but Aurelie didn’t answer. Silently she slid off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. Luke heard the door shut and he threw an arm over his eyes. He didn’t know what had just happened, but he was pretty sure it was his fault.
From behind the closed door he heard her moving around, a cupboard opening and closing. Seconds ticked by, then minutes. Unease crawled through him, mingling with the virulent regret and even shame he felt. He hated locked doors. Hated that damning silence, the helplessness he felt on the other side, the creeping sense that something wasn’t right. Something was very, very wrong.
He got up from the bed, pulled up his trousers and buckled his belt, then headed over to the door.
‘Aurelie?’ No answer. His unease intensified. ‘Aurelie,’ he said again and opened the door.
As soon as he saw her Luke swore.
She stood in front of the sink, one arm outstretched, a fully loaded syringe in the other. Acting only on instinct, Luke knocked the syringe hard out of her hand and it went clattering to the floor.
Aurelie stilled, her face expressionless. ‘Well, that was a waste,’ she finally said, her voice a drawl, and bent to pick up the syringe.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
She eyed him sardonically. ‘I think the more important question is, what do you think I’m doing?’
He stared at her, confusion, fury and shame all rushing through him in a scalding river. This woman drove him insane.
Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t? He’d said he would. ‘It looks,’ he said as evenly as he could, ‘like you’re shooting yourself up with some kind of drug.’
Her lips curved in that way he knew and hated. Mockery. Armour. ‘You get a gold star,’ she said as she swabbed off the syringe with a cotton pad and some rubbing alcohol. ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing.’
And he watched as she carefully injected the syringe into the fleshy part of her upper arm.
Luke felt his hands clench into fists at his sides. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on here?’
She put the syringe away in a little black cosmetic bag. Luke glimpsed a few clear phials inside before she zipped it up and put it away. She gave a small, tired sigh. ‘Don’t worry, Bryant. It’s only insulin.’
She walked past him back into the bedroom, and Luke turned around to stare at her. ‘Insulin? You have diabetes?’
‘Bingo.’ She reached for a fuzzy bathrobe hanging on the back of the door and put it on. Sitting on the edge of the bed, swallowed up by fleece, she looked young and vulnerable and so very alone.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘When should I have done that? When I was passed out on the dressing room floor, or after you dunked me in the sink?’
Slowly he walked into the bedroom, sank onto a chair across from her. He raked his hands through his hair, tried to untangle his tortured, twisted thoughts. ‘So when you were passed out in New York, it was because of low blood sugar?’ Just like she’d said.
‘I forgot to check my bloods before I went.’
‘That’s dangerous—’
She let out a short laugh. ‘Thanks for the warning. Trust me, I know. I’ve been living with diabetes for almost ten years. I was keyed up about the performance and I forgot.’ And then as if she realised she’d revealed too much, she folded her arms and looked away, jaw set, eyes hard.
‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier? In the kitchen, when I asked?’
‘You wouldn’t have believed me—’
‘I said I would—’
‘Oh, yes, you said.’ Her eyes flashed malice. ‘Well, maybe you’re not such a Boy Scout after all, because I don’t think you were telling the truth.’
‘It was,’ Luke said, an edge creeping into his voice, ‘a little hard to believe you were passed out just from lack of food. If I’d known you had a condition—’
‘And maybe I don’t feel like explaining myself every time something looks a little suspicious,’ she snapped. ‘If you were passed out, would someone assume you’d done drugs? Were a junkie?’
‘No, of course not. But I’m not—’
She leaned forward, eyes glittering. ‘You’re not what?’
Luke stared at her, his mind still spinning. ‘I’m not you,’ he said at last. ‘You’re Aurelie.’ The moment he said it, he knew it had been completely the wrong thing to say. To think.
She turned away from him, her jaw set. ‘I am, aren’t I,’ she said quietly.
Luke dropped his head in his hands. ‘I only meant you’ve been known to … to …’
‘I know what I’ve been known to do.’ Her eyes flashed, her chin trembled. He could always tell the truth of her from that chin. She was scared. And sad. Hell, so was he. How had they got here?
He shook his head, weary and heartsick, but also angry. ‘What happened back there on the bed, Aurelie? Why did you look like …’ He could barely say it. ‘Like you were being tortured? Or attacked? Were you trying to prove some point?’ Had she set him up, shown him to be exactly what she’d accused, just another man determined to get her into bed? ‘Well, I guess you made it,’ he said heavily when she didn’t answer. ‘Congratulations.’
Still she said nothing, just stared him down, and in that silence Luke wondered if things could have turned out any worse.
‘Do you still want me to go?’ she finally asked. ‘To Asia?’
He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. ‘Do you still want to go? After this?’
She raised her eyebrows, her expression so very cold. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
He felt a rush of anger, cleaner than shame. She’d played him. Admittedly, he’d let himself be played. He’d been willing to be seduced, had turned it to his advantage. But the fact remained that she’d used him, coldly and deliberately, to prove some twisted, paranoid point. He hadn’t had a sexual agenda until she’d sat in his lap.
Liar.
‘Yes, you can go to Asia,’ he told her wearily. Something good would come out of this unholy affair. ‘I’ll have my PA email you the details. You need to be in Manila on the twenty-fourth.’ With that he stood up and he saw, with some gratification, that her eyes had widened.
‘You’re going?’
‘I don’t want to stay and, frankly, I don’t think you want me to, either. Like I said, you made your point.’
She stared at him, still swallowed up by her bathrobe, her eyes wide and stormy. Luke felt the shame slither inside him again. ‘I didn’t come here intending to sleep with you,’ he said. ‘I swear to God I didn’t.’
She said nothing and with a shake of his head he left the room.
AURELIE GAZED AT her reflection for the fifth time in the hall mirror of the deluxe suite Luke had booked for her in the Mandarin Oriental in Manila’s business district. She’d arrived a few hours ago and was meeting Luke in the bar in ten minutes.
And she was sick and dizzy with nerves.
She let out a deep breath and checked her reflection again. She wore just basic make-up, mostly to disguise the violet circles under her eyes since she hadn’t