AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And then, as Lionel stood there feeling surplus to requirements for what was likely the first time in his life, the two women gazed at each other for a long moment. Then another one, as the band played old standards and the better part of fashionable Spain tried to eavesdrop without appearing to do so.
Until, to Lionel’s great astonishment, his grandmother laughed. “Fair enough,” she said, and did not precisely incline her head to Geraldine, though the notion seemed to hang between them anyway. Then she shifted her gaze to Lionel. “Now that you are here, the dancing can begin at last. Had I known you would go to such lengths to exclude me from your wedding ceremony, I might not have gone to the trouble of waiting for you.”
“Abuelita.Come now. You know as well as I do that you no longer wish to travel. How many times have you told me that the world must come to you?” He indicated the still-growing crowd behind them. “And so they have.”
“You are saying it was your new wife’s choice to exclude me?” But she was still smiling, if more at Geraldine than Lionel. “How ungallant.”
“I could have invited you. But I thought you might prefer it if I arrived here at the party with the best present you could possibly wish for.” He nodded at Geraldine. “The Asensio line, assured at last.”
“You will forgive me if I wait a bit longer to applaud you for acquitting yourself of those responsibilities,nene,” his grandmother said dryly. “It isn’t only the marrying that matters to the bloodline, as well you know.”
Lionel sighed. “I have had a wife for only slightly more than twenty-four hours. Perhaps we could have a slight grace period before we decorate the nursery.”
“What I can give you is the first dance,” his grandmother told him instead, and rapped her cane against the floor.
Across the room, the musicians stopped playing. Then started again as the dance floor cleared.
And Lionel had absolutely no choice but to take Geraldine’s hand in his. He bowed to his grandmother, as much a mockery of something genteel as anything else, but it made her laugh.
He had known it would.
Then he pulled his wife with him, off the dais and out into the center the dance floor. Once there, he pulled Geraldine into his arms and did not care for the sensation of something likereliefthat enveloped him. Nor did he wish to pursue it, or think what it might mean.
He thought instead of the fact that, even in those heels of hers, he was still taller than her in a way he liked. And in a way she liked too, if that shine in her green gaze was any indication. Lionel wrapped one hand around hers, then slid his other hand down, anchoring it in the small of her back.
“Do you know how to dance?” he asked her, aware of that husky note in his voice, but he did not wish to consider that too closely, either.
A kind of humor flitted through her eyes, making them gleam like emeralds all their own. “Not a single step.”
“Then I suggest you simply let go and let me lead.” He tipped his head slightly to one side. “Do you think this is something you can manage?”
And he understood that he’d said that precisely so that it would light that fire of battle in her gaze. “That will depend on how good you are at leading, I would imagine,” she clipped back at him.
Lionel let himself smile. Then he pulled her closer, and began.
And with every step, the room around them retreated further and further away.
He could tell she was inexperienced, but she kept her gaze on his. And he found her fluid and lithe as they moved through the steps of the dance and knew it could only be because, somehow, the chemistry that he had felt last night had been no mirage. No attempt to make sense of the ruin of his plans, but a very real thread pulling them both together.
Because she might claim that he was untrustworthy, a despoiler of young girls, the kind of man who would toss not only a woman aside, but any baby she carried besides.
But her body told a different story.
And every time they turned, every time they moved, all Lionel could think was,mine.
Mine.
One number ended and another began, but Lionel did not let her go. Nor did he release her for the next song, or the one after that.
It was not until he heard that same rapping of his grandmother’s cane that he finally stepped back and allowed space he didn’t want between him and Geraldine.
Geraldine, who looked flushed and full of wonder. Geraldine, who was without question the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld. Especially when she looked at him this way, as if it was the sight of him alone that set her alight.
Geraldine, who had married him and who he intended to make his wife in every possible way, no matter what it cost him.
But first there was his grandmother, and this party.
Lionel brought her over to his grandmother again, and this time, there was a different sort of look in the canny old woman’s eyes.
