Annie's Secret

‘I like to think so, yes.’

‘Hmm,’ he mused softly. ‘So, are you truly not interested in me?’

Annie felt her cheeks colour in a revealing blush. ‘I’m not interested in any man who, when he’s away on business, just wants a weekend fling while out of sight of his wife and family.’

‘And if the man has no wife? Or family?’ he pressed.

Her mouth compressed. ‘Don’t they all say that?’

‘Do they?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Annie replied. She may prefer to spend most of her time at Balfour Manor but that didn’t mean that she didn’t occasionally accompany her father when he went away on business. Or that her father’s presence protected her from the advances of some of the business associates she met at those times. On the contrary; the often scandalous exploits of Annie’s sisters seemed to have given most of those men the impression that all the Balfour sisters were open to seduction!

Luc gave her a hard look. ‘In my case it happens to be the truth.’ Children to inherit, and a wife to provide those children, would one day be necessary, Luc accepted. But he would choose his own time, and the correct woman, when it came to filling that position.

‘I’m still not interested,’ she announced.

He arched mocking brows. ‘No?’

‘No!’ she said with finality. ‘And I very much doubt you usually have to try this hard to seduce a woman into your bed either,’ she added.

It was true that Luc usually only had to show the minimum of interest in a woman in order to make love with her. But of late, he recognised with a frown, those easy conquests had started to pall. To become boring.

To the point that boredom had succeeded in piquing his interest in this bristly brunette? A woman so unlike the tall and model-thin blondes he was usually attracted to? Perhaps.

He moved restlessly. ‘You presume to know me that well?’

Annie gave a derisive snort. ‘I know your type that well,’ she claimed.

‘Indeed?’ There was a dangerous edge to Luc’s voice now.

‘Indeed,’ Annie echoed tauntingly.

Luc continued to look at her for several long seconds, the colour burning in Annie’s cheeks by the time he stretched his long legs out in front of him and leant back on his hands in the sand to turn dismissively and gaze out across the lake.

Giving Annie the opportunity to study him at close quarters unobserved. To once again note the changes in him. What had happened in the past four and a half years to change Luc from that young man, who had met every challenge with a recklessness that bordered on dangerous, to this remote and ruthlessly unyielding man whose every word and action proclaimed contempt for the very wildness he had once possessed in such abundance?

Why should she care what had happened to him, Annie instantly rebuked herself, when the same intervening years had taken their toll on her own life and emotions? When he didn’t even remember their time together that had resulted in those changes in her life. When he didn’t even remember her!

‘If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go for a swim.’ Annie didn’t wait for Luc to reply as she rose abruptly to her feet and began to walk down the beach to the water’s edge.

Luc slowly turned his head, his gaze admiring as he watched her fluidity of movement as she walked across the sand, arms lightly swinging, shoulders straight, her back long and supple, her hips gently swaying—

He sat forward suddenly, the darkness of his narrowed gaze arrested on her lower back. On the tattoo revealed just above the soft rise of her left buttock!

Luc’s breath caught in his throat as he stared at that tattoo. As the memories of a lush body naked in bed beneath him, wrapped around him, riding him as the woman smiled down at him seductively and her breasts jutted forward temptingly, came crashing into his head.

He rose quickly to his feet to cross the sand in three long, determined strides, before reaching out to grasp her arm and swing her round to face him. ‘Annie?’ he exclaimed as he pushed his sunglasses up into the darkness of his hair to look down searchingly into her face.

Once again the memory of those golden limbs entwined with his flashed graphically into his head. As did the silky softness of her skin as he’d kissed and tasted every inch of her body—the length of her back, that distinctive tattoo, the full curve of her bottom—before he had turned her over and explored the curve of her neck, the hard pebbles of her breasts, the gentle slope of her belly, the tiny nubbin nestled amongst the auburn curls between her legs as she writhed beneath him in the throes of ecstasy…

The sudden pallor of her cheeks, and the slight trembling of her body, told him all too clearly that this woman had those same memories—just as she had when they’d met earlier this morning!

His eyes narrowed furiously. ‘You denied earlier that we had ever met before!’

Annie gave a bitter laugh. ‘No, what I actually said was that surely one of us would have remembered it if we had,’ she reminded him. And one of them had remembered; how could Annie ever forget? Yet obviously Luc had! ‘Something obviously just triggered your own memory,’ she added sarcastically. ‘What was it?’

A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘The tattoo,’ he bit out.

Annie’s eyes widened. ‘My unicorn?’

Several of her university friends had decided to acquire tattoos during their first year at Cambridge, and Annie, with a desire to be accepted for herself rather than as a Balfour, had foolishly allowed herself to be dragged along too. Most of the other girls had opted for dolphins or butterflies, but Annie had known as soon as she saw the unicorn that it was the one she wanted.

How ironic that its existence should have succeeded in alerting Luc to her identity when nothing else had!

‘Your unicorn,’ he echoed grimly as he grasped both her arms. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier that we had met before?’ He shook her slightly.

‘And what was I supposed to say when you obviously had no memory of that meeting?’ Annie hissed. ‘“Hey, remember me? I’m the woman you spent the night making love to when you were on a skiing holiday four and a half years ago before dumping me the following morning.”?’ She scowled at him. ‘Somehow I don’t think so, Luc’

Well, when she put it like that…

Having spent the past few years deliberately blocking all memory of his ignominious fall from grace, and the dire consequences to his father because of that recklessness, Luc now clearly remembered the night he had spent making love with this woman.

Luc frowned. ‘We need to talk—’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ Annie interrupted derisively. ‘So we were lovers.’ She shrugged. ‘I remembered it. You obviously didn’t. End of story.’ She grimaced. ‘Now, would you please let go of me, Luc—you’re causing a scene.’ She looked about them pointedly to where several of the other hotel guests were now watching their exchange with open curiosity.

‘Ignore them!’ Luc rasped. He didn’t give a damn what the other hotel guests thought of them. Or him. He only cared that for some reason Annie had chosen not to remind him of their prior relationship.

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ Annie snapped. She only hoped, once Luc had released her, that she didn’t add to their curiosity by collapsing at his feet! Her legs certainly felt shaky enough for her to do that.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. Why did Luc have to suddenly remember their brief time together? It would have been so much easier, for everyone, if she could have just attended the rest of the conference without seeing him again—without him remembering—before returning home to England with no one any the wiser.

That Luc had now remembered their meeting was a complication she could well have done without. One that raised too many questions in her own mind…

The fact that he’d looked so grimly formidable at having remembered that meeting certainly wasn’t reassuring.

Annie forced the tension from her body and permitted a relaxed smile to curve her lips. ‘Let’s not make a big deal out of this, Luc,’ she dismissed lightly. ‘It was a little unflattering that you didn’t remember me initially, of course, but—’

‘Stop it, Annie!’ Luc said impatiently even as his fingers tightened on her arms.

‘Stop what?’ she asked, frustrated at his behaviour. ‘It’s great that you now seem to want to get together and discuss old times, but really, what would be the point when—’

‘I said, stop it!’ Luc repeated with controlled aggression. ‘The Annie I met before—’

‘The Annie you met, and who you’ve only just remembered,’ she pointed out fiercely, ‘was twenty years old and extremely naive!’ She gave a huff of derisive laughter. ‘I’ve grown up a lot in four and a half years, Luc. Enough to know when a man’s only interest is in taking me to bed!’ she added insultingly.

Luc felt the nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched cheek as he considered how she had learnt such a thing. Apart from that night she had spent with him, that is…