Exquisite Revenge (13 page)

Jesse felt the illicit burn of excitement and curled her fingers around the bed’s headboard. Luc made his way down her body, teasing every inch of her with a thoroughness that had her writhing and aching and begging for release. Until he got between her legs, when his breath and mouth sent her soaring up into the light where she couldn’t speak any more.

When he entered her with a cataclysmic thrust Jesse took down her hands, uncaring of his threat, because she had to touch him or die. She shut her eyes and rose up to meet the bliss Luc promised her, ignoring those insidious voices, whispering that she was heading for certain catastrophe.

‘So, tell me how you really learnt to cook.’

Jesse was sitting on a stool with her chin propped in her hand, watching Luc do something very complicated to a fish in a pan. She’d drunk half a glass of wine and felt incredibly mellow. Which most likely also had a lot to do with the fact that this was the evening after their whole day in bed. A bone-deep sense of satisfaction oozed through Jesse’s entire body.

Luc’s voice was light, but she sensed an undercurrent of
steel—as if she was touching on a tender point. ‘I told you—my mother had a breakdown after my father died and I had to cook for me and my sister and her when she came out of hospital.’

Impetuously Jesse asked, ‘How did your father die?’

Luc’s jaw tightened. He drizzled some oil over the fish in the pan and it sizzled.

When he said casually, ‘He killed himself,’ Jesse almost missed it. Before she could say anything Luc was explaining, ‘I told you that my sister has special needs? That she’s verging on autistic?’

Jesse nodded, knowing well enough not to mention his father again. Her heart ached for Luc in a very peculiar way, but her mind skittered weakly away from looking at
why
too closely. Much as it skittered away from analysing anything of the last couple of days too deeply.

Luc went on. ‘I discovered that cooking calmed her. Getting the ingredients and putting them together seemed to occupy her.’ He grimaced. ‘Of course when things didn’t work out as they should she would fly into a rage, but that just made it more imperative that I learn how to do things properly. The more complicated the recipe, the more it would have an effect on her. She would sit for hours and watch a
boeuf bourguignon
cooking slowly.’

He looked at Jesse and smiled faintly. ‘She’s now working as a chef for a company that caters for people with special needs. It’s like meals on wheels, and they offer opportunities to people like Eva.’

Jesse’s voice was husky. ‘Eva is a pretty name.’

Then Luc asked, ‘So, what happened after your mother died?’

Jesse blanched and took a hasty sip of wine. She almost resented Luc for skirting so close to dangerous reality.

Very reluctantly she said, ‘I was taken in by the Social Services … I lived in foster homes until I was eighteen.’

Luc looked at her. ‘That must have been rough.’

Jesse shrugged and avoided his eye. ‘It wasn’t easy.’

‘But what about your father? Why didn’t you live with him—despite what he did?’

Jesse realised that Luc must have assumed that her mother and father had been married. The old shame crawled up her spine. ‘My parents weren’t married … My mother was my father’s housekeeper.’ Her mouth twisted with bitterness as she revealed, ‘
He
was married to a very honourable woman from English society.’

Luc’s hands stilled. ‘So … your mother and father had an affair and you were brought up in the house?’

‘More or less … except it wasn’t so much an affair as my father using my mother whenever he felt like it.’

Luc’s voice was cold. ‘He
knew
he was your father?’

Jesse nodded and finally looked at him again, not sure how she felt at seeing the condemnation in his eyes.

Before she knew it the words were tumbling out. ‘I went to him one day when he was in his study … I don’t know where I got the nerve … I must have been about six. I was going through a phase where I was missing not having a daddy. And I knew he was my father. So I went and asked him why he didn’t act like the fathers I saw at school …’

‘Jesse—’

But she held up a hand, stopping Luc in whatever he was going to say, and finished. ‘He said nothing at first. He just got up and went and closed and locked the door to his study. And then he took off his belt. He whipped me with it, all down my back and legs, until there was blood on the floor. The buckle broke my skin …’

Luc had left the fish and come round to stand in front of
Jesse. When he cupped her face in his hands and lifted it up she was surprised to feel tears running down her face.

‘He told me never, ever to call him my father again, and that if I repeated what I’d said to anyone he’d kill me and my mother.’

Luc shook his head. ‘No wonder you have a thing about locked rooms. Was he violent to your mother?’

Jesse nodded. She felt Luc gather her into his chest and rock her. He felt so solid and strong and warm. Her hands gripped his shirt, holding on tight until she was still.

When he let her go and gave her a tissue she hiccuped. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never told anyone about that before … I don’t usually cry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Is he still—?’

Jesse stopped his words by blurting out, ‘Please—I don’t want to talk about it any more, okay?’

After dinner, and much later that night in bed, Luc asked softly, ‘Those scars on your legs … are they from that day?’

Jesse came up on one arm and looked at Luc. She just nodded. And then, to stop him asking any more questions, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth, slid over him so that her thighs were straddling his hips and her breasts were crushed into his chest.

Luc clamped his hands around her hips and lifted her slightly until she felt him guiding his erection between her legs. And Jesse weakly obliterated everything from her mind except this exquisite moment.

When the storm had passed Jesse curled into Luc’s side, once again claiming him in sleep in a way which should have had him prising her from him, but which was having the opposite effect.

Luc felt more than a little pole-axed. When Jesse had told him about her father earlier a tidal wave of anger had come over him at the thought of her being so abused. And also a
feeling of pride … that she’d come through something like that and forged such a successful life for herself.

He sighed deeply and recognised that he was in serious danger of becoming so sidelined by this woman that he’d forget about his primary focus, which was to get off the island and get back in time to deal with O’Brien.

He had Jesse exactly where he wanted her—
literally
—but he found that instead of exploiting this intimacy he was intent on seducing her some more … and then some more. She was a fever in his blood, and he was very much afraid he wasn’t ready to douse it just yet.

Luc felt the old tentacles of vulnerability reach out to touch him with ghostly memories, but he pushed them aside and damned them all. Jesse was different … this situation was different. He would never be led astray again.

As he fell asleep he reassured himself that he hadn’t lost sight of his goal at all. He was still entirely focused on his endgame, and in complete control of what was happening …

Jesse was sitting on the couch in the den, feeling more sated than she’d ever felt in her life. After waking late, and a lazy, lingering brunch, which had inevitably ended with them back in bed, she’d left Luc asleep upstairs to come down and see to Tigger. Before she’d left the bedroom, though, she’d spent an indulgent moment watching Luc, his big body sprawled in abandon, utterly self-confident even in sleep.

She watched Tigger now, who was valiantly trying to unthread the stunning oriental carpet on the floor with his tiny claws, and deftly lifted him out of harm’s way and onto the couch beside her. He promptly went to the edge and looked down the great distance. He miaowed indignantly, and she smiled at his clear frustration.

She lifted him up and took him into the kitchen saying into his sweet fur, ‘I think it’s milk and nap time for baby cats …’

It was only when she was tucking him into his box and watching him lap greedily at the milk that Jesse realised with a shock just how far into a fantasy world she’d allowed herself to travel.

In the past few days, since everything had become physical between her and Luc, she had somehow begun to imagine that perhaps this was real. That this bubble was not some mad aberration. When the reality was that she’d kidnapped Luc Sanchis to stop him from saving her father … which he must still want to do at all costs. She’d conveniently blocked that out because she’d become far more interested in the physical nirvana Luc promised every time he touched her.

She heard him call her name now, faintly, from upstairs. Galvanised by panic, because she couldn’t have him look at her with that far too perceptive gaze when she felt so exposed, Jesse lurched out of the villa and down a path she hadn’t yet explored. It led to a beautifully soft and sandy private cove. But Jesse was oblivious.

She hugged her arms around herself at the water’s edge, feeling cold. What had she been thinking, allowing Luc to seduce her like this? She mocked herself. More accurately, what had she been thinking, allowing herself to be a full and willing participant in that seduction?

The deadline was in three days’ time. Three days and her father would be ruined. She’d almost lost sight of that goal. If Luc had turned to her that morning as they’d lain in his bed and said to her,
I really need to get back to work …
Jesse would most likely have tripped downstairs and rung for a jet before she’d even realised what she was doing.

With a little sob of emotion that made her clamp her hand over her mouth, she realised
I don’t know who I am any more!
The cool shell she’d built up to keep people at arm’s length was well and truly gone. She’d turned into someone who cried at the drop of a hat and was happy to blurt out secrets she’d
harboured for a lifetime. Not even the nicest of her social workers or foster parents had managed to get her to reveal what had happened to her, and yet with Luc she’d spilled it all.

How could she trust anything that had happened between them? She imagined Luc waking and remembering with distaste that he had a job to do: to try to make Jesse believe he really wanted her. This whole environment was contrived and false. From the moment she’d forced Luc onto this island she shouldn’t have trusted anything. Or him. No matter how much the weak part of her believed she could or longed to.

She’d seen how her father had charmed people when she was small—only to turn around and stab them in the back with cruel words as soon as they’d gone. And now she knew worse than that: her father had ruined the businesses of people who’d slighted him over dinner. So she knew how easily someone could present a façade when it suited them …

Luc’s words came back to her—words he’d said only days ago:
All you’ve done is make yourself a foe for life … I will find out all your secrets and you will pay …

After long minutes of looking blankly at the sea, feeling as if a part of her soul was ebbing away, Jesse went back inside. She found Luc in the den, and valiantly ignored the kick of her heart when she saw him.

He turned from where he’d been looking out at the view, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. His hair was damp from the shower. Incredible pain lanced Jesse, but she ignored that too.

He said to her now, ‘That storm never did materialise, did it?’

Jesse shook her head. Not that storm. But another storm had. It had whipped her up inside so intensely that she knew she’d never emerge as the same person.

Luc squared his body to face her more fully, and Jesse had
the uncanny prescience that she wasn’t the only one who’d just faced some revelations.

‘Your name … Moriarty … it’s Irish, isn’t it?’

Jesse nodded, a little blindsided by this observation. ‘Yes, it is … My mother was Irish—from Kerry.’

‘O’Brien is Irish too …’

Jesse went cold all over. Goosebumps broke out on her skin. And then Luc said it out loud.

‘He’s your father, isn’t he, Jesse? Your mother was his housekeeper.’

‘H
E’S
your father, isn’t he, Jesse? Your mother was his housekeeper.’

Luc must have seen the instantaneous reaction of shock on Jesse’s face, because he obviously took it as confirmation.

He continued, seemingly unaware of the seismic reaction within Jesse. ‘What I’d like to know is, after everything he’s done to you, why the hell do you want to save him?’

For a second she thought she might faint. As if sensing it, Luc crossed the distance between them and took her arm; he led her to the couch where he forced her to sit down.

He glared down at her, hands on his hips. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this from the start?’

Jesse felt far too vulnerable where she was, so she scrambled off the couch and went to stand apart from Luc, crossing her arms. ‘I didn’t tell you because it has no relevance to anything.’

Even Jesse winced at those words, and she flinched slightly at Luc’s caustic laugh.

‘Give me a break, Jesse. It has
everything
to do with this. Why else would you want to save him so badly? Clearly you have some misguided sense of loyalty to the man—’

‘No!’
Jesse reacted viscerally to those words, cutting Luc off. ‘I don’t want to save him.’

He looked at her. ‘Excuse me?’

Jesse swallowed. ‘I don’t want to save him. I want to ruin him. I want him to be finished for ever. And I’m not going to let you be the one to save him. That’s why I wanted to buy you out—so that no one else would come to his aid …’

For a long tense moment they stared at each other across the divide, and then inexplicably Luc threw back his head and laughed. Jesse just stared at him. But he kept laughing. He couldn’t seem to stop. Eventually he had to sit down on the couch. Tears were running from his eyes.

Anger was rushing upwards inside Jesse; she’d completely exposed herself and he was
laughing
at her.

She stalked over to Luc and stood over him, much as he’d just done to her. ‘What’s so funny about that?’

Luc stood up, sober now, making her move back. He shook his head. ‘What’s so funny about it, Jesse—what’s so ridiculous—is that all this time we’ve been on the same side …’

‘What do you mean?’ Jesse asked faintly.

She found herself wanting to believe Luc so badly. But at that moment he turned away from her and ran his hands through his hair. She couldn’t see his expression, and in the few seconds before he turned back to face her she remembered standing on that small beach just now. She had the stark realisation that no matter what Luc said now she couldn’t trust him fully. She had to remember that or it could all still unravel.

‘What I mean,’ Luc said, when he turned back, ‘is that I want to see him gone too. I was going to wait until the last moment—until I knew no one else could step in to help him—and then walk away from the deal.’

‘What?’

‘When I told you I was interested in his Eastern European concerns it was the truth—but only insofar as I have every intention of saving them for myself and letting him go to hell with the rest of his poisoned businesses. Not that he’s aware of that …
yet
.’

Jesse looked at him and fought down the trembling flame of hope inside her. She had to be strong. She’d prepared for this her whole life.

She paced away from Luc with crossed arms, and then turned back to face him. ‘What possible motive could you have for wanting to see him ruined?’

She tried not to notice how vibrant and gorgeous he looked in the dying light of the sun as it streamed in the huge windows. She tried to stop her heart from thumping just a little too hard.

‘I told you that my father killed himself.’

Jesse nodded.

Luc paced back and forth, taut energy radiating out from his body. ‘My father was a construction foreman for a company owned by your father in Malaga. One day there was a terrible accident and my father was badly injured. He had to have both legs amputated from the knees down.’ Luc shook his head. ‘When he came home he was a shell of his former self. He was so ashamed of what had happened even though it wasn’t even his fault. It was outdated machinery.’

Luc slashed a hand down. ‘Of course there was little or no health and safety regulations in those days, and as for litigation or admission of culpability …’ He sneered. ‘O’Brien merely hired a new foreman and got on with his work. It was only when the next person had a fatal accident that he was forced to close the plant down.’

‘What happened?’ she asked quietly.

Luc looked at her now and she shivered. His eyes were so black.

‘My father couldn’t cope with being less than a full man. He’d been very proud. My mother was barely coping too, and Eva … she was so young at the time, and difficult. One night I woke up because my mother was screaming. I rushed outside
and my father was sitting in his car, in the garage, with the engine on. It was too late to save him.’

Jesse clenched her arms tighter. ‘I’m sorry, Luc.’

‘Yes,’ he said flatly, ‘I’m sorry too. I went to see your father once, when I knew he was visiting the factory one day. It was before my father died. I went to beg him for help. He did exactly the same thing to me, Jesse. He took me into his office and locked the door …’

He gave a curt laugh. ‘Not once since we met again has he even remembered the name of Sanchis—or me as that young boy who confronted him.’

Jesse knew her father had been behind plenty of dodgy practices over the years. Dozens of claims had been mounted against him, but all had come to nothing because he was so well protected. Why would he remember the son of one man from one of his many factories dotted around Europe?

Everything urged her to believe Luc, but she felt as if she was being torn in two. She could feel emotion rising, and she wanted to tell Luc to stop—but he wouldn’t. It was as if he was binding her tighter and tighter with his words and soon she wouldn’t be able to walk away … Her heart was too soft. This was when she had to be most vigilant. But it was agony.

‘He told me that if I ever came back saying anything about my father he’d hurt my mother and Eva. He didn’t touch me physically, but he didn’t have to.’

Jesse was shaking her head now, her vision blurring. ‘No. Stop it. You’re making it up. You’ve gone too far, Luc. I won’t stand here and listen to you trick me into believing something like this. It’s too coincidental.’

She turned to rush from the room, but Luc caught her and whirled her around in his arms. ‘Damn it, Jesse, I’m not lying. It’s all true.’

Jesse dashed her tears aside. Suddenly she longed for the
cool, emotionless austerity of her life before she’d met this man. ‘Can you prove it?’

The expression on Luc’s face was fearsome, and his hands tightened on her arms. ‘My father was foreman of a lowly construction company in southern Spain. Do you really think it made the papers?’ His mouth twisted when he added, ‘And yet despite that it managed to wreck a whole family.’

Jesse looked up at Luc. She could already feel that intensity reaching out to ensnare her. She was so susceptible to this man.

She pulled out of his arms with effort, and finally he let her go. She backed away from him and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I just need to be alone for a while …’

Luc battled the urge to grab Jesse back to him, clenching his fists at his sides and watching her slim back retreat. It was a lot to take in, and more than a little fantastical to discover that they’d both had the same objective all along.

When he’d woken in the bed earlier, to find Jesse gone, it had been as if his brain had been working overtime during sleep. He’d had a dream of Jesse and her father, a faceless threatening presence locking her into a room, and just like that Luc had
known
. The links were too many to dismiss. Why on earth would someone like her be interested in someone like O’Brien unless it was for some personal reason? He just hadn’t figured that it was for the opposite reason he’d initially suspected.

Luc had so many more questions, but Jesse’s face before she’d left the room, stark with shock and emotion, made him cautious. He’d have to give her some time. But surely now there could be no objection to their returning to England together?

When he thought of that his heart gave an involuntary kick, and for the first time in years Luc knew he was on very shaky ground.

Later that night Luc woke abruptly when he heard a sound that was familiar but
un
familiar, because he’d got so used to the peace and quiet of the island.

He hadn’t seen Jesse again that evening. She’d stayed holed up in her room and Luc had decided to give her more time, resisting his urge to batter the door down and kiss her into trusting him.

He looked at his watch and saw he’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. And then the sound registered fully:
helicopter
.

He jumped out of bed, pulling on his boxer shorts, and silently thanked Jesse for coming to her senses. He half expected to bump into her when he opened his bedroom door, but the villa was silent. An awful slither of foreboding went down his spine.

He went downstairs and could still hear the unmistakable
thwop-thwop
of the helicopter. And then he saw the note, and a phone on the hall table. He went over and picked up the piece of paper:

With an inarticulate roar of pure rage Luc stormed over to the villa door and opened it just in time to see the flashing
lights of the helipcopter as it rose up into the night sky, banked to the right and then disappeared into the distance.

For long seconds, as the island fell into silence again, Luc couldn’t believe what had just happened. And then it became painfully crystal-clear. Once again a woman had taken his trust and betrayed him—except this time it was far, far worse.

High above the black expanse of sea Jesse sat in the helicopter with tears running down her face.
Why couldn’t she stop crying?
She struggled to control herself, glad of the sound of the engine and the blades which precluded any conversation. In her lap she held the squirmy bundle which was Tigger, and she stroked him absently, trying to keep him calm.

She’d had to leave because she knew she couldn’t last two more days in that villa alone with Luc. Couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t use everything he now knew about her to wear her down and make her trust him … make her believe him … when he could still turn around and rip her world from under her feet.

Earlier she’d been so close to trusting him, believing him, but how could she? How could she trust him after only a few days spent together? No matter how intimate they’d been?

Trust
. It was the one thing she’d never been able to do with anyone after her trust had been so comprehensively eroded at an early age, and then over and over again as she’d grown up.

She had to be strong and remember that Luc’s prime motivation all along had been to get off the island, whether it was for the same reasons as Jesse or not. That was why he’d seduced her in the first place.

Pain, swift and agonising, rose up to clench Jesse’s heart. She’d
wanted
to trust him so badly. The first time she’d wanted it in her life. And that was when she’d finally had to heed the danger of her situation. If she trusted Luc then she’d
learnt nothing. All her years of struggle to prevail would have been for naught.

She simply had to shut down her mind and forget about what had happened. It was a mirage. It had never really existed. Because would someone like Luc ever have
really
seduced her if given a choice? She went cold. Of course not.

She knew he’d never forgive her for this.

Jesse closed her eyes on the starry sky outside and shut down inside. She retreated back to a place she knew, where she was icy and removed from anything too painful.

When she finally got to Britain, on the plane that had been waiting for her in Athens, the woman at Immigration said officiously, ‘You need a licence for that animal—he needs to be checked and given shots and registered.’

Jesse shook her head, the thought of being separated from Tigger breaking through the ice. ‘I didn’t realise. I’ve never owned a pet before …’

The immigration official looked from Jesse’s red eyes and puffy face to the tiny ball of fur miaowing pathetically occasionally. She sighed and looked at her watch. It was four a.m., and Jesse was the only passenger.

‘I could lose my job for this, but I’m going to pretend I didn’t see
him
.’ She waggled a finger at Jesse and looked stern. ‘But I’m going to check on the system to make sure you get him thoroughly checked and properly registered, so make sure you do.’

Jesse started crying all over again at the woman’s kindness.

There was no ice left to cloak herself with; she was a mess.

Two Months Later …

Jesse took a deep breath and looked at herself in the floor-length mirror in her bedroom. The dress was a deep blue colour, and silk. It was a feat of designing that Jesse didn’t
understand. All she knew was that it showed far more skin than she was comfortable with. Practically her whole back was bare, apart from one strip of material connecting the front to the back, and it was very low-cut at the front.

Her fingers itched to take it off and put on a familiar dress suit, but then she remembered the spurt of something very illicit when she’d spotted it in the window of the shop in town that afternoon. She’d been trying it on before she’d even registered her intent, and the shop assistant had said,
‘The dress was made for you. You have the perfect figure to carry it off …’