She dragged her fingers along the spines of a series of books on car racing. Franco’s cologne teased her nose a second before the heat of him spooned her back and his hands settled at her waist. She leaned into him.
“I took Vincent to the Monte Carlo Grand Prix after our grad-school graduation twelve years ago. He became hooked on fast cars. When he returned to the States he convinced his father to sponsor a NASCAR team.”
And last year he’d been badly injured at a race.
Stacy turned. Franco stood so close their h*ps and thighs meshed and she could see the tiny strain lines radiating from his eyes and lips. “You can’t blame yourself for his accident. Candace said it was a freak event. Something about an equipment failure.”
He hesitated. “There is a price for each choice we make.”
“Tout a un prix,” she quoted his earlier words back to him. Everything had a price. Including her.
Would the price for this affair end up being more than she could bear?
Franco needed to get away from Stacy. Now.
He had broken a rule and hugged her. How could he not? She might have tried to act unaffected while telling her grisly tale, but the tremor in her voice and the deathly pallor of her face had given her inner angst away. If she was acting, she was the best damned actress he had ever seen.
But if she was telling the truth then not only had her mother walked away from money, but Stacy had as well. She could not possibly be that different from other avaricious members of her sex. Could she? Had she not already hinted that a million dollars would not be enough to give her a life of leisure?
But she plans to go back to work. She did not ask for more.
What was it about her that made him talk? He had revealed things about Lisette and Vincent that he had never shared with anyone. If he did not leave now then there was no telling what she would extract from him.
He put necessary inches between them. “I must read over the documents and spend an hour with Mathé. Can you amuse yourself?”
“Of course,” Stacy replied without hesitation.
“If you are genuinely interested in history then you may explore the house. The wives are allowed to change the linens, but not the furniture or the architecture.”
Excitement flared in Stacy’s eyes. Any of his other lovers would have pouted if he tried to ignore them, and then they would have cajoled or attempted to seduce him into entertaining them. If he had brought his lovers here, that is. And since Lisette, he had not. Stacy would not be here if not for his father’s insistence on meeting her. Franco would not put it past the old goat to have stripped the rooms himself to force Franco to share his bedroom and his bed.
“Your father won’t mind if I snoop around?”
“Non. Papa knows the history of the house and the furnishings. I will see if he can accompany you.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.” She fussed with a button on her blouse and Franco struggled with a sudden urge to strip the garment from her. He had escorted her from his bed to a taxi less than twelve hours ago, and yet his desire for her had not diminished with exposure. If anything, his craving for her had intensified. Not a positive circumstance. “Your father wasn’t expecting me, was he?”
“He asked to meet you.”
Her eyes widened. “You told him about me? About us?”
“Oui.”
“The whole truth?”
“I do not lie.” Her gaze fell and her cheeks darkened. From embarrassment? Was she ashamed of the bargain they had made? Franco reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair beneath Stacy’s ear. “Tonight, we will do something I have never done.”
Her pulse quickened beneath his fingertips. “What’s that?”
“I have never had a woman in my boyhood bed. Fantasies, oui. But flesh? Non.”
Her gaze darted to the object in question behind him and the tip of her tongue dampened her lips. He could not resist bending down to capture and suckle the soft, pink flesh. Stacy leaned into him, curling her fingers around his belt and rising on her toes. Her br**sts pressed his chest with tantalizing softness.
She had come a long way as a lover. In a short time she had become less reticent about her pleasure, but she had yet to initiate any contact. He was on the verge of saying to hell with the documents and tumbling her onto the sheets when she pulled away. Blushing, she ducked her head as if her ardent response embarrassed her. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t want to leave her, and for that very reason he escorted her to the salon where his father waited with refreshments, then walked out and locked himself in his father’s study.
The documents transferring ownership of the Constantine holdings to Franco, less a lifetime annuity for his father, were straightforward. His father had agreed to sign the papers the day Stacy returned to the States with her million. Franco delayed as long as he possibly could, rereading the document and then playing with Mathé before going in search of Stacy two hours later.
He found her in the nursery, sitting in an old rocking chair with her head tipped back and her eyes closed. Her slender fingers caressed the worn wooden arms.
His mood lightened at the sight of her. And what nonsense was that? Why did Stacy affect him so strongly? Was it because she did not try to work her wiles on him? Or did she have him completely fooled? Was her air of innocence the bait in her trap?
“Que fais-tu?” he asked, more harshly than he had intended.
She startled and her lids flew open. “I’m imagining what it would be like to rock your baby in the same chair that your mother and grandmother used. It must be comforting to know that generations of ancestors have sat here and had the same hopes and fears for their children. Any child would be fortunate to have roots that deep, Franco.”
An image of Stacy rocking with a dark-haired baby at her breast—his baby—filled his mind. He rejected the possibility. No matter how logical her motivations, he’d bought her, and he could not respect a woman he could buy. “I doubt my mother ever rocked me in that chair. She was not the loving type. I had a series of bonnes d’enfants.”
“Nannies?”
He nodded.
“My mother was wonderful. We moved a lot and she worked most of the hours in the day, but I always knew she loved me.” Stacy rose, hugged herself and walked to the window. The curtains had been removed, leaving the wide casement bare to the evening sun. “She was my best friend even though I wasn’t always the best of daughters. I hated moving, and once I hit my teens we argued about it often. But that’s because I didn’t know why. She always told me my father loved me and wanted to be with me, but that he couldn’t.”
“She lied.”
She abruptly faced him with her head held high, her hands fisted by her side and fire in her eyes. “To protect me, yes.”
“My father lied as well, but during a school vacation I researched the newspaper archives and learned the truth about my mama. She was a spoiled party girl always looking for excitement. Shopping. Drugs. Men.”
The sympathy softening Stacy’s eyes made him regret the confession. Confidences would lead her to expect more from him than he was willing to give. He was a cold bastard—or so he’d been told. Stacy would do best to accept his limitations and his money and move on.
“I’m sorry. I assumed living in a wonderful place like this meant you’d automatically have a happy childhood.”
“I was not unhappy.” And why was he sharing that? Because he did not want her pity.
“Are you and your father close?”
“When he is not enthralled with his latest paramour, oui. We used to go to the races together.” She was getting too personal. He had to derail this tête-à-tête.
Franco approached her, pinning her in the window by planting a hand on either side of her. He leaned closer, inhaling her unique scent and aligning his h*ps with hers. Desire thickened his blood. “I have not made love in this room either and we have an hour before dinner.”
That he considered sex less personal than conversation was telling, he realized. The understanding he saw in Stacy’s eyes took him aback. She saw through his actions, but rather than call him on his evasive tactics, she smiled and cupped his cheek. “I’m all yours.”
For two more weeks. Longer would be too dangerous. Stacy had a way of breaching his defenses. He would have to find a way to stop her before he crumbled like castle ruins at her feet.
Nine
Franco’s laughter stirred something deep inside Stacy.She crossed from the luxurious en suite bathroom to one of the tall tower windows of Franco’s bedroom and looked outside. Franco and Mathé were kicking a soccer ball around on the lawn below. Franco’s teeth flashed in the early-morning light as he laughed again.
He’d be a good father. The kind of father she wished she’d had. And his children would have all the things she’d lacked. History. Roots. Security.
According to Monsieur Constantine, this room hadn’t changed in over two decades. Franco could have had something new with each of his stepmothers’ redecorations, but instead he’d stuck with the furnishings he and his father had chosen together. That told Stacy Franco liked stability. And he might even have a tiny sentimental streak. Like her.
She touched a finger to her watch and then smoothed a hand over the scarred wooden headboard pushed against the wall between two windows. Last night she’d slept spooned with Franco on the narrow mattress. This morning she’d awoken alone, but surprisingly well-rested. Letting her guard down enough to sleep had apparently not been an issue after all. But then again, he had exhausted her before letting her sleep. Warmth rose under her skin and settled in her pelvis. The man seemed determined to make up to her for the mediocre lovers of her past.
“You are exactly what Franco needs, my dear,” Monsieur Constantine said in heavily accented English behind her.
Startled, Stacy turned and found him in the open bedroom doorway. Hadn’t Franco said he’d told his father the whole truth? “How can you believe that?”
The older man shrugged. “I am sure you had your reasons for agreeing to accept money in exchange for spending time with my son. But you are not like any…how you say?…gold diggers I have ever encountered. I have met many in my seventy-five years, and I have even had the misfortune to marry a few. Between my wives and Lisette, my son has become quite bitter and distrustful of women.”
Stacy nodded. “He told me about Lisette.”
Bushy white eyebrows rose. “That is surprising. Did he also tell you that he continued to love her until she admitted she had married him for his money, and that she had the abortion because she was planning to divorce him?”
Poor Franco. “Um…no.”
“My divorce settlements put us in financial difficulties. Difficulties over which Franco eventually triumphed, but his wife did not have the integrity to lessen her expenses and stand beside him through adversity. When one truly loves one takes the good with the bad…as I did with Franco’s mama.”
He joined her by the window and looked down on Franco and Mathé. “He will not tell me what Lisette said to him in that Paris hospital, but it changed him. He is not the son I once knew. He keeps much locked inside now.”