A Very French Affair. Эбби Грин
and got thrown around a bit…’ She shrugged. ‘That’s it. I told you it was nothing to get worked up about. It’s silly to still let it affect me.’
He looked at her for a long, intense moment and couldn’t stop the feeling that he was somehow letting her get to him—get under his skin in a way that went beyond physical attraction. He drew back. The shutters came down, his face expressionless.
‘If you don’t mind, I have an important meeting when we land in New York and I need to concentrate on some paperwork.’
And he promptly shut Sorcha out as effectively as she had shut him out from the start. It threw her. She made the motions of getting a book out of her bag, put on her glasses to read…but the page and the print blurred in front of her eyes. She couldn’t relax next to Romain, and her mind was feverishly trying to decipher what had made him clam up like that.
She was intrigued. Suddenly he had more facets to him than a mere autocratic and judgmental luxury goods magnate. She recalled how professional he’d been on the set the day before. He’d run it smoothly, fairly…especially when Dominic had threatened to throw a little tantrum when something hadn’t gone his way. Sorcha wasn’t used to a steadying force on a set. She found more often than not that she acted as the peacemaker, the mediator between various hysterical egos.
She sneaked another look, but Romain was a million miles away, immersed in facts and figures, shirtsleeves rolled up, his profile harshly beautiful. And extremely remote. In that moment she had trouble believing that he had ever kissed her with such passion only that morning.
Some time later Sorcha felt a bump and her head jerked up. She’d been asleep on something very soft…it felt like a cushion…only it was no cushion. It was an arm and a very broad chest. She jerked upright completely. Slumberous hooded grey eyes looked back at her, completely unconcerned. Sorcha took it all in in a flash—along with the fact that they were about to land. She must have heard the wheels being lowered.
The seat divide was up, and Romain had leant back into his own reclined seat, pulling her with him onto his chest. The sudden memory of how he’d felt underneath her cheek made a flush spread through her body.
‘I…’ She couldn’t speak.
Romain watched her flounder. She looked sleepy and tousled and flushed and so…gorgeous that he had to shift minutely in his seat. He’d suffered the ignominy of his body reacting against the will he’d tried to impose on it for the past three hours or so, and right now he felt he needed to take a very long, very cold shower. When Sorcha’s head had kept drooping in jerks as she’d slept, he’d put down his papers, unbuckled their belts and pulled her into him. Again, he’d been surprised at how her soft curves had seemed to melt into his body, as if made for him. Her evocative scent had drifted up from silky black hair.
Their seats were towards the front, and somewhat screened from the rest of the cabin. And it was that fact now that seemed to be uppermost on Sorcha’s mind as her hair swung around her shoulders in an arc and she cast a nervous look backwards.
‘No one saw,’ he offered helpfully, feeling absurdly annoyed.
She sat back and folded her arms. ‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I must’ve been more tired than I realised.’
She could see him shrug out of the corner of her eye as he flipped his seat upright, ‘The pleasure was all mine.’
She burned. Her insides were on fire. She couldn’t even escape and go to the toilet as they were about to land. Buckling her belt again, she busied herself putting her book away—but not before it had fallen out of her hands and into Romain’s lap. He picked it up before she had a chance to snatch it back.
‘Man and His Symbols…Carl Jung…’ That imperious brow quirked again.
Sorcha was unaware of the plane touching down, announcing their arrival in New York.
‘Yes,’ she said tightly, holding out a hand for the book.
He gave it back after a long moment, making sure that their fingers brushed, and drawled, ‘I have to admit I’m more a fan of his old adversary, Freud.’
Her fingers burned. The book was hers again. She held it to her chest and said waspishly, ‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘Tell me,’ he said equably, which should have had alarm bells ringing in her head, ‘would this have anything to do with what Val was talking about the other night?’
She looked at him open-mouthed. And promptly shut it again. She knew if she didn’t tell him he’d only ask Val. And if she didn’t tell him she risked turning it into something bigger, more…
She sighed inwardly, then outwardly shrugged. She hated having to tell him. ‘I recently graduated from NYU. I got a degree in psychology.’
He said nothing for a long moment, those eyes assessing, making her nervous. ‘Val said you got a first?’
She nodded, amazed at his memory.
‘Well done.’
Completely nonplussed, trying to think about what this could reveal, Sorcha just muttered something unintelligible. Too much was happening. Too much of herself was being revealed, and she felt very, very exposed. She did not want him knowing anything about her, and now he knew about the outreach centre, her degree, her fear of flying, her attraction…what next?
The hubbub and chatter that surrounded them as people got out of seats and collected bags gave Sorcha an excuse to get away. And she did, with barely disguised panic.
The next evening Sorcha stood huddled against the wind in her parka jacket on the top of the Empire State Building. This was where they were working for the night. The observation deck was theirs till six in the morning. These were the only shots they had to do in New York.
‘So, where’s Mr Tall, Dark and Gorgeous tonight?’
Sorcha felt a defensive retort about to spring from her lips and bit it back. Dominic was not the person she should allow to wind her up. So she shrugged nonchalantly, as though she didn’t care, and said, ‘I have no idea. Why are you so worried anyway?’
Dominic’s face contorted into an ugly scowl. ‘Because whenever he’s around I feel like he’s watching me, waiting for me to make some kind of false move.’
Sorcha had to bite back a wry smile. She didn’t blame Dominic. Romain did have that ability, and she was glad that it wasn’t just her on the receiving end. And, as brilliant a photographer as Dominic was, there was the element of a loose cannon about him.
The truth was, she’d been wondering the same thing herself, her senses on high alert. It was odd that he wasn’t here, especially as tonight was the first time the other model was involved—her counterpart, her lover. This was where they were to meet for the first time, and she would have imagined that with Romain’s apparent love of control he’d be watching Zane like a hawk to make sure he performed.
Sorcha knew Zane well. He was one of the most recognisable male models in the world, and had just broken out to act in a movie. He was a nice guy, easy to get on with. She heard a kerfuffle in the corner. Dominic was having a mini-tantrum about something. She could hear snatches of heated conversation, and he had a mobile clamped to his ear.
‘You need to come up here now, because Claire is saying she needs approval for Zane’s costume…and if we don’t start shooting in the next half hour we’re going to jeopardise Simon getting his dawn shots…’
Sorcha’s heart started to thump. Silly. It mightn’t even be him. Since he was now back in New York, she didn’t doubt that he’d have made plans to take some current mistress out to dinner. Wasn’t that exactly how men like Romain operated? Ruthless and controlling in business, the quintessential playboy socially—a string of women around the world.
Sorcha couldn’t kid herself and think that what had happened between them had meant anything more than a bit of diverting