Exquisite Revenge by Abby Green Read Free Book Online Page B

a corkscrew, and then put the water under his arm and the wine and sandwich in respective hands.
    He completely ignored Jesse and made his way back out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the bedrooms.
    Jesse followed him and asked, ‘Where are you going?’
    Luc stopped at the top of the stairs and sighed. He turned around. ‘I’m going to my room to eat and drink and get away from
you
—which seems to be about the only thing I
can
do at the moment.’
    Jesse saw one very large hand clamped around the wine bottle and her throat felt dry. ‘Don’t you need a glass?’
    ‘No,’ came the curt reply, ‘I don’t need a glass.’
    And with that he turned and disappeared. A couple of seconds later she winced as she heard the slamming of a door.
    Jesse turned around and sank down onto the bottom stair. The enormity of everything that had happened hit her then, and she lifted a hand to her head. It was trembling from the adrenalin. The main front door was still open, and she looked out blankly at the benignly beautiful view.
    She had managed to incarcerate Luc Sanchis on this island. She was now alone, for the next ten days at least, with one of the world’s most powerful men and a potentially lethal enemy. She recalled how he’d turned on the stairs, his entire body moving with innately masculine grace, and heat pooled in her lower belly. He was six feet four of hard, muscle-packed, angry testosterone, and the look in his eyes just now had been murderous.
    Luc sat in a chair on his private balcony. The Mediterranean stretched out as far as the eye could see, with not another piece of land or a boat in sight. The threat of a storm appeared to have passed for the moment and the glorious view mocked him. His hand was still wrapped around the neck of the wine bottle and he lifted it to his mouth and took another healthy slug, noting that he’d managed to demolish half of it already.
    Disgusted, because he was usually more than abstemious when it came to alcohol, he slammed it down on the table beside him, alongside the half-eaten sandwich. He’d taken the wine from the fridge on a whim and had relished Jesse’s wide-eyed response to him pulling it out.
    Damn her anyway, this pixie-sized, short-haired witch.
    He still couldn’t quite believe what she’d managed to do to him—and with such ease. That perhaps was worst of all,when he thought of it. How he’d happily walked right into her trap. The modern-day communications that everyone took so much for granted had allowed her to rearrange his schedule with no questions asked. He grimaced. It was all thanks to the fact that she was effectively a computer nerd. Although when he pictured a nerd he saw a twenty-year-old weedy guy in glasses. Not a petite and annoyingly vulnerable-looking blonde-haired elf. He snorted.
Vulnerable?
As if.
    Luc grabbed the wine bottle again almost rebelliously; the more wine he drank, the more her image in his head grew blurry, so he took another gulp.
    He sat forward with the bottle dangling from his fingers, completely unaware of the rakish image he presented, with his shirt buttons ripped apart, exposing the top of his chest.
    He could almost laugh. But it wasn’t funny in the slightest. Only last week his secretary had enquired solicitously as to whether he’d thought about scheduling any holiday time for the rest of the year. She’d probably be assuming right now that he’d taken her concern as advice. And he knew she wouldn’t question his
apparent
change of direction when it came to the O’Brien deal, because she was used to him changing his mind and not explaining why. It rankled bitterly now. He didn’t know Jesse Moriarty from Adam and yet she seemed to have read him like a book.
    And the two people in the world who cared about him most were currently at sea on a two-week cruise. Only this morning he’d told his mother and sister with affectionate mock severity that he didn’t want to hear from them unless there was a serious