Count Toussaint’s Pregnant Mistress Read Free

as these, could issue commands to a bellboy or concierge in many different languages. Yet now as she stood there alone, uncertain, everything felt new. Different. For this time she was alone, no one knew who or where she was, and she could do as she pleased.
    The question was, do what?
    ‘Mademoiselle…?’ A bellboy started forward, eyebrows raised in query. Abby lifted her chin.
    ‘I’m looking for the bar.’
    The man nodded and gestured to a room off to the right panelled in dark wood. Abby nodded her thanks and started towards the long, mahogany bar, still with no idea what she was doing…or why.
    She slid onto a leather stool, her hands clasped in front of her. The bartender, dressed in a tuxedo, was slowly polishing a tumbler. He glanced at her, taking in her worn coat and the diamanté straps of her evening gown visible from the open collar. Expressionless, he raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Would you like a drink?’
    ‘Yes.’ Abby swallowed. She’d ordered wine, she’d drunk champagne; on occasion she’d had a nameless cocktail at one function or another. Now she wanted something different.
    ‘I’ll have…’ She swallowed, her mouth dry. ‘A martini.’
    ‘Straight or on the rocks?’
    Oh, great. Did she want it with ice? What was even in a martini? And why had she ordered one? She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it. ‘Straight,’ she said firmly. ‘With an…olive.’ She had a vague collection that it came with olives. If she didn’t like the drink, at least she’d have something to eat.
    The bartender turned away, and Abby’s gaze roved over the bar. Only one other person was sitting there, all the way at the other end, and before he even looked up or acknowledged her presence—with a shock that felt like an icy finger trailing down her spine and diving into her belly—she knew.
    Him.

CHAPTER TWO
    S HE knew it was him; she felt it in that tremor of electric awareness that rippled through her body; every nerve and muscle was on high alert as her heart began to beat with slow, heavy, deliberate thuds. He sat on the last stool, a tumbler of whisky in front of him, his head bent.
    Then he raised his head and Abby’s breath caught in her throat, the sheer emotion of the moment turning her breathless and dizzy as he turned so that his gaze met and held hers, just as it had once before. For a long, taut moment neither of them spoke, they simply looked. The look went on far longer than it should have, than was appropriate for two strangers staring at each other in a bar. Still Abby could not look away. She felt as if she were suspended in time, in air, motionless and yet waiting.
    ‘You’re even lovelier in person.’ He spoke in English with a faint French accent, his low voice carrying across the empty room. Shock rippled through her at the realization that he knew who she was; he recognized her. Of course, plenty of people recognized her. She was the Piano Prodigy, after all. Yet under the quiet heat of his gaze Abby knew he wasn’t looking at her as a prodigy, or even a pianist. He was looking at her as a woman, and that felt wonderful.
    ‘You remember me,’ she whispered. Her voice trembledand she blushed at the realization, as well as the revealing nature of the statement. She couldn’t dissemble. She didn’t know how to, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to.
    He arched one eyebrow, with the flicker of a smile around his mouth and in his eyes. ‘Of course I remember you,’ he said, a gentle, teasing lilt to his voice—although Abby saw an intensity in his fierce blue eyes, the same intensity she’d seen in the concert hall and had responded to. ‘And now I know you remember me.’
    Her blush deepened and she looked away. The bartender had delivered her martini, complete with an olive pierced by a swizzle-stick, and she seized the drink as a distraction, taking far too large a sip.
    She choked, gasping as the pure alcohol burned its way to her belly, and she returned the