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‘You wouldn’t be the first girl.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WEALTH OF cynicism in that comment left Lulu flabbergasted.
‘Gigi and I weren’t starring in our own version of How to Marry a Millionaire, if that’s what you mean,’ she said, trying to sound as dismissive as he did, but knowing it just came out defensively. ‘We’re working girls. Gigi’s still working. She runs the cabaret. I work!’
‘You’re a woman who by her own admission is supported by her parents.’
Lulu went to deny it, but she couldn’t, and nor could she explain her circumstances. It was so frustrating!
‘You wouldn’t be the first person to want what your friend’s got. Maybe I’m wrong…’ He shrugged.
Lulu hated him for that shrug, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other. It did matter when you were the one being unjustly accused!
‘You are wrong! And Khaled Kitaev has no right to talk about me to you or anyone.’
‘He’s hardly said a word.’ Alejandro leaned back, all wide shoulders and amused speculation. ‘I’d worked you out five minutes into that flight, querida.’
‘You’d worked me out?’ Lulu could feel herself crumbling inside like a sandcastle.
‘Troublemaker.’
‘What…?’ The word emerged as a whisper.
All of a sudden she was convinced he knew everything about her. Gigi might not have spilled her secrets to Khaled, but somehow this man knew everything.
Did he know she’d never had a boyfriend? Probably. Did he think she was some kind of misfit freak? Probably. Did he think it was funny, making a joke of spending the night with her?
Her confidence hit an all-time low.
Khaled had taken her best friend away and it had felt as if a large piece of her inhabited land had been annexed by a ruthless invading force because her private world was already so small. How would Alejandro like it if he was forced to question everything about his life, let alone try to start again?
But she couldn’t begin to explain it to this man.
And why should she?
‘What have I done to make you say those things to me?’ she defended herself. ‘All you’ve done is attack me since we met on the plane. I’m not a bad person, but I think you want me to be awful so you can take your bad mood out on me. I thought—I thought when you kissed me—’
Mon Dieu, what was she saying? Lulu scrambled to her feet, belatedly aware that there wasn’t anywhere to go.
Her derrière hit the bed-end.
‘You don’t know a thing about me,’ she muttered fiercely, turning her back on him, ‘and I hope after this weekend we never see each other again.’
Alejandro’s first instinct was to turn her in his arms and kiss her. But the last time he’d done that she’d been upset, and he’d just had his conscience slammed up against the wall.
He dated independent, self-assured women every time. Not that it always worked out. His ex-wife had independently propelled herself into other men’s beds. But Lulu’s words had truth to them.
Everything about her rang true.
Was he still judging other women by his relationship with his ex-wife?
Sometimes it was just about chemistry and timing. Both of which he had here. He was wasting it by twisting this girl around the knot that had been his long-ago short-lived marriage.
He looked at her
rigid shoulders and it occurred to him that this was about her only defence with him.
