fact that she hadn’t had to stay up long said it all. He rarely gave interviews; the last one had been at least two years previously. He was the CEO of Banque Lévêque, and had reached that exalted position at a ridiculously young age. Now in his mid-to-late thirties, he had brought a conglomerate of smaller archaic banks kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, turning them into Banque Lévêque and making it one of the most influential financial institutions in the world.
Alana saw the flush on her cheeks and scrambled for some powder to try and disguise it. There had been little on his childhood or family, just one line to say that he’d been born in the suburbs of Paris to an unwed mother. Nothing about his father.
Her mouth twisted cynically. She wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest to learn that he was married. From her experience, the holy sanctity of marriage was a positive incitement for men to play away. She stopped trying to calm her hectic colour down; it was useless, and if she put any more make-up on, she’d look like a clown. She met her own eyes and didn’t like the glitter she saw.
The wealth of information she’d found on his personal life—quite at odds with the paucity of information on his family or professional life—had put paid to the suspicion that he could be married. Picture after picture of stunning beauties on his arm abounded on the Internet. It would appear that he’d courted and fêted an indecent amount of the world’s most renowned actresses, models and it-girls. However, no woman ever seemed to appear more than twice.
The man was obviously a serial seducer, a connoisseur of women. A playboy with a capital P. And Alana Cusack, from a nice, comfortable, unremarkable middle-class background, with a relatively attractive face and body, was not in his league. Not even close.
He was rich. He was powerful. He was successful. He played to win. He was the very epitome of everything she’d vowed never to let into her life again. She packed up her make-up things and gave herself a quick once-over. Her dark-navy trouser suit, and cream silk-shirt buttoned up as high as it would go, screamed professional. She adjusted the string of faux pearls around her neck. With any luck he’d have met and seduced one of the many women at the party last night, and not even remember the fact that he’d shown any interest in her.
‘Let’s get started, shall we?’
Alana spoke briskly, and barely glanced up from her notes when Pascal was shown into the studio. But she felt the air contract, the energy shift. The excitement was tangible. She hadn’t even experienced this level of palpable charisma from some of the world’s most famous sportsmen. She’d been given a thorough briefing from an attendant PR-person not to stray into personal territory, and above all, not to ask him about relationships with women. As if she even wanted to go there.
She felt rather than saw him sit down opposite her. She could hear the clatter of people getting ready around them with lights and the camera. Derek was with her again today, and he said now, ‘Just a couple of minutes; I need to check the lights again.’ Alana muttered something, feeling absurdly irritated. She just wanted to get this over with.
‘Late night last night?’
She looked up quickly and glanced round to see if anyone had heard. No one appeared to have. She hated the intimate tone he’d used, as if drawing her into some kind of dialogue that existed just between them. It was less than twenty-four hours since she’d met him in the first place. She had to nip this in the bud. She looked at him steadily, ignoring the shockwaves running through her body at seeing him again.
‘No.’ She was frosty. ‘Not particularly. You?’ Why had she asked him that? She could have kicked herself.
He smiled a slow, languorous smile that did all sorts of things to her insides. She gritted her teeth. He was immaculate again today in a dark suit and pale shirt, a silk tie making him look every inch the stupendously successful financier that he was. ‘I went to bed early with a cup of hot cocoa and dreamt of you in your buttoned-up suit.’
Before she could react to his comment, his eyes flicked over her in a brazen appraisal. ‘A variation on a theme today, I see. Do you have a different suit for every day of the week?’
A molten, heated flush was spreading through Alana like quickfire. She was so incensed that he was already toying with her that she couldn’t get words out. They were stuck in her throat.
‘OK, Alana, we’re ready to go here.’
Derek’s voice cut through the fire in her blood. She glared at Pascal for a long moment and struggled to control herself. He hadn’t taken his eyes off hers, and now he smiled easily, innocently. With a monumental effort, Alana found her cool poise. And after the first few questions had been asked, and Pascal had answered with easy, incisive intelligence, Alana began to relax. She’d found a system that was working. She just avoided looking at him if at all possible.
And that was working a treat until he said, ‘I don’t feel like you’re really connecting with me.’
She had to look at him then. ‘Excuse me?’
His eyes bored into hers, an edge of humour playing around his lips that only she could see. ‘I don’t feel the connection.’
Alana was very aware of everyone standing around them and looking on with interest. She wanted to get up and walk out, or hit him to get that smug look off his face. ‘I’m sorry. How can I help you feel more … connected?’
He gave her an explicit look that spoke volumes, but said innocuously, ‘Eye contact would be a help.’
She heard a snigger from one of the crew in the room. A familiar pain lanced her. There was always the reminder that people wanted to see her fail. She smiled benignly. ‘Of course.’
Then the interview took on a whole new energy because, now that he was demanding that she make eye contact with him, she couldn’t remain immune to the effect he had on her. And he knew it. She struggled through a few more questions, but with each one it felt as though he was sucking her into some kind of vortex. The sensation of an intimate web enmeshing them was becoming too much.
In a desperate bid to drive him back somehow, she deviated from her script, and could sense Rory’s tension spike from across the room as she asked the question. ‘How did a boy from the suburbs in Paris develop an interest in rugby? Isn’t it considered a relatively middle-class game?’
Now she could sense the PR-person tense, but they didn’t intervene. Clearly Pascal Lévêque was not someone to be minded, unlike other celebrities. He would stay in absolute control of any situation. For the first time, he didn’t answer straight away. He just looked at her, and she felt a quiver of fear. He smiled tightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’ve done your research.’
Alana just nodded faintly, sorry she’d brought it up now.
But then he answered, ‘It was my grandfather.’
‘Your grandfather?’ She avoided looking down at her notes, but she knew there had been no mention of a grandfather.
He nodded. ‘I was sent to the south of France to live with him when I was in my teens.’ He shrugged minutely, his eyes still unreadable. ‘A teenage boy and the suburbs of Paris isn’t a good mix.’
Something in his eyes, his face, made her want to say, ‘it’s OK; you don’t have to answer’, and that shocked her, as she never normally shied away from asking tough questions. And she didn’t know why this question was generating so many undercurrents. But he continued talking as if the tension between them didn’t exist.
‘He was hugely involved in league rugby, which is a more parochial version of the game. Very linked to history in France. He instilled in me a love for the game and all its variations.’
Alana had no doubt that she’d touched on something very personal there, and the look in his eyes told her she’d be playing with fire if she continued. All of a sudden, she wanted to play with fire.
‘You never considered playing yourself?’
His