CHAPTER 2

           Liza had been totally useless, absolutely hysterical somewhere in the background. Lara had found herself in a private ambulance, accompanied not by her friend but by Christophe.

“She will follow in my car,” he had asserted, getting in the way of the paramedics while simultaneously telling them what to do.

           Lara just hadn’t had the strength to fight Christophe Moreau off that day. Her head had been aching fit to burst and her stomach churning with nausea. She had shut her eyes to escape, telling herself that this explosive and domineering stranger was simply attempting to make amends for an accident that hadn’t been his fault in the first place.

          She had been taken to a clinic, subjected to an alarmingly thorough examination against her will, and tucked into a bed in a very expensively decorated room.

“Oh, my God… This is so unnecessary,” she had protested to the nurse. “I just want to go home.”

          Christophe had entered the room, splintering waves of vibrant physical energy that seemed to charge the very atmosphere and drive out all tranquility.

“Where’s Liza?” she had whispered, shaken that he was still around.

“I had her taken home. She was too distressed to be of any assistance. I understand that your parents are abroad and will not be home until tomorrow. Would you like to contact them? Would you like me to do it for you?”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t even know your name,” she had begun through clenched teeth.

“I’m Christophe Moreau,” he had murmured with a slashing and brilliant smile. “Tell me how do you feel?”

“I just want to go home... Don’t you ever listen to anything people say?”

“Not if I don’t want to hear it,” Christophe had admitted.

“Look, all this...” Lara said and indicated the fancy room with embarrassment. “It’s not necessary. It was a stupid fall. Your car didn’t touch me. It’s not as if I’m going to sue you or anything. And all this fuss…”

“Is my wish,” he had inserted silkily.

          He was scanning her slender shape beneath the bedclothes with unashamed appreciation, making her cheeks ignite into sudden color and sweeping up to her face with yet another smile.

“That’s incredible, but I just can’t take my eyes off you. I know you noticed it by now. Then again, you must be accustomed to a great deal of attention from men’s part.”

“Not since I got engaged,” Lara had muttered stiffly, infuriated by how he was openly looking her over as if she were an object on a supermarket shelf there for the taking.

          Christophe had stilled, golden eyes narrowing and flaring.

“You belong to another man?”

“I belong to no man, Mr. Moreau!” Lara had snapped.

“Well, I must take care of this part… I promise you that sooner rather than later, you will belong to me,” Christophe had murmured with utter conviction.

          She had honestly thought he was nuts. Nobody had ever talked to her like that before… Such a waste that a male dressed with such apparent sophistication in a superbly tailored mohair and silk blend suit, a male who spoke with an air of culture and education, should make such primitive statements… That had astonished Lara.

“You’re too late, Mr. Moreau. I’m getting married in six weeks,” Lara had informed him flatly, involuntarily studying his strikingly male features before she realized what she was doing and hurriedly looked away again.

“We’ll see...”

          And Christophe had laughed indulgently, the way you laughed when a child said something innocently amusing. Like he always did…

          Lara sank back to the present and discovered that she was shivering. Her first thought was for her father. No matter what he said, Kenneth shouldn’t be alone. Grabbing up a coat, Lara let herself out of the tiny cottage she rented and climbed into her car to drive over to his house.

“But Mr. Miller is at work, Mrs. Anderson. What would he be doing home at this time of the day?”

          Her father’s housekeeper studied her with a questioning frown. Lara swallowed hard, fighting to keep her face unconcerned.

“I thought he was finishing early.”

“Well, he didn’t mention it to me.”

“I’ll catch him later.”

          Lara climbed back into her car. Dear God, where had her father gone? She must’ve been out of her mind to let him wander off like that in the state he was in! Another little voice asked her what she was doing. Her father had said he needed time on his own. She wasn’t his keeper. Shouldn’t she respect his wishes?

          But the nagging sense of urgency nibbling at her nerve-endings wouldn’t leave her alone. Reluctantly Lara went home again. Christophe... She couldn’t get him out of her mind. Would she go to the Northern Star Hotel to crawl and beg and plead as once her father had done with her mother?

          Her stomach gave a sensitive heave. What would be the point? She knew Christophe Moreau. There was no way he would let her father off the hook. Christophe wanted revenge.

          He couldn’t touch Lara but he knew just how deep the bond was between father and daughter. It would be a sweeter revenge than any that dark Machiavellian intellect might have calculated.

“Someday you will come to me on your knees and beg me to take you... and I will break you, Lara.”

          As she remembered, perspiration dampened her short upper lip. Christophe had destroyed her life. He had hacked to pieces everything she held dear. Her love for Randall, her happiness, her tranquility... and in the end, her self-respect. She had fought him to the very last shred of her endurance and then had learned the secret of her frailty in a shattering hour of self-discovery.

          Shuddering with disgust, Lara shut out the memories but the humiliation and the shame lived on as strongly as ever. Christophe was one hundred percent a predator. Ruthless, unforgiving, utterly intolerant of those weaker than himself.

          She would never ever forget the way he had looked at her on her wedding day. With smoldering incredulous fury and pure, unadulterated hatred. The Alpha male, fabulously rich, indecently successful, and stunningly handsome... rejected over and over by the same woman.

          Right up until the very last moment, Christophe had expected her to change her mind and fling herself at his feet.

“I will never forgive you, Lara,” Christophe said outside the church door.

          Lara had been shaking so badly by that time, Randall had practically been holding her upright. She looked like a ghost in the wedding photographs. Randall had assured her that he had forgiven her but as she lived day in, day out with the farce of her marriage, she had never been able to forgive herself.

          She raised an unsteady hand to her pounding temples, struggling with the greatest of difficulty to retain her concentration. Why on earth hadn’t she realized before now that her father was in trouble? She had been too involved in her problems, Lara acknowledged wretchedly.

          Randall had been ill for a long time before his death. His business had crashed in the recession, leaving nothing but debts. Her father had urged her to come home but Lara had refused. She hadn’t wanted to turn into the Daddy’s little girl she had been before her marriage.

          She hadn’t even had a job in those days. All Lara had ever thought about as a teenager was marrying Randall and having children. She shoved that particular recollection away with helpless bitterness.

          Christophe had invited her to the hotel to gloat over her father’s downfall. A sadist to the backbone, he wanted to experience her pain personally. Why should she give him the satisfaction when she knew that he wouldn’t allow her father to go unpunished? No way was she going to him!

          After driving for hours, Lara stopped the car and got out. It was dark and cold and wet, just like that other day long ago, that day she couldn’t bear to remember. She straightened slight shoulders, tightened the sash on her raincoat, and lifted her head high as she crossed the parking lot.

          This was for her father. This was her duty. So, what if she felt physically sick at the prospect of seeing Christophe again? She owed this meeting to her father. If the opportunity to watch her squirm gave Christophe a kick, maybe... just maybe it might be possible to persuade him to show her father some clemency.

          Naturally, the money would have to be repaid. And the only way that could be done would be by the sale of her father’s home. And since houses didn’t sell overnight, Christophe would have to be prepared to allow time for that sale to take place.

          All that she would ask would be that he didn’t drag her father through court and utterly destroy him. Was that so much to ask? she wondered tautly as she approached the reception desk of the hotel.

“Can I help you?” a smiling receptionist asked, jolting her out of her reverie.

“My name is Lara Anderson. I have an appointment with Mr. Moreau at eight,” she advanced with all the appearance of a job-hunter, mentioning an interview.

“I’ll call up... Just one second,” the receptionist said and after a second, she said Lara’s name to the person answering Christophe’s phone.

          The young woman’s eyes flicked over the wedding ring on Lara’s hand. Lara moved away a step or two, a nervous hand brushing up to check the sleek severity of the ponytail.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Anderson...”

          Lara turned back.

“Is there a problem?”

“Mr. Moreau...”

          The brunette cleared her throat awkwardly.

“Yes?” Lara pressed tightly.

“He says that he doesn’t recognize your name…”

“I beg your pardon?” Lara breathed in deeply, hot pink abruptly washing her ivory pale complexion as she belatedly understood.

          One slim hand braced on the edge of the desk. She swallowed hard on her fury.

“Try Miller,” she suggested thinly.

“Miller?” the receptionist repeated with a perplexed look.

“Just tell Mr. Moreau that Lara Miller is here,” she enunciated between gritted teeth.

“You can go up,” Lara was told ten seconds later.

           The elevator disgorged two couples in full evening dress. She walked in, her heart in her throat. The Northern Star Hotel was one of the most expensive establishments in the country. Lara had always hated this place.

          This was where her mother had come to meet men. This was where she had trysted with her lovers. And there was a peculiar agony to Lara’s awareness that it was in this very same establishment that she had forever lost her claim to the moral high ground.

          Had she been smug and virtuous in those days? Her mother had once accused her of that...

“You’re just like your father,” Linda had condemned with bitter resentment. “You’re so freaking virtuous, you ought to be wearing a halo! So smug, you make me sick! But you won’t get through life like that. Someday you’re going to fall off your pedestal and fall flat on your sweet, innocent little face and it’ll serve you damned well right!”

          And she had fallen... Boy, had she fallen…