CHAPTER 5

          Lara didn’t need another invitation. On unsteady legs, she backed out in haste. Out in the corridor, she closed her eyes and breathed in slowly and deeply. She felt hurt, alone, worthless, and the sensations were intense.

          Christophe confused her, cast her into turmoil. He still had this power. They were opposites in every way but just for a strange and highly disturbing moment, she had recognized an utterly inexplicably glimpse of empathy.

          When she saw that, Lara had wanted to put her arms around him. Crazy! Unbelievable! Just one of those mad tricks of the mind when one’s emotions were on a high...

          ‘After all, would I pet an enraged tiger plotting to put me on his menu?’ Lara thought.

          But Lara couldn’t escape the feeling that she had hurt Christophe. And yet wasn’t that what she had always wanted to do? When she was with him, she didn’t know herself. It had always been that way. With other people, she was introverted and quiet, never bitchy or hot-tempered, and certainly not violent.

          ‘Dear God,’ Lara thought as she recalled the manner in which she had launched herself at him like a screaming shrew. ‘As usual, he drew out the worse in me.’

          Lara got into her car without remembering leaving the hotel. She didn’t start the engine. She stared out the windscreen unseeingly. The way she had felt when he touched her three years ago still haunted her. And every so often Lara made herself draw those memories out to reinforce her own disgust and shame.

          Christophe Moreau made her feel as though she could turn into a woman like her mother... Wasn’t that what frightened her the most? Not only did she look like her mother, but Lara had also found that she could behave like her too.

          That had been the most devastating discovery of all. That there was this weakness inside her, this ability to forget about loyalty, self-restraint, even love and lose all control in a man’s arms.

          Sometimes, Lara had even told herself that she ought to be grateful for that sordid incident with Christophe. She had been afraid then that if she didn’t remain constantly on her guard, virtually controlling even her thoughts, she too might easily turn into a slut like Linda Miller.

          If it hadn’t been for that noise next door, Christophe wouldn’t have stopped, she knew that. Sex was a terrifyingly powerful force if you knew yourself to be as vulnerable as Lara felt herself to be. One weak moment in the vicinity of a male like Christophe and that would be that.

          She had been incredibly lucky to escape untouched. Only somehow, she thought now on a tide of bitter pain, it had never occurred to her that she might be just as untouched three years on, after two years of marriage. Untouched by human hand. A virgin, no less.

          And wouldn’t Christophe just love to know that, Lara reflected painfully, shuddering at the very idea. He would find it hilarious. Some kind of poetic justice in his mind... The greatest irony...

          Lara drifted out of her thoughts to find herself sitting shivering inside a very cold car with all the windows fogged up. She drove off but somewhere down deep in her mind was an image of Christophe as she had last seen him in the hotel suite.

          Angry, contemptuous... bitter? What the heck did he have to be bitter about? Had he really imagined she would accept that insulting offer? Three months in Christophe Moreau’s bed, working out her penance for daring to marry another man. What a monumental ego he must have!

          And the utterly peculiar way he had gone about making that offer...Lara’s head was thumping again, tension twisting through her like a steel wire. It was too late to go barging in on her father. Tomorrow morning first thing, she would be on his doorstep, and if he hadn’t seen a lawyer yet, she would see that he did.

          It was a crisis and Lara thrived in a crisis. For years it seemed her life had lurched from one crisis to another. She was about to call her father when the doorbell went. She peered through the peephole and recognized the broad, weathered features of the heavily built man on the other side of the door.

“Dr. Elliott...?”

          She opened the door and looked at him in puzzlement. Sam Elliott was one of her father’s oldest friends. He and his wife ran a private nursing home.

“I tried to call you earlier but I decided it was better to talk about this face to face,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded, anxiously scanning his troubled face.

“Your father’s going to stay with us for a day or two until I can get him sorted out…”

“But why…? What’s the matter with him?” Lara prompted sickly.

          Sam Elliott sighed.

“He told me about… his problems. All his problems. Judging from the look on your face, I could see that he didn’t tell you a thing… Dear, Ken has been receiving treatment for depression for some months, now…”

          She paled.

“Oh… No, my father didn’t tell me...”

“He’s been quietly going off the rails ever since your mother died… And with everything else that happened lately…”

          She shut her eyes and groaned. Four months ago, they had received news of her mother’s death in a car crash. From the day she walked out until the day she died, neither Lara nor her father had had any contact with Linda Miller.

          Her mother hadn’t wanted any contact. She had wiped them both out of her life and had embarked on a new life abroad.

“But he seemed to take it so well,” she protested shakily.

“Sweetie, didn’t it ever occur to you that he took it… too well?” the older man murmured. “I think that he still hoped that Linda would come back. But when she died, Ken had to finally face the truth… that she was gone for good. That’s when the depression came and the gambling started. Now, this other mess he’s got himself into… This blow might be fatal to your father, Lara.”

“Oh… Um… Yes,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes.

“Ken just can’t cope with it, Lara,” Dr. Elliott said and sighed. “I don’t wish to startle you, but… This afternoon, Ken took some sleeping pills…”

          Lara gasped at him in horror.

“He did what?”

“Now, calm down… They weren’t enough to kill him but then, he didn’t have enough. His housekeeper found him lying in the hall and thought he’d had a heart attack...”

          She collapsed down on the sofa behind her, sick to her stomach, and bowed her head.

“She called me immediately. I saw the pills and contacted his own doctor. We worked out how many he must have taken and between us... Well, sweetie, we decided that my nursing home would be a better choice than the local hospital.”

          Tracks of moisture ran unchecked down her cheeks. Lara wanted to thank the older man for taking care of this sensitive matter with such grace and discretion but she couldn’t find her voice.

“Now, when he came to, Ken swore he hadn’t been trying to… harm himself. He said he was just desperate to stop his mind from going round and round and get some sleep. But when the first pill didn’t do the trick, he took a few more...”

“Do you… Do you believe him?”

“I’ll know better what to think in a few days when we’ve talked some more,” the doctor confessed wryly. ‘Well... Now I’m here to ask you how to get in touch with this fellow… He’s French or something… Maurice… No, Moreau I think is his name…”

“Christophe?” Lara gasped.

“Do you think he’d see me? I want to tell him that Kenneth needs criminal charges right now like he needs a hole in the head!” Sam Elliott delivered grimly.

          Lara was barely thinking straight. But one awareness dominated the chaos of emotions tearing her apart. Tonight, she might’ve lost her father. And even if it hadn’t been a suicide attempt, in his current condition, who was to say he mightn’t make such an attempt this week or next week or the week after?

           If he wasn’t coping now, how could she expect him to cope when the police were involved and the news of his disgrace leaked out? How could he handle all the horrors still to come? Lara cleared her throat.

“There aren’t going to be any criminal charges. I... saw Christophe tonight and he was very… understanding”

“He wasn’t very understanding when he had Kenneth tossed out of the company’s building!”

“I explained to him how much strain Dad had been under. There won’t be any court case,” she repeated unsteadily, her slender hands twisting together as she made her decision.

“But what about the money, Lara? I gather that Kenneth has no hope of paying all of it back...”

“Christophe is prepared to write it off…” she lied again.

“Hmm… He must be a very decent man… this Christophe,” Dr. Elliott said and shook his head. “I honestly thought he would want to nail your father’s hide to the wall as an example to the rest of his employees...”

          An inward quivering at that particular image assailed Lara. She tasted cold fear but this time it wasn’t only for her father, it was for herself as well. The older man smothered a yawn and stood up.

“Sweetie, I’ll pass on the good news to your father.”

“Could you tell him, please, that I’ll come and see him tomorrow?”

          Dr. Elliott grimaced.

“Lara, would you be terribly hurt if I advised you to give him a couple of days to get himself together again?”

“No, of course not,” she lied.

“You see, Ken feels he’s let you down and I don’t think he wants you to see him until he has himself under control again.”

“No problem,” she said stiffly.

“He’s not out of the woods yet. Ken still has a lot to handle, Lara. He’s lost his job and, even worse, his self-respect.”

          As soon as the older man had gone, Lara dialed the Northern Star Hotel number with clumsy fingers. She asked for Christophe’s suite. He answered the call with a growl of impatience in his voice.

“Hi, it’s me...” she said tightly. “Listen… Uh… I’ve changed my mind.”

          Silence buzzed on the line for long seconds. It went on and on and on while Lara trembled at her end of the phone with a heady mix of fear and despair. Maybe Christophe had never expected her to accept... Maybe he had been playing some sort of game with her.

“I’ll send my car over to collect you.”

          There was no emotion whatsoever in his reply. Lara couldn’t believe her ears.

“When?”

“Now.”

“Now?” she echoed incredulously.

“Now,” he repeated, his tone even colder than she had ever heard it. “I waited three damn years. I won’t wait one hour or one second longer.”

“I can’t come over to your hotel at this time of night,” Lara gasped.

“Why not?”

          His deep, dark voice thickened audibly.

“You won’t be going home again...”

          Lara was shattered. Now... Tonight?

“If you don’t come tonight, the deal’s off.”

“That’s totally unreasonable!”

“Yes… And this is what I want,” Christophe asserted.

“You… You can’t always get what you want…”

“Can’t I?”

          He laughed softly and the phone went dead.