Free Forbidden or For Bedding? by Julia James

disclosed to you only on an “as necessary” basis, as Mr de Rochemont instructs.’
    After the call, which Alexa had heard out in a silence that was partly due to her continuing inability to believe what she was hearing and partly because she had long since decided to ignore the woman’s pointedly unpleasant manner, Alexa resumed her task of distributing the flowers into a variety of containers—for she possessed no single vase that was capable of holding the vast bouquet.
    The scent of the flowers seemed overpowering. But her mind seemed strangely blank—as if too much had happened, too fast, and she could make no sense of it at all.
    I don’t know what to do, she thought. I don’t know what to do.
    Then don’t do anything.
    The words formed in her mind and brought a kind of relief. After all, nothing was required of her for the moment other than to place the vases around the flat. Then, knowing she was in no state of mind to go to her studio—where, anyway, no current commission awaited her other than Guy de Rochemont’s, which, whatever the extraordinarily unbelievable events of the night before, she had resigned—she settled down at the desk in her living room and worked her way through a considerable amount of domestic paperwork, from utility bills to ongoing business expenses.
    Then she vacuumed the flat, cleaned the kitchen, did some laundry and finally, after a light lunch, set off to the shops, having first despatched by courier the dress and accessories from last evening, with a note apologising because they had not been first cleaned, to Rochemont-Lorenz.
    Her fridge restocked, she decided it would be a good opportunity to go to the gym, and spent several hours there. The exercise helped occupy her mind. Stop it falling back into vivid memory or that sense of blank incomprehension that seemed to be paralysing her brain. Back home again,she stayed in all evening, reading or watching back-to-back documentaries on television, before retiring to bed.
    As she slipped between cool sheets she had a sudden searing memory of the previous night. For a moment she froze as heat flushed through her body. Then, with a decisive flick of the duvet, she reached for a book on early Italian art—her current bedtime reading. Pictures of martyred medieval saints would be an effective antidote to that betraying sensual flush—and to thoughts about the man who had caused it.
    But about Guy de Rochemont she still didn’t know what to do.
    I don’t understand …was her last conscious thought as sleep took her.
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    It was also her first conscious thought four days later, after days spent resuming her life as much as she was able, given her state of mental bemusement. She had come to the conclusion that the complete lack of any further communication by anyone remotely to do with Guy de Rochemont, let alone himself, could betoken only one thing: his parting words to her, the vast bouquet he had sent and the call from his PA with his private phone number, had not in fact meant anything. It was all beyond her comprehension, and continued to be so right up to the moment when, one Sunday, as she was passing a leisurely morning, the entryphone sounded.
    It was Guy de Rochemont.
    Numbly, she let him in. Numbly, she opened her front door to him. Numbly, she heard her own voice on her lips—‘I don’t understand…’
    He glanced down at her, wry amusement in his beautiful green long-lashed eyes that made her breath slow and her pulse instantly quicken. ‘I told you, ma si belle Alexa, itis very simple. As simple…’ he lowered his mouth to hers and took her into his arms ‘…as this.’
    And so, over the next weeks, and then months, it seemed to be.
    Without any conscious decision on her part, Alexa simply accepted the situation. Slowly, the sense of bemusement that it was happening at all seeped away, and having Guy de Rochemont in her