‘Do what exactly?’
‘Continue the pretence that we’re a normal married couple …’ there was a hard, cold edge to her voice now ‘… very much in love. It won’t be easy, but of course privately we can go on as before. You can live your life, have your freedom and I won’t ask any questions. And then at the end of it we go our separate ways.’
Very slowly he shook his head. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Tristan, don’t say that—’
‘Lily, you must know that it is,’ he said despairingly. ‘We tried it before and it nearly destroyed us both. Living a lie like that, pretending out of some sense of obligation or duty—I can’t do it again.’
A sheet of ice formed itself instantly over Lily’s heart. She felt the blood leave her face. It wasn’t a lie for me, she wanted to shout. I wasn’t pretending to love you. Light-headed, cold with horror, she began to back away as Tristan’s face blurred behind a veil of humiliating tears.
‘OK. I understand …’ she gasped, holding up her hands in front of her as he opened his mouth to protest.
‘Lily, wait!’ he growled. ‘Just listen—’
But at that moment an arm slid round her shoulders and she looked up to see Jamie had appeared beside her. He was looking at Tristan with unconcealed dislike.
‘They’re waiting for you to start the receiving line,’ he said coldly. ‘Although I think that Lily can be excused that ordeal.’ He turned his attention to her, his face softening with concern. ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded, closing her eyes against the tears.
When she opened them again Tristan was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HELL, thy name is wedding reception.
Sitting at the top table in the sweltering afternoon heat, Tristan gritted his teeth and looked at his still-full champagne glass. He felt as if he were the victim of some sadistic, protracted torture technique designed to test his strength and endurance and will power in every way possible.
The wedding breakfast was over, and as the guests dozed over coffee Scarlet’s father turned over yet another page of his speech. Beside Tristan, Tatiana’s slim thigh, encased in duck-egg blue silk, pressed against his.
There had been a time when his automatic response to any kind of emotion would have been to obliterate it with some hot, meaningless, commitment-free sex, and back in those days the sultry looks coming his way from the chief bridesmaid would have been extremely good news.
He moved away slightly.
Unfortunately for Tatiana it had been a long time since he had dealt with things that way. A year, to be precise. And as a strategy for emotional avoidance it had to be said that particular night had backfired spectacularly.
Automatically his hand moved across the table and his fingers closed around the stem of his glass, twisting it round while he resisted the temptation to pick it up and drain it. He badly wanted something to take the edge off the torment, and in the absence of a revolver and a single bullet alcohol seemed to offer his best chance, but unfortunately he had to stand up and make a speech in a minute.
Or perhaps that was being optimistic, he thought sourly. If Scarlet’s father continued at his present rate Tristan would have plenty of time to down a bottle and sober up again before it was his turn.
If he leaned forward he could just see Lily’s profile, half hidden by Jamie Thomas’s lean frame. The razor wire wrapped around Tristan’s heart tightened a little and his chest burned with the effort of not getting up, vaulting across the table and snatching her up into his arms.
Dios. Dios mio … Why hadn’t she given him a chance to finish?
Finally Mr Thomas brought his speech to a close and everyone rose to their feet and toasted the bride and groom with enthusiastic relief. Tristan’s hand was like a vice around his glass as he put it to his lips, wondering whether to take this chance to grab Lily and slip out. His head buzzed with the need to talk to her.
Too late. Tom was already getting to his feet as everyone else settled down into their seats once again. Tristan, caged and crucified by his own moral code of courtesy and duty, sat down too, clenching his hands together and resting his forehead on them as Tom started to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen … I’ll make this brief.’
Not bloody brief enough, thought Tristan dully, his heart jerking violently against his ribs as he looked at Lily. Not brief enough.
Tom was as good as his word. His speech was short and typically full of wry, self-deprecating humour and as the guests rose to their feet again to toast the bridesmaids they were still smiling. The vintage champagne burned Lily’s throat like acid as she choked back sudden tears and stared out of the marquee into the melting, strawberry-sorbet sunset. It was nearly over now, she told herself desperately. She only had to hold it together for a little bit longer before she could slip away quietly and howl out her sorrow and frustration and emptiness into the goose-down pillows of her room.
Tristan’s refusal earlier had felt like another loss. Not of a real child this time, but of hope. Of another little bit of her future. She wasn’t sure how much more loss she could take.
It would be so much easier if she could hate him, she thought bleakly, absent-mindedly twirling a sugar flower from the top of the wedding cake between her fingers. She should hate him: this was the man who had delivered the news of their baby’s death in flat, emotionless tones, and then left her alone in the hospital. The same man who had just crushed her fragile dream with a single word.
But then she would remember the pain she sometimes glimpsed beneath the layer of ice in his eyes, the mask of honour and duty she suspected he wore to cover up the loneliness of his upbringing. She remembered the torment on his face sometimes when sleep had stripped away that mask, and she knew that it was hopeless. He touched her in places she couldn’t help responding to, regardless of how sensible that response was, or how healthy. She hadn’t chosen to fall in love with him, just as she hadn’t chosen anything else that had happened to her in the last year, but now it had happened she had to live with it. Minimise the damage.
Around her she felt a frisson of interest stir the syrupy afternoon air. The girls on her table—a mixture of heiresses and models—were all sitting up a little straighter, fluffing up hair that had been flattened earlier beneath extravagant hats. Looking up, Lily immediately saw why.
At the top table Tristan had got to his feet.
Lily had the sensation of being in a lift as it plunged quickly downwards. He was so golden and gorgeous, but as she looked up at him she recognised a new severity in his features that she hadn’t seen before. The intense blue eyes were the same, and the perfect cheekbones and the square chin with its deeply carved cleft, but, indefinably, gone was any trace of that louche, wicked playboy who had stepped out of the helicopter last summer and kissed her so audaciously. Looking away quickly, she saw that the sugar flower had crumbled to dust in her fingers.
‘As a Spaniard this role of ‘best man’ is not one I’m very familiar with …’ Tristan began, and a little sigh of female appreciation went round the marquee as that deep, husky Spanish voice filled the evening. Gazing out across the lawns, Lily felt it shiver across her skin, spreading goosebumps of longing as her poor, ravaged body stirred with feelings she had suppressed for a long time and her head was filled with a picture of a dark church, a handful of people.
‘And when Tom asked me to do it I initially refused on the grounds that he’s clearly a far better man than I am,’ Tristan went on. A ripple of laughter greeted this. He had them all in the palm of his hand, thought Lily painfully. It was completely impossible to remain immune to that combination of grave intelligence and those killer good looks.
‘However, when he sent me a copy of a book called The Complete Guide to Being a Best Man I discovered that it was not so much a competitive event as a series of clearly defined duties.’
More laughter.
Duties. Lily closed her eyes for a second against the
pain.
‘There are quite a lot of them,’ he went on huskily, holding the book up and bending it back so that the pages flickered out like a fan, ‘but I have learned recently that to do something out of duty is not always the best approach …’
Every word was another turn of the screw. Wasn’t it enough that he had shattered her last hope, she thought numbly, without making her suffer so publicly too?
Tristan gave Tom a lopsided smile and put the book down on the table. ‘Thanks for the thought, Tom, but I’m going to do this my way.’
Outside beyond the silken drapes of the marquee, the blush-pink sun was dipping down behind the trees around the lake, staining the sky the same colour as the roses in Scarlet’s bouquet. In the centre of the lake the tower stood, dark and forbidding, its windows reflecting the sinking crimson sun and making it look as if it were on fire. Tristan’s voice, deep and grave, went on, talking about the perfection of the day. Lily’s head was filled with a sort of roaring, as if she were standing on the top of a mountain in a high wind.
Wishful thinking.
‘… everything a wedding should be …’ Tristan’s voice reached her as if from a great distance ‘… champagne and roses; beautiful dresses and beautiful bridesmaids …’
Back in the real world, all around her, people smiled fondly. But then they couldn’t know that the perfect, proper wedding that the best man was describing was the opposite in every way of his own hasty, hole-in-the-corner one to a woman he didn’t love.
‘It’s about friends and families and laughing and dancing and fun.’
He stopped, looking down for a moment, frowning as if he was wondering how to go on. Everyone waited. The dying sun cast everything in a soft, rosy glow, adding to the sense of enchantment.
‘That’s a wedding. A marriage is a different thing entirely.’ His voice was soft now, and filled with a kind of weary resignation. ‘A marriage is about sharing, talking, compromising. It’s about being honest. Being there.’
Enough.
Lily’s throat burned and her eyes felt as if they were full of splinters as she got up and slipped quietly out from her place at the table. She walked quickly away from the marquee across the grass. The dew was falling and it was damp underfoot, making her heels sink into the soft ground so she paused for a second to kick them off and gather them up before stumbling onwards, blinded by tears. Tristan’s voice followed her, filling her head and seeming to wrap itself around her in the velvety air, in a ceaseless, caressing taunt.
‘Lily …’
She jerked to a standstill for a second as she realised that he was behind her, that what he was saying was her name. Then she carried on, faster than before, almost running down the sloping lawn towards the lake.
‘Leave me alone, Tristan. Go back to your rapturous audience. I think I’ve heard enough.’
‘Have you? I don’t think so.’
She did stop then, whirling round to face him, her face blazing with anger that she no longer had the strength or the inclination to hide. ‘How could you?’ she croaked, and the rawness in her voice was shocking in the perfect, rose-pink evening. ‘How could you stand up there in front of all those people and say that stuff about sharing and talking and … and compromise, for God’s sake? How could you say it in front of me?’
Her voice was rising to a shout and there were tears running down her face. Taking a step towards him, she raised her hands, clenching her fists and pounding them against his chest as the anger and the grief, sealed in for so long, came spilling out.
‘I never asked anything of you, Tristan! I didn’t ask to be your wife, I didn’t ask to be taken to a country where I knew no one and left alone there for days on end while you went away …’ She gave a wild laugh. ‘God, I didn’t even ask where you went to! I asked for nothing and that’s exactly what I got!’
Still her fists flailed at him, raining blows on his chest and his arms that he had absorbed without flinching, but now he caught hold of her wrists and held them tightly. ‘What do you want?’ His voice was a low rasp, edged with despair. ‘What do you want, Lily?’
She went suddenly still. Their faces were inches apart and she could smell the citrus scent of his skin. It brought back a rush of memories that sent heat flooding downwards through her stomach. Heat and wetness and need.
I want everything we nearly had and didn’t.
I want the impossible.
I want you.
‘I just want some … consideration,’ she said hoarsely, ruthlessly stamping out the need and the longing, fighting to hang onto the anger of a moment ago. ‘I want to not have to listen to you standing up there theorising about what makes a successful marriage, when ours was nothing but misery and loneliness.’ Her voice cracked and she tried to hide it with an ironic, self-mocking laugh. ‘Stupid as it sounds now, I wanted all that stuff that you mentioned—the sharing and the talking, but most of all I wanted … our baby. I wanted our baby so much.’
The sob that escaped her was muffled by his mouth coming down on hers as he gathered her into his arms and pulled her into his body. Her tears ran over his fingers as he held her face in a kiss that went on and on, fuelled by despair and rage and sadness and guilt.
Guilt that after all that had happened, after the enormity of what she had lost, Lily found herself wanting to forget, just for a moment. To be the person she had been—full of love, instead of empty and angry and hollowed out by grief. Her hands tangled into his hair, gripping tightly, and their teeth clashed as she kissed him back with the ferocity of her anger. And then he was lifting her up, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her across the lawn, his breath coming in harsh, shaky gasps, his chest rising and falling as he held her against it.
She didn’t look up, didn’t tear her mouth from his for a moment, but she knew where they were going. Even before she felt his footsteps slow, or heard the clatter of his feet against the wooden boards of the walkway, she knew where he was taking her.
Her tattered heart cried out in the emptiness inside her as he carried her back to the place where it had all started.
Back to the tower.
It was as if time had caught, taken a wrong turning, looped back on itself.
Everything was as she remembered, exactly the same. The dying light coming through the arched windows, the apricot glow behind the trees, the sparse room with the bed at its centre, like a stage. Everything.
Except …
Themselves.
The slow, dreamy languor with which they had touched each other last year was gone now, replaced by a desperation that made their movements swift and clumsy. Tristan didn’t take her straight to the bed. Kicking the door shut, he let her slide from his arms and she slammed herself back against it, pulling him into her with a savagery that made him gasp.
‘Lily …’
She didn’t want gentle.
She couldn’t do tender.
Gentleness had died in her along with her baby. Tenderness had been ripped out of her by the surgeons afterwards. Now she wanted oblivion.
‘No,’ she said harshly, grasping handfuls of his shirt and bunching it into her fists. ‘No words. You don’t have to worry, Tristan, I don’t want love or tenderness or a happy ever after any more. Just make me forget, all right?’
Her voice was as jagged and cruel as broken glass, her movements swift and vicious. Her hips arched up towards his, grinding against the hardness of his arousal as her hands grappled with the buttons of his shirt until impatience got the better of her and she tore it open, exposing his bare chest to her fingernails, raking the flesh as he pushed up her skirt and tugged at her knickers, tearing the silk before entering her with a single powerful thrust that made her cry out in fierce triumph.
He drove into her with a relentlessness that made her dried and shrivelled heart sing, and with every hard push she felt the twin demons of anger and grief receding. Heat was spreading inside her, sending out bright tongues of flame to the furthest extremities o
f her body and building to a core of white brightness at a point in the cradle of her pelvis.
She closed her eyes, focusing on the light, and the movements of the muscles under his skin as she held onto his shoulders. He was carrying her, holding her and she was going to shatter …
She let go, crying out and throwing her head back so that it banged against the door, opening her eyes and looking at him through the fiery haze of sensation that claimed her.
And then she felt herself crashing down, spiralling back to earth.
Her heart stuttered and stopped and she felt the heat in her veins turn to ice. With a final shuddering thrust Tristan bent his head and hid his face in her hair, but not before she’d seen the expression of extreme suffering it bore.
They stood, motionless, still locked together as their breathing steadied. Staring into the melting remains of the day, Lily’s eyes stung with tears she couldn’t shed. Tristan’s head was heavy on her shoulder. Then he seemed to gather himself, straightening up as if it hurt him. Wordlessly he picked her up and carried her to the bed.
Ecstasy and despair, balanced on a knife edge, she thought numbly. After the pleasure, the pain.
Except for him there had been no pleasure.
Duty.
That was all.
Always Duty.
The moment he placed her down on the bed, Lily rolled away, lying with her back to him and tucking her knees up against her body. Tristan felt the ever-present guilt harden inside him, mixing uneasily with self-loathing.
How could he have been so crass?
He had wanted her so badly, but that was no excuse for behaving like an animal, taking her standing up against a wall, for God’s sake. When he had brought her here he had intended it to be like closing the circle. A new beginning. Instead he had only ended up hurting her even more.
Dios.
‘Lily, I’m sorry.’
She didn’t move. Only the barest nod of her head, rustling her hair against the pillow, showed that she had heard him. He sighed and raised himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to her.
Hot Nights with a Spaniard (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases) Page 29
