Эбби Грин – Escape For Mother's Day: The French Tycoon's Pregnant Mistress (страница 18)
Alana felt a knife skewer her inside, so hurt for a moment that she felt winded. And yet this was exactly what she’d asked for. Demanded. And when he bent his head to kiss her again, and started to open her shirt, she couldn’t stop him because if she did he’d know that all of her proclamations were built on a very flimsy foundation.
With the lingering heat of their recent impassioned love-making still in her blood and heavy limbs, Alana’s focus came back to the present. The earth below was an indistinct mass of brown mountains seen through breaks in the cloud. She sighed and let her head fall back against the seat, closing her eyes. She was playing with fire; she knew it. And all the trust issues in the world weren’t going to keep her safe from harm.
As his private jet winged Alana home in style and comfort, the novelty and charmlessness of commercial travel was quickly reminding Pascal how far he’d come. Although, he could never forget his upbringing; it was branded onto his skin like a tattoo. He could remember how close he’d come to being one of the lost youths of the Parisian suburbs: lost to a life of crime and drugs, hopelessness. Until his mother had died and had thus saved him, by ensuring that he would go to live with his grandfather. She had redeemed herself and her woeful mothering by making sure he’d take another path, despite the fact that he’d been a representation of everything that had failed in her own life.
Pascal strode free of the gnarled mass of human traffic in Charles de Gaulle airport and sank into the back of his car which was waiting just outside the doors. Why was he thinking of such things now, when he hadn’t thought of them in years?
Alana.
A woman was making him think of these things, when no other lover had ever done so. He had to concede that no other lover had taken him by the scruff of the neck and rattled him so completely. No other lover had evoked within him a compelling need to obey instinct over intellect. He hadn’t lived like that for a long time. She connected to something within him, primitive and long-suppressed, deep and visceral. He searched desperately to justify this feeling, to rationalise it, but his brain wouldn’t cooperate.
When she’d stood there earlier and had coolly informed him that she was fine with their temporary affair, that above all she didn’t expect commitment, he should have been rejoicing. Wasn’t it a man’s ultimate fantasy? For a man like him, happy to take lovers for a short time until they bored him, or until they started looking for more.
Here he was, being offered this fantasy on a plate, and he well knew that she meant every word she’d said. It wasn’t some kind of devious reverse-psychology. So why had he felt anything but relieved? Why had he wanted to challenge her? Why had that instinct not to let her go felt so strong? He’d certainly never aspired to the empty heights of marriage, either; he’d learnt at an early age that searching for that elusive happiness only bred disillusionment and pain. His parents had both proved in their own ways to be prime examples of that. His father had seen him as nothing but a threat to his own marriage, and had rejected him outright because of it.
Yet Alana was making him question the very bedrock on which he’d built his life. His sluggish brain finally kicked into gear: attraction. That had to be it. A rare form of lust. He just hadn’t met a woman who’d taken possession of his body and mind before, that was all. That had to be all. OK, so she wasn’t into anything permanent—well, neither was he. He just wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of the ultimatum, that was all. He relaxed. Their affair certainly wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
‘You know we’re just concerned, love.’
‘I know, Mam, I know.’ Alana sank into her couch, still wearing her coat.
‘He seems like a very nice man. He’s awfully important, isn’t he?’
Alana bit back a rueful smile.
Her mother trilled a laugh down the phone. ‘I might not quite understand these new relationships, but, love, I know how hard it was for you when Ryan died. It’s OK to move on now, it’s been long enough. No one would expect you to mourn for ever.’
Alana felt a wave of isolation come over her. Her parents had never really acknowledged the fact that she’d been divorcing Ryan; it had simply been too painful for them to admit that one of their children had failed in their marriage that way. So, when Ryan had died so tragically just before the divorce had come through, Alana had known that in some awful way, it had allowed her parents to believe in the myth of her fairy tale. Was it any wonder she hadn’t been able to confide in them?
After a few more words they finished the conversation, and Alana was relieved that her mother hadn’t mentioned Pascal again. She shook her head and then resolutely turned off her phone before she could get another acerbic call from her sister, Ailish, who would no doubt have seen the same gossip rags as her mother. She and Pascal were all over the press; the reporters had been waiting at Dublin airport. She knew she’d been naïve to think for a second that perhaps people wouldn’t be interested.
Why did she have to go and meet someone who made her feel alive again, someone she couldn’t resist? Someone in the public eye on a level that made Ryan O’Connor seem as if he’d been in the Z-list celebrity pile? It was as if she’d had a list of things to avoid and had blithely ignored each and every one of them. Alana just hoped that she could look at Pascal one day soon and not feel that burning desire rip through her entire body like a life-sustaining necessity.
CHAPTER SIX
THREE heady, passion-filled weeks later, that day was eluding Alana spectacularly as she looked down from her position in the press box to the VIP area in Croke Park. Déjà vu washed over her as she caught Pascal’s eye and made a face before turning her attention back to the game between Ireland v England. Her heart was singing, her breath was coming fast, and her blood was zinging through her veins. She put her intermittent feelings of nausea down to that see-sawing feeling and tried to forget that she’d been compelled to buy an over-the-counter pregnancy test that morning on her way to work after Pascal had said goodbye to her from her own modestly sized double bed.
She wouldn’t think about her late period or the pregnancy test now. It couldn’t be possible. And yet, a small voice niggled,
The match picked up in pace just then and Alana let it distract her. At the end, Pascal found her as the usual scramble started.
‘I’ve agreed to go on the post-match analysis panel to give my opinion on how I think the tournament is going to go. They’re doing it in the press centre here.’
‘OK,’ Alana said, feeling slightly breathless and hating herself for it. ‘I’ve some interviews lined up, and then I’ve got to head back to the studio, so I’ll see you later.’
He nodded and bent close to her ear for a moment. ‘I want to kiss you so thoroughly that you’re boneless in my arms, but I don’t think you’d thank me for that in front of the entire pressbox.’
Alana felt boneless already, and fought the rogue urge to let him do exactly that. She just shook her head swiftly, alternately disappointed and relieved when he stepped away with a cool look on his face.
His tall, powerful frame disappeared down through the seats, taking a little piece of her with him. She sighed. She was in so much trouble, and she was potentially in a whole lot more trouble too. The kind of trouble that Pascal Lévêque wouldn’t thank her for. And yet … She placed a hand on her belly. Right at that moment she thought that, if she was pregnant, it was something she’d always have for herself. A baby, a child.
Just then the cameraman signalled that they were ready to go with the first interview, and Alana gathered up her stuff and hurried down to the pitch.
By the time they were onto the last interview with one of the Ireland players, Alana was feeling exhausted. She glanced up and her stomach contracted painfully when she saw who it was—Eoin Donohoe, one of her late husband’s partners in crime. He was a huge, intimidating presence, one of the biggest players on the team. Like Ryan, he, too, was married, but that hadn’t stopped his own hedonism. Waves of old mutual antipathy flowed between them as Alana prepared to ask the questions. Eoin smiled at her, but it held a nasty edge which she ignored.
They were almost done with the live interview when Eoin said quietly, ‘So, we see that you’re moving on with your life. Poor Ryan’s barely cold in the grave.’