‘What time do you think it is?’ she asked, drawing patterns over his smooth bronze skin, marvelling at his male beauty.
When he didn’t answer she cocked her head to look at him. He was staring straight up, unseeing.
‘Oh, I’d say about ten. Listen, I’ve been thinking...’
At that the pulsing beat of his phone sounded again.
Dante loosened his arm from under her and reached over.
‘Yep, right on cue,’ he said, looking at the screen before pressing the button to answer.
‘Good morning, Mother. It’s still early. Though not as early as your last call.’
Lucie lay still, acutely aware of her nakedness and of the low burr of the woman’s voice on the other end of the phone.
‘Yes, of course—go right ahead. I haven’t forgotten. I know how important this is for you—for all of us.’
He sat up, skilfully tucking two pillows behind him in a way that suggested he’d done it a thousand times before. A sharp sense of sadness suddenly struck her as she realised that, yes, he probably had—with a thousand different women in his bed.
So she had made a wonderful grand gesture to her mother, had she? She had shown her! Proved that she wasn’t her property—that she had a mind of her own.
Really?
Maybe all she’d done was prove that she was another statistic.
‘Yes, I was just about to sort it.’
She saw his fingers drum on the sheet as he shot her a quick glance. No, she mustn’t think like that—she mustn’t let all that mental chatter take her down the wrong path. She must think positively. She’d made a choice—she hadn’t just thrown herself at the first man available. She had decided to step out of her mother’s shade and into the light. Dante’s light. And she felt warmed by it—not ashamed.
‘Not at all, Mother.’
Lucie rolled round, pulled the sheet up to her chin and stared at the utterly perfect blue sky. Her mother would have made at least a dozen calls to Lucie’s drowned phone by now. The last time Lucie had been incommunicado it had almost led to the armed guard being called. Leaving one’s phone behind was the ultimate offence.
Calling was her mother’s way of salving her conscience. She couldn’t really care less what Lucie was up to, but she liked to be able to say with some certainty exactly where she was. And of course Lucie’s role, as far as her mother was concerned, was to talk her back from the ledge when her own anxiety levels soared.
Like in the early days of her parents’ separation, when her father had been entertaining new lady-friends and Lucie had been expected to file a daily report to her inconsolable mother. Yes, she was always expected to be available—so goodness knew what kind of reception waited for her when Lady Viv finally did track her down.
‘As soon as I know for sure I’ll tell you.’
On the other hand maybe she had been a bit rash to throw her phone away like that. Her mother might actually be worried about her. It would be the first time, but then she’d never given her cause for concern before. Apart from that time when she’d sat on her phone and smashed the screen... Oh! Who could forget the barrage of abuse she’d faced for that?
If she hadn’t let her bottom spread with all that horse-riding... If she’d been a bit more like Lady Viv in her day...
Lucie cringed, recalling that moment. She’d heard Badass and Simon laughing in the background after her mother’s, ‘You sat on it?’ had been repeated three times with increasing volume.
‘Today. Sure.’ Dante whistled.
She really didn’t want to be listening to his private call with his mother. She knew more than most how they could turn out. No—it was time to get off the boat, get back, and get on with the aftermath.
She sat up and reached for a second time for her clothes. The dress—minus another dozen or so buttons—lay at her feet, but she really had no other option and so began the arduous task of fastening it up again.
‘Yes, you know I will.’
Something about his tone made Lucie pause. She was trying to fasten the stupid ankle straps on her shoes, but why bother? She could just as easily leave them hanging out of their ridiculous diamante loops.
‘Give me five minutes. I’ll call you right back.’
Maybe she should be giving him privacy, she thought, standing up and catching sight of herself in the mirror. How utterly ridiculous she looked. While Dante, also now standing up, walking around the bed, the purest, most male, handsomest form imaginable, was even more attractive than he looked with his clothes on. How was that possible?
He was walking round to her.
‘Sorry about that—I had to take it.’
He hooked the phone against his neck as he smoothed one of the most engaging smiles she had ever seen all over his face. A double dimple. Wow.
‘Lucie, what are your plans for the day?’
She mentally groaned at the thought of all those people crawling over the yacht, dismantling the party paraphernalia, wanting to ask her questions, getting into her space. She really ought to be there—she really oughtn’t to have left. But she had and—damn it all—it had been so worth it.
‘And the weekend?’
Well, that was easy—she would be fielding calls from her mother. There would be, Where the hell have you been? and then, Who the hell were you with? and undoubtedly, Have I taught you nothing? Then some sort of symbolic wringing of the hands, and after about ten seconds it would be all about Lady Viv again.
Only if she let it, she reminded herself. She’d had a lovely evening, and the last thing she was going to do was let her mother spoil it by dissecting it. There were some things at least that she could keep private.
‘Only, if you’ve no particular plans I’d like you to come up to New York with me.’
He was moving about in that easy Hollywood way he had, as if the cameras were rolling, the director was in his chair and she was the starlet waiting to speak her lines. She narrowed her eyes.
‘New York?’
He nodded.
‘My mother is due to collect an award at the Woman of the Year Awards next weekend. There has been a lot of speculation in the press about it—I don’t know if you keep up with all that stuff? Anyway, we’ve all got to put on a show for Eleanor, and I need to take a date. Princess, I can’t think of anyone who would slip into the role better than you.’
She turned. She faced him. She could see herself in the mirror, with last night smeared all over her. And he’d just asked her out on a date? To an awards ceremony? With the rest of the Hermida family and the whole world watching?
‘It’s very flattering, but I don’t know if that is such a great idea.’
‘Why wouldn’t it be a great idea?’
Lucie tried not to look at her reflection. ‘Well, it would be public, I assume? If the press are all over it before it’s actually happened, they’re going to be even more interested when it does.’
She thought she heard him draw in a breath.
‘And the problem with it being public is...?’
Cameras. Photographers. Lady Vivienne Bond, she thought, wincing.
‘It’s just not my thing. You know that.’
‘I know that I’d like you to come with me.’
‘But there must be tons of girls who could go with you. Girls who would actually enjoy getting all dressed up in—’ she held out the skirts of the satin dress ‘—one of these.’
He laughed. ‘It’s not exactly torture, is it?’
She scowled, saw that blasted reflection again. ‘Look, it’s not my thing. And my mother would—’
‘Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? Your mother would...?’
He held her gaze—worse, he probed her gaze. She felt as if he were looking right inside her mind. She glanced away.
‘What would your mother do, Lucie? Disapprove? Are the aristocracy only supposed to date other aristocrats? Is that it?’ He took a step towards her, laughed. ‘Am I too low-rent for you, Princess?’
/>
‘Oh, stop it! You know I was only kidding.’
‘Were you? Look, I don’t give a damn what your mother or anyone else thinks—I need a date for this event, that’s all. Someone who—gets it.’
‘Gets what?’
‘That it’s just a date. A no-strings-attached, short-term, all-you-can-eat buffet, and then—goodbye.’
‘Sounds...filling.’
He laughed. ‘You see—you get it. Plus, you know what cutlery to use. I don’t need to worry that you’ll use your fish knife to spread butter on your napkin, or any other crime of the century like that.’
‘It’s not exactly a hanging offence.’
‘Well, not to me and you—but to someone like my mother it’s on a par with genocide. “There are certain standards, Dante, and you know what they are...”’
The low, slow tones he used to mimic Eleanor Hermida made her instantly compare them to Lady Viv’s shrill staccato.
‘And, for all I normally don’t give a damn about melon forks and steak knives, this is her special day, and it would be very nice...’ his cheeks slid into two slight furrows and his eyes twinkled endearingly ‘...if you would come along and show us all how it’s done. It’s not you who’ll be in the spotlight. It’s my mother. You’ll just be there to make up the numbers.’
‘Gosh, you make it sound so tempting.’
‘Plus you get to seriously annoy your mother. Put another bit of emotional distance between you.’
‘We’re as emotionally distant as the two poles as it is. But I like your logic.’
‘So we have a deal?’
‘Let me go over this again. I come as your date on an all-inclusive, no-strings weekend and then we never meet again? And I do this because it will annoy my mother? It sounds childish.’
‘It sounds perfect. It demonstrates much more effectively than words that you are your own boss. That you make your own choices and are answerable to yourself. And it has the advantage of being very public. There’s no mistaking your intention.’
‘And the no-strings bit?’
He looked at her sharply. ‘That is non-negotiable.’
‘Absolutely! As long as we’re both clear.’
It was all very well to use a weekend with Dante to drive a long overdue wedge between herself and her mother. But there was no way she wanted to end up like her. Worrying over a playboy. Good grief, no!
‘Crystal,’ he said.
She stood in last night’s rags, with last night’s make-up gone and her hair flat and fallen. But this time when she looked at herself in the mirror she saw tomorrow’s woman. Something had happened overnight. Whatever her motivation—and she wasn’t entirely blind to the fact that of all the men in all the world she’d chosen the handsomest one to spend her first ever night with, and she wasn’t entirely deaf to the little alarm bell that had rung at ‘no strings’—she had taken a major step down a brand-new path. And she had liked it.
‘So I come to New York...? What are the rest of the details?’
‘We fly first to the Hamptons. There’s a business deal I’m considering there. I’ve been putting it off, but I need to make a decision before I head to Dubai.’
He spoke quietly, gravely, and she saw then that there was more—much more—to him than a polo-playing playboy.
‘Yes. We’ll go there, hang out for a couple of days, see some friends, and I’ll get this tied up. Then New York. With the family. But that’s it. No, Wouldn’t it be nice if...?—none of that. It’s these few days and then we split.’
As if she needed any clearer explanation, he lifted his arms and pointed with each finger in the opposite direction.
‘Look, I’m perfectly clear on that—you don’t need to worry. And, sorry if this comes as a shock, I have no intention whatsoever of pursuing a romance with you. You’re really not my type.’
‘Pardon me?’
Lucie couldn’t stifle a smirk.
‘What? Hasn’t anyone ever told you that before? You look as if I’ve just delivered the news that you’ve got two heads. Sorry, Dante, but you’re not my type. It’s that simple.’
He swiftly gathered himself together again, but there was no mistaking that it looked as if this was the first time in his life he’d ever been told Thanks, but no thanks by a woman. It certainly wouldn’t do him any harm.
‘What’s not “your type” about what we just did? I don’t recall you telling me that you’d had better.’
‘I don’t recall telling you that I’d had anything! There was no one before to compare you to.’
He was now pulling on jeans, fastening buttons, looking as if he had not a care in the world more than what shade of T-shirt he might choose. But she could taste a lick of tension in the air and see the edge of strain across his brow.
‘Sorry—that came out all wrong. What I mean is—what I mean is that I’ve been surrounded by playboys my whole life. My own father practically invented the word! I’ve seen at very close range the devastation that they bring. So, lovely as you are, the last thing on this earth I want to be is anywhere near you after this weekend.’
Grey T-shirt selected and pulled down over his perfect golden torso, hair flicked effortlessly back into place and beautiful one-dimple smile slipped on, Dante faced her.
‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up. I’d hate to think that those screaming orgasms you had were such a disappointment.’
Lucie smiled through the flush of shame that she felt creep warmly over her chest and neck. Would she ever be able to think again of those moments without feeling a stab, a shadow, an echo of how he’d made her feel? But there was no way she was letting him get away with thinking he held all the cards.
‘Ditto,’ she said tartly. ‘You seemed to be having a reasonable time yourself.’
At that he laughed. A proper laugh. His eyes sparkled and she hit the two-dimple jackpot.
‘You’re a match for me, Princess. That’s for sure. More than a match.’
‘And for the last time...’ she began.
‘You’re not a princess,’ he said. ‘I know. And I’ll drop it. Promise. So, we’ll go to the Hamptons? Then on to New York? We’ll dress up and go out and honour my mother. And we’ll tell your mother via the world’s press that her days of using you as therapist and whipping post are done. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ she said, smiling.
And all the while that tinkling little bell rang in her ears with a warning not to smile too broadly, or feel too happy, or fall too deeply. Because there was no one waiting to help her over these hurdles. There never had been. And wishes didn’t come true.
CHAPTER SIX
HOW MANY LEAR JETS had she flown in? Lucie wondered fleetingly as she crossed the tiny strip of Tarmac and prepared to board yet another.
The whole effort involved in being ‘Party Aristocracy’ as opposed to ‘Dullard Aristocracy’, as Lady Viv called her country cousins, seemed far too much like hard work. Apart from all the planning, the packing and the travelling, the whole angst around who would be waiting with their phone to snap a photo or record a video or—God forfend—lip-read, was just too hideous to contemplate.
Her father didn’t give a damn, of course. He had been photographed and filmed and reported so many times that he’d become a bit of a caricature of himself, and was always being hunted by the press for some exploit or other. And her mother’s method of second-guessing the second-guessers was simply exhausting! Why on earth either of them still felt the need to parade themselves across the world was beyond her.
Yet here she was—in jersey, sneakers, cashmere and sunglasses, a huge leather bag on her arm and a coterie of matching luggage being loaded onto the plane before her. So much for gorging on ice-cream and taking a sledgehammer to her bathroom scales. She felt a million miles apart from that girl already, she realised as she reached out for the little rail on the portable steps.
A million miles in terms of feeling like a ‘woman’ and of feeling in control. H
ad she really once sought comfort in clothes with elasticated waists and vats of calorific carbohydrates? Was she honestly the type of person who felt it vain and undignified to care if her hair was sitting nicely or if she looked her best before she greeted the world each day?
When exactly had she been transformed? she wondered. It had been so many weeks’ work, and somewhere along the path she had become—what? A woman who took pride in herself? A woman who realised that although she might never be one of the petite slender blondes so beloved of the world, as Lady Viv was, she had a good mind and a healthy body and was simply being obstinate and churlish not to make best use of them?
Dante’s hand touched the small of her back and the warring sensations of pleasure and anxiety sprang up, as they had every five minutes since he’d picked her up at her father’s villa.
He was becoming even more tactile, she thought, pulling away without acknowledging him and climbing the short flight of steps. She really wasn’t used to anyone touching her. It had simply never happened as a child, as a teenager, as an adult. She’d never sought out hugs or soothing little arm-rubs—and she didn’t intend to start now. Not once did she remember climbing onto her mother’s lap. And certainly no one had been there to comfort her at boarding school—apart from one awful night in the sanatorium, delirious with fever when she’d fallen into the hefty bosom of Nurse.
She could still remember the racking sobs, the sensation of her wet face on soaked cotton, of rocking and rubbing and finally the agony subsiding. But only that once. And it was a memory so painful that she never, ever aired it.
No, there hadn’t been a lot of touch in her childhood. Nor a lot of love.
Even making love had had its challenges. Of course she’d seen enough of life to know what to expect, but it was almost a miracle that she’d rolled past the incredible urge to cut and run when he’d attempted to kiss between her legs! She couldn’t explain to him why that had been so utterly unbearable. Hadn’t the words in her own mind to know where to start. All she knew was that she most definitely was not and never would be able to relax enough to endure that.
The Argentinian's Virgin Conquest Page 8
