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And he was not sure that he would ever get over the sight of her in bare feet, racing across the flagstones before she disappeared into his house, her dark hair streaming behind her as she moved.
Making it clear that he was not the only one so close to undone.
His people kept him apprised of his new wife’s doings throughout the day. She had woken late and had seemed disgruntled, according to the maids, because she had claimed—repeatedly—that she never slept like that, so deeply and so long. She seemed suspicious of the breakfast brought to her in her room, an Andalusian staple of olive oil pressed here at the estate on toast made from freshly baked bread, with a pinch of salt andjamón serrano. Even when encouraged to take it out on one of the terraces off her rooms that overlooked the Asensio state, the fields gleaming in the bright fall sun, she had seemed out of sorts until she’d had a fair bit of thecafé con lechethat was typical for a Spanish breakfast.
“Perhaps,” the maid who brought him this information had theorized, “she is suffering from the jet lag.”
“Perhaps,” Lionel had said, as if he agreed.
When he was not certain he did.
After her breakfast, his people had laid out dressing options for her—another thing not taken in entirely good grace, according to reports—and then Geraldine had taken herself on a self-guided tour of his home. She had lingered anywhere there was a book, running her fingers down the spines and leafing through the pages. And then she had spent hours in his library, where she had been served a traditional lunch running the gamut from breads and cured meats to gazpacho to a hearty stew and a green salad, with coffee to finish.
She had eaten heartily, then returned to her exploration of his books. And she had not been exactly thrilled when the team of stylists had taken her in hand again, but nor had she objected outright.
All of these things were reported to him, one by one, and with many colorful asides about the new mistress of the house—a term Lionel had not used and was not at all sure he planned to approve—so perhaps it was not very surprising that Lionel could not quite focus the way he would like.
And that evening Lionel found himself waiting for this woman he had married with every expectation of thinking little of her again. He stood ready in the entry hall of his own home so that he might take her hand and lead her into the great celebration that was the entire point of this farce. Because for as long as he had known her—and so therefore, as long as he had been alive—Lionel’s iconic and widely revered grandmother had never done anything by half.
Her eightieth birthday party, meticulously plotted out and entirely conceived by DoñaEugenia herself, was certainly no exception to this rule. Lionel had assumed that he would approach this landmark feeling quite pleased with himself, given the trouble he had gone to for the occasion. Collecting a wife as ordered and all.
Yet celebrating the woman who had been the only family he had, and long after she was the only family he acknowledged, was the furthest thing from his mind tonight.
Because Geraldine appeared at the top of the stairs and Lionel could think of nothing and no one else.
For a full moment he was not certain that he was capable of speech. Perhaps it was a great many moments, he would never know. He made an immediate mental note to give all the staff who’d worked with her tonight a hefty raise for their trouble.
Because he was certain, at a glance, that she might very well set the whole of Andalusia alight.
For they had dressed her in a column of flame. Once again, the dress was a love letter to that figure of hers, from her wide hips to her tiny waist to the aching fullness of her breasts. Geraldine, who had looked like a piece of furniture in that chapel yesterday, was today nothing short of a dream come true.
A dream Lionel had not permitted himself to indulge in the night before, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Tonight she was pure sex on two feet.
Yet all he could think was that she was his.
His.
He watched as Geraldine made her way toward him, her green eyes wary, betraying her nerves as she fussed with the dress with every step she took in another pair of shoes that made her legs look like a fantasy come true.
“The more you fidget, the more you call attention to how uncomfortable you are,” Lionel said, aware that he sounded not quite himself. It was that or swing her up into his arms, carry her to his bed, and hope his grandmother understood some weeks from now when he emerged, finally sated.
This was likely the first moment in his entire life that Lionel wasn’t sure he cared what his grandmother thought at all.
And that was shocking enough that it cleared his head. A little.
Geraldine, naturally, took that opportunity to glare at him, but that hit differently when she was dressed like this. When her beauty was in no way hidden. “I’m not uncomfortable and I don’t fidget. I’m nearsighted and I can’t see as well as I would like, but they wouldn’t let me wear my glasses after I pointed out that this dress is hardly appropriate for an eighty-year-old woman’s birthday party.”
Lionel moved toward her, then pulled her arm through his. It was an old, courtly sort of gesture, and it sat in him oddly. As if it carried some weight beyond simple expediency.
As if it mattered. Or she did.
He could not allow such thoughts to derail him. “As you will see when you meet my grandmother,appropriatenessis not a concern. She would be the first to tell you that the only thing that matters in terms of a woman’s attire is how glorious she feels while wearing the items in question. And if it can cause a head or two to turn, all the better.”
“I think you’re brushing past the fact that your people confiscated my glasses a little too quickly.”
“You do not need to see,” he told her. “Hold on to me and you will be fine.”
She scowled at him. “That is not remotely comforting. I think you know that.”
