both letters and numbers. She punched in her birth date. The ear splitting noise continued. She keyed in Rafael’s name and date of birth next, but Josien was clearly not the sentimental type. She tried entering the year that Chateau des Caverness had been built, the name and year of its most successful champagne vintage, the number of ancient Linden trees lining the sides of the lane leading up to the chateau, but the alarm just kept on screaming. She started pressing buttons at random. ‘Shiste. Merde. Bugger!’
‘Nice to hear you’re still multilingual,’ said a midnight-smooth voice from close behind her and Gabrielle closed her eyes and tried to stop her already racing heart from doubling its tempo yet again. She knew that voice, the deep delicious timbre of it. A Champagne voice, a voice of Rheims, it was there in the lilt and the texture of the words. A voice that conjured up forbidden thoughts and heated yearnings. She’d heard it in her dreams for years.
‘Oh, hello, Luc.’ If he could do deadpan, so could she. Gabrielle turned slowly and there he stood, looking every inch the head of a Champagne dynasty in his tailored grey trousers and crisp white business shirt. Gabrielle could have spent a lot longer staring at Luc Duvalier and cataloguing the changes time had wrought in him but circumstances and a healthy respect for her eardrums dictated moving right along. ‘Long time no see. I don’t suppose you could help me turn this thing off?’
He brushed past her, long, strong fingers moving swiftly over the panel. ‘Cinq six six deux quatre cinq un.’
The alarm cut out abruptly and silence cut in. A loud, ringing kind of silence.
‘Merci,’ she said finally.
‘You’re welcome.’ Lucien Duvalier’s perfectly sculpted lips tightened. ‘What are you doing here, Gabrielle?’
‘I lived here once, remember?’
‘Not for the past seven years, you haven’t.’
‘True.’ Now that quiet had been restored, Gabrielle could look her fill. She studied the tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed man standing before her, trying for detachment and failing miserably. Luc had been twenty-two when she’d last seen him and even then the promise of tightly leashed power and outrageous sexuality had hovered about him like a velvet cloak. Night, the household staff had called him. And Rafael, Luc’s childhood partner in crime, with his fair hair and his teasing blue eyes, had been Day.
‘Sorry about setting the alarm off,’ she said with an awkward shrug. ‘I should have known better than to use the key.’
Luc said nothing. He never had been one for small talk. But it was all she could manage. Taking a deep and steadying breath, Gabrielle tried again. ‘You’re looking well, Lucien.’
When he still made no reply Gabrielle looked past him, across the courtyard towards the chateau tucked snugly into the terraced hillside. ‘Caverness is looking well too. Cared for. Prosperous. I heard about your father’s death a few years back.’ She didn’t feel inclined to say any more on the subject. Had she wanted to lie through her teeth she could have added something about being sorry to hear of old man Duvalier’s demise. ‘Guess that makes you king of the castle now,’ she added recklessly. She met his dark burning gaze without flinching. ‘Should I kneel?’
‘You’ve changed,’ he said abruptly.
She certainly hoped so.
‘You’re harder.’
‘Thank you.’
‘More beautiful.’
‘My thanks again.’ Gabrielle held back a sigh. If Luc wanted to categorise the changes in her, she might as well show him the big ones. She wasn’t a gangly sixteen-year-old on the cusp of womanhood any more. And Luc wasn’t the centre of her life. ‘Look at us,’ she chided lightly. ‘Childhood playmates and here I’ve greeted you with less warmth than one would greet a stranger. Three kisses, isn’t it? One for each cheek and then a spare?’ She moved closer and brushed his left cheek with her lips, breathing in the subtle pine scent that clung to his skin and trying very hard not to let it wrap around her and squeeze. ‘One.’ She pulled back and made for his other cheek, never mind that he stood as if turned to stone. ‘Two,’ she whispered and let her lips linger a fraction longer this time.
‘Back off, angel.’ Luc’s voice was nothing more than a dark and dangerous rumble as his fingers came up to caress her jaw before sliding around to the base of her neck. ‘For your own sake if not for mine.’
A warning. One she would do well to heed. Not that she did. A frisson of awareness slid down her spine and she closed her eyes the better to diffuse it. So he could still make her body ache for his touch. Nothing to worry about. She was older now. Wiser. She knew better than to lose her heart to the head of the House of Duvalier. Not that a few more iron clad reasons to ensure she kept her distance from this man wouldn’t come in handy. ‘Are you married these days, Luc?’
‘No.’
‘Celibate?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’ She brushed his ear lobe with her lips. ‘You seem a little…uptight. It’s just an innocent greeting.’
The fingers at the base of her neck tightened. ‘You’re not innocent.’
‘You noticed.’ She pulled back smoothly, dislodging his hand with a shrug as she stepped away and shot him a careless smile for good measure. ‘You always were observant. Perhaps two kisses are greeting enough for you, after all. Shall we take a rain check on the third?’
‘Why are you here, Gabrielle?’
Here in this place where no one wanted her. Luc couldn’t have made the implication clearer if he’d painted it on a sign and hung it on the door. ‘Simone phoned and left a message. She said my mother had been ill. She said…’ Gabrielle hesitated, unwilling to reveal any more weakness to this man. ‘She said that Josien had been calling for her angels.’ Whether Josien had been calling for her children, who’d been named after two of the winged entities, was anyone’s guess. Rafe thought not. Rafael thought Gabrielle’s decision to travel halfway across the world on the strength of a fevered plea a colossal mistake but even so… Even if Josien refused to see her…
Some mistakes were unavoidable.
Gabrielle attempted a nonchalant shrug. ‘So here I am.’
‘Does Josien know of your expected arrival?’ asked Luc quietly.
‘I—’ Nervously, Gabrielle fiddled with the cuff of her stylish cream jacket. ‘No.’
Luc’s gaze grew hooded and Gabrielle thought she saw a flash of something that looked a lot like sympathy in their depths. ‘You always were too impetuous for your own good,’ he murmured. ‘I gather your brother declined to accompany you?’
‘Rafe’s busy,’ she said guardedly. ‘As I’m sure you must be. Luc, if you could just tell me where to find my mother…’
‘Come,’ he said, turning abruptly and heading for the door. ‘Josien is staying in one of the suites in the west wing until she recovers more fully. A nurse attends her. Doctor’s orders. It was that or the hospital.’
Pulling the door closed behind them, and pocketing her keys, Gabrielle hurried to match Luc’s long loping stride. ‘How bad is she?’
‘Frail. Twice, we thought we’d lost her.’
‘Do you think she’ll want to see me?’
Luc’s features hardened. ‘That, I have no idea. You should have called ahead, Gabrielle. You really should have.’
Gabrielle’s apprehension grew claws as they entered the chateau through the western door. Josien Alexander had always been a mystery to her children. Never loving, constantly critical. Gabrielle had spent most of her childhood trying to please a mother who could not be pleased. Gabrielle’s overriding instinct was still to please her, even after