‘You didn’t need to worry. I got an appointment with the doctor the moment I got back. The baby’s fine. I’m fine.’
‘And now I’m fine too,’ he confirmed with a slanting grin as he echoed Stacey’s familiar mantra. Though, that wasn’t quite true.
‘Luc?’ She knew at once that he was holding something back. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
Relaxing his grip, he stepped back and admitted, ‘There is something I have to tell you, but not here. My house?’
‘You have a house in London?’
‘Not too far away,’ he confirmed. ‘My car’s right outside. Can you come now?’
She searched his eyes and must have seen the urgency in them. ‘Of course. I’ll ask my secretary to clear my diary, and then I’m all yours.’
Luc’s London house was amazing. It was one of those smart white town houses in an elegant Georgian square with a beautifully manicured garden for the exclusive use of residents at its heart. The interior was exquisite, but soulless, Stacey decided until Luc led the way into a library that smelled of old books and leather.
‘This is lovely.’ She gasped as she turned full circle to take it in. The walls appeared to be composed entirely of books, and there were several inviting armchairs, as well as a welcoming fire behind a padded brass fender.
‘I chose each of these books myself,’ Luc explained as he followed her interested gaze. ‘I can’t claim credit for the rest of the house. Apart from the tech, it was designed by a team.’
‘We rely a lot on teams, you and I,’ she observed with a crooked smile. ‘I suppose that’s how we keep ourselves isolated so successfully. There’s always a buffer between us and the world, and that’s the way we like it.’
‘That’s the way I used to like it,’ Luc admitted.
‘And now?’
‘And now I want to tell you why I am as I am, and why I’ve never told you that I love you.’
She was so shocked by Luc’s declaration she couldn’t find a single word to say. As the old clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the seconds they stared at each other with so much in their eyes it would have taken a week to express it, anyway.
Taking both her hands in his, Luc led her to the window where light was shining in. ‘I closed off my heart…to you…to everything. It was the only way I could come to terms with the love I destroyed.’
Stacey’s heart lurched, but she didn’t dare to interrupt. Luc was staring out of the window looking as fierce as she’d ever seen him. ‘I must have told you about my parents?’ He shot her a look of sheer agony.
‘Niahl spoke of them with great affection…’ She couldn’t remember Luc mentioning them once. In fact, if the subject of mothers and fathers ever came up, however innocent the reference, Luc would always clam up.
‘Yes…yes, Niahl met them,’ he confirmed, frowning as he no doubt examined the memory. ‘Perhaps he told you they were eccentric—reckless, even—always coming up with new ideas?’
‘Not really. He said they were funny and warm, and that they adored you and your brothers and sister, and that, unlike the farm, your family house was a real home.’
‘He didn’t mention they were practically penniless?’
‘No.’ She shook her head decisively. ‘He said they were the most generous people he’d ever known, and that he loved visiting, because they always made him so welcome. I remember him saying that everything was so relaxed and friendly.’ And now it was time for the hard question. ‘So what went wrong?’
‘Their death was my fault.’
Luc rattled off the words as if they had to be said but he couldn’t bear to say them.
‘How was it your fault?’ Stacey pressed. ‘They were killed in an air crash, weren’t they? You weren’t the pilot. You can’t blame yourself for that.’ Oh, yes, he could, she saw from Luc’s expression.
‘I’d just started to make some real money,’ he said grimly, staring blindly out of the window. ‘I was still working from my bedroom, but I was selling programs hand over fist. My parents had this new idea to make mobile buildings, of all things—it made perfect sense to them. My mother would design these portable homes, and my father would build them.’
‘Niahl told me they were wonderful and so clever that he was always learning something from them, but I didn’t realise they had those skills.’
‘They didn’t, and I told them so. They begged me to give them the chance to visit a factory a short flight away. I said of course, and gave them the money to book a ticket. I should have checked…’
‘What should you have checked?’ But Luc wasn’t listening.
‘How could I deny them when I had enough money to pay for the flight?’ he murmured, narrowing his eyes as he thought back. ‘I pointed out the difficulties they might encounter with this new business venture—the cash-flow problems, the complexities of hiring staff. The one thing I didn’t think to insist on was that I booked the tickets, and so they went to a friend instead who’d built his own single-engine aircraft in the garage, and was always bragging about it, though he hadn’t flown it for months—maybe never, for all I know. I guess my parents thought they could save me some money. They were never greedy. They didn’t know what greed was, but they were…impressionable’
