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?Actually, there is one thing we were going to ask you...’
There was a beat of silence as Philip and Alicia glanced at one another.
‘Really?’ Mimi leaned forward. ‘So ask me?’
‘We’re going to have a photographer.’ Philip grimaced. ‘It’s not really our kind of thing, all those formal staged shots, but Bob and my parents are a little old-fashioned that way.’ He hesitated. ‘But what we’d really like is for you to make a film for us.’
‘Something personal,’ Alicia said quickly. ‘You know—like you did at school, with us just talking and being ourselves.’ Her mouth trembled. ‘You have such a gift, Mimi. You capture a moment and hold it for ever, and I thought you might be able to do that for us.’
Mimi blinked. Her hands were shaking and her throat felt thick. ‘You’d trust me to do that?’ she said slowly.
They both nodded.
Meeting her gaze, Alicia gave her a lopsided smile. ‘I’ve trusted you with my life—or have you forgotten playing lacrosse against St Margaret’s?’
Mimi grinned. ‘It’s seared into my brain.’
Glancing over at her friend, she suddenly felt dizzy. More than anything, she wanted to say yes. She loved Alicia, and what better way to prove that than by making her shy, modest friend the star of her own film?
But she knew Alicia too well, and without a doubt this was her way of showing her some support. She didn’t need to do that—not publicly, anyway, and especially not on her wedding day. It was enough for her that Alicia had always been such a loyal, true ally.
‘Oh, Lissy, I’m just an amateur, really. And this is your big day.’ She was trying to gather herself together.
‘Isn’t that exactly what I said she’d say?’ Glancing at Philip, Alicia shook her head. ‘I wish I could make you believe in yourself like I believe in you.’
Mimi rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a good friend, and it’s a lovely idea, but you’re biased.’
‘I knew you’d say that too.’
Alicia smiled, and something in her smile snagged a tripwire in Mimi’s head.
‘And you’re right—I am biased. But it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t my idea. Or Philip’s,’ she added as Mimi glanced at her fiancé. ‘It was Basa’s.’
Mimi froze. Her heartbeat was booming in her ears so loudly she was surprised everyone in the restaurant couldn’t hear it.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said finally. And she didn’t.
The Caines might not actually live in a castle, but after her stepfather and uncle had been arrested the family had pulled up a metaphorical drawbridge. Overnight she had simply stopped being invited into their world. There had been no drama about it. They were far too well-bred to make a scene. But she had known from what Alicia hadn’t said that Robert and Bautista thought she was bad news, and she’d never had any reason to believe they had changed their mind.
Her breath felt jagged in her throat. All she had were those few hours at the party, when she’d mistakenly believed that Bautista felt about her as she felt about him.
‘And that’s why I asked him to join us so he could tell you himself.’
Finishing her sentence, Alicia lifted her hand and waved excitedly at someone across the restaurant.
Mimi glanced in the direction of her friend’s gaze and instantly felt the fine hairs at the nape of her neck stand on end. On the other side of the room, with a lock of dark hair falling across his face, his dark suit clinging to his lean, muscular body like the ivy that grew over his family’s Georgian mansion, was Bautista Caine.
Her heart seemed to stop beating.
Watching him move, she felt her body turn boneless. There was a swagger to the way he walked, a kind of innate poise and self-confidence that she had never possessed—except maybe briefly, when she was behind the camera. But even in a room like this—a room full of self-assured, beautiful people—he was by far the most beautiful, with his dark, almost black hair and eyes, and his fine features perfectly blending his English and Argentinian heritage.
But his impact on the crowded restaurant wasn’t just down to his bone structure, or those mesmerising sloe-dark eyes, or even that easy honeyed smile that made you forget your own name. He had what directors liked to refer to as presence: a mythical, elusive, intangible quality that made looking away from him an impossibility.
To her overstrained senses it seemed to take an age for him to reach the table. Quite a few of the diners clearly knew him and wanted to say hello. Her pulse skipped a beat as a famous Hollywood actress got to her feet and kissed him on both cheeks but Bautista seemed completely unfazed.
Of course he did: this was his world. More importantly, it wasn’t hers, and no amount of lunching with A-listers was ever going to change that fact.
Her understanding of that was the difference between now and two years ago when, high on the incredible thrill of finally being noticed by the object of her unrequited teenage affections, she’d let herself believe that their worlds could collide without any kind of collateral damage.
