The French Aristocrat's Baby (11 page)

To her surprise, the reply pleased him.

‘Good—I’m glad you want to give it such careful consideration. That shows sound business sense. Study the papers, and the draft contract, too.’ With a small smile, he nodded and handed her a second file from his pile of paperwork. ‘And now, you have a choice. I have an appointment on the mainland, so I’m flying straight back. You can either travel with me, when you can spend a few hours wandering around the shops until I’m ready to return. Alternatively, you can stay here and enjoy what
The Windflower
has to offer while you study the paperwork at your leisure. Then, if you have any questions, we can discuss it over dinner.’

E
TIENNE
might have proved he had the selective memory of a gentleman, but Gwen was still uncertain.

‘Dinner? Where? Le Rossignol isn’t open tonight, and I was only going to have salad at home—’

Etienne shook his head with a smile.

‘It will be served here on
The Windflower.
’

Gwen looked around, almost breathless with delight. Dinner on his private yacht sounded like heaven. It only took her a few seconds to discover the flaw in his plan.

‘What happens if I haven’t come to a decision by this evening?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I expect you’ll get a certain amount of pleasure from a gourmet meal you haven’t had to plan and organise yourself?’ He grinned. ‘I don’t employ a huge staff purely for my own benefit. When I entertain a prospective business partner, I
entertain
.’ He stressed his final words as though the phrase should be inscribed in block capitals over the entrance to every room. Gwen smiled, recognising again their mutual desire to put on a good show for the benefit of others. All the fight flowed out of her in an instant.

‘I’d be delighted to stay here,’ she said with real feeling. ‘Although I’m afraid I don’t have anything to wear.’

He laughed. ‘If that troubles you so much, I could send someone to the
gite
to collect something for you?’

Gwen bit her lip. Her only formal dress he had already seen. Not, she reminded herself sternly, that this mattered. Her aim was to dress appropriately, not to impress him…
Yeah, right
, said the annoyingly honest voice in her head. She
could
take up his offer of a lift back to the mainland and hit the shops instead, but she didn’t want to. For one thing, she couldn’t afford to splash out on a new dress. For another, she was itching to sample what life on
The Windflower
had to offer. While Etienne was on shore, she could indulge her fantasies in safety. She swallowed her pride.

‘My blue dress is in the wardrobe at home…’

Etienne held out his hand for her keys and Gwen handed them over in silent amazement at this man who seemed able to solve any problem and persuade her into anything. As she told him where to find all the things she would need to get ready for dinner that evening she marvelled at how helpful he was being. His reaction when he’d mentioned the name ‘Angela Webbington’ had disturbed her. He had presented himself then as some sort of hollow, disappointed man. Right now, nothing could look less like the truth. Etienne was his usual, charming, irritatingly compelling self. Her curiosity was well and truly aroused. What sort of grim secret could such a man be hiding? She had noticed that laptop computers were available for use in all the public areas of the ship. The temptation to find out the worst
about him began to dangle before her. If Etienne assumed his past was common knowledge, he wasn’t likely to care if one more person found out about it.
And putting a couple of names into a search engine hardly amounts to snooping, does it?
she reassured herself.

After pocketing her keys, Etienne reached out and patted her unexpectedly on the arm.

‘My people will be very careful. You don’t need to worry about a thing,’ he said as his touch dropped away from her.

Gwen thought of the moment she had tried to slip out of bed and he had drawn her back into his body with those same, strong hands. Memory snatched the breath from her throat. She looked up quickly to see if he had noticed. He was looking at her, but his expression was as impassive as it had been when he was annotating his business proposition. With an awful pang she realised their moments together had passed. Any fear she might have felt at being alone with him dissolved. He wanted her business as a project now, not her body for his plaything. She had lost her chance. The only thing she had left was her dignity, and she wasn’t going to let that go without a struggle. She tried to make it sound as though she were still in two minds about accepting his invitation.

‘OK, thanks. What time is dinner, and where will it be served?’

‘I haven’t decided on either yet,’ he said affably. ‘Don’t worry. When it’s ready, I’ll send a steward to find you.’

‘I’m sorry I misjudged you, Etienne. You really did invite me here for business, after all!’ Gwen said, trying to keep her voice light and casual.

‘How could you ever doubt me?’ He gave her a particularly winning smile as he escorted her to the door. ‘You made it quite clear yesterday that you don’t want to become my mistress. Nothing else was on offer. I’m a straight-talking man. Unlike some people, I don’t make promises I can’t keep.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Gwen tried to leave it at that, but some devilish impulse forced her to add, ‘It doesn’t stop you keeping plenty of company, though! I lost count of how many women I saw you talking to at the reception.’

‘None of them matter.’ He sliced the remark at her sharply.

Taken aback by his bitter tone, she thought of his bathroom back at the chateau, stocked with cosmetics for every taste and occasion. Evidently, plenty of women passed through his hands, but none made much of an impression on him. That made his mention of the shadowy figure of Angela Webbington all the more interesting. She had mattered. Gwen’s curiosity increased until she could hardly stand it.

‘You’re looking thoughtful, Gwen?’

She jumped guiltily, and said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Do your staff treat all your female visitors the same?’

‘Gwen, you are very worried about the staff. They are not here to judge you, they are here because they have jobs to do.’

He started walking away and then stopped a little short of the boardroom door. ‘And of course,’ he continued with a hint of mischief in his eyes, ‘there’s all the
difference in the world between the way I introduced you as “Miss Gwen Williams” today—’ standing a little apart from her, he extended his palm to an imaginary member of staff exactly as he had done earlier, up on deck ‘—and this…’

Before Gwen realised what was happening he had closed the gap between them and slid his arm around her waist. It enclosed her with a memory of those sublime moments they had shared as he lowered his voice to say, ‘Meet Gwen, everybody…’

Instinctively, she relaxed against the delicious pressure of his arm. Almost at once it slipped away from her, like a dream. It was a painful reawakening. Gwen blinked quickly, trying to dismiss the sinful feelings that kept creeping up on her. When Etienne leaned across her in the helicopter, and now as he demonstrated his technique with conquests, the urge to take matters on her own lips and kiss him almost made a fool of her. Gwen knew she must forget their night of passion. Etienne certainly had. From the way he casually left her side and opened the boardroom door to usher her out now, he couldn’t have meant anything by it. All his little gestures, like those smiles that made her feel like the only girl in the world, must be totally unconscious.

He summoned a steward to show Gwen to her suite. She swept past Etienne with what she hoped was an air of professional detachment and followed the man to her temporary home. Only then, behind locked doors, could she allow herself to grieve for what might have been.

Etienne could not watch her walk away. He went back into the boardroom, locked the door and leaned back against it. Anyone would have to break through four inches of solid mahogany and his iron determination to get in. This whole situation was bizarre. Gwen Williams was a real challenge. She confronted him with both the easiest and the most difficult situations. Here was a woman who didn’t want to become his mistress. If that wasn’t unbelievable enough, it really mattered to him! She was so totally unlike any other woman he had bedded. He couldn’t let the memory go. They talked together then, and they were still talking now. She said things he found worth listening to. He found he wanted to know what she was going to say next. Whenever he closed a door on her, it could never quite shut her out of his mind.

It had to be because she had resisted him. That was surely the top and bottom of it. He wanted her to want him, body and soul. Anything less was unnatural. Gwen’s body language kept saying yes. Yet she had refused him twice, and nothing on earth would persuade him to risk asking her again. Instead, he had changed tack and was offering her the only thing more powerful than his attraction for the opposite sex—money. It was incomprehensible that any woman would take advantage of that before his body, but Etienne had to give her the chance. Once again, she flew in the face of reason. She hadn’t accepted straight away. He tried to persuade himself this was a good thing. Gwen was the first girl who had touched his heart since Angela. And, if he put her on a similar pedestal he would expect her to fall to
earth with an equally leaden thud, but it hadn’t happened yet, despite her circumstances.

Until he took her home and found the place was condemned to darkness, Etienne had had no idea that she was in such financial difficulty. It didn’t take much imagination to realise other parts of Gwen’s lifestyle would be under threat. She was obviously desperate for money, but she still held out against him. She refused to take the easy way out. He had never before known a woman with such an independent streak.

Smiling to himself, he moved away from the door. He strolled back to the boardroom table. His personal copy of her file lay on top of his pile of paperwork. Placing one long golden finger on her name, he traced over the letters.

This girl was one in a million. She fully deserved to succeed.

A steward showed Gwen to her suite. It was magnificent, with a view across gentle blue waters to the coastline beyond. He gave her an amazing guided tour of the staterooms and their private spa, but Gwen couldn’t take in much detail after the first few seconds. She was more interested in the laptop on the table in her reception room. Once she was alone, she locked the door. It only took seconds to enter the name ‘Angela Webbington’ into a search engine.

What she discovered about Etienne’s past made her wish she hadn’t been in such a hurry to pry. There were pages of photographs of his ex-fiancée. Angela Webbington turned out to be a tall, whippet-thin blonde.
Gwen was built for comfort rather than speed, and cringed. Each time she looked at Etienne, she thought of sex. When he looked at her, she had a horrible feeling all he now thought was ‘chef’. If this Angela was his ideal woman, then Gwen’s fantasies of being leapt on again with a cry of undying lust were sadly misplaced.

She sighed. It had been a mistake to ever emerge from her kitchens. She was at her best when she was being brilliant behind the scenes. Angela Webbington was a force in front of Stateside TV cameras.
I’m fooling myself to think the other night was anything more than an accident of lust
, she thought.
I happened to be in the right place at the right time, that’s all.

She scrolled down the web page sadly, but things suddenly got a whole lot worse. A terrifying headline screamed: ‘
Baby or Bastard
?’, adding in only slightly smaller letters: “‘
I’ll disown you both!” vows future count
.’ It was accompanied by a photograph of a gaunt Angela. She had been snapped leaving what the report identified as an abortion clinic. Gwen switched off the screen.

For a long time, she sat staring into space. The blank computer mirrored her thoughts. The report was simple and straightforward, but her reaction to it was complex. Etienne had been a spectacular lover, but she could not imagine him as a father. He was too much like her own dad. They were both totally absorbed by their own lives. Gwen had decided very early in life that real fathers should have a life outside work. In primary school, she had listened to her classmates’ stories of holidays in foreign countries. The Williams family had been restricted
to half-day trips. Her parents never travelled further than they could help. Everything revolved around the opening hours of their shop.

Gwen looked around her luxurious on-board suite. She could understand a rich man like Etienne not wanting to be tied down. There was something of that in her own character. Everything she did was a reaction against the restrictions of her earlier home life. Her move to France had scandalised her extended family, who all lived within a few miles of each other. That was bad enough, but the ultimatum Etienne had given to Angela Webbington went even further. A man who could abandon his fiancée and unborn child was surely capable of anything.

Although the room was warm, Gwen shivered.

She had known the charming Etienne had a ruthless streak, but she had not thought him capable of such coldness. She picked up his proposal and began to read it. At first, she could not concentrate. Haunted by that one incident in his life, she wanted to know more. Yet she was scared about what she might unearth. Her worries meant she only skimmed through the paperwork to begin with. Then a wicked idea took root in her mind, and began to grow. It was so terrible she could hardly bear to think it—but it was a truth that couldn’t be denied.

Anyone cold-hearted enough to abandon their fiancée on the mere suspicion of infidelity was bound to succeed in business. When it came to the cut and thrust of business life, Gwen knew her limitations. She was hopeless. She let paperwork pile up. Dealing with bad payers and unreliable tradesmen kept her awake at
night. When it came to cooking, she was a star performer. Anything else was a case of damage limitation. A ruthless man like Etienne Moreau would never stand for that. His money and network of advisors would be invaluable.

With him on her side, she could not fail.

She settled down to read the paperwork more carefully. It wasn’t long before she realised what a good scheme Etienne was actually putting forward. Any worries she had about accepting his investment began to recede. He would provide a large sum of money up front, and the services of his marketing team would be available for free. That alone would have persuaded Gwen to sign up. The prospect of handing over the restaurant’s promotion and website updating made her feel weak with relief. All she wanted to do was create dishes and cook. In return, Etienne was offering her an eighty-twenty split of the profits. She felt that was worth haggling over, so left the contract unsigned. Then she pushed it aside and tried to enjoy her spell aboard
The Windflower.