Lynne Graham - One Night With His Wife

And now it seemed that once again everything had fallen through. Star sighed. Where Juno was concerned that was nothing new. There was nothing new in her sudden dramatic flight from trouble either. That was vintage Juno, Star reflected sadly. When things went wrong, Juno panicked.

But now she urged her daughter to approach Luc Sarrazin for child support, Star simply cringed. Her mother might be desperate to justify her bahaviour, but that particular suggestion had been way below the belt. Juno knew what a disaster her daughter’s short-lived marriage had been. Hadn’t it been partly her fault that Luc had felt constrained to marry Star in the first place?

‘Star…’ Rory said again more forcefully.

‘Shush! I need to hear the rest of this message.’ Star switched the tape back on.

‘I know you’re trying to tune me out because I’m not saying what you want to hear. Yes , I hate Luc because he’s a Sarrazin, but you made babies with him! He’s got no heart or imagination but he ought to be keeping his own kids.’ Juno paused. ‘You see, I don’t know how long it’ll take to sort this mess out, or even if I’ll be successful. But I promise you that if I am, I’m going to have the most wonderful surprise for you when I get back again!’ she forecast in a bright but not very confident tone. ‘Byee!’

‘Luc…so his name’s Luc,’ Rory continued in a sharp, flat tone unfamiliar to Star’s ears. ‘I’ve never understood why you won’t talk about the twins’ father, but now that I’ve finally got his name, maybe you could tell me who he is.’

‘My husband…well, sort of…’ Star’s voice just petered out again.

Rory’s jaw had dropped. He pushed a dismayed hand through his fair hair, making it stand on end. ‘You’re saying you’re married? But I thought—’

Star gave an awkward shrug. ‘Yes, I know what you thought, but I couldn’t see the point in contradicting you.’

‘You saw no point?’ His suntanned face was flushed, his hazel eyes bemused. ‘There’s a big difference between being a single mother and someone’s wife , Star!’

‘Is there? It wasn’t a proper marriage and it only lasted a few weeks. The twins were an accident…my accident, my mistake,’ Star stressed tautly. ‘It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. It’s something I just want to forget.’

‘But you can’t just forget you’ve got a husband!’ Rory’s dismay at that revelation was unconcealed. ‘My parents will hit the roof if they find out that you’re a married woman!’

It was make-your-mind-up time, Star conceded ruefully an hour later as she settled the twins into the wooden playpen with their toys. She had made a snack for their lunch from the few provisions that remained in the fridge. So where was she going with Rory?

Almost without her noticing, he had crossed the boundary of being just a good mate. But she could now pinpoint the exact date when that subtle change had begun. It had been the day he took her home to meet his family. Even though he had introduced her purely as the casual friend she had been at the time, his wealthy parents had seen her as a threat and acted accordingly. Rory had been embarrassed, and then furious at their behaviour. He was a decent guy, a really decent guy, and he had been a terrific friend.

They had met in the hospital canteen some weeks after the twins were born. The twins had been in the special care unit for a very long while. At the same time, Rory’s beloved grandmother had been seriously ill. When he had realised that Star had to walk miles just to catch a bus to the hospital, he had started synchronising his visits to his grandmother’s bedside and offering Star a lift home.

He’d been twenty-two then, and he had told her he worked in a supermarket. He hadn’t mentioned that it was his year working out to complete a degree in business management, or the even more salient fact that his father owned a vast chain of supermarkets which was a household name in the UK.

When she had angrily accused him of not telling her the truth, he had said straight off, ‘You’ve got a real prejudice against people with money.’

To be fair, she had not been very frank with Rory about her own past. She had told him that she had been a charity child, raised at a rich and reluctant French guardian’s expense. The child had been kept rigorously at arm’s length, lest she contaminate her guardian’s good name and reputation with her unconventional background and questionable parentage.

Luc Sarrazin’s father, Roland, had been that guardian.

And Star had only met Roland Sarrazin twice in her entire life. Once when she had first become his ward, at the age of nine, and the second and final time just over eighteen months earlier, when the old man had been dying. She had flown out to France to stay at the Sarrazins’ magnificent family home, the Chateau Fontaine, and dutifully pay her respects. Her conscious mind now recoiled from remembering the other events which had taken place that winter.

Instead she recalled her years of separation from her mother, Juno Roussel. Nine years of prim and proper imprisonment in a boarding school for a child who had once known what it was to run free. Nine years deprived of even written contact with her mother. She had spent the school holidays in London, as the guest of Emilie Auber, an elderly childless widow related to the Sarrazin family. Only Emilie had given Star affection during those years, but Emilie had also made the appalling mistake of encouraging Star to love Luc Sarrazin.

Dear sweet Emilie, with her sentimental dreams of romance…

‘Luc needs someone like you, but he doesn’t know it yet,’ Emilie had said.

No, Luc definitely hadn’t known. And he hadn’t needed her either. Indeed, Luc had given Star a taste of humiliation which she would never, ever forget.

‘You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with sex. Find a boy the same age and experiment on him!’

As Star stared into space, she shivered and hugged herself. The chill inside her seemed to bite right through to her bones. It had been eighteen months, and she hadn’t yet followed Luc’s advice and experimented. First she had discovered that that single reckless night in Luc’s bed had got her pregnant. Then she had become the mother of two tiny premature babies. The twins’ tenuous hold on life had sentenced her to months of tortured fear and anxiety. But now Venus and Mars were home, safe and healthy, and slowly catching up with their peers. And Rory was still here, being caring and supportive. He loved the twins and he wanted a girlfriend, not just a mate. He wasn’t likely to wait for her to make up her mind for ever…

His kisses were pleasant. They didn’t burn. But then being burned hurt , Star reminded herself fiercely. No more dancing too close to the fire. No more dizzy adolescent fantasising. The guy she loved, the only guy she had ever loved, had spent their wedding night in the arms of his exquisitely beautiful mistress, Gabrielle Joly. As rejections went, it had been pretty final. It had told her all she should have needed to know. But Star had always been a fighter, and stubborn with it. She hadn’t been willing to let go of her dream. Hating Luc, loving Luc, and determined to hang onto him by any means available, she had got down and dirty in the trenches of fighting for her man.

Getting him into bed had felt like a major coup. She had thought she had won; she had thought he was hers ; she had thought surrender meant acceptance. She hadn’t really cared how he felt about it. After all, men didn’t always know what was good for them. In fact men could be pretty thick about recognising their soulmate if she came along in an unfamiliar guise. And Luc, even possessed as he was of an IQ of reputedly sky-high proportions, had been a really slow and exceedingly stubborn learner.