Count Toussaint’s Pregnant Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page A

flying kites on Hampstead Heath.’
    ‘Them?’ Luc repeated softly, and Abby shrugged again.
    ‘Them. Other children.’
    ‘And you never flew a kite?’
    ‘I was always on my way to piano lessons. Too busy.’ The waiter returned with their dessert and Abby was glad of the reprieve. She hadn’t meant to reveal quite so much with that question and its betraying answer. ‘And cook, because food is so delicious and I’ve never learned how to make anything properly. What about you?’ She took a spoonful of indulgently rich, dark-chocolate mousse. ‘If you could do anything, what would it be?’
    ‘Turn back time,’ Luc stated matter-of-factly, and Abby started at how grim he sounded. Then he smiled and dipped his own spoon into the rich, chocolatey dessert. ‘So I could have this evening with you all over again.’
    Abby smiled, although she didn’t think that was what he’d meant when he’d spoken about turning back time.
    All too soon, however, the waiter returned on his silent cat’s feet to clear away their chocolate mousse and pour thecoffee in tiny porcelain cups, leaving a plate of petits fours , delicate and frosted pink, on the table.
    The evening was almost over, Abby thought sadly. In a few minutes, a quarter of an hour perhaps, she would leave. She would find a taxi speeding down the near-empty Rue du Faubourg St Honoré, slip into its dark interior and give the driver the address of her own staid and respectable hotel half a mile away. Then she would pay the driver and walk through the deserted foyer of the hotel, avoiding the speculative looks of the bored bellboy and the silent censure of the concierge, praying that he would not tell her father, ‘Mademoiselle est revenue trop tard…’
    Then she would forget this evening ever existed, and Luc—just Luc—would be nothing more than a distant memory, a dream.
    Except…Except, she thought with a jolt, the evening didn’t need to end at the bar. They could go somewhere else. Somewhere private.
    A bedroom.
    This was a hotel, after all. Was Luc staying here? Did he have a room? The questions, as well as their potential answers, left her dizzy. Was she, a woman who had barely been kissed, actually contemplating a night with this man? A one-night stand?
    Yet it wouldn’t be anything so sordid, because they knew each other. They were practically soulmates. The trite word made Abby grimace. Luc touched her hand, his caress light yet so very sure.
    ‘Abby,’ he said, ‘what are you thinking?’
    ‘That I don’t want to go home,’ Abby blurted. She felt herself flush and suddenly didn’t care. ‘I want to stay here with you.’
    Luc frowned, a shadow of regret in his eyes. ‘It is late. You should go.’
    She reached out and curled her fingers around his wrist;her thumb instinctively found his pulse. ‘No.’ Was she actually begging?
    ‘It is better,’ Luc said quietly. ‘I…’ He sighed, gazing down at her fingers still clasped on his wrist, and lightly, so lightly, traced the delicate skin of her inner wrist with his thumb. Abby nearly shuddered at the simple yet overwhelming contact.
    ‘Is there any reason why we can’t…be together?’ she asked in a low voice, unable to look at him directly. She kept her gaze fastened on their clasped hands instead. ‘You aren’t…married?’
    She felt Luc’s fingers tighten, tense. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not married.’
    She strove for a lighter tone. ‘Are you seeing someone?’
    ‘No,’ he said again, just as simply. ‘There’s no one.’
    ‘Well.’ Abby took a breath, gathered all her courage and looked up to meet Luc’s dark gaze, offering him a smile. Offering herself. ‘There’s me.’

CHAPTER THREE
    S HE was nervous, Luc saw, and he felt regret lash at him, a whip with a sting he’d felt far too many times already. He shouldn’t have let it get this far, yet he’d been so amazed, so overjoyed, by her presence in the bar. It had felt, as he’d told her, like