The Night That Started It All by Anna Cleary

properly and be a decent, loving support to her sister-in-law.
    ‘Come on, Shar. The truth is you’ve been grieving over Rémy and the engagement a long, long time. We think you need to make this pilgrimage to properly close this episode in your life.’
    Oh,
right
. Where did they get their psychiatric expertise from? Doctor Phil?
    A few retorts jostled on her tongue, but most of them would only add fuel to Neil’s assertion that she wasn’t being herself. Her mousy, frumpy, slutty, hormonal self.
    ‘We absolutely
insist
on sending you first class,’ Neil persisted, enthusiastic since it didn’t have to be him. ‘See? Youcan sleep all the way. It’ll be a rest. And don’t worry about Paris. The family will look after you. Look how well you got on with Luc.’
    Visions of the boathouse, their hot, panting urgency, Luc’s hard length filling her up, making her cry out, making her
wild
, making her yearn
every night since
, sent Shari’s knees weak. ‘No,’ she said faintly. ‘You’re wrong about that. We detested each other.’
    ‘Are you sure? It hardly seems like a week since you were here fluttering your lashes at him.’
    Shari wanted to shout
Stop
. If only he knew what he was saying. Every word was a spike in her heart. Considering that Luc Valentin was the only person now living who knew the shame of her battered woman status …
    Considering she’d actually had
sex
with him …
    Considering he thought her the lowest, most pathetic creature he’d ever laid his aristocratic eyes on …
    And
how recently she’d snarled at him on the phone like a wild animal.
    She shuddered to the core. She could never face him again.
    ‘Come on, Shar.
Please
. If not for yourself, do it for Emilie. Em wants to ask you herself, but she’s afraid you’ll think she’s imposing on your generous nature.’
    Right. Fine. The Big One. The Emilie card.
    Emilie was fragile, Neil reminded her. The twins could be distressed. Any further disturbance could bring on a premature birth situation. They could
lose the twins
. They could lose Emilie.
    Shari’s conscience twinged. She loved Em as much as she loved Neil. With sinking resignation it dawned on her she didn’t have a chance of wriggling out of it unless she wanted to feel shame and self-reproach for all time.
    Succumbing to the intense and excruciating pressure by painful degrees over days, she accepted that this was what family members did for each other. For once in her life she mustput aside her personal fears and phobias and do something for someone else. Regardless of what Luc Valentin thought, she did have courage
and
self-respect, and she could behave honourably, and like an adult.
    She could go there and meet him on his home turf with cool composure.
    Though she did lay down some stipulations. She would only go briefly. And she would arrange it all herself. She wanted no interference.
    There would be no advance warnings given. She made Neil solemnly promise on his honour as a brother and a stockbroker. No jolly welcoming committee at the airport. No feather bed tucked under the charming rafters of Tante Laraine’s rustic roof.
    Emilie was shocked and wounded at this—Tante Laraine was her mother’s beloved cousin,
and
the mother of Luc—but Shari insisted. She would rather stay in a hotel.
    She would rather stay in a drain.
    All right, she could admit to herself she was scared. Call her a coward, but everyone knew the French loathed strangers. Especially if they couldn’t speak the language creditably. Rémy had always found her attempts to use her high school French hilarious.
    Naturally, the last thing she wanted was to stay in a household where her name was a byword. One of her deepest fears was that Luc would have informed his entire family about the whore of Babylon Rémy had engaged himself to. It wasn’t as if she’d be able to defend herself there by telling them the truth about their golden boy.
    Boys.
    And as if everything else weren’t enough,