He was very, very real.
‘You shouldn’t have run,’ he said.
He spoke French. There was an underlying accent, she could tell, but she couldn’t identify what his native language might be. The part of her brain that was capable of any kind of rational thought was not functioning.
She gazed at him helplessly as he walked towards her. Her heart had started to beat. Not racing, but with slow, heavy beats that seemed to take an eternity. Time seemed to be slowing down around her.
He came up to her.
She could not see his face properly in the dim light. The moonlight slanted across his face, turning it to planes and shadows. Turning her limbs to sponge. Her hands tightened on the stone balustrade. She ignored the cold that bit into her flesh.
It was the only part of her that was cold. In the rest of her a slow heat was burning.
‘Why did you? Run?’
The sound of his voice, with its low-pitched, accented timbre, caught at her senses.
‘I don’t know.’
It sounded to her ears such a stupid answer to make. But it was an honest one. It drew a slight smile from him. An indentation of his mouth. Her eyes went to it, drawn irresistibly. It did something to her. Something that fanned the slow-burning heat inside her and sucked the breath out of her lungs. She felt herself stepping back from the balustrade, letting go of it. Her arms fell helplessly to her sides.
What was happening? What was happening here, now, with this man who had drawn her eyes like a magnet as he’d approached her, and from whom she had run, fled, sensing an imperative that she must if she had any sanity obey, because he was only a fantasy, could only be a fantasy, nothing more? And yet he had come after her, followed her here, now…and she did not know why…
‘I just knew that I had to run…’
Her voice was still low, strange even to her ears.
He took another step towards her.
‘You don’t have to run from me,’ he said.
Eve looked at him. The shadowed light was still etching his face, the moonlight glinting off his eyes. There was something in his eyes…
He murmured something. She did not understand it. It was not French, or English. There had only been a few words, and she could not identify the language. Then he was speaking again, this time in English.
‘Who are you?’
Expression flickered in her face. Her lips parted, but she did not speak. She did not want to speak. Did not want to tell him who she was. It didn’t matter whether this man had or hadn’t heard of her father—and anyway, why should he have? There were a lot of rich people in the world and they did not all know each other. It was because suddenly, urgently, she wanted to be…someone quite different. A woman who could, if she wanted, walk out under the Mediterranean sky and gaze into the eyes of a fantasy come to life…
Prevarication came to her.
‘Why do you think I’m English?’ she answered, sticking to French.
The smile indented at his mouth again, and yet again she felt her breath catch.
‘Aren’t you?’ he mocked, very gently, keeping to English.
His words, accented as they were, with that strange, elusive accent, resonated through her. She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders.
‘You’re not French either,’ she returned, still in that language.
‘No,’ he agreed, but said no more.
Eve knew why. Like her, he did not want this moment to be encumbered by nationalities, identities, categories and classifications. Like her, he wanted it to be—pure. That was the word that formed in her mind. Pure.
Out here, in the clean, fresh air, with the wind from the sea soughing so gently in the tall pine trees, in the clear moonlit night, it was nothing to do with the luxury world of the hotel, with its high-stakes casino, its three-star Michelin restaurant, its marina for multimillion-pound yachts, and its car park full of deluxe cars for deluxe people.
Nothing to do with the world of her father. Beyond the reach of his long, malign shadow.
She knew she was being foolish. She couldn’t escape from being who she was, what she was. Nor could this man here, who might possibly be some kind of impostor, interloper, but who was, she knew, with the deep recognition and experience of the world she had been brought up in, one of the rich men of the world.
But for this short space of time they would both escape from who they were, what they were.
‘Why did you follow me here?’ She spoke in French still. She didn’t quite know why.
He smiled again, not a mere indentation of his mouth, but almost a laugh, lifting his face, showing the whiteness of his teeth.
‘No Frenchwoman would ask that!’ The mockery was there again, but it was conspiratorial, not cruel.
She gave an answering, unwilling smile, acknowledging her mistake.
‘And no woman,’ he went on—and his voice had changed, the timbre deepening, sending the heat seeping through her veins again, ‘as beautiful as you need ask that question.’
For a moment he held her eyes, then hers flickered away, uncertain. As they did so the breeze freshened over her bare arms, and she gave a slight shiver.
He was there immediately. He stripped off his tuxedo jacket and draped it around her shoulders. The warmth from his body was still in the silk lining. Eve felt her throat tighten. It was so intimate a gesture. She felt her heart-rate flutter again.
His hands were still on her shoulders as he stood half behind her. She twisted her head back.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice was low, almost breathless.
His face was close. Far too close. Far, far too close. The world disappeared. Simply ceased to exist. Only his eyes existed, looking deep into hers. Moonlight reflected in their depths. A pulse beat at her throat. She felt her hand move, reach up, and with the lightest touch her fingers traced his jaw. She felt it tense beneath her feathering touch. Saw the pupils of his eyes flare. Heard the intake of breath in his throat. Caught the heady, masculine scent of him.
Then her hand fluttered free, and her mouth dried at what she had just done. Touched a complete stranger like that. Instinctively, impulsively, she pulled away, stepping forward to seize the balustrade again.
‘I’m sorry!’ The apology rushed from her in a low, abashed voice. Her head lowered, and she gazed unseeingly down at the wavelets lapping on the rocks below the terrace. She bit her lip.
‘You apologise?’ She could hear his accent. It shivered down her spine, rippling through her blood. Setting her body resonating finely, so finely…
He had stepped close to her again, was standing behind her now. And once again she felt the pressure of his hands on her shoulders, through the fine material of the jacket he’d draped around her. The pressure seemed to anchor her to the earth, the turning earth.
‘There is no need to apologise.’ She could hear amusement in his voice, but something else ran beneath the amusement.
He turned her around. Her back was against the balustrade, and he was standing right in front of her. His hands slipped to either side of her face, long, strong fingers sliding into her hair. He was tall, taller than her, looking down at her. His hair was sable in the night.
She gazed at him. Helpless. Motionless.
She did not breathe. Did not do anything, anything at all, that might break this moment. Might shatter the reality of what was happening. She was standing here, in the moonlight, by the sea’s edge, and this man, whom she did not know, could never know, held her face in his hands and looked down at her.