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Admittedly, his heart was beating a tad too fast for a cool guy in charge of the situation.
    She angled the bin into line with its neighbours just as he caught up with her.
    ‘Shari.’
    She jumped, and with a strangled cry started back through her gate.
    Realising the enormity of having suddenly seemed to appear out of the dark, he was filled with contrition. ‘Shari.’ He only just restrained himself from grabbing her. ‘Forgive me for startling you. I—I only want to talk. I just want to explain …’
    ‘Luc.’ Her voice was stunned, incredulous. ‘Do you have any
idea …
? What—what are you even
doing
here?’
    He noticed her draw the lapels of her garment close andfold her arms across her breasts. It affected him with a burning desire to hold her to him, kiss her hair.
    ‘Shari,’ he said thickly, advancing on her. ‘Shari …’
    The light fell full on her face then, and he narrowed his eyes for a closer look. With a gut-wrenching shock he saw it wasn’t a shadow darkening the area surrounding her right eye.
    She turned sharply away, covering the bruise with her hand, and started striding for the house. ‘Leave me alone.’
    After a second of stunned paralysis, comprehension flooded through him and he was aware of a sharp twist in his chest. Her whimsical make-up had had a purpose, after all. He bounded after her onto her little verandah with the blind intention of pinning her down and making her talk to him, but she reached her door first.
    Before she could close it, he rammed his knee against it. ‘What happened? Who did that to you? Was it him? Rémy?’
    ‘Of
course
not. What do you think, that as well as being a slut I’m a … a …? I had an accident, all right?’ She was flushed and trembling, so achingly vulnerable in her fierce pride he felt something inside him give.
    Accident,
vraiment
. He couldn’t believe that. At the fragile pretence he felt so torn with tenderness and remorse, he hardly knew what he was saying, only that his voice grew hoarse. ‘Shari,
chérie
. Don’t be so … I didn’t mean to imply … This—this is
not
how we should say
au’voir.’
    In the verandah light her naked face was strained, her eyes dark with emotion. ‘We are strangers. We will never meet again. Move away from the door, please.’
    She closed it in his face.

CHAPTER FOUR
    B UT the world as Shari knew it jolted off its axis. It was Rémy she never saw again.
    Soon after dawn one morning in the autumn, Neil came hammering on her door with the shattering news. Rémy had been driving too fast on a foggy Colorado mountain road, misjudged a corner, and skidded over a cliff.
    The shock was so immense, Shari was overcome with nausea and had to run to the bathroom to throw up. The details were sketchy, but it was clear Rémy hadn’t been alone in the car.
    What a surprise.
    In the hours that followed, once Shari had begun to assimilate the news, she wished she could cry. At least poor Emilie had that release. Em was so distraught, so overcome with grief, Neil was beside himself with anxiety for her health and that of their soon-to-be-born twins.
    The best Shari could do was to change into her old track pants and run for miles, thanking heaven Luc Valentin wasn’t there to see her in her running clothes. Her emotions were a mess, not improved by an even more than usually massive dose of PMT.
    She tried not to speculate about what Luc would be thinking about Rémy’s loss, and concentrated on feeling sad. Of course she must be, deep down. She must be torn with sadness, though the main feeling she was aware of was her sympathy for Em.Overcome as she was, as they
all
were, she refused to delude herself about Rémy.
    His death didn’t change the cruel things he’d done. Some of the wounds he’d inflicted had had a bitter afterlife.
    All right, maybe her plunge into adventure with Luc had been a bit soon after the end of the engagement, but officially—
technically
—despite the things Luc had said