Exquisite Revenge (17 page)

He hadn’t appeared at her apartment, threatening to knock her door down, and Jesse hated herself for being so disappointed. She had told him not to come near her. She was worse than pathetic.

As she settled into the private jet that had been sent for her by the Norwegian company she relished the privacy. Some hair flopped forward onto her forehead and Jesse pushed it back, enjoying this proof that her life was changing in subtle ways all the time.

She was infinitely softer than she had been. Even her clothes were softer. She felt a little exposed in loose haremstyle pants, with a slim gold belt and a soft clinging top, but she couldn’t go back to the asexual uniform she’d worn before. And she hated that her metamorphosis had more to do with one person than her own desire to change:
Luc
.

Once they were cruising Jesse switched on her laptop. It opened straight onto Luc’s e-mail. She couldn’t help but touch the screen with her fingers, as if she could touch him. The last words of his message blinked out at her:
I’ve never felt the desire to set this story straight with anyone except you …

Jesse resolutely deleted the e-mail and crushed all thoughts of Luc Sanchis. She was barely clinging on to control as it was.

It was only when she realised she hadn’t seen the polite air steward who had helped her onto the plane for a while that she began to get a little suspicious. Also, she had the weird sensation that they weren’t flying so much west to east across northern Europe as north to south.

She looked out of the window and the topography definitely looked browner than it should, given that they should almost be descending over Norway by now. In fact the plane didn’t seem to have dipped in altitude at all yet.

Jesse began to panic mildly, but told herself that she was being ridiculous. But as the minutes ticked by and the plane droned onwards, flying further and further into territory that bore no resemblance to Norway, she panicked in earnest.

She got out of her seat and knocked on the main pilot’s door, where the steward had to be too. No answer. Something was definitely up. Jesse sat back down, sweating now. She could see the sea below her and it sparkled in the sunlight. Azure blue and green. An awful suspicion was forming in her head, but she didn’t dare give it oxygen so she sat rigidly in her seat and focused on staying calm.

By the time the plane did land, and a sheepish-looking air steward emerged from the cockpit, Jesse was feeling rage. This was the last straw. She all but sprang out of her seat and went to the open door of the plane. She looked out onto exactly the same peaceful idyllic scene Luc Sanchis had greeted months before—only this time the roles were reversed.

She looked down to see him standing at the side of the Jeep, hands in the pockets of his jeans, a short-sleeved polo shirt straining across his chest. Dark glasses glinted in the sun.

In the space of time since they’d been here the temperature had already risen, and it held the promise of the heat of summer not far away.

Jesse crossed her arms against the emotion in her chest and shouted out, ‘I’m not getting off this plane, Sanchis!’

She watched as Luc ripped his sunglasses off and threw them into the Jeep beside him. He started striding towards her and Jesse squeaked and ran back into the plane, buckling herself back into her seat. The air steward looked on, impassive.

She heard Luc coming up the metal steps, and then he was filling the doorway with his broad frame.

‘How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Sanchis? We’re way beyond that now.’

Jesse felt breathless. ‘I’m not leaving, Luc.’ She appealed to the steward. ‘This man is kidnapping me.’

‘Well, in fairness, Ms Moriarty, I think you kidnapped him first.’

Jesse blanched and far too belatedly recognised the young man as the steward she’d hired herself to slip the sleeping aid into Luc’s drink that day. This was how scrambled her brain had become. Her heart sank.

Luc looked smug, and then he was advancing on her, bending down, effortlessly flipping open the safety belt. Jesse was trying to swat his hands away but to no avail. Before she knew it Luc was hefting her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

She was speechless and slightly winded. She was vaguely aware of the steward carrying some things out of the plane—
her
things—and going ahead of them, presumably to put them in the Jeep. As he went past them again, back towards the plane, she heard Luc say, ‘Thanks, Steven. I’ll call your boss when I want you to come back. It might be a few days.’

Jesse gasped and hit Luc’s back. ‘Stop this! Put me down!’ But her words were weak and ineffectual from this position.

She heard the steps being pushed away and the plane’s engine revving up and clenched her hands into fists. Luc got to the Jeep and put her down, all but lifting her into the passenger
seat, securing the seat belt around her before closing her door.

He was in the driver’s seat and locking the doors from the inside before she’d even got her breath back. She was sputtering and gasping with indignation, and then Luc looked at her and grinned.

‘I have to admit this is far more satisfying than I expected it to be.’

He turned back and, much more expertly than Jesse had, drove them off the airfield and to the villa. Jesse sat and fumed, arms crossed. And secretly battled the million butterflies that were hopping around in her belly. She kept her eyes forward, averting them from Luc’s big, capable hands and his thighs in those faded jeans.

Jesse heard a sound from the back of the Jeep. She looked back and gasped when she saw Tigger was in a cat basket. She glanced at Luc. ‘But … how?’

Jesse had only that morning left him with her apartment security guard, who’d assured her that his daughter would take care of Tigger.

Luc didn’t answer straight away. He drove through the gates of the villa, pressing the button to close them behind him, but Jesse was barely aware of that. All sorts of emotions were erupting in her belly. Why had he brought Tigger? What did it mean?

Luc cast her a quick glance. ‘Deborah, my secretary, explained the situation to your security guard. She brought Tigger to the plane just ahead of your arrival.’

Jesse sat back in the seat. They were pulling up to the villa now, and she said suspiciously, ‘What situation?’

Luc stopped the Jeep smoothly, undid his belt and got out. He then took out Tigger’s basket and came around to open Jesse’s door. She scrambled out before he could touch her, far too aware of how it had felt to be thrown over his shoulder.

She asked again. ‘What situation?’

Luc just strode ahead of her and said, ‘Patience is a virtue, Jesse.’

Jesse slammed the Jeep door shut, feeling like a petulant child. With no choice, she followed him into the hallway. She said to his back, ‘What about my meetings? I’m expected in Oslo right now.’

Luc turned around. ‘I took the liberty of tracking down one of the few hackers out there
not
employed by you and paid him to hack into your account. I got him to send e-mails postponing all your meetings. You might want to look into hiring him as he did such a good job.’ He gestured with a hand. ‘I don’t think I need to show you around, do you? Your tour was quite comprehensive the last time.’

He turned again and started striding towards the kitchen. Jesse followed him with hands clenched, still in shock that he’d turned the tables so neatly on her.

‘Luc …’

When she got there he’d put Tigger’s basket down and let him out, and the fast-growing kitten was already frolicking in the grass and running after butterflies.

‘Luc—’

He went to the cooker and she could see that something was already on the stove, cooking. He’d obviously been here for a while and had started preparing food.

He glanced up, for all the world as if this was an entirely normal occurrence. ‘I made some pasta for lunch. You’re probably hungry, and I know how crabby you get if you don’t eat properly.’

Jesse just blinked at him. Something much more volatile was happening inside her now. Emotion was cracking and spreading. ‘Luc, what are you
doing
?’

He ignored her and came to steer her into a chair; he poured
her some wine. ‘Just … relax, Jesse. We’ll eat and then talk, okay?’

Jesse watched him as he went back to tend to the food. She might almost have imagined that he sounded
nervous
, and those emotions in her belly grew a lot more tangled and volatile.

For once Jesse was happy not to push it, afraid of what he might say, and a couple of minutes later Luc served her up a delicious-looking plate of
penne
in a simple tomato sauce, with crusty bread.

They ate, and it was the most surreal meal Jesse had ever had, with neither of them saying a word.

When they were finished Jesse cleared the plates. A strong feeling of
déjà-vu
caught her unawares, making her stumble slightly. Past and present were dangerously meshed. She had to grip the sink for a moment.

Luc was beside her instantly, arms around her. ‘What is it?’

Jesse felt herself responding helplessly and emotion surged dangerously. She pushed herself free, terrified Luc would see how much it was affecting her to be back here.

She backed away from him, eyes huge. ‘Is this some kind of elaborate sick joke, Luc? The last laugh is on you because you’ve managed to kidnap me?’

He shook his head. His eyes were intense. ‘No, it’s not a joke, Jesse. I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.’

Suddenly Jesse blurted out, ‘
Stop
it—stop making me think that—’ She couldn’t finish. She turned and fled the kitchen, needing to hide her raw emotions from Luc.

But he followed her to the den, to the couch where he’d first made love to her. It sat between them, reminding her, making that emotion crack open even more.

‘Making you think what, Jesse?’

She swallowed, desperately clinging on to whatever flimsy
control she had left. ‘What are we doing here, Luc? Why did you do this? More punishment? You weren’t satisfied that I’d quite got the message?’

He winced, and his face took on a slightly ashen hue. ‘Jesse, if I could go back in time to when we met again, to that last night in particular, and change what I did and said, I would. I was unforgivably cruel and a coward.’

Jesse put her hand to her belly, feeling sick to remember it. ‘You didn’t have to bring me all this way just because you feel bad about how you ended it, Luc, or bad about what happened. I knew it was never going to be anything more.’

He smiled then, but it was bleak. ‘Did you, Jesse? Then you knew more than me—even though I told myself I knew what I wanted, knew what I was doing.’

Jesse was getting confused. Luc looked almost sad now.

‘I brought you here, Jesse, because this is where it ends … if it has to end.’

Jesse’s heart spasmed. ‘I thought it
had
ended.’

To her surprise Luc said, ‘That night when we first met, over a year ago. You were there because your father was there, weren’t you?’

Jesse nodded. ‘It was the first time I’d seen him since I was a child. I’d gone there because I needed to know what I was up against.’

Luc ran a hand through his hair, tousling it. His eyes speared her to the spot. ‘It started between us that night, Jesse, and then afterwards when you came to my office. It’s so ironic that we wanted the same thing, yet both of us were so used to trusting only ourselves we didn’t even think to consider that option.’

Jesse grimaced. ‘The evidence pointed towards us each believing the other wanted to go into business with my father … I couldn’t afford to let you know my motives because I didn’t want anyone to know about my relationship with him.’ She
bit her lip. ‘It felt like such an ugly part of me … How could I articulate that? Or why I wanted to destroy him?’

Luc was shaking his head. ‘After you left here … left me here … I spent those two days devising every torture possible to inflict upon you when I saw you again. And then when I learned that O’Brien was really gone, that you’d got him, I realised that I wasn’t even angry about that—after years of wanting to avenge my father. O’Brien had stopped being a priority for me around the same time as I got off that plane and realised you’d kidnapped me. That’s how quickly you made me forget nearly everything. I was angry about something else entirely. Angry at how easily you’d managed to make me forget everything I’d believed was important. Angry at how hurt I was that you couldn’t trust me.’

Luc continued before Jesse could interject.

‘So to cope with that knowledge I simply blocked you out completely. I shut down. If I could have had an operation to erase you from my memory bank I would have, because I knew how dangerous you were to me by then. I dated a different woman every night in some kind of effort to feel normal again, and within five minutes of meeting each woman I wanted to claw my own eyes out from sheer boredom.’

Shakily Jesse said, ‘That’s a pretty strong reaction.’

‘Yes.’ Luc was grim. ‘Because pretending you hadn’t ever existed was slowly driving me insane—and then I saw you, at that function … To try to avoid how I was really feeling about seeing you again, I told myself I wanted revenge for what you had done. But really I wanted revenge for how you made me feel. For making me relegate everything that had been important in my life to the periphery—like my mother and sister. You waltzed into my office like a tiny tornado, wreaking havoc, and I should have known then that I was in trouble.’

Jesse needed to sit down. Her legs felt wobbly. She looked behind her and saw a chair and sank into it. Luc came closer
and she was glad she was sitting down. He pulled the matching chair close and sat down too. Jesse found it hard to breathe.

She needed to speak, to say something. ‘You said that there was no trust between us because there was no relationship.’

Luc just looked at her, searching her face as if for a clue. And then he said heavily, ‘I wanted to hurt you in return for not trusting me, so I said that. But it was cruel and untrue …’