Mistress for a Month

The very last person in London she felt like seeing was her perfect, superior, drop-dead gorgeous, big sister.

“I don’t feel too well,” she heard herself say.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something I ate, probably. Or jet lag. I’ll have to catch you on my way home.”

“I’m so sorry you don’t feel well. I worked so hard all day just so we could all be together tonight. Do you need a doctor? Should I come to London?”

Guilt swamped Amy. She felt like dirt. Here she was lying, and Carol sounded so concerned and caring. “I’m sure after a quiet night here, I’ll be just fine.”

“Well, then, if you’re sure…I really am tired after the trip. Maybe I’ll just pop by and check on you first thing in the morning on my way to the firm. Maybe bring you a croissant or something.”

They talked a little while longer, making tentative plans to see each other in the morning before they hung up.

I can’t believe I did that! I’ve let him ruin my visit with Carol! My mood! Everything!

She stared across the room at the wadded-up newspaper.

All those women, women as beautiful and poised and perfect as Carol. They must’ve liked him, too.

He’d said he liked her because she was different.

Quit thinking about him!

Usually, Amelia wasn’t one for hard liquor, but this was an emergency. She went to the kitchen, telling herself she was after a bottle of sparkling water or a soda, but the bottle of scotch lived in the same cabinet with the sodas, and it spoke to her. She grabbed a glass and poured a shot over some chunklets of ice. Swirling the glass, she returned to the living room, where she settled herself on the couch once more. For a long time, she just sat there, glumly sipping Carol’s scotch as she glared at the wadded-up newspaper and the half of Remy’s face she could see.

Then she stood. Crossing the room, she picked up the newspaper again. This time a photograph she’d barely noticed caught her attention. His stony face bleached of arrogance and any conceit, Remy was walking through the pits carrying André’s helmet under his arm. All she saw in his hard features was shock and grief.

Who was he really? He’d been so nice to her today. He’d been attentive to her needs, and he’d gone out of his way to make her feel special and beautiful. Was he that sensitive, caring person or the man she’d just read about?

He’d had lots and lots of women. He couldn’t have had all those women if he wasn’t a really good lover. He was French. Frenchmen had a worldwide reputation for being good lovers. She knew it was crazy, but she began to envy those glamorous women whose hearts he’d broken.

Fletcher had accused her of being old and boring. More than anything she wanted to be exciting.

Remy de Fournier had asked her to go dancing tonight. Maybe he was totally awful like the papers made him out to be.

Or maybe he was just the man she needed to show her how to be a more exciting and confident woman. He’d made her feel interesting and beautiful today.

Maybe it was time she learned a new set of life skills. What sort of things could he teach her if she spent an entire night with him?

Her mother was always saying she could be and have so much more if she refused to settle. Maybe it was time to live a little dangerously.

Slowly Amy dug into her pocket and felt for the scrap of paper with Remy’s phone numbers on it. For a long moment she studied the flowing black letters. Then with shaking fingers she began dialing his mobile, but after letting it ring once, she hung up, and would have chewed her nails except she couldn’t because she had on those new tips.

Damn!

She was still staring at her fake pink fingernails in utter frustration when the phone rang.

Expecting Carol, she picked it up.

“Did someone from this number call me?” Remy’s deep, dark voice spoke with such tender concern she almost forgot he was the terrible person she’d read about and not the sweet man she’d met by chance and had liked so much this afternoon.

He sounded so nice.

“Me!” she squeaked, forgetting the terrible bit. “That would be me! The girl you bumped—”

He laughed as if he were thrilled, too. “I know who you are.” Somehow the way he said that made her feel very special, like she was the only woman in the world who mattered to him. Which was ridiculous. He was a womanizer.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t call,” he said, again sounding so sincerely worried and humble she could almost feel her heart shatter. He was that good.

Or that bad.

Either way, this could be a win-win.

Hang up on him.

She plunged in recklessly. “I—I’m free tonight. Carol…” Amy glanced across the room at a silver-framed photograph of her blond sister and Steve and silently crossed herself. “We…we won’t be getting together, after all. She…has a headache.”

“Nothing too serious, I hope.”

“No.”

“Excellent. I can be there as soon as you can be ready.”

“But I don’t have anything to wear.”

“I don’t really object to that,” he teased. “I could bring dinner over, and we could stay in. You could wear…nothing. I wouldn’t mind. I swear.”

She laughed. “You are terrible.”

“So I’ve been told.” He laughed. “What do you want, chérie?”

If she wanted lessons in love from an expert, she should say, “You.” She should say, “Yes! Yes!”

“Fortnam and Masons is only two blocks away. If I could just pop over there…”

“I particularly liked your dress this afternoon.”

“I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” he said in a dark, eager tone that sent a chill through her.

“Me, too,” she responded in a voice that was probably too low for him to hear.

When he hung up, she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue and drew a slow, deep breath. Just talking to him made her feel sexy and daring.

She exhaled a long, shaky breath. And then another. Oh, my God. She was so excited she’d held her breath almost the entire phone call.

Deep down she knew that if she were smart and practical, she would return to Honolulu and regroup. No way should she fly to France to negotiate with his agents or his family about the vineyard or even think about the Matisse until she had her head on straight. If she were smart and practical she would tell him she knew who he was and ask him to leave her alone.

But despite everything she’d read about him, or maybe because of it, she wanted to go out with Remy. Which was crazy.

He’d tricked her!

But he’d been charming, devastatingly charming. And he had not pressed his advantage, she told herself.

Not yet, anyway.

Her mind warred with itself, but soon the hunger for adventure with a dangerous, incredibly attractive man won out over good sense and logic.

He was a comte. Despite his many faults, that would cut a lot of ice chunklets with her shallow mother and brilliant sister. Definitely, he was a win-win.

Now all she had to do was to find a sexy red dress!

Three

Is nothing more tempting than the bad and the forbidden? Now that Amy knew who Remy was, he fairly oozed danger with every white smile and seductive touch.

Maybe that was why the evening with him was one of the most desperately wonderful evenings of her life. Not that she wasn’t bothered by what she’d read about him or by her plan not to let on that she knew.

Her senses were heightened to an extreme state of agitation when she looked out her living-room window as she was putting up her hair in a clip and saw him at the end of the block, striding up Duke Street with a single white rose. When he rang the bell, her throat closed as if a fist circled it. She tore the clip out of her hair and ran to the door.

As he handed her the long-stemmed rose, did she only imagine that his expression was darker and more haunted than it had been earlier? Then their eyes touched, and he smiled. As she sniffed the delicate blossom, he stepped across the threshold.

“I needed this tonight,” he murmured as he gazed at her. “You’ll never know how much. You’re like a breath of fresh air.”

He wore the look of a hunted man, and she imagined he must have read the ugly publicity, too. Did he have a conscience, after all?

When she turned around, he gasped. “You look beautiful.”

“I don’t usually shop in expensive stores,” she said, feeling pleased with the flirty red dress and silver strappy sandals that made his intense gaze linger until her skin heated.

Tonight he looked very masculine and elegant in black.

“You don’t look like the same playful girl I watched buying silky, see-through knickers in the flea market this afternoon.”

Blushing at the memory, she held up her new bag.

“Very nice,” he said.

The ensemble had cost a fortune, but as she’d stared at herself in her bedroom mirror, she’d been thrilled with the beautiful girl she barely recognized. For the first time she’d thought she was almost as beautiful as Carol.

“Are those shoes comfortable?”

“Naturellement.”

“But can you walk in them?”

She pranced back and forth in front of the sofas as she had in front of her mirror earlier just to prove she could.

“Wow!”

She picked up her hair clip and coiled her hair high on her head. When she secured it, he whispered, “Better down.”

She removed the clip again, and he smiled as her hair fell about her shoulders again. “Much better.”

She bit her lip and set the clip on a low table.

“What do you say we take a walk first?” he asked.

“First let me find a vase for the rose.”

Later in the gloaming twilight when he took her hand and led her across the Millennium Bridge, she enjoyed the warmth of his long fingers entwined with hers and enjoyed the feeling that for the moment, no matter what their differences, she belonged with him.

A young couple was letting their preschool children dash about blowing bubbles. Remy’s indulgent grins made her smile. Did he like children as much as she did?

The captain of a small motorboat looked up and waved gaily at the children and their parents. The children stopped blowing bubbles when gulls and a lone pelican swooped low over the gray, churning waters.

The little boy, who had blond curls in need of a trim, pointed. “Bird.”

Remy smiled. “What a wonderful age. Life is so carefree. Do you want children?”

Nervousness tightened her throat, but she nodded, anyway, thinking it an odd question from a man like him. “First I have to find a suitable father for them.”

“Not Fletcher?”

“Not Fletcher. What about you? Do you want children?”

His eyes darkened beneath his heavy brows. “I’m not sure I would make a very good father.”

“Of course you could be a wonderful father—if you committed yourself to it.”

“One would hope any man who fathered a child would do as much. But I’m afraid there’s more to it. One must have examples set early in life.”

She heard gravity and doubt and profound pain in his voice as he watched the children race ahead of their parents to the other side of the river.

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