‘Really?’
‘I have an idea.’
‘Let me know as soon as you can.’
‘I will,’ he promised, holding her gaze. ‘And you let me know as soon as you can.’
‘Of course.’ Her heart lifted as she realised Luc hadn’t forgotten anything. ‘If we can get this right your guests will be talking about this party for the rest of their lives.’
‘And you?’ he pressed with a keen stare. ‘What will you be talking about, Stacey?’
‘Happy times.’ She pressed her lips flat as her eyes smiled. ‘I won’t let you down,’ she promised.
‘Okay?’
‘Not sure.’ The strangest feeling had just swept over her. It was the same not-alone-in-her-body feeling she’d had before. First stop: a bathroom.
‘I’m relying on you to get this right,’ Lucas said, draining his cup.
She nodded, half in business mode, half planning to dash off right away to see the doctor at the drop-in clinic. ‘I won’t let you down. It’s going to be the event of the year.’ The event ofher lifeif she was pregnant.
‘What would you like to eat?’
‘No time to eat. The bathroom?’ she reminded him. ‘Coffee’s fine.’
‘Soup,’ he said. ‘You must eat something.’
‘Okay, soup,’ she agreed. ‘But this one’s on me.’
Luc had relaxed a little over a bowl of soup, and now she was on her way to one of the last briefings with her team before the big event with a pregnancy test stuffed in her pocket.
As they’d parted, he’d said, ‘Thank you for bringing me up to speed regarding the party, and now I must speak with my people.’
There’d been no mention of seeing each other again, but she’d taken that for granted, she supposed. Luc would obviously want to know the result of the test.
‘Your global empire calling?’ she’d teased.
‘Well, I’m more concerned about the party right now,’ he’d admitted, ‘as it’s only a couple of days away, but, yes, the global empire is always waiting in the wings. I never know from one day to the next when I’ll be called away at a moment’s notice.’
A cold wind had brushed her cheek when he’d said that but, keeping her promise to herself that she wouldn’t become a clinging vine, she’d simply nodded her head in agreement.
They’d done a lot of reminiscing over lunch, leaving out details like how it felt to make love after wanting and caring and needing for so long. Or how safe she’d felt when Luc had steered her down the mountain. They hadn’t mentioned taste, touch, or sensation, but it had been there all the time in their eyes—the glance that had lasted a beat too long, the small shrug of resignation that things couldn’t be different between them, because of who they were, and the very different paths they trod. Luc’s first memory of Stacey at the farm had been waking up in the morning to discover she’d squirted shaving cream into his hand while he was asleep, so the minute he raked his hair, he was covered in the stuff. ‘I remember your roar of fury,’ she’d told him with relish.
He’d looked like a great angry bear when he’d stomped out of his room in search of the bathroom with foam all over his face. She’d suspected at the time that no one treated Lucas Da Silva with such scant regard for his position in life, for, though his parents had been impoverished, they’d been aristocrats with a lineage stretching back through the mists of time. ‘And the chilli in my ice cream,’ he’d reminded her.
‘It was strawberry, so I thought you wouldn’t notice. Clever, huh?’ she’d said with a mischievous look over the rim of her coffee cup.
‘Deadly,’ he’d agreed, and then they’d laughed together before falling silent again.
Would she never lose this yearning for Lucas? The more she saw of him, the more she liked him. She couldn’t help herself.
And what was wrong with that?
Everything, Stacey concluded as she entered the hotel where the team was waiting. She was setting herself up to be hurt.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHATWASSHEdoing now?What was the result of the test?What was the doctor’s view?
