Clare Connelly Pairs: Warming the Sheikh’s Bed & Love in the Fast Lane

by Connelly , Clare

“You left me six months ago. You told me to move on. I did. I have.” She sucked in a deep breath, her heart bursting in her chest. “Exactly when did you have this epiphany and decide we should be together?”

  “Six months ago,” he stated firmly.

  She felt as though someone was slowly electrifying her. From the tips of her fingers to the soles of her feet, her body began to shake. “What?”

  “As soon as I walked out the door I knew it was a mistake.”

  “But…you didn’t call me.”

  “No. And you didn’t call me.”

  She shook her head slowly, her eyes were wet with unshed tears. “This is completely unfair. You can’t just… do this to me. Again! I was over you. Then I wasn’t. Then I was. And now you’re trying to mess my life up… again.”

  He closed the distance between them, his eyes running over her body and face, eating her with his stare. “Do you love him?”

  “Alec?” She frowned. For the briefest of moments, she thought about lying. But that wouldn’t be fair to anyone; least of all Alec. “No.”

  He had guessed as much, but having it confirmed was the sweetest thing he could have hoped for. “Does he love you?”

  “No,” she said with almost complete confidence. She lowered her gaze, unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t think so. It’s not serious.”

  He pressed his lips to hers, taking her by utter surprise. He pushed her against the wall of the house, using his leg to separate hers, holding her wrists prisoners in one hand. He kissed her until her toes tingled and her breath was forced. He kissed her until her muscles were weak and her body sagged. Were it not for the wall of the cottage and the weight of his body, she would have collapsed in a heap at his feet.

  Her insides were churned by desire, as she felt everything she was and wanted slip into place.

  “Do you want this?”

  She moaned against his lips, and nodded with slow desperation.

  “Do you want me?”

  Oh, she did. So badly. She nodded again.

  He stepped back, running a hand across his stubbled chin. “Then end things with Alec. Do it by the end of the wedding, or I will do it for you.”

  She opened her mouth to object but he lifted a finger to her lips to silence her.

  “You are mine, Aurora Jones, and always have been. The sooner you accept that, the better it will be for everyone.”

  He stalked back towards the water, leaving her staring after him, like a person who was completely lost out of time and place.

  He turned around once he’d unlooped the boat from the tree.

  “Well? Are you with me?”

  He was talking about more than just the return trip across the lake, and they both knew it. For the third time in a matter of minutes, she nodded. She took a step towards the boat, and towards a future that no longer felt safe or certain. Except for one detail. Leonardo was in it, front and center. Everything else would just have to work itself out.

  7

  “Dance with me.” Not a question. A statement. A statement because he knew the answer. He knew that a single look was enough to make her body quiver. That she had never been particularly good at saying no to him, but that now it was utterly impossible.

  She put a hand in his, and felt shocks of electricity burst through her system at the simple, polite contact.

  “You were a beautiful bridesmaid.”

  “Maid of Honor,” Aurora corrected with a small smile. “Thank you. You’re not looking too bad yourself.”

  Leonardo’s hand on the small of her back was warm, pressing her to him with a gentle pressure, as the band played a slow ballad. She lifted her face to stare into his eyes, and felt as though the heavens were swallowing her. His chin was stubbled, his cheekbones prominent in his tanned face. She flicked her gaze away, aware that she was in danger of making a scene.

  “Have you talked to him?”

  Her heart turned over in her chest. “Not yet.”

  “Having doubts, S.B?”

  Her eyes flew to his again, her face was pale. “Doubts? I’m riddled with them.”

  “Are you? Strange, when I am so certain.” His voice was a deep husk. Slowly, his fingers moved up and down her lower back, sending riots of sensation tumbling through her.

  “How can you be? When we’ve already tried this once?” She cleared her throat and focussed on something over his shoulder. “I never told you why I quit modelling.”

  “I presume the endless travel and bitching and early starts and late nights finally wore thin.”

  “No.” She bit down on her lip, and tried to organise her thoughts. Resolutely, she kept her eyes averted. “I started having panic attacks. They were set off by the lights at shows. The noise. The people.” She felt him stiffen; his hand froze on her back. “Photographic work was worse. A camera right in my face. People touching me. I couldn’t bear it.”

  When he spoke, Leonardo’s voice was strangely disconnected. “This was because of me?” Her eyes flew to his.

  “Not because of you, per se. The doctor I saw said it was a reaction to your accident. To our break up.” She dropped her gaze. The penetrating sympathy in his dark stare was soul-destroying.

  He shook his head slowly. When he spoke, his voice rang with quiet disbelief. “But you were photographed constantly. Out at nightclubs, openings, with a host of different men. You seemed… thrilled… from what I could tell.”

  Her throat ached. “I was fine so long as I’d pounded a bottle of champagne before leaving the flat.”

  He lifted a hand and cupped her cheek, but she pulled away sharply.

  “You’re not listening to me.” She swallowed. “I can’t go through another break up with you. Loving you and losing you was just about the hardest thing I can imagine ever having to go through. If we do this, I feel like I’m opening myself up to that all over.”

  A muscle ticked in this jaw, as he looked at the woman he had loved since he’d first seen her. Loved, and yet wounded so badly, by the only other passion he had in life: his racing.

  “I can’t make this decision for you.”

  She blinked, her eyes filling with warm, salty tears. “I don’t need you to make my decision for me. I need you to promise me that you’ll never hurt me again. That you’ll never get hurt again like you were in Germany.” She closed her eyes and took in a fortifying breath. “I came so close to losing you.”

  “You lost me by choice,” he drawled, a hard note of cynicism to his voice. “You walked away from me when I needed you most.”

  Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “You don’t need anyone.”

  He pressed a finger to her chin, lifting her heart shaped face to his. “Guess again. I need you.” Her eyes clung to his face; she needed to know it was true.

  “Enough to quit racing?”

  His expression flickered momentarily, hardening beneath her eyes, before it relaxed again. “Enough to make sure you know, every day, that what we share is real and unavoidable.”

  “I know how unavoidable it is.” Hadn’t they been trying for years?

  “Then stop avoiding it.” He whispered with mock severity, lowering his face so that his mouth was only a whisper from hers. “Come with me to Australia tomorrow.”

  “Australia?”

  “Melbourne.”

  Of course. The Grand Prix. A chill ran down her spine.

  “Aurora.” Alec appeared, handsome in his tuxedo, his face quietly watchful. “Mind if I cut in?”

  She felt Leonardo stiffen and knew he was fighting an inner-battle; a desire to object. To stake his claim. A barbaric need to assert his possession of Aurora. And so she forced an easy smile to her face and stepped out of his arms. “Of course.” She blinked a warning look at Leonardo.

  As she brushed past him, he caught her hand, and whispered in her ear, “Tell him, Aurora. Tell him now.”

  She shook her hand free forcefully and smiled more brightly at Alec. “Are you having a good night?” She asked hi
m, as he put an arm around her waist and took her free hand in his.

  “Weddings are weddings.” He grinned. “Though I’ve never been to one with quite this level of organisation.”

  Aurora laughed, looking around for their mutual best friends. They were dancing cheek to cheek. In the middle of perhaps one hundred revellers, they were completely alone. “Beatrice could do this for a living.”

  “If she didn’t have a trust fund the size of a country waiting for her, you mean.”

  Aurora didn’t respond, but she kept her smile in place. She’d long ago given up any interest in the financial backgrounds from which people heralded. Despite the fact her parents barely had two pennies to rub together, she’d become one of the highest paid models in the world. She protected her privacy fiercely though; and had sued newspapers in the past for printing details of her modelling fees. She believed, therefore, that everyone was entitled to a similar protection and shrugged. “She has a talent for organisation.”

  “Perhaps she’ll arrange your wedding for you?”

  It was the perfect opening. So why did she hesitate? To acknowledge to Alec that she was wading back into the terror filled landscape of loving Leonardo Fontana was a death knell to her own future sanity. She knew it, and Alec would know it. And she couldn’t debate the matter until she had her own feelings straight.

  “You know, if you dance with Leonardo like that, Beatrice is going to think you’re sleeping with him.”

  Her eyes flew to his in confusion. “Like what? What were we dancing like?”

  “As though you wanted to rip each other’s clothes off,” he responded quietly, a note of frustration in his voice.

  “We weren’t,” she denied, though her insides were still quivering from Leonardo’s seductive touch at her back.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  She sighed. “Not really.”

  “Then don’t do it.” His smile was disarming, and a flop of brown hair fell over his eyes as he lowered his head, so that he could whisper in her ear. “There are far better prospects for you, you know.”

  She shook her head, striving to keep things light. “Are there?”

  “You know there are.”

  “Alec…” She exhaled, her beautiful face unknowingly shadowed by the seriousness of her thoughts. “I think we need to talk.”

  “Uh oh. No conversation that starts with that invitation ends with good news.”

  She nodded. “I know. Still. I think it’s important.”

  She stopped swaying in time to the music.

  Alec nodded, finally, and took her hand in his. “You really want to do this?”

  Not really. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Come on.”

  He led them away from the dance floor, towards the marquee. He paused briefly to scoop up two empty glasses and a bottle of champagne from an attended bar.

  “Not here.” She shook her head. “There’s another garden.”

  She moved ahead of him, pulling him behind, as she skirted the side of the house.

  “Where are you taking us to? The orient?” He grumbled after several minutes’ walk.

  “In a manner of speaking,” she said with a grin.

  “Seriously, Aurora, can we not just speak here? It’s perfectly private.”

  “Shhh. You’ll like this.”

  They emerged into the Japanese garden just a moment later. A spectacular triumph to the Victorians’ obsession with the formal style of the mysterious East; the garden was surrounded by topiaried bushes, a small running stream and waterfall, enormous goldfish and a white gravel garden that rendered the walker Zen by its presence alone.

  “Woah. What is this place?”

  “It’s called the Shinzoto garden. It was designed for a visiting ambassador from Japan, in the fifties.” She ran her hands over a thick bristled bush, enjoying the sensation of spikes against her skin. “After the war, Beatrice’s great grandparents wanted to show the diplomat that they were amenable to continuing their trade relationship. Despite the war. This was a sort of statement to that.”

  He looked around quietly. “It’s very beautiful.”

  “I know. I’ve always felt so at peace here.”

  “And how do you know so much about it?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He poured the champagne he’d brought into the glasses and leaned the bottle against a tree stem. He crossed the distance to her quickly and passed a glass to her. “I mean, do you know about Beatrice’s great grandparents because she told you? Or because Leonardo Fontana did?”

  “Oh.” She shifted a little. “That’s what I need to speak to you about.”

  Alec lifted a finger and pressed it against her lips. “Hang on a moment, Aurora. I think I know what you’re going to say. Let me go first.”

  Above them, the perfect Summer evening was decorated by a thousand sparkles in the ink colored sky. She looked at it now, wondering if ancient Gods of Roman times were staring at her, enjoying her predicament. She sipped the champagne and sighed.

  “We’ve been hanging out. And it’s great. But I know that you have a history with Fontana. I knew that all along.” He clinked his glass against hers in a silent cheers. “I didn’t expect to fall in love with you.”

  “Oh, God.” She closed her eyes. “Alec, please don’t. Please don’t tell me you care for me like that.”

  His smile was sincere. “Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?” He lifted a finger and ran it along her lips. It was like a slug crawling against her mouth. She instinctively pulled away in revulsion, on the pretence of sipping her champagne. She drained the entire flute in one movement. “Aurora, it isn’t just that you’re stunning, though you are. In the future, poets will recite verses dedicated to your beauty and grace. And the best thing is, you don’t seem to give a shit. You would rather hang out in a tracksuit, watching football with me, than dressing up in a cocktail dress and going to a fancy party. You are smart, and you are interesting and you have pretty much been all I could think about since the first night I met you.”

  Two spectacular declarations of love in one evening. It might have been Beatrice’s wedding night but it was Aurora who felt totally overwhelmed by adoration. She lifted her hands to Alec’s chest. “But I told you… I mean… I was honest with you. That first day… I told you that I was in love with someone else.”

  “No. You didn’t.” His smile would have been disarming if she were in any place to be disarmed. “You told me that you had been in love with someone once.”

  She frowned. It was six months in the past. The details weren’t clear. “I… I meant that I still love him. That I did then. That I do now. That I always will.”

  He handed his champagne flute to her and took her empty one. “Haven’t you had fun with me?”

  “Of course I have.” She put an arm on his shoulder solicitously. “I consider you a valuable friend.”

  “So what?” He asked quietly. “You’re going to get back with a guy you already know it won’t work with. Again?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shake of her head. “I know that I can’t let him go though.”

  “I don’t believe this,” he snapped, his lips white around the edges from tension. “Why would someone like you turn yourself into a victim?”

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, to hide her surprise. “A victim? I don’t see it that way.”

  “Then you’re as blind as you are stunning.”

  “With all due respect, you’ve got no idea.”

  He pressed his lips together. “What is he doing for you? Is he going to give up racing? How is he going to meet your needs?”

  His question was reasonable, but Aurora shook her head. “I don’t think we should talk about this now. It’s Beatrice’s wedding. She’ll be missing me.”

  “She can miss you a moment more.” He spoke to her more firmly than she’d known possible.

  “What’s going on, Alec? I’ve never seen you l
ike this before.”

  “And I’ve never seen you make such a God-awful mistake before.”

  “That’s really none of your business.” His voice was deep, his tone unmistakably menacing. Aurora watched in silence as Leonardo cut across the garden with a confident, predatorial gait. “Aurora has told you her feelings and wishes. Respect them.”

  “Or what?” Alec took a step towards Leonardo, his intention clear. He lifted a hand, preparing to swing a fist at the taller man’s face, and Aurora cried out, moving between them. If Leonardo’s reflexes were not so quick, the fist would have connected with her chest. But he held out a hand and easily grabbed Alec’s punch in his palm.

  “I understand you’re upset, but that’s the only free pass I’ll give you. Try to hit me again, and you’ll regret it.”

  Aurora felt herself begin to shake as the reality of her predicament seeped through her mind. “Both of you stop it. Please.”

  “You have told him. It is over.”

  “It’s not over,” she said in exasperation to Leo. “It’s not over because there’s nothing to be over. We are friends. That’s all. Alec, I’m sorry that I didn’t speak to you sooner. I guess I knew you had feelings for me that were different to mine for you, but I didn’t want to lose your friendship. That was selfish and wrong and I’m really sorry.”

  Alec shook his head. “You’re crazy.” He threw his hands in the air. “Whatever. Do me a favour though, Aurora. Forget my number. Don’t call me. You were right just now. Whatever it is we are is over.”

  She watched him go with true emotion. Alec was gone, but Leonardo was there to receive the full brunt of her frustration. “Why did you come here? Didn’t you think I could handle things on my own?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I saw you coming this way and when you didn’t reappear, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “That I was okay? Why did you think I wouldn’t be? What did you think was going on? God, did you think we were making out or something? That I wanted to try Alec out before deciding for sure which of you I wanted?” She pushed at his chest, and he took it without complaint. “I wanted to make this work. I wanted to keep on a good footing with Alec. I like him. Don’t you understand that?”