wine, the menu—has been specially chosen to meld together to make one perfect meal. Any alteration—any deviation—will bring the whole wonderful edifice crashing down.’
Fleur let her brows drift upwards. ‘Are you telling me you can’t produce another starter that’s just as suitable?’
‘Of course I’m not,’ he said explosively, ‘but I am telling you that Mr Chapman will have to choose another wine and it will have to be chilled.’
‘I’ll make sure that he knows the problem the moment he gets back from the stables,’ she said soothingly. ‘What suggestions do you have for an emergency starter?’
He frowned, and rattled off several alternatives. Surmising that any hesitation on her part would be a bad thing, Fleur chose the only one she recognised. ‘The onion tart.’
He shrugged, obviously handing over all responsibility to her. ‘So, it is decided,’ he said, and turned away to begin barking at the kitchen staff in the island tongue.
Hoping fervently she hadn’t made things worse, Fleur made her way out of the kitchen. The place had been a revelation—huge and ultra-modern, with air-conditioning to cool it. Clearly Luke recognised the value of looking after his staff.
She found the housekeeper competently supervising the setting of a table out on the terrace.
After a quick explanation, Susi said, ‘Of course I will see that a message is left for Luke in the stables.’
No one came to her with any other emergency, so she concluded that the cook had done whatever needed to be done.
After she’d dressed for dinner she ventured forth, feeling incredibly glamorous in a camisole gown that matched her skin. She’d been a bit worried that the ivory silk clung too closely to her curves, and perhaps the neckline showed more cleavage than she was comfortable with, but after sinking her principles enough to try on several other dresses she settled on it because it would move from dinner table to dance floor with grace.
She was walking past the door to Luke’s bedroom when it opened and he emerged, darkly saturnine in evening clothes.
Her wayward heart picked up speed.
‘I hear you dealt with an emergency,’ he said, examining her in a way that sent prickles of pleasure through her.
She managed a laugh, horrified when it emerged low and breathy. ‘I think your cook just needed to be comforted because the tuna hadn’t turned up.’
‘Susi told me you handled him like a pro. Put him on his mettle, then chose the one dish he’s famous for.’
‘Did I?’ She laughed more naturally and confessed, ‘That was a lucky break. I chose it because it was the only one I recognised.’
‘All he wanted was to have his dilemma recognised and to be challenged to work a miracle—you clearly read him perfectly.’ Beneath his amused words ran an intoxicating thread of awareness.
‘Just as well he didn’t need any real help, because I don’t know anything about haute cuisine. I can do good plain farmhouse fare, and that’s it.’
Together they went along to the big reception room that overlooked the lagoon and the western horizon. But once inside he frowned down at her. ‘You look exquisite, but you need something else to go with that gown. Come with me.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Every other woman here,’ he told her, ‘will have jewellery. Serious stuff.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t own any and I couldn’t wear anything of your mother’s,’ she said carefully, rebelling at the thought of being tricked out in jewellery to appease his pride. For once he wasn’t going to get his own way; besides, it didn’t ring true. Luke had far too much confidence in himself to worry about what others would think.
‘I’m not going to give you anything of my mother’s,’ he said curtly. ‘I don’t have the right. But I inherited some from my great-grandmother, and some I’ve acquired—we grow pearls here, in case you didn’t know. And tonight we need to convince everyone that this relationship is serious enough for me to part with some of my pearls.’
When she bit her lip, he said a little impatiently, ‘Don’t be silly, Fleur. Think of them as a prop in a play.’
‘Do you always get your own way?’
‘Usually,’ he replied with a straight face. ‘It comes of being the only boy in the family, I think. My sisters spoiled me.’
Not just his sisters either, she thought wryly as she went with him into a small strongroom off his office. Probably every woman he met had a strong inclination to spoil him in their various ways.
Including her.
And she was being silly; as he’d said, the pearls were simply a prop, so why was she so reluctant to borrow them?
Because, she realised with a panicky intake of breath, she wanted anything he gave her to mean something.
This was getting out of hand. She’d always been aware of him as a man, but his searing kiss had woken her sleeping body, fundamentally transforming every cell. Now when she looked at him or thought of him it was with a secret inner yearning, a fierce hunger that ate away at her self-sufficiency.
She had to stop it right now.
Chapter Seven
TENSELY Fleur watched Luke open a safe and pull out a handful of cases. He flicked up the lids of a couple, and brought them across to her. ‘Which do you like best?’
Afraid that he might read the apprehension in her eyes, she kept them fixed on the jewels. Exquisite, lustrous with a faint golden sheen, one was a string of perfectly graduated and matched beads. The other featured a single magnificent tearshaped pearl, the gold chain fastened by a diamond clasp.
‘They’re the same colour as your skin,’ Luke said. ‘The pendant, I think, will sit better in the neckline of your dress.’ He closed one box and put it back in the safe.
‘Turn around,’ he commanded.
When she obeyed, Luke brushed her firefall of hair aside and thought that there was something oddly vulnerable about the nape of a woman’s neck. Not that he’d call Fleur defenceless, he thought with a twist to his lips as he dropped the pendant around her throat and fastened the clasp, his hands lingering a fraction of a second too long on her exquisite skin.
Far from defenceless, in fact; she stood up for herself, and had been extremely competent in two different emergencies, yet something about her made him intensely protective.
As well as aggressive and reckless and aroused.
Possibly it was her natural perfume, the faint, barely noticeable aroma that sent a surge of involuntary heat through him whenever he got close to her. Pheromones, he thought cynically, and recalled the time he’d reminded her of the primal signalling system that ensured two people would make healthy babies.
Not that he was thinking of making babies with Fleur
