Read Online The Night That Started It All by Anna Cleary - Free Book Online

roared into a mad, uncontrollable rush.
    ‘Shari.’ He searched her face, then bent formally to kiss each of her cheeks.
    She’d mentally prepared herself for this. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t allow him to touch her, kiss her, even brush her cheek with his roughened jaw, let alone touch her with his gorgeous lips. But when it came to the crunch …
    ‘
Bonjour
,’ she breathed, barely able to stand on her marsh-mallow knees. She felt the backs of her eyes prick and was possessed by a despicable longing to cling to his lapels.
    Though gentle, his dark velvet voice seared her nerves like a bow drawn across the strings of a cello. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’
    ‘Oh. Oh, yes. Thanks. I know. It’s dreadful, isn’t it? Same—same to you, of course.’
    Amber glowed in the depths of his dark eyes as they searched hers. With chagrin she supposed he was looking for traces of the bruise.
    ‘You must be desolated,’ he said.
    Was he serious? Was this more mockery?
    He continued. ‘I did not expect … When did you arrive? Why did you not say? Who are you with? Where are you sleeping?’
    Beneath her silken finery her breasts all at once felt indescribably tender. Some of the insulting assumptions he’d made during their previous encounter flooded back with raw immediacy, and she found herself breathing rather fast.
    ‘Perhaps you mean with whom.’
    His eyes glinted.
‘Comment?’
He tilted up one thick black brow. ‘
Vraiment
, it’s coming back to me. How you are.’
    How she
was
, though, seemed to wholly concentrate his attention, because he devoured her from head to toe, raking her ensemble with a wolflike, smouldering curiosity that eliminated the rest of the world from her awareness. At the same time, the smoothness of his deep voice was having its old hypnotic effect. She might have been walking with him through the shrubbery on a summer’s night.
    ‘You are very pale. Your
lips
are pale.’ He examined them with an intense interest. ‘And you are thinner.’ His gaze swept over her, lingering a second longer than was necessary below her throat. ‘Though not too thin, fortunately.’
    Scandalously, her overly sensitive breasts swelled to push the boundaries even of this new bra, and she began to feel almost aroused.
    Inappropriate.
Thoroughly
inappropriate.
    All these conflicting sensations were making her giddy, but somehow she stayed upright and said things. Some things, at least.
    As if in a dream she inclined her head. ‘I’m sure you mean that as a compliment, though I have no idea what you expected. It’s only been a couple of weeks.’
    She realised she’d made a gross tactical blunder when the ghost of a smile touched his mouth and she caught a glimpse of his white, even teeth. ‘Five weeks and three days, to be exact.’
    ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said crushingly. ‘I haven’t been counting.’
    She had the disconcerting feeling that the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth signalled satisfaction. But what did he have to be satisfied about? Why did he think she’d come here? For him?
    He gestured then to the fascinated onlookers, in particular to a couple of elderly women who were circling to view her narrowly.
    ‘
Maman, Tante Marise, c’est Shari,’
he said. ‘
La
fiancée de Rémy.’
    ‘
Ex
-fiancée,’ Shari corrected hurriedly, but her words were lost in the babble as family members closed in around her and subjected her to a gamut of curiosity. Only thing was, their questions, arguments and observations were all for each other, not for her.
    Not that she’d have understood them anyway. Their French was so rapid and idiomatic she could scarcely pick up a word.
    Except for the term
fiancée
. That was being bandied about quite furiously.
    The next thing she knew someone patted her, though stiffly. Then someone else murmured something to her about Rémy and gave her a kindly nod. More people spoke to her, some with increasing warmth until everyone, including