`I don't call it pleasant to make someone parade in front of you while you walk round them and criticise as if they were in some kind of cattle market!'
'So that's why you were in such a bad mood all afternoon,' Luke said, inspecting the bottle of wine presented by the waiter. He waited until a small amount had been poured into his glass, then took a sip, and nodded. `Most women would have enjoyed having an afternoon at the hairdressers', not to mention a free wardrobe.'
Kate waited until the waiter had finished pouring the wine. `I'm not most women,' she pointed out tartly as he left the bottle on the table and disappeared discreetly. `I'm me, and I don't appreciate being treated like… like some kind of bimbo!'
To her chagrin, instead of looking contrite, Luke grinned. `Kate, you're the last person I'd treat as a bimbo!'
She wished he wouldn't smile like that. Kate seized her glass and took a gulp of wine, trying to keep her eyes off the heart-wrenching lift of his mouth.
`As far as I'm concerned,' Luke said, `you're a sensible and intelligent woman, and a damn sight too valuable to me to start treating like a sex object! I can't tell you what a relief it is to find a woman prepared to keep a relationship on a strictly business footing, and who doesn't expect to be showered with compliments!'
`One every now and then wouldn't go amiss!'
`I would have said that you look wonderful in that dress, but you'd probably just have accused me of being sexist!' For a moment their eyes clashed, and then Luke smiled ruefully. `I'm sorry,' he apologised. `It's just a bit of a shock to find my prim and proper secretary transformed so suddenly into something quite different!' He reached over and touched her hand briefly. `You look beautiful tonight, Kate. Is that better?'
Kate was glad of the dim light that disguised the deep flush that swept up her throat. She withdrew her hand hastily, shaken by the way her heart had jolted at his touch.
`I was only joking,' she muttered. `Sensible and intelligent were enough of a compliment!'
`Were they? I don't know of any other woman who would have been satisfied with that!'
'Ah, but as far as you're concerned I'm not a woman,' Kate said drily. `I'm your secretary.'
Luke picked up his glass and looked at her over the rim, an enigmatic expression in his eyes.
`When you look the way you do tonight it's hard to remember.'
Kate felt as if she had stepped suddenly on to uncertain ground, and she took a hasty sip of wine while she tried desperately to think of a way to bring the conversation back to safe, familiar territory. She was tense, flustered by the warmth in his voice.
`You said you wanted to talk to me about the trip to Paris,' she reminded him, wondering if her voice sounded that high and unnatural to him too. `Whom exactly are we going to meet?'
She avoided looking directly at him, certain that he would read the silly, girlish flutterings of her heart in her eyes. She wasn't sixteen now, she chided herself. She was a grown woman, too sensible to misinterpret the most casual of compliments, the briefest of touches. This was a business dinner, that was all. True, Luke was being pleasant, but it really shouldn't set her heart pounding like this…
Luke gave her a quick, keen look, but answered her readily enough. 'Philippe Robard and his grandson, who's also a director of the company. Robard owns the Oasis chain of hotels-you must have heard of them when you were in France?'
When Kate nodded he went on, `He's expanding fast, with an eye to the UK in particular. You probably know that his speciality is buying up old buildings-mostly run-down chateaux and transforming them into five-star hotels. Everything top quality, of course, but with an eye to retaining the original character of the building as far as possible.'
He fiddled absently with his knife. 'Robard's been extraordinarily successful so far, but he needs to be careful not to lose quality control as he expands. He's a hotelier, not an engineer.'
`And that's where we come in?' Kate was concentrating fiercely on what he was saying to take her mind off its sudden obsession with his mouth.
`Exactly. I'm offering him a complete consultancy service on the construction front, leaving him free to concentrate on running the hotels. That's why it's so important that we give him the right impression tomorrow. He needs to feel that we embody the qualities he's looking for in his buildings: style, efficiency, quality.'
Kate hailed the arrival of the waiter with the first course with relief. Now she would be able to look at her plate. `He can get all that from a French firm, can't he?' she said vaguely, picking up her knife and fork.
`Yes, but remember he wants to get a foothold in the UK as much as I want to get one in France.' Luke seemed more interested in his business than in his food. `We've got a good international reputation outside Europe, and you, Kate, are going to give us our European flavour.'
`I see.' Kate's eyes were lowered to her plate, and a wing of hair shone in the reflected light. `What exactly do you want me to do?'
'You'll be there as my assistant, and, obviously, to help out with any language problems. I expect you to impress them with your efficiency and the charm which I know very well you possess, even if you don't waste any of it on me!'
Kate looked up in astonishment and her eyes, huge and dark, caught the gleam of gold from a candle near by. She put her knife and fork down slowly. `What on earth do you mean?'
It was Luke's turn to concentrate on his dinner. `I've seen the way you talk to people in the office. They all like you. I'm sick of my directors telling me how charming you are! All I ever get from you is disapproval or a lecture about my manners, or lack of them.'
There was a strange note in his voice, and Kate bit her lip. She could almost swear he was hurt!
`That's not fair,' she protested. `I'm perfectly nice to you sometimes.'
Luke leant over to refill her wine glass, and then his own. `Only sometimes!' he said, but she was relieved to see a glint of amusement in his eyes. `The trouble with you, Kate, is that you're very honest-sometimes uncomfortably so. I'm not used to that. I learnt early on not to expect too much honesty from women.'
Bitterness shadowed his voice and Kate wondered if he was remembering Helen. Was she being any more honest than Helen in not admitting that she had met Luke before? she wondered guiltily.
On an impulse she opened her mouth to tell him, but then the waiter was beside them, checking their glasses, offering them another roll, and by the time he had gone the moment had passed and Luke had changed the subject.
`I suppose going to Paris tomorrow will be like going home for you?'
'In a way,' she said, not sorry to let go of the opportunity to tell Luke the truth. It would only have embarrassed them both. `It's funny, all the time I was in France I thought about coming back to England, and now I'm here I think about France just as nostalgically. Having dual nationality makes you a little schizophrenic!'
`I never think of you as being French,' Luke said thoughtfully. `You always seem so cool and English.'
`I take after my father.'
`What was he like?'
Kate wondered what Luke would say if she told him that he knew perfectly well. He had always despised her father, she remembered, had thought of him as stuffy and snobbish. He hadn't known how kind and generous her father could be to those he loved.
`He was rather cool and English too,' she said lightly.
There was a lurking smile about Luke's mouth. `He sounds all right.'
For one dizzy moment time seemed to telescope, and Kate found herself wishing desperately that her father could have known this new Luke.
`So you don't regret coming back to England?'
'No.' Kate shook her head, feeling the shining softness bounce against her cheek. `I would have come back before, but my mother is…well, she's very gay and very charming, but hopelessly impractical! After my father died and we went to France it somehow seemed natural that I would look after things like money. Veronique, my halfsister, was married by then, but I was always more sensible than her anyway, even as a child.' She sighed.