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A muscle ticked in this jaw, as he looked at the woman he had loved since he’d first seen her. Loved, and yet wounded so badly, by the only other passion he had in life: his racing.
“I can’t make this decision for you.”
She blinked, her eyes filling with warm, salty tears. “I don’t need you to make my decision for me. I need you to promise me that you’ll never hurt me again. That you’ll never get hurt again like you were in Germany.” She closed her eyes and took in a fortifying breath. “I came so close to losing you.”
“You lost me by choice,” he drawled, a hard note of cynicism to his voice. “You walked away from me when I needed you most.”
Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “You don’t need anyone.”
He pressed a finger to her chin, lifting her heart shaped face to his. “Guess again. I need you.” Her eyes clung to his face; she needed to know it was true.
“Enough to quit racing?”
His expression flickered momentarily, hardening beneath her eyes, before it relaxed again. “Enough to make sure you know, every day, that what we share is real and unavoidable.”
“I know how unavoidable it is.” Hadn’t they been trying for years?
“Then stop avoiding it.” He whispered with mock severity, lowering his face so that his mouth was only a whisper from hers. “Come with me to Australia tomorrow.”
“Australia?”
“Melbourne.”
Of course. The Grand Prix. A chill ran down her spine.
“Aurora.” Alec appeared, handsome in his tuxedo, his face quietly watchful. “Mind if I cut in?”
She felt Leonardo stiffen and knew he was fighting an inner-battle; a desire to object. To stake his claim. A barbaric need to assert his possession of Aurora. And so she forced an easy smile to her face and stepped out of his arms. “Of course.” She blinked a warning look at Leonardo.
As she brushed past him, he caught her hand, and whispered in her ear, “Tell him, Aurora. Tell him now.”
She shook her hand free forcefully and smiled more brightly at Alec. “Are you having a good night?” She asked hi
m, as he put an arm around her waist and took her free hand in his.
“Weddings are weddings.” He grinned. “Though I’ve never been to one with quite this level of organisation.”
Aurora laughed, looking around for their mutual best friends. They were dancing cheek to cheek. In the middle of perhaps one hundred revellers, they were completely alone. “Beatrice could do this for a living.”
“If she didn’t have a trust fund the size of a country waiting for her, you mean.”
Aurora didn’t respond, but she kept her smile in place. She’d long ago given up any interest in the financial backgrounds from which people heralded. Despite the fact her parents barely had two pennies to rub together, she’d become one of the highest paid models in the world. She protected her privacy fiercely though; and had sued newspapers in the past for printing details of her modelling fees. She believed, therefore, that everyone was entitled to a similar protection and shrugged. “She has a talent for organisation.”
“Perhaps she’ll arrange your wedding for you?”
It was the perfect opening. So why did she hesitate? To acknowledge to Alec that she was wading back into the terror filled landscape of loving Leonardo Fontana was a death knell to her own future sanity. She knew it, and Alec would know it. And she couldn’t debate the matter until she had her own feelings straight.
“You know, if you dance with Leonardo like that, Beatrice is going to think you’re sleeping with him.”
Her eyes flew to his in confusion. “Like what? What were we dancing like?”
“As though you wanted to rip each other’s clothes off,” he responded quietly, a note of frustration in his voice.
“We weren’t,” she denied, though her insides were still quivering from Leonardo’s seductive touch at her back.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
She sighed. “Not really.”
