The Night That Started It All
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Anna Cleary
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19,9K
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15
CHAPTER ONE
SINCE the break with Manon, his long-time lover, Luc Valentin mostly resisted seduction. Sex risked ever more desire, and desire was a downhill slope to entanglement in a web of female complications. Before a man knew it he could be sucked into an emotional shredder.
So when Luc strolled into D’Avion Sydney and the pretty faces at the front desk lit up like New Year’s Eve, their smiles were wasted on the air.
‘Luc Valentin,’ he said, handing over his card. ‘I’m here to see Rémy Chénier.’
The first beguiling face froze. ‘Luc—Valentin? The Luc Valentin? Of…’
‘Paris. Head Office. That is correct.’ Luc smiled. Rarely had his appearance at one of the company offices sparked such a dramatic effect. ‘Rémy, mademoiselle?’
The woman’s eyes darted sideways towards her fellows. It seemed a strange paralysis had overcome them. ‘Er…Rémy isn’t here. I’m sorry, Mr Valentin, we haven’t seen him for days. He isn’t answering his messages. We don’t know where he is. We don’t know anything. Do we?’ she appealed to the others. She consulted her mobile, then scribbled an address. ‘You might try here. I’m sure if he’s in Mr Chénier will be deligh—overjoyed to see you.’
Luc doubted it. Since his plan was to encourage his cousin to explain the shortfall in the company accounts then wring his unscrupulous neck, joy was likely to be limited.
There would be a woman involved, Luc guessed, driving across the Harbour Bridge under an impossibly blue sky. With Rémy there was always a woman, though in Luc’s thirty-six years never the same one twice.
The address was for a sleek apartment complex on Sydney’s northern shore. Luc pressed the buzzer twice before it connected. Then for several tense seconds all he heard was the rustle of white noise.
Prickles arose on his neck.
At last, enfin, a voice. It sounded muffled, more than a little croaky, as if its owner had a terrible cold. Or had been weeping.
‘Who is it?’
Luc bent to speak into the intercom, which hadn’t been designed to accommodate tall guys with long bones. ‘Luc Valentin. I am wishing to speak with Rémy Chénier.’
‘Oh.’ Through the woman’s husky fog he could detect a certain relief. ‘Are you from his office?’
‘You could say I’m from D’Avion, certainly.’
‘Well, he’s not here. Praise the Lord.’ The last was muttered.
Luc drew his brows together. ‘But this is his apartment, yes?’ The place looked like the sort of residence Rémy would choose. All gloss and sharp edges.
‘Used to be. Not that he ever seemed to know it,’ she added in an undertone. ‘Anyway, he’s gone. Don’t know where, don’t care. Nothin’ to do with me. I’m outta here.’
Luc’s eye fell on a small pile of carefully stacked possessions inside the glass entrance, among them cooking pots and a frilled and very feminine umbrella.
‘Excuse me, mademoiselle. Can you tell me when was the last time you saw him?’
‘Months ago. Yesterday.’
‘Yesterday? So he is in Sydney still?’
‘I—I hope not. Maybe. I don’t know. Look…Look, monsieur…’ Luc noticed a slightly mocking inflection in the ‘monsieur’ ‘…I’m very busy. I can’t keep—’
He jumped in quickly before she cut him off. ‘Please, miss. Just one more thing. Has he taken his clothes?’
‘Mmm…’ There was a pregnant pause. ‘Let’s just say his clothes took a tumble.’
Luc hesitated, picturing the scene those words conjured. He had an overwhelming desire to see the face that went with the foggy voice. ‘Are you Rémy’s girlfriend, by some chance? Or—perhaps—the maid?’
There was a long, loaded silence. Then she said, ‘Yeah. The maid.’
‘Pardonnez-moi, miss, but will you allow me to come upstairs and speak with you face to face? There are some ques—’
The intercom disconnected. He waited for the door to unlock. When it didn’t he pressed again. Finally after one long, persistent ring, she came back on. ‘Look, get lost, will you? You can’t come up.’
‘But I only wish to—’
‘No. You can’t.’ There was alarm in her tone. ‘Go away or I’ll call the police.’
Luc straightened up, frowning. What after all would he expect? Rémy had never been known to leave friends in his wake. Though if she was the maid, why would she be weeping?
She must have a cold.
He noticed a box jammed against the glass. Through its half-open lid he saw it was packed with shoes, some of them a little scruffy. Though certainly feminine in shape and size, these were not the shoes of a femme fatale.
He slid behind the wheel of his hire car, wondering what had happened to his powers of persuasion. In the past he’d have had that door open in a second and the maid eating out of his hand. Of course, in the past he hadn’t learned what he knew now.
The gentle sex were deceptive. The gentle sex were capable of eviscerating a guy and throwing his entrails to the wolves.
From behind a curtain at an upstairs window Shari Lacey watched the car drive away. Whoever he was, he’d had quite a nice voice. Deep, serious and quiet. Charming even, if she hadn’t been over French accents. So over them.
She shuddered.
* * *
In the next thirty-six hours Luc ran through everything at the D’Avion office with a fine-toothed comb. Every file, every Post-It note. Tested Rémy’s team until the PA was sobbing and the execs a whiter shade of grey. He sacked the finance officer on the spot. The guy should have known.
Significant sums had vanished from the accounts, neatly siphoned away, while nothing he uncovered gave Luc a clue as to his cousin’s likely whereabouts. With the directors’ meeting in Paris looming, Luc felt his time was running out. With grim clarity he saw the moment was close when he must let the law loose on his cousin.
A chill slithered down his spine. Another family scandal. They’d dredge it all up again. His embarrassment. The public ignominy. “The Director, His Mistress, Their Dog and Her Lover” splashed all over the world again in lurid, shaming letters.
He stared grimly through the office window at Sydney Harbour, a treacherous smiling blue in the midday sun. One way or another he had to find the canaille. Hunt him down and force him to make reparation.
There was one final resort, of course. Luc sighed. He should have known it would come to this.
The family connection.
Emilie, Rémy’s twin, was married to an Australian now, but as far as Luc knew she and Rémy had always been close. Despite not having seen her for a few years, Luc thought of Emi with affection. Though she shared Rémy’s gingery curls and blue eyes, she was as different from her twin as a warm, happy wren from a vulture.
Trouble was, like all the women in his family she wanted to know too much.
* * *
Eyeliner in hand, Shari leaned closer to the mirror. Dark blue along right lower lid, continue without breaking across bridge, now ease onto left lower lid.
She winced. Careful. While the swelling had subsided, her bruise was still tender. Her badge. The perfect parting gift, really, for a mouse. It brightened up her face. It seemed she could never have compared to all those exciting women Rémy had known in France. And she was too demanding. Suspicious. Difficult. Too clever for her own good. Too emotional— Well, that one was certainly true. Too mouthy. Too jealous. Too unforgiving. Frigide. A frump. Needy. Victorian…
His complaints had mounted over time. No wonder the poor guy had been forced to seek so much feminine consolation far and wide.
She knew in her mind the trick was not to believe the things he’d said, but to ridicule them. Though in her heart…
He’d stopped being sweet some time back, but this recent encounter had been…a shock. Nothing she’d ever anticipated. Though she needed to remind herself it could have been far worse. For a while there she’d thought he might actually force her into sex.
Hot shame swept through her again. To think something like this could happen to her. The irony of it, when her girlfriends had so envied her for her sexy Frenchman. At one time. Before they noticed his roving eye. However tactful they tried to be around her, Shari knew they’d seen it.
But if any of them found out it had come to this squalid end—the ones she had left, that was—what would they think of her? Would they assume he’d been violent all along? Would they think she’d tolerated it?
She wished she wouldn’t keep thinking of all those battered wives she’d seen on television shows over the years. All those sad women, too beaten down to defend themselves, believing they deserved their punishment, making excuses for their abusers. Forgiving them, walking the domestic tightrope fearful of saying the wrong thing.
She started breathing fast, getting too emotional again. It was no use getting worked up again. She wasn’t those women. She hadn’t been too entangled in the relationship to see she had to extricate herself. She’d acted swiftly and decisively, give or take a couple of cruel tweaks of her hair. A twist of her ear. A nipple. Shari Lacey would not be, could never be, downtrodden.
From now on it was all good. She was in her lovely old Paddington again, with every pretty street teeming with the sort of inspirations a children’s author needed. She had everything to sing about.
Still, it was amazing how a man’s fist had only needed to be slammed in her face the one time to leave her as jumpy as a kitten. Thank heavens she’d already dealt with the estate agents and fixed up the details of her move before Fist Day, or she wasn’t sure how she’d have coped.
But she was a rational person. She was safe now. She would get over it. The important thing was to fight fear. Not to turn into an emotional cripple, cringing at the sound of every male voice. She could still enjoy men and indulge in a little flirty chit-chat.
Maybe.
Rémy was not typical. Her head knew this. Once again, though, it was her heart that was the trouble.
In fact it was a good thing, a needful thing, that Neil was insisting she come to his party. There’d be loads of men there, all quite as civilised as her lovely brother. It could be her testing ground. From this moment on, serenity was her cloak and her shield.
When her hand grew steady again, she lined both lids with the darker shade, painted a band of purple shadow beneath her eyes and on the upper lids, then switched to the turquoise brush inside the corners, across the bridge and all the way to her brows.
Standing back to examine her handiwork, she felt a surge of relief. Not only was the bruise undetectable, the stripe across her eyes looked quite atmospheric. It was dramatic, maybe a little over the top, but it suited her. Somehow it made her irises glow a vivid sea-green.
If she hadn’t been kicking herself over what a fool she’d been, how needy she must have been to fall for such a cliché, she’d have laughed to think of how poor old Neil and Emilie would freak when she turned up looking like Daryl Hannah in Bladerunner.
Though Emilie was no fool. She had grown up with Rémy.
That set Shari worrying again, so as an added decoy she drew a frog on her right cheekbone.
Now what to wear to Neil’s fortieth? If a woman was forced to go to a party wearing a stripe, it might be best to look gorgeous. A little shopping might be called for. Her smile broke through. With her camouflage in place, the frump could go out.
She’d cried her last tear over the man who couldn’t love. Cried and cried till she was empty.
It was time to get back on the horse.
