by Abby Green
She looked up at him, wishing she could read what was in those green depths. Decipher that inscrutable expression.
Cesar stepped back and Lexie let her hand drop. It felt as if a chasm had opened between them. With a shaky hand she pulled her shirt and bra strap back up. She couldn’t really think straight when Cesar was half clothed in front of her, and cringed as she realised it was only seconds ago that she’d been begging to see him.
Humiliation scored her insides. She was damaged. She couldn’t just throw caution to the wind and do this. That was the problem.
She slid off the table, her legs unsteady. Between them she throbbed lightly. Mockingly.
Expecting Cesar to be irritated, put out, she caught her breath when she looked up at him and he smiled. Lexie nearly had to put her hands behind her to catch the desk. Lord. When he smiled something inside her ached because she hadn’t really seen him smile before now.
He moved close again and rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip. His smile faded. ‘We want each other.’
Lexie’s heart thumped. Hard. ‘Yes...’ How could she deny it? God. She felt as gauche as a sixteen-year-old contemplating her first make-out session. But then she’d never had that experience.
‘Next weekend there’s a function in Madrid. You said you wanted to see the city?’
Her head felt fuzzy. Had she?
But Cesar didn’t even bother to wait for her agreement, he just said, ‘We’ll go together. I have an apartment there so we can stay overnight.’
Lexie’s heart nearly pounded out of her chest at the thought but she managed to nod. ‘It’ll be good for us to be seen together. It’ll be good for the press.’
‘Yes,’ Cesar agreed equably. ‘But it’s not just about that, Lexie. It’s for us.’
* * *
When Lexie had left Cesar had to wait another few minutes for his body to cool down. He’d been ready to lift her up and carry her into his bedroom. His conscience mocked him—as if he could have held back from taking her right there on his desk.
When she’d pulled back, put her hand on his chest, everything within him had screamed with rejection. And then he’d come to his senses and realised just how close to the edge he was. So he’d welcomed a little space...sanity.
He was a civilised man, even though the last time he could remember feeling remotely civilised was over a week ago—just before he’d laid eyes on Lexie Anderson for the first time.
Cesar went to the window that looked out over a private section of the castillo gardens, tucking one arm under the other across his chest.
Something skated over his skin...a very old memory. A feeling. Vulnerability. He didn’t like it. It harked back to a time before he’d made sure he was immune to such weaknesses.
He wanted Lexie, but she was dangerous. Because when he was near her he seemed to forget himself. His mouth tightened.
Everything in him had always urged him to trust nothing—and especially not women. After all, his mother and grandmother had taught him that lesson very well.
A memory came back, blindsiding him: his grandmother, dragging him painfully up to a first-floor window. Forcing him to sit down on the window seat. Every day, for hours on end. Before and after his lessons. Because she’d found him there one day. Watching...waiting.
‘If you like it here so much then you’ll do it every day. Watch, Cesar. Watch. See how she does not return for you. And when you tell me that you believe me we can stop playing this game.’
Cesar could remember glaring at his grandmother’s thin, bitter face mulishly before she’d taken his ear painfully and pulled his face back to the window. Tears of pain had sprung into his eyes but he’d blinked them back. Loath to show her any emotion. Because even at that tender age of five he’d already known better.
And so he’d looked out of the window—fiercely—for hours on end, willing the figure of his mother to appear. Sometimes he’d thought he’d seen something, but it had only been a mirage. It had taken another full year before he’d finally told his grandmother what she wanted to hear.
His grandmother had made sure that he would see pictures of his mother enjoying her life in Paris. Becoming successful. Famous. A model. Having another son. His half-brother. Forgetting about him.
His mother had come back, with his younger brother, another year after that. The shattering pain of seeing his brother’s hand in hers had been unbearable. He’d hated her—hated them both so much that he’d rejected her right back.
He’d lost his father before he’d even really known him. Then his mother had left him behind like a piece of unwanted luggage. Cesar’s grandmother and grandfather had shown nothing but disdain and faint tolerance for their grandson. Their only motivation in making him heir had been their own greed and fanatical obsession with the family name.
The past finally receded from Cesar’s head. He castigated himself for letting a woman, no matter how alluring, have this effect on him, for making him think about those things again. He wanted Lexie—pure and simple.
He was impervious to anything above and beyond sating himself with her. He would never want anything more with a woman than momentary satisfaction. And Lexie was no different.
CHAPTER SIX
TOWARDS THE END of that second week Lexie’s nerves were jagged and fraying. It was almost certainly because of the constant presence of Cesar on the set. She felt his gaze on her like a physical touch sometimes.
She wasn’t used to this. This excruciating build-up of sexual awareness and frustration. She hated Cesar for having done this to her, having this hold over her, while in the same breath she wished he would just stride across the set and take her in his arms and kiss her to make her head stop spinning.
But it wasn’t just the physical sensations. He seemed to have snuck deeper. And she couldn’t believe she was in danger of being gullible all over again even though this was infinitely different from what had happened with Jonathan Saunders.
Madrid and the weekend loomed large. The irony was not lost on Lexie—she was playing the part of a jaded sexual libertine and yet she had no idea of the reality of what that should feel like. She felt like a fraud, and gave thanks that no one seemed to have called her on it yet.
But after this weekend, a sly voice pointed out, you’ll know exactly what it feels like.
When they finally called a wrap that day, and Lexie saw that it was Cesar waiting for her with a golf buggy to get her back to the unit base instead of one of the PAs, she snapped and said caustically, ‘Don’t you have a world leader to meet or something equally important to do?’
Cesar just looked incredibly sanguine and stepped out of the buggy to help her in, saying sotto voce, ‘I’m your besotted lover, remember?’
Lexie stifled a snort and pulled the coat she wore to keep warm around her, hiding her voluptuous curves in the elaborate dress.
And then she felt churlish. She glanced at Cesar’s patrician profile. He was even more gorgeous dressed down in faded jeans and a long-sleeved top. Workmanlike boots. He looked younger like this, less intimidating. Less a titan of industry.
As much as his presence on the set unnerved her, she’d come to expect it now. Two days ago she’d been waiting for the camera to be set up and had wandered behind one of the equipment trucks to find Cesar deep in conversation with one of the oldest members of the crew. A veteran who had worked on some of the biggest films ever made.
Cesar had been listening intently and asking him about his career. The effect this had had on Lexie was nothing short of pathetic. It had been akin to seeing Cesar cradle a small puppy. Inducing warmth, tenderness. Danger.
When they reached the base Cesar helped her from the buggy and opened the door of her trailer for her. Before she could go in, though, he caught her hand.
She looked at him warily.
>
‘I have to go to London tomorrow morning for twenty-four hours. But I’ll be back to take you to Madrid on Saturday. We’ll leave after lunch.’
He let her hand go to cup the back of her neck, drawing her to him. Even though Lexie had a split second of realisation that he was going to kiss her the touch of his mouth to hers was still like an electric shock, infusing her blood with energy and heat. It was a chaste kiss, and he drew back almost as soon as it had started. But Lexie wanted more.
‘Till then.’ He let her go, stepped back.
Lexie’s heart was beating fast. This was the moment. She could say something now—back out, not go through with it. Stay safe.
She opened her mouth. Cesar’s green gaze was almost black. And, treacherously, she shut her mouth without saying anything. A recklessness within her was urging her to seize the moment.
Lexie saw other crew members arriving back from the set. Her dresser hurrying to help her out of her costume.
She took a breath. ‘Fine, I’ll be ready.’
Cesar smiled and it was distinctly predatory. ‘I look forward to it. Don’t miss me too much, will you?’
Lexie wanted to make a face but he was already turning to go. She really didn’t like the impulse she felt to run after him and beg him to take her with him.
* * *
On Saturday Lexie was dressed casually, in a stripy long-sleeved top, a long, loose, gypsy-style skirt and soft boots. She had a weekend bag and was waiting for Cesar in the imposing reception hall of the castillo, trying not to think about the butterflies fluttering around in her belly at the prospect of seeing him again, or to think too much about what the weekend would bring.
So she thought of the difference between his private apartment and its soaring modern space and the rest of the castillo. So different. It made her wonder what it must have been like to grow up here...and why his mother had left him behind.
Something caught Lexie’s eye through a doorway and she put down her bags for a moment to walk into a long formal room. It was filled with portraits and she shivered a little as she looked at them. They were all so stern and forbidding—much like the dour castillo housekeeper.
She walked around them and came to the most recent ones. Lexie figured they had to be of Cesar’s grandparents. They appeared sterner than all the rest put together and she shivered again.
‘Cold?’
Lexie jumped and put a hand to her heart, looking around to see Cesar lounging against the door frame, watching her. She took him in. He was wearing dark trousers and an open-necked shirt. He looked smart, yet casual. Gorgeous.
‘You startled me.’
He straightened up and came in, hands in his pockets, which made her feel minutely safer. Her skin was hot. And an ache she’d not even been aware of noticing eased. She’d missed him. For one day.
Dragging her eyes away from him, she regarded the portraits again. ‘Are these your grandparents?’
He stood beside her and a frisson of electricity shot straight to her groin.
He sounded grim. ‘Yes, that’s them.’
Lexie was curious. ‘What were they like?’
He was clipped. ‘Cold, cruel, snobbish. Obsessed with the family legacy.’
She looked at him and almost gasped at how hard his face had become. Stark. Pained.
‘What did they do to you?’
He smiled, but it was hard. ‘What didn’t they do? My grandmother’s particular favourite hobby was getting me to compile scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings featuring my mother and half-brothers, further driving home the message that they wanted nothing to do with me.’
Lexie stared at Cesar, too shocked to say anything for a moment. No wonder there was such tension in him when he mentioned his family. And yet he’d gone to that wedding... He glanced at her and she could see it in his eyes: Not up for further discussion. What surprised Lexie was the wave of rage she felt welling inside her at the horrific cruelty he’d endured.
‘What happened to your father? Is it true that he was a bullfighter?’
Cesar looked away again and Lexie thought he would ignore her, but then he said, ‘He rebelled. He wanted out and wanted nothing to do with his inheritance. So he did what he could to ensure that his family would disown him: he became a bullfighter. It was the worst insult to his parents he could think of. And they duly disinherited him.’
‘Your mother...?’
Cesar kept his eyes on the portraits.
‘My mother was from a small town down south, where my father went to train as a bullfighter. She was poor. He fell in love and they got married, had me.’
‘Did she know who he was? Where he’d come from?’
Now Cesar looked at Lexie, and she almost took a step back at the cynicism etched on his face. He seemed older in that moment.
‘Of course she did. That’s why she targeted him. If he hadn’t died she probably would have persuaded him to return home—especially once they’d had me.’
Lexie tried to hide her dismay at seeing this side of him. He seemed utterly unapproachable at that moment.
‘You don’t know that for sure, though...’ she said, almost hopefully.
‘Of course I know,’ he dismissed coldly. ‘As soon as my father died she brought me here, but my grandparents wanted nothing to do with her. Only me. They realised that their legacy would be secure with an heir. Once she knew there was nothing she could gain, she left.’
Lexie put a hand to her belly in a reflexive action as the old pain flared inside her hearing his words. To think of the awful wrench it must have been for his mother to give him up. No matter what he said, she couldn’t have been that cruel.
‘But she came back...? You said that she came back some years later.’
A bleak look flashed across Cesar’s face, but it was so fleeting that Lexie wasn’t even sure she’d seen it.
‘Yes, she did. Maybe she thought she could benefit then. But it was too late.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Almost seven.’
Lexie gasped. ‘But that’s so young...you were still so young. Why didn’t you go with her?’
Even as she realised that Cesar wasn’t going to answer her she had a moment of intuition. He’d been left here when he was so tiny, yet he had been old enough to remember. Remember his mother walking away. Lexie couldn’t even begin to imagine what had broken inside him in those years after his mother had left him. Broken so badly that he’d let her walk away from him again.
Cesar stepped back and said, ‘We should go. The plane is ready.’
* * *
After a short trip in a sleek Land Rover to a local airstrip, Lexie knew she shouldn’t have been surprised to see a small private plane waiting for them—reminding her, as if she needed it, just who she was dealing with.
Except the man she was dealing with had just shown her a side of himself that was raw and bleak, and she couldn’t stop her chest from aching. Even though she knew that he wouldn’t thank her for it. He hadn’t had to say a word for her to know that he would scorn the slightest hint of pity.
Cesar parked the car and swung out of the driver’s seat with lithe grace. He’d come around to help Lexie out before she could object, taking her hand in his firm grip.
An assistant took their bags to the plane. The pilot was waiting to greet them, and then they were stepping into the plush, luxurious world of the super-rich. Although Lexie was still a bit too shaken up by what Cesar had revealed to truly enjoy this novel experience.
A steward showed her to her seat solicitously, and Cesar took the seat opposite. There was no waiting for other people to arrive, to sit down. Once they were in they buckled up and the plane was moving.
In a bid to try and shake some of the residual melancholy she felt at hearing abou
t Cesar’s less than happy-sounding childhood, Lexie asked, ‘So what’s the function this evening?’
Cesar stretched out his long legs across the aisle. ‘It’s a dinner and Spanish music event at the Italian Ambassador’s residence.’
Lexie felt her stomach plummet. ‘Seriously? But I’ve never met an ambassador in my life...I won’t know what to say—’
He leaned across and took one of her hands out of her lap and held it to his mouth, kissing it. Effectively shutting her up. The air in the cabin seemed to get hot and sultry.
‘You don’t have to worry about saying anything. They’re not going to present you with an IQ questionnaire before dinner to see if you qualify.’
Lexie hated this insecurity that stemmed not only from her dyslexia but from having left school early. ‘But they’ll be talking about politics and the EU and economics...’
‘And,’ Cesar replied without hesitation, ‘if they do I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t know just as much if not more than them. These are people, Lexie, they’re not intellectual giants.’
‘Well, you are...’ She was being distracted by the hypnotic stroke of Cesar’s thumb on the underside of her wrist. His thumb stopped and he frowned at her.
‘Where on earth do you get that from?’
Lexie shrugged, feeling exposed again for having researched him in the beginning.
‘You’re one of the most successful men in the world...you go to economic forums...all those books in your study and apartment...’
Cesar’s mouth twisted. ‘All those books in my study belong to my family. The only reason I haven’t ever got rid of them is in case I need them for reference and for reasons of pure vanity—because they look good.’ Then he said, ‘Me, though? The books I like reading are popular crime thrillers—nothing more intellectual than that, I assure you.’
Something shifted inside Lexie. An ominous feeling of tenderness welled up.
‘And as for school...I was not a natural A student—far from it. I had to work for every one of my grades. Once my grandparents realised this they recruited the local swot—Juan Cortez, who is now the Mayor of Villaporto, the local town—to come and help me.’
