Carnal in Cannes (24 page)

A sharp, pungent smell yanked Martine alert. She jerked her head away from the source of the aroma and opened her eyes to find Harry leaning over her prone form.

“Lie still,” he ordered. “You"ve a cut on your forehead, and it"s bleeding. I need to clean it.”

Martine choked back a wince when he dabbed a damp cotton ball at the apex of her hairline. She focused on his wrists, on the tiny lines creasing the heel of his palm. A numbing lethargy stole over her limbs, and her bones sank into the planked flooring as if crushed by a slab of concrete. The wedding band she"d placed on his finger scant minutes before gleamed under the track lights, the metal a shining mockery of the ceremony, of her idiotic fantasies.

“It"s more of a graze than a cut. You won"t need stitches,” he said, his breath and words spinning warmth across her chilled cheek but not registering, not sending flutters to her belly and groin.

118

Jianne Carlo

Behind Harry stood Casmir, hands jammed into his trouser pockets. He stared at her, and she knew he asked a silent question. Sadly she gave him an imperceptible shake of her head. She owed too much to the Gypsy and refused to add to his burdens.

For the first time in years, her nerve had failed, and she"d run to hide and cower as she had when pursued by the man who"d owned her in Solino. Cowardice meant failure, and her grand-mère deserved better. Collecting her scattered wits and valor, she took a deep breath, pushed away Harry"s hand, and lurched into a sitting position.

“I would like a moment to speak to Harry.” She didn"t glance over her shoulder but sensed the others huddled in the hallway. “Please leave. Everyone,” she added for Casmir"s benefit.

The Gypsy had his fists balled, and only when she shot him a pleading glance did he flex his fingers and take a stride forward. The brine of the docks lingered on his flesh and made the air fragrant as he passed by, and the aroma of the exotic spices and unfamiliar perfumes Casmir traded cloyed her nostrils in the claustrophobic confines of the narrow hallway.

Waiting until the sounds of shuffling footsteps receded, she filled her lungs again, gathering the remnants of her courage along with much-needed oxygen, and looked into the eyes of the man who would"ve been her husband. “I know a Gypsy girl who"s a virgin. She"ll marry you. She"s young and pretty, and her mother has seven children.”

“That would be bigamy.”

Unable to bear his intense stare, she looked down as she skated against the wall and sat up straighter. Even laces tied into the bows of his formal black shoes.

The supple leather had been polished to the hilt and reflected the pinpoints of the round lights above them. For some reason his footwear had her hypnotized, and she couldn"t unfix her stare from his shoes.

“We haven"t signed the marriage papers.”

“Are you the woman from Grasse?”

No more lies.

Martine widened her eyelids with two fingers, popped out the first contact lens, and then repeated the motion on her right eye, collecting the tinted circles in her cupped palm. She lifted her chin. Her lungs skipped a few inhales when their gazes collided, and Harry pursed his lips. Opening her hand, she showed him the lenses.

“Do you need them to see?”

“Non.”

Capturing both circles between his fingers, he said, his voice calm and showing no hint of anger, “Then this doesn"t matter.” He dropped the lenses onto the floor, lifted one shoe, and ground them under his heel.

She linked her fingers and folded them in her lap.

Mediterranean Mambo: Carnal in Cannes

119

“Nuh-uh. No way do you get to go back to wearing that mask, Martine.” He spoke in the same drawl he used with his stepmother, and her belly convulsed, welling bile up her throat. He separated her intertwined hands and ordered, “Look at me, Martine.”

Her neck muscles knotted, and her head felt heavier than the
Glory’s
three-ton lead anchor, but she obeyed his command. Lifting her chin she met his glance.

“What were you doing if you weren"t posing?” Not a hint of warmth or his usual humor was in evidence.

The memory of that unforgettable incident when she worked the masquerade party three weeks earlier flooded her mind. Her supervisor had read Harry"s ad to her, and she"d latched on to the words “virgin” and “substantial monetary reward,”

as if they were a life raft losing a battle with a tempest. Then her damned garter unsnapped, and she"d sneaked into the library to refasten her left stocking. The memory played in her head like a DVD that was stuck on repeat.

Just as she bent over to fix the garter, she heard a woman crooning, “Harry,
Harry, come out wherever you are,” but ignored the all.

The library door flew open.

Her head whipped up.

She’d locked the door.

She had.

She knew she had.

Merde, merde.

A man dressed in Regency costume—tight cream breeches, paisley burgundy
waistcoat fitted over an ivory shirt ruffled at the neck and wrists—stood in the
doorway. His mouth dropped open, and warm honey eyes fixated on her exposed sex.

Heat scaled her cheeks as his pants tightened over an impressive erection
thickening and lengthening in time to her accelerating heartbeat.

Merde, that will hurt.

Her glance flicked to his face.

His hooded gaze snaked one millimeter at a time up her body, and Martine
pictured what he saw.

Her standing by the couch, one foot encased in a strappy sandal perched on the
carpet, the other propped on the upholstered sofa, her classic French maid’s uniform
of requisite black skirt and snowy apron bunched at the waist, and her rear end
naked because she’d worn no panties tonight.

“My stocking slipped,” she replied. “I didn"t have the time to go back to my locker to fix it.”

The humiliation of the moment their eyes first met those twenty-one days ago bounced around her brain like a ping-pong ball on autorepeat, and once again she was trapped in the past, in that moment.

120

Jianne Carlo

Perspiration peppered her forehead, and her cheeks flamed when their gazes
locked. He wore his lust like a trophy, unashamed, intense desire darkening his
brown eyes.

Five seconds ticked by, and no matter how much she willed her limbs to move,
they wouldn’t.

“I saw you, Harrison Indiana Ford. Come out. Come out, wherever you are.”

The woman’s throaty shout siphoned the oxygen out of Martine’s lungs. Her
temporary paralysis vanished.

The ultra-feminine voice called out again, and she heard the sound of high
heels clacking on the hallway’s marble.

His head turned in the direction of the sound.

Smoothing her skirt down, Martine glanced over her shoulder to ensure the
intruder held the man’s attention.

All at once light left the room.

She froze.

Martine heard a muffled click like the sound of a door closing. Soft panting
reached her ears, and she smelled smoke and the faint hint of alcohol, wine perhaps.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she clamped her lips together and sent a silent prayer
to Bondyne, her grand-mère’s version of God, and crossed her fingers
. This must be a diabolical nightmare.

Someone tried the door handle. A stray beam of moonlight glinted on the brass
handle’s polished perfection as it twisted left, then right.

“I’m growing tired of this, Harrison Indiana Ford. You have to face me at some
point in time.”

He held his breath, Martine realized when the room grew silent. She sidled to
the French doors, uncaring of the faint swooshing of her shoes on the thick carpet.

Before he could make a move, she had unlocked the door, then broke into a furious
sprint.

“Why weren"t you wearing panties?”

Martine squeezed her eyes shut as heat scaled from head to toe. “I only had three pairs then. None were clean.”

Silence dominated the deserted hallway. Harry, his eyes half-shuttered, raked her features as he digested her answer.

“And you just happened to apply to become my wife three weeks later?”

One tiny lie and then no more.

“I learned of your plans to advertise for a wife that night.”

Harry"s brows knitted. “You knew who I was?”

“Not then,” she replied and shuttered her eyes. “I heard you and Terry speaking on the balcony.”

“This is too much of a coincidence.”

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121

Harry"s narrow-eyed squint made her want to explain what had happened, and she babbled more than normal, trying to make him see it was all a really, really huge coincidence.

“I was leaving the party. I"d lost my tray and knew I"d be fired or fined, so I kept to the grounds, and when I reached the balcony, a white wig landed at my feet.

Then I heard Terry speak. I liked his accent, so I picked up the wig and waited.

Then Terry called you Harrison. I was curious about you.”
I was half in love with
you even back then
. “I couldn"t leave until you did.”

Harry waved his hand as if the last two sentences were of no importance.

“That"s why you gasped when you first saw Terry the morning after our civil wedding. You recognized him.”

“Non. I never saw him. I recognized his voice that morning, and I was afraid you knew all.”

“Did you also overhear me discussing Madame Christen with Geoff?”

“The matchmaker? Oui, but I didn"t know her name then.”

The silence became absolute, and the air pressed down on her shoulders, making her joints ache. Hopelessness corroded the smoldering survival instinct that had kept her alive and burst into flames when all had seemed lost in the past. And at that instant she knew that this time she"d run out of options. Waves of exhaustion drained the last spark of fight left. Martine turned away from him unable to take the blow of the disappointment and disgust he must feel.

“How"re you doing?” He brushed a stray curl from cheeks dampened with a thin sheen of perspiration.

“I"m okay now. You don"t have to worry about me any longer,” she stated and braced a palm on the cool wall of the corridor.

“Wrong.” He corrected her. “We"re heading back on deck where we"ll both sign the marriage certificate, and then you and I are going to have a long, honest conversation.”

She focused on him, searching his face for a clue, any hint of what he felt. Only when his long finger tipped her dropped jaw closed did she register the shattering of the last vestiges of her armor against him. She hadn"t even thought about concealing her shock and surprise but had let her naked emotions show.

Remorse and guilt lodged a soccer-size ball, or so it seemed, in her throat. He didn"t deserve the violence and mayhem bound to occur once Jean-Claude Fournier knew she still lived. She made a final attempt to put an end to everything and protect him, struggling to get the words past her strangled vocal cords.

“Harry, it will not work. A marriage between us.” Martine hung her head. “I lied about everything else but not about what my mother did, not what I was during those years in Solino. Your stepmother, she will use that against you.”

“Again wrong,” he said and swept his knuckles across the line of her jaw. “On all counts. I lashed out at you because I was angry. D"you know why I was angry, Martine?”

122

Jianne Carlo

“Because I deceived you.” She glanced up at him.

“Wrong again.” Harry flashed her one of his crooked smiles, and a wave of pain squeezed her ribs.

“Because I couldn"t get the woman from Grasse out of my head. Yesterday morning I woke up with my arms around you, but I had been fantasizing about her.

I had a boner that could set Guinness records, and I didn"t know which woman had done it to me—you or the woman from Grasse.”

“I didn"t think you"d remember,” she mumbled. “I"m so confused.”

“English, sugar. Tell me what you said,” Harry directed as he hugged her close and lifted her off the floor.

Had she spoken in Creole?

“I can walk,” she protested and buried her nose in his shirt, savoring his scent.

“What did you say just now in French?” he asked again.

She translated her words.

“Not remember? The image of you in those stockings and garters and no panties standing next to that couch is tattooed on my brain for all eternity. I"ve never seen anything more erotic in my life.” Harry carried her effortlessly as he strolled down the hallway. “You"ve no idea how I"ve berated myself over the last two days. As hard, pun intended, as I tried, I couldn"t erase the woman in Grasse,” he said, looked down at her, and he quirked his lips. “
You
from my memory. It was driving me loco.”

He crossed onto the main deck, and a mistral swept aft to stern, skipping the fabric of her sleeve over her arms. Martine shivered as the chill in the breeze lifted the hair from her nape.

The group of witnesses and the small bridal party, save the flower girl and the ring bearer, stood huddled in a semicircle around a pub-height table opposite the bar. The chef"s niece and nephew lay curled asleep and swathed in blankets on the padded bench seat opposite the adults. Band members lounging in chairs kitty-corner to the bar lurched upright when Harry set Martine on her feet.