Anna Cleary - The Night That Started It All

The car drew into the kerb and she scrambled in. As it moved into the road she turned to cast him a last icy, burning look through the window.

He felt stunned. Nom de Dieu . What sort of guy did she think she was dealing with? With fire flaring in his veins, he raced for his hire car.

Attempting to keep her cab in sight among the many, he wove in and out of the traffic—absurdly heavy for a country of this size—rationalising his impulse. At least if he talked to her again he could explain his position more fully. Surely it was important to leave their encounter on a positive note.

They were practically family, weren’t they? She’d be grateful, as he would be. After all, it had been a fantastic few minutes they’d shared. Fantastic.

Her silky softness still seemed to be in his senses, her voice, her very essence … His hands tightened on the wheel. If he was honest, he wasn’t ready yet to call it quits with her.

They left the Harbour Bridge behind, wound a way through the neon city and plunged into a maze of narrow one-way streets lined with terraces. Having lost the taxi a couple of times, he thought he still had the same one in view, and was heartened when he saw the name Paddington on a shop front.

Wasn’t that where she’d said she lived?

Just his luck, he was trapped on the wrong side of a red light. By the time he started again, the cab was out of sight.

He cursed long and colourfully. Taking the direction he calculated his quarry must have taken, he crossed a couple of intersections before he reached one where he caught a fleeting glimpse of someone alighting from a stationary cab. The distance was too far for him to be certain it was Shari, but it was a chance. His only chance.

Curbing his impatience, he recircuited the block and waited for the lights again, drumming his fingers on the wheel in his urgency to backtrack.

By the time he reached the terrace he’d estimated was the one, the cab was well and truly gone, the street quiet.

Breathing fast, her heart still thumping painfully, Shari paused in the delicate task of stripping her face bare. She would not accept the verdict. She wasn’t guilty of anything.

She’d done nothing to feel ashamed of. She didn’t care what Luc Valentin thought of her. She’d allowed him to enjoy her body purely out of generosity.

She took some deep calming breaths to slow herself down, then, when her hand was steadier, gingerly dabbed the paint from the bruise, revealing it in all its violent glory.

Was it her imagination it looked worse? She cleaned her teeth, then changed into her flowery old oversized tee shirt and slipped into bed. Lying there in the dark, she rolled the events of the evening around in her mind.

It was his problem if he couldn’t appreciate an honest human exchange without labelling a woman. And the insulting way he’d refused to believe a word she’d said. What was that all about?

She was startled from her reflections by noise from outside. Her heart thudded until she remembered tonight was the neighbourhood’s bin collection night. Hers was crammed full to overflowing with trash left by the previous tenants.

She should get up and take out the bin. She should.

From his park across the street Luc scrutinised the row of houses in the terrace. He suspected 217 could be the one, for a light had recently gone out in its upper front window. Now the entire house was in darkness, as was its neighbour.

What if he was mistaken? He began to see how ridiculous his mad chase was. He couldn’t knock on every door in the terrace. And how likely was Shari to open the door to him anyway? She’d probably accuse him of stalking her.

Le bon Dieu , he was stalking. Whatever it was about her that had got under his skin was compelling him to linger there even now, when he knew he’d lost any opportunity he might have had if only he’d been able to keep the cab closer.

It wasn’t as if he could throw pebbles at her window. The chances were he might terrify some poor little old lady to death.

He was about to cut his losses and call it a night when he heard a familiar rumbling, then at 221 an old guy came into view hauling a wheelie bin. He trundled it through his gate and parked it next to some others lined up under a streetlight.

A minute or two later one after another all the lights came on at 219.

Luc waited, watching, then his heart leaped. Another bin was being wheeled from the gate of 219, this time by a woman.

A blonde woman.

He got out of the car and strode swiftly across the street.

She’d changed from her party clothes into some long, flowing robe-like garment, but as he drew nearer he saw it was Shari. Admittedly, his heart was beating a tad too fast for a cool guy in charge of the situation.

She angled the bin into line with its neighbours just as he caught up with her.

‘Shari.’

She jumped, and with a strangled cry started back through her gate.

Realising the enormity of having suddenly seemed to appear out of the dark, he was filled with contrition. ‘Shari.’ He only just restrained himself from grabbing her. ‘Forgive me for startling you. I—I only want to talk. I just want to explain …’

‘Luc.’ Her voice was stunned, incredulous. ‘Do you have any idea … ? What—what are you even doing here?’

He noticed her draw the lapels of her garment close and fold her arms across her breasts. It affected him with a burning desire to hold her to him, kiss her hair.

‘Shari,’ he said thickly, advancing on her. ‘Shari …’

The light fell full on her face then, and he narrowed his eyes for a closer look. With a gut-wrenching shock he saw it wasn’t a shadow darkening the area surrounding her right eye.

She turned sharply away, covering the bruise with her hand, and started striding for the house. ‘Leave me alone.’

After a second of stunned paralysis, comprehension flooded through him and he was aware of a sharp twist in his chest. Her whimsical make-up had had a purpose, after all. He bounded after her onto her little verandah with the blind intention of pinning her down and making her talk to him, but she reached her door first.

Before she could close it, he rammed his knee against it. ‘What happened? Who did that to you? Was it him? Rémy?’

‘Of course not. What do you think, that as well as being a slut I’m a … a …? I had an accident, all right?’ She was flushed and trembling, so achingly vulnerable in her fierce pride he felt something inside him give.

Accident, vraiment . He couldn’t believe that. At the fragile pretence he felt so torn with tenderness and remorse, he hardly knew what he was saying, only that his voice grew hoarse. ‘Shari, chérie . Don’t be so … I didn’t mean to imply … This—this is not how we should say au’voir.’

In the verandah light her naked face was strained, her eyes dark with emotion. ‘We are strangers. We will never meet again. Move away from the door, please.’

She closed it in his face.

BUT the world as Shari knew it jolted off its axis. It was Rémy she never saw again.

Soon after dawn one morning in the autumn, Neil came hammering on her door with the shattering news. Rémy had been driving too fast on a foggy Colorado mountain road, misjudged a corner, and skidded over a cliff.

The shock was so immense, Shari was overcome with nausea and had to run to the bathroom to throw up. The details were sketchy, but it was clear Rémy hadn’t been alone in the car.

What a surprise.

In the hours that followed, once Shari had begun to assimilate the news, she wished she could cry. At least poor Emilie had that release. Em was so distraught, so overcome with grief, Neil was beside himself with anxiety for her health and that of their soon-to-be-born twins.

The best Shari could do was to change into her old track pants and run for miles, thanking heaven Luc Valentin wasn’t there to see her in her running clothes. Her emotions were a mess, not improved by an even more than usually massive dose of PMT.

She tried not to speculate about what Luc would be thinking about Rémy’s loss, and concentrated on feeling sad. Of course she must be, deep down. She must be torn with sadness, though the main feeling she was aware of was her sympathy for Em. Overcome as she was, as they all were, she refused to delude herself about Rémy.

His death didn’t change the cruel things he’d done. Some of the wounds he’d inflicted had had a bitter afterlife.

All right, maybe her plunge into adventure with Luc had been a bit soon after the end of the engagement, but officially— technically —despite the things Luc had said to her, she had done nothing wrong. Impulsive maybe, to share pleasure with a man who couldn’t appreciate a woman’s generosity in the best spirit, but not wrong.

She’d stick to that even as Luc Valentin tied her to the stake and applied the flaming torch.

No. If she did feel any guilt, the real reason, the one she could never admit to Em, was that, where Rémy was concerned, the worst she could feel was this terrible, awful hollowness. On the other hand, where Luc was concerned, she felt—

Raw.

The shock shook some Parisian quarters as well. In his executive office high above the Place de l’Ellipse, Luc Valentin was riveted to the police report, his pulse quickening by the second.

The loss of a young life was a tragedy, of course, though his cousin hadn’t exactly endeared himself to many of his relatives. Luc guessed poor Emilie would be the one who suffered most. The only surprise was that it had been an accident. Despite Rémy’s oily ability to slip out of tight situations, the chances had always been that eventually someone would murder him.

Someone like himself.

He’d considered it a few times after his tumultuous encounter in Sydney.

All at once finding his office suffocating, he took the lift down to the ground.

He strode block after block, seeing nothing of the busy pavements as the vision that haunted his nights invaded his being. Shari Lacey, powerful, vivid, as searing as a flame. Shari, her emerald eyes glowing with the sincerity of her denials. Shari …

Her very name was a sigh that plucked at his heartstrings. No, he mused wryly, wrenched them. If only Australia hadn’t been so far away. If he could talk to her. Hear her voice …

In the midnight hours he’d once or twice considered taking a month’s vacation and taking the long flight back. Just to—catch up. See if she needed protecting.

Those last bitter moments at her house stayed with him. We are strangers still rang in his ears. In English the words sounded even harsher than they did in French. That cold click of her locking her door, locking him out , had reverberated through him with a chill familiarity.

He grimaced at himself. Suddenly women were rejecting him on both sides of the world. Why? He’d never been a guy to pursue an unwilling woman. Vraiment , until Manon’s sudden betrayal he doubted he’d ever before experienced one. All his life, he’d taken for granted his ease at acquiring any woman he desired.

But first Manon, and now Shari … Somewhere on the journey, he’d lost his way.

Maybe he should have stayed in Australia and persevered. If it hadn’t been for that crucial directors’ meeting he might have stayed and … What?

Remonstrated with her? Sweet-talked her? Tried to make her forget Rémy? But how could he have? What man would dream of trying to impose his will on a woman who was already wearing the evidence of brute masculine force?