She really did paint a pretty pathetic picture, with her pale skin and tiny frame, and now those enormous eyes shimmering with sadness.
“You can have a different ring, but you will wear one. We are married. This is not a joke. This is not temporary.”
“You don’t wear one,” she blurted out, her cheeks glowing red with the anger and offense she’d felt throughout their marriage. “You want to brand me but you won’t wear something that says you’re married to me.”
His laugh was unexpected, as he pulled a hand through his hair. “I hate jewellery. I hate having anything on me. You know I practically hate clothes.”
Now her cheeks glowed for a different reason. That was true. Kyle always slept naked, no matter what the climate. He was totally unashamed of his body; and why would he have been? He was glorious. A testament to fantastic genetics, good diet, and an active lifestyle.
“I feel the same about my engagement ring,” she said stiffly. “It’s no different. I hate it. Do we really need rings to say that we’re married?” Her eyes blinked up at him with such an expression of innocence that he wondered if she recalled him having said as much to her when she’d first tentatively approached the idea that he might like to wear a wedding band.
With a sound of exasperation he slipped the ring back into his pocket. “We can talk about it later.”
And though it was childish and silly, Annie had a flutter of pleasure at having achieved what she considered to be a very small victory over her husband.
He lifted his glass, his eyes locked to hers meaningfully. “To my wife,” he said softly, and her heart turned over in her chest at the way that simple statement caused her insides to tremble with sensual anticipation.
Only she couldn’t want him again. Not after everything that had happened. She stifled the fluttering of temptation and smiled curtly. “To my husband,” she responded sarcastically, drinking half of the champagne in one mouthful.
Kyle’s frown was infinitesimal.
“So why Aspen?” She asked, shifting in the seat a little to face him more fully.
He regarded her thoughtfully. “The hotel is underperforming.” He lifted his shoulders in a visible show of unconcern. “I want to speak to the manager.”
“And you couldn’t have done it over the phone?” She retorted waspishly, having another gulp of the bubbly liquid.
“No.” He sat back in his chair, his eyes never leaving her face. “I want to see how the hotel is being run for myself.”
“We were there recently enough,” she pointed out, careful to keep accusation out of her voice.
“Seven months ago,” he corrected softly. “It was our last trip before you left me.”
She nodded and angled her head to stare out of the window. The plane had begun to taxi on the runway, and the engines were building to their inevitable pre-flight crescendo.
“Do you remember, Annabelle? We spent two full days in the suite. More specifically in bed.”
Her eyes flashed with heat. “I remember.” She swallowed and dug her fingers into the armrests as the plane speeded up and then lifted into the air with a gentle lurch.
She remembered everything about that week. The sex, yes, but also the indecision. The feeling that beyond bed, she had no hold on her husband’s interest. Instead, she’d watched him being fussed over by women ten times as beautiful as she could ever be and Annie had known then what a losing battle she’d been fighting.
But in between the dejection and worry, there had been sex. Annie had worked out that, more than likely, their child had been conceived in Aspen. The dates certainly fit, and they’d given themselves every opportunity to conceive.
“You can imagine my surprise when you left me, only weeks later.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “I wasn’t sure you’d even notice.”
He grunted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She drained her champagne and then pressed the glass onto the table with a little more force than was necessary. “It means that our marriage was over long before I left it.” She stared at him without seeing; her mind was dipping into the past.
She closed her eyes, pretending to be dozing, but a movie was playing behind her eyelids and she and Kyle were the unwitting stars.
SEVEN MONTHS earlier - Aspen
“YOU DON’T HAVE to stay locked up here.”
“I know, but I’ll be happier here,” she promised, her heart lurching at the sight of her handsome husband. Dressed in a casual pair of chinos and a grey sweater, she wanted to pull him back to bed. In bed, she understood him. In bed, she knew how much he wanted her. The threat of tears stung her eyes and she smiled brightly to urge them away. “Honestly, I’m halfway through my book and …”
“Your book will be here when we return,” he promised, his light tone at odds with the frustration his wife was evoking.
“I know.” She padded across the room, looking much younger than her twenty four years. She cupped his cheek sweetly, having to lift onto her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. “Have fun. I’ll wait up for you.”
“It’s a business dinner,” he responded drily. “Hardly what I’d like to be doing.”
Her smile was distracted. “Then stay locked up here with me.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s your company, isn’t it?”
He laughed. “And my responsibility.” He took a step back and shoved his hands in his pockets. “There’s a bar downstairs. A great jazz singer performing. And a heap of celebrities if you want to go autograph hunting.”
She rolled her eyes. “No thanks.”
His eyes clouded with something she couldn’t interpret. “I’m meeting with a man I think you’ll really like. His business was the first asset I acquired. His daughter’s coming too. You’ll enjoy their company.”
She bit down on her lip. “I don’t know. Surely you’ll be able to do business more efficiently without me there to slow you down.”
“To slow me down?” He murmured, his lips lifting into a smile. “Honey, it’s not like that. It’s dinner. Conversation. We’re looking at picking up a Greek shipping corporation that’s about to go bust. That’s all.” He stroked her cheek then flicked a glance at his Rolex.
“Can you be ready in ten minutes?”
She nodded, but her mind was screaming at her to stick to her guns and say ‘no’. Her tummy was already beginning to flood with the familiar kick of adrenalin and anxiety that always punctuated her senses when she was faced with the prospect of spending time with Kyle’s friends.
She knew what they were all thinking.
Why her?
Why this nobody?
What did she have to offer a man like Kyle?
Despite the fact she’d been planning to stay in that evening, her hair was styled into a perfect ballerina bun and her make up was flawless. A year and a half of marriage had led Annie to see that she just didn’t fit in to Kyle’s world. Not because of any one particular thing. She was just chalk and cheese with the sophisticated, high-flying lifestyle he effortlessly inhabited.
But Annie had learned early on how to look the part.
She pulled a black cocktail gown on carefully and touched up her lipgloss, then slipped into a pair of strappy heels. The woman who confronted her from the mirror certainly looked like a tycoon’s wife. She was glossy, polished, poised and expensive. All of the things Annie absolutely wasn’t.
Kyle looked up as she entered and then returned his attention to the papers on the desk without a flicker of recognition. “You made it with two minutes to spare.”
“A gold star for me then,” she commented drily.
He flicked the page over and scanned the rest of the document, taking longer than the spare two minutes to finish whatever he was doing. Annie stood in the doorway, waiting with the appearance of patience while the butterflies spread through her entire body.
I’ve changed my mind. Let me stay here.
The words hovered on her perfectly painted lips
, but she didn’t say them. She couldn’t bear to see the disapproval in his eyes. Worse, she couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing him, and she knew that’s what he’d feel if she let him down yet again.
He turned to face her and smiled distractedly. “The car’s downstairs.”
“Where are we going to?”
“A little French restaurant called Manger Ensemble. You’ll like it.”
“Is it far?”
“Just down in the main street.”
“Why don’t we walk?” She ached to take his hand in hers, to take comfort from his touch. But outside the bedroom, she’d never felt like he wanted to be touched. He was great at sex. Terrible at intimacy. She understood that. It was just part of him, and probably because of the horrible childhood he’d endured.
“Because we’re already ten minutes late,” he drawled, implying easily that she was the reason for their tardiness.
“Oh. Okay.” She swallowed, those stupid tears back cloying at her throat.
She was a master at hiding her doubts from her husband though. She kept her cloak of almost bored resignation wrapped around her shoulders and lifted her handbag from the top of the bar.
A Bentley was waiting at the entrance to the hotel. His hotel, she reminded herself. His Bentley. And she was His Wife.
She flashed a distracted smile at him as she took her seat in the back of the car. Her nerves were shot to pieces. What did he say these people were called?
“So this man owned the first company you bought?” She prompted him with the only information she could recall.
He settled himself beside her. His hip brushed hers and she felt the surge of electric lust bolt through her.
“It was a small chain of boutique hotels. His dad had founded the first one in Naples, and bit by bit it had grown to include twelve exceptional little spots.”
The way he spoke of his successes with such casual disregard fascinated her. “I don’t understand how you did that.”
Her tone was rich with awe, but he didn’t notice it. Kyle was used to people speaking to him with that sort of hushed reverence.
“I signed a paper,” he grinned.
“No, but I mean … to have the money to do that. How old were you?”
He laughed. “You know all this.”
“Twenty two?”
He dipped his head in acknowledgement.
“I’m twenty four and I can barely remember my internet banking logins.”
A quick frown flashed on his expression but he concealed it before she noticed. The ease with which she pointed out her perceived flaws was troubling, as always. “I financed the first purchase,” he said softly. “The figures were good and the market was great. The banks were less cautious then.”
“You’re not saying luck played a part.”
“No.” His eyes sparked with determination. “I would have found a way to buy them, no matter what it took. But the route I found was not difficult.”
“Still, I couldn’t have just walked into a bank and borrowed that amount of money.”
He grinned. “I don’t know. I think any loans officer who got one look at you would give you the world for a smile.” He padded his thumb over her lower lip then dropped his finger to her chin, lifting her face to meet his. “You look beautiful, Annie.”
“Thank you.” When he touched her, she felt the most spectacular power in her heart. But it was always over too fast. He dropped his hand away and leaned back in the seat a little.
To hide her enormous sense of loneliness, she pushed on with the line of questioning. “So you stayed friends with this man?”
“Ralph,” he nodded. “He desperately needed to sell. He knew he couldn’t do the chain justice. Several of the accommodations were in dire need of repairs and modernising. He couldn’t do it.”
“But you could.”
“Yeah.”
“And he didn’t mind?”
“I’m sure he was incredibly disappointed, but he was pleased that someone like me had bought them. I renamed the place in Naples after his father. It took three years to bring them all up to standard, but now they’re some of the most exclusive resorts you’ll come across.”
“And his daughter will be there tonight?”
“Amira.”
Annie was used to the swell of jealousy she felt whenever she imagined her husband with another woman. For she knew his past, before her, was loaded with a string of glamorous women. He had been a confirmed bachelor, and the google image searches showed just the kind of women he’d chosen to fill his life and bed with prior to meeting Annie.
“A lovely name,” she said softly.
“A lovely woman,” he concurred, with no idea that the précis was only fuelling Annie’s own fires of insecurity.
“And now you’re going into business with this guy?”
“Ralph,” he nodded.
“Why?”
“The sale was his find.” He shrugged. “And because I can.”
She turned a little in her seat. “You’re doing this to help him.”
“It makes good financial sense.”
“I’m sure it does.” Her heart flipped with love.
“Don’t look at me like that, Annie,” he murmured. “We definitely don’t have time for what I want to do to you.”
Annie smiled, but a strange heartbreak was numbing her. Sex. All roads led to sex with Kyle, and Annie was too desperately in love to address it. She blinked her eyes, fanning her long lashes against her cheek. When she spoke, her sultry words didn’t so much as hint at the sadness that was stealing over her.
“Dinner won’t take long, will it?”
He laughed. “Not if I have any control over things.”
His kiss was a passionate declaration; his tongue invaded her senses, driving all the insecurities deep back into her heart. Her hands lifted to his chest, clutching his sweater in her grip. “Let’s go back to the hotel,” she unclasped her seatbelt, uncaring in that moment for road rules. She needed to be closer to him. She moved nearer, lifting her legs onto his lap so that he could run a hand beneath her skirt and tease her underwear with his fingers.
“Kyle,” she pushed her hands under his shirt, feeling the ridges of his abdomen and slicking with moist heat. “Please.”
His laugh drove her wild. His fingers pushed the scrap of lace aside and danced at her most sensitive heart, reminding her that he owned her completely. Her eyes were hooded, her mind was blank.
“You are a vixen,” he said with mock condemnation, as he slid a finger inside her feminine core and she bucked her hips in response.
“You made me a vixen,” she reminded him throatily.
“Mmm, yes, my sweet virginal wife,” he teased her insides and his tongue plundered her mouth with the same desperate rhythm.
She had been. She had been completely innocent and unprepared for the type of pleasure Kyle would introduce her to. He had conquered her effortlessly. He had made her his.
The car pulled to a stop and he lifted his head, his eyes conflicted as he studied her. “You are alive in my arms,” he remarked cryptically, pulling his hands from her body and smoothing her dress in place in one movement.
“I’m alive out of them too,” she said, but her nerves were skittering in a billion different directions.
His smile was distracted now. “You’ll keep.”
And he was right.
Dinner had been a conflicting mess of sensations. The desire he’d aroused strummed her body all night, but there was an ache too that not even the biggest deluge of sexual satisfaction could ease.
What kind of marriage did they have if the only place she could feel wanted and relaxed was in bed?
Ralph was a kind, gentlemanly type of man, and Amira was very lovely. Beautiful to look at, but kind and intelligent. As the night progressed, Annie learned that Amira had studied International Relations in Paris and spoke four languages. And though she was stunning to look at, Amira seemed not to realise
or care.
What must that kind of innate confidence be like?
As Amira made some joke and Kyle laughed in an easy response, barbed wire coated Annie’s insides.
For the last eighteen months she’d done everything she could to be the right kind of wife to him.
But she’d never be good enough. Not when there were women like Amira in the world.
Though it took her another month to finally steel herself to walk away from her greatest addiction, looking back Annie knew that night was the moment. The moment she realised how foolish their marriage was, and how much happier he’d be with someone else. Someone better.
4
I t was the same elegant suite. The rooms they’d stayed in seven months earlier, and also where they’d spent their honeymoon. Tiny hurricanes of memories swirled dangerously in pockets around the room. The sofa they’d curled up on and talked for hours and hours on their first visit had become, on the second trip, the sofa she’d sat on alone, reading book after book while he dealt with his business interests. The kitchen they’d stood in every morning and drunk coffee, naked, contemplating the day ahead, was the same kitchen she had sobbed in when they’d returned from dinner with Ralph and Amira and she’d realised how hopeless it was.
Annie masked her feelings now but they were rioting inside of her. It was like stepping back into the past. A chasm of uncertainty spread before her. Who was she?
Not the woman she’d assumed on her last visit. And not the woman she had turned herself into. She swallowed, turning slowly to take in the luxurious fittings and elegant artwork.
The last time they’d come it had been summer, and the view had been covered with greenery and wildflowers and endless blue skies.
Now, the vista was glowingly white. Snow. Sky. Everything shimmered with pale magic.
“Bring back memories?” He asked, watching her thoughtfully. She’d barely spoken since getting on board the flight. The engagement ring she refused to wear bore a heavy mark in his pocket.
Her smile was condescending. That was new. The acidity with which she regarded him seemed to have come out of nowhere.
The Sheikh's Million Dollar Bride & The Billionaire's Ruthless Revenge (Clare Connelly Pairs Book 6) Page 18
