by Lucy Ellis
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY STOPPED TO fuel up the car after a couple of hours on the road. Lulu wound down her window and saw a newspaper headline behind the glass of the service station window: Celebrity Wedding. Oligarch Brings in Private Army of Security.
It was a little daunting to realise she was heading into all that.
The other daunting reality was striding back towards the car. His superbly fit and powerful frame was gloved in an understated but clearly expensive set of dark trousers and a navy shirt. Like a man who went on secret missions with the armed forces and climbed walls without ropes, just using his weapon of a body as all the equipment he required.
Lulu looked away.
Ah, oui, this was her new little problem. She had discovered now she felt physically better that she was responding to that Latin machismo thing some women went a little silly over. She might not have a boyfriend as such, but she did have hormones.
She really needed to make a big effort to curb her imagination.
People were looking his way as he approached the car. So maybe she wasn’t the only one. She had to admit he had the impervious aura of confidence that belonged to someone for whom the small stuff of life was taken care of. She imagined Alejandro du Crozier rarely fuelled up his own car, although he’d taken care of it easily enough.
She had watched him do it through the side mirror—watched him sticking the petrol gun into the tank. There was something about a man’s broad forearm, a chunk of watch, a powerful wrist and a strong hand gripping the nozzle that put all sorts of erotic images into a woman’s head.
Admittedly they were images mostly gleaned from books she’d read. Her personal notebook of erotic experiences was fairly limited.
Alejandro tossed a wrapped sandwich onto her lap as he eased in beside her and turned the engine over.
‘Ham salad. It’s not much, but it should tide you over until we reach Dunlosie.’
Lulu wondered if this was him thawing towards her. Whatever it was, it was a thoughtful gesture. ‘Thank you,’ she said uncertainly, and busied herself with unwrapping her sandwich.
She could feel his eyes on her.
‘Would you like half?’ she offered.
Alejandro had bought the sandwich with an eye to her turning up her pert little nose at plastic-wrapped food. His preconceptions took a solid hit.
‘I had a king’s breakfast,’ he said shortly. ‘Eat up.’
Lulu gave an internal sigh. So much for the thaw.
Half an hour up the road, Alejandro flipped his phone onto speaker.
A male voice began to speak in Spanish, and Alejandro replied in the same language.
Lulu found herself transfixed by the deep, mellifluous quality of his voice as he spoke his own language. Then a Scot’s voice came on the line.
‘We’re pleased to have you here in Edinburgh, Mr du Crozier. Congratulations on captaining South America to that win in Palermo. It warms a Scotsman’s heart to see the English floundering on a field.’
Lulu’s head snapped around at that. What was this?
Alejandro chuckled. ‘No problem at all,’ he said easily in his smooth, deep voice. ‘It was a good match.’
Lulu felt as if she’d had the rug pulled out from under her. Where had this come from? The smile, the ease, the charm?
‘We will be sending our principal to you tomorrow, at your convenience and we’ll give you an aerial viewing of the property. Will it be just you, Mr du Crozier?’
‘Possibly one other.’ Alejandro glanced her way. ‘Two o’clock looks good.’
As he ended the call Lulu told herself not to make any enquiries—she would only look nosey.
‘I’m looking at property while I’m here,’ he said, his eyes on the road. ‘I’m thinking of investing in a golf course. It’s on a picturesque strip of land along the coast near Dunlosie.’
He didn’t look like a golfer. Although she suspected those broad shoulders and strong arms could hit a golf ball to the moon and back.
‘Do you play golf professionally?’ she ventured. When he raised an eyebrow she added hurriedly, so that she didn’t look stupid, ‘That man said something about you captaining a team?’
He smiled slightly. ‘Polo. I captained South America.’ He was watching her as if gauging her reaction. ‘It received some press coverage.’
Vaguely his name stirred a memory. She rather thought she ought to know it.
‘I have a little fame, Lulu.’
He must have read her frown.
‘Ah, oui.’
She tried not to look curious or impressed, or as if she cared. He was smiling to himself, and she wanted to tell him she didn’t care if he was famous, or who he knew. It wasn’t as if she was angling to spend any time with him when they reached the castle. She wasn’t interested in him. He was just transport.
She leaned forward and rummaged in her bag.
It was almost a relief to have her phone in her hand and something to concentrate on other than the magnetism of the man beside her.
He flicked on the sound system.
‘Is that necessary?’
Alejandro spared her a glance. ‘It passes the time.’
‘I’m trying to do some work.’
‘Games on your phone?’
‘Wedding plans. See.’ She held it up but he kept his eye on the wet road.
‘Isn’t that the bride and groom’s prerogative?’
‘I’m maid of honour,’ she said proudly. ‘I have responsibilities.’
Alejandro thumped the wheel with the heel of his hand.
‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.
‘Santa Maria,’ he said under his breath, and after a moment began to chuckle.
‘What’s so funny?’
When he kept laughing her expression took on a look of bafflement, and for a moment she looked very young and decidedly adorable.
He didn’t want her to look adorable. He took another look. Definitely adorable. No wonder she had entitlement issues. He doubted there was a man alive who could resist those big brown eyes or her air of fragility.
It would bother him. If he was considering taking this anywhere. But since the day he had learned he’d inherited everything, in the form of the estancia and all the debts his father had collected, and gained nothing but his mother’s endless demands for more money, his wife’s desire for freedom and the everlasting dissatisfaction of his disinherited sisters he’d carried around the feeling that he’d let them all down.
Fragile women required a lot more than he was able to give.
‘I want to know why you’re laughing at me,’ she insisted.
‘I’m going to kill him.’
‘Kill who? What are you talking about?’
‘Fate. The universe. Khaled Kitaev.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘I’m padrino de boda, querida.’
She had a blank look on her face that made him want to spin this out a little longer, because watching her lose a little of that tight composure was almost worth the hassle.
He relented and filled her in. ‘Best man.’
She dropped her device and it slithered through her satin skirt and thumped at her feet.
‘You can’t be!’
‘I am.’
‘But we don’t like each other.’ She clamped her mouth shut, as if she couldn’t believe that had just slipped out.
No, maybe not, but he’d just discovered he did like her. She might be spoiled and self-centred, but he lived in a world where most women fell at his feet.
Lulu Lachaille would fall, if he applied the right pressure here and there, but she wasn’t going to trip herself up.
She might just be what he was looking for this weekend after all.
Distraction from the spectacle that was a wedding, where everybody mouthed belief in fidelity and love ever after but nobody in his world practised it.
Although he had to admit Khaled and Gigi did seem to be that rares
t of unions—a couple who genuinely liked one another.
And he liked Gigi’s little friend, with her pretty curls and her rosebud pout and her French girl’s way of looking as if she was bored and it was his job to entertain her.
‘I wouldn’t say I don’t like you,’ he said, checking out her pretty knees, just visible under the froth of her netted underskirt. Her hands went there immediately, smoothing it down.
‘Not in that way,’ she said crossly. ‘I don’t want you to like me that way at all. I mean in a platonic sense. In a maid of honour and best man duty sense.’
‘Now I’m a duty? Careful, querida, you’ll damage my ego.’
‘I doubt that,’ she said repressively.
He grinned.
She looked decidedly flummoxed.
‘You’ll need to make an effort, then,’ she blurted out almost defensively.
‘I intend to.’
Lulu tried to ignore the fact that she felt hot all over. Was he flirting with her?
‘I’m serious. You’ll have to be polite to me so people don’t notice anything’s wrong.’
But something is wrong, thought Lulu, checking him out surreptitiously. Why did he have that sexy half-smile sitting at the corner of his mouth? He kept looking at her and she didn’t want him to look at her. It made her feel most unlike herself.
‘The best man has duties with the maid of honour,’ she persevered staunchly, feeling as if she was drowning in something and holding on to talk of the wedding as a life buoy.
‘Sí, I believe he does.’
Not those kind of duties. The thought just appeared in her head. It should have embarrassed her, and her heart was racing crazily, but a big part of her was actually enjoying the attention.
Alejandro du Crozier was flirting with her and she wasn’t diving for the nearest manhole to escape.
Probably because she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him again after this weekend.
It wasn’t as if he was going to ask her out. This was just a straightforward few hours in a car together, and then there was the weekend… Maybe it would be okay just to pretend for a few hours that she was normal and he was…interested?
That was when the car gave a bit of a lurch, and the sound of rubber dragging on the road had Lulu gripping her seat.
Alejandro said something filthy in Spanish even as he braked, and all the heat that had been building between them dissipated with the reality of the car coming to a stop at the side of the road.
Lulu forgot how much she’d been enjoying herself as her old friend panic set in and she looked around wildly. ‘What’s going on? Why are we stopping?’
There was no way she was getting out here, in the middle of nowhere!
‘It’s a flat. The back left tyre is shot.’
At least it wasn’t electrical. Lulu slumped a little in her seat. She could stay where she was, safe and sound, and it wouldn’t take too long. She could manage this. But she needed to dial down the panic. She cast about for something to pin her focus to in the car and remembered her phone.
In the silence that followed she glanced up, only to find he was watching her. She really didn’t want him to notice how nervous she was. ‘Well, fix it,’ she said defensively, before returning her attention to the screen.
Fix it?
Alejandro cut the engine and eased back in his seat to take a good look at what exactly he had on his hands.
One hundred and thirty pounds, at a guess, of Paris-bred entitlement—and he damn well wasn’t her mechanic. His gaze dwelt on her soft, petulant mouth. Although there was something he wouldn’t mind fixing.
He reached across, plucked her phone from her hands and tossed it onto the back seat.
Time to take the edge off his distracting sexual interest in her.
Lulu gave him a puzzled look. He’d sort that out for her too.
He leaned in.
Her eyes widened, her breath came short, but she didn’t exactly push him away as he slid his fingers through the astonishingly silky weight of curls behind her head and fitted his mouth with practised ease to hers.
Her muffled yelp gave him the opportunity to invade her warm mouth. He had planned to make this quick. He didn’t linger where he wasn’t wanted. Only Lulu wasn’t struggling, and she made no attempt to push him away. Instead her hands unfolded over his shoulders and then, almost tentatively, she was kissing him back.
He let her.
This wasn’t about proving a point any more.
Her hand stroked gently against his shoulder as she moved her mouth sensuously against his.
She was seducing him. And it was working. His body was suddenly as hard as a pick axe.
Which was inconvenient, given neither of them could do anything about it right now, in a broken-down car on the side of a quiet Scottish road.
Sí, not one of his smarter moves.
He began to think about leaping into ice holes in Reykjavik, of losing to a lesser team, about the very real possibility that a photo of him making out like a teenager with this girl might all too easily end up on the internet.
But what should have killed his desire stone-dead was the wave of tenderness that came over him as she drew away and hid her face in his neck in a gesture of embarrassment that oddly, crazily, had a rush of male protectiveness surging up from nowhere.
He found himself stroking the back of her neck, the urge to be affectionate with her amazingly strong.
Fragile, he told himself again. She’s fragile.
Lulu was aware that Alejandro was moving away from her and she had nowhere to hide. One minute she’d been trying to control her panic, the next she’d been tipped into something she hadn’t had a lot of in her twenty-three years—the feel, the scent, the excitement of a man kissing her. And not just any man. This man. This very masculine man, who knew exactly what he was doing.
Her heart had slammed against her chest as his mouth had slid against hers. It had been the most invigorating experience of her life.
She waited for him to say something, because for the life of her she had nothing. Zero.
‘All fixed now,’ he said, dropping the words into her lap as if he’d tossed her his hotel room key.
It wasn’t his words but the deliberation with which he wielded them that had her gaze flying to meet his. And then his meaning became clear.
Fixed? Lulu floundered with the concept. He’d done it on purpose? He hadn’t been carried away like her at all?
Mon Dieu, what a little fool she was.
Her heart was still galloping like a wild horse, and now it picked up pace for all the wrong reasons.
She was aware of him watching her from beneath hooded eyes…aware that he now knew a great deal more about her than he had minutes ago. More than any man knew, to her deep embarrassment. And he’d set her up. He’d done it to humiliate her.
Her hand shot out but he caught it before she found her target. ‘No slapping, mi belleza.’
Alejandro watched the struggle on her face and, as much as he welcomed the status quo between them being lodged once more in place, he knew he’d acted like a bastard.
And that was when he heard it. The rumble.
His attention moved across to the side rear-vision mirror and he saw what was coming.
Lulu wrenched her wrist out of his hold and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand to give him the message. ‘You’re never to do that again.’
‘Fine.’ He kept his eye on what was coming.
‘There’s a name for men who force themselves on unwilling women.’ She addressed him directly, unbuckling her belt.
That had his attention.
‘I didn’t use any force, querida.’ He was frowning at her. ‘You were with me the whole way. It’s called chemistry.’
‘I know what it’s called.’ She opened her door.
‘Where the hell are you going?’ he growled, not liking her spin on this.
‘Somewhere far away from you.’ Which was when she gave
a shriek and slammed the door shut again.
Around them a sea of black-faced sheep surged, like something out of a biblical plague. The car rocked slightly with the force.
‘I probably should have mentioned that,’ Alejandro drawled, winding down his window. ‘We’ve got company.’
CHAPTER FIVE
I’M GOING TO DIE.
Lulu went stiff as a board as all around her the road just seemed to fill up with sheep.
‘Welcome to Scotland,’ said Alejandro, propping one arm casually on the door, as if floating in a sea of sheep happened regularly in Argentina.
A whimper had buried itself at the base of her throat, and she just knew that if she opened her mouth it would come out and humiliate her. But, really, how much worse could it get?
She had to speak. To make something happen.
‘Drive, why don’t you?’ she hissed at him a little desperately.
‘Where?’ He gestured at the woolly tide. ‘This is Scotland, chica. Here we give way to sheep.’
Lulu didn’t know if this was true or just more of him tormenting her. She suspected a little of both.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘the back tyre’s shot.’
Forget the tyre! She was shot. Her mouth pulsed from his kiss and her body felt oddly light, but that might be shock setting in. Because those big, woolly mammoths with their black faces were turning her tummy to cold liquid and her pulse was going so fast she thought she might pass out.
This was worse than a two-hour flight from Paris to Edinburgh, or letting a man she had only known for a few hours at most plant a kiss on her.
This was her worst nightmare.
Because she couldn’t escape. And the knowledge that she was only inches away from a full meltdown in front of this man was probably the only thing keeping her upright and frozen in her seat.
She knew she should never have got in this car with him.
She had no more control over her anxieties than she’d possessed this morning before the flight, when she’d knelt over the porcelain bowl at home in her flat and lost her breakfast.
Dieu, what if she was sick again? In this car? He wouldn’t be kind. There wasn’t a kind bone in his body.
There was a click, and Lulu realised he’d opened his door.
