by Lucy Ellis
She turned around, pecked her mother on the cheek. ‘I love you, Maman, but I have made other arrangements.’
‘Lulu!’
She grabbed her hand luggage and ran as fast as she could in her clumpy shoes and narrow skirt—out of the room, down the stairs, across the flagstone-laid hall, out into the courtyard.
She was on the lawn when she saw him heading for the helipad.
‘Alejandro! Wait for me!’
He turned around, arms hanging loose from those broad shoulders, and Lulu had to swallow a very large lump of nerves. Because he was such a force of nature, so assured in his masculinity and determined to have his way.
Well, so was she. Determined to have her own way, that was. And she was about to take a huge leap into the unknown.
‘Why did you ask Susie about my schedule the other night?’ she shouted over the whup-whup of the blades.
‘Because I wanted to date you.’
Finally he’d said the right words.
‘I’m coming, then,’ she announced. The wind from the rotors was already destroying her carefully constructed up-do. ‘What do you think?’
‘You don’t want to know what I think, querida.’ His expression was wry. He gave a jerk of his head. ‘Get in.’
Lulu scrambled into the chopper. Fresh nerves assaulted her, but she didn’t have much choice.
They were already in the air when she thought to look down, and there on the lawn was not only her mother but Trixie and Susie too, all of them gazing skywards. Trixie was waving madly. Lulu extended her hand and waved back, feeling nothing but relief that she was leaving them and their questions behind, but as she turned to Alejandro beside her she felt a big ball of dread in her belly.
So much could go wrong.
Alejandro was looking at her as if he had her exactly where he wanted her. She guessed he did. Only she wondered where the man who had taken her so passionately on the library desk had gone, and she figured that if the idea of an unplanned pregnancy had spooked him, he needed to wait until he’d learned the truth about her.
Too much trouble. Lulu already knew that, and it was only a matter of time until he knew it too.
*
He’d known if he stopped pushing she would push herself—and she had, Alejandro thought with some satisfaction as they drew up in front of the Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires.
They were right on schedule. He would stash her here and then he could still make his meetings across town, before taking the long drive out to the estancia this afternoon.
Naturally he’d keep an eye on her—maybe they could have dinner. Probably a good idea. Discuss their options. What mattered was that she was in town, within easy reach. If she was carrying his baby he wanted to know about it.
Which didn’t explain his unease as he escorted her across the square. He was growing distinctly tense as they approached the hotel. Lulu kept looking at him with those big anxious eyes. He should probably explain the set-up.
‘You’ll be comfortable here—you’ll want for nothing, querida. You only need to pick up the phone.’
She didn’t say a word, but as they walked through the doors and into the lobby of the hotel Lulu slipped her hand into his.
It was a small gesture. No one looking on would even notice it.
Alejandro felt it like a lightning strike.
Her small fingers curled trustingly around his. His mind was back on that Edinburgh street, when she had wound her arms so tightly around his neck and her heart had beat like a trapped bird.
He halted and looked around.
‘Alejandro?’
With a nod he turned and strode back the way they’d come, dragging Lulu on her clumpy heels after him.
Alejandro knew he was behaving like a madman. But her small smooth hand in his felt as if she was squeezing something vital inside him.
‘What are we doing?’ she asked as they stepped out into the warm afternoon and the familiar sounds of his city wrapped around them.
‘Sightseeing,’ he said.
‘Really?’
Instead of being full of disbelief she was beaming up at him as if he’d promised her rubies, not blisters. He paid some attention to her shoes.
‘Are they okay for a long walk?’
She looked a little offended. ‘You forget, I’m a showgirl—I dance in heels.’
He had forgotten. Alejandro just couldn’t imagine her up on stage in a rhinestone bikini and feathers. Unclothed, she looked as if she belonged in an eighteenth-century portrait by Goya, La maja desnuda.
‘Where are we going?’
Her voice broke into his thoughts and he must have looked blank for a moment, because her forehead formed a tiny concertina of indecision.
‘Not that we have to go anywhere,’ she added. ‘Unless this is like a date or something?’
A date? It was the one thing they hadn’t had. He’d skipped it all in favour of deflowering her and possibly getting her pregnant. It was wince-inducing stuff.
He could picture the tabloid headlines: Like father, like son.
He was not his father’s son. He had long been his own man. And the press were not going to run with this story.
His hand tightened around Lulu’s.
‘Sí, like a date, Lulu.’
A slow smile curved her mouth. ‘It’s your city, Mr du Crozier. Where will we go?’
*
He showed her the historic centre of his town, its cobbled streets with their belle époque architecture. He led her into El Ateneo—once a theatre, now one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world.
‘I thought this might particularly interest you,’ he explained, standing behind her with his hands folded behind his back. ‘It was once a theatre where they danced the tango, but tastes changed in the early twentieth century. A local businessman siphoned in the funds to turn it into what you see now.’
She looked up into the domed ceiling. ‘What an amazing thing to do—it’s like a jewel box for books.’ She looked up at him. ‘I don’t know what would have happened to the club if Khaled hadn’t come along. I still shudder to think of the theatre coming down under a wrecking ball if anyone else had been in charge. But, between you and me, I think I would rather like L’Oiseau Bleu to become a bookshop. Only don’t tell Gigi.’
‘You’d be out of a job.’
‘I wouldn’t mind so much.’ She drifted towards an aisle of books, taking down some volumes on theatre costume.
She wouldn’t?
‘This is what you’re interested in?’ he asked over her shoulder, inhaling the gorgeous violet scent of her.
Lulu nodded. ‘I’ve always spent my free time at the theatre hanging around the costumiers. I find it fascinating.’ She closed the book and he took it out of her hands to re-shelve it. She turned up her face. ‘Actually, I’m starting a part-time degree in costume design.’ She hesitated, then confided, ‘You’re the first person I’ve told.’
Alejandro could see how much it meant to her by the way she searched his face, as if wanting approval.
‘That’s amazing, Lulu.’
She smiled almost shyly back at him and he had to fight the urge not to kiss her. Then her smile faded and he wondered what she was thinking.
Lulu was trying to picture herself hugely pregnant in front of a sewing machine. She guessed it could be done—other women did it all the time. But she wouldn’t be able to work. She would have to rely on…Alejandro. After all her efforts to prise herself lose from her parents she would be back where she started.
‘How are you going to fit it in with your showgirl gig?’
Lulu suspected he was implying that working nights and studying during the day wouldn’t really be her problem any more if she was pregnant.
He clearly wanted to go down that road, so she made herself smile at him and pretend nothing was the matter.
Alejandro saw the light and shadow flickering over Lulu’s face. Right now he was struggling to imagine her in a revu
e. He’d seen the Folies Bergère, and what he remembered was sparkles and bare behinds and jiggling bare breasts.
At the time he’d appreciated it.
Thinking about Lulu that way—in front of an audience of men—just made him hot under the collar.
It also didn’t fit with the private, modest girl he knew. The girl who had covered her breasts the first time he took off her bra. He blew out a breath. He really didn’t need to be thinking about that now.
Instead he looked down at her neat little outfit, at the thirties-style wide-legged green trousers and the cute little cream blouse. She’d changed on the plane en route from Heathrow to Buenos Aires. He found it sexy, but she did also look as if she might be on her way to do the school pick-up—if she was Norma Shearer.
Putting Norma aside, thinking about Lulu as a young mother wasn’t a stretch.
Not that any of that was going to happen.
‘Well, I dance six nights a week, so there’s time during the day when I can go to college. Just about.’
‘You dance six nights a week?’
‘Being a dancer isn’t for the faint-hearted,’ Lulu replied, clearly relishing proof of her hard work.
He remembered the quick assessment he’d made of her as being spoilt and helpless. He’d been so wide of the mark it made him wonder afresh at his misreading of her. He also acknowledged for the first time what a huge impact pregnancy would have on Lulu’s plans.
He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry, querida.’
‘Sorry? For what?’
‘This situation we find ourselves in. I should have taken better care of you.’
To his surprise she looked slightly irritated. ‘I was there too, Alejandro, if you remember, and nobody needs to take care of me. I can take care of myself.’
She turned away and trotted on those clumpy heels towards the doors of the bookshop and out into the busy street, not looking back to see if he followed.
He caught up with her.
‘Can’t we agree on equal responsibility for the “situation”?’ she asked less heatedly as he steered her into a nearby café, where the music was hot and the food was good.
He ordered a lemonade for Lulu and a coffee for himself.
‘Agreed.’
He didn’t agree. They hadn’t been on an equal playing field. Lulu was a rookie—he should have looked after her better.
But he watched her defensiveness fall away at his agreement and acknowledged that her independence was a point of conflict for her. He wasn’t sure why. Although after seeing her mother in action with her he could make a stab in the dark at it.
He didn’t know much about mother/daughter relationships. His own mother had been about as interested in the girls as a cat. He had only counted because he’d been the heir his grandfather had depended upon and the future source of his mother’s income.
He watched Lulu’s face as she talked earnestly about her course. It trickled through his mind that his mother might once have been like this, at the start of her modelling career, with the world before her—only to find herself a handful of years later trapped in a marriage she saw as inescapable and taking her misery out on her kids.
But Lulu talked on and on with such determination. He suspected that in the same situation as his mother she would make her own way out, bringing her children along with her.
It made him want to drag her back to the hotel and make her his again. But they weren’t doing that. They were having a drink and she was sharing her hopes and dreams, and the fact that they were so simple and yet clearly so profoundly important to her stirred a protectiveness in him he hadn’t felt about anyone except his sisters in many years.
He didn’t see why she couldn’t achieve all she wanted to. There was no reason why she shouldn’t. Except there was that slight wistfulness that crept into her voice as she talked about the various career options her course would open up. As if she might not make it.
‘So what will we be doing tonight?’
She brought him back to the here and now with that question. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be working, Lulu, out on the ranch, but I’ll drop by when I can.’
Her eyes flew to his and then dropped away.
‘I’ll organise people to take you out,’ he found himself explaining. ‘You won’t be bored.’
Her face had frozen into a little mask of pleasant indifference. ‘I’m sure I won’t,’ she said tightly, not looking at him.
She put down her glass and started stirring the lemonade with her candy-cane-striped straw.
Alejandro told himself it was for the best. He should be at a meeting right now. She should be back at the hotel.
It was time to wind this up.
‘You don’t have any luggage,’ he said instead.
‘No, not even a toothbrush.’
She looked tense, deliberately avoiding his gaze by pretending to watch the crowds go by on the footpath beyond the plate-glass windows. All of a sudden she noisily scraped back her chair.
‘I have to go to the ladies’.’
*
As Lulu dried her hands at the sink she wondered what on earth she thought she was doing.
Alejandro hadn’t mentioned this morning that he wasn’t going to be around for the next three weeks.
Which was fine, really.
At least he wouldn’t witness any of her weird behaviour. She could just sit in her hotel room…
But she wished he’d quit with the confusing messages he was sending.
He kept taking hold of her hand and making her feel like part of a couple, and he’d lulled her into a false sense of togetherness by letting her talk on and on about her plans. She’d definitely relished the opportunity, given that every time she’d seen Gigi lately the talk had always been about the wedding. But mainly it had just been nice sitting together, talking.
She shook her head. Really, he was being very careless with her feelings. Listening to her ramblings, behaving in a protective fashion, making her feel as if she was the only girl in the world. Didn’t he know all the nice gestures were making it harder for her?
No wonder she hadn’t looked for a sexual relationship before.
Sex made everything so much more complicated.
And it felt awful when it went wrong.
Because it had gone wrong. Somehow she’d misread things.
As she came out into the restaurant Alejandro’s body language caused what was left of her optimism to drop to her shoes. He looked faintly bored, sprawled in the booth with his phone open while two of the waitresses were clearing their table when it only took one. She couldn’t blame them. His long, lean muscular frame was on display in a T-shirt and jeans, but even dressed down he looked incredible, with his tousled chestnut hair falling over his temples.
She hadn’t missed the flurry of excitement as their waitresses had recognised him, nor the way Alejandro had dealt with that recognition, erecting a little wall of cool disregard that held them all at bay.
I’m not his girlfriend, she imagined herself telling the drooling girls flitting around him, but I might be carrying his child. We’re doing a test in a few weeks. Peeing on a stick.
Lulu’s pride lifted her spine.
No, she wouldn’t be spending time with him.
This wasn’t about that.
Besides, it was his loss.
Alejandro shot a couple of emails across town and looked up to see Lulu making her way back towards him.
She could at least smile at him.
He’d changed his plans for her. He’d skipped a meeting this afternoon at his office a few blocks from here, hence the explanatory emails, but he was supposed to be at the estancia right now.
She sat down. ‘I guess we can go now.’
Alejandro discovered he didn’t want to go anywhere.
She wouldn’t be alone, he reminded himself. It was the centre of Buenos Aires—the privileged centre. He’d organised a suite for her, he’d hand over a credit ca
rd, and with a gym and a pool and a health spa and the Recoleta district just outside, with its high-end boutiques, she wouldn’t be bored.
But he knew she wouldn’t use the card, and he suddenly felt a deep twist in his gut at the idea of her sitting alone in a hotel room.
She could be at this moment pregnant with his baby and he was planning to dump her in a hotel suite—like a secret he wanted to keep.
He’d be no better than his father.
That decided him—or rather her small hand creeping across the table to touch his did. He slid his fingers between hers.
‘Alejandro,’ she said, swallowing hard, but her eyes issued a challenge nonetheless, ‘I don’t want to stay in a hotel.’
‘It’s all right. I don’t want you to either. I’m taking you home with me,’ he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LULU GLANCED AT her phone again and made a face. They had been driving for several minutes down a tree-lined road through the property Alejandro’s ancestors had held for centuries—called, evocatively enough, Luna Plateada, Silver Moon, after the stallion his Scots-born ancestor had brought across the seas two hundred years ago.
‘It’s just my mother,’ she said, when he asked her what was wrong.
She hadn’t even realised she was frowning.
‘Maybe you should put that away,’ he suggested. ‘We’re here.’
Lulu looked up and she knew in that moment she’d bitten off more than she could chew as she saw the villa looming up ahead. It was a colonial-style mansion that spoke of money and history.
It was also a working farm. She’d seen the horses grazing in the home paddocks, and now they drove past brick stables and various outbuildings into the courtyard.
Lulu took a steadying breath and kept her eyes down as Alejandro escorted her inside.
There was a lake behind the house. She saw this because there were glass windows everywhere and an expansive feel to the house, as if it were open to the outdoors. Moorish arches linked the entrance hall to various other rooms.
Lulu felt a vertiginous sense of dislocation, but countered it by pressing her back up against the wall as she stopped in one of the archways.
