Summer Sins: Bedded, or Wedded? / Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded / The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain. Julia James

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      ‘You’ll see,’ he answered, a half smile playing on his face.

      He knew exactly where he was going to spend this time with her. The season was a little early, but it was better than the heat of summer, and there would be no crowds to get in their way. It was a place he never took his amours to, but Lissa was different. Different how, exactly, he still did not ask—or answer. He only knew that the kind of affaire he was used to would not work with her. Lissa was not someone to leave in his apartment while he kept up his daily routine of business meetings and high-pressure work, spending only evenings with her in restaurants, or at the theatre or the opera, or social engagements, as had been his custom with Madeline and her predecessors over the years. No, he wanted Lissa to himself twenty-four-seven—safe by his side, in his bed. He had thought her forever forbidden to him—and now that fate had given her to him after all he would not neglect her.

      So it was well worth breaking his neck all day, driving his PA and directors as if the devil were chasing them, in his attempt to clear his desk of all essential tasks. Some were impossible to complete, and those he could not postpone he undertook to do remotely. A couple of hours a day on the laptop, in communication with his office, would be the maximum he would commit to.

      Besides, he argued to himself, when had he last taken a holiday? He gave an ironic grimace—the French took more holidays than most other nationalities, and his staff, like all sensible people, made the most of them, but he, running the whole company, seldom took time off.

      Well, now he would. Now, with the woman he had thought never to have beside him, he would for once play hooky.

      Even as he formed the thought, another plucked at his mind.

      What about Armand? Should he not contact him? Find out how it was that he and Lissa had parted?

      He blocked it out. It didn’t matter what had happened between them—all that mattered was that Lissa was not bound to his brother anymore, and was free to come away with him instead. After all, hadn’t Armand asked him not to interfere in his affairs of the heart? And hadn’t he learned—almost at a cost that chilled him to contemplate—that it would have been wiser by far to have done just that? Instead he had blundered in, intent on doing his best for his brother, guarding him from making a mistake that would cost him dear. No, this time around he would do nothing. Armand’s life was his own—whatever had happened between him and Lissa was not his concern. All that was his concern was that the woman he had so catastrophically desired when she was his brother’s intended wife had now, wonderfully, been set free for him to claim.

      Had Lissa been in love with Armand? No, that was impossible. There was not the slightest vestige of a broken heart, or any such thing. If he had not known what Armand had been to her, he might never have guessed at the recent presence in her life of any other man.

      For a brief moment a flicker of, not unease, but perhaps uncertainty glimmered in his mind. He blocked it out. Appearances had been deceptive when it came to Lissa—none knew that better than he. His first sight of her had made him think her a cheap putain. How wrong he had been. It had been a mask, that cheap, tacky appearance—a costume necessary for her job. And though he naturally would have preferred that she had never worked at the casino, that was all over now anyway. Besides, she had been prepared to lose her job rather than compromise herself morally. So that, again, was another mark in her favour.

      And she had turned him down because of her commitment to Armand.

      That was what had convinced him about her. She had resisted him because of her brother.

      Memory flickered in his mind again.

       Someone very important to me …

      That was how Lissa had described Armand to him—not knowing that she was talking about his own brother.

      Was Armand still important to her?

      No—he could not be. Certainly not emotionally—he had established that already, and her very presence in his bed confirmed it. Financially, then? Perhaps—he had to consider the possibility. Seeing inside the grim place she lived had brought home even more forcibly just how impoverished her life was. He could understand Armand, with his wealth and social position, being a temptation to her. And while—as was obvious—she had not loved Armand as a wife should love her husband, still that did not mean she had not held him in regard. Certainly enough to turn down another man. Even when she had responded to his desire for her she had still said no.

      Besides, Armand’s e-mail had said he hadn’t yet proposed to her. She might not even have realised he was in love with her, wanted to marry her—yet she had still turned him down that night because of Armand’s presence in her life.

      Whatever had changed Armand’s mind about her—or even hers about him—there was only one thing of importance now. Whatever Armand might have wanted—might still want—it was too late.

      She is with me—that is all I care about. She is free to come to me. I have claimed her, and she is mine.

      He would think no more than that.

      ‘Xavier, no! I can’t accept—I really can’t.’

      For answer he waved an impatient hand. ‘I insist,’ he said.

      Her mouth looked mutinous for a moment. ‘I won’t let you buy me clothes.’

      Xavier took her hands in the middle of the formidably chic salon of one of the top French couture houses, where he had taken her after breakfast the morning they were due to leave Paris.

      ‘Do it for me, cherie. To keep me happy. I want to see your beauty set off to perfection.’

      She bit her lip. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It isn’t right.’

      He gave a Gallic shrug. ‘Then why not regard them as a loan—nothing more—as you did the dress at the hotel?’

      She frowned a moment. ‘What did you do with it, anyway? That dress?’

      He shrugged again. ‘I believe I gave it to the maid. She was very grateful.’

      Lissa’s eyes widened. ‘That was very generous—it cost a fortune. But not—’ she grimaced, looking about her in this bastion of high fashion ‘—as much as anything here will cost.’ She looked at him straight. ‘Xavier, it’s not just that I can’t accept you buying clothes for me, but it’s because I don’t want you spending your salary like this. I’m not sure how senior you are at XeL, but even so—’

      There was the very slightest cough from the stick-thin, scarily chic vendeuse, hovering at a discreet distance. At least, it might have been a cough, or possibly more like a smothered choke. It certainly drew a forbidding glance from Xavier. Then he looked back at Lissa.

      ‘Let’s just say I buy clothes here at cost.’ He paused minutely. ‘XeL has a cross-holding with this particular design house which allows that. I get a discount.’

      Lissa looked at him suspiciously. ‘How much of a discount?’

      ‘A substantial one,’ he answered smoothly.

      It seemed to do the trick, and she gave in, contenting herself with merely stipulating СКАЧАТЬ