By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      IT WAS as well Luc’s strides were longer than Shari’s because she could run amazingly fast for a pregnant person.

      When had a woman been more difficult to pin down? It was absurd how hard this—this conquest was proving. An unwelcome flash of déjà vu rocked through him just then and nearly stopped him in his tracks.

      Zut, it was his recurring nightmare. The last time he tried to pin down a woman she’d left him. Abandoned her home and her world.

      Surely this wasn’t the same though. It was in no way the same.

      Dodging people and traffic, he cursed himself fiercely for the fiasco of the day. Everything had gone wrong. He’d known Shari was in a volatile frame of mind. Of course she was, in her condition. Why hadn’t he noticed the state of the apartment? This was no way to bring a woman home.

      But why couldn’t women understand that forcing a man into this ridiculous pursuit procedure only roused him to more lust? The more he ran, the more his blood seethed in his veins with a single red-hot intent.

      As if he hadn’t done enough to her already, he was conscious of a primitive need to catch her and take her down. On the pavement. On the street. Or at least rush her to his bed and plunge himself into her until she surrendered herself to him in screaming ecstasy.

      At the same time he felt constrained by an opposing instinct to handle her as if she were made of the most delicate porcelain. The woman had him tied up in knots.

      His heart muscle was working overtime by the time he caught up with her. When he saw how her eyes hardened to see him, his gut clenched. The impulse to grab her and kiss her, plunge his tongue into her mouth until her knees buckled was overwhelming, but he restricted himself to gently touching her arm.

      ‘Shari. Please, will you calm down?’

      She slowed her pace to a very fast walk, her face set against him.

      ‘What are you doing? Where are you running?’ He knew his voice sounded too harsh, courtesy of his pounding blood pressure. ‘Should you be running?’

      ‘I’m going back …’

      ‘Mais pourquoi? Bien sûr, je suis un bâtard, Shari, mais j’ai …’ In the stress of the moment he didn’t hear everything she’d said, then realised it was the apartment she was returning to. For the moment, anyway.

      ‘… my things.’

      ‘But why?’ He’d just launched into an emphatic and just defence of his behaviour when a series of shouts that had been in the corner of his ear all along finally captured his attention. Turning, he recognised Louis, the waiter from the café, jogging along behind him with the shopping bags.

      With emotion running higher than the Eiffel, he was hardly in the mood to smile, but there might have something comical in the scene. The red-faced guy puffing to catch up with them acted as a circuit breaker. He was obliged to stop and was relieved to see that at least Shari paused too, looking on with a polite smile while he showered Louis with thanks and euros.

      With passions under tighter controls, they resumed walking, Luc racking his brains for something he could say to minimise the damage and manoeuvre events into a situation he could control.

      ‘Perhaps I need to explain,’ he said, as calmly as he was able with his adrenaline ready to burst the levees. ‘What I said in the café was not intended the way it may have sounded. I didn’t mean you to think I don’t accept your word.’

      ‘No?’ She cast him the sort of glance usually reserved for snakes.

      He felt stirred to defend himself. ‘Chérie. What I said burst from my heart in the heat of the moment.’

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘Mais non. You misunderstand. I was trying to demonstrate how we must trust each other.’ He waved the salad bag. ‘Vraiment, we are in similar boats, you and I.’

      ‘You think?’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘I doubt if you’d like the view from this canoe, monsieur.’

      Anyone would have thought he was a selfish animal, without a vestige of humanity. But since they were approaching his building, he restrained his impassioned defence.

      ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said with restrained dignity, ‘we are nearly there. Let us not argue before Madame la concierge.’

      She froze him with a glance.

      It was challenging to know whether she was so complicated because she was a woman or because she was an Australian. Or was it purely the result of her being pregnant? Of course, he had to remember she was used to being with a violent psychopath.

      She needed to learn there were guys in the world who knew the meaning of civility, even if they occasionally overlooked a few minor details in the matter of their surroundings.

      He turned away from her to greet the concierge. ‘Madame. Comment ça va?’

      He listened with greater attention than usual to the latest about the old woman’s grandson, her daughter-in-law, and her arthritic cousin in Nantes. Only when the vieille was threatening to open up her concerns about her entire extended family did he deal with the issue of addressing the boxes he’d instructed the maid to leave with her. As well, he provided Madame with enough euros to cover the cost of postage, along with a generous contribution towards her retirement fund.

      After that burst of friendly conversation, the journey up to the apartment was tense, as if one false word could detonate an explosion. He kept to his side of the lift, Shari to hers.

      Shari held herself taut, resisting the current of sexual electricity rampant in the confined space.

      Every so often his hot angry glance flickered over her, causing her to burn with indignation. While she’d at last intuited that he wasn’t likely to slam her with his fist, СКАЧАТЬ