Pride After Her Fall

by Lucy Ellis

  She was falling in love with him, and there could be no coming back from that. And if love was a voyage they were sailing into uncharted waters this morning.

  Last night he had taken her hands and shown her the secrets of his body, almost intimidating in its muscular perfection but, like hers, telling stories.

  He was marked all over with nicks and cuts, old scars from his years on the track that weren’t always obvious until she touched him, ran her palms and fingertips over his back and hip, the long developed muscle of his quadriceps, and right there she had felt the groove in his flesh where he’d told her he’d had cartilage removed after a smash in Italy.

  ‘Got adventurous on a corner and ended up upside down,’ as he’d casually put it, ‘with some wreckage in my leg.’

  Yet last night on the beach outside a restaurant, when she had tried to ask him about himself, what drove him, he’d diverted her by hitting her most touchy subject: Raymond. In bed he had diverted again, by leading her directly to his physical scars, deftly hiding what lay beneath.

  She wondered if he was always like this with women—stripping them bare of their secrets but managing to keep his own wound up nice and tight.

  But she found she didn’t want to think about other women, his past, because it didn’t matter to her. She wanted only to be in the moment, because she could trust that. Looking beyond, not knowing what was coming, instinctively frightened her.

  ‘My grandmaman never let me buy ice creams when I was a little girl,’ she confessed, licking the final scrap off the inner rim of the cone. ‘She said ice cream should be eaten in a bowl with a spoon at a table. Preferably without your elbows touching any surfaces.’

  ‘She sounds like an old dragon.’

  ‘Non, she was always very sweet, just set in her ways. She raised me, you know, from when I was thirteen and started boarding school. I always came home to her in the holidays. She made it her mission in life to improve me.’

  ‘What needed improving?’

  ‘My manners. I was a total barbarian—you have no idea.’

  She crunched the cone between her teeth.

  Nash grinned and she offered him his own bite.

  ‘Clearly still a barbarian.’ She laughed, covering her mouth. ‘I had to learn early how to behave myself in public. Grandmaman was quite well-known in our parts. She was photographed by Cecil Beaton in her day, you know. She was an amazing beauty.’

  ‘I see where it comes from,’ said Nash, those blue eyes scanning her face.

  Lorelei shrugged off the compliment. ‘Looks fade. She would have preferred to be an artist herself, but she was a wonderful patron. She drew artists, writers, musicians to our house. Quite a circle. Her third husband, my grandpère, left her a fortune and she set up the Aviary Foundation, a gallery in town and a charity to raise money for various causes. When the accident put paid to any hopes I had of a riding career she gave me new purpose, put me on the board of the Aviary where I’ve been ever since.’

  ‘Your career, in effect?’

  ‘Ah, oui, sometimes it feels that way. Although I’ve tried to keep the charity separate from my everyday life. It’s not always easy.’

  She paused, realising she’d gone wading into deeper waters. But she wanted to talk about this. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d accused her of last night, or what he’d said back in Monaco when he’d cancelled their date.

  ‘Despite what you think, Nash, I don’t date the men I deal with through the charity. I don’t blur those lines.’

  ‘Yeah…about that, Lorelei…’

  He looked gratifyingly uncomfortable and it pleased a hurt little part of her.

  ‘About that, Nash…?’ she prompted.

  ‘I was out of line. I apologise.’

  ‘Do you?’ Suddenly their easy camaraderie seemed forced. Her insecurities backed up in her throat.

  She so wanted this man’s understanding and approval, and it left her wide open to being hurt. All of a sudden she wasn’t sure she could do that. But nor was she sure she had a choice any more.

  Last night everything had changed for her.

  ‘I was trying to work out how you lived your life. I was—’ He broke off, as if he knew the more he said the deeper he’d be digging himself a hole.

  Lorelei made a gesture of cessation. ‘Perhaps we should just leave it at the apology.’

  But his eyes flashed up and darkened on hers. ‘I was jealous,’ he said flatly.

  Her heartbeat sped up. ‘Ah, oui?’

  ‘Thinking about you with another man kills me.’

  He said it as if it was being ripped out of him without anaesthetic, but he looked her in the eye and Lorelei found she was swaying a little with the impact of his words.

  She lowered her lashes.

  ‘Nothing to say, Lorelei?’

  ‘Why, Nash, don’t think about it, then.’ She lifted her gaze and gave him a little smile.

  ‘Not exactly what I was looking for,’ he responded, but his eyes were warm.

  Feeling a little breathless, she reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. ‘That is nice to hear, Nash. Some not very nice things were intimated about me in the papers around the time of Raymond’s trial. I think the journalists were just looking for dirt.’

  ‘It sells papers,’ said Nash grimly.

  Oui, he would know. She was talking to a man who had spent more than a decade dodging the paparazzi.

  ‘I hope I never have to go through that again. Five weeks in Paris for the trial, and every morning I opened the paper there would be another story.’ Lorelei shuddered delicately.

  Nash was frowning. She wondered what he was thinking. Had he read any of those stories? She didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to think about it any more. But she did want to clear the air.

  ‘All of these men I was supposed to be involved with—I was on Yurovsky’s yacht last summer with at least fifteen other women, one of them his girlfriend at the time, and as for Damiano, I’ve known him since I was a teenager. It’s never been romantic.’

  ‘You don’t need to explain your past to me,’ he said roughly, but she could see the satisfaction curling like smoke in his eyes.

  He was jealous?

  ‘Au contraire, Nash, I’ve told you a great deal about my past and you’ve told me so little. I think you have a habit of privacy.’

  ‘You want to hear about other women?’

  Lorelei made a dismissive gesture. ‘Eh, bien, you will not be serious about this! Why don’t you keep your important secrets, then?’

  He leaned in and pushed her rogue curl behind her ear.

  ‘What do you want to know, Lorelei?’

  She brightened. ‘We could start with something I asked you about last night—about your scars. You said you show them every time you race. What did you mean?’

  The amusement dropped away from his expression and he rocked back on his heels.

  ‘I know it’s probably very complicated,’ she persevered, ‘but I’d like to know why you do what you do…’

  ‘Complicated?’ he said with a humourless smile. ‘No, sweetheart, it’s incredibly simple. It’s in the blood. My old man, John Blue, worked in pit crews around the world and dragged us with him.’

  ‘Ah, an international childhood.’

  ‘Yeah, you could say that.’

  He was quiet for a moment, but Lorelei waited. She sensed she’d just glimpsed the tip of an almighty iceberg.

  ‘Mum walked out when I was barely more than a baby. Couldn’t take the lifestyle, couldn’t take the old man. Can’t blame her.’

  He turned away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets, bunching his shoulders.

  ‘She left us boys with Dad,’ he said, looking away down the beach as if scanning for something. ‘He was a drunk and a bully and he made our lives a living hell. Until one day when Jack—my older brother—was big enough to climb behind the wheel of a car and he started us both rally driving. Jack was good, but I was bett
er.’

  She didn’t quite understand. ‘You raced for your papa?’

  ‘No, I raced in spite of my old man.’ His voice was taut and stripped of emotion. ‘He had world-class dreams and I was going to fulfil them for him. The minute I signed with Ferrari I cut contact with him.’

  Lorelei suppressed a shiver. He hadn’t shown this side to her. She imagined it was this single mindedness that had made him so very good at what he did and a very wealthy man.

  ‘You took your revenge?’ she said quietly, uncertain as to how she felt about that.

  ‘No, I survived.’

  It was a terse statement, to the point, and it chilled her to the bone.

  ‘You didn’t abandon your old man,’ he said suddenly, meeting her eyes, and she could see he’d shut down again, ‘I admire that.’

  ‘Non.’ The negative was pushed from her instinctively. She rejected his statement with her entire body. ‘Don’t admire me. My mother wasn’t there for me either, but my father didn’t drink or make my life hell—at least not on purpose. He loved me. How could I abandon him? I couldn’t abandon someone I love.’

  Nash was watching her as if her words were flicks of a knife.

  ‘Good,’ he said with finality, and she knew the subject was closed, ‘I’m glad he loves you. You deserve that, Lorelei.’

  Meaning he didn’t? Lorelei wanted to offer him something, but she had a strong feeling whatever she did in this moment would be rejected. He was a man driven by demons and it was all too possible she had come too late into his life to make any difference at all.

  With a sudden movement Nash bounded up onto the sea wall beside her, offering her his hand. Standing over her, he was once more the solid, take-charge guy who made the world seem a less chaotic, threatening place when she was with him.

  ‘Enough of the past. I want to show you the mountains this afternoon. We’ll take the Jeep up.’

  *

  Later that evening over dinner she asked him the question that had been bothering her most. ‘That accident you were in, in Italy, is that why you got out of the sport?’

  Nash shook his head. ‘You’d think so, but no.’ His voice was quiet and deep and sure. The rose candlelight cut into the restaurant walls, lining his dark head in gold. ‘My take on it is I don’t have any dependants. If I killed myself racing at least I’d leave the world doing something I loved.’

  Lorelei almost choked on her mouthful of wine, a little stunned by his matter-of-factness. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘I’m not planning on careening off the track any time soon, Lorelei.’

  ‘No, but—’ She broke off helplessly, wondering if he actually knew how empty he had made his life sound. ‘What about your brother Jack?’ she prompted.

  Nash said nothing, began cutting into his steak.

  ‘What about me?’ The moment the words passed her lips she couldn’t believe she’d been so gauche. ‘What I mean to say is, if anything happened to you I’d be heartbroken.’ She gave him a small smile to lighten the impact.

  He reached for his iced water. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  Lorelei had the urge to rub the spot in her chest that had gone suddenly cold.

  ‘Something must have made you stop,’ she said, her voice a lot less confident.

  He put down his glass. ‘My brother Jack is an alcoholic, like the old man. He let his business slide, lost his wife, gambled away his life. He thought he had nothing more to live for. Six years ago I walked into a hospital room in Sydney and I barely recognised him. I’d been racing professionally for eight years, and I’d been back once.’

  Nash met her eyes. ‘His ex-wife told me I was to blame. Jack always wanted the career, but I was the one who got the talent. So I quit racing. I moved back to Sydney and I lived with him for a year. Got his business back on its feet, went every day to AA with him and made sure he was okay. I owed it to him. He got me to university. He’s my brother. And he hates me.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘The talent and the luck. To my old man I was a meal ticket, and my brother was convinced I stole what should have been his. In my family nobody works. The joke is I’ve worked hard all my life to get where I am. That’s what I do. I work. I came back to Europe and I sold the design for Blue 11, and part of the reason I did it was because I wanted to show them it was more than luck, more than being able to hold a car on the road at speed.’

  His expression was grim. ‘It should have been enough for me, but it wasn’t. I love to race. And now I don’t have to prove anything. To the old man, to Jack, even to myself. I don’t want to lose it a second time.’

  Lorelei was quiet. Finally she said, ‘Hence the comeback?’

  ‘You picked up on that the other night at dinner?’

  ‘It was hard not to. I was at the table, Nash.’

  He put his hands palm-down on the table, giving her a wry smile. ‘Have I ever told you, you do have a world-class ass, Ms St James?’

  ‘Several times,’ she replied dryly, dabbing at the tears in the corners of her eyes, then offering up her most beguiling smile. He deserved it after that. ‘I think you should take me home and I’ll show it to you.’

  Nash pushed back his chair, raised his hand for the cheque.

  *

  Lorelei lay with her head on his chest, her mind full of the story he had told her. She knew it was selfish, but she couldn’t help wishing he wasn’t staging this comeback—because it was going to have repercussions on their fledgling relationship.

  ‘Why now, Nash? Why race now?’

  His voice was heavy, relaxed. ‘Like I told you, I started out racing in spite of my father. Now I race for myself.’

  ‘But why now in particular?’ she pursued.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He yawned. ‘At the risk of sounding New Agey, I’ve been feeling a lack in my life and I know racing will fill that.’

  ‘What sort of lack?’

  Nash chuckled. ‘Not the sort you’re imagining, Lorelei.’

  A little frustrated, she lifted her chin. ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Yeah…’ his smile was lazy ‘…I do. I’m thirty-four. All anyone’s going to be asking over the coming months before I start winning any flags is whether it’s an early midlife crisis.’

  ‘You’re confident of winning?’

  He gave her that very male look she was already familiar with. It was a redundant question. He was confident about everything, and he always won.

  She sat up. ‘During the early months of my rehabilitation the thing that got me out of bed was the desire to get back in the saddle. It was only when I realised I couldn’t go back to competitive riding that I found the emptiness resided not in the fulfilment of a dream but in the absence of anything else in my life.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘So what’s in your life now?’ he asked, his voice deceptively lazy.

  But Lorelei knew him well enough to catch the watchfulness in those blue eyes viewing her from beneath heavy lids.

  You.

  The rush of feeling overwhelmed her. She wanted to be enough for him.

  She wanted to stand in for racing.

  She wanted him to realise what an extraordinary man he was, and for once to stop pushing himself.

  She wanted a great deal she probably couldn’t have.

  ‘I have my work,’ she said diffidently.

  ‘Yeah, the charity.’

  ‘No, my horses…’ she began with a little frown.

  ‘You have horses?’

  ‘Oui, two, I stable them at Allards.’

  ‘So you still ride?’

  ‘Whenever I can.’ She hesitated, then went on the offensive. ‘So what are you lacking in your life, Nash?’

  ‘Me?’ He looked amused. ‘I’m just easily bored.’

  ‘I’ll have to come up with some ways of keeping you from being bored, then,’ she said softly, and slid forward over him, her curls falling down to
brush over his chest in the way he liked. His eyes met hers, and all that banked heat made the blood pool in her thighs and pelvis. ‘I’ve got a few ideas.’

  She knew how to make a man want her, trip over his feet to get to her, but it had never been about that with Nash. From the moment he had put his hand on her shoulder outside the hotel and told her he would handle it, rushed to her rescue like a valiant knight, she’d been off-centre with him. She had always looked after herself, knowing all too well how unreliable men could be. She had given Nash access to the vulnerable heart of hers and made him her lover, and right now she knew there should be more.

  For the first time in her life she wanted more.

  ‘Isn’t this comeback supposed to be hush-hush?’ she asked

  He cupped her bottom. ‘I think I’m safe.’

  Lorelei kissed him. He was telling her he trusted her, that he accepted her right to know and she had his respect.

  ‘Besides,’ he said complacently as she kissed her way down his body, her bare bottom resting back on his thighs, ‘we’re releasing a timed leak on Monday. By Wednesday the media will be all over it.’

  Lorelei felt as if he’d yanked a rug out from under her.

  Her head came up. He wasn’t saying he trusted her at all. He was just saying the timing made it irrelevant. She tried to ignore the crumpling in her chest.

  ‘What’s happening Wednesday?’ she asked, feeling a little sidelined.

  ‘A press conference,’ he replied calmly, stroking her thighs, ‘and then lockdown.’

  ‘What’s lockdown?’

  ‘Training.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘The circuit.’

  ‘A lot of travel?’

  ‘For the next year.’

  He sat up, and she gave a gasp as he flipped her onto her belly and began placing hot kisses down her spine, over the rounded curves of her bottom.

  ‘Perhaps I can fly in?’ she suggested, feeling a little stunned.

  ‘I’d enjoy that,’ he said, tracing one quivering buttock.

  ‘Would you?’ she said a little sharply.

  Nash put his mouth to her ear. ‘Your visits would be most welcome.’

  She waited for him to ask her to go with him.

  He didn’t.