One Night with His Wife Read Online Free PDF

of my children!’ Star slammed back at him shakily.
    Rory shot a thoroughly bemused look at both of them.
    Luc had stilled again. His nostrils flared. His breath escaped in an audible hiss of reaction at that news. ‘So how many experiments did it take?’ he derided in disgust.
    Star was ashen pale. She said nothing. Turning away, she closed a taut hand over Rory’s arm and walked him back outside. ‘I’m sorry about this, but it’s better if you go for now. Luc and I need to talk, sort some things,’ she explained tightly.
    ‘Obviously you haven’t told him about the twins yet.’
    ‘No…but he wants a divorce,’ she heard herself advance, because she was too ashamed to tell Rory what her mother had done to Emilie.
    Rory sighed. ‘Probably the best thing in the circumstances. He seems a pretty aggressive character. I couldn’t see you ever being happy with someone like that.’
    Happy?
She almost laughed. What was happy? Being separated in every way from Luc had been like living in a void. It hadn’t cured her. Forcing a brittle smile, Star said, ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to have a row with you about buying food for us.’
    Closing the back door again, she leant against the solid wood, mustering all her strength. She had assumed that Luc had gone back into the kitchen. So as she moved back in that direction she was surprised to see that the twins’ bedroom door had been pressed more fully open.
    Luc was poised several feet from the foot of the cots.Venus was curled on her side, an adorable thatch of copper curls screening her tiny face. Mars was flat on his back, silky dark hair fringing his sleep-flushed features, one anxious hand gripping the little bunny rattle which he never liked to get too far from him.
    ‘They’re what? Five…six months old?’ Luc queried without an ounce of emotion.
    After the number of setbacks the twins had weathered, they were still quite small for their age. Star studied her children with her heart in her eyes, thanking God as she did every time she came into this room that they had both finally been able to come home to her, whole and healthy. She glanced from under her lashes at Luc. His bold dark profile was grim.
    ‘Would you have liked them to be yours?’ she heard herself whisper foolishly.
    ‘Tu plaisantes!’
    You must be joking! Star reddened fiercely at that retort. What a stupid question to ask! Instead of asking it, she should just have told him the truth. Whether Luc liked it or not, Venus and Mars, fancifully christened by Juno,
were
his son and daughter.
    Luc strode out past her. Leaving the door carefully ajar, Star followed him back into the kitchen.
    ‘In fact, I’m extremely grateful that they are
not
my children,’ Luc drawled in level continuation as he took up a commanding stance by the hearth, his lean, dark, devastating features cool as ice. ‘It would have complicated the divorce and made a clean break impossible. Considering that we have about as much in common as oil and water, joint custody would have been a serious challenge.’
    Star was pale as death now. His reaction shook her to her very depths. All right, so he had never thought of her as his wife. Yet when Rory had walked in Luc had been angry, aggressive, powered, it had seemed, by some atavistic all-male territorial instinct. She had never seen that side of himbefore, but now she had to accept that his reaction to Rory had simply stemmed from his savage pride.
    Didn’t he have any normal feelings at all? How could Luc just stand there telling her that he was relieved and grateful that her babies were supposedly nothing to do with him? In pained fascination, she searched his face, absently noting the very faint sheen of moisture on his dark golden skin, the unyielding blank darkness of his hooded gaze.
    ‘Luc…I—’
    ‘I was leaving…’ Luc studied his diminutive wife, struggling to distance himself, black fury like a thick, suffocating smoke fogging his usually ordered