“Cherie, my cousin, she understands. We spent so much time together, back then, she was with me through all of it. She suggested we go out that night, that we dress up and pretend to be other people. Just for one night, to pretend that this grief doesn’t fill us. I was never meant to meet you. I was never meant to meet anyone that I would know beyond that party. It was just a way to forget, for one lousy night.”
Surprise was a mild way of describing how he felt. She’d spoken of her father and brother often, but always, he realized now, in the past tense. As people who once were. Sympathy was threatening to overtake him, but he wouldn’t let it. If true, he would pity her immensely, but what if it were just another lie, an invention to play on his emotions?
“But we met and I fell in love with you that night, Guy. That same night. The more I loved you, the harder it was to reconcile who you thought I was with the truth and I couldn’t …I couldn’t find a way to tell you. I’m so sorry that I didn’t find a way. But you have to believe me. This was never a planned deceit. I had no ulterior motive. I simply… I fell in love with you. You have to believe that what we had was real.”
He stared down at her beautiful face, pinched with intensity, and what was warm in him iced over. The problem was, he wanted to believe her, but he couldn’t. He’d never be that stupid again, and she had too many reasons to lie.
“I don’t want to get drawn into a conversation about the past. The relationship we had then was a fiction. It’s not realistic to think we can ever be that to one another again. I’m offering you a specific type of relationship. Whether you accept it or not is your decision.”
Addie was numb. Objectively the night was perfect – utterly sublime – but she was incapable of feeling anything beyond the pain that was spreading through her body with a singular determination, obliterating hopefulness, optimism and devotion, almost, in one fell swoop.
She’d been so certain that if she told him the truth, he would understand. That if she could find the right words at the right time, he would know that she was the same person he’d fallen in love with. That she’d lied out of self-preservation rather than any nefarious motivation. That he could trust her.
She’d thought it would be enough.
And it hadn’t been.
The relationship we had then was a fiction. It’s not realistic to think we can ever be that to one another again.
Guy laughed at something the man – what was his name? – had said, and Addie pushed a smile to her face belatedly. Her feet hurt from dancing, but it was nothing to the pain in her cheeks from stretching this false grin across her face; nothing compared to the throbbing ache in her heart.
“Are you coming?” The man turned his smiling face to Addie, who had no idea what he was talking about.
But Guy came to her rescue. “Ava may have to be back in London for work. We are still assessing our schedule,” Guy said, smoothly insinuating their partnership and togetherness, sliding a hand around her waist as if to emphasise his point.
His touch hurt.
It hurt because here, surrounded by others, he acted as though he adored her. As though she were irreplaceable to him. And she knew how patently untrue it was.
It was all pretend.
So far as Guy was concerned, he was giving her a taste of her own medicine. Is this what he’d thought? That she’d been faking it like this? That she left him and assumed a different role?
She supposed she did. Her mother required so much of her care, and caused her so much worry, that Addie was harried and exhausted as soon as she left Guy’s company. With him, she was truly happy.
Or, she had been back then.
“Acting, huh?” The man grinned. “That must be challenging.”
“Ava’s a natural,” Guy said, as he had to Santiago, and it sent resentment skittling through Ava’s nervous system.
“What made you get into it?”
Addie cleared her throat. “My father used to read me plays,” she said, knowing she didn’t imagine the way Guy’s fingers paused in their gentle stroking of her waist. “Never books. He would do the voices, and I got used to them,” she smiled at the memory – her first genuine smile all night. “As soon as I could read, I took over some of the roles, and eventually learned them by heart. I would always perform them… for my brother, my mum, my teacher, my teddies.” She shook her head, but the smile was dying on her lips. “I got a scholarship at the Bristol Old Vic.”
She didn’t add that she hadn’t been able to take it up. That she’d discovered her mother’s gambling addiction and the truly dire state of their finances right when she’d been poised to step out into the world on her own for the first time.
“Nothing makes me happier than performing,” she said.
“Truer words were never spoken,” Guy murmured, and only Addie caught the undercurrent of cynicism in his words.
“Excuse me,” emotions were tumbling through her. She needed space. “I’m going to get a glass of water.”
She didn’t really need to go far. Waiters were milling around with trays of all sorts of drinks, but Addie just wanted to get away. She grabbed the first glass she passed and cradled it in her hands as she weaved through the party. Fairy lights were strung overhead, and in the centre of the dance floor was an ice sculpture of Santiago and a beautiful woman – it must have been his late wife, Rafaela.
Addie flicked a glance at it as she passed, but the need for solitude triumphed curiosity. She emerged at the edge of the party and found solace in the same space Guy and Maria had shared their conversation earlier.
She stood with her back to the rambling jasmine, staring out at the sea, and finally, she stopped fighting the tears that were stinging her eyes. The air was heavy with salt and sadness; she breathed them both in, but already her mind was turning to the reality of the decisions before her.
Could she really leave Guillem? Leave this island knowing she would never see him again? Was there anything else she could do to get through to him? To show him that she wasn’t what he thought?
He was fighting her so hard, pushing her away at every opportunity, but was that because he was scared of being hurt?
Guy, scared?
She almost laughed at the absurdity of that.
And yet, the parallels between herself and Maria shook her to the core. Oh, they were different, too, but Guy had loved them both, and discovering that they’d lied to him had hurt. Was she being punished for Maria’s wrongs?
“Hiding from me, querida?” His voice was smooth as he approached her from behind. Addie blinked and lifted a hand to dab at her tears before turning to face him. She didn’t bother trying to smile.
He took in her appearance, and if anything, his expression hardened.
“I’m not hiding.”
He moved closer then, and she inhaled his masculine fragrance, the hint of citrus and pine, and her lips tingled with the memories of that. The first night they’d met.
“Have you missed me? These last six months, I mean.” She looked up at him, her gaze roaming his autocratic profile, trying to discern the emotions in there that she needed to see.
There were none.
“No.”
A bullet. A wounding, scalping bullet. It landed with a thud in her heart.
“I missed the idea of what I thought you were,” he said after a small pause. “I regretted letting sex distract me. There were signs, all the way along, that you weren’t what you pretended, but I was too captivated to care. I’m ashamed of that.”
“I was everything you thought I was.”
His eyes glinted in his handsome face, and the moon shimmered across them, casting his features in angular relief. He seemed to be weighing his words carefully, but when he spoke, he changed the subject. “Have you thought about my proposition?”
Addie tilted her face to his, uncertainty flooding her. “Yes.”
“Yes?” He lifted one brow so Addie shook her head quickly.
“I mean, yes, I�
�ve thought about it, and no, I still can’t do it.”
A muscle throbbed in his jaw, steady and slow, like his heart.
“Unless,” she whispered, the word tremulous.
“Si?”
“Unless it is a fresh beginning for us. A new beginning. If you could put the past behind us and try again. Let me show you that I’m the same woman you fell in love with in London. No secrets, no lies.”
Guy recoiled visibly. “That’s not the deal.”
“Why not? Why can’t it be?”
“Because, Ava! I don’t damned well want that. Don’t you understand? How many times and in how many ways do I have to tell you that I don’t want you like that? My trust, once lost, is gone. And I will never trust you, I will never like you, I will never want you anywhere but my bed.” He lifted a hand to her waist and jerked her against him, her eyes flying wide at the sudden and unexpected contact. “But I do want you there. And I’ll go to the ends of the earth to have you there.”
13
“LEAVING ALREADY, DARLINGS?” Luciana’s voice arrested them on the edges of the party. Addie hadn’t seen Guy for over two hours, since he’d stalked away from her and the incredible wall of jasmine. She had no idea how he’d spent the party. She’d milled around, making idle chit chat when absolutely necessary, otherwise avoiding people as though she were a host for a modern form of the plague.
“It’s two in the morning,” Guy murmured, casting a glance at his wristwatch before dropping his hand and capturing Addie’s, intertwining their fingers. “Ava is tired.”
Luciana shifted her attention to the woman she believed her son to be madly in love with.
I will never want you anywhere but my bed.
“Is it two already?” Luciana laughed. “Goodness, I have been having such a marvelous time, I didn’t realise!”
“Everything was beautiful,” Addie supplied, feeling that she ought to at least thank Luciana for including her.
“All the more so because you were here,” Luciana said with warmth. “You must come and spend a weekend at the vineyard.”
The invitation unfurled in Addie with a sense of awkwardness. Lying to these people, people she really liked, hurt. “We’ll organize something,” Guy said casually, noncommittally. “Good night, mother.”
“Good night, darlings,” Luciana waved a hand in the air.
Several golf carts were lined up to convey guests to their accommodations. Guy waited near the first, holding the door open, his jaw clenched.
Addie slipped into it, her stomach swooping, disbelief still pulling at her. This couldn’t be the end.
It didn’t have to be, her heart argued. If she could accept his offer, then she could still see him.
And be treated like this? By a man she loved?
It would destroy her.
Pride stole through her, and she jutted her chin out defiantly, her eyes straight ahead. She had to be strong, for just a little while longer.
They drove in silence, and Addie was too heart-sore to notice the beautiful night they were wrapped up in. The crispness of the inky sky, sparkling with diamond-dust stars, the warmth of the evening and the sound of crashing waves. The smell of the island, citrus and jasmine and sand and salt.
She didn’t notice any of it.
The golf cart stopped; the moon was high overhead, streaking the yacht in pale, luminescence.
They didn’t speak the whole way to the yacht, but once on-board, Guy turned to face Addie. Was she imagining a weariness in the set of his features?
Probably.
This man was unbreakable.
He was heartless and ruthless, and yet he had her heart.
They say fortune favours the brave, but Addie’s ability to be brave was running out. She reached for Guy with the last remaining strand of her courage, her fingers curling around his wrist, pulling him to face her.
“We need to talk about this, Guy.”
“No,” he ground the words from between his teeth. “There has been enough talking. Enough. Suficiente.” He took a step closer to her, pressing Addie’s back against the wall. “You want to talk about the past; I am sick of it. I am sick of hearing you attempt to explain away what you did. You lied to me, querida…”
“I told you why,” she whispered, as his fingers found the straps of her evening gown and slid between them and her smooth, golden flesh. “I told you about the accident…”
“Yes. But was it the truth? Or another lie?”
She sucked in a harsh breath at his words, anger and fury battling with sadness. “You think I’d make something like that up?”
“I don’t know!” And there was angry desperation in the words. “I never thought you would, but I didn’t know you at all.” He stared at her with abject frustration. “Every word that comes from your beautiful lips makes me doubt it.”
“Don’t,” she whispered urgently, shaking her head and slowly pushing at her dress, her eyes challenging him, imploring him to listen to what she was sure his heart knew. “You can’t doubt me. You can’t doubt this,” she said softly, as his mouth came to her neck, brushing against the soft flesh there, finding her pulse point and running his tongue along it so that she sucked in a breath of surprise. A breath of need.
“This I do not doubt,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt while his mouth roamed higher, to her cheek, and then across to her lips. “This is all that makes sense,” he kissed the words into her, firing them into her blood and body.
“Because you love me,” she said simply. “That’s why you’re so angry at me, Guy.”
His laugh was derisive. “You’re delusional.”
“No. Why would you be so angry at me if you didn’t love me? You’re hurt. I hurt you. And I’m sorry for that.”
Guy broke away from her, pushing his shirt off his body, freeing himself from the restraint of clothing so Addie could see the way his chest was being torn with each and every hard-drawn breath.
He spun around to face her but Addie was right there. They say fortune favours the brave, and she needed to be brave, just a little longer. She stood on the tips of her toes, so she could brush her lips against his. “Stop fighting me.”
She lifted her hands to either side of his face. “Please, stop fighting me.”
She didn’t know she was crying until a tear landed with a moist thud on the soft, creamy flesh of her breast. But Guy did. He chased it down, his tongue tracing a line from her cheek to her décolletage and lower, to her breasts. He sucked a nipple between his teeth and she cried out, a sob of pleasure and need, of hope, too, because despite everything, Addie was still filled with hope.
Her heart needed to hope or it would wither away for good.
He lifted her easily, scooping her to his chest, her dress still ruched around her waist. But he didn’t carry her below deck. He placed her on the white lounges at the front of the yacht, laying her down and then bringing his mouth back to hers, while he undid his pants. He kicked out of them, his body over hers, his weight a pleasure Addie had been craving for so long.
“Please,” she murmured, and it was a catch-all ‘please’. A need for him to make love to her and love her, to give her everything she so desperately craved.
He answered it. At least, physically, donning protection and sliding inside of her as soon as he could dispense with her underwear, his body making hers stir to a fever pitch, her heart throbbing with pleasure and hope, with a tenuous optimism taking grip of her as a wave of awakening spread across the boat.
“I love you,” she said, her eyes holding his as pleasure made her body fire. “I have loved you all along.”
He said nothing.
They made love beneath the stars, and when she exploded as if moved by their celestial dust, she pushed onto her elbows and kissed him through her pleasure, her tongue dueling with his as her body sapped of strength, and she cried.
She cried for what she hoped would be the dawning of a new day, not just in general, but specifically for them.
She had no reason to hope, and yet she did.
Addie awoke in her own bed, with no clear recollection of how she’d got there. She was naked, as she’d been on the deck late the night before. No, in the early hours of this same morning. She frowned, reaching first for Guy, and finding him missing, and then for her phone.
It was almost midday. She squawked in surprise and pushed out of the bed, her body aching pleasurably with remembered touches.
Ghosts of his kisses still tingled over her skin and she bit down on her smile. Until she moved to the window and looked out towards the island – and saw another boat instead.
And heard noises. Lots of noises.
She frowned and dressed quickly, pulling on a pair of jeans and a simple white shirt, not bothering with a bra. She scraped her hair over one shoulder and then moved quickly from her room, looking left and right for Guy as she made her way through the yacht and up on deck.
Staff were everywhere, milling around, cleaning, doing things she presumed were necessary to the maintenance of a yacht such as this. But she wasn’t looking at them, nor for them. Her eyes skimmed over, until she saw a familiar face.
The woman with the bright blonde hair. She smiled at Addie. Had it only been yesterday that Addie had gone in search of Guy, still so hopeful she could talk him around? That she could make him understand? The intervening twenty four hours crackled in her mind like a thunderstorm.
“Have you seen…”
“Ava.” Guy’s voice came from behind.
She caught her breath, or perhaps it caught on her, snagging in a throat that was suddenly constricted.
She turned quickly, her eyes landing on him with an urgent, soul-twisting fatefulness.
“Guillem,” she said softly, taking a step towards him. Memories of that night flashed before her. His kiss, his desperation for her – as fierce as her own for him. The way they’d moved as one, so perfectly in tune. She was aware of the movement around them, the evidence of a bustling marina. “Where are we?”
Claiming his Secret Baby & Blackmailed by the Spaniard (Clare Connelly Pairs Book 4) Page 33
