Tempestuous Reunion

From no age at all, Catherine had been desperate to be loved. With hindsight she could only equate herself with a walking time-bomb, programmed to self-destruct. Within hours of her birth, she had been abandoned by her mother and her reluctant parent had never been traced. Nor had anybody ever come forward with any information.

She had grown up in a children’s home where she had been one of many. She had been a dreamer, weaving fantasies for years about the unknown mother who might eventually come to claim her. When that hope had worn thin in her teens, she had dreamt of a towering passion instead.

Leaving school at sixteen, she had worked as a helper in the home until it had closed down two years later. The Goulds had been related to the matron. A young, sophisticated couple, they had owned a small art gallery in London. Giving her a job as a receptionist, the Goulds had paid her barely enough to live on and had taken gross advantage of her willingness to work long hours. Business had been poor at the gallery and it had been kept open late most nights, Catherine left in charge on the many evenings that her employers went out.

Luc had strolled in one wet winter’s night when she’d been about to lock up. His hotel had been near by. He had walked in off the street on impulse, an off-white trenchcoat carelessly draped round his shoulders, crystalline raindrops glistening in his luxuriant black hair and that aura of immense energy and self-assurance splintering from him in waves. She had made her first choice then, bedazzled and bemused by a fleeting smile…she had stopped locking up.

A silver limousine purred into the kerb several yards ahead of her now, penetrating her reverie. She hadn’t even noticed where she’d been walking. Looking up, she found herself in a quiet side-street. The rear door of the car swung open and Luc stepped out on to the pavement, blocking her path. ‘May I offer you a lift?’

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