by India Grey
Not to this one there wasn’t, she thought sadly. Not as far as her husband was concerned, anyway.
Tristan came back in the early afternoon, bringing a blast of crisp autumn air into the warm room as well as several expensive-looking carrier bags. Dropping them by the door, he sauntered over to the bed, slipping off his jacket as he did so and throwing it onto a chair.
Dozing in bed with Don Quixote, Lily felt her stomach instantly melt with desire. It was as if in the short amount of time he’d been out she’d already forgotten how incredibly handsome he was.
Incredibly handsome, and incredibly…powerful. His presence filled the room, changing the atmosphere from one of peaceful languor to that peculiar kind of sinister stillness that preceded a thunderstorm.
‘What are you reading?’
‘Don Quixote,’ she muttered, feigning sudden interest in page thirty seven, which she’d already attempted to read about four times that morning. Anything to avoid having to confront his raw, menacing beauty.
He gave a short, scornful laugh. ‘How appropriate. The ultimate romantic idealist.’
Lily put the book down, bending her head so that he wouldn’t see the hurt on her face. ‘You’ve been gone ages,’ she said lightly, simply trying to make conversation, but as soon as she’d said the words she regretted them. He turned, pacing moodily back towards the bags he had left by the door.
‘It was business,’ he said tersely. ‘I had a meeting that I couldn’t miss.’ The words were innocuous enough but tension screamed from every line of his lean body as he scooped up the bags and tossed them onto the bed beside her. ‘I stopped on the way home to pick these up for you.’
Hesitantly Lily reached out and pulled the first bag towards her. It was made of the sort of stiff, shiny card that would make Scarlet swoon with delight and as she glanced tentatively inside all she could see was tissue paper. It crackled like the static she could feel in the air as she pulled out the delicate parcel.
‘What is it?’
He came towards her, undoing the top two buttons of his shirt with sharp, stabbing movements. Lily felt her breath stall.
‘Have a look.’
She wanted to, but that meant tearing her eyes away from the strip of olive skin that was being revealed at his throat. Blindly her fingers fumbled with the paper, until they met cool, slippery satin. She looked down.
The dress was the colour of old ivory, or bone. For a moment she just gazed down at it lying against her bare legs, looking almost incongruously expensive and precious in the rumpled chaos of the bed.
‘Tristan, it’s beautiful…but why?’
A guilt present? Had the meeting that was so important been with one of his women…his mistresses? That would explain the dangerous tension that lay just beneath the surface, and the glitter in his eyes.
‘Because you didn’t get your white dress yesterday.’
Lily felt her eyes sting with the threat of sudden tears. He had done it again. Every time she just about convinced herself that she could live by his cold rules and keep her own treacherous feelings hidden he brought her resolve crashing down by doing something unexpectedly, unfairly lovely. Slowly unfolding her cramped legs, she got unsteadily to her feet, so that she was standing on the bed in her tiny vest top and knickers and holding the dress up against her. It was simple and exquisite—short and close-fitting with a low neckline that swept almost from shoulder to shoulder. She let it fall again and walked across the tangle of covers towards him and bent down to wrap her arms around his neck.
‘Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.’
Raised up by the height of the bed, her stomach was almost level with his face and for a second she felt him rest his head against it. Then he stiffened, pulling away and turning his back on her.
‘Actually I did. You’ll need something to wear tonight, and I wasn’t sure you would have brought anything smart enough.’
‘Smart enough for what?’
He turned back to face her, and the expression on his face made her heart stop. She wasn’t sure whether it made her want to run away from him, or to take him in her arms as she had done that night in the tower.
‘A black tie reception for a few European chancellors and bankers at El Paraiso.’
‘El Paraiso?’ she echoed, her heart sinking.
‘My parents’ house.’
There was something oddly flat in the way he said the words, as if he was being very careful not to let any feeling seep into them. Lily remembered him standing in the garden at Stowell the evening she’d told him about the pregnancy. I have no choice about the family I was born into, he’d said, and his voice had vibrated with all the emotion he was being so careful to keep in check now.
‘Ah,’ she said softly, stepping down from the bed and walking towards him with a demure smile. ‘A black-tie reception for Europe’s major financiers, and meeting your parents. Sounds like a fun evening. I can see now why the “gorgeous-dress-as-bribe” was necessary, because otherwise I might just decide I need to catch up on some of the sleep we missed out on last night and spend the evening in bed.’
She came to a standstill in front of him, looking up at him without really lifting her head. He seemed so tall, so very lean and strong and well muscled, but somehow that just seemed to emphasise the hollowness in his eyes. There was a bitter edge to his smile.
‘Not a chance. Technically you’re my wife now, remember?’
‘Of course.’ She placed her hands flat against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. Her whole body ached with the longing to put her arms round him and soothe away the tension, but she already understood him well enough to know that he was too proud to lower his guard for such an obvious approach.
Wide-eyed, she looked up at him. ‘And as your wife,’ she said very gravely, ‘I suppose it’s my duty to accompany you?’
‘Exactly.’ His smile widened a little. ‘You’re catching on fast.’
‘OK, then, let’s compromise.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Meaning?’
Lily rolled her eyes in an exaggerated display of exasperation. ‘Compromise?’ she said emphatically as if she were talking to a small child, while all the time slowly undoing the buttons of his shirt. ‘It means each of us getting a little bit of what we want. I believe it’s widely held to be one of the essential ingredients in a marriage—although I’m not sure if the same principles apply to marriages of convenience. However, I think, just to be on the safe side, that we’d better assume that they do.’
‘So, let me guess—you want to spend a little bit of the evening in bed?’
‘Now look who’s catching on fast,’ Lily said huskily, grasping hold of the edges of his open shirt. ‘A little bit of the evening, and most of the afternoon too…’
He was smiling broadly as he lifted her up and laid her on the bed, and the anger and the pain that shadowed his eyes had dissolved away leaving clear, gleaming pools of pure desire. Lily’s tender heart blossomed and ached as she lay back against the pillows. Leaning over her, Tristan impatiently tore off his shirt while he trailed a path of kisses over her collarbone and down her arm.
The light of the pale autumn sun slanted through the window, brushing Tristan’s smooth butterscotch skin with gold dust, and highlighting the faint cross-hatching of scars on his back.
Lily bit her lip, closing her eyes and sliding her hand into his hair, her whole body throbbing with love and need while simultaneously being racked with pain.
Pain that she sensed in him and longed to heal, if only he’d let her near.
But he wouldn’t. She gasped as he took her hips between his big hands and brought his mouth down on her navel, kissing, sucking, moving his mouth lower…
This was the only closeness she was allowed, and while she craved it with every cell of her being she also knew that it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
She wanted what she could never have.
Not just his body, but his heart.<
br />
Modelling would never have been Lily’s first choice of career. She had fallen into it thanks to a combination of chance and financial necessity, shelving her dreams to go to university in order to make the most of the undreamt of riches that were suddenly within her reach.
But at times like this, she reflected hazily as she walked with Tristan across the grand entrance hall at El Paraiso, she was glad that she had. Confidence was easier to fake if you knew how to hold yourself and how to walk.
Although, given the thoroughness with which Tristan had just made love to her, that wasn’t exactly easy. Especially not in four inch heels, and with Tristan, mouthwateringly handsome in black tie, so close beside her. Close enough that she could smell the clean scent of his skin from the hasty, last minute shower they had shared while Dimitri had waited for them in the car below. Close enough to sense the tension in his body, despite his outward show of utter indifference.
They were late.
Lily’s heels made a rapid, staccato rhythm on the marble floor as she struggled to keep up with him. Silently she cursed the fact that she’d spent the car journey here staring into the blackness of the window while her mind mentally replayed the blissfully erotic events of the afternoon in glorious freeze-frame detail, rather than asking Tristan to fill her in on his family. Too late now, she thought in panic. From behind double doors between the symmetrical sweeping staircases that rose on either side of the hallway, she could hear the sound of voices, and her chest constricted with nerves.
‘Wait,’ she croaked, putting an arm on his sleeve.
Tristan stopped. He was composed to the point of complete detachment, far removed from the man who had buried his face in her neck and gasped her name just an hour earlier. ‘Are you OK? You don’t feel sick?’
Lily gave a half-laugh and pressed her hand to her stomach. ‘Yes, but then I do all the time. It’s not that, it’s just…’ she twisted nervously at a strand of hair that had escaped the pins that held it in a sophisticated twist on top of her head ‘…I’m about to meet your family and I don’t know anything about them.’
‘Believe me, that’s a good thing,’ he said acidly, his face hardening as he looked in the direction of the doors in front of them.
‘Tristan, don’t,’ Lily said in anguish. ‘I mean—for example, do you have any brothers and sisters?’
He flinched. Only slightly, but she caught the minute narrowing of his eyes, the tiny indrawn breath. ‘Yes. I have…one brother. Nico. He’s in Madrid, so he won’t be here tonight. Now, if that answers your questions, perhaps we could go in?’
He moved to open the door, but Lily stayed where she was, fighting the nerves that were shredding her insides.
‘Tristan?’
‘What?’ He spun round, not bothering to conceal his impatience. She was standing in the middle of the oppressively grand hallway, her chin lowered, her hands plucking nervously at her dress.
The dress he’d chosen for her earlier, sensing without knowing much about such things that the colour would bring out the pale gold of her skin, and that the low scooped neck would show off the fragile perfection of her collarbones.
It did.
Dios mio, it did…
She bit her lip, looking up at him with smoky, hesitant and unreasonably lovely eyes. ‘Do I look OK?’
Tristan stiffened, straightening his shoulders, his head jerking back slightly as he forced back the almost over whelming urge to cross the stretch of marble floor between them and take her in his arms and kiss her until her lips were bare of gloss and her hair had tumbled from its pins.
He pushed open the door. ‘You look fine,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Now, let’s get this over and done with.’
Lily had never seen a room so luxurious or so chilling.
Long, high-ceilinged and decorated entirely in shades of cream and gold, it made Stowell, with its faded silks and threadbare Persian rugs, look positively down at heel by comparison. And although Scarlet frequently joked about the drafts there, Lily felt an icy chill creep down her spine as she followed Tristan into the crowded room. It was as if the temperature had just dropped several degrees, and almost without thinking Lily felt for Tristan’s hand as they made their way through the crowd towards a group of people at the far end of the room.
She couldn’t be sure exactly how she knew that the tall man with his back to them was Tristan’s father. Perhaps it was something to do with the breadth of his shoulders, a certain arrogance in the tilt of his head that was already familiar. He was talking to another man, gesturing eloquently, confidently with a hand that held a crystal champagne flute. Beside them two women—one about Lily’s age in an impeccable but rather conservative little black dress, one older and wearing a high necked dress in midnight blue—stood mutely.
Draining her glass, the older woman looked up suddenly. She was slender, elegant and immaculately made up in a way that obscured rather than enhanced her considerable beauty. As she saw them a look—shock? fear?—flickered across her face. Before Lily had time to put her finger on what it was, it was gone; replaced by a gracious smile of welcome.
‘Tristan, darling boy! You’re here!’
Juan Carlos Romero de Losada turned round slowly, flicking back the cuff of his expensively tailored jacket and checking his watch before looking at his son.
‘At last,’ he said with a sinister smile. ‘You are precisely one hour and five minutes late.’
Tristan ignored him, leaning across to kiss both women, but Lily felt his hold on her hand tighten. ‘Good evening, Mama, Sofia…’ His lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. ‘Sorry we’re late. We rather lost track of time.’
Lily was aware of all eyes turning in her direction. Her heart was crashing against her ribs as Tristan raised her hand so that everyone could see her fingers laced through his, with the diamond glittering beside her new wedding band. Slowly he brought it to his lips, kissing it gently before saying, ‘I’d like to introduce Lily Alexander. My wife, and the new Marquesa de Montesa.’
For a second it seemed that a spell had fallen on the small group. While all around them the rest of the guests talked and laughed and drank the excellent vintage cava, no one in the circle around the fireplace moved or spoke. Lily glanced at Juan Carlos and felt a sickening thud of horror as she saw the fury rising in his eyes like some dark liquid coming to the boil. Fury that in this setting, in front of his guests, he was powerless to express.
It was Tristan’s mother who broke the terrible silence, stepping forward and kissing Lily on both cheeks with a blast of designer perfume and alcohol fumes.
‘But, my dear, how delightful! You must forgive us for being so unmannerly, but this is such a shock. I had almost given up hoping that Tristan would settle down—and with such a beautiful girl.’ She gave an awkward little laugh. ‘It is almost too much to take in!’
As Lily submitted to Allegra Montalvo y Romero de Losada’s gracious embrace she had the strangest feeling that she were floating amongst the painted clouds and cherubs on the ceiling, looking down on the tableau of figures below. Sofia, whose olive skin had flushed with telltale colour when Tristan had kissed her cheek, now seemed to stiffen and shrink backwards, clearly desperate to move away. Tristan’s father, the oddly compelling Juan Carlos, stepped forward to take Lily’s hand in his.
For an awkward moment she stood, one hand still clasped in Tristan’s, one imprisoned between Juan Carlos’s soft fingers. She could almost feel the animosity between the two men crackling through her, as though she were some kind of conductor.
‘Lily…Alexander?’ Juan Carlos repeated quietly, with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘I think our paths have not crossed before?’
It was a clever question, Lily thought with a stab of anguish. Everyone must have been thinking the same thing—that the idea of her ever having brushed even the most outward peripheries of Juan Carlos’s exclusive social circle was utterly preposterous. Sofia gave a strange snort of amusement, wh
ich she quickly suppressed with a swig of cava.
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘No. Of course,’ Juan Carlos continued softly, ‘I would have remembered such a pretty face. You must tell us all about yourself—where you come from and what you do for a living.’
‘I’m a model. I live in London.’
From the look on Juan Carlos’s patrician face it was as if Lily had said she was a high class hooker. His brows rose almost into his distinguished grey-streaked hair.
‘My dear, how fascinating. What surprising people my son seems to mix with. And where did you meet?’
‘At Tom’s,’ Tristan said coldly. ‘At a party in the summer.’
Allegra’s exclamation of delight sounded almost genuine. ‘How romantic!’ she exclaimed a little too brightly. ‘And how sudden. It must have been love at first sight!’
Frowning a little, Tristan tucked the stray lock of hair behind Lily’s ear. ‘I don’t remember it being love at first sight. I don’t think that came until we woke up the next morning.’
Lily was aware of the brittle tinkle of Allegra’s laugh, but only distantly.
A shiver of helpless longing rippled across Lily’s skin—skin that still tingled from the ecstasy he had awoken in her earlier. But she was aware that beside her Juan Carlos’s face had taken on a bland and dangerous look. Giving an abrupt nod in the direction of the ladies, he turned to Tristan.
‘A word in private, if you please.’
For a moment Tristan hesitated, as if he was going to argue, and then Allegra stepped forward and tucked her arm through Lily’s.
‘You men go and talk business! I’m going to show Lily around our home, and get to know her properly.’
‘I assume she’s pregnant?’
In the masculine enclave of Juan Carlos’s wood-panelled office there was no place for such feminine refinements as champagne flutes and cava. Picking up a solid, square cut decanter from a cedarwood tray, Juan Carlos sloshed dark liquid into two glasses. He held one out to Tristan, who ignored it.
