Книга - Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride

Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride
India Grey


Accidentally pregnant, conveniently wedInfamous playboy Tristan Romero meets ordinary Lily at a lavish ball, and arrogantly predicts that she will wake up the following morning between his designer silk sheets! Powerless to resist this wicked billionaire, Lily knows Tristan is only offering one night. But then she discovers she's pregnant. . .Tristan's aristocratic duty demands he take Lily as his bride. However, Lily's shame over accepting a loveless proposal is heightened when she realises that, as the Spaniard's wife, she'll be expected to fulfil his every need. . .







As she glanced backwards Lily’s eyes went automatically to his chest. Beneath the dark, slightly crumpled jacket of his perfectly tailored suit his white shirt was untucked, the collar open, lopsided, showing an expanse of deep golden flesh and one sculpted collarbone.

She wasn’t sure which was worse: the instant rush of hot, indignant anger because the kiss that had turned her inside out with longing had been given so casually, so randomly, by a man whose body was barely cold from another woman’s bed.

Or the low-down ache of desire and the shameful knowledge that she didn’t care. That she just wanted to kiss him again.


A self-confessed romance junkie, India Grey was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon


writers’ guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept those guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she also gained a degree in English Literature from Manchester University and, in a stroke of genius on the part of the gods of romance, met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity, and heaps of pink washing generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!

Recent titles by the same author:

AT THE ARGENTINEAN BILLIONAIRE’S BIDDING

TAKEN FOR REVENGE, BEDDED FOR PLEASURE

MISTRESS: HIRED FOR THE BILLIONAIRE’S PLEASURE

THE ITALIAN’S CAPTIVE VIRGIN

THE ITALIAN’S DEFIANT MISTRESS





SPANISH ARISTOCRAT, FORCED BRIDE


BY




INDIA GREY















MILLS & BOON


Pure reading pleasure




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)




CHAPTER ONE


THE shadow of the helicopter fell over the lush velvet lawns of Stowell Castle, stirring up the hot August air and ruffling the canopies of the great trees in the parkland.

Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo glanced down. Below him the party was already well under way, and he could see waiters carrying trays of champagne circulating between the groups of outlandishly dressed guests scattered across the emerald grass. Dispassionately he noticed that people were looking up, emerging from the marquees placed at opposite ends of the lawn and shielding their eyes from the sinking sun to watch his arrival.

It was set to be the party of the year, because Tom Montague’s Annual Charity Costume Ball always was. This was the event that drew the glitterati and the aristos back from their Malibu beach houses and Tuscan palazzos to indulge in twenty-four hours of lavish hedonism in the idyllic setting of Stowell Castle’s gardens.

It was also the event that had drawn Tristan Romero back from the jaws of hell some two thousand miles away, for reasons that had nothing to do with indulgence or hedonism.

He was here for Tom.

Sighing wearily, he circled the helicopter round over the lawn so that the roofs of the marquees snapped and strained like galleons’ sails. Tom Montague was the seventh Earl of Cotebrook and one of the most genuinely good and generous people imaginable; a combination which Tristan felt was particularly dangerous—especially where women were concerned. Tom only ever looked for the good in people, even when it was invisible to the rest of humankind. Which was why they’d been friends for such a long time, Tristan thought acidly, and why he now felt duty bound to come and make sure that the girl that Tom had talked about incessantly over the past few weeks was worthy of him.

But, of course, he would be dishonest as well as emotionally bankrupt if he tried to pretend that that was his only reason for coming.

Ultimately he was here because the tabloid press and the paparazzi and the gossip columnists expected him to be. It was part of the deal he had made when he sold his soul to the devil. Grimly he swung the helicopter round, following the path of the river that looped around Stowell and marked its northern boundary. As he came lower his eyes raked the trees along the river bank, looking for the telltale glitter of sunlight on a long lens.

They would be there, of that he was sure. One of the hardened group of paparazzi elite, who were dedicated enough to go the extra distance for a picture and ruthless enough not to question the ethics of getting it. They would be there somewhere, watching and waiting.

He would be almost insulted if they weren’t. Many people in a similar position to him complained endlessly about press intrusion, but to Tristan that was missing the point. It was a game. A game of strategy and skill, in which the truth was an irrelevance and a lapse of concentration could cost you your reputation. Tristan didn’t like the paparazzi, but neither did he underestimate them for a second. It was simply a case of use or be used. Be the manipulator or the victim.

And Tristan Romero would never be a victim again.

Down below Lily Alexander slipped through the crowds of people in their spectacular costumes as if in a dream. The champagne in her hand was vintage, the silk Grecian-style dress she wore was designer, and the stretch of grass beneath her bare feet was at that moment just about the most enviable place to be on the planet.

So why did she feel as if something was missing?

There was a saying on the London modelling circuit: ‘There are three things that money can’t buy: love, happiness and an invitation to the Stowell Annual Costume Ball.’ Magical was the word people used to describe it, in tones of wistful reverence. Lily was unutterably privileged to be here, as she told herself for about the fortieth time that evening, blotting out the dissatisfied little voice that answered, But where’s the magic? Surely there has to be more to life than this…

A shadow passed across the dipping sun, darkening the extravagant pink and gold evening. Walking across the lawn in search of Scarlet, Lily was aware of a throbbing in her head; a steady, rhythmic pulsing, like a second heartbeat, which only seemed to intensify her edginess.

This year the theme of the party was Myths and Legends, and as the sun cast long shadows across the grass silken-clad girls with elaborate, shimmering fairy wings were mingling with Greek gods and screen icons. Several large marquees stood around the fringes of the lawn, with a space in the centre where, according to Scarlet, a troop of semi-naked stunt riders were going to perform later.

On unicorns, apparently.

A warm breeze was stirring the leaves of the stately horse chestnut trees, making them bend and sigh. By this time tomorrow she would be half a world away in the arid heart of Africa, and all of this would seem more like a dream than ever, if that were possible. Perhaps it was normal to feel like this just before a trip like the one she was about to embark on? She was branching out from the safe confines of the shallow, superficial life and plunging straight into the depths of a world that until now she had only read about in the papers and seen on TV news reports. Being nervous was probably completely understandable. Except that nervous didn’t quite describe the feeling she had…

Restless.

The word flashed into her head from nowhere, echoing round it, amplified by the throbbing that was growing louder all the time. She tipped her head back, suddenly aware that the evening air held a kind of tension; a pulsing energy that resonated inside her, filling her with a sense of anticipation. A helicopter was suspended high above and, mesmerised, she watched its blades slicing through the soft apricot sky as it circled like some dark, powerful predator.

Suddenly she jumped as the mobile phone she was clutching tightly in her hand rang, breaking the spell. She answered quickly, pressing it tightly to her ear so that the shrieks of laughter and the sporadic bursts of ear-splitting music from the rock band that was tuning up in the marquee couldn’t be heard on the other end of the line by the director of the African children’s charity with which she was going to be working.

‘Yes, fine, thank you, Jack. All ready for tomorrow, I think….’

The noise persisted, all but drowning out Jack Davidson’s voice, and Lily walked quickly across the lawn away from the party in the hope of finding somewhere quiet to talk.

‘Yes, I’m still here…’ she said loudly. ‘Sorry, it’s a bad line.’

She kept her head down, focusing all her attention on the voice in her ear. Jack was running through the itinerary for the trip, and the words ‘orphanage’ and ‘feeding station’ seemed utterly incongruous in her present luxurious surroundings. She kept walking, rounding the corner of the castle with its massive stone turret and heading out across the open ground beyond. She had left behind the lush greenness of the formal gardens and was now crossing an area of rough, parched grass behind the castle. The sounds of the party were muted here, but the noise of the helicopter blades was getting louder, pulsing insistently through the honeyed afternoon, whipping up the heavy air until Lily felt as if she were standing in the eye of the storm.

High above, Tristan Romero smiled as he watched her.

The reason he hadn’t seen her earlier, he realised, was that her pale golden colouring had made her melt perfectly into the drought bleached grass of the field. She was like a goddess of the harvest, he thought with a stab of curiosity as he hovered above her. She was wearing some kind of delicate crown of golden leaves on her head, but this didn’t stop her long, wheat-coloured hair rippling out in heavy streamers in the wind from the rotor blades. She stood still, struggling to hold down her dress as it billowed up around her, but her efforts were hampered by the fact that she was holding a mobile phone to her ear with one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, and simultaneously trying to control her wind-blown hair.

He came down just in front of her and couldn’t resist keeping the blades going for a minute longer than was necessary, so he could enjoy the delicious spectacle of her long, long brown legs beneath the flyaway dress, which was being flattened against the most incredible body.

There was something familiar about her, he thought as he pulled off his headset and jumped down from the cabin. In the sudden stillness she had shaken back her heavy hair and as he walked towards her he got a proper look at her face. He wondered whether he’d slept with her before.

No. With a body like that he would almost certainly have remembered. She was tall, but there was a slow grace in her movements that told him that bedding her would be an unforgettable experience. Tristan felt desire uncurl somewhere low down in his exhausted body. She was still on the phone, her head bent, clearly totally preoccupied with the conversation she was having. As he got closer he heard her say, ‘Yes, yes, don’t worry, I know it’s important, but I’m writing it all down. I’ve got all the details here in front of me.’

A beautiful girl with an outrageous disregard for the truth. How intriguing, he thought as she finished her conversation and looked up at him.

He felt a small shock jolt through his body, as if he had just touched a live wire. Against the golden tones of her hair and skin and dress, her eyes were a cool, clear silver; the colour of the mist that hung over the lake first thing in the morning.

‘Eight-thirty,’ she said out loud. Her voice was slightly breathless, and she was looking straight at him, but almost as if she weren’t seeing him. ‘Eight-thirty, tomorrow morning. Heathrow Terminal One.’

He smiled, quirking an eyebrow as he carried on walking towards her. ‘I’ll remind you when we wake up,’ he said dryly.

It was a joke. A throwaway remark. He had made it without even intending to stop walking, but the moment the words left his lips two things happened.

Firstly, he heard it: the quiet cicada whirr of a camera shutter, and from the corner of his eye caught the glint of a lens in the shadow of the trees. And secondly, he saw the instantaneous darkening of those extraordinary silver eyes.

Tristan Romero had many skills. Heading up the list had to be seducing women and manipulating the press. He didn’t even have to think about it. Before she could utter a single word of protest he had put his hand around her waist and was pulling her towards him.

The first thing she had noticed about him was his eyes.

His dark hair was cut close into his perfect neck, a couple of days of stubble emphasised sculpted cheekbones and his skin was tanned to a deep, even gold that made the blue of his eyes seem almost shocking. Looking up into them, desperately trying to imprint on her memory the instructions she’d just been given for meeting the rest of the African expedition tomorrow, Lily felt her throat tighten as sharply as if someone had wrapped a cord around her neck and pulled it. Hard.

Blue.

Blue you could float in.

Drown in.

She’d spoken out loud because she knew that all the information that she’d just been given was in danger of evaporating from her brain like water hitting hot stone. His answering remark was clearly a joke, but her body didn’t seem to get the humour. The world stopped and time vanished into a vortex of cinematic, freeze-frame intimacy as the blueness pulled her down. In the deep underwater world of his eyes everything slowed. Lily could hear nothing but the drumming of her pulse in her ears, feel nothing but the bloom of heat beneath the surface of her skin, the prickle of awareness low down in her pelvis.

And then he’d pulled her against him and she wasn’t drowning any more. She was burning. His kiss was pure magic. Firm, expert, and shockingly tender. Lily felt as if the sinking sun had slipped from the flame-streaked sky and set the world on fire, and that she were standing in the midst of the leaping flames with no desire to be rescued. His arm was around her waist, his hand resting in the small of her back. Lily felt herself arching helplessly towards him, her hands—still holding the phone and the champagne glass—hanging uselessly by her sides as her lips opened for him and the darkness behind her closed eyes glittered and glowed with blistering lust.

‘He’s here!’

It was just a distant shout, but suddenly he was lifting his head, pulling away slightly so that his blue eyes met hers. For a second Lily caught a look that was almost like despair in their depths, but then it was gone and he was letting her go.

Dazedly she turned round. From the direction of the party Scarlet and Tom were walking towards them, hand in hand, and behind them came a drift of girls dressed as fairies and mermaids and wood nymphs in shimmering silks and floaty chiffons.

‘Finally!’ Tom shouted, his kind face breaking into a grin as he walked up to the man who had just fallen out of the sky like some avenging angel and kissed her to within an inch of her life. With his pale, romantic English looks Tom looked absurdly at home in his St George costume, and oddly pure and noble next to the dangerous glamour of the beautiful stranger. ‘I see you’ve already met Lily,’ he said easily.

‘Lily…’ The devastatingly sexy mouth that moments ago had been caressing hers now twisted into an ironic, mocking smile as that blue gaze swept over her, taking in the coronet of golden laurel leaves in her hair and the Grecian pleated silk dress. ‘That makes it easier. I wasn’t sure if you were meant to be Helen of Troy or Demeter, goddess of the harvest.’

Lily felt the colour flood her cheeks. The dress was one she had worn in a shoot a couple of years ago when the Gladiator look had been at its peak. Suddenly she wished she’d taken the time to plan something a bit more interesting, like Scarlet, who was stunning in a little black dress and diamonds as Coco Chanel.

‘I was kind of thinking Helen of Troy…’ she said awkwardly, not meeting his eye.

‘Of course. The face that launched a thousand products. You’re the girl from the perfume advertisements?’

Lily nodded, jumping like a startled deer as he reached out and took hold of her wrist, raising it slowly. Her first thought was that he was going to kiss her hand, but he turned it palm upwards and his thumb brushed the blue-veined skin of her wrist. Then he bent his head and breathed in.

‘Every time I see one of those adverts I wonder if the perfume smells as good as you make it look,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But I never actually imagined it would be possible.’

His voice seemed to reach down inside her and caress her in places she’d never been touched before. His English was perfect, but the Spanish accent ran through it like wine through water. Lily had to force herself to focus on his words. To reply to them.

‘I’m not wearing it,’ she stammered. ‘Not tonight. I’m not wearing anything.’

Oh God. Had she really said that?

‘Really?’ His mouth curved into a smile that would have melted ice caps, and yet didn’t quite manage to warm those cool blue eyes. ‘What a very appealing image that conjures up.’

For a heartbeat he looked at her, and then he turned away.

And that was how he did it, Lily thought as heat and liquid excitement cascaded through her, drenching her body from within while her logical mind switched off and shut down. Whoever he was, he had a way of drawing you in with one hand and then slamming the door in your face with the other. It wasn’t nice, but, God, was it effective. She felt disorientated, unhinged by what had happened, as if he had kidnapped and brainwashed her, and then thrust her back out into ordinary life.

Lily was aware of Scarlet desperately trying to catch her eye, but then Tom pulled her forward and was saying, with mock formality, ‘Scarlet, I want you to meet Tristan Romero de Losada; Montalvo, Marqués of Montesa, and my oldest friend.’

Lily’s heart gave a violent jolt, as if electrical pads had just been pressed to her chest.

Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo?

Oh, God. How could she not have recognised him?

But the truth was that none of the grainy, long-lens photographs in the tabloids or close-up red-carpet shots in the glossy magazines could have prepared her for the impact of seeing the Marqués of Montesa in the bronzed and beautiful flesh.

Introductions over, Scarlet came over to her and Lily seized her arm and dragged her a little way away, back towards the castle and the rest of the party.

‘Tom’s best friend is Tristan Romero de Losada? From the uber-aristocratic Spanish banking family?’

Scarlet looked amused. ‘That’s right. They’ve been best friends even longer than we have, since they were locked up together in some grim Dickensian prep school as little boys.’

Lily’s head was spinning. The lingering pleasure from his kiss mixed with shock and shame that she could have been so easily taken in. ‘But Tom’s so nice,’ she faltered, ‘and he’s…he’s…wicked.’

‘Lil-y,’ said Scarlet reproachfully. ‘You should know better than most not to believe everything you read in the papers—or at least to understand that it’s never the entire story. Tom won’t hear a word against him—apparently Tristan practically saved his life on more than one occasion when Tom was bullied at school. Anyway,’ she said, turning to Lily with a speculative look, ‘how come you seem to know so much about him? Since you’d rather read Nietzsche in the original than a tabloid newspaper, you seem very well informed.’

‘Everyone knows about him,’ Lily muttered darkly as they walked back towards the castle. ‘You don’t even have to read the tabloids. The broadsheets and the financial pages mention the Romero name pretty regularly too, you know.’ Most reporters were torn between disapproval and awe at the breathtaking ruthlessness that had ensured that the Romero bank had ridden out all the economic storms of modern times and remained one of the most significant players in global finance, and the Romero family one of the richest and most powerful in the world.

‘Anyway,’ she said, aware that she sounded like a sulky child, but unable to stop herself, ‘what’s he come as? James Bond? He’s hardly a myth or a legend.’

‘Darling, he hasn’t come as anything. He’s the one person for whom Tom makes an exception to the fancy dress rule. He’s come as himself—legendary Euro Playboy, mythical sex god. He’ll have left some party on a yacht in Marbella or the bed of some raving beauty in a chateau in the Loire and come straight here.’ She gave a gasp of laughter, which she quickly stifled, and leaned closer to Lily’s ear. ‘In something of a hurry, I’d say. Check out his shirt. It’s buttoned up all wrong.’

Glancing backwards, Lily’s eyes went automatically to his chest. Scarlet was right. Beneath the dark, slightly crumpled jacket of his perfectly tailored suit, his white shirt was untucked, the collar open, lopsided, showing an expanse of deep golden flesh and one sculpted collarbone.

She wasn’t sure which was worse: the instant rush of hot indignant anger that the kiss that had turned her inside out with longing had been given so casually, so randomly by a man whose body was barely cold from another woman’s bed.

Or the low down ache of desire, and the shameful knowledge that she didn’t care. That she just wanted to kiss him again.

‘Everything OK?’ said Tom out of the corner of his mouth. They had walked back across the field to the party and were now striding across the lawn towards the marquee where the bar was. Tristan gave a curt nod. ‘Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get away.’

‘Not a problem. For me, anyway, although your extensive collection of female hangers-on have been getting increasingly restless. I was running out of answers for where you could be.’

‘A house party in St Tropez is the official story.’

Tom threw him a swift grin. ‘It must have been some party. Perhaps you’d better do your shirt up properly, old friend, or we might have a riot on our hands.’

Tristan glanced down with a grimace. Dressing quickly when he’d landed his plane at the nearby airfield, he’d been so tired he’d hardly been able to see straight. Hardly the ideal circumstances to get ready for what was always dubbed the social event of the year. The mild air pulsed with music from one of the marquees around the lawn, an insistent reminder that yet another sleepless night lay ahead of him.

‘So that’s the official story,’ said Tom soberly, ‘but what’s the truth?’

‘Khazakismir,’ Tristan replied tonelessly, looking straight ahead and unbuttoning his shirt as they walked across the lawn towards the tented bar.

Tom winced at the name. ‘I hoped you weren’t going to say that. News coverage here has been patchy, but I gather things are pretty grim?’

The name of the small province in a remote corner of Eastern Europe had become synonymous with despair and violence in the course of a decade-long war, the original purpose of which no one could remember any more. Power rested in the bloodstained hands of a corrupt military government and a few drugs barons, who quashed any sign of civil unrest quickly and ruthlessly. Reports had filtered through in the last week of a whole village being laid to waste.

‘You could say that.’ A door in Tristan’s mind swung open, letting the images flood back into his head for a moment before he mentally slammed it shut again. ‘One of our drivers was caught up in it. His family were killed—everyone apart from his sister, who’s pregnant.’ His mouth quirked into a bitter smile. ‘It seems that the military were keen to make use of the brand new cache of weaponry they have courtesy of funds from the Romero bank.’

Pausing at the entrance to the marquee, Tom laid a hand on his arm.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine,’ he said tersely. ‘You know me. I don’t get involved in the humanitarian side. I’m just there to help out with practicalities. Redress the balance.’

He didn’t meet Tom’s eyes as he spoke, looking instead over his shoulder and into the distance, where the lake lay in its hollow of shadows, the tower in the centre wreathed in mist. A muscle flickered in his jaw.

‘Anything I can do?’ Tom said quietly.

Tristan flashed a brief, ironic smile as they moved into the damp, alcohol-scented warmth of the marquee. ‘I haven’t been seen anywhere for a while, so I could do with giving the press their pound of flesh. If any word got out tying me to activities over there it would be a security nightmare.’

Tom’s smile didn’t waver as he shouldered his way through to the bar, nodding a welcome to his guests. Speaking quietly, he said, ‘That’s easily arranged. The usual tame photographers are here, the society event ones who have progressed slightly further up the evolutionary scale from the paparazzi, but if you pick someone high profile and enjoy a little bit of public affection, I’m sure they’ll regress into mindless savages who’ll sell your picture to every glossy magazine and sleazy gossip rag by Monday morning.’ He took two glasses from the tray on the bar and handed one to Tristan. ‘Cheers, old chap. So—who’s it going to be?’

‘Lily.’ Tristan tossed back the dark coloured liquid in the shot glass, feeling it burning a path down his throat as he watched Tom’s open face fall. He was gauging his reaction before admitting what had already happened. It wasn’t positive.

‘No. No way. Not a good idea.’

‘Why not? She’s high profile.’ And beautiful, there was no doubt about that. Even Tristan, tired and jaded, had been jolted by it, which had surprised him. It was more than that, though. For a moment back there when she was in his arms he had found himself looking into her slanting, silvery grey eyes and felt almost…

Almost human?

‘She’s also Scarlet’s best friend,’ Tom said firmly. ‘You screw her up—which let’s face it, you certainly will—and you screw things up for me.’

‘Why would I screw her up?’ Tristan picked up another shot glass and looked restlessly around. ‘She’s a model, Tom; hard as nails and, judging from what I just saw, not really all there. She’ll end up with something shiny and expensive from Cartier, and a whole raft of publicity, and I’ll feed the press appetite to portray me as a pointless playboy and throw them off the scent. Everyone’s happy.’

Tom looked worried. ‘I don’t think she’s like that.’

‘You’re too nice, Tom, my friend,’ Tristan said grimly, draining his glass. ‘They’re all like that.’




CHAPTER TWO


AS TWILIGHT fell it brought with it a kind of enchantment. Paper lanterns glowed palely in the trees and the scattering of diamond stars that glittered in the purple heavens looked as if they’d been placed there purely for the delight of the guests.

Lily wouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing was impossible here tonight.

Earlier, as waiters had circulated with cool green cocktails that tasted of melons and champagne, masked girls dressed as dryads and wood nymphs had appeared from the shadowy trees that fringed the lawn on white horses, with delicate, spiralling unicorn’s horns on their foreheads. To the haunting strains of a full orchestra headed by a stunning girl playing an electric violin they had performed a display of equestrian dance, weaving around each other, making the horses rear and pirouette, until Lily wasn’t sure if she was dreaming. Once, through the writhing, stamping figures of the unicorns, she found herself staring straight into the eyes of Tristan, standing opposite, his shirt half unbuttoned and his arm around a well-known young Hollywood actress dressed as Pocahontas. A shock, like a small electrocution, sizzled through her.

The next time she looked he was gone.

She had hardly touched her cocktail. She didn’t need to. Already she felt heavy and languid with tiredness, but beneath that there was an edge of restlessness, a throbbing pulse of desire and impatience and wild longing that alcohol would only exacerbate. The riding display finished and the unicorns melted back into the darkness that had gathered beneath the trees. Lily turned to say something to Scarlet, but she had moved away slightly and was standing with Tom. His arms were looped around her waist and as Lily watched he pulled her into him and spoke into her ear.

Lily felt a beat of pain, of anguish, deep inside her chest and turned away.

She and Scarlet had been a team for so long. All through school at a fairly rough comprehensive in Brighton it had been the two of them—united by both being tall, skinny and teased for it—until the day when Maggie Mason had spotted them shopping together in The Lanes and invited them both up to London for an interview at her famous modelling agency. Lily had been so set on going to university, if it hadn’t been for Scarlet there was no way she would have even taken Maggie’s card. But they had been in it together, two halves of the same whole—as different as it was possible to be. But always together.

Which was, she told herself firmly, why she was so pleased for Scarlet. Tom was lovely, and when she thought of some of the unsuitable men that her friend could have fallen in love with…

Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo, for example.

The violinist was playing solo now, a gentle, haunting melody that echoed across the mist-shrouded fields and gentle hills enfolding the castle. Another horse cantered into the ring, this time with the most fantastic pair of wings attached to its saddle. A murmur of delight ran around the crowd, which quickly turned to a gasp of surprise as the scantily clad girl rider opened the lid of the basket she carried.

There was a flurry of feathers, a whispered beat of wings and a flock of white doves spiralled upwards into the sky. In the smudged violet light their wings were almost luminescent. For a moment they seemed to hang motionless in the air, as if uncertain what to do with their unexpected freedom, and out of the corner of her eye Lily caught a movement in the crowd opposite. She turned her head, and was just in time to see a man in a Robin Hood costume raise his bow and arrow and take a shot.

A macho jeer went up from the group around him as one of the doves faltered, losing height for a minute in a ragged tumble of feathers. Lily could see the arrow, hanging tenuously from the bird’s side, seeming to drag it downwards. Miraculously the bird didn’t fall but, with an odd, lopsided flapping, flew down towards the lake.

Rage exploded inside her. The display was over and the crowd began to drift away towards the next entertainment, but Lily began to run, down the sloping lawn to the water. The grass was cool and damp beneath her bare feet and as she got near the lake the ground grew softer. Heart hammering, she pushed her way through the thick tangle of undergrowth and looked around, across the glassy surface of the water to the island in its centre.

The ruined walls of the stone tower were dark against the faded lilac sky behind, but in the stillness she could hear the agitated beating of wings. Doves rose from the broken ramparts at the top, and she strained her eyes into the gloom to see if the injured one was amongst them. What if the arrow was still there, lodged in the bird’s flesh?

Her eyes stung and frustration drummed in her head as she peered up into the nebulous sky, but it was impossible to make anything out clearly. With a gasp of exasperation she was just about to turn back when she noticed a wooden walkway at the back of the tower leading across the stretch of water to the island. Hurrying round, she felt the brambles snag at the hem of her dress and the damp grass cling to her legs. The walkway was narrow, the boards old and very smooth, but stepping tentatively onto them Lily could feel that it was sturdily made.

From across the lawn she could hear more yells of hilarity above the bass beat of the music as the party escalated, which only strengthened her resolve and refuelled her fury. The sound of the doves at the top of the tower was a soft murmur, but it was comforting as she stepped onto the dark island.

In spite of the warmth of the evening she shivered. Everything was inky, insubstantial; layers of grey that melted into each other until it was impossible to say what was real and what was shadow. The air was heavy with the scent of roses and through the indigo dusk Lily could see their pale globes clustered around a small door in the tower.

Her heart was knocking so violently against her ribs that she could feel it shaking her whole body as she went towards the door. Hesitantly, almost hoping that it would be locked, she put her hand against the blistered wood.

It sprang open, without her even pushing. Lily gasped; a sharp indrawn breath of pure fear as a figure appeared in the doorway, white shirt ghostly in the opaque light. She leapt backwards, pressing her hand to her mouth, choking with fear as the man reached out and caught her, pulling her back towards him.

‘Helen of Troy.’ The voice was very deep, very scathing, very Spanish. He gave her a little shake. ‘You followed me, I suppose?’

Lily’s heart was almost beating out of her chest, but the arrogance of his words penetrated her shocked haze. ‘No! I came to look for a bird…an injured dove. Some…idiot with a bow and arrow took a shot at it when they were released and it flew in this direction. When I came to look for it I saw that they’d flown up to the roof of the tower, but I didn’t know that you were here—’ She stopped suddenly, as the most likely explanation for Tristan Romero to be discovered on a secluded island in the middle of a party popped into her horrified mind, and then tried to take a hasty step backwards. ‘Sorry. I’ll go.’

His hand tightened around her arm. ‘No. Don’t let me stop your mission of mercy,’ he drawled. ‘There’s a dovecote on the roof. Go up and look for it.’

She hesitated, remembering the Pocahontas girl. ‘Are you here alone?’

‘Yes.’ Against his white shirt his skin looked very dark, and the hollows beneath his hard cheekbones were inky. Apart from that it was impossible to see his face in any detail, but his voice was like sandpaper and when he laughed there was no humour in it. ‘I take it Tom’s warned you off. Perhaps you’d prefer to come back with a chaperone?’

His fingers were still circling her wrist. She could feel her rapid pulse beating against his thumb. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, with a brave attempt at scorn. ‘I just didn’t want to interrupt anything, that’s all. Now, if you’d like to tell me where to go?’

He let go of her, stepping back into the shadows with a sweep of his arm. ‘Up to the top of the stairs.’

Inside the tower the air was chill and damp. A stone staircase spiralled above them, and Lily’s bare feet made no sound on the ice cold stone as she began to climb up. The staircase opened onto a small landing halfway up, where a narrow, arrow-slit window spilled soft light onto a closed door. Lily stopped outside the door, but Tristan walked past her, leading the way up another twisting staircase.

At the top he pushed open another door and stood back to let her through first. Lily stepped out and turned around slowly, letting out a low exhalation of awe as she did so.

From below it looked as if the tower were half ruined, the stone walls crumbling and uneven, but now she could see that this was a deliberate illusion. The platform she now stood on was paved with smooth stone flags, and all around the insides of the thick stone walls that looked so dilapidated from the other side of the lake were recessed ledges where birds could nest. But this hardly made an impression. It was the view that stole her breath. Over the lowest part of the wall she could see the pink stained sky beyond the trees that fringed the far side of the lake. At the front of the tower the wall was higher, but a narrow gothic-style arched window framed a view over the lake to the gardens and the castle and the fields beyond, making it possible to look out without being observed. Lily walked over to it.

‘It’s amazing. I thought this was a ruin; an empty shell.’

‘That’s the idea,’ said Tristan from the doorway. ‘It was commissioned by one of Tom’s more inventive ancestors, and intended to appear decorative but functionless. In reality it’s an incredibly cleverly designed gambling den. Where you’re standing now is a lookout post, so that anyone approaching could be seen long before they had any chance of getting here.’

Lily shook her head and laughed softly, tilting her head back and looking up at the violet velvet sky, feeling suddenly light and breathless. Tristan levered himself away from the low door-frame where he’d been leaning, and came slowly towards her.

Her pulse quickened, and she felt the laughter die on her lips as electricity crackled through her. In the hazy half-light his eyes were dark blue, his face grave, and she sensed again that weary despair she had glimpsed in him earlier. Suddenly she found it impossible to reconcile this achingly beautiful man who wore sadness like an invisible cloak with the sybaritic playboy whose libertine lifestyle so fascinated the gutter press.

‘You’re right.’

Lily gave a small, startled gasp, wondering how he’d managed to read her mind, but then he raised one hand, gesturing to a recess in the wall beside her.

‘The injured dove,’ he said tonelessly. ‘There it is.’

‘Oh…’ She frowned, stooping down and letting her hair fall across her face as she felt heat spread upwards. The bird was huddled in the back of the nesting recess, its wing held up awkwardly. The white feathers were stained with crimson at the place where the wing joined the body. ‘Poor thing…’ Lily crooned gently. ‘Poor, poor thing…’

Tristan felt his throat tighten inexplicably. Her voice was filled with a tenderness that seemed to slip right past his iron defences and go straight into the battered, shell-shocked heart of him.

Usually he slipped between lives with the insouciant agility of an alley cat, letting the doors between the two halves of his world swing tightly shut behind him. But tonight—Dios—tonight he was finding it hard to leave it all behind. The raucous revelry of the party had grated on his frayed nerves like salt in an open wound, which was why he’d had to get away. But this…

This gentle compassion was almost worse. Because it was harder to withstand.

‘I think its wing is broken,’ Lily said softly. ‘What can we do?’

He looked out over the lawn to the glittering lights of the party. ‘Nothing,’ he said, hearing the harshness in his voice. ‘If that’s the case it would be best to end its suffering quickly and kill it now.’

‘No!’ Her response was instantaneous and fierce. She stood up, placing herself between him and the bird, almost as if she were afraid he was going to grab it and wring its neck in front of her.

‘You couldn’t. You wouldn’t…’

‘Why not?’ he said brutally as images of the place he had been earlier flashed into his head with jagged, strobe-lit insistence. This was just a bird, for God’s sake. An injured bird; a pity, not a tragedy. ‘Why not end its suffering?’

‘Because you don’t have the right to play God like that,’ she said quietly. ‘None of us do.’

Standing in the last light of the fading day, she looked remote and almost mystically beautiful. Not of this world. What did she know about suffering? He could feel the pulse beating loudly in his ears, but her words cut through it, exploding inside his head. No? he wanted to say. Then who will? It’s not power that makes men behave like God, but desperation.

He turned away abruptly, walking back towards the door to the stairs. ‘It’s not about having the right,’ he said bleakly. ‘It’s about having the guts.’

‘Wait!’

He heard her come down after him, and the blue twilight darkened as she shut the door at the top of the stairs again. Tristan stopped on the landing, his shoulders against the closed door, and watched her come down the stairs, melting out of the shadows like something from a dream.

Slowly she came down the last couple of steps and stood in front of him, shaking her head. ‘I don’t,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I don’t have the guts to kill it. What shall I do?’

He shrugged. ‘Sometimes you just have to accept that there’s nothing you can do.’

‘But that’s—’

‘Life,’ he said flatly. ‘That’s—’

But he didn’t finish, because at that moment the dusk was shattered by two loud explosions that detonated a chain of night-marish images and sent an instant tide of adrenaline crashing through him. He saw her start violently, her head snapping round to the window, her eyes wide with shock. Pure instinct took over. Without thinking he reached for her, pulling her into his body, against his crashing heart as he shouldered open the door behind him and dragged her into the room beyond.

The next moment the sky beyond the two tall, arched Gothic windows was lit up with showers of glittering stars.

Fireworks. It was fireworks. Not bombs and mortars. Relief hit him, followed a heartbeat later by another sensation; less welcome, but every bit as powerful as he became aware of the feel of her breasts beneath the silk of her dress, crushed against his chest. As another volley of blasts split the sky she pulled away from him, laughing shakily.

And then she looked around her at the hexagonal room, with its pale grey walls and its arched windows and the bed with the carved wooden posts at its centre, and suddenly she wasn’t laughing any more.

‘Yours?’ she whispered.

He nodded briefly. Over the years he’d lent Tom more money than either of them bothered to keep track of. The tower was a token return for his investment. ‘It’s where I come when I want to be alone.’

Their gazes locked. Time hitched, hanging suspended. Her full lips were parted, her breathing was rapid and her grey eyes shone with shimmering colour from the fireworks that exploded above them. Then she blinked and looked away.

‘Oh. I see, I’m sorry—I’ll go.’

She moved towards the door, but he got there first, slamming it shut and standing with his shoulders against it.

‘Tonight I don’t want to be alone.’




CHAPTER THREE


ADRENALINE was pulsing through Tristan, making the beat of his heart hard and painful. It vibrated through his whole body as the explosions continued outside—audacious reminders of the things he had travelled around half the world to forget.

In the grainy, blurred light Lily’s luminous beauty had an ethereal quality. Her eyes were still fixed on his, and as he gazed into them he felt the panic recede a little, washed away by the warm, anaesthetising tide of desire. Rationality slipped away, like sand through his fingers. For a moment he battled to hold onto it, to anchor himself back in the world of reason, but then she moved forward so she was standing right in front of him and he could see the spiked shadows cast by her lashes on the high arc of her cheekbone and feel the whispering sigh of her breath on his skin as she exhaled shakily.

‘I don’t want to be alone, either,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I don’t want to go back to the party.’

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he reached out and touched the gleaming curve of her bare shoulder with his fingertip. He felt her jerk slightly beneath his touch, as if it had burned her, and an answering jolt of sharp, clenching desire shot through him.

With deliberate slowness he bent his head, inhaling her scent as he brought his lips down to her shoulder. ‘You don’t like parties?’

‘I don’t like crowds. I prefer…’ she breathed, then gave a soft, shivering gasp as his mouth brushed her skin ‘…privacy. I don’t like being looked at.’

‘You’re in the wrong job,’ Tristan said dryly.

‘Tell me about it.’

There was a wistful ache in her voice that made him lift his head and look into her face. For a fleeting moment he glimpsed the bleakness there, but then she was tilting her head up to his, her lips parting as they rose to meet his, and the questions that were forming in his head dissolved like snow in summer.

He didn’t want to know anyway. He didn’t want to talk to her, for pity’s sake. This was purely physical.

Not emotional.

Never emotional.

Her hands came up to cup his head, her fingers sliding into his hair, pulling him down, harder, deeper. He sensed a hunger in her that matched his own. The silk dress hung loosely from her shoulders and he knew that simply slipping the narrow, gathered straps downwards would make it fall to the floor, but he forced himself to wait, to take it slowly, to suppress the naked savagery of his need.

Above all, this was why he had come. Tom and the press were just convenient excuses.

This was his salvation, his purifying baptismal fire. This was where he lost himself, purged himself of all the images from the last week that haunted him whenever he closed his eyes. It didn’t matter whose body he lost himself in, whose lips he was kissing. It meant nothing. It was simply a means to an end.

A way of remembering the joy of being alive, the pleasures of the flesh.

A way of forgetting.

Lily pulled away, taking a deep, gasping breath of air, trying to steady herself against the swelling tide of pure desire that threatened to sweep her away. The light was fading quickly now; the sky beyond the arched windows was the soft, lush purple of clematis petals and the walls of the tower room had melted into it, making it feel as if they’d been cut adrift from reality and were floating far out at sea. Tristan’s hands rested on her shoulders, his thumbs beneath her jaw, stopping her from dropping her head, ducking away from meeting his gaze. In a world of smudged inky shades of blue and mauve his eyes were as deep and dark as a tropical ocean.

‘I have to warn you,’ he said roughly, ‘this is just tonight. One night. No strings, no commitment, no happy ever after. Is that what you want?’

His honesty made her breath catch. No promises, no lies. Somewhere, distantly, she was aware of pain, of disappointment, but it was numbed by the dizzying lust that circulated through her body like a drug. In the morning she was leaving for Africa—a different world, a new direction in her life. Tonight stood alone; a bridge between the old and the new. There were no rules, only the imperatives of the moment. Of forgetting about tomorrow, and giving herself something to remember when it came.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, lifting her hands to the neck of his shirt, sliding them beneath the open collar. ‘Just tonight.’

Outside another explosion ripped the sky apart with a shower of pink stars and she felt him flinch slightly. Carefully she began to undo the buttons of his shirt. There was nothing hurried about her movements, though her hands shook a little with the effort of keeping them steady, of reining back the powerful need that was building within her. He stood completely still as caressingly she trailed the backs of her fingers down the strip of lean, well-muscled flesh that was revealed by his unbuttoned shirt, and the only evidence of his desire was the quickening thud of his heart.

Her hand moved downwards, skimming over the buckle of his belt.

Not the only evidence…She felt his whole body tense as her palm brushed the hardness of his arousal beneath his clothes. For a second his head tipped back, as if he was in pain, but then he seemed to gather himself, and as his hands gripped her shoulders Lily couldn’t tell whether he was taking control or abandoning it.

The bed was as pale and cool as a lunar landscape in the mystical blue twilight. Tristan’s hands slipped down her arms, making her shiver, and then he was taking her hands in his and drawing her towards it. She wasn’t aware of the ground beneath her feet any more. Stars, brighter even than the ones lighting up the washed out sky outside, filled her head, gold and glittering as, very gently, he pushed one strap of her dress down over her shoulder and stroked a circle of bliss over the skin he had exposed.

Lily bit her lip to stop herself crying out into the thick silence. With maddening, excruciating slowness Tristan turned his attention to the other shoulder. In the fading light his face bore an expression of detached intensity, which made tongues of fire leap along her nerves, burning pathways into the hungry, molten core of her. With a care that was almost abstracted he took the pleated silk between his fingers, holding it for a second before sliding it off her shoulder.

The dress slithered to the floor like a curtain coming down, and Lily stood before him, naked apart from a pair of tiny silk knickers.

She was almost too beautiful, Tristan thought with an edge of despair. Too perfect.

As she stood there, the muted evening folding around her like veils of blue voile, softening the planes and angles of her impossibly slender body and silvering the coronet of leaves in her hair, she looked like some remote and untouchable figure from ancient mythology. With careful restraint he reached out and took her waist between his hands, stroking his thumbs upwards to the small, exquisite breasts.

‘Selene…’ he murmured, and her head jerked back, her eyes filled with shock and hurt, but he felt the convulsive tremor that shook her as his palms brushed her hardened nipples and she didn’t try to move away.

‘No!’ she said harshly, raggedly. ‘That’s not my name. I’m Lily…’

Tristan laughed softly. Her misplaced insecurity touched him. As if anyone would forget her name. ‘I know that.’ He bent his head, pressing his lips to the pale skin below her collarbone, unhurriedly moving downwards. ‘Earlier I thought you were a golden Demeter, but now you look like Selene, the goddess of the moon.’

She closed her eyes and buried her shy smile in the silk of his hair. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘She fell in love with a mortal—a handsome shepherd boy called Endymion—and she couldn’t bear the thought of ever being separated from him.’ Tristan’s mouth hovered for a second over the tight bud of her nipple, the warmth of his breath caressing the quivering, darkened flesh until he felt his own desire pounding at the barriers of his self-control. ‘So she asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep, so that he would never die and never grow older. Every night she used to go and lie with him.’

He straightened up and looked at her. Her eyes were incandescent with unconcealed need but laughter gleamed in their depths as she raised herself up onto her tiptoes to kiss him again.

‘You seem to be on first name terms with all the A-list goddesses,’ she said softly against his mouth. ‘Either you have friends in very high places or a degree in Classics.’

He pulled away sharply, dipping his head downwards so she couldn’t see his face. ‘Neither,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I have half a degree in Classics.’

‘You gave it up?’

‘Yes. I dropped out.’ His voice was soft, but he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from it as he pressed his mouth against her scented skin and pushed away the thoughts of the life he should have had. He heard her gasp as he ran the tip of his tongue around the rosy halo of her nipple and he felt her whole body momentarily convulse against him as he took her deeper into his mouth, sucking, kissing, losing himself in her.

Her arms tightened around his neck, her breath in his ear was a soft siren song of want. The familiar room, his refuge, his private sanctuary, blurred and blackened as the blood pounded in his head, a primitive, insistent rhythm, drowning out everything else but the miracle of her cool, creamy flesh on his tongue.

Sense left him. His brain—exhausted, jaded, cynical—crashed, and the jagged pattern of his constant, tormented thoughts levelled out into a flat line of submission while his body and his senses took over. Her hands were on his belt, working swiftly, deftly at the buckle, then pushing his trousers downwards, his underwear too, and together they sank down onto the bed, their mouths not leaving each other, their hands not pausing in their urgent, hungry exploration. Dimly Tristan was aware that his shirt still hung loose and unbuttoned from his shoulders, but he was too far gone to stop and take it off.

He was too far gone for anything. The awfulness of the last few days, the constant, grinding stress, the relentless horror that pushed at the steel barriers he placed around his mind had suddenly gone, sucked into the vortex of physical need, of blissful annihilation. It was as if some inbuilt survival mechanism had clicked into place inside him, finally shutting off the maddening need to think and plan and stay rigidly in control…

Did she sense this as she pushed him gently back onto the moonlit bed, and rose above him? Her flawless skin was bleached to ghostly whiteness, intensifying the dark glitter of her eyes and the crimson of her kiss-bruised mouth as she dipped her head and slid down his thighs, parting her glistening lips and…

The outside world slipped from focus. Even the machine-gun snap of the fireworks faded to a dull crackle. There was nothing beyond the sensation of her soft mouth on his burning, swollen flesh, the feathery caress of her hair brushing his skin as she bent over him. Opening his eyes, looking down, he could see the pale arc of her back. In his dazzled head her shoulder blades looked like angel’s wings.

Dios…Dios mio…

He was on the edge, on the brink of oblivion, holding on by his fingernails, but he wouldn’t allow himself to let go and hurtle through the secret darkness to his own bliss. Sitting up, he caught hold of her and, sliding his hands into her hair, pulled her head up.

‘My turn now.’

Meeting his eyes through the blue gloom Lily was instantly flooded with slippery heat. Though his face was tense and set, they were black and liquid with arousal. Wordlessly she let him pull her towards him, so that they were facing each other on the moon-drenched bed. One hand was in her hair, his strong fingers slowly massaging her scalp, sending shivering electrical impulses down through her entire body. The other remained at his side as he looked at her.

He simply looked…

Lily Alexander was used to being looked at. It was her job. Her life. It made her feel many things…resentful, jaded, uncomfortable, contemptuous…Never like this before. Never as if she were burning from the inside, as if fire were spreading from the cradle of her pelvis through the centre of her, while torrents of honeyed desire soaked her. Her body was a tool of a job she’d never wanted, and over the years she had learned to regard it with dispassionate acceptance, as if it were something impersonal. But now this man was bringing it to life. Transforming it from an aesthetically successful arrangement of bones, muscles, limbs into a finely tuned network of tingling nerves, heat, pounding blood. By making it his, he was giving it back to her.

His fingers circled her navel, making the taut skin of her midriff quiver as shock waves of screaming anticipation zigzagged downwards, and then in a gesture that was more intimate than anything that had happened before he gently laid his flattened hand against her stomach.

For a few heartbeats they were both very still. Lily wondered distantly if he could feel her stomach contract and tighten with clenching desire beneath his palm. Warmth radiated into her from his touch, and she was aware that beneath the storm of need and arousal she also felt strangely still, as if the clamour that had raged inside her for so long was finally hushed.

She felt cherished.

And then the moment was gone, and another crashing wave of need hit her as he slid one finger beneath the silken top of her pants, slipping them down over her hips. She could feel her pelvis tilting upwards in brazen invitation, her head tipping backwards so that he was supporting it in his cupped hand, as the fingers of his other hand splayed downwards, towards the swollen heart of her desire. She felt herself opening for him as his clever, unhurried fingers stroked and caressed, moving inexorably closer, until she could bear the waiting no longer, twisting and writhing her hips in a wordless plea for release.

With a whisper-light touch of a fingertip he brushed the tight bud of her longing, holding her tightly as a shuddering gasp tore through her in response.

‘Please, Tristan…’ she begged. ‘I can’t wait any more…’

Her hands were on his shoulders, gripping him tightly as if to anchor herself. She felt as if she were breaking up, slipping away, as if she needed him to hold her and keep her together. Almost imperceptibly he shook his head.

‘We can’t.’

His voice was hard, jagged, and as he spoke his grip on her tightened as if he had anticipated the rip tide of shock and disappointment that tore through her at his words.

Her head whipped up and she gave a sharp, indrawn hiss. ‘Why? Why not?’

‘Contraception. I have nothing.’

The tension left her in a rush. ‘But th-that’s OK, it’s fine,’ she stammered, inarticulate with relief, leaning in towards him again and murmuring into his neck as she trailed a line of kisses along the line of his jaw. ‘I’m on the pill…and I’m clean…It’s quite safe.’

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘But you don’t know about me.’

His words stopped her in her tracks and she pulled away to look into his face. In the half-light his deep-set eyes were shadowed, making it impossible to read the expression in them. Her gaze travelled slowly over his face. The moonlight turned his skin to marble, and accentuated the sculpted perfection of his cheekbones, the deep cleft in his chin.

She shook her head, momentarily struck dumb by his beauty, trying to find the words.

‘No,’ she said eventually, reaching out and stroking her hand down his face in a mixture of tenderness and reverence. ‘But I trust you. I’ll do what you say. If we have to stop this here…’

Her hand was on his chest now. Lily was aware of the steady, strong beat of his heart beneath her palm.

‘No.’ He barely moved his lips as he said the word. ‘There’s no need to stop. It’s safe.’

Exhilaration leapt inside her, instantly detonating tiny explosions of desire along the winding pathways of her central nervous system. A low gasp of relief and longing was torn from her lips in the moment before Tristan took possession of them, and then her head was filled with nothing but the musky scent of his skin, the champagne taste of his mouth. His hands gripped her pelvis, pulling her onto him, while her fingers tore at his muscular shoulders.

He entered her with a powerful thrust that made her want to scream out with joy. She was taut and trembling with ecstasy, so stupefied with desire that she was unable to think, only to feel. Bliss flooded every cell of her body, making her pliant and helpless, but Tristan’s arms were tight around her. Gently he laid her down in the cool sheets, kissing her breast, her throat, finally coming back to her parted, panting lips as the rhythm of their bodies gathered pace and her legs twined helplessly around his hips.

Lily’s final, triumphant cry of release shattered the still blue evening at exactly the same time as the finale of fireworks exploded beyond the lake. They lay together, their breathing fast and laboured as the sweat dried on their bodies and pink and gold stars cartwheeled through the blue infinity above.

It had rained in the night.

Getting up from the crumpled bed Lily had gone to the window and looked out onto a cool world of silver and green. The rain had fallen in sheets, turning the glassy surface of the lake misty.

As she looked out of the window of the Jeep as it rattled over the arid African plane just a little over twenty-four hours later it was almost impossible to believe that she hadn’t dreamed it. Hadn’t dreamed that cool lushness; hadn’t dreamed turning away, crossing the floor back to the bed where Tristan lay, his arm thrown across the place where she’d been lying.

Hadn’t dreamt the expression of torment on his face.

And as she’d watched him he’d cried out, a harsh, bitter shout of anger, or of pain, and without thinking Lily had slipped back beneath the sheets beside him, cradling his beautiful head against her, stroking him, murmuring soothing, meaningless, instinctive sounds into his hair until the room had reassembled itself in the grey light of dawn and she had felt the tension leave his body.

Then she had got quietly out of bed and put on her silk dress and slipped silently out the door and down the stairs. He hadn’t reminded her about the Heathrow terminal, as he’d so jokingly promised. He hadn’t woken up to say goodbye.

The Jeep stopped at the camp. The heat was already almost beyond endurance, the air thick with the dust thrown up by their convoy of vehicles. Getting stiffly out, Lily wondered whether she was strong enough to face what lay ahead.

She bent her head, closing her eyes for a second and running her tongue over dry lips.

But she had found the strength to walk away from the tower yesterday morning.

If she could do that, she could do anything.




CHAPTER FOUR


London, six weeks later.

‘CONGRATULATIONS, Miss Alexander.’

Lily looked uncomprehendingly into the smiling face of the doctor. She had come here expecting an explanation for why she had felt so awful since picking up a stomach bug on her trip to Africa just over a month ago, but Dr Lee looked as if he was about to tell her she’d won the lottery, not contracted some nasty tropical disease.

She frowned. ‘You have the test results back?’

‘I have indeed. I can now confirm that you don’t have malaria, yellow fever, hepatitis…’ he let each sheet of flimsy yellow lab paper drift down onto the desk between them as he went through the sheaf of test results ‘…typhoid, rabies or diptheria.’

Lily’s heart sank.

It wasn’t that she wanted a nasty tropical disease, but at least if she knew what was causing the constant, bone-deep fatigue, the metallic tang in her mouth that made everything taste like iron filings, then maybe she could do something about it. Take something to make it go away, so she could start sleeping at night instead of lying awake, hot and breathless, fighting the drag of nausea in the back of her throat and trying not to think of that other night. Of Tristan Romero.

She shook her head, trying to concentrate. That was another thing that was almost impossible these days, but with huge effort she dragged her mind back from its now-familiar refuge in a twilit tower, a moon-bleached bed…

She had to put that behind her. Forget.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. If all the tests have come back negative, then what—?’

‘Ah, not quite all the tests show a negative result. There was one that has come back with a resounding positive.’ Dr Lee folded his hands together on the desk and beamed at her. ‘You’re pregnant, Miss Alexander. Congratulations.’

The walls seemed to rush towards her, blocking out the bright September sunshine outside, compacting the air in Dr Lee’s very elegant consulting room so that it was too thick to breathe. Lily felt the blood fall away from her head, leaving a roaring, echoing emptiness, which was filled a few seconds later by the distant sound of Dr Lee’s voice. She was aware of his hand on the back of her head.

‘That’s it…just keep your head down like that, there’s a good girl. This sort of reaction isn’t uncommon…Your hormones…Nothing to worry about. Just give it a moment and you’ll soon feel right as rain…’

Rain.

The memory of the lake at Stowell in the misty pre-dawn light rose up from the darkness inside her head; the rain falling in shining, silvery sheets on a landscape of pearly greyness. She remembered the musical sound of it, a timeless, soothing lullaby as she had held Tristan, stroking the tension from his sleeping body, while all the time, unknown, unseen, this…secret miracle had been unfurling within her own flesh.

‘There. Better now?’

She sat up, inhaling deeply, and nodded. ‘Yes. Sorry. The shock…’

Dr Lee’s face was compassionate, concerned. ‘It wasn’t planned?’

‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t understand. I’m on the pill.’

‘Ah. Well, the contraceptive pill is pretty good, but nothing gives a one-hundred-per-cent guarantee, I’m afraid. The sickness bug you picked up in Africa could have impaired the pill’s effectiveness, if that was quite soon after…’ He cleared his throat and left the sentence tactfully unfinished.

Mutely Lily nodded.

‘In that case it would tell me that it’s still very early days,’ he said gently. ‘There are many options open to you, you know.’

Lily got clumsily to her feet and held onto the back of the chair for support as the meaning of his words penetrated her numb brain.

Options.

‘Think about it,’ Dr Lee said with professional neutrality. ‘Talk it over with your partner, and let me know what you decide.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t have a partner. He’s not…He wouldn’t…’ She stopped, her mouth open as she tried to articulate the degree of Tristan Romero’s absence from her life without making herself sound like a cheap tart. I barely know him…I don’t have his number and he made it perfectly clear that he wouldn’t want to hear from me again…It was meant to be sex without strings. A one-night stand.

Oh, God, maybe she was a cheap tart. She remembered the hunger with which she’d pushed him back on the moonlit bed and taken him in her mouth; remembered the despair that had sliced through her like forked lightning when he’d said they shouldn’t go any further, that he had no contraception, and the desperation with which she had assured him it was safe.

‘This is nothing to do with him.’ Her knuckles were white as she gripped the back of the chair. ‘It’s not his fault, or his responsibility.’

Dr Lee’s eyebrows rose. ‘Miss Alexander—’

‘It’s mine. My fault, my responsibility. My baby.’ The words sounded strange and unfamiliar, but as she spoke them the same peculiar, illogical sense of peace that she had felt that night in the tower, in Tristan’s arms, came back to her, shivering through her whole body like a delicate meteor shower. She lifted her chin, meeting the concerned gaze of the doctor with a determined smile. ‘It’s my baby. And I’m keeping it.’

‘A call for you, Señor Romero.’

Tristan looked up irritably from the computer screen. ‘Bianca, I told you I did not wish to be disturbed.’

‘Lo siento, señor, but it is Señor Montague. I thought you would wish to speak to him.’

Tristan gave an abrupt nod as he reached for the phone. ‘Sí. Gracias.’ He swung his chair round so that he was looking out over the Placa St Jaume and the sunlit grand façade of the City Hall opposite. The Banco Romero de Castelan was one of the oldest and most well established in Spain, and its main offices were in a grand and prestigious building in the heart of Barcelona. It was beautiful, but oppressive. The sun had moved across the square, so that the high-ceilinged rooms with their echoing marble floors were in deep shadow from lunchtime onwards, although that wasn’t the only reason Tristan felt permanently chilled when he was here.

‘Tom.’

‘At last. You’re impossible to get hold of,’ Tom grumbled good-naturedly. ‘Were you in the middle of ravishing some innocent from the accounts department or something? Your secretary seemed remarkably reluctant to let me speak to you.’

‘You pay too much attention to the gossip columns,’ said Tristan acidly. ‘I’m working. Believe it or not, banks don’t run themselves. Bianca was under strictest instructions not to let any calls or any visitors through, so I don’t know how you persuaded her.’

‘It’s called charm, old chap. It’s what those of us who can’t get women into bed merely by glancing at them have to rely on. Which one is Bianca? The dark haired one with the cleavage you could get lost in?’

Tristan grinned reluctantly. ‘No. Redhead, looks like Sophia Loren, although since you’re soon to be a married man I hardly think it’s relevant.’ His smile became a little stiffer as he said, ‘How is your lovely bride-to-be?’

‘Oh, you know; beautiful, sexy…and suddenly totally preoccupied with flower arrangements and bridesmaid dresses. I tell you, it’s a whole new world. In my darker moments I have actually found myself thinking that your commitment to anonymous, emotionless one night stands might not be so insane after all.’

‘At last you’ve seen the light,’ Tristan said dryly. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.’

Tom laughed. ‘Oh, it is. Far too late. I’m at the mercy of forces way beyond my control—namely Scarlet and my mother. My mother’s decided that we have to have an engagement party and as best man I’m afraid you have to be there. That’s why I was phoning—can you manage the last Saturday in September? Scarlet thinks that a small dinner at Stowell will be the least alarming way for her family to meet mine.’

Tristan glanced at his BlackBerry. Parties in Madrid and Lisbon, a business dinner in Milan and an invitation to spend the weekend at the island retreat of some friends were already filled in.

‘What if I said no?’

‘Then we’ll make it October.’ Tom sounded completely unconcerned. Leaning back in his chair, pushing a hand through his hair, Tristan stifled a sigh, recognising that he wasn’t going to be able to get out of this one easily, but not willing to examine the reason why he wanted to.

‘I’ll try,’ he said curtly. ‘But one of the projects is at a difficult stage at the moment. You know what it’s like. I can’t promise anything.’

‘No. Of course not. You never can.’ Across the miles Tristan heard the quiet resignation in Tom’s voice. ‘You are the undisputed world champion of not promising anything and not committing yourself. But pencil it in and try to be there if nothing more important comes up.’

‘I’ll get back to you,’ Tristan said coldly. Cutting the call, he stood up, staring for a moment at the phone in his hand as Tom’s words echoed reproachfully through his head.

Every one of them was true, of course.

He swore, slamming his fist down on the polished wood of the desk from which generations of Romeros had run their banking empire, exploiting their name, consolidating their power and their fortune, regardless of who they destroyed in the process. And he was as cold and ruthless as the rest of them. He never allowed himself to forget that or to believe any different, whatever he did by way of atonement. His blue-tinged blood ran thick with the sin and corruption of his fore-fathers. Of his father. The only way in which he differed from them was that he was honest about it.

Honest.

Honest enough to admit that he was beyond redemption. Honest enough to know that he was best alone.

He gave a short, harsh exhalation of laughter. OK, so while he was being so unswervingly truthful he might as well admit to himself the real reason that he was so reluctant to go to Tom’s party. Back to Stowell. Because, he thought in self-disgust, she would be there.

Lily Alexander.

The girl with the skin that smelled like almonds, and felt like velvet.

The girl who had caught him at a low ebb, and got past his defences in a way that had never happened before.

And wouldn’t happen again, he thought, steeling himself. What did it matter if she was there or not? He would treat her in exactly the same way he treated every other woman he had slept with and discarded. With distant courtesy. And then he would walk away.

Lily’s throat was tight and her fingers nervously pleated the rose-coloured silk of her dress. ‘A small dinner party to celebrate your engagement,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what you said on the phone. Scarlet, just look at all this…’

She looked anxiously around Stowell’s grand hall, where a steady stream of people in evening dress were drifting in through the vast doorway and indulging in an orgy of air-kissing. ‘It’s like a scene from Georgette Heyer.’

Scarlet laughed and tucked her arm through Lily’s, drawing her close. ‘I know, I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it? We were supposed to be keeping it really small, but in the end I just couldn’t bear to leave anyone out, so we’ve ended up inviting virtually everyone we know.’

Lily felt her heart perform an agonising twist-and-plummet motion inside her chest.

‘Everyone?’ She slicked her tongue over lips that were suddenly dry and stinging. ‘Tom’s friends too?’

‘Oh, yes, he’s worse than me. He’s invited just about everyone he ever went to school with, and his entire family.’ Scarlet dropped her voice. ‘My poor parents are completely out of their depth. You will look after them, won’t you, Lily?’

Lily nodded, for a moment unable to speak due to the huge lump of cement that seemed to have lodged in her chest. ‘Of course,’ she managed at last. ‘It’ll be lovely to see them.’

That much was true. When Lily was growing up Scarlet’s parents had provided her with everything from home-cooked meals to help with schoolwork and advice about boyfriends, and numerous other things that her own mother had been utterly ill equipped to give her. As Scarlet gave her arm a squeeze Lily found herself wondering what Mr and Mrs Thomas would make of her current predicament.

‘God, I’ve missed you,’ Scarlet was saying. ‘You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you.’ In spite of the diamonds that glittered at her throat and her very sophisticated swept-up hairstyle, she suddenly looked very uncertain, and Lily was reminded of when they were teenagers, worrying about whether anyone would ever kiss them. ‘Just because I’m getting married, things between us won’t change, will they? We’ll still be best friends? Still tell each other everything?’

Lily hesitated, swallowing back the guilt that choked her. ‘Of course.’

Sliding her arm free of Lily’s, Scarlet grabbed a couple of glasses of champagne from the tray of a hovering waitress. She thrust one into Lily’s hand and clinked her own against the rim. ‘Here’s to us…to friendship that nothing can shake.’

A hot tide of nausea instantly erupted inside Lily’s stomach as her newly heightened senses picked up the sweet-sharp scent of alcohol and rebelled against it. God, why hadn’t she brought a ready supply of ginger biscuits to keep the sickness at bay? She felt the sweat break out on her upper lip as her throat tightened convulsively.

‘Lily? Are you all right? What’s wrong?’

Mutely Lily shook her head. In front of her Scarlet’s face was a blur of concern and regret sliced through her. For the first time since she was ten years old she was keeping something from her best friend and it didn’t feel right. But how could she possibly break the news that she was pregnant when she hadn’t even told Scarlet about what had happened that night?

So much had happened so quickly, she thought wearily. She hadn’t told Scarlet about Tristan simply because she hadn’t had a chance. She’d gone straight to Africa the day after the costume ball, and when she’d returned it had been to find Scarlet starry-eyed and utterly preoccupied with her engagement to Tom Montague. He’d proposed, she told Lily dreamily, at the culmination of the firework display at the party.

Somehow Lily hadn’t felt it was tactful to mention what she had been doing at that precise moment…

‘I didn’t think you looked well,’ Scarlet was saying now as she put her arm around Lily’s shoulders and guided her towards the door. ‘In fact, you haven’t been yourself since you got back from Africa. I think it’s more than just being affected by the stuff you saw there. You need to see a doctor and get some blood tests done or something.’

‘I have,’ Lily muttered weakly. They had reached the wide stone stairs in the entrance hall and as they slowly began to descend the cool air from the open doors to the courtyard touched her face and dispersed the suffocating feeling of nausea a little. She took a deep breath, realising that she couldn’t really put off telling Scarlet any longer, but not quite knowing how to say it. Pausing to lean against the balustrade at the foot of the stairs, she turned her face towards the doorway and felt the chill September breeze lift her hair.





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