Sinful Revenge: Exquisite Revenge / The Sinful Art of Revenge / Undone by His Touch

The following morning Jesse was grouchy after a night of broken sleep. Even though she was well used to insomnia. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for years, and it was in the small morning hours that she did her best work—even coming up with the anti-hacking software that had made her name. She was most relaxed when surrounded by quiet and darkness, such a far cry from her chaotic upbringing.

She cursed loudly as black smoke billowed out of the toaster and the kitchen’s smoke alarm went off. Scrambling to try to eject the toast, she vaguely heard, ‘What the hell?’ before she sensed a large presence by her side. And then she was being summarily lifted out of the way, so that Luc could flick out the charred toast far more dextrously than she’d been doing.

Even through the acrid smell of burning his own scent, clean and lemony, hit her nostrils and caused an immediate physical reaction. She lurched back further and took him in. He was now flicking a tea towel at the alarm, which was no bother to him considering his height. The T-shirt he was wearing pulled upwards, exposing a sliver of taut belly with that tantalising line of dark hair leading down under the jeans he was wearing. His bare feet, with their strong bones and hair-sprinkled toes, made Jesse’s own feet curl into the tiled floor.

And then suddenly the alarm stopped, leaving the residue of an echo in their ears as they adjusted to the silence again. A bird twittered innocuously outside.

Jesse gulped and looked up at Luc, who was quirking a brow and looking down at her with the offending toast held between thumb and forefinger.

‘I didn’t think it was actually possible to burn toast in a toaster. Obviously you’re more proficient at computer programs and kidnapping.’

Jesse scowled at being reminded of the fact that in this area she failed miserably, and grabbed the toast out of his hand. She wasn’t going to admit weakness in front of him now, and she slapped it down on a plate and took it over to the table, where a steaming cup of coffee awaited her.

‘I don’t have a sophisticated palate. I happen to like burnt toast.’ She slathered spread on it defiantly, her stomach already protesting at the thought of eating it.

She took a bite and looked at Luc, who shrugged minutely as if already bored with her little performance. He said laconically, ‘Forgive me if I don’t join you—I prefer my food a little less cooked.’

She struggled to chew the burnt bread and watched as Luc busied himself pulling ingredients from the fridge. Eggs; salmon; milk … Then she continued to watch as he whistled tunelessly and prepared himself a delicious-looking breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. All evidence was pointing to the fact that at least Luc wouldn’t starve while on the island.

Seriously bemused to see this side of such a man, Jesse said faintly, ‘There’s some coffee in the pot.’

Luc grimaced slightly, and she watched as he took a sniff and then poured it down the sink before preparing a fresh one.

‘No offence, but it would appear as if your coffee-making skills are in the same class as your toast-making skills.’

Inexplicably this made a dart of hurt lance Jesse. She’d got so used to eating out of cartons or heating up ready-made meals for one that she hated to think of it as pointing to a lack in her life. A lack of something earthy and feminine. It made her think of her mother and how she’d used to love cooking up Irish stews and feeding them to her daughter, along with tales of growing up in the countryside in Ireland …

Before Jesse could get up and escape Luc came over to the table with his own breakfast and freshly brewed coffee, sitting down. Curiously she felt the urge to stay put, not to escape.

His breakfast mocked her. The scrambled eggs looked so fluffy she could imagine they tasted as light as air, and along with the strips of smoked salmon … Her mouth watered. And then the scent of fresh coffee hit her stomach and it rumbled.

Mortified, she knew her wish that Luc hadn’t heard it hadn’t been granted when he glanced up. He said, ‘Help yourself to coffee, if you like … and there’s eggs and salmon left over.’

Rigid with embarrassment, Jesse fought down the softening feeling inside and said caustically, ‘I’m sure you don’t really want to share food with your captor.’

Luc merely shrugged in a very Gallic way and said in between mouthfuls of food, ‘I’m making the best of a bad situation. And I think if I can be pleasant then you certainly can. I’m the one here under duress, not you.’

Jesse felt ashamed, but bit back the words of apology on her lips. Unbelievably the man who wanted to save her father—one of the most corrupt men on the planet—was managing to make her feel in the wrong.

‘You didn’t attempt to escape last night?’

Luc finished chewing his last mouthful and looked at Jesse. He sat back and took a long sip of coffee, put his cup down.

He shook his head. ‘No—as you well know. Because if I had the sensors would have set off the alarm and the sound of the sirens would have split our eardrums.’ He elaborated. ‘I have the same security system on several of my own properties. I know that it’s so good it precludes the need for bodyguards. And I know how futile it would be to set it off.’

‘Oh,’ Jesse said now, still struck by how reluctant she seemed to be to leave. She was finding it curiously easy to be sitting across the table from the man she’d kidnapped the day before.

‘Where did you learn to cook?’

Immediately a shuttered look came over Luc’s face, his eyes going dark and mysterious. Jesse’s gaze narrowed on him, her curiosity piqued properly now.

Luc regarded the woman across the table. She was in another loose top today, albeit a short-sleeved one. It showed off her slender pale arms and tiny wrists and hands. Immediately he was furnished with a graphic image of one of those hands wrapped around a certain part of his anatomy, and was rewarded with blood rushing to that strategic region in his pants. Curse her anyway.

Anger galvanised him into answering her, because this anger would help remind him of why it was so important to get out of here.

‘I learnt to cook because my father died when I was twelve and my mother had a breakdown. I had to look after her and my younger sister.’

He saw Jesse’s face blanch and her eyes grow wide. As if she cared.

Anger at her response spurred him on. ‘My sister had—has special needs. She was deprived of oxygen at birth, and as a result has been mildly brain-damaged all her life. When my father died and my mother became ill she was only eight. She was terrified, so I had to try to keep things as constant as possible. Keeping her routine the same, including her meals, was part of that process. She’s slightly autistic too, so any change in her routine was inordinately more threatening to her than to another person with the same needs … though she’s much better now.’

Because, Luc reflected, he could now afford the best round-the-clock care and support.

Jesse’s voice was husky, and it had an immediate effect on Luc’s body. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been a tough time.’

‘The toughest,’ he agreed grimly.

Suddenly he felt very exposed, sitting here and telling Jesse Moriarty, of all people, about the most cataclysmic time of his life, when all his anger and rage had coalesced into a lifelong ambition to see justice meted out.

‘So how is it that you can’t cook? I take it that burnt toast is just the tip of the iceberg?’

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_3c805357-e6da-5ca9-95cd-02fc812b8f44)

JESSE felt very vulnerable all of a sudden, and wondered if Luc had just furnished her with a fake story. But then she recalled the intensity on his face and in his eyes and she had to believe him—even though she didn’t like the sympathy he’d evoked within her.

She looked down at the blackened remains on her plate and found herself saying, ‘My mother died when I was nine. She was a brilliant cook, but she hadn’t started to teach me yet … She kept saying she would but there never seemed to be time. She was so busy …’ Jesse trailed off remembering her harried and stressed mother, whose face would be red and sweaty as she struggled to put together a meal for one of her father’s dinner parties with the usual little or no notice.

One time when something had gone wrong he’d come downstairs, flushed in the face with drink, and slapped her mother so hard that she’d fallen over the kitchen table, bringing pots and plates to the floor, waking Jesse up.

Feeling seriously disorientated at having remembered that, Jesse forced it from her mind and said lightly, ‘And then I just never learnt … I was terrible at home economics at school.’

‘But brilliant at maths and computer sciences?’

Jesse glanced at Luc and shrugged minutely. ‘They made more sense to me than sewing or baking.’ She had lost herself in numbers and algorithms far more easily than the more nurturing classes.

‘What about your father?’

Jesse forced her face to stay blank, not to respond. Tightly she said, ‘My mother was a single parent; I never knew my father.’

She hadn’t really. Not in the traditional sense. She’d always been the unwanted reminder downstairs. Hidden away. Until she’d had the temerity to come out and risk his wrath for the second time in her life. And that had had dire consequences.

Luc was moving and Jesse glanced up, a little disorientated to find that they’d been conversing so easily. He was heaping leftovers of egg and salmon onto his plate. He glanced at her and she felt breathless.

‘Are you sure you don’t want any?’

Jesse shook her head vigorously, realising that they’d gone way off track, sitting here talking relatively companionably. When Luc came back to sit down Jesse stood up and took her plate over to the sink to wash it. She felt prickly all over and, most betrayingly of all, as if she might cry.

Without saying anything to Luc she left the kitchen, walking as nonchalantly as she could, horribly aware that he might be looking at her. Only when she was around the corner and had ducked into the empty study that had so incensed him the day before did she breathe out shakily.