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More than the evening.

No. Again he slammed the harsh, forbidding negative down across his wayward thoughts. The only reason he had anything at all to do with Lissa Stephens was to assess whether she was suitable to marry his brother. It had seemed in the casino an open and shut case. Picking her up in the street as he’d done should only have confirmed it. She should have been eager to be picked up—eager for the interest and intention of someone so obviously rich. She should have batted her thickened eyelashes at him and come on to him.

Instead, she’d shown every reluctance at getting into his car, and when she had she’d fallen asleep.

He frowned. It didn’t make sense. It was irrational. Lissa Stephens in the casino and Lissa Stephens asleep in his car seemed two quite different people, both in appearance and in behaviour.

As the car drove on, back into the brightly lit affluent West End, a world away from the dreary bleakness of south London’s poorer districts, Xavier knew he could be sure only of one thing. That he could not yet be sure about Lissa Stephens.

His investigation, he had to accept, was very far from over.

But what, precisely, should be his next step?

Well … He shifted his shoulders as if to release a sudden tension. He had the rest of the night to decide.

The rest of the night to think about Lissa Stephens.

As she stood outside the door to her ground-floor flat, Lissa paused a moment. Her emotions were strange. She was still feeling blurred from interrupted sleep. But that was not the reason.

The reason was even now driving away down the street.

Why did he do it? Why did he offer me a lift and go out of his way to drive me back here, miles away?

Any wariness that he might have had less than honourable intentions had been completely unfounded. He hadn’t made the slightest attempt to make a move on her, and certainly her own attitude had scarcely been inviting.

Deliberately so. Because what, dear God, would have been the point? Even without any of the complications in her life, the guy was still a punter, and therefore completely out of bounds. He might be like something out of Continental movie in terms of looks, but if he’d actually thought he might pick her up sexually, knowing her to be a casino hostess, it would only have been because he himself was a sleazeball.

But he wasn’t that.

Apart from that moment when he’d shown surprise that a woman working as a hostess could possibly be capable of learning a foreign language, he hadn’t actually dissed her at all. In fact, if she’d had to describe his attitude towards her she would have had to say it was one of civility and nothing more.

She frowned again. So why had he offered her a lift? Some kind of Gallic gallantry after making her miss her bus? If so, it had been an over-the-top gesture, and she’d responded appropriately by asking to be let out at Trafalgar Square. He could have done that and gone on his way.

But he hadn’t. He’d insisted on driving her all the way back here. But why?

Impatiently she brushed the question from her head. It was pointless asking it—she wasn’t going to get an answer. And the answer didn’t matter anyway.

Xavier Lauran was not someone she was going to encounter a second time after all.

For the briefest moment, as she inserted her key into the lock and turned it quietly, she felt a pang go through her. He had walked into her life—and out again. The most incredible-looking male she’d ever seen. A man to take her breath away, stop the blood in her pulse, hollow out her stomach.

Gone.

The pang bit again. Her eyes clouded. Then, with a tightening of her chin, she let herself inside her flat. Xavier Lauran had been and gone in her life, and that was that. And it was just as well.

There was no room in her life for him. None at all.

No room for anyone except—

‘Lissy, you’re home.’ The voice that spoke out of the darkness was soft, and very slightly slurred.

Lissa walked into the bedroom. Her life closed around her. Familiar, loving, but cruel and bleak.

Xavier stood by the uncurtained windows of his hotel suite and moodily nursed a cognac glass between his fingers. He looked down at the silent street below.

He should go to bed. Go to sleep. But he didn’t feel tired. There was a restlessness pacing in his veins. A question circulating in his head.

What was he going to do about Lissa Stephens?

He’d thought it would be cut and dried. That the trashy casino hostess gushing over him was all the evidence he needed that she was the last person he should allow his brother to marry. The carefully orchestrated offer of a lift was merely supposed to have given the girl the opportunity to do what any of her co-workers would surely have done.

But she hadn’t.

Why not?

The cynical answer was that a woman with sufficient—if unexpected—intelligence to have learnt a foreign language was also one that was too smart to jeopardise what she had going with another wealthy man—his brother—to risk a fleeting interlude with anyone else. And maybe that was the reason she hadn’t given him the come on.

But maybe it was for a quite different reason. Logic demanded that he consider that possibility. One that was at odds with the woman he had thought she obviously was. Maybe Lissa Stephens simply wasn’t the kind of girl the evidence said she was.

The slow, unconscious swirling of the cognac in his glass halted abruptly.

He had to know for sure.

And there was, Xavier knew, with a sudden clenching of his stomach, an obvious way to find out.

Spend more time with her.

Conflicting emotions flashed through him as he articulated the thought—and neither was welcome. Emotion seldom was. But he had to recognise it, all the same. One was extreme reluctance—reluctance for a reason that was troublingly evident in the second emotion flaring in him. An emotion that was completely and absolutely inappropriate to the situation. But it was there, all the same—and he could do nothing about it.

Anticipation.

With a sudden lift of his hand, he raised the cognac glass to his lips and took a mouthful of the fine, fiery liquid. He might as well face it—he wanted to see the girl again. Wanted to spend more time with her.

And it was not just to check her out for his brother.

The kick of the cognac to his system seemed to release something in him. A hot pulse through his veins.

He wanted to see her again all right.

Danger prickled on his skin.

He shouldn’t do this.

The cool, analytical voice of reason spoke inside his head. It was the voice he always listened to. The voice he ran XeL with, ran his life with—the voice he listened to which had advised him to disentangle his brother from his previous mésalliance. It was the voice with which he selected the women for his bed. Suitable women, appropriate women, who moved in his world, who were part of it, and knew the rules by which he conducted his affairs. Women quite unlike the likes of Lissa Stephens, with her confusing double image—one moment a cheap casino hostess and the next.

He shouldn’t have thought of Lissa Stephens. Shouldn’t have remembered that second image of hers, the one that had come like a blow out of nowhere in a rain-wet London street in the bleak fag end of the night.

But it was too late. It was in his head, etched like a diamond against murky smoke. The pure, bare, unadorned beauty of her profile turned away from him. The long fall of pale hair from its high plume. The upturned collar of her cheap jacket that nevertheless framed the crystal contours of her face.

Of its own volition his hand lifted the glass to his mouth again, and he took another mouthful. He wanted to see that image again. Wanted to look at it. At her.

He needed to know.

The words formed in his mind.

He needed to know. Was she, against all evidence, a fit woman to marry his brother? That was what he needed to find out.

Nothing else. That was, after all, the only question on the table. The only question that could be on the table.

Sharply, he turned away. There was nothing else he needed to know about Lissa Stephens.

As he deposited, with a jerkier movement than was necessary, the cognac glass on a table as he passed it, by heading to his bedroom, he screened out the word that had formed in his consciousness.

Menteur.

Liar.

Lissa lay, staring at the ceiling unseen above her. From time to time, through the muffling of the bedroom door, she could hear a train rattling along the tracks that ran past the rear of the poky flat. From beside her, on the next pillow in the double bed, came the rhythmic rise and fall of slightly stertorous, drug-induced breathing.

She gazed upward into the dark.

For all her extreme weariness she could not sleep. Even though she knew she had to be up again in a few hours, her mind was wide awake.

Thinking. Remembering.

And—worse still—imagining.

About one single face. One single man.

Angrily, she tried to force the image from her mind.

What was the point in thinking about him? None—none at all. So why was she doing it?

Because her mind would not go anywhere else.

Would not even think about the one thing that, above all else in her life, she always thought about. The one person she always had to think about.

Guilt drenched through her. Oh, God—how low could she stoop? Even thinking it with a note of resentment, however faint. Automatically, as if to assuage her own guilt, she reached out a hand to let it rest lightly on the sleeping form beside her. A wave of love and pity welled in her.

If only she could wave a magic wand. If only she could make it somehow instantly better. If only she could …

But she couldn’t. Bleakness chilled in her throat. There was no magic wand. Nothing like that. Only a tiny sliver of hope. And even to seize that meant that all her waking hours had to be dedicated to one thing and one thing only—earning money. Saving money. Little by little. Slowly, oh, so slowly.

Unless Armand …

The chill intensified.

He hadn’t phoned. She had hoped against hope that tonight he would, but there had been nothing. That made it three nights in a row, not hearing from him.

He’s gone.

The grim words tolled in her brain. She might try to dispel them, but they would not disappear.

Gone.

A single word, extinguishing hope—hope she should not have allowed herself.

Against her will the image formed in her mind of sable hair and dark eyes and a sculpted mouth.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘LISSA, the manager wants you. In his office. Sharpish!’

Lissa swivelled her head from her cramped place at the vanity unit in the crowded dressing room that she and the other hostesses changed in. She had only just arrived, and was about to start on her make-up.

She frowned at the command, issued by one of the staff from the door.

‘What for?’

A shrug was her only answer, and with a sigh Lissa got to her feet again and made her way out of the dressing room. A couple of the other girls looked at her curiously.

The manager’s office overlooked the casino floor, which was currently thinly populated.

‘You wanted to see me?’ said Lissa. She was wary and tense. It was seldom good news when the manager wanted to see a hostess. It was usually to reprimand her for not having brought enough custom to the bar. Maybe, thought Lissa tightly, the manager thought she hadn’t got the rich Frenchman to buy enough last night.

Damn, she didn’t want to be reminded of him. She’d done her best all day, all through the long slog into the City, and the long, tedious hours working in the office her temping agency had currently assigned her to. All through the crowded rush-hour journey home, sardined in the Tube train with all the other commuters until they’d been disgorged at the South London underground station closest to her flat. And certainly all through the brief time she’d had at home before setting out for her evening’s work here at the casino.

The manager, short and rotund and far from pleasant, eyed her up. Lissa stood impassively.

‘Private hire,’ he told her. ‘You’re to go straight there. There’s a car waiting outside.’

Lissa stood very still.

‘I’m afraid I don’t do private hires,’ she said quietly. ‘I did make that clear when I started.’

The manager narrowed his small eyes.

‘You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. And you’re lucky you made a hit last night. The guy who’s booked you is that fancy Frog who dropped a ton at the tables. He’s paying premium price for you, so make sure you give value for money, all right?’

Lissa swallowed. So Xavier Lauran had not been the type to stoop to coming on to her last night after offering her a lift home? No, he was just the type who liked the euphemism of a ‘private hire.’

‘Maybe Tanya would—’ she ventured.

‘He’s booked you, all right? And you deliver—understand? Or you walk—permanently.’

Lissa understood. Schooling her face into immobility, she nodded and got out. She felt sickened, more than sickened. It just wasn’t something she’d thought of the man last night.

Somehow she got herself back downstairs again, picked up her things and left the casino.

Just as last night, the rain was coming down heavily. She shivered, but not because of the wet. She had just lost her job. She knew it. Knew the manager would sack her instantly as soon as he found out she had no intention whatsoever of accepting a ‘private hire.’ Worse, she wouldn’t even get the wages she was owed for this week’s work.

Anger and intense depression mingled venomously inside her. Avoiding the front of the casino, she made her way with rapid, urgent footsteps to the main road. At least there were plenty of buses at this time of night, and the Tube was still running. Another thought struck her. What reason could she give for getting home so early? She didn’t want to say she’d lost her job because she’d been offered one she wouldn’t take.

Well, she would think up something on the way home. She would have to. That was the least of her problems.

Acid still curdled in her stomach, and more than acid. Anger, gall and bitterness. More even than that. But she would not give it words. Instead she found other words.

Creep. Jerk. Slimeball.

She said them in her head, over and over again, pounding them down on the pavement with each hurrying step.

A car pulled on to the pavement ahead of her.

She recognised it instantly. Equally instantly she swerved out on to the roadway in automatic avoidance.

‘What are you doing?’

The voice was a demand, wanting an answer. She didn’t even look around.

He strode up to her, catching her arm as she tried to plunge through the traffic.

‘You’ll kill yourself!’

She tried to tear herself free, but he was strong, the grip around her forearm unyielding.

‘Let go of me, you total creep.’ She tugged again, just as ineffectually. Rain was streaming into her eyes.

‘Comment?’ The surprise in his voice snapped something in her. She wheeled on him.

‘I said let go of me, you creep! You pig! How dare you try and buy me like that? My God, I might work in that fleapit, but the only work I do is to get jerks like you to buy rip-off drinks. You’ve got no right to think I do anything else. So take your bloody “private hire” and—’

He said something in French. Abrupt. Basic. Very basic.

His grip tightened on her arm as she stood struggling at the kerbside behind his chauffeured car.

‘I do not know what you have been told, but clearly you have been misinformed.’

His voice was icy. Formal. Lissa glared round at him, anger still boiling in her—and still that unwanted awareness of him.

It was a mistake to look at him. Even as she did so she felt again the incredible blow that went right through her solar plexus. The streetlight etched the planes of his face, and the sudden hardness in them, in his eyes, sent an unwilling thrill of reaction through her.

She fought against it.

‘Oh, do me a favour,’ she threw at him scornfully. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. When I get told that you’ve paid “premium price”—’ she emphasised that heavily ‘—for a “private hire”—’ she emphasised that even more heavily ‘—I don’t damn well need it spelt out in neon lights. Nor do I need the creep running the casino to spell it out for me that I either do it or get fired.’

The icy expression in his eyes changed suddenly. Devastatingly. Lissa felt her insides dissolve.

The grip on her arm loosened, but he did not relinquish her. Instead, he guided her up onto the safety of the pavement again.

‘Don’t—’ She hustled back at him, but he ignored her. Then he turned her to face him.

‘You take insult,’ he informed her, ‘where none is intended. At least not by me.’ He took a sharp breath. Something changed in his eyes as he looked down at her. Then they were veiled. He dropped her arm. She should have bolted, but she didn’t. She just stood there, in the pelting rain, blinking at him. She didn’t know why, but she did all the same.

‘I wanted to see you again,’ said Xavier Lauran.

Her face didn’t change, but something else did, deep inside. She went on blinking at him. Staring at him.

‘I wanted to see you again,’ he repeated—as if, she thought, he was confirming it to himself.

‘Why?’ Her question was blunt. Unforgiving.

There was a slight alteration in his features, a lift of his eyebrow.

‘Why? Because …’ he paused. ‘Because when I gave you a lift home yesterday night I …’ He fell silent a moment. Then he spoke again. ‘You were different,’ he said bluntly. ‘A quite different woman from the one you had been at the casino. A woman I wanted to see again.’

‘What for?’ she demanded witheringly. ‘Some “private hire” entertainment?’

‘For dinner,’ he answered simply.

Lissa blinked.

‘I wanted to invite you for dinner,’ said Xavier Lauran. ‘I knew you worked, and I did not know when your night off was. I have limited time in London, so I did not want to waste it. I phoned the casino and asked if it was possible to arrange, as you term it, a “private hire.” By that I meant that I would pay the casino for your time, so they would not lose out, and it would free you to accept my invitation to dinner.’

Emotions were churning through her.

‘Dinner.’ Her voice was flat.

‘Just dinner.’ His voice was flatter.

She stared up at him. Rain washing down her face.

‘Why?’ she asked bluntly.

Again, something changed in his eyes, but she didn’t know what—not in this uncertain light, with the rain streaming down on both of them. A smile crooked at his mouth. Not much of a smile, but a smile all the same. A touch sardonic. A touch wry. A touch humorous. A touch indulgent.

‘Don’t you ever look in the mirror, Lissa? Not in the casino, but at home. When you haven’t got all that mess on your face. If you did, you’d have your answer. The reason I want to see you again. The reason I’m inviting you for dinner.’

‘Dinner,’ she said again. The mouth quirked more.

‘I’m a Frenchman,’ he elaborated, with that same wry, sardonic touch. ‘Dinner is important to me. Tonight I’d like you to share it with me. Just dinner,’ he added. ‘Does that reassure you?’ An eyebrow lifted, as if indulging her.

Reassure her? It stunned her. There wasn’t another word for it. No word, either, for the hollowing in her stomach as she stood there, frozen, motionless, staring up at Xavier Lauran who had not, after all, thought she was a—

‘So, will you accept my invitation? Now that you know what it is. And what—’ his voice bit suddenly ‘—it is not.’

‘You really mean just dinner?’ She could not hide the doubt, the suspicion.

He nodded gravely. ‘And, although I do not wish in any way to harass or hurry you, it would, peut-être, be considerably appreciated if you would give an imminent answer. On account, you understand—’ his eyes glinted ‘—of the inclement English weather we are currently experiencing.’

She stared at him still. His sable hair was completely wet. So were the shoulders of his cashmere coat. Rain glistened on his eyelashes. They were ridiculously long, she thought abstractedly. Far too long for a man. They ought to make him look feminine, but … Her stomach gave one of the flips it did whenever she stopped blocking out all thoughts of this man who had nothing to do with her life. But feminine was the very last thing they made him look. They simply made him look …

Sexy.

That awful, cheap word. Overused, trashy, tabloid.

And true.

Completely, undeniably true.

She felt her stomach dissolve, gazing up at him, at the way the rain made his hair glisten like a raven’s wing, the way it perfected the incredible planes of his face. she just wanted to go on gazing, and gazing and gazing.

He was guiding her towards the car. She hardly registered it. Then the chauffeur was there, opening the passenger door, and she was being ushered inside. She sank back, boneless, into the deep leather seat.

What am I doing?

The question sounded in her mind, but she didn’t pay it any attention. She couldn’t. She just sat there, capable only of feeling that suddenly she was out of the rain, still soaking wet, but at least not with rain shafting down into her face. A moment later Xavier Lauran had climbed in on his side of the car, and the chauffeur was reclaiming his driving seat.

‘Seat belt,’ he reminded her, as the car moved off, and his voice, in the confines of the car, suddenly sounded very French.

Very sexy.

No, she mustn’t think that word. Not now—not with this man who had walked back into her life when she had thought he never would, never could. And whom up till two minutes ago she had had every reason to think a total jerk, a creep, a slimeball, a—

Punter.

Numbly her eyes flew to him as she fumblingly did up her seat belt. He was currently pulling down his own seat belt with an assured, fluid movement. She wanted to watch him. Wanted to watch him doing anything, everything. Because.

Because she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Because he made her stomach go hollow. Because he stopped the breath in her lungs. Because—

He’s a punter.

The thought pulled her up short. One of those men who thought spending an evening in a two-bit casino being fawned over by women, drinking third-rate champagne and throwing money around pointlessly on stupid gambling was a good time.

She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be here. It was wrong—all wrong.

‘What is it?’ He’d paused in the act of fastening the seat belt. His eyes focussed on her intently. Questioningly.

‘Why did you come to the casino last night?’

Her question was stark.

For a moment he stilled. Then he answered.

‘Why do you ask?’

She brushed some raindrops from her hair.

‘It’s hardly your kind of place, is it?’

He didn’t bother to disagree.

‘I was bored. I was passing. I’d been to a play in Shaftesbury Avenue I hadn’t liked, so I walked out. I didn’t feel like going back to my hotel. The casino was an impulse, nothing more, just to pass some time.’ His voice was offhand. Then it changed. So did the expression in his eyes.

‘But I’m glad I did go in. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have met you. And I will tell you, in complete honesty—’ he levelled his gaze at her ‘—that until I saw you at the bus stop last night your appeal to me was precisely zero. But then …’ He paused. ‘It was unexpected,’ he said.

His eyes swept down over her, washing away her guard. She shouldn’t let it be washed away, but it was gone all the same.

‘It made me want to see you again.’

Simple words.

Doing very unsimple things to her.

He was still looking at her, with that same disarming expression. ‘Would it be so very hard to have dinner with me?’ he said. There was a quizzical, amused cast to his eye.

Her eyes were uncertain, confused.

She shouldn’t do this. She should make him stop the car, get out, go home. Back to her real world. She shouldn’t let herself be taken away like this, by a man who did things to her insides that made it impossible to think straight, to think logically, rationally, coolly, sensibly, sanely.

The litany trotted through her head, every word a compelling, urgent argument to tell him to stop the car and let her out. Then into the litany another thought arose, inserting itself into her mind.

If she didn’t get out it would mean she’d keep her job at the casino. They wouldn’t know she’d just gone for dinner.

But did he really mean just dinner? Was she an idiot to believe him?

‘Dinner? That’s all?’ Her voice was sharp.

‘Exactement. In the public dining room of my hotel. It will be very comme il faut, je vous assure.’ There were undertones to his voice, but she could not identify them. She was focussing on the words.

He had used ‘vous’ to her. The formal mode of address, implying not familiarity or superiority—but courtesy.

A knot inside her that she hadn’t even been aware of untied itself.

But another one still remained. One that was much harder to untie. Impossible.

She should go home. She should not do this. If she wasn’t working, she should be at home.

Because there was no point, no point at all, in having dinner with this man.

But it would be worth it if only for the memory.

She took a breath—and made her decision. Looking straight at him.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Il me fait un grand plaisir de vous accepter, m’sieu,’ she enunciated carefully. Then she looked at him uncertainly. ‘Was that correct?’ she asked.

His mouth quirked. Tension seemed to have gone out of his face.

‘It will do perfectly,’ he said.

He relaxed back into his seat, his shoulders easing.

‘Where did you learn French?’

‘At school,’ she volunteered. She, too, sat back into the contours of the seat. ‘Same as everyone else, really. I can just about get my way around France, but that’s all. I can’t really have a proper conversation, or read novels or watch TV or anything demanding. It always seems a bit bad, really, that the British—and the Americans, too, I suppose—can get away without knowing another language fluently. English is de rigueur, presumably, in business circles outside France?’

She was babbling, she knew, but it seemed important to her somehow to have an innocuous conversation—one that had nothing to do with where she worked, or what she’d thought he’d hired her for. A conversation she could have had with anyone.

‘English now is very much the lingua franca, it’s true, but I also speak Italian, Spanish, and some German, as well.’

Her reply was another burble.

‘Well, I can say café con leche, por favor in Spanish, and dov’e il cattedrale in Italian, and I think that’s about it. As for German, it’s just Bitte and Danke. Oh, and I can say epharisto in Greek. But that’s really my lot.’ She gave a self-deprecating smile.

The long eyelashes swept down over his dark eyes. There were no more raindrops on them, but his hair was still clearly wet. So was hers. She could feel water trickling down her back. Another thought struck her. She could hardly dine in a hotel restaurant looking like a drowned rat. But maybe there would be powerful hand dryers in the Ladies, and she could at least get her hair dry. She could try and style it a bit, too, though it was probably best left in a tight pleat. But she could put a bit of makeup on, though—she had enough in her handbag after all. It was the clothes that were the main problem, however. She was just wearing jeans and a jumper—would that really do? Well, it would have to. Anyway, her thoughts raced on, it obviously didn’t bother him, or he wouldn’t have asked her out in the way he had.

Why had he?

The question stung through her thoughts, scattering them instantly. Then into her head his words sounded. Don’t you ever look in the mirror?

A quiver went through her. Was she really the kind of woman a man like him was interested in? She knew she could look good—knew she had been blessed with a face and figure that many women would envy her for. But a man like Xavier Lauran, rich, sophisticated and French, would move in circles where every woman was beautiful and chic, groomed from top to toe in exquisite designer clothes.

Doubt trickled through her. Then she put it aside. A man like Xavier Lauran would know his own mind. If he thought her beautiful enough to interest him, then that was that. He had, after all, no other reason to spend his time with her.

A warm glow began to spread through her. It might only be dinner, but in the evening ahead she would enjoy all she could of it.

She gave a silent mental shrug. Even if she had to do it in jeans and a jumper.

Fifteen minutes later, she realised she’d got that bit as wrong as everything else about the evening. She was being ushered across the huge, marble-floored lobby of a West End hotel, and guided distinctly towards the left-hand side.

‘The hotel boutique is still open—I am sure they will have something suitable for you there.’

Lissa stopped dead, and looked round at Xavier Lauren.

‘I beg your pardon?’

He glanced down at her. ‘I don’t wish to be critical, but you’re soaking wet—as am I. And there is, I believe, a dress code at the restaurant here that precludes jeans. So it would be a good idea to avail yourself of the resources of the hotel boutique.’

Lissa swallowed. ‘I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy anything there.’

‘But I can—’

She shook her head. A quick, decisive action. ‘Monsieur Lauran, I don’t let men buy me clothes.’

He went on looking at her a moment.

‘Consider it merely a loan. You can change back into your jeans at the end of the evening.’