucien.’
When he still made no reply Gabrielle looked past him, across the courtyard towards the chateau tucked snugly into the terraced hillside. ‘Caverness is looking well too. Cared for. Prosperous. I heard about your father’s death a few years back.’ She didn’t feel inclined to say any more on the subject. Had she wanted to lie through her teeth she could have added something about being sorry to hear of old man Duvalier’s demise. ‘Guess that makes you king of the castle now,’ she added recklessly. She met his dark burning gaze without flinching. ‘Should I kneel?’
‘You’ve changed,’ he said abruptly.
She certainly hoped so.
‘You’re harder.’
‘Thank you.’
‘More beautiful.’
‘My thanks again.’ Gabrielle held back a sigh. If Luc wanted to categorise the changes in her, she might as well show him the big ones. She wasn’t a gangly sixteen-year-old on the cusp of womanhood any more. And Luc wasn’t the centre of her life. ‘Look at us,’ she chided lightly. ‘Childhood playmates and here I’ve greeted you with less warmth than one would greet a stranger. Three kisses, isn’t it? One for each cheek and then a spare?’ She moved closer and brushed his left cheek with her lips, breathing in the subtle pine scent that clung to his skin and trying very hard not to let it wrap around her and squeeze. ‘One.’ She pulled back and made for his other cheek, never mind that he stood as if turned to stone. ‘Two,’ she whispered and let her lips linger a fraction longer this time.
‘Back off, angel.’ Luc’s voice was nothing more than a dark and dangerous rumble as his fingers came up to caress her jaw before sliding around to the base of her neck. ‘For your own sake if not for mine.’
A warning. One she would do well to heed. Not that she did. A frisson of awareness slid down her spine and she closed her eyes the better to diffuse it. So he could still make her body ache for his touch. Nothing to worry about. She was older now. Wiser. She knew better than to lose her heart to the head of the House of Duvalier. Not that a few more iron clad reasons to ensure she kept her distance from this man wouldn’t come in handy. ‘Are you married these days, Luc?’
‘No.’
‘Celibate?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’ She brushed his ear lobe with her lips. ‘You seem a little…uptight. It’s just an innocent greeting.’
The fingers at the base of her neck tightened. ‘You’re not innocent.’
‘You noticed.’ She pulled back smoothly, dislodging his hand with a shrug as she stepped away and shot him a careless smile for good measure. ‘You always were observant. Perhaps two kisses are greeting enough for you, after all. Shall we take a rain check on the third?’
