Count Toussaint’s Pregnant Mistress Read Free Page B

decision was. ‘I will.’
    Luc led her to a cozy table for two in the corner of the deserted bar, and Abby sank onto the plush seat, watching as the waiter popped the cork and poured two glasses of champagne, the bubbles zinging wildly.
    ‘To unexpected surprises,’ Luc said, raising his glass.
    Abby couldn’t resist asking, ‘Aren’t all surprises unexpected?’
    His smile curved his mobile mouth and glimmered in his eyes. ‘So they are,’ he agreed, and drank.
    Abby drank too, letting the champagne slip down her throat and through her body. The bubbles seemed to racethrough every vein and artery. She stared at the bubbles in her glass and watched them pop against the side of the flute as she desperately thought of something to say.
    She’d played in the concert halls of nearly every European capital, she could navigate airports, taxis and foreign hotels, yet in the presence of this man she felt tongue-tied, and even gauche, uncertain, unable to fully believe that this was even happening.
    Yet it was.
    She slid a sideways glance at him and saw that there was a particularly hard set to his jaw, a determined resoluteness that seemed at odds with his light tone, the glimmer of his smile. He possessed a hardness, Abby thought suddenly, a darkness that she didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to.
    He downed the rest of his champagne, turning to smile at her, the darkness retreating to his eyes alone. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again. It is providence, is it not, that you came here?’
    Providence. An act of fate, of God. Abby gave a little helpless shrug of assent. ‘I don’t know why I did. I usually take a taxi straight home after a concert.’
    ‘But tonight you did not.’
    ‘No.’ The admission was no more than a breath of sound, and Luc’s direct blue gaze met hers.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because…’ How could she explain that the single moment of seeing him in the concert hall had changed her, made her want and feel things she’d never felt before? That single glance had opened a well of yearning inside her, and she didn’t know how it could be satisfied. ‘Because I felt restless,’ she finally said, and Luc nodded. Abby felt as if he understood everything she hadn’t said.
    ‘When I saw you,’ he said in a low voice, rotating the stem of his champagne flute between his long, lean fingers, ‘I felt something I have not felt in a long time.’
    Abby’s breath hitched and her fingers tightened around her own glass. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What did you feel?’
    Luc opened up, surprising Abby with the bleak, stark honesty of his gaze. ‘Hope.’ He reached out to brush a stilldamp tendril of hair from her cheek, his fingers barely touching her, yet still causing a wave of sensation to crash over her, dousing her to her core. ‘Didn’t you feel it, Abby? When you were at the piano and you saw me? I have never—’ He stopped, then started again. ‘It was like a current. Electric. Magical.’
    ‘Yes,’ she whispered, the word catching in her throat. ‘I felt it too.’
    ‘I am glad.’ Luc’s mouth quirked upwards in a tiny smile, although there was a curious bleakness to his words. ‘It would be a sad thing if only one of us had felt it.’ He reached for the champagne bottle and topped up both of their glasses, although Abby had hardly had a sip. ‘Were you pleased with your performance tonight?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ She took a tiny sip of champagne. ‘I can’t remember much of it.’
    Luc laughed softly. ‘Neither can I, to tell you the truth. When you came on stage and I saw you, the rest fell away. I was simply waiting for the moment when I could speak to you. I never thought it would be granted to me.’
    ‘Why didn’t you—?’ Abby stopped, biting her lip to keep the words, the revealing question, from coming. Luc arched an eyebrow.
    ‘Why didn’t I…?’ he prompted, and Abby shook her head. It didn’t matter; he filled in the rest. ‘Why didn’t I