Then the moment was lost because there was a sudden lull in the din of people talking and all heads, as one, swung round to the arch where a leggy brunette was poised theatrically, her beautiful face a picture of exaggerated remorse. The glow of the lanterns and the backdrop of light from the house did her a lot of favours. She was aiming for drama and she was delivering it in bucketloads. Her lips twitched with amusement, inviting everyone at the honoured top table to get in on the joke with her. Caitlin could only admire the spectacle.
Then Luisa was stalking towards them, tossing her hair as a waiter scurried to hold out a chair, then it was all about Dante.
Caitlin thought she might be gaping. Up close, the woman was even more stunning than she had appeared at a distance. Perfect features in a perfectly oval face. Her hair was waist length, curling down a narrow back and, although she was olive toned—just a shade lighter than the guy sitting next to her—she had the most incredible bright blue eyes.
Caitlin politely turned away as more food continued to arrive, but she could hear breathless murmurs coming from the woman in question and not much from Dante.
Caitlin’s head was whirling. She suddenly felt self-conscious. A little ridiculous in her newly acquired fancy dress and her silly high heels, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
She was back to feeling like that girl who had been ditched by the boy everyone in the village had assumed she’d end up with. Ditched for a five-foot-ten beauty from Latvia. All the insecurities Caitlin had felt then assaulted her now in a full-frontal attack, a reminder that this silly party wasn’t real, that there was no engagement, that love and marriage were not things on the cards for her, and no amount of optimism and silver linings could camouflage that fact. This charade was a pragmatic solution to a problem that had been tearing her apart.
She wasn’t a beauty queen like Luisa. She was the girl next door and she was ashamed of those taboo stirrings she had felt with Dante, that slow uncurling of something sexual that had blindsided her. Had she completely lost her mind? Had two glasses of champagne gone to her head?
She surfaced to find that the business of eating was beginning in earnest. The alcohol was flowing. The courses were coming thick and fast, each one a testament to what a talented chef could produce.
‘I never remembered Alejandro drinking quite so much,’ a deep, velvety voice to her left murmured.
Caitlin had glazed over at Alfredo’s long-winded monologue about a game of golf he had played three weeks previously. She snapped to attention in a hurry at the sound of Dante’s deep, dulcet tone.
She looked narrowly at Alejandro, who was flushed, before turning sideways to Dante.
‘He...he...’
Dante’s dark eyebrows winged upwards in a question.
‘He’s thoroughly enjoying his own engagement party?’ Dante queried helpfully before she could think of something to say. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that he was a man trying to drown his sorrows.’
‘Thankfully—’ Caitlin stabbed a piece of succulent chicken breast ‘—you don’t know better.’ Her skin tingled. Something about his voice, his accent, barely there and stupidly sexy.
‘Mind you,’ Dante mused thoughtfully, ‘he’s stuck between our parents. They will be asking him all sorts of probing questions he probably doesn’t know how to answer.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Oh, the usual. Timelines...venues...food preferences for the wedding meal...’
Caitlin remained silent. Yes, she’d been plied with a couple of those questions herself but poor Alejandro would be squirming like a fish on a hook, trying to fend off probing questions.
‘Poor Alejandro,’ Caitlin murmured softly, without thought. Too late, she realised that that was the last thing she should have said because those questioning eyebrows now conveyed less mild curiosity and more scorching interest.
‘That’s an odd response. Why do you say that?’
‘Because...’
‘Because...?’ Dante prompted silkily. ‘I’m all ears.’
He had moved closer to her so that his shoulder was almost but not quite brushing hers and she could smell the warmth of his breath and whatever woody cologne he was wearing. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Luisa had turned the full, glowing wattage of her undivided attention to the elderly man sitting next to her. There was lots of noise, people talking, laughing, getting merrier by the second as the alcohol continued to flow, served by the army of solicitous waiters. The lanterns swayed in the breeze, picking up the glitter of expensive jewellery, adding a layer of mystery to the wildly glamorous gathering.
Amidst all this, the low murmur of his voice in her ear somehow seemed to wrap them in a bubble of their own.
‘We haven’t talked about...er...concrete plans for anything.’ She tentatively tested the waters to see whether this evasive response would have the desired effect of shutting him up. The dress was beginning to feel uncomfortable, or maybe it only felt uncomfortable because she was beginning to perspire with a sense of rising panic.
Across the table, Alejandro was not helping matters. He was tugging at his collar and guzzling champagne as though his life depended on it. She would have to corner him, somehow, and steer him back on the straight and narrow, but she had no idea how she was going to do that because there was still a long way to go with the wonderful never-ending meal and then, presumably, speeches.
‘I confess I’m surprised.’
‘Why?’
‘I always thought that once rings were on fingers, the first thing a woman wanted to do was pin her man down to a time and a place.’
‘Has that been your experience?’
‘I’ve never been engaged. I’m surmising.’
‘I guess you and Luisa...must have discussed things of that nature?’
‘It won’t work.’
‘What won’t work?’
‘Trying to get me off-piste with this conversation. Don’t you want to set up house as soon as you can? Alejandro is no longer a boy in his twenties. I’m sure he’s keen to set the date so that he can start producing heirs to the throne.’
Caitlin contained a shudder of horror.
‘It may not have occurred to you,’ Caitlin said stiffly, ‘that in this day and age a woman might actually want to further her career before she starts having a family. I’m only twenty-five.’
‘No, if I’m being honest.’
‘No what?’
‘No, it hasn’t occurred to me.’
‘I love what I do.’ She slanted her eyes sideways and instantly looked away because the lazy intensity in his gaze unsettled her. ‘I left Ireland to make my way in London and I managed to land a very enjoyable job freelancing at a magazine. Every day is different and I have a lot of opportunities to go somewhere with my career. I may not want to sacrifice all of that to have kids when I’m still young.’
‘Photographer for a magazine...’ He let that musing statement hang tantalisingly in the air between them for a few seconds. ‘Very interesting. Tell me, how did you and my brother meet? There’s quite a chasm between the world of business and the world of entertainment and I’m racking my brains but I’m pretty sure publication isn’t part of the family holdings.’
Caitlin had a moment of sheer panic. What, exactly, had Alejandro told everyone? She had been vague when questioned but the man sitting next to her wasn’t going to let her get away with vague.
‘No one spends all their time working,’ she said faintly. ‘Everyone has hobbies and Alejandro discovered that he enjoyed photography. It’s...relaxing...’
‘A straight answer, Caitlin. Is that asking too much? How did you meet?’
‘He dropped by.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I happened to be renting space in a workshop. I still do, as it happens. He dropped by and we got chatting.’
; ‘Why would he drop by a workshop?’
‘You should ask him.’
‘But you’re sitting next to me,’ he responded smoothly, ‘and so I’m asking you.’
‘He dropped by—’ Caitlin glanced across to Alejandro, who was now looking the worse for wear ‘—and we just happened to click.’
‘But you didn’t start going out with one another. That happened later...’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why is that? Was it not love at first sight? Maybe he was involved with someone else at the time? Or maybe you were?’
His low voice was a persistent murmur in her ear.
‘Why are you asking all these questions?’ she breathed. ‘I get it that you’re curious about our relationship, but, honestly, isn’t it enough that I’m here? Your parents haven’t pried into our...our relationship...’
‘My parents are already in love with the idea that their eldest son is going to be tying the knot. They have grandchildren on their mind. They see what they want to see, but my vision is slightly less rose-tinted. Alejandro might be older than me but he’s gullible in places I’m not. Gullible enough to fall hook, line and sinker in love with a woman who might not be...let’s just say, right for him. So my curiosity? Natural. Your reticence on the subject of love and marriage, not to mention your reluctance to go into detail? Less natural.’
She was thinking hard. Thinking about how to address those suspicions. Loathing the man for putting her on the back foot, for not accepting what she had to say, for not being satisfied with polite small talk.
She was still thinking, still sweating with discomfort when it happened.
The crash was deafening. For a few seconds, she just couldn’t seem to focus on what exactly had happened because everything seemed to have slowed down. Then she realised, in a flash, that Alejandro had fallen. He had begun standing up, but he’d had so much to drink that his legs had refused to co-operate. He’d fallen, dropped backwards like a stone, catapulting the chair behind him and crashing to the ground.
She sprang to her feet. Everyone had sprung to their feet. Then it was all a blur. She raced over to where Alejandro lay sprawled in an unnatural position on the ground, with one arm flung behind his head and his leg twisted underneath him. He was perfectly still and as she shoved her way to his side Caitlin desperately wondered whether he was breathing at all. Tears had sprung to her eyes and she was whimpering when someone pulled her back.
She felt the hardness of muscle against her back and then Dante was whispering urgently into her ear.
‘Don’t panic. He’s alive and there’s a doctor here. Take it easy.’
The voice that had filled her with discomfort and hostility only moments earlier now soothed her, but she barely had time to question the phenomenon because amidst the chaos someone was pushing forward and taking charge, ordering people to stand back while simultaneously reaching for his phone and jabbing at it as he bent towards Alejandro.
Caitlin couldn’t bear to watch. She spun round and buried her head against Dante. He could have been anyone. She just couldn’t look at her friend lying there on the ground. There was a roaring in her ears, which she wanted desperately to block out.
She wasn’t quite sure what happened next. She knew that people were being ushered inside. So was she. Her feet were moving, propelling her towards a sitting room where she was settled on a sofa, a quiet place which was good, left on her own, time to gather herself. What had just happened replayed in her head in slow motion.
It was dark in the sitting room, with only one of the lamps on a side table on, but that suited her. Her thoughts were going crazy in her head and just when she was about to go out because she couldn’t sit on her own any longer, the door was pushed open and she saw Dante outlined, a shadowy silhouette filling the frame.
‘You need to sit down, Caitlin.’ His voice was low and serious as he moved towards her.
She fell back against the sofa, too scared to say a word. He’d moved from the shadows into the pool of light from the lamp and his expression was as serious as his voice.
‘What’s happened, Dante?’ she whispered.
‘Sit and I’ll tell you. Good news and bad...’
CHAPTER THREE
SHE WAS SHAKING like a leaf and she barely noticed the glass of brandy Dante had brought in with him. He’d been thinking ahead, she dimly registered, predicting her reaction and knowing that she would need a stiff swig of something to deal with whatever he had to say.
If the gravity of his expression wasn’t enough, the very fact that he had come equipped with brandy said it all.
He’d sat her down on the sofa and he sat next to her and waited until she had fortified herself by duly sipping some of the fiery alcohol, even though she didn’t feel she needed it.
‘Just tell me,’ she whispered.
‘There was a doctor there. An eminent surgeon, as it happens. A relative on my father’s side. Of course, he couldn’t do a complete test but it would seem that Alejandro fell at an awkward angle. If I could draw a parallel, it’s a bit like someone collapsing to the ground because the chair they’d planned on sitting on has been yanked out from under them.’
‘An awkward angle...’
‘He didn’t fall far, but what’s certain is that he’s broken several small but significant bones in his ankle.’
Caitlin looked at him and blinked. Her thoughts were lagging behind but a few broken bones didn’t seem like the end of the world and she said as much, breathing a sigh of relief and closing her eyes.
‘Not so fast,’ Dante said, and he held her gaze when she opened her eyes to stare at him.
A person could drown in those eyes, she thought distractedly. She hadn’t noticed how deep and dark they were before, because she’d been arguing with him, resentful and defensive at his suspicions, which had made her question all over again the wisdom of embarking on the charade. They weren’t arguing now, and something shifted and filtered through her defences. Now, as their eyes locked, she could see that his were the deepest shade of bitter chocolate and fringed with thick, sooty lashes that any woman would give her right arm for.
He was a good-looking guy and she was up close and in a state of shock. It was understandable that those first impressions, that whisper of sexual attraction, felt stronger now. ‘You said he just broke a few bones...’
‘Preliminary findings show that he struck his head on the marble flooring at an awkward angle. He’s concussed at the moment and we won’t know more until more detailed examinations are made at the hospital, but Roberto seems to think that Alejandro could slide into a temporary coma.’
‘A coma?’ Tears gathered. ‘But he just had a little fall...’
‘It’s not a certainty so there’s no need to start getting upset.’
‘Of course I’m going to be upset! I should be there with him.’ She stood up while Dante remained seated, his long legs stretched out and lightly crossed at the ankles.
Why wasn’t he responding? How could he look so cool and collected at a time like this?
‘I need to get to that hospital,’ she repeated, with mounting urgency. ‘You need to take me right now.’
‘You’re in shock and you’re better off here. Rushing to the hospital isn’t going to achieve anything. Right now, and for the next few hours, if not days, Alejandro will be out of it, undergoing a battery of tests. Trust me, I will be the first to know of any developments.’
Caitlin hesitated, soothed by his assertiveness. She realised that it had been a long time since someone else had taken charge and it felt good. ‘I feel so helpless. He must be terrified.’
‘Caitlin, he’s in the equivalent of a deep sleep. He’ll be as peaceful as a newborn.’
All that stress, she thought, riven with guilt. Yes, he’d fallen, but was a part of him retreating from the awkward situation he ha
d obviously found difficult to cope with? Had his brain decided to conveniently shut down just for the moment?
There were so many cases of people forgetting traumatic events, relegating them behind closed doors in their head because they just couldn’t cope with the memories.
Had Alejandro done the equivalent?
And yet, she thought feverishly, they had both been so cavalier about this arrangement.
Alejandro was gay. This was a revelation that had seeped out over a period of months and Caitlin had been more surprised at his shame at the admission than the admission itself. After all, in this day and age, who thought twice about someone being gay?
But she didn’t understand, he’d said matter-of-factly. His background, generation upon generation of accumulated wealth, was mired in tradition, his elevated birthright an albatross around his neck.
He was the older and expected to marry and produce. It would kill his parents if they found out about his sexual persuasion. Nothing Caitlin had said over the months could assuage his anxiety but it was only when he told her that his parents were becoming increasingly vocal on the subject of his love life that she began to see just how much it was affecting his state of mind.
He’d begun playing truant from work. He’d stopped caring about whether his increasing absences were noted or not. If only his brother would get married, he’d told her. That would let him off the hook. He’d be able to remain free for longer, at least until he sorted out what he would do in the future. But Dante, he had said, just wasn’t playing ball.
And his parents wanted to know what was going on. Why had they not been introduced to any girlfriends? They had someone in mind for him, a lovely girl, daughter of one of their friends. They were insistent on a meeting.
And from there, Alejandro and Caitlin’s plan had been born.
He’d been desperate and so...had she.
She wasn’t going to think of her own circumstances. This was about Alejandro and the fact that he was in hospital and she couldn’t help but blame herself because she hadn’t seen just how stressed he’d been at the whole mess and at lying to all his friends and family.
The Forbidden Cabrera Brother (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 4
