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She remembered gathering him to her. Stroking him until his heartbeat steadied, until the lines beneath his brows were smoothed away and she had chased away whatever nameless horrors tormented him. For a short while then, against the odds, she had touched him. She had reached him and he had clung to her. Could she reach him again? Not for a moment, but for a lifetime, for the sake of the baby she wanted so much?
That was what fairy tales were about. About quests that were seemingly impossible, where you had to follow your heart and fight for the things you believed in.
And she believed in love. In marriage. In families and fairy tales. She always had. Raising her chin now, she met his bleak gaze steadily.
‘No. If that’s how it has to be…we get married.’
He flinched, very slightly, his eyelids flickering shut for a split second before the steel shutters descended again and that small glimpse of suffering and humanity was concealed.
‘Right. If that’s your choice.’ His voice was cold, clipped, but contained a note of weary resignation. ‘Just for God’s sake don’t tell anyone yet.’
‘But what about Scarlet?’ she protested. ‘I can’t lie, Tristan—’
‘No? Then maybe we should drop this whole charade now,’ he said silkily.
‘She’s my best friend.’
His perfect, sculpted lips stretched into a sardonic smile. ‘Then I would have thought that you would be able to see that announcing your own shotgun wedding at her engagement party might not be the most tactful thing to do. You can tell people in good time. For the moment you have to behave in a way that means it won’t come as a complete surprise when you do.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘Just follow my lead,’ he said coldly, turning on his heel and walking back towards the entrance to the castle. ‘You might not be able to lie, but I hope you can act.’
For a moment Lily didn’t move, watching him walk away, his head bent and his shoulders held very straight.
No. She couldn’t act, as the director of the perfume commercials would certainly testify. But the thing was, in this case she suspected she wouldn’t have to.
‘What’s going on?’
Tom’s tone was as light as always but Tristan knew him well enough not to be deceived. Behind Tom’s affable, self-deprecating façade was a mind sharp and incisive enough to have earned him a first at Oxford. He wouldn’t be easy to fool.
Leaning against the massive stone fire place, Tristan took a thoughtful sip of his drink and let his gaze wander around the room. ‘Nothing. Why?’
The speeches officially announcing the engagement and welcoming Scarlet to Tom’s illustrious family were over, and the guests had stirred and reassembled them selves as fresh bottles of champagne were circulated around. Lily was standing over by the window, talking to Scarlet’s parents, who were finally beginning to lose a little of the terrified look they had worn all evening. The light from the fading, flame-streaked sky outside put roses in her pale cheeks.
‘That’s why,’ said Tom gently. ‘You haven’t taken your eyes off her for the last two hours.’
Tristan’s hand tightened around his glass. With some effort he tore his gaze from Lily and looked at Tom levelly.
‘Come on, Tom. You’re engaged, not blind. She’s beautiful. Any man could be forgiven for looking.’
‘As long as that’s all you do.’ Tom softened the warning with a smile. ‘Lily’s sweet. She deserves a nice steady guy who’ll buy her flowers and give her break fast in bed, not a man like you who’ll—’
‘Buy her diamonds and give her orgasms in bed?’ Tristan cut in ruthlessly. ‘It doesn’t sound so bad to me.’
‘Ah, well, that’s because you can’t see that there’s more to life than money and sex.’
‘How little faith you have in me.’ Tristan took a swig of his drink and grimaced. ‘What if I told you I’ve decided it’s time to give up the one night stands and settle down?’
Tom laughed. ‘I’d ask if it was just orange juice in that glass, or whether you’ve diluted it with vodka like you used to do in school. And then I’d probably look out the window to check for flying pigs and ask myself if it was April the first.’ Throwing an arm round Tristan, he slapped him affectionately on the back before moving away to rejoin his other guests. ‘The day you get married I’ll swim naked around the moat,’ he added with a grin.
Tristan didn’t smile.
‘Deal.’
At that moment he wished very fervently that there were vodka in his glass. And no orange juice. He wanted nothing more than to have something to slow the incessant, ruthless progress of his thoughts and bring warmth back to the frozen places inside him.
A baby.
His gaze moved inexorably back to Lily. She was sitting on the window seat now, deep in conversation with Scarlet’s mother. Or rather, he noticed, Scarlet’s mother was deep in conversation with her. Lily’s head was bent slightly as she listened, her face thoughtful. The gentle, sleepy quality he had noticed the first time he met her struck him again as he watched the graceful movement of her hand as she smoothed a strand of hair back from her forehead.
He felt as if something were crushing his chest.
But it wasn’t her beauty that caught him by the throat and squeezed. It was her goodness. Tom was right. She needed a decent man, a kind husband who would love her as she deserved to be loved.
Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo knew with a cold, bleak certainty that he could never be that man.
He was the kind of man who was effortlessly good at everything he did, she knew that. So it came as no surprise to Lily to discover that Tristan’s acting ability was excellent.
It wasn’t a surprise. But it was still shocking.
She was acutely aware of his presence, as if some internal satellite navigation system were constantly signalling his whereabouts to her, inexorably pulling her towards him and making it impossible not to keep looking at him. Every time she did she found he was looking back, smiling a little, his eyes dark and glittering with obvious desire.
Acting the part.
And, of course, she was acting too. Standing with Scarlet’s brother Jamie, as she smiled and talked and put her glass to her lips she was acting that everything was normal. Acting as if she weren’t in the grip of raging pregnancy hormones, that she hadn’t just agreed to enter into a loveless marriage with a notorious playboy, and—most challenging of all—that she weren’t feeling as if her husband-to-be were slowly stripping her naked with his eyes from the other side of the room.
Husband?
The word was too domestic, too tame to be applied to the man who could make her squirm with guilty longing simply by looking at her from twenty feet away in a room full of people. Married life was going to be extremely uncomfortable if this was the effect he had on her.
Oh, God, what was she doing?
Scarlet’s brother Jamie was talking about the band he was in at university. Making vague, encouraging noises, Lily tentatively turned her head to where Tristan was leaning against the huge stone fireplace talking to Tom’s gorgeous teenage cousin. The cousin had her back to Lily, but Lily could imagine the expression of slavish adoration on her face from the way her head was tilted up, her whole body arched towards Tristan.
At that moment he looked up, his eyes meeting hers as if she had just pulled on some invisible wire stretching between them. The look was of such smouldering sensuality that Lily felt as if he had slammed her against the silk-covered wall and were holding her by the throat.
And then he smiled.
It was like sunrise. A slow warming, a delicious golden promise of the scorching heat to come. Lily was dimly aware of the cousin looking round, following the direction of his gaze, visibly wilting as she saw that it was directed at someone else.
‘Get your coat, Ms Alexander, I think you’ve pulled a billionaire.’
Jamie’s low, amused voice brought her back down to earth. She whipped her head round to face him again, trying to hide her flaming cheeks behind the curtain of her hair, but before she could think of a suitable explanation he dropped his voice and said, ‘Right, he’s coming over. This is the moment when I slip away and leave you to it. Good luck!’
She wanted to reply; she wanted to tell him to stay, but suddenly her mouth was so dry that the words didn’t come. As Jamie vanished into the crowd she turned away, feigning interest in a portrait of an insipid man in a powdered wig with a sour lemon expression. Regency men were supposed to be rakish and dashing, she thought vaguely, remembering the Georgette Heyer heroes that she and Scarlet used to sigh over. They had despaired of ever finding men like that in Brighton…
‘This would be a good time to leave, I think. Don’t you?’
Her whole body jolted as the husky Spanish voice caressed her ear. Standing behind her, he very gently picked up the lock of hair that was falling over her shoulder and smoothed it back, tucking it behind her ear.
Tongues of flame were licking downwards into Lily’s pelvis, making it hard to think straight.
‘But I’m staying here tonight…’
‘That was Plan A, sweetheart,’ he murmured softly, putting his hands on her hips and pulling her against him as his mouth brushed her neck, her jaw, her ear lobe. ‘I asked for your things to be brought down to my car. I’m taking you home.’
