Count Toussaint’s Pregnant Mistress (4 page)

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, a new confidence blooming through her. ‘You won’t hurt me.’

And it didn’t hurt. It all felt wonderful, and even more so as Luc touched her, his hands skimming over her body, lips following; every sensation was sharp and exquisite. When Luc let her touch him Abby found herself becoming bold, touching and tasting him as he had her, revelling in his gasps and moans of pleasure.

They didn’t speak any longer, but the lack of words didn’t bother Abby, for surely this ran too deep for words? What need was there to speak of when their bodies communicated so beautifully, working together in silent, sensuous harmony?

And then it stopped. Luc rolled away, leaving Abby bereft, her arms empty and wanting.

‘Luc…’ she said, half-gasp, half-moan.

‘I don’t have protection.’ Luc sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her, and ran a shaky hand through his hair. ‘To think how close…’

Abby’s body ached and throbbed with unfulfilled desire. She moved restlessly on the sheets, her fingers bunching
against the rich satin, needing more even though she wasn’t entirely sure what ‘more’ would feel like. ‘You aren’t going to…?’

‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ Luc gave her a fleeting smile even as he pulled on his clothes. ‘We need protection, Abby. I won’t play roulette with your life.’ He paused, his brows drawing together. ‘That is, you don’t have protection already? You’re not on the Pill?’

Abby shook her head, still dazed with desire. She hadn’t even given a thought to birth control or the implications of what they were about to do.

‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

It felt like it would be a lifetime. With a little smile Abby saw he’d buttoned his shirt wrong; his fingers had been shaking. He pressed a kiss to her damp brow. Abby reached up and touched his jaw, her fingers sliding to his cheek.

‘Hurry,’ she said, and after a second’s pause Luc nodded.

‘I will.’

Luc left the room; in the distance Abby heard the soft ping announce the lift’s arrival, and then the swoosh of the doors opening and closing. Already she felt horribly alone.

The air felt cold on her naked skin and she wrapped the sheet around her, curling into it, desperate for Luc to return. The events of the evening—the champagne, the rich food and the overwhelming emotion—all caused her to suddenly feel exhausted. Without meaning to or even realizing what she was doing, her eyelids slowly drooped shut.

It was a matter of minutes to find the nearest chemist and buy the necessary items. Back in the suite, Luc strode to the bedroom, his whole body tingling with emotion, awareness. He felt so alive.

He stopped short at the sight of Abby lying in bed, her hair spread like dark silk across the pillow, her lashes
fanning her cheek. Her mouth, still swollen from his kisses, was pursed slightly in sleep, and he wondered what she was dreaming about.

Him?

Surely that
was
a dream?

In that moment, the condoms still clenched in his hand, Luc realized with cold, stark clarity how impossible this evening was. How fantastical.

Is this real? Tonight is as real as anything is.

Except, Luc acknowledged as he gazed down at Abby, this wasn’t real. He’d lied. This was but a moment in time, an evening taken from reality. And it had to stop now. He’d been about to take her innocence, Luc thought, the realization lashing him. He’d been about to take what wasn’t his, selfishly, utterly, and then walk away in the morning, for he knew he had no other choice. He had nothing more to give, nothing more to feel. Already he felt the numbness creep over him once more, his mind, soul and even heart turning cold and blank again.

He was so used to the sensation, it was almost comforting, and only the knowledge of how he might have hurt Abby pierced it like a well-aimed arrow. For surely he would hurt her? Unless…

Unless he left now, before he claimed her for his own and took her innocence. If he left now, while she slept, he would hurt her, but not as much. Not as deeply.

Luc let out a ragged sound, half-sigh, half-cry. He didn’t want to go. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself in Abby’s embrace for a few hours.

What a selfish bastard he truly was, and always had been, turning a blind eye to another’s pain as he took and did what he wanted.

No longer. Slowly, aching with regret and loss for what he’d never really had, Luc slid the unused pack of condoms
into his pocket. He reached down to kiss Abby’s forehead once more, letting his lips barely brush her skin. She let out a little sigh, and the tiny sound clawed at Luc’s heart, causing little shocks of emotion that penetrated the hard shell he’d surrounded himself with. He’d kept himself numb for so long, he hadn’t thought he could feel again. He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to feel the guilt and regret his own failure caused streaming hotly through him.

He’d failed Suzanne. He’d failed her spectacularly, through month after month of never seeing, never understanding. Never doing anything to save her. He wouldn’t fail anyone else again, especially not someone as innocent and sweet as Abby. He wouldn’t allow himself the opportunity.

She had her life, her music, a whole, wonderful world that had nothing to do with him. It was better that way.

Gently Luc tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear, and let his fingers linger on her cheek before he forced his hand away.

He walked slowly to the doorway, his heart
aching, feeling.
He forced the emotion away, let the numbness settle over him once more like a mantle, a shroud. His coat draped over one arm, he turned back towards her sleeping form and whispered a single word: ‘Goodbye.’

Then he stole from the room, so quietly that in her sleep Abby didn’t even stir.

A
BBY
woke slowly, languorously, a sleepy warmth still spread over her like a blanket.

‘Excusez-moi…’

Abby jerked upright, shock drenching her in icy ripples. A maid stood at the foot of the bed, her eyes downcast, a duster held in one hand.

Abby clutched the sheet to her chest—her naked chest. She didn’t have a stitch on; she looked around with a gnawing desperation for Luc. He was nowhere to be seen.

He was gone.

She felt it, just as she’d felt the connection—electric, magical—between them last night. This felt much worse—a consuming emptiness that told her he’d left like a thief in the night, before they’d even…She bit back the thought and its accompanying sob. She didn’t need to look down at the floor to see only her clothes strewn there, so carelessly, so obviously, to know he was gone. His departure echoed emptily inside her.

She glanced back at the maid who had raised her eyes to gaze at her with sly speculation that made Abby’s whole body flush. From somewhere she dredged the last remaining shreds of her dignity and stared haughtily at the maid.

‘Vous pouvez retourner dans quelques minutes…’

The maid nodded and disappeared from the room. Abby heard the lift doors swoosh open and knew she was alone.

Completely alone.

She choked back the sudden grief that threatened to swamp her. Why had he left? He’d gone to buy birth control, for heaven’s sake, and then he’d just left her here—why? Had he had second thoughts? Decided she wasn’t worth the effort? Would he ever be back? This was his room, after all; perhaps he would return. Surely…?

Abby slipped from the bed, wrapping the sheet more firmly around her as she stalked through the suite looking for clues, promises that he would be back, that he’d just slipped out for coffee.

But of course he hadn’t. In a place like this, coffee would have been delivered, along with warm croissants and the newspaper. She and Luc would have lounged in bed, drinking coffee and feeding each other croissants while they shared interesting bits of news they’d read. Then they would have made love as they’d meant to, had been about to, last night, slowly, languorously, taking their time…

Except of course they wouldn’t, now, because he was gone. It was a fantasy, just as last night had been a fantasy. What she’d felt had been a fantasy.

False.

Fairy tales didn’t happen. They were lies masked as bedtime stories, and she’d been a fool to believe in them—in him—for one moment.

Abby walked through the living room where they’d sat and talked, looking for—what? A scribbled message, a scrap of paper, anything to show her he hadn’t left so abruptly, hadn’t snuck out while she’d been sleeping with false promises of his quick return. Anything to show her last night had been real, that he’d felt as she had.

There was nothing.

Luc had taken every shred of evidence with him, as thoroughly and mercilessly as a criminal erasing his clues. The bureaux were empty, the cupboards bare.

He was utterly, utterly gone.

Still wrapped in a sheet, Abby sank on the edge of the bed, her mind spinning, desolation skirting on the fringes of her mind.

She couldn’t break down, not here, not now.

Not yet.

She took a deep breath and willed herself to think clearly. He was gone; she needed to accept that. She needed to get out of here.

She glanced down at her evening gown, still lying on the floor in a pooled heap of silk. That was all she had to wear, and the thought of walking through the lobby of the hotel in last night’s clothes made a fresh flush creep across her body once more as her head bowed in shame.

How could he have done this, have left her? After
everything?
And yet nothing. She’d been aching with desire, her body desperate to join with his, and he’d simply walked away! She closed her eyes, remembering the sweet, sweet pleasure of his hands on her body. A choked sob escaped her and she pressed a trembling fist to her lips. No, she wouldn’t think of that. She couldn’t, if she wanted to get out of here. She needed strength for the journey home, for surely her father was waiting for her, worried, furious, needing explanations.

What had she done?

Last night she hadn’t been thinking of repercussions. She hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d just
wanted
, wanted Luc, had wanted the night with him never to end.

And now it had. It had ended hours ago, and she hadn’t even realized.

With shaking hands, Abby dressed herself. Her Cinderella’s
ballgown felt like rags now and left her just as bare. She shrugged on her coat and slipped her feet into the heels. A glance in the mirror showed her pale face, made strained and gaunt by the morning’s realizations. The evening gown spoke volumes about how she’d spent her night.

Abby heard the lift doors open once more and knew the maid had returned. She took a deep breath and kept her head held high as she swept towards the foyer.

‘Excusez-moi, mademoiselle,’
the maid murmured. ‘The gentleman checked out late last night. I did not realize he had a visitor.’

‘I was just leaving,’ Abby said in a cold voice, for her pride was all she had right now. Without looking at the maid, unable to bear seeing her scorn or pity, she entered the lift. As the doors closed, she sagged against the bench, the howl of misery inside her threatening to claw right up her throat and spill out in an endless rush of tears.

Somehow she managed to hold it together as she left the hotel. An almost comforting numbness stole over her as she walked alone through the opulent lobby, her head held high, looking neither left nor right. She heard the speculative murmurs in her wake, and knew she’d been recognized. She pushed the thought away, emerging into the street, the crisp morning air cooling her heated cheeks.

She hailed a taxi, relief pouring through her when one pulled up smoothly to the kerb seconds later. She slipped inside, gave her address and closed her eyes.

She’d almost fallen into a doze—sleep was the ultimate anaesthetic—when the door of the taxi was yanked open.

‘Where,’ Andrew Summers hissed through clenched teeth, ‘have you been?’

Abby paid the driver and slipped out of the taxi. ‘I was out,’ she said, her voice flat and expressionless. ‘Please, Dad, let’s not make a scene here.’

Andrew nodded jerkily, and Abby followed him up to their hotel suite.

She stood in the doorway of the small parlour that separated their bedrooms, clutching her jacket to her as her father yanked a miniature bottle of whisky from the room’s fridge and unscrewed the cap. He downed it in one angry swallow, surprising Abby, for she’d never known him to drink more than a glass of wine with dinner.

‘I had reporters sniffing around here earlier this morning,’ he told her, his back to her; still she could see his hands shake as he put down the empty bottle. ‘Apparently someone saw you last night with a man.’

And she thought they’d been alone; she thought it had been
providential.
Abby smiled cynically at this naïve thought. She’d grown up a lot in the last twenty-four hours.

‘I was,’ she confirmed coolly, and her father turned around, his eyebrows raised in disbelief.

‘A stranger? You were out with a stranger? Abby, how could you?’

She shrugged, not wanting to admit how easily she could, and had. ‘I simply had dinner in a hotel bar. Is that so shocking?’

‘The reporters are saying you went upstairs with him,’ Andrew stated flatly.

Abby lifted her chin. ‘My private life is no one’s concern but my own.’

‘That’s not true,’ Andrew returned. ‘Your private life is my concern, and the public’s concern, because you’re a public figure. We’ve worked hard to make you into a celebrity.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to be a celebrity.’

Andrew shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that.’

It was too late for a lot of things, Abby thought wearily. Too late for regrets. She thought of Luc’s wish to turn back time. Would she have turned back time if she could, wished last night into never having been?

With a fresh wave of sorrow she realized she wouldn’t have. She’d have wished it into
completion—which
must make her truly pathetic. Despite the disappointment of this morning, last night had been magical—for a time. She was glad to have had it, even if it meant facing this morning and its harsh realities alone.

‘I need to shower,’ she told her father. ‘And change. After that we can talk.’ She saw surprise flicker across his face and knew he wasn’t used to her giving orders. She wasn’t used to it, either, but without another word she left the parlour in a swirl of silk and closed the door of her bedroom.

In her
en suite
bathroom she turned the shower on full blast and stripped the gown from her body, kicking it into a corner on the floor. She never wanted to see or wear it again; it felt tainted. Everything did.

She stepped into the shower and let the scalding water stream over her like tears. The beauty of last night, she realized, the promise and the potential, did not make up for the ugliness of this morning. Why had Luc left so suddenly, without a word of explanation or farewell?

The answer was obvious—he didn’t want to be found. For whatever reason he’d changed his mind about being with her, and hadn’t wanted the confrontation of telling her so. Abby closed her eyes. Was she so undesirable, so gauche in the bedroom that he’d been able to leave in the middle of their encounter? She gave a little laugh of disbelief. Honestly, if he’d been able to leave so easily, she didn’t have what it would have taken to make him stay.

Once she was dressed and showered, she returned to the parlour, where her father sat on the sofa, his mobile phone clenched to one ear. The expression on his face was grim, and almost idly Abby wondered to whom he was talking. The concert-hall manager? A reporter? Her agent?

He snapped the phone shut and swivelled to look at Abby. ‘That was your mother.’

She felt a faint flicker of surprise; as first violinist of an orchestra in Manchester, her mother had a busy schedule, and rarely rang while Abby was on tour.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘No, Abigail,’ her father replied tersely, ‘everything is
not
all right. Your mother read in the paper this morning about the Piano Prodigy’s mystery man!’

The Piano Prodigy; it was how she’d been marketed since she’d started playing professionally at age seventeen. And, while she’d never particularly liked it, right now the words seemed so cold, so inhuman. Abby walked to the window, twisting a damp strand of hair around her finger as she gazed out at the city landscape of early spring. The trees lined the boulevard, still stark and bare against a dank, grey sky.

‘I don’t think,’ Andrew continued in that same tight voice, ‘you realize what last night meant.’

A harsh bark of laughter escaped her. ‘I know exactly what it meant.’
Nothing.

‘For your career,’ Andrew emphasized. ‘Although also…’ he trailed off, and Abby could only imagine the questions he was unable to ask.

Although her father had been both her manager and mentor for years, they’d never had the kind of relationship that encouraged personal revelation or intimacy. Abby still remembered getting her period in the middle of a piano lesson. She’d asked the mother of another pupil what to do, and kindly the woman had run out and got the necessary items at a nearby chemist. The woman had also told her father, who had looked stricken. They’d never spoken about it, of course, just as they wouldn’t speak of this. Abby wasn’t a woman, or even a daughter—she was a pianist. A prodigy.

‘Why should it mean anything to my career?’ she asked
now, although the question had little interest for her. At that moment, her career hardly mattered.

‘It doesn’t help your image to be known as a party girl,’ Andrew said after a moment.

‘A party girl?’ Abby turned around. ‘A
party girl?
’ she repeated in disbelief. Her life was so far from that—from either the party or the girl. She’d never done anything,
anything
that earned such a statement, such a judgement…until last night.

Last night she’d thrown everything to the winds—her reputation, her career, her life—in order to spend an evening with a man. A man who wanted nothing more to do with her, who hadn’t even wanted her enough in the first place.

‘Abigail,’ Andrew said in a voice of strained patience. ‘We have worked very hard to get where we are now. We’ve guarded your reputation, nurtured it as a woman of singular devotion and talent.’

Abby didn’t miss the use of the plural pronoun
‘we’.
Everything she’d done, her father felt
he’d
done. It had always been so. Her career was a joint enterprise, and her father had just as much, or perhaps far more, invested in it as she did. He felt any rumour or speculation, any threat, keenly.

Yet he didn’t feel the betrayal of last night.

Only she felt that.

Abby turned back to the window and gazed once more at the bleak boulevard. A light, misting drizzle had begun to fall once more. She stiffened in surprise when she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder.

‘Abby—whatever happened last night…’ Her father trailed off, and Abby knew that was the best he could manage. It was his brand of sympathy, and from somewhere she dredged up a smile.

‘It’s all right.’

‘You’ll just have to play your heart out tonight,’ Andrew continued briskly. ‘A stellar performance erases all sins.’

Sins.
An apt word, Abby thought, and somehow she managed to nod, as if she were agreeing with him.

She didn’t play her heart out that night; perhaps she had no more heart. She felt cold and numb, and in fact she didn’t play very well at all. She stumbled during the
Apassionata
badly enough for people to notice, and she heard the collective little gasp. She didn’t even care. She continued playing, vaguely aware that the music was as flat as her feelings, her heart. Numb, lifeless.

At the intermission her father, waiting in the wings, tensely told her to relax. Abby could see the worry in his eyes, and she wondered if it was for herself or her career. Had there been any self? she wondered now, gazing in the mirror at her own pale, drawn face. Or had there simply been the music?