AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But she could hardly follow him into the billiards room. What would she say?
Besides, he was probably already learning from Khaled what a mess she was—all the things she couldn’t do—and now he wouldn’t look at her as if she fascinated him. He would look at her and see someone who was too much work.
That was when Lulu became aware that she was standing in a dark corridor just feeling sorry for herself.
If anyone had found her there how stupid she would have looked.
Sad little Lulu, scared of her own shadow and too damn gutless—as Susie would put it—to grab the things she wanted most in life. Willing to let a man think she was a shallow narcissist in order to cover up how truly pathetic her life was in truth.
Whatever had passed between them she owed him an apology—and if she couldn’t tell him all of the truth, at least she could tell him something, so he wouldn’t go away thinking the worst of her.
*
It was easier said than done.
An hour later she watched him making the rounds of the guests, so tall and broad-shouldered, with his tousled chestnut hair tamed and a slow half-smile making him look as if he knew a secret nobody else did. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him to engineer a casual bumping of elbows, and he had made no move to approach her at all since he entered the room.
She doubted he’d even looked her way. She, on the other hand, couldn’t take her eyes off him.
Lulu fought off the memories but suddenly they were all she had moving through her mind, drawing her attention to the gentle ache that lingered from last night’s unfamiliar activities.
It was her own fault they weren’t together now. She’d asked for this.
A braver woman would just go up to him, draw him aside and discreetly make her apology. But all her bravery from earlier seemed to have fled in the face of all these people and his apparent indifference, and now she just felt as if the room was closing in on her.
Her skin was clammy, her hands were shaking, and to make matters worse her mother kept advancing on her with an agonised expression barely hidden behind her practised social ease.
Lulu had evaded her for some time now, by circulating like a good little bridesmaid among the wedding party members and their partners, clutching a glass of champagne she actually hadn’t touched. By the time they went into dinner she was a jangled mass of nerves.
She dared another flickering glance Alejandro’s way as Gigi rose to announce, just when they were on their third course, that there would be games this weekend.
Amidst the laughter and commentary she was startled when his attention came her way. It was a casual movement. His gaze just seemed to drift over her, and his eyes, when she looked at them, were dark in the candlelight.
For a fanciful moment she was reminded of a leopard, hanging deceptively lazily in the branches of a tree, every muscle in its superb killer’s body seemingly at rest. But those eyes…those eyes held pure predatory intent.
Lulu watched Susie touch his arm, leaning across in all her sexy glory and saying something that made him smile, displaying the easy charm of a man for whom attractive women did and said anything to claim his attention.
It was somewhat disconcerting to see evidence of what she knew would happen. He would move on.
Not with Susie, nor even this weekend, but with someone. And he would forget about her.
But it had never occurred to her she would have to watch other women come on to him this weekend.
The guests were handing a hat down the table, and she was so enmeshed in her thoughts she didn’t pay much attention. She obediently shoved her hand in and took out a small folded piece of paper, ignoring its contents as she glared daggers at Susie across the table.
‘There are four teams,’ Gigi announced, ‘and you’ll only find the prize if you solve the clues for your team in consecutive order. There’s a time limit so—go!’
Chairs scraped…couples paired off. People were taking their champagne with them. There was laughter, a shriek as a girl was swept up into her companion’s arms. Lulu’s heart sank. It was going to be that sort of game.
She could see her mother, saying something to her stepfather and another older woman, and then Félicienne began scanning the room. In a moment Lulu knew she was going to be dragged off with the middle-aged party, as if she were thirteen and not twenty-three.
She watched Susie grab a bottle and was wondering who would be drinking that with her when a hand closed around her elbow.
‘Come on,’ said a darkly familiar voice in her ear. ‘We can win this.’
Alejandro used his big body to block the crowd and the view of her mother as he pushed her into the stream of guests heading out into the draughty hall.
‘But you’re purple and I’m pink,’ she said, her heart hammering, knowing that wasn’t the point.
