Summer Sins. Julia James

gave a silent salute to the boutique saleswoman. Or was it Lissa Stephens herself who’d chosen that simple, but superbly cut coffee-coloured sleeveless silk shift that went so perfectly with her fair colouring? He didn’t know, didn’t care. Knew only that at last he was seeing Lissa Stephens as he had wanted to see her from the moment he had got out of the car the night before to offer her a lift home after purposely preventing her from catching her bus.

      Why had he done that? Stopped her getting her bus so he could offer her a lift? He’d had a good reason, but right now he didn’t recall exactly why. There wasn’t room inside his head for that. For anything. Anything at all except to close in, the way he was doing, on the woman sitting there as he walked up to her. He stopped dead in front of her, looking down.

       ‘Incroyable.’

      His voice was a husk. It turned Lissa inside out and back again. Her lips parted as she tilted her head to gaze up at him.

      ‘Incroyable,’ he murmured again. His eyes were washing over her, full force, working over every iota of her appearance, sweeping down over her, then back up again, to hold her own helpless, breathless gaze.

      ‘I knew you would look good, but this…. this is beyond all my expectations.’

      For one moment longer his eyes held hers in that incredible, heart-stopping gaze, and then suddenly, like a switch going on, he smiled. She reeled again.

      Gracefully, he lowered his lean frame into the adjacent chair, without taking his eyes off her. Immediately, claiming his attention in the most unobtrusive fashion, was the waiter who had served her. As Xavier Lauran’s eyes left her, she felt at last the air returning to her lungs. Then, a moment later, with the waiter disappearing, it left them again. Xavier Lauran turned back to her.

      ‘You look simply fantastic,’ he told her. His voice was warm, and melting. Melting through her like honey.

      She couldn’t say anything. She was bereft of words. She had known in the first moment of seeing him, when he’d walked into the casino last night, that this man was like none she had ever known. But until this moment the full force of his power to render her breathless and helpless had not been turned on her. Now it was. Now, in a heady, incredible rush to her head, she knew that for the first time he was responding to her, and that responsiveness was making his own attractiveness totally lethal.

      What was happening to her?

      It was a pointless question. She knew with every shimmering cell in her body that what was happening to her now was making her reaction to him of the night before seem like the palest shadow of awareness.

      It was like being carried away on a flood-tide—a flood-tide of heady awareness that was making her feel weightless and floating. Floating towards a destination she had no control over.

      ‘Your champagne, sir,’ said a voice.

      She started, realising that the waiter had returned, and that he was bearing a tray with a bottle of champagne nesting in an ice bucket, smoky fumes curling from its opened neck. She watched as he carefully poured a little into one of the flutes on the tray, then proffered it to Xavier Lauran, who inhaled the bouquet and took a considering mouthful.

      He nodded, and the waiter proceeded to pour out her glass, then fill the remainder of the other one. Then he was gone. Xavier picked up her flute and offered it to her, retaining his own. She took hers gingerly.

      ‘Salut.’ He clinked his glass against hers.

      She took a sip simultaneously with him, then lowered the glass.

      Xavier glanced at her. ‘A little better than last night’s, non?’ he said. There was amused irony in his voice, and in the lift of his eyebrow.

      A smile broke from her. ‘It’s not even champagne, is it? What they serve there?’

      ‘Méthode champenoise,’ he agreed, with all the disdain of a Frenchman, for sparkling wine produced anywhere but in the élite Champagne region of France. ‘And atrociously done at that. This, however, is champagne. Not one of the most famous houses, but all the better for that, I believe. And this is a particularly good vintage.’ He took another savouring mouthful.

      So did Lissa. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ she said. Then she made a face. ‘I’m sorry—that’s a crass thing to say. I don’t know anything about champagne, I’m afraid—I only know that what they serve up at the casino is pretty grim. As well as being a hideous rip-off, of course. But I can tell this is completely different.’ She frowned slightly. ‘What makes it so good?’

      ‘Many things. The grapes, the soil, the weather, the slope, and above all the nose of the chef du cave, whose responsibility it is to ensure the quality of the assemblage—the blending of the grapes which gives each champagne its distinctive character.’

      Xavier leaned back in his chair, the flute held carefully in his fingers. They were long fingers. Lissa’s eyes went to them, and for the briefest moment she had a vision of their tips just touching her face, even as they were touching the glass. She dragged her eyes away, making herself listen to what he was saying. He was explaining the factors that went into creating a vintage champagne—one that would be made from the grapes of one year’s harvest alone, not blended with those from previous years. She listened attentively, interested in the subject as much as simply revelling in listening to his beautiful, accented voice, revelling in his attention being focussed on her.

      ‘What are crus?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never understood those, either.’

      Xavier enlightened her.

      It was good to talk about something like champagne. He could talk without thinking, and that was good right now. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to watch. He wanted to watch the way Lissa Stephens held her champagne glass with a natural grace and elegance, the way she lifted it to her mouth from time to time, and the way her soft lips embraced the lip of the flute. He wanted to watch her gazing across at him, her eyes hanging on his, deep and smoky. He wanted—

      ‘Your table is ready now, sir, if you would like to go through?’

      The maître d’ from the adjacent restaurant was hovering deferentially. Xavier nodded. He got to his feet.

      ‘Shall we?’ he invited Lissa.

      She stood up. She didn’t feel quite steady on her feet, but it had nothing to do with the champagne she’d been sipping.

      And everything to do with the man she was about to dine with.

      Supremely self-consciousness of his scrutiny, she walked forward into the dining room. The shoes that went with the dress were a fraction tight, but she didn’t care. She only knew the dress itself made her feel like a million dollars, moulding her body and yet simultaneously skimming her contours. She let the maître d’ show them to their table, secluded and private on the far side of the dining room, and took her place on the banquette with the same self-consciousness.

      The business of ordering food—a lengthy process, involving no less a personage than the chef himself, emerging from his domain to conduct an intensive, mutually satisfactory conversation in rapid, idiomatic French with this man for whom any chef would proffer his arts and skills—helped her relax. So, too, did the continued sips of champagne. She wasn’t entirely sure how much she’d drunk, because her glass never seemed to be empty. She would need to be careful, she knew, but only with an abstract part of her mind.

      Prudence, caution, being sensible—all seemed qualities that had nothing to do with what was happening to her now.

      Because what was happening to her now was magic. Pure and simple.

      Magic to sit here at the same table as this man, the man who could turn her inside out and back again with a single long-lashed glance. Magic to be so wonderfully, shiveringly aware of what he was doing to her. Magic to listen to his smooth, deliciously accented voice, talking about … well, she couldn’t really think what. But it was easy, undemanding conversation that flowed between them, back