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Frowning, he held out the crumpled tie, which she smoothed before stepping closer to him and looping it up over his head. The move had begun as an automatic thing. The mirror image of a memory she had from her childhood. Of watching her mother doing this for her father before every dinner event they attended. Even as her hands crossed over the silky black material, looping it into a bow tie, Célia wondered what on earth she was doing, aching from the past and yearning for something she should not want from the present.
The scent from his aftershave, spicy and earthy, drifted towards her as if propelled by the heat from his body, crashing against her in waves. Refusing to look up at him, unable to face what must have been confusion at her actions, she concentrated on knotting the silks in the right way and just about resisted placing her hands on his chest once she had done. They fell uselessly beside her once she had pulled the silk tight and stepped back, looking out to what must have been a Hockney to disguise her own embarrassment.
‘I don’t think that anyone has ever done that for me before.’
Loukis watched her shrug a shoulder as if to say it was nothing, but the small gesture had exposed the sleek line of her neck and collarbone and obliterated any sense of casualness the moment might have conveyed. The moment she had looped the tie over his neck, she had brought them so close he could smell her shampoo, orange blossom and citrus. He’d had to look away, jaw clenched and body steeled against the sudden shocking wave of arousal she had ignited. If he’d been tense when he had arrived, he was now rigid.
But any thoughts of sensual delight provoked by Célia were doused with the reminder of why he had been so stressed upon his arrival. Sobbing ten-year-olds had that effect. Sobbing ten-year-old sisters tended to drive him beyond despair.
‘Why do I have to go...? Why are you making me do this...? Please, Loukis, I don’t want to go with her...’
The ache in his chest mixed with fury and an impotence, a helplessness, that Loukis simply refused to accept.
‘The MC is here?’
Célia stepped away, as if sensing the swift change in mood from whatever had just passed between them.
‘Yes.’
‘And the—’
‘Valuation has been done, the staff are preparing the food and drink for this evening. The red carpet is lined with a roaring crowd of paparazzi—in case you came in the back way—and all but three invitations have been accepted. We should have a full turnout.’
Loukis nodded, heedless of the way she had interrupted him.
‘Good. We should go.’
‘Go?’ Célia asked. ‘What? Why would we—’
‘We need to make an appearance on the red carpet. My limousine is waiting at the back to circle around the block so we can make our grand entrance.’
The horror covering Célia’s features would have been funny had it not been such a shocking waste of time.
‘No. I’m not... I cannot—’
‘You can and you will.’
She was shaking her head now and backing away from him as if he posed some great physical threat.
‘I did not agree to that and...no. No, Loukis, I will not be walking the red carpet with you. I will not get drawn into whatever publicity you are courting. I can’t be—’
‘Associated with me?’ Loukis demanded. As if he didn’t have enough reasons to regret his wayward youth. A wave of exasperation rode over him, his usual defences having been brought down by Annabelle’s recent misery. At one time in his life, he’d had nothing more to think of than his own sensual pleasures. With hindsight he could see the desperate need to escape, to lose himself in whatever delighted him after years of a bitter, emotionally neglected childhood. To protect himself, even, from all the hurt that it had brought.
He had immersed himself in whatever and whoever he could find, courting scandalous headlines even as he sought, almost childishly, to illustrate just how little he cared. How he had laughed as each of the world’s news stations and papers had reported his latest exploit in competition with his even more scandalous mother.
But he did care. Cared that Célia seemed so horrified by being seen with the legendary playboy. It hurt, more, because in the last month they had worked so closely together on tonight’s event, he’d inch by inch shown a little of his true self. He’d relaxed into her strangely satisfying blunt honesty and thought that just maybe she’d seen him as more than a headline. But he should have known better.
‘No, Loukis, it’s not what you—’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, cutting off any further words with a hand slashed through the air. Without casting another glance her way, he spun on his heel and exited the room, pulling slightly at the bow tie’s hold around his neck.
It was time to refocus on why this night was so important. Three years ago, his mother had unceremoniously dumped a seven-year-old girl on his doorstep, without any other explanation than ‘sister’, and departed. No return date, no apology, no financial assistance and no belongings—clothes even. Nothing. Until six months ago, legal documents bearing the word ‘custody’ plunged a knife into his heart.
By the time he’d walked through the kitchens and passed staff too preoccupied with their tasks to give him a second look, he’d managed to calm his breathing. By the time he slid into the back of the sleek limousine he’d decided it was better she was not by his side and was already cursing whatever accidental instinct had prompted such a demand. And by the time the town car had circled the building to draw up at the top of the red carpet, to a hail of flashbulbs, he had a particularly charming smile in place.
He opened the door to the limo himself, not waiting for the driver, and stepped out onto the carpet. Initially he’d been against the idea, but had been won over by the calibre of celebrities Célia had somehow managed to draw to the event. He was not so vain as to think for a second that it was because of him. Yes, his name held not inconsiderable weight in the business world, and his private fortune had amassed into the billions, courtesy of his father’s years of hard work. But savvy, intellect and, as he’d once heard an Englishman say, gift of the gab had nearly trebled the shipping company’s income.
All of which had made his board members very happy and his mother even more avaricious. Especially in the years since his father’s death. But it was the years before his father’s death that had created the most damage. Watching his father slowly lose a piece of himself each time his mother disappeared with yet another lover before he finally broke had taken its toll on Loukis, and ensured that the one surefire way of getting what he wanted—sole custody over his sister—was completely untenable. Nothing would persuade him to enter into the devil’s bargain of unholy matrimony, not even to appease the court’s outdated impression of what ‘family’ should look like. After all, that mirage of a family unit had done him no favours.
