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She patted the water into her hot skin as they continued on their progress, chagrined to realise that she had nodded off—although that wasn’t surprising in view of her lack of sleep—and had been reliving her intensely erotic encounter in vivid Technicolor instead of paying attention to the fascinating parade of French towns and villages popping up into sight as the train whipped past the rolling fields of the French countryside.
And now it was too late. According to the multilingual announcement broadcast through the carriage, the high-speed train was slowing down on the approach to the outskirts of Avignon. She would have to make certain she paid attention on the return trip, Veronica lectured herself.
Someone had discarded a newspaper on the floor beside Karen’s empty seat and she automatically leaned over to pick it up, grimacing as she noticed that it was the same one that Lucien had been reading in the bar. She idly flicked through it, only able to pick out a few words and phrases here and there. Much of the centre of the paper was illustrated with typical paparazzi shots of the usual set of international celebrities caught in embarrassing situations, and Veronica skipped over them, uninterested in the misdoings of minor royals and rock stars going into rehab, or the big Exclusivité—a string of photos of a notoriously volatile actor having some kind of punch-up in a London hotel. On impulse she tucked it into her bag. She would throw it away later, she promised herself—she didn’t need any proxy souvenirs of her night on the town!
As she manhandled her case down the long flight of concrete stairs to the group of glass boxes housing the rental car agencies outside the Avignon TGV station, Veronica was glad that she had had the forethought to buy herself a wide-brimmed straw hat at a Paris market. The heatwave that was baking Paris had also tightened its relentless grip on the South of France, and the aching blue sky was adazzle, the temperature already in the mid-thirties, even though the sun wasn’t yet at its height.
There was a long queue for the rental car, but it moved surprisingly quickly and she was soon stepping back out into the blazing sun nervously clutching the key to her VW Golf. Setting out for the car park, she glanced over towards the adjacent rental agencies and stopped dead, oblivious to the flow of people around her, as she saw a man leaning against one of the counters, laptop and suitcase at his feet, panama hat in hand, joking with the girl handing him a sheet of paper.
It was Luc! The man in the olive shirt and jeans from the Gare de Lyon … Absolutely, unmistakably him!
Snapped out of her stunned trance by a cranky, sunburnt tourist trying to get his suitcase between a concrete bollard and her stalled luggage, Veronica hurried on her way, her thoughts whirling.
Surely this was one spooky coincidence too many, she thought as she quickly shovelled her possessions into the boot of her shiny blue compact and got behind the wheel.
Had he followed her? She remembered telling him at some stage that she would be spending most of her holiday in the South of France, although she hadn’t specified when or how she was leaving. At the time he had gone into a long, and hilariously incomprehensible, rhapsody about the Côte d’Azur, and from the questions she had tried to ask about the famous beaches there he might have thought that was where she was headed.
If he had been talking about his own imminent plans to travel down to the Mediterranean coast then perhaps this could just be shrugged off as another of life’s little strange twists. At the time, it might have amused him to think that they could conceivably run into each other on a beach in Nice or Cannes.
Her pleasure in the thought curdled as her imagination continued to flourish. But what if he had somehow managed to track her down for some sinister purpose of his own? What if he was a stalker? she fretted. Or some kind of conman or kinky killer whom she had thwarted by sneaking off before he could achieve his evil aims?
She suddenly laughed at her wild speculations. In reality, she and Lucien had been ships passing in the night, and all either of them had expected to carry away from their brief encounter was the memory of a good time!
There was a perfectly innocent explanation for them to be crossing paths again. Luc had been carrying a laptop, so perhaps he had come down to Avignon on business. He was probably self-employed, like Veronica, and could pick and choose his working hours.
She was nervous enough about driving on the right-hand side of the road for the first time, as well as doing her own navigation, without adding the paranoic fear that she was being trailed by a psychotic serial killer!
CHAPTER THREE
VERONICA sighed with contentment as she sat at her table under a spreading plane tree in the tiny village square and sipped her cup of coffee, enjoying the faint breeze that feathered warmly around her bare neck and riffled the end of her pony-tail.
Karen had said the Reeds wouldn’t expect her to arrive at their villa, Mas de Bonnard, on the outskirts of the little village of St Romain-de-Vaucluse, until mid-afternoon. As a direct drive, it was only about forty minutes north-east of Avignon, so she had decided to take it slowly, avoiding the larger roads and towns and following the meandering scenic route that Melanie had recommended as being the one they preferred as the prettiest. She had even suggested this very café as worthy of a stop.
Veronica cut another sliver from her glistening pastry and popped it into her mouth, savouring the intense burst of apricot on her tongue.
A sleek silver convertible with red upholstery slid into the cobbled square, following the lone street that passed through the village. As it drew level and slowed almost to a stop for a scamper of children chasing a small dog, the driver lazily took a survey of his surroundings. His eyes were masked by wraparound sunglasses, but Veronica saw his glossy black head jerk in a rapid double take. His jaw visibly dropped, then tightened with a snap and the car braked to an abrupt halt. A long arm was slung across the top of the empty passenger seat as the driver twisted to look over his shoulder and backed sharply in to park parallel with the kerb, springing out of the car without bothering to open the door.
In a few ground-eating strides he was standing in front of her, his black shadow stamping his presence on the sun-dappled tablecloth.
‘Well, isn’t this a cosy little reunion!’
Coffee slopped into her saucer as she flinched at the sarcastic drawl. She looked up into Lucien’s blazing brown eyes, his wraparound sunglasses pushed up on top of his head unmasking his hard expression, his hands planted on his hips, legs astride, male aggression oozing from every gorgeous pore.
Her brain went into panic mode as every female cell in her body rioted with delight at his proximity.
‘What are you doing here? Are you following me?’ she blurted, half in hope, half in horror.
There was a brief pause, as if he was taken aback by the response. The shock on his face when he had seen her from the car had been completely spontaneous, she acknowledged wretchedly, her hands clenching as she fought to control her humiliation.
‘Are you going to stab me with that if I don’t give you the answer you want?’ he asked warily, and she lowered her eyes to see that she was gripping the knife she had used to cut her pastry, holding it defensively in front of her body. She hastily let it clatter back onto the plate. She could always scream if he tried anything violent. They were in a public place, after all.
Unlike last night.
The last time she had spoken to this man they had both been naked in his bed, making hot, passionate love!
She blushed, and the predatory light that had been banked in his eyes flared into renewed life.
He hooked out a chair from the adjacent table with a swipe of his foot and spun it around to sit astride, folding his arms along the top. Through the thin vertical slats of the back of the chair she could see that the sides of his olive shirt hung open revealing a white singlet, the circular