Bought For The Frenchman's Pleasure

‘Well, what’s stopping you now…?’

Sorcha stopped dead. It was only then that she registered Kate’s stunned look, her mouth gaping open inelegantly on an unspoken warning.

The low-pitched, dangerously accented deep voice came from so close behind her that she fancied she felt a hint of warm breath on her back. Too late. She hadn’t even noticed. And now he was here, right behind her. And he had obviously heard every word which seemed to hang suspended accusingly in the air.

CHAPTER TWO

AS ROMAIN spoke he felt righteous anger move through him at her insulting words. But he also felt uncharacteristically at a loss. What on earth had possessed him to cross the room so soon? He couldn’t even remember forming the wish or the desire to come closer…and yet here he was.

Her back faced him, her skin so pale that he doubted she’d ever been in the sun. And it was very lightly freckled. A true Celt.

It made her even more intriguing, added to her allure. An almost blue-black sheen rippled off her hair as she started to turn around, and when she faced him he sucked in a breath. She was, quite simply, ravishing. Almond-shaped blue eyes ringed with indecently long black lashes. Cheekbones so high and well defined that it was a sin that she wasn’t smiling, to make her cheeks full and ripe. And her mouth…Lord, it must have been created by a god of decadence. The lush lower lip was a sensual invitation to touch, feel, slide his tongue across, and on it rested a top lip that was endearing with its slight overbite—an exquisite anomaly in a perfect face, a cupid’s bow of tempting irregularity.

Her breathing was rapid, her widening eyes over-bright, the pupils dilated, and her skin flushed under his look. Something hard settled in his chest. He’d been right. He fought a silent battle with himself. Hadn’t he just witnessed her little ten-minute trip to the powder room? Where he knew damn well that she and plenty of others like her would have been indulging in snorting a mood-enhancer…the most common kind on this circuit. She hadn’t reformed.

He wanted to walk away, wanted to turn around and forget he’d ever seen her. But he also—perversely—never, ever wanted to let her out of his sight again. And he hated himself for it. And he hated her for attracting him so effortlessly. Yet he knew he was being irrational. And that fired him up even more.

‘Yes…?’

Somehow she managed to articulate a word that sounded English, that made sense. Because one thing Sorcha knew for sure was nothing else made sense any more. Every preconceived notion about this man had fled. He was just a man, a devastatingly attractive man, holding her in some kind of wickedly sensual spell.

Tall, dark and handsome. He was a walking cliché. But no banal description could do justice to the way his hair shone almost black under the glittering lights. The way his hooded eyes hinted at a dangerous sensuality that was so palpable she felt faint. The way his skin shone and glowed with undeniable rude good health, so darkly olive that she fancied he must surely come from the Far East, despite being French. She was tall—almost five foot eleven—but she had to tip her face up to his. She was barely grazing his shoulder in heels.

The bespoke designer suit did little to hide the raw untamed sexuality of the man. Sorcha, from her experience of working with some of the best bodies in the business, knew a good physique when she saw it. His was…perfect. And she’d bet money that it wasn’t honed in a gym. This man gave off an air of restless energy that spoke to her, called out to her. As a lover of the outdoors herself, she knew that he would only be content with pushing himself to the max, in the rawest of environments.

What had happened to her? Why couldn’t she seem to move? She was vaguely aware that Kate had melted away seconds ago. And he was still looking at her as though he wanted to throttle her! For long moments they stared at each other in silent and heated communication. Finally Sorcha spoke again, more impatiently this time. Who did he think he was to come over and glower at her? She refused to give him the satisfaction of recognition.

‘Yes? Can I help you?’

Romain had to focus. Her voice was husky, the accent refreshingly unjarring…melodious…. Clarity rushed back with force when a hapless waiter dropped a glass nearby, shocking him out of his stupor, making her flinch. And then he remembered. And that hardness took hold again.

Say hello, exchange a few words and get out of there—after all, hadn’t he come here tonight to meet her? He might have decided to dismiss the notion of using her for the job, but a few words couldn’t hurt…

He held out a hand. ‘Romain de Valois. I don’t believe we’ve actually met before…despite that flawless character reference.’

Finally some life force returned. She ignored his hand and said, with sweet acidity, ‘Nearly as flawless as the one you gave me eight years ago?’

He dropped his hand and looked down at her, cool and unperturbed by her rudeness. ‘So you do remember? I wasn’t sure if your acerbic comments just now were due to intense dislike on first sight, or if you were referring to that.’

She couldn’t hide the bitterness. ‘Of course I remember, Monsieur de Valois. It’s not every day the press chases a seventeen-year-old out of London, calling for her blood—a press that was spurred on by your comments. All you lacked was a pulpit…’ Her chest rose and fell and she couldn’t disguise her agitation. She could feel her skin heating up under his look.

‘Do you forget that you were a seventeen-year-old drug addict?’ he said with harsh inflection. ‘Photographed unconscious on the street?’

A pain so sharp that it caused her to stop breathing for a second made Sorcha want to curl inwards. Guilt, shame, and an old, old fear all vied for supremacy. With what felt like a superhuman effort she found some hard brittle shell left. She tossed her hair with studied indifference, and was too wound up to notice the tiny flash in the cool grey gaze.

Her voice was scathing. ‘If you’ve got nothing more to do than come over here like some kind of outdated moral judge and check for track marks on my arms, then please excuse me—’ She turned to go, and was taking a step away when her wrist was caught in a strong grip. His touch seared through her whole body like a brand. He slowly and very calmly turned her palm upwards, and made a thorough study up and down the underside of her milky white arm.

‘No,’ he said musingly. ‘No track marks. But then I’m sure you’re an intelligent woman. You’d have them well hidden.’

Sorcha finally yanked her arm free and hugged it close to her chest, as though he had burnt her. Her voice was shaking with emotion, and to her utter horror she could feel the sting of tears at the back of her eyelids. ‘Mr de Valois, if you would please excuse me? I am here in a work capacity tonight for your aunt. I don’t want to cause a scene, but trust me when I say that if you try to stop me leaving again I will scream this room down.’

‘There’s no need for such dramatics Miss Murphy—or should I say Quinn? And if you did anything of the sort I’d put you over my shoulder and carry you out like a child having a tantrum.’

Sorcha gulped, her bravado in short supply all of a sudden. She didn’t doubt his words for a second, and the thought of him throwing her over his impossibly broad shoulder…She could feel the heat flare up from her stomach.

She furiously willed a body which seemed to have been invaded by an alien force to obey her silent command to stop reacting to his presence, and gritted out, ‘It’s Murphy to you. If all you want is to see the tabloid fodder you chewed up and spat out, then have a good look.’

‘Oh, I am,’ he drawled, and Sorcha mentally castigated herself for her careless words.

She didn’t want this man’s attention on her…any part of her.

‘You’ve certainly grown up…and filled out.’

She sucked in a breath, unaware that her innocent movement caused his eyes to be drawn back to those parts of her body where they had rested briefly in an eloquent accompaniment to his words.

‘I was just a teenager—’

‘No teenager I knew stayed out till six a.m. every morning, drinking champagne all night, taking cocktails of various drugs to stay awake—’

He glanced pointedly at the glass in her hand. Her knuckles were white on the stem because she gripped it so tightly. Following his glance, and feeling suddenly reckless and rebellious, she tipped the glass to him in a salute. ‘Well, I must say it’s nice to meet the man who once called me the poison seeping into the industry…Here’s to you, Mr de Valois. I wish you luck on your crusade to rid the world of imperfect people!’

And with that Sorcha downed the half empty glass in one go. Very carefully she put it down on a nearby table. And while she still could, feeling sick from the immediate rush of a drink she didn’t usually favour, she spun on impossibly high heels and strode away from him, the silk of her long dress billowing out behind her.

More than a few men turned to look as she passed, and Romain couldn’t fail to notice, the very strange and proprietorial surge of…something very disturbing. He felt a little shell shocked. He could still see the white expanse of her delicate throat, bared as she had downed the sparkling drink. Her eyes had flashed before putting the glass down.

No woman had ever walked away from him like that, or showed such blatant disrespect. Yet, much to his utter confusion, he found himself thinking that his decision to veto her for the campaign suddenly seemed a little too hasty. Watching her walk away had filled him with the almost overwhelming urge to grab her back, strike more sparks, keep her talking.

He hadn’t expected this. He’d expected her to be hard, with that smooth shell most models had, yet her vulnerability had hit him straight between the eyes. And he’d been surprised that she’d remembered his comments from eight years previously. His jaw hardened. Despite his aunt’s words, and Sorcha Murphy’s apparent vulnerability, he’d be more than surprised to find that she had given up her old habits.

To be brutally honest, he’d expected that once she’d known who he was she’d morph into exactly the type of woman he’d become immune to. Sycophantic, posturing…But she hadn’t. She’d been filled with fire and passion underneath that pale, pale skin. An intoxicating package.

For some men, he told himself angrily, and finally turned away from the image of her slender back walking away from him.

‘Well, he can take his job and—’

‘Sorcha!’ Maud’s husky smoke-ravaged voice rang out like the crack of a whip.

It stopped Sorcha in her tracks—literally. She was pacing back and forth in Maud’s palatial office that looked out over busy New York streets. Ever since Maud had called her in to tell her that Romain de Valois wanted her for his campaign, she’d been feeling jittery and panicky.

She sat down. ‘Sorry, Maud, I know he’s your nephew—’

‘Technically, he’s my ex-nephew.’ The older woman waved a hand. ‘That doesn’t matter anyway. Nepotism didn’t get him where he is now; that was through sheer hard graft and ingenuity.’ Her face softened with unmistakable affection. ‘Can you believe even I have to answer to him?’ She ignored Sorcha’s dark scowl, austerity marking her features again. ‘The fact is, this is probably one of the most prestigious jobs you could ever be offered—two weeks jet-setting around the world. Do you know how many models were considered? It’s so important to him that he’s overseeing the whole shoot personally. He’s even willing to kick off in Ireland to accommodate your holiday plans—a condition I insisted on.’

The thought of even a day with that man glowering down his nose at her, checking up on her every two minutes, caused very contradictory feelings in Sorcha’s head…and body. Since that night almost a week ago she hadn’t been able to get his dark face and tall, impressive body out of her mind. And she hated it. He was her nemesis—the embodiment of every misunderstanding she had suffered all those years ago.

‘Maud…can’t you see how difficult this would be? He’s not just anyone. He’s—’

‘I’m well aware of the things he said in London that time. But you have to admit, innocent or not, if you hadn’t been caught like that then he wouldn’t have had any reason to say anything. His hand was forced by his board. He didn’t have the complete control he enjoys now. They couldn’t be seen to be taking an easy line on models doing drugs…not when that girl had died so soon before…’