by Fiona Brand
He recalled the expression on Carla’s face when she had found the engagement ring he had ordered for Lilah, her stricken comment that Constantine had wanted Sienna enough that he had kidnapped her.
Raw emotion gripped him.
Almost the exact opposite of his behaviour.
* * *
Carla walked quickly through the lobby, which was empty except for a handful of guests checking out. She had wasted frantic minutes checking the backstage area. It had been empty of possessions, which meant either Elise or Nina had her things.
Too fragile to bear the stirring of interest she would cause by waiting inside, she avoided the concierge desk and made a beeline for the taxi stand.
Not having her medication wasn’t ideal. She hadn’t taken any last night, and now she would go most of the day without them. Antacids would have to do. She could wait out the short flight to Sydney and the taxi ride home, where there was a supply of pills in her bathroom cupboard.
A pale-faced group of guests, obviously catching an early flight out, were climbing into the only taxi waiting near the hotel entrance. Settling her gym bag down on the dusty pavement, she settled herself to wait for the next taxi to turn into the hotel pickup area.
Long seconds ticked by. She glanced in at the empty reception area, her tension growing, not because she was desperate to escape, she finally admitted to herself, but because a weak part of her still wanted Lucas to stride out and stop her from going.
Not that Lucas was likely to chase her.
Shivering in the faint chill of the air, she stared at the bleak morning sky now graying in the east as a cab finally braked to a halt beside her.
She slipped into the rear seat with her bag, requested the cab driver take her to the airport and gave the hotel entrance one last look before she stared resolutely at the road unfolding ahead.
Why would Lucas come after her, when she was giving him the thing he had always valued most in their relationship, his freedom?
* * *
Lucas caught the flash of the taxi’s taillights as it turned out of the resort driveway and the panic that had gripped him while he’d endured the slow elevator ride turned to cold fear.
Sliding his phone out of his pocket, he made a series of calls then strode back into the hotel and took the elevator to the rooftop.
Seconds later, Tiberio phoned back. He had obtained Carla’s destination from the taxi company. She was headed for Brisbane Airport. He had checked with the flight desk and she had already booked her flight out to Sydney.
The quiet, efficient way Carla had left him hit Lucas forcibly. No threats or manipulation, no smashed crockery or showy exit in a sports car, just a calm, orderly exit with her flight already arranged.
He felt like kicking himself that it had taken him this long to truly see who she was, and to understand why she was so irresistible to him. He hadn’t fallen into lust with a second Sophie. He had fallen in love for the first time—with a woman who was smart and fascinating and perfect for him.
Then he had spent the past two years trying to crush what he felt for her.
Issuing a further set of instructions, Lucas settled down to wait.
* * *
Carla frowned as the taxi took the wrong exit and turned into a sleepy residential street opposite a sports field. “This isn’t the way to the airport.”
The driver gave her an odd look in the rearview mirror and hooked his radio, which he’d been muttering into for the past few minutes, back on its rest. “I have to wait for someone.”
Carla started to argue, then the rhythmic chop of rotor blades slicing the air caught her attention. A sleek black helicopter set down on the sports field. A tall, dark-haired man climbed out, ducking his head as he walked beneath the rotor blades.
Her heart slammed in her chest. She had wanted Lucas to come after her. Contrarily, now that he was here, all she wanted to do was run.
Depressing the door handle, she pushed the door wide and groped for the cash in the side pocket of her gym bag. She shoved some money at the driver, more than enough to cover his meter, and dragged the sports bag off the backseat. A split second later the world flipped sideways and she found herself cradled in Lucas’s arms.
Her heart pounded a crazy tattoo. The strap of the sports bag slipped from her fingers as she grabbed at his shoulders. “What do you think you’re doing?”
His gaze, masked by dark glasses, seared over her face. “Kidnapping you. That’s the benchmark, isn’t it?”
Her mouth went dry at his reference to the conversation they’d had when she had listed the things Constantine had done that proved his love for Sienna. Her pulse rate ratcheted up another notch.
She stared into the remote blankness of the dark glasses, suddenly terribly afraid to read too much into his words. “If you’re afraid I’m going to do something silly or have an accident, I’m not. I’m just giving you the out you want.”
“I know. I read the note.” He placed her in the seat directly behind the pilot. “And by the way, here it is.”
He took out a piece of the hotel notepaper, tore it into pieces and tossed it into the downdraft of the blades. The scraps of paper whirled away.
“What are you doing now?” she asked as he started to walk away from the chopper.
The noise muffled his reply. “Getting your shoes and makeup and whatever else it is that makes you happy.”
Seconds later, he tossed her sports bag on the floor at her feet and belted himself in beside her.
“Where are we going?” She had to yell now above the noise from the chopper.
Lucas fitted a set of earphones over her head then donned a set himself. “A cabin. In the mountains.”
A short flight later the helicopter landed in a clearing. Within minutes the pilot had lifted off, leaving them with a box stamped with the resort’s logo on the side. Lucas picked it up. She guessed it was food.
Carla stared at the rugged surrounding range of the Lamingtons, the towering gum trees and silvery gleam of a creek threading through the valley below. “I can’t believe you kidnapped me.”
“It worked for Constantine.”
Her heart pounded at his answer. It wasn’t quite a declaration of love, but it was close.
She followed Lucas into the cabin, which was huge. With its architectural angles, sterile planes of glass and comfortable leather couches it was more like an upscale executive palace than her idea of a rustic holiday cottage.
He placed the box on a kitchen counter then began unloading what looked like a picnic lunch. A kidnapping, Atraeus-style, with all the luxury trappings.
Frustrated by his odd mood and the dark glasses, she walked outside, grabbed her sports bag and brought it into the house. She could feel herself floundering, unable to ask the questions that mattered in case the hope that had flared to life when he had bodily picked her up and deposited her in the helicopter was extinguished. “It’s not as if this is a real kidnapping.”
He stopped, his face curiously still. “How ‘real’ did you want it to be?”
Sixteen
“We’re alone. We’re together.” Lucas reached for calm when all he really wanted was to pull her close and kiss her.
But that approach hadn’t worked so far. Carla had actually tried to run from him, which had altered his game plan somewhat. Plan B was open-ended, meaning he no longer knew what he was doing except that he wasn’t going to blow this now by resorting to sex. “We can do what we should have done last night and talk this out. Have you eaten?”
“No.” She stared absently at the rich, spicy foods and freshly squeezed juice he had set out then began rummaging through her gym bag just in case there was a stray pack of antacids in one of the pockets.
Lucas, intensely aware of every nuance of expression on Carla’s face, tensed when she picked up the phone on the counter. “What’s wrong? Who are you calling?”
She frowned when the call wasn’t picked up. “Elise. She can get me some
medication I need.”
“What medication?” But suddenly he knew. The small bag of snacks she carried, her preoccupation with what she was eating and the weight loss. “You’re either diabetic or you’ve got an ulcer.”
“The second one.”
He could feel his temper soaring. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You weren’t exactly over the moon when I got ill in Thailand.”
“You had a virus in Thailand.”
“And the viral bacteria just happened to attack an area of my stomach that was still healing from an ulcer I had two years ago. Although I didn’t find that out until the ulcer perforated and I got to hospital.”
He felt himself go ice-cold inside. “You had a perforated ulcer?” For a split second he thought he must have misheard. “You could have died. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her gaze was cool. “After what happened in Thailand I didn’t want you to know I was sick again.” She shrugged. “Mom and Sienna didn’t know about you, so it was hardly likely they would call you. Why would they? You had no visible role in my life.”
That was all going to change, he thought grimly. From now on he was going to be distinctly, in-your-face visible.
He felt like kicking himself. In Thailand he had distanced himself from Carla when she was sick because the enforced intimacy of looking after her had made him want a lot more than the clandestine meetings they’d had through the year. Pale and ill, sweating and shivering, Carla hadn’t been either glamorous or sexually desirable. She had simply been his.
He had wanted to continue caring for her, wanted to keep her close. But the long hours he had spent sitting beside her bed, waiting for her fever to break, had catapulted him back to his time with Sophie.
He had not wanted her to be that important to him. He hadn’t wanted to make himself vulnerable to the kind of guilt and betrayal his relationship with Sophie had resulted in. He could admit that now.
“When was the last time you had your medication?”
She punched in another number. “Lunch, yesterday. That’s why I’m calling the resort. Either Nina or Elise can go to the suite and find my handbag, which is where I keep my MediPACKs. I’m hoping Tiberio or one of your other bodyguards could drive up with it.”
“If you think I’m taking two hours to get you the medication you need, think again.” Lucas’s cell was already in his hand. He speed dialed and bit out commands in rapid Medinian, hung up and slipped the phone back in his pocket. “Our ride will be here in fifteen minutes.”
She slipped her phone back in her handbag. “I could have waited. It’s not that bad. I just have to manage my stomach for a few weeks.”
“You might be able to wait, but I can’t. What do you think it did to me to hear that you almost died in hospital?”
“I didn’t almost die.” She grimaced. “Although it wasn’t pleasant, that’s for sure. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t used to dealing with the ulcer. It just got out of hand.”
He went still inside. “How long did you say you had the ulcer?”
“Two years or so.”
Around the time they had met. His jaw tightened at this further evidence of how blind he had been with Carla. He knew ulcers could be caused by a number of factors, but number one was stress. In retrospect, the first time they had made love and he had found out she was a virgin he should have taken a mental step back and reappraised. He hadn’t done it. He hadn’t wanted to know what might hurt or upset Carla, or literally eat away at her, because he had been so busy protecting himself.
“News flash,” she said with an attempted grin. “I’m a worrier. Can’t seem to ditch the habit.”
He reached her in two steps and hauled her close. “The woman I love collapses because she has a perforated ulcer,” he muttered, “and all you can say is that it wasn’t pleasant?”
Carla froze in Lucas’s arms and, like a switch flicking, she swung from depression and despair to deliriously happy. She stared, riveted by his fierce gaze, and decided she didn’t need to pinch herself. “You really do love me?” He had said the words last night but they had felt neutral, empty.
“I love you. Why do you think I couldn’t resist you?”
“But it did take you two years to figure that out.”
“Don’t remind me. Tell me how you ended up with the ulcer.”
“Okay, here it goes, but now you might fall out of love with me. I’m a psycho-control-freak-perfectionist. I worked myself into the ground trying to lift Ambrosi’s profile and micromanage all of our advertising layouts and pamphlets. When I started color coordinating the computer mouses and mouse pads, Sienna sent me to the family doctor. Jennifer gave me Losec and told me to stop taking everything so seriously, to lighten up and change my life. A week later, I met you.”
“And turned my life upside down.”
“I wish, but it didn’t seem that way.” She snuggled in close, unable to stop grinning, loving the way he was staring at her so fiercely. “All I knew was that I was running the relationship in the exact opposite way I wanted, supposedly to avoid stress. If you’d arrived in my life a couple of weeks early, you would have met a different woman.”
“I fell in love with you. Instantly.”
She closed her eyes and basked for just a few seconds. “Tell me again.”
“I love you,” he said calmly and, finally, he kissed her.
* * *
During the short helicopter ride, Lucas insisted on being given a crash course on her condition. When they reached the doctor’s office, which was in a nearby town, Carla took Losec and an antibiotic under the eagle eye of both the doctor and Lucas.
At Lucas’s insistence, the doctor also gave her a thorough checkup. Twenty minutes later she was given a clean bill of health.
They exited the office and strolled around to the parking lot to wait for the rental vehicle that Tiberio, apparently, had arranged to have delivered.
Lucas had kept his arm around her waist, keeping her close. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” She leaned on him slightly. Not that she needed the support, but she loved the way he was treating her, as if she was a piece of precious, delicate porcelain. She could get used to it.
Lucas cupped her face, his fingers tangling in her hair. “I need to explain. To apologize.”
Carla listened while Lucas explained about how her illness in Thailand had forced him to confront the guilt and betrayal of the past and had pushed him into a decision to break off with her.
His expression was remote. “But as you know, I couldn’t break it off completely. When Constantine told me he was marrying Sienna, I knew I had to act once and for all.”
“So you asked Lilah to accompany you to the wedding.”
“She was surprised. Before that we had only ever spoken on a business level.”
“But she guessed what was going on the night before the wedding.”
“Only because she saw us together.” He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. “I’m not proud of what I did but I was desperate. I didn’t realize I was in love with you until I read the note you left in the hotel room and discovered that you had left me. It was almost too late.”
He hugged her close for long minutes, as if he truly did not want to let her go. “I’ve wasted a lot of time. Two years.”
“There were good reasons we couldn’t be together in the beginning. Some of those reasons were mine.”
He frowned. “Reasons that suited me.”
Gripping her hands gently in his, he went down on one knee. “Carla Ambrosi, will you marry me and be the love of my life for the rest of my life?”
He reached into his pocket and produced the sky-blue diamond ring, which he must have been carrying with him all along, and gently slipped it on the third finger of her left hand.
Tears blurred Carla’s eyes at the soft gleam in Lucas’s gaze, the intensity of purpose that informed her that if she said no he would keep on asking until she was his.
/> Emotion shimmered through her, settled in her heart, because she had been his all along.
“Yes,” she said, the answer as simple as the kiss that followed, the long minutes spent holding each other and the promise of a lifetime together.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781459230361
Copyright © 2012 by Fiona Gillibrand
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