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A faint gleam in her dark eyes then. “I doubt that.”
“Naturally, the savage, rutting creature you seem to think I am will only view your denial of what we both feel as a great challenge.”
“I don’t feel anything.” Her voice then had been crisp, her gaze clear, but he still hadn’t believed her. Wishful thinking or the truth? How could he still not know? “Am I attracted to you? Of course. You’re a remarkably handsome man. I can’t imagine any woman alive wouldn’t react to you, especially when you decide to turn all of that smoldering on her to get your way.”
“Is that what I did? I thought I kissed you and you kissed me back and we very nearly broke a few decency laws right there in that strip club. It wouldn’t have bothered me if we had. I have an unofficial diplomatic immunity. You, of course, might not enjoy a stint in a French prison.”
“I don’t find it necessary to act on every attraction I might feel,” Brittany had said, again as if he hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t been able to think of any other person alive who’d ever treated him as if he was annoying. What was the matter with him that he found that as intriguing as anything else she did? How much must he hate himself? But, of course, he’d already known the answer to that. And she’d still been speaking, still fixing him with that stern glare of hers that he’d doubted she knew made him almost painfully hard. “And I feel certain that as time goes on, the attraction will fade anyway.”
“I’m told that never happens. Such is my charm.” Cairo had smiled when she’d shaken her head at that. “I’m only reporting what others have said.”
“How would they know?” she’d retorted, settling back in her chair as if its stuffy, hard back was comfortable so long after 2:00 a.m. “You never spend more than a weekend with anyone. I’m signing up for far more exposure to your...”
“My scepter?” he supplied.
Her smile in return had been that sharp, edgy thing he found far too fascinating. “Your charm. Such as it is.”
“I think you’re kidding yourself,” he’d said softly then, because he couldn’t seem to maintain his game with this woman. “Sex is inevitable.”
“I’m sure you believe that,” she’d replied, her tone crisp, as if she didn’t care either way, and he’d found that needled him far more than if she’d seemed horrified. “And I told you I don’t care who you have it with, so I certainly don’t need to hear about it.” Then she’d shrugged as if she’d never encountered a topic more tedious in all her life. “Have at, with my blessing.”
Except the most curious thing had happened since that conversation. Cairo had discovered that he hadn’t had the slightest urge to touch any woman but her. He told himself it was because she’d proven herself to be such an excellent partner. A perfect costar in this little bit of theater they were performing for the masses and for their own complementary ends.
He told himself a lot of things. But the only woman he saw was her.
“Why would you do this?” she’d asked him that first night when Ricardo had ushered her into the elegant salon that had stood more or less unchanged for centuries. “What can you possibly hope to gain?”
He’d only shrugged. “I need an infliction, as you said, for any number of shallow reasons. Why are you doing it?”
She’d sniffed. “I want to retire to Vanuatu and live on the beach, where no one can take a single photograph of me, ever.”
Cairo didn’t think they’d believed each other, but there it was. And here they were now, weeks into this thing. She dressed perfectly, reacted perfectly, gazed at him with the perfect mix of adoration and mystery whenever there was a camera near. She was tailor-made for her role.
That had to be why he’d lost his drive for his favorite vices, women and whiskey, in no particular order. He was too busy taking in the show.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked now.
She’d changed from her stunning ball gown the moment they’d boarded the plane, almost as if she couldn’t bear to be in all that couture a moment longer. She did it every time. The moment she could be certain no cameras would follow her, she threw off all the trappings of her larger-than-life presence and left nothing behind but a real, live woman.
Cairo was fascinated. He found he liked her in what he considered her backstage uniform. Low-slung, high-end athletic pants that clung to every lithe curve and long-sleeved T-shirts made of the light, remarkably soft cotton she preferred. Usually, like tonight, she also wore an oversized cashmere scarf she would wrap several times around her neck. He liked it. He liked her gleaming copper hair piled high on the top of her head, so he could see her delicate ears and the line of her neck and that sweet, soft nape he had every intention of getting his mouth on, one of these days.
“Forgive me,” he said when moments dragged by and he was still staring. “It occurred to me that you’re the only woman I’ve ever seen in casual clothes.” He smiled, and had no idea why it seemed to come less easily than usual. “My lifestyle has never really leant itself to such intimacies.”
Brittany blinked. Then again. Her expression shifted from that bulletproof cool he despised and admired in turn to something else. Something that made that gnawing thing in him dig deeper and start to actually hurt.
“You work so hard to pretend otherwise,” she said after a moment that dragged on far too long and made his chest hurt. “But beneath all the smoke and mirrors, beneath the Cairo Santa Domini spectacle, you’re a completely different man. Aren’t you?”
Cairo didn’t like that at all. He’d worked too hard for too long to make certain no one ever bothered to take him at anything but face value, because he knew exactly how black and cold it was beneath. Why was this woman the only person on earth who never seemed to do that?
“There is no ‘beneath the spectacle.’” His voice was too grim. Too gritty. Too damned revealing. “There is only spectacle. The spectacle is how I survive, Brittany. Believe that, if nothing else.”
It was possibly the most honest thing he’d ever said to her. Or to anyone.
“Sometimes I think you’re a monster,” she told him. “I think you want me to think it. And then other times...” Her voice softened, and everything inside him ran hot and wild, terror and need. “I think you’re possibly the loneliest man I’ve ever met.”
His heart kicked at him. Cairo wanted to kick back. At her, and this situation, at his whole wasted, twisted life.
“I don’t know an orphan or refugee who is ever anything else,” he said quietly. He knew he shouldn’t have said it. He should have made a joke, laughed it off. Said something appalling or shallow, as expected. But he couldn’t seem to look away from her. He couldn’t seem to breathe. He didn’t understand what was happening to him or why he couldn’t stop it. There was nothing in all the world but her lovely face and that searing gleam of recognition in her dark hazel eyes, and the words coming out of his mouth, filled with a truth he knew he shouldn’t tell. “I am both. All I have—all I will ever have—is the spectacle.”
