Summer Sins. Julia James

emotion he clicked on Armand’s e-mail. His eyes scanned the words rapidly. It was just about his upcoming business schedule in the USA. Nothing about marriage plans.

       Why not?

      The question hung in Xavier’s focus. Why had Armand gone so quiet on a topic he’d written so enthusiastically about only a short time ago? Xavier’s mouth tightened. Was Armand’s reticence now because he did not trust his brother not to interfere, even though he’d asked him not to? Did he suspect that being despatched to the Middle East and America had been a deliberate ploy on his part?

      A heavy rasp escaped Xavier. What did it matter? From now on he was out of it—he had to keep a very, very long distance from Armand and his plans to marry Lissa Stephens. It was the only safe thing to do—the only rational thing.

      Lissa Stephens could never be his.

      However much he wanted her.

      It had been a long, tiring day, and Lissa had to force herself to walk briskly out of her local Tube station in the rush-hour crowds. She carried bags of grocery shopping bought from one of the City supermarkets. It meant lugging the bags home, but there was no supermarket near her flat—only a dingy convenience store near the entrance to the station, stocking overpriced groceries and sad looking fruit and vegetables. This part of London depressed her. Here in the tatty concrete wilderness around the Tube station, an unsuccessful urban regeneration project of the fifties and sixties, where the only people were those who could not afford anywhere better, her spirits never failed to droop.

      But, however depressing the area, her flat did nevertheless have advantages. Not only was it social housing, so the rent was low for London, but it was also on the ground floor, and only a quarter of a mile away from St Nathaniel’s Hospital, which made her mandatory weekly visits there blessedly easier.

      Her expression changed slightly as she rebalanced her shopping bags and continued to trudge homeward in the dusk.

      It had been on one of her weekly visits to St Nat’s that she had first met Armand. He had been visiting a colleague who had collapsed with a heart attack, so he’d said later, but it had taken only a single look as they’d waited for the elevator together for him to smile, so warmly, so appreciatively.

      And that was how it had started.

       If only—

      No. Automatically she cut off the pointless hope. There was no purpose in holding on to it. It was folly to hold out for the happy-ever-after ending that she dreamed of, where Armand’s magic wand would make everything all right. In the end there was only herself to rely on. Even as she forced herself to recall that, a thought came to her.

       Xavier …

       Xavier Lauran is rich …

      No.

      It was impossible and out of the question. She must not let her thoughts stray in that dangerously tempting direction. She must not let her thoughts stray to him, period. Doing so was like poking a wound with a stick, just to see the blood run.

      She reached the old Victorian tenement and got out her keys. Her spirits low, battered on all fronts, she told herself she had to keep on at the task ahead of her. She could do nothing else. All her strength, her focus, her time and her will-power, had to be bent to that purpose only.

      Work, earn, save. No let up, no reprieve. For as long as it took.

      As she opened the door to the flat, she froze. There were voices inside, and they were not coming from the television. One was familiar, but the tone was not familiar, at all. It was excited, happy, with no trace of either the thread of pain or the drug-induced slurring. The other voice was also familiar but hearing it made her surge disbelievingly into the living room and stop dead. A figure unfolded from the battered sofa. Lissa’s face lit.

      ‘Armand,’ she cried.

      She went into his outstretched arms.

      ‘Xavier, have you been listening to anything I’ve said?’

      The voice beside him was light, with a teasing note, but Xavier had to force himself to pay attention. He’d had to force himself to pay attention to everything that Madeline de Cerasse had said to him all evening. He’d taken her out to dinner. It had been a deliberate gesture on his part. Completely rational. He needed, he knew, to pick up his normal life. He needed, he knew even better, to have sex as soon as possible. With another woman. And since he was, he realised, technically still regarded as her lover, at least by her, he knew it would have to be Madeline.

      There was only one problem. He had absolutely no desire whatsoever to take Madeline to bed.

      His eyes rested on her a moment. Her beautifully styled brunette crop set off a face of piquant allure, matched by a chicly elegant body that she was well skilled in using to sensual advantage in bed. He had every reason to desire her.

      Yet he did not. He did not want her.

      He only wanted one woman.

      And he couldn’t have her.

      Abruptly, knowing he was breaking his own first rule of affaires with his selected partners, he set down his fork. He was always considerate and tactful when the time came to end a relationship, letting his partner have sufficient time not just to accustom herself to the dissolution of their affair, but also to arrange an alternative partner for herself, to make the parting easier. This time he was neither.

      ‘I have something to say to you,’ he announced brusquely.

      Five minutes later he was sitting at the table on his own. Madeline had gone. He was not surprised. He had tried to soften the blow, but it had been difficult to do so at such short notice. She had reacted by assuming the role of offended woman. He had allowed her to do so, letting himself appear the brute it comforted her to cast him as.

      Well, perhaps he was a brute. There was certainly anger burning in him. Anger at himself. He should not have interfered in his brother’s life. He should have left his marriage plans well alone. He should have—

      He tossed down his napkin and got to his feet abruptly. It was irrelevant what he should or should not have done. It was too late.

      Too late for regrets. Too late for everything.

      Lissa Stephens was not for him and never could be, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do about it.

      How could the world change so much, so swiftly? The question swirled in Lissa’s head like a carousel, making her giddy with happiness. It had all happened so quickly—dizzyingly quickly. Armand had flown in from Dubai and done what Lissa had prayed that he would—and feared so much that he would not. He had waved his wonderful, miraculous magic wand and transformed everything. He had made all the necessary arrangements—that was what he’d been doing when he’d gone so quiet, so it would be a wonderful surprise, he’d said, his face lit from within with a glow that had made Lissa curl with happiness.

      Now, a mere twenty-four hours later, it was done. America next stop.

      She didn’t mind being left behind—understood the reason for it and rejoiced in it. As she made her way back from the airport even the damp and derelict street she lived in suddenly seemed bathed in glorious sunshine. Everything was radiant.

      It took her another twenty-four hours, so suffused in happiness was she, for the realisation to come to her. When it did, her breath caught with the impact of it. She had three weeks to herself—the time the trip to America would take.

      Three whole weeks.

      Her breath stilled in her lungs.

      A name distilled in her mind.

      Xavier.

       Do I dare? Do I really dare?

      Her lips parted as she slowly exhaled.

      Why should she not dare? She had three precious weeks to herself, and even a day, a single night,