'I can't find my passport,' she confided abruptly, steeling herself for the disappearance of that smile. Luc got exasperated when she mislaid things.
'Relax,' he urged. 'I have it.'
She sighed relief. 'I thought I'd lost it…along with my credit cards and some photos I had.'
'You left them behind in New York.'
She smiled at the simplicity of the explanation. Her usual disorganisation appeared to be at fault.
'Why were yo
u crying?'
She laughed. 'I don't know,' she said, but she did. 'Has someone upset you?' he had demanded with a magnificent disregard for the obvious. Nobody could hurt her more than Luc and, conversely, nobody could make her happier. Loving Luc put her completely in his power and, for the first time in a very long time, she no longer felt she had to be afraid of that knowledge.
A brown forefinger skimmed the vulnerable softness of her lower lip. 'When I'm here, you don't have to worry about anything,' he censured.
Since meeting Luc, worry had become an integral part of her daily existence. The sharp streak of insecurity ingrained in her by her rootless childhood had been roused from dormancy. But it wasn't going to be like that any more, she reminded herself. As Luc's wife, she would hold a very different position in his scheme of what was important. Depressingly, however, when she struggled to picture herself in that starring role, it still felt like fantasy.
'Why do you want to marry me?' Her hands clenched fiercely together as she forced out that bald enquiry in the lift.
'I refuse to imagine my life without you.' He straightened the twisted collar of her silk blouse and tucked the label out of sight with deft fingers. 'Do you think we could save this very private conversation for a less public moment?' he asked lazily.
Catherine made belated eye-contact with the smiling elderly couple sharing the lift with them and reddened to her hairline. She had been too bound up in her own emotions to notice that they had company. Catherine Santini. Secretly she tasted the name, savoured it, and the upswell of joy she experienced was intense.
'Life doesn't begin with "once upon a time", cara, and end "and they all lived happily ever after", Luc had once derided. But, regardless, Luc had just presented her with her dream, gift-wrapped and tagged. Evidently if you hoped hard enough and prayed hard enough, it could happen.
As she crossed to the limousine, the heat of the sun took her by surprise. Her eyes scanned the climbing roses in bloom at the wall bounding the clinic's grounds and her stomach lurched violently. 'It's summer,' she whispered. 'You had the flu in September.'
With inexorable cool, Luc pressed her into the waiting car. Her surroundings were then both familiar and reassuring, but still she trembled. Luc hadn't said a word. Of course, he had known. He had known that she had lost more than a few weeks, had seen no good reason to increase her alarm. Everything now made better sense. No wonder Mr Ladwin had been reluctant to see her leave so quickly. No wonder she didn't recognise her clothes or her hairstyle or the change in Luc. She had lost almost a year of her life.
'Luc, what's happening to me?' she said brokenly. 'What's going on inside my head?'
'Don't try to force it.' His complete calm was wondrously soothing. 'Ladwin advised me not to fill in the blanks for you. He said you should have rest and peace and everything you wanted within reason. Your memory will probably come back naturally, either all at once or in stages.'
'And what if it doesn't?'
'We'll survive. You didn't forget me.' Satisfaction blazed momentarily in his stunning eyes before he veiled them.
The woman who could forget Luc Santini hadn't been born yet. You could love him passionately, hate him passionately, but you couldn't possibly forget him. Hate him? Her brow creased at that peculiar thought and she wondered where it had come from.
'Are you thinking of putting off the wedding?' she asked stiffly. It was the obvious thing to do, the sensible thing to do. And what she most feared was the obvious and the sensible.
'Is that what you want?'
Vehemently she shook her head, refusing to meet his too perceptive gaze. How could she still be so afraid of losing him? He had asked her to marry him. What more could he do? What more could she want?
He didn't love her, he still didn't love her. If she was winning through, it was by default and staying power. She wasn't demanding or difficult, spoilt or imperious. She was loyal and trustworthy and crazy about children. She had had no other lovers. Luc would have a problem coming to terms with a woman who had a past to match his own. And in the bedroom…her skin heated at the acknowledgement that she never said no to him, could hardly contain her pleasure when he touched her. Most importantly of all, perhaps, she loved him, and he was content to be loved as long as she never asked for more than he was prepared to give. All in all, he wasn't so much marrying her as promoting her and, though her pride warred against that reality, it was better than severance pay.
'The wedding will take place within a few days,' Luc drawled casually and, picking up the phone, he began the first of several calls. Finding himself the focus of her attention, a smile of almost startling brilliance slashed his hard mouth and he extended a hand, drawing her under the shelter of his arm. 'You look happy,' he said approvingly.
Only a woman who was fathoms deep in love could lose a year of her life and still be happy. Kicking off her shoes, she rested blissfully back into the lean heat of him, thinking she had to be the luckiest woman alive. Maybe if she worked incredibly hard at being a perfect wife, he might fall in love with her.
'We're in a traffic jam,' she whispered teasingly, tugging at the end of his tie, feeling infinitely more daring than she had ever felt before. The awareness that they would soon be married was dissolving her usual inhibitions.
Luc tensed into sudden rigidity and stumbled over what he was saying. Leaning over him, bracing one hand on a taut thigh, Catherine reached up and loosened his tie, trailing it off in what she hoped was a slow, seductive fashion.
'Catherine…what are you doing?'