When Da Silva Breaks the Rules

by Abby Green

  Lexie burned with indignation and something much hotter to imagine Cesar guessing her vital statistics.

  Just then a PA came close and hovered. When Lexie looked at her she made a signal that she was required. Lexie looked back at Cesar and said, with evident relief, ‘I have to go. They’re ready to shoot again.’

  But he didn’t get out of the way. And Lexie knew she wasn’t supposed to step onto the manicured lawn.

  She was about to open her mouth when he moved closer and put a hand around the back of her bare neck, exposed because her hair was up in a complicated chignon. He bent down and pressed a fleeting but hot kiss to her mouth, and then pulled back, letting her go.

  Lexie tingled all over. Her head felt fuzzy. ‘What was that for?’

  Cesar smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and Lexie felt something tug inside her, wondering again what he’d look like if he really smiled.

  ‘As you so memorably pointed out, there are camera phones around. I’m just being vigilant.’

  Lexie flushed to recall what she’d said to him. There was nothing remotely fossil-like about this man. He was all bristling, virile energy.

  Faintly she said, ‘Celeste will have to retouch my lipstick.’

  He smirked. ‘Well, you’d better run along and let Celeste do that.’

  For a second Lexie blinked at him. There was a tantalising glimmer of something lighter between them. But then he was turning and striding back the way he’d come, and as Lexie walked over to the main hub of the set she couldn’t be unaware of several appreciative female and male glances that lingered in his direction and then on her with undisguised envy.

  * * *

  Cesar was waiting for Lexie in the main castillo drawing room three days later. Looking back on the last tumultuous week, he did not relish the twisting and turning of events since he’d taken one look at that woman and his brains had migrated to his pants.

  Cesar was renowned for lots of things: his inestimable wealth; philanthropy; scarily incisive business acumen; a zealous desire for privacy; success. And control. Above all control over his emotions. He’d become a master of controlling them from a young age. Too young.

  His usual choice of woman was tall and brunette. Elegant. Classic. Not blonde, petite and curvy, with blue eyes big enough to drown in. And with a dubious reputation splashed across the tabloids.

  On some level he’d always sought to stay away from prying eyes, as if somehow they might see something in him that he couldn’t articulate himself. A darkness that had clung to him for a long time. The stench of abandonment. The cruelty of neglect and a lack of care. It had been like an invisible stain on his skin.

  Yet for someone who had spent his life largely on the periphery of the media glare, largely due to his very non-scandalous social life, the prospect of suddenly being thrust front and centre was not having the effect he might have expected.

  Of course he didn’t relish the idea. But at the same time it didn’t fill him with repugnance.

  Cesar poured himself a drink and smiled grimly. Right now though, all those concerns were receding and being replaced by something else. Someone else. Lexie Anderson. Cesar had been due to go to North Africa that week, to attend a meeting about aid, but had cancelled it on the flimsy pretext of wanting to make sure that the first week of filming went smoothly.

  Cesar would be the first to admit that he had dismissed the film industry as flaky and narcissistic, but just one week had proved him wrong. The crew were tireless and worked twelve-and thirteen-hour days—if not longer. He was also surprised by how quickly and well they worked as a cohesive unit.

  The producer had explained that most of them had worked together before, but there were lots of inexperienced locals in the mix and Cesar had witnessed more than one incident of a more experienced crew member patiently showing someone the ropes.

  Lexie was one of the most tireless. Standing for long minutes on a mark while the lighting crew and cameraman worked around her. Her co-star would invariably go back to his trailer. Cesar had found out that she could have insisted they use a stand-in but had wanted to be there herself. He had to admit that he hadn’t really expected her work ethic to be that strong.

  She was popular. Especially with the male members of the crew. Cesar was more aware of that than he liked to admit. He’d never been jealous because of a woman before and he didn’t welcome jealousy’s appearance.

  He heard a sound then, and with something whispering over his skin like a warning Cesar took a breath and turned around.

  Bombshell. That was the only word that seemed to compute in his head when he saw the woman standing in the doorway. Her effect on him was like a bomb too—exploding out to every extremity and making his flesh surge as blood pumped south.

  He took in details, as if he couldn’t handle the full reality. Glossy blonde hair, trailing over one shoulder in classic screen siren waves. Pale skin. Slim bare arms. A sleeveless gold lamé dress that fell to the floor in a swirl of glamorous luxury.

  She was poured into it, and the material highlighted her curves to almost indecent proportions. The deep, plunging vee of the neckline drew his eye to that abundant cleavage.

  She was every inch the glittering movie star. And the most provocatively beautiful woman Cesar had ever seen in his life. He knew that if they hadn’t already kissed, if he hadn’t already seen her up close, he might have seen her like this and dismissed her as too garish. But right now he could no more dismiss her than recall his own name.

  His hands clenched so tightly that he heard a crack, and he looked down stupidly to see his heavy Waterford crystal glass about to break in his hand.

  He put it down on the sideboard with a clatter that jarred his ragged and sensitised nerve-endings.

  She moved into the room, and the sinuous sway of her hips nearly undid him. Normally he had finesse. He could utter platitudes to women like You look beautiful. But right now all he could do was say gruffly, ‘My driver is waiting outside—we should go.’

  * * *

  Lexie fought down a betraying quiver of insecurity as she preceded Cesar out of the room, and cursed herself for wanting his reassurance that she looked okay and not too over the top. Her dresses were normally fine—fairly standard designer fare, given to her after photo shoots or premieres—but when she’d compared them to the finery he’d ordered there had been no competition. She’d had to choose one of his.

  She had not been prepared for his impact on her in a classic black tuxedo. It was obviously a bespoke suit, moulded to his powerful body in a way that most men’s weren’t. It should have made him appear civilised. Just like trousers and a shirt should make him look civilised. But the structured clothes only made him seem more raw. Untamed.

  His hair was always on the slightly messy side, and Lexie didn’t like the way that small detail already felt familiar. But his jaw was clean-shaven, and somehow it gave him a more youthful air.

  He took her arm with one big hand and Lexie had to curb her response not to jump. She could feel slightly rough calluses. It made her think of how he’d looked swinging lithely from that huge horse the first time she’d seen him...muscles bunching and quivering. He was no mere soft-palmed money man. The very heart of her feminine core grew hot and damp.

  She tried to pull her arm free but his hand was firm. She sent him a sharp glance, irritated at his effect on her, which quickly turned to something else when she saw him gazing at her intently. His hand slid down her arm and took her hand. It was a relatively chaste gesture, and yet it had an almost embarrassing effect on Lexie.

  She let herself be led to the exclusive black car and Cesar let her go so she could slide into the back, with the driver holding the door open solicitously.

  When he got in on the other side he sent her a look that made Lexie feel utterly exposed. As if he’d been toyin
g with her, taking her hand like that.

  Feeling unbearably prickly, Lexie stared out of the window. Anything to escape that dark green mocking gaze.

  His voice was cool. ‘This was your suggestion, you know. You don’t have to look as if you’re about to go to the gallows.’

  Lexie tensed and felt angry. She turned back to Cesar. ‘I don’t regret my suggestion for a second. It’s still the best option.’

  The tinted windows gave the back of the car a disturbingly cocoon-like atmosphere. And since when had the privacy window gone up? Lexie’s skin prickled. She could have sworn it had been down when they’d got in. And was it her or had the temperature in the back of the car just shot up by about a thousand degrees?

  Cesar was lounging on the other side of the car like a pasha surveying his concubine. She almost wished he was glowering at her, as he had done that first day. She could handle that. She couldn’t handle this far more ambiguous energy swirling between them.

  Feeling a kind of desperation rising up, she said, ‘What happened before...the kissing...it won’t happen again.’ So why can’t you stop thinking about what it would be like to be kissed again...and more?

  Something in Cesar’s eyes flashed, but he said easily, ‘We can’t stand ten feet apart, Lexie. We’ll have to...touch...display moments of affection. Surely it shouldn’t be so hard for you to feign besotted devotion?’

  That prickliness was lodging in Lexie’s gut, and it made her say waspishly, ‘Yes, well, I’m not the only one who has to be convincing.’

  Before she could react, Cesar had reached for her hand and taken it in a firm grip. Lexie gasped as he brought it to his mouth and kissed her sensitive inner palm. It felt shockingly intimate, and a shard of pure sensation pulled at her belly and groin.

  He took his mouth away, eyes glittering fiercely. ‘Is that convincing enough for you?’

  Lexie knew her eyes were wide, her breathing choppy. He’d just kissed her hand and she was a puddle. Her hand! She yanked it away before he could make a complete fool of her.

  Cesar saw how Lexie shrank back and everything in him rejected that even as he saw the signs of mutual attraction: the hectic pulse at the base of her neck, flushed cheeks.

  Almost accusingly she said, ‘You don’t look like the type of guy who relishes PDA.’

  Cesar bit back the urge to clamp his hands around that tiny waist and haul her into him to show her exactly what he thought of PDA. Every time she moved her breasts moved with her, deepening that enticing line of cleavage. But a warning bell went off in his head. She was right, and it irked him that she’d read him so easily.

  He didn’t like public displays of affection at all. In fact he really wasn’t a tactile person. He usually discouraged his lovers from touching him, preferring to keep their contact confined to the bedroom.

  Human touch had been non-existent when he was growing up in the castillo. When it had come it had been rough, perfunctory. Unloving. A minute shove. A clip around the ear for some transgression. Worse after he’d been caught rolling around in the dirt with Juan Cortez, swinging punches at each other.

  If a lover slipped her hand into his, or wound her arm through his, his first instinct was to flinch away. Except right now all he could do was see the wide chasm of distance between him and Lexie in the back of the car and resent it.

  Salamanca wasn’t far. And it was for that reason, Cesar told himself, that he said softly, ‘Come closer.’

  ‘You come closer,’ Lexie responded spikily.

  Unbidden, Cesar felt a burgeoning...lightness within him. He even felt a rare smile tip the corners of his mouth.

  ‘I asked first.’

  Lexie’s expression turned mutinous and had a direct effect on Cesar’s already raging blood. Arrowing directly to his groin.

  ‘Lexie,’ he growled, ‘if you can’t bring yourself to move closer in the back of a car, with no one watching, how do you expect us to convince a wall of paparazzi?’

  With palpable reluctance Lexie huffed a sigh and moved across the seat, still keeping a healthy few inches of space between them. Cesar was intrigued. She was spiky, confident. And yet she showed these tantalising glimpses of another side altogether...one less sure of herself.

  Her faintly floral scent tickled his nostrils. He fought not to just grab her and haul her onto his lap.

  ‘So, tell me something about yourself...’

  ‘Like what?’ Lexie’s voice was almost sharp.

  Even more intriguing. She was seriously unsettled.

  ‘How did you get started as an actress?’

  Lexie glanced at Cesar. The sensation that he was seeing a part of her that no one else cared to observe was acute and uncomfortable. Once again all of her deepest secrets and vulnerabilities felt very close to the surface, as if he might just peel a section of her skin back and see them all laid bare.

  Right now, facing a barrage of photographers and pretending to be this man’s lover would be infinitely preferable to this intimate cocoon in the back of the car. Then she remembered the awful, excoriating feeling of seeing her life spread across his desk in a series of lurid pictures and she said with faux sweetness, ‘You mean you skipped the part about the casting couch in that extensive research file?’

  That earned her a twitching muscle in his jaw that distracted Lexie momentarily. His jaw was so hard, so resolute. As if hewn from a lifetime of clenching it.

  His voice was equally hard. Clearly he did not welcome her sarcasm. ‘I’d like to know how you really got started.’

  Lexie’s belly dipped ominously and she looked at him suspiciously. He seemed to be genuinely interested. But that reminded her uncomfortably of how she’d once believed someone else had been genuinely interested. That experience had left her splashed all over the tabloids, with her reputation ground into the muck. Mocking her for how quickly she’d trusted the first person who had appeared to want to know the real her. After she’d lived a lifetime protecting herself.

  The reminder was not welcome now.

  In a desperate bid to avoid this, Lexie racked her brain for a pithy and superficial answer. But his gaze was too direct. Too...unforgiving.

  ‘Well,’ she started reluctantly, ‘I was in a shop one day... I’d just moved to London from Ireland. I was sixteen.’

  He frowned. ‘You’re Irish?’

  She nodded, hiding the dart of pain. ‘Originally, yes.’ When he said nothing more, she continued. ‘I was in this shop...and a young kid was in front of me. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the owner accused him of shoplifting—which he hadn’t done. So I stepped in and defended him.’

  Lexie shuddered slightly when she recalled the oily owner’s eyes devouring her overly buxom curves. She’d developed early—another unwelcome reminder right now.

  ‘The next thing I knew,’ Lexie went on, eager not to think of that time, ‘I was shouting at him. I told the kid to run...and then a woman arrived.’ Lexie looked at Cesar, but he was just watching her. She felt silly. ‘Look, this is a really boring story...’

  ‘I want to hear it. Go on.’

  Lexie glanced away and then looked back after a moment. His gaze was intent. She took a breath. ‘The woman had heard me shouting and came to investigate. She stepped in and defused the situation. Afterwards she took me for a coffee. She told me she was a casting director and asked if I’d like to audition for a part in a short film.’

  Lexie recalled how bleak those days in London had been. How alone she’d felt. How impoverished. Vulnerable, but trying to be strong...optimistic...

  ‘So I said yes...and I got a leading role in the film. It was shown in the fringe category at the Cannes Film Festival the following year, and it won an award.’ She shrugged one slim shoulder, self-conscious all of a sudden, but determined not to let him see how easily he seemed to be able to
unsettle her. ‘That’s it. That’s how I got started. But it was a rocky road... I had an unscrupulous agent for a while... It takes time to realise who has your best interests at heart.’

  For a long moment Cesar was silent, and then he said, ‘I’d imagine if anyone had tried to lure you onto a casting couch you would have subjected them to the same treatment as that shop owner.’

  A dart of unexpected warmth pierced Lexie—and then she thought of the lurid photo shoots she’d done and the warmth fizzled out. ‘Unfortunately I wasn’t always so sure of what to say no to...’

  Something in the air shifted between them. Lexie couldn’t look away from Cesar’s gaze. It was hypnotic. He seemed a lot closer. For an awful churning moment she wondered if she had moved closer to him without even realising?

  ‘You didn’t say no when I kissed you in the stable.’ His voice was deep, rough.

  Breath was suddenly in very short supply to Lexie’s lungs. ‘Proof that my track record doesn’t appear to be improving with age.’

  Her brain was short-circuiting. Was it only a week since she’d first kissed this man? It felt as if aeons had passed. Cesar slid an arm around her waist, pulling her into him. She gasped, filled with a fatal but delicious hot lethargy that urged her not to think. Just to feel. He was going to kiss her, and all Lexie felt was intense anticipation. Her blood was sizzling.

  His mouth touched hers. Soft, coaxing. Taking Lexie by surprise. Dismantling any feeble defences she had. His other arm pulled her in even closer and lust exploded deep in her solar plexus.

  His mouth was firmer now—insisting, demanding that she respond. As the last shred of trepidation melted away Lexie’s mouth opened, and Cesar’s attack was brutally sensual and complete. His tongue was stroking hers, sucking it, forcing her to respond.

  Without even being aware of it, Lexie touched his jaw, her fingers spreading, threading through his hair, gripping it. Learning the shape of his skull.

  One of his hands cupped the weight of her breast and it sent no flares of danger into her brain. Only a desire for more. She arched into that hand and heard a low, feral growl of approval.