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She wasn’t sure which was worse: the instant rush of hot indignant anger that the kiss that had turned her inside out with longing had been given so casually, so randomly by a man whose body was barely cold from another woman’s bed.
Or the low down ache of desire, and the shameful knowledge that she didn’t care. That she just wanted to kiss him again.
‘Everything OK?’ said Tom out of the corner of his mouth. They had walked back across the field to the party and were now striding across the lawn towards the marquee where the bar was.
Tristan gave a curt nod. ‘Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get away.’
‘Not a problem. For me, anyway, although your extensive collection of female hangers-on have been getting increasingly restless. I was running out of answers for where you could be.’
‘A house party in St Tropez is the official story.’
Tom threw him a swift grin. ‘It must have been some party. Perhaps you’d better do your shirt up properly, old friend, or we might have a riot on our hands.’
Tristan glanced down with a grimace. Dressing quickly when he’d landed his plane at the nearby airfield, he’d been so tired he’d hardly been able to see straight. Hardly the ideal circumstances to get ready for what was always dubbed the social event of the year. The mild air pulsed with music from one of the marquees around the lawn, an insistent reminder that yet another sleepless night lay ahead of him.
‘So that’s the official story,’ said Tom soberly, ‘but what’s the truth?’
‘Khazakismir,’ Tristan replied tonelessly, looking straight ahead and unbuttoning his shirt as they walked across the lawn towards the tented bar.
Tom winced at the name. ‘I hoped you weren’t going to say that. News coverage here has been patchy, but I gather things are pretty grim?’
The name of the small province in a remote corner of Eastern Europe had become synonymous with despair and violence in the course of a decade-long war, the original purpose of which no one could remember any more. Power rested in the blood-stained hands of a corrupt military government and a few drugs barons, who quashed any sign of civil unrest quickly and ruthlessly. Reports had filtered through in the last week of a whole village being laid to waste.
‘You could say that.’ A door in Tristan’s mind swung open, letting the images flood back into his head for a moment before he mentally slammed it shut again. ‘One of our drivers was caught up in it. His family were killed—everyone apart from his sister, who’s pregnant.’ His mouth quirked into a bitter smile. ‘It seems that the military were keen to make use of the brand new cache of weaponry they have courtesy of funds from the Romero bank.’
Pausing at the entrance to the marquee, Tom laid a hand on his arm.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Fine,’ he said tersely. ‘You know me. I don’t get involved in the humanitarian side. I’m just there to help out with practicalities. Redress the balance.’
He didn’t meet Tom’s eyes as he spoke, looking instead over his shoulder and into the distance, where the lake lay in its hollow of shadows, the tower in the centre wreathed in mist. A muscle flickered in his jaw.
‘Anything I can do?’ Tom said quietly.
Tristan flashed a brief, ironic smile as they moved into the damp, alcohol-scented warmth of the marquee. ‘I haven’t been seen anywhere for a while, so I could do with giving the press their pound of flesh. If any word got out tying me to activities over there it would be a security nightmare.’
Tom’s smile didn’t waver as he shouldered his way through to the bar, nodding a welcome to his guests. Speaking quietly, he said, ‘That’s easily arranged. The usual tame photographers are here, the society event ones who have progressed slightly further up the evolutionary scale from the paparazzi, but if you pick someone high profile and enjoy a little bit of public affection, I’m sure they’ll regress into mindless savages who’ll sell your picture to every glossy magazine and sleazy gossip rag by Monday morning.’ He took two glasses from the tray on the bar and handed one to Tristan. ‘Cheers, old chap. So—who’s it going to be?’
‘Lily.’ Tristan tossed back the dark coloured liquid in the shot glass, feeling it burning a path down his throat as he watched Tom’s open face fall. He was gauging his reaction before admitting what had already happened. It wasn’t positive.
‘No. No way. Not a good idea.’
‘Why not? She’s high profile.’ And beautiful, there was no doubt about that. Even Tristan, tired and jaded, had been jolted by it, which had surprised him. It was more than that, though. For a moment back there when she was in his arms he had found himself looking into her slanting, silvery grey eyes and felt almost…
Almost human?
‘She’s also Scarlet’s best friend,’ Tom said firmly. ‘You screw her up—which let’s face it, you certainly will—and you screw things up for me.’
‘Why would I screw her up?’ Tristan picked up another shot glass and looked restlessly around. ‘She’s a model, Tom; hard as nails and, judging from what I just saw, not really all there. She’ll end up with something shiny and expensive from Cartier, and a whole raft of publicity, and I’ll feed the press appetite to portray me as a pointless playboy and throw them off the scent. Everyone’s happy.’
Tom looked worried. ‘I don’t think she’s like that.’
‘You’re too nice, Tom, my friend,’ Tristan said grimly, draining his glass. ‘They’re all like that.’
CHAPTER TWO
AS TWILIGHT fell it brought with it a kind of enchantment. Paper lanterns glowed palely in the trees and the scattering of diamond stars that glittered in the purple heavens looked as if they’d been placed there purely for the delight of the guests.
Lily wouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing was impossible here tonight.
Earlier, as waiters had circulated with cool green cocktails that tasted of melons and champagne, masked girls dressed as dryads and wood nymphs had appeared from the shadowy trees that fringed the lawn on white horses, with delicate, spiralling unicorn’s horns on their fore heads. To the haunting strains of a full orchestra headed by a stunning girl playing an electric violin they had performed a display of equestrian dance, weaving around each other, making the horses rear and pirouette, until Lily wasn’t sure if she was dreaming. Once, through the writhing, stamping figures of the unicorns, she found herself staring straight into the eyes of Tristan, standing opposite, his shirt half unbuttoned and his arm around a well-known young Hollywood actress dressed as Pocahontas. A shock, like a small electrocution, sizzled through her.
The next time she looked he was gone.
She had hardly touched her cocktail. She didn’t need to. Already she felt heavy and languid with tiredness, but beneath that there was an edge of restlessness, a throbbing pulse of desire and impatience and wild longing that alcohol would only exacerbate. The riding display finished and the unicorns melted back into the darkness that had gathered beneath the trees. Lily turned to say something to Scarlet, but she had moved away slightly and was standing with Tom. His arms were looped around her waist and as Lily watched he pulled her into him and spoke into her ear.
Lily felt a beat of pain, of anguish, deep inside her chest and turned away.
She and Scarlet had been a team for so long. All through school at a fairly rough comprehensive in Brighton it had been the two of them—united by both being tall, skinny and teased for it—until the day when Maggie Mason had spotted them shopping together in The Lanes and invited them both up to London for an interview at her famous modelling agency. Lily had been so set on going to university, if it hadn’t been for Scarlet there was no way she would have even taken Maggie’s card. But they had been in it together, two halves of the same whole—as different as it was possible to be. But always together.
Which was, she told herself firmly, why she was so pleased for Scarlet. Tom was lovely, and when she thought of some of the unsuitable men that her friend could have fallen in love with…
Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo, for example.
The violinist was playing solo now, a gentle, haunting melody that echoed across the mist-shrouded fields and gentle hills enfolding the castle. Another horse cantered into the ring, this time with the most fantastic pair of wings attached to its saddle. A murmur of delight ran around the crowd, which quickly turned to a gasp of surprise as the scantily clad girl rider opened the lid of the basket she carried.
There was a flurry of feathers, a whispered beat of wings and a flock of white doves spiralled upwards into the sky. In the smudged violet light their wings were almost luminescent. For a moment they seemed to hang motionless in the air, as if uncertain what to do with their unexpected freedom, and out of the corner of her eye Lily caught a movement in the crowd opposite. She turned her head, and was just in time to see a man in a Robin Hood costume raise his bow and arrow and take a shot.
A macho jeer went up from the group around him as one of the doves faltered, losing height for a minute in a ragged tumble of feathers. Lily could see the arrow, hanging tenuously from the bird’s side, seeming to drag it downwards. Miraculously the bird didn’t fall but, with an odd, lopsided flapping, flew down towards the lake.
