Abby Green - A Very French Affair

Finished with discussing the main schedule of shots with the other men, Romain turned to look for Sorcha. She’d disappeared. He walked over to the edge of the terrace, where a complicated lattice design in marble formed a wall. And there she was, just on the level below, down a few steps. He felt that annoyingly familiar punch to the gut. With her hair free, in tousled waves down her back, she stood on the terrace below talking to one of the hotel staff. He was pointing something out to her on a carving, and she was bending down, putting on her glasses to take a closer look.

He knew she wouldn’t be faking an interest. And when she turned to look up and smile widely at the man he jealously felt bowled over by her natural beauty. She was dressed simply in shorts, which showed a smooth length of pale, slim leg, and a plain white T-shirt which clung to her breasts far too provocatively for his liking. He vowed to take her, and soon. He couldn’t wait much longer, and the sooner he burned himself free of this desire, the sooner he could get back to normal.

Because, as much as he relished the feeling of boredom being gone, he also conversely wanted it back. In these uncharted waters of insatiable desire he felt rudderless. He wasn’t used to a woman making him feel like this, and the only other time that had happened he’d been too young to know how to deal with it, or the consequences. Not so any more. This time he was equipped. He would take her and then move on to someone more suitable, safer. This was just a temporary madness.

At that moment, as if Sorcha sensed him watching, she turned and looked up. The smile slid from her face and was replaced with a flare in her eyes. Her mouth opened slightly. She wanted him too. He knew it like an immutable truth that stirred in his blood. Though he knew she’d deny it again if he pushed her.

And that was why he found himself tugging her back from getting on the boat as they watched Simon and Dominic go off ahead of them. Now they were alone. No crew around.

Sorcha looked up into Romain’s expressionless face. She was very aware of the fact that they were now alone. On a stunningly beautiful idyllic white marbled palace island. Dominic and Simon’s boat was chugging away in the distance. Their boatman was looking at them expectantly.

‘Have lunch with me here.’

Sorcha’s immediate and first reaction was to shake her head and say no. A strong suspicion assailed her, making her quite sure that he was only asking so he could keep her close, could make sure she stayed out of trouble. Romain saw her hesitation. He smiled, and it looked dangerous and far too seductive.

‘Don’t worry—I won’t ravish you. And you have to eat, don’t you?’

She opened her mouth, and to her utter horror and chagrin her stomach made a sound like water going down a very big, echoing drain. She promptly shut her mouth and blushed.

‘That settles it.’ He took her arm and shepherded her back up the steps and into the main open-air foyer of the hotel.

The feeling of unreality lingered as they were shown to a secluded table in the corner of the magnificent restaurant. There were no walls, only columns, open to the warm air, the hazy blue of the sky and the lapping waters of the lake, intricately carved with complicated mosaics which were echoed in the roof above. It was truly the most breathtaking place Sorcha had ever been in her life.

A waiter materialised and she heard Romain order a bottle of champagne. She stopped him with a brief, light touch on his hand. He looked at her quizzically.

‘I’m sorry but do you mind if we don’t have champagne? It’s just that it gives me a headache…’

She sent a small, hesitant smile to the waiter and then back to Romain, who felt slightly winded.

‘If you don’t mind…what I’d actually really like is a beer.’

He lifted a brow and felt totally nonplussed. It had been pure reflex to order champagne—his first step in any seduction. And she wanted beer? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even drunk a beer, and yet in that instant it seemed to him to be the most desirable drink in the world.

He nodded to the waiter. ‘Two beers, please.’

Sorcha felt embarrassed as the waiter scurried away. ‘Oh, you don’t have to have one just because of me…That is,’ she qualified, feeling awkward, ‘you don’t exactly look like a beer drinking man.’

He sat back. His face was all lean angles, making him look austere.

‘Tell me, what do I look like?’

Like a man who knows how to make love to a woman…

Sorcha’s insides liquefied, and she couldn’t believe how a bubble of sensuality seemed to have enveloped them.

She had to control herself with effort. ‘You look like a vintage champagne type. Or a thousand-euro-a-bottle of wine type.’

He had actually paid that much and more for wine in the past, and it seemed almost crass now. ‘Forgive me. I should have consulted with you before ordering. Though, after seeing you put away half a glass of champagne in one go in New York, I was under the impression that you liked it.’

Sorcha had the grace to smile. ‘I actually hate the stuff. I wouldn’t have had a glass at all, only for Katie giving me one. Maud likes us to look like we’re having a good time at events like that…drinking champagne promotes the stereotype.’

‘And you weren’t having a good time?’ he asked easily.

The beers arrived. Romain held his bottle up and Sorcha clinked hers to his. Without breaking eye contact, they both took a long swallow.

Romain closed his eyes for a second. ‘I’d forgotten how good it tastes—especially in this climate…’ He opened them again, catching Sorcha looking at him with glittering big blue eyes. His body tightened. ‘Go on, you were going to tell me why you weren’t having a good time…’

She was? She had to be careful. To her consternation, she was finding that he was all too easy to talk to. It would be very easy to let something slip out that she wasn’t ready to talk about.

She shrugged minutely. ‘Well, you saw what it was like. A room full of movers and shakers. We were there primarily as adornments. People look at us and think: Models—ergo stupid. It’s all about seeing and being seen.’

She looked out to the lake. ‘In the early days it was all fabulously exciting to be in the same room as the Mayor of New York, or the biggest, newest film star, but really…your illusions get stripped away pretty quickly. Coming from somewhere like Ireland, I think I have a pretty good inbuilt detector for anyone who isn’t genuine. And about one per cent of that crowd are genuine…’

What she said brought back a niggling sense of déjà vu, but before he could dwell on it, pin it down, the waiter returned and took their order. Romain ordered more beers, and Sorcha was surprised to see they’d already been talking for some time. Her eyes took in his relaxed stance, his T-shirt straining across the muscles of his chest. She remembered seeing him emerge from the sea in Ireland. He smiled and she couldn’t breathe. The brown column of his throat looked all too touchable.

It felt as if a silken cord of intimacy was wrapping itself around Sorcha.

She spoke to fill the silence which seemed far too heavy and potent for her, seizing on the first thing that came into her head.

‘I was here before…’ She answered his questioning look, ‘On a backpacking trip with my friend Katie, when we were twenty-one. We’d been on a shoot in Delhi, and decided to do a little travelling before going home. We stayed at a tiny hostel just across the water there somewhere. We used to sit in our window, drinking beers. We’d dream about being over here, having a sumptuous meal, fine wine…’

She couldn’t stop a sudden giggle from rising, and Romain watched her. She didn’t realise how infectious her grin was. She knew part of it was a slightly hysterical reaction to being here in the first place, sharing such an intimate space with this man. At how fast things were moving, changing…