He stifled his response. Though her mannerisms had altered, one thing definitely hadn’t changed. Annie in a mood like this was better left to calm down.
“Good evening, Mr Anderson. Might I say how delighted we are to have you with us tonight? Bianca was especially thrilled that you were able to attend after all.” A woman so officious and glamorous that she could, surely, have only been one of the owners, approached Kyle and began to speak instantly.
“Of course,” he nodded dismissively. Annie took a small side-step, and waited to see how he’d react. It was an almost out of body experience, watching him in this environment. She’d done so numerous times, but that had been as his wife. His wounded, desperate, aching wife.
Now she was still all those things, but she was angry too. Furious, in fact, at the husband who had bullied her back into his life and would no doubt soon find her powerless to resist him in bed.
The very thought sent her pulse into overdrive.
A man dressed in a suit passed by Annie and sent her an appreciative look. She smiled at him distractedly and then scanned the rest of the room. It was not as busy as she’d expected, but she suspected the collective financial means of those gathered would make up for it. There were several faces she recognised: some from other social events she’d attended in the past and some from the society sections of magazines and newspapers.
Annie took another small step away from her husband, who was still making small talk with the older woman. Then, another, and another, until she’d broken far enough away to consider herself a free agent.
These shindigs always had an excellent bar. And though Annie considered herself a mediocre drinker of very limited tolerance she waded through the sea of tuxedos until she reached a glistening champagne tower.
“Ma’am?” A young woman with a neat red braid asked, pointing towards the delicate construction of art deco crystal saucers.
“Please,” Annie nodded. She waited patiently while the waitress dislodged a glass that was so full it virtually had a meniscus and passed it to Annie.
She smiled in thanks and then moved on, sipping as she went to reduce the likelihood of spilling. Pre-recorded jazz was being piped through the speakers but it did little too soothe her fractious temperament.
Kyle had been right, she realised begrudgingly. Though Bianca deNicolai was famous primarily for two things (an ill-conceived affair with a married Russian politician that had resulted in her permanent exile from the country, and the stunning figure she flouted in artful black and white shots) there were also several other pieces of interest. Her photography of subjects other than herself seemed to echo an almost impressionistic palette, and Annie found herself drawn to several of the French countryside in particular.
“Do you like?” An Italian voice asked from behind her shoulder.
She slid a quick look in the direction of the voice, and saw a handsome man with a dark complexion in a shirt and low-slung jeans which somehow exuded confidence and casual elegance.
“Very much, yes.” Annie was far too kind-hearted a person to withhold praise simply because she found the blatant self-promotion of the nudes a tad too bold.
“These pieces are very special to the artist,” he said, moving closer to one of the prints. “This one is a field where her grandfather is buried.”
“Oh.” She blinked, her eyes enormous. “That’s … poignant. It must be hard for her to part with it.”
“Si,” he agreed with a nod. “She has another from the same day which remains with her.”
“You know the artist?” Annie asked, and the man lifted a hand in the air and beckoned with two fingers.
Annie spun, following his gaze, and was greeted by the unmistakable sight of the photographer artiste herself.
“My sister,” he explained, as Bianca prowled closer. She was wearing a skin tight dress that showed almost as much flesh as her photographs.
“Ciao,” Bianca’s smile was pure seduction. “Who is this, Carlo?”
“We hadn’t got around to introductions. La Bella Donna was just admiring Number Thirty Seven.”
“Ah ha.” Bianca extended a hand and shook Annie’s. “I am Bianca.”
“Yes, of course you are,” Annie grinned. “I’m Annie … Smith.” She had begun to revert to her maiden surname in recent months. And why should she not? They were going to get divorced. At least, that had been her plan. But even before their separation, during their short marriage, she’d preferred to use her own name as much as possible. Being an Anderson carried far too much sway for her liking.
“Piacere.” Bianca’s smile ramped up to the mega-watt range as she looked past Annie and Carlo.
“Darling! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see you again,” she tottered a few paces away. Annie didn’t turn around initially. She didn’t need to. Of course Kyle had come in search of her. She knew it because she knew him, and also because her skin seemed to flush like a proximity alarm when he was within touching distance.
She tilted her head slowly, allowing her features to assume a mask of disinterest. Even when Bianca put both hands on the sides of his face and brought her lips to his in a brief but unmistakably familiar kiss, Annie’s look of unconcern didn’t change.
Kyle, however, clearly felt some consternation at this turn of events. “Bianca,” he drawled impatiently. “I see you’ve met my wife.”
“Your …” The Italian woman turned in surprise, her lips a perfect ‘o’ of surprise. “You said your name was Annie Smith?”
Kyle’s eyes flashed with a dark emotion that only Annie recognised. “She does that sometimes,” he said with a nod. “My wife’s sense of humour is not always amusing.”
“I wasn’t attempting humour,” Annie interjected in self-defense, her smile belying the sharp retort. “In any event, yes, we just met. Bianca’s art is exceptional, darling.” He lifted a brow at the endearment and closed the rest of the distance between them. His hand wrapped around her waist and his fingers pressed to her hips with just enough intensity to make her stiffen.
Annie sent him a warning glance. “I particularly like this piece.” She nodded to the photograph of the field in France.
“It’s very special to me,” Bianca murmured. “You remember, I told you about this place, Ky?”
Ky? Annie heard the term of affection without so much as a flicker of betraying reaction but inside her blood was raging like a tsunami. Ky!?
“Did you?” His fingers began to sway, up and down, soothing her through the couture she wore.
“When we were in Paris that time. I suggested we go there but you had to work.” Bianca put a hand on Annie’s arm. “He is always working, no? This man is a slave to the dollar.”
Annie swallowed. “I don’t mind,” she lied. “It gives me a lot of free time to explore my own interests.”
Kyle’s fingers increased their tattoo but Annie suddenly couldn’t bear to have him touching her. She took a step forward on the pretence of examining the print more closely. “I’d like to buy it,” she said with finality. “Excuse me. I’ll go and see that lady with the clipboard.”
“Maria,” Bianca informed Annie with a perfect smile. “She is running the sales.”
“Darling,” Kyle’s tone held a warning. “We can go together.”
“Oh, no, no. You and Bianca must have loads to catch up on. Besides,” she winked at Bianca, “I want to see what else I can snap up.” She turned her attention to Carlo. “Come, Carlo. Why don’t you give me a tour so these two can … talk?”
Kyle watched his wife link her hand through the crook of the suave Italian’s arm with a strong desire to shout expletives. He hated the sight of her with anyone. He hated the way she was ignoring him.
He watched Annie and Carlo for at least twenty minutes. Their heads remained bent close together, and her face. God, her mesmerising face. She listened intently to the stories behind the art and he realised how long it had been since she’d looked at him with the same wrapt fasci
nation.
Then again, when had he last spent the time conversing with her at length on any subject beyond the perfections of her body?
It should have been him showing her through the gallery, not Bianca’s bloody brother.
He swallowed and attempted to focus his attention on the story one of Bianca’s friends was boring him with.
“Fascinating,” he nodded. Bianca and Carlo were nearing the arch. They were moving to a different room of the galleria, out of his sight. And suddenly he couldn’t bear not to see her. Not to watch her.
“Excuse me.” He moved quickly and purposefully, his eyes glued to the pair as Carlo removed two more champagnes from the tower and handed one to Annie. She flicked a casual smile at him and Kyle’s chest squeezed painfully.
The room was filled with Bianca’s nudes and Annie didn’t stop for long at any of them. Instead, she drew Carlo to a bench seat in the middle and sat down. Kyle couldn’t hear them, but he saw the way she lifted her feet into the air and nodded at the heels. A frown tugged at his lips.
Were her feet hurting her?
Annie always wore heels. There was a height disparity between them – she was short and he was tall – and he had presumed she liked to be nearer to him. She pulled a grimace and shrugged, then squeezed her finger and thumb together. He wondered what she was saying now.
“Glenfiddich,” he said to an approaching waiter without bothering to look in his direction.
“Yes, sir,” the man bustled away instantly.
Carlo was telling a story, gesturing with his hands and Annie was laughing almost uncontrollably.
Her face radiated amusement and happiness and the loss Kyle felt was profound. How in the world hadn’t he realised before now?
How had he not seen that she was miserable?
With a sense of gnawing panic he thought back to the first time they’d met. No, not the first time they’d met, for she’d been worrying about her idiotic brother then too and her expression had worn the proof of that concern. But once he had assured her he would fix things on that score, they’d gone on a date. And she’d laughed and laughed all night.
He’d told her stories that he hadn’t meant to be amusing, but she’d gently teased him until they’d both ended up laughing. A frown marked his brow; a scowl etched his lips.
“Thank you.” He took the proffered Glenfiddich and swirled it in the glass. The ice chipped a little and he took the first sip.
When had she stopped laughing?
They’d married quickly. Within two months. He had wanted her in his home, with him all the time. He had always loved her obsessively.
And she’d still smiled and laughed. Their honeymoon had been perfect, right here in Aspen. He’d teased her for her British accent and her British ways – that addiction she had to tea, and her insistence that ‘chip butties’ were a food group in and of themselves. She’d made him pimms and lemonade and he’d almost been sick at the pungent sweetness of the drink. They’d watched Ricky Gervais and on that score he’d had to agree that she had a point – he was hilarious.
So when had she stopped laughing? When had she stopped greeting him at the door with the smile that could make his world tip off its edge? And why hadn’t he noticed until that moment?
She felt so far away from him. Oh, she was only across a room in a gallery, but she might as well have been in a different galaxy.
The panic was suffocating him now.
Why hadn’t she talked to him?
He frowned.
That horrible last day, she’d tried to. She’d come to see him and he’d stone-walled her. He’d grown impatient with her demands. What he’d seen then as her insecurities and petulant over-reactions.
So he’d told her to calm down and go home. To drink a tea and watch a movie.
He cringed now at the condescending way he’d dismissed her.
And he really had dismissed her.
When he’d returned home several hours later clutching a bunch of roses as though such a meagre offering could atone for the way he’d ignored the feelings she’d tried to convey, Annie had been long gone.
His heart turned over in his chest as the past seemed to gulf like a river of accusations.
Annie looked in his direction at that moment and their eyes clashed for a brief second, before she slid her gaze onwards without a hint of reaction.
He saw nothing in those eyes he recognised. It wasn’t simply that she was indecipherable, as he’d believed earlier. She was wilfully closed off to him. She had agreed to be his wife but she was showing him that she would never be ‘his’ in the way she had once been. In the way he’d tried to remind her when they’d been in bed earlier.
He took another swig of his scotch and began to move through the room, looking at the pictures without seeing them. All he could visualise was Annie’s smile. The way it dazzled on her face as she laughed with Carlo. The way it hadn’t shone for him for a very long time.
Kyle Anderson felt a flush of regret and an ever greater dawning of doubt. He had never been good at fixing broken relationships, and theirs was quintessentially, completely and perhaps irreparably broken.
6
“See anything you like?” His wife’s voice was a murmur from behind him.
Kyle was startled out of his reverie to realise he’d been fixating on a large-scale black and white image of the curve of Bianca’s legs and backside.
He turned his back on it and looked straight at Annie. “Now that you’re here, yeah.”
She blinked at him and then shrugged as if to dismiss the compliment. “You were right. She’s more talented than just this stuff.” Annie waved a finger around the room.
Kyle really didn’t want to talk about Bianca though.
“How did you meet her?” The question was voiced casually enough but Kyle had years of experience with his wife’s jealousies and he heard the note of steel in the few words and understood.
“Through mutual acquaintances,” he hedged, putting a hand in the small of Annie’s back and guiding her through the room. “She used to date a guy I went to college with.”
Annie was walking slowly and he remembered belatedly that she’d been gesturing to her feet as though they hurt. “Would you like to sit down?”
Her expression was quizzical. “Why?”
His chest twisted at the derisive question. She was dismissing his concern. She didn’t want it. Not from him. But from Carlo? The jealousy now was all his.
“And you dated her too?”
The question shouldn’t have surprised him but it was more direct than her usual approach. In the past, Kyle might have obfuscated to protect his wife from the silly feelings of envy that had seemed to plague her.
“Yes.” He studied her face, trying to interpret the emotions he perceived in her expression.
“I’m always so impressed by how you stay friends with all these women you’ve slept with,” she said in a saccharine way that seemed to imply exactly the opposite.
He pressed his lips together. “We don’t have to stay if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine.” She blinked up at him. “I gave up caring about your … other lovers … the day I moved out.”
He lifted a hand to her cheek and cupped it gently. “I’ve missed you.”
She swallowed rapidly. He saw the betraying gesture and dropped his thumb to the pulse point at the base of her neck. Her blood was raging just like his. “I’m sure you’ve found ways to console yourself.”
His laugh was a short burst. “I told you yesterday: it’s been a very long, lonely six months.”
She smiled tightly and took a step backwards, breaking their physical contact. “And I told you I find that impossible to believe.” She lifted a finger and pressed it against his lips in a gesture of silence. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t. I really don’t mind that you’ve been with other women since me. I considered our marriage over, and with it any obligations we owed one another.”
“I didn’t,” he muttered, his emotions bursting angrily through him. “And I swear to God, Annie, it would just about kill me to think of you with some other guy.”
Her cheeks flushed at the obvious burst of passion. Annie was not at all proud of herself but she recognised the pleasure she took from his jealousy. “Then don’t think of it,” she prodded, transfixed by the obvious torment in his face. She almost wanted to relieve his suffering and tell him that of course she hadn’t been with another man since leaving him.
But kindness was too hard to find.
“Annie.” It was a groan, a plea and an ache.
“People are starting to look,” she whispered, tilting her lips into a polite smile. “You don’t want to disrupt your lover’s exhibit.”
His cheekbones were slashed with dark colour. He put an arm around her waist and walked towards one of the doors. She moved with him simply to avoid attracting more attention.
To Annie’s chagrin, he took her into a room away from the rest and at that moment it was uninhabited by anyone else.
“I was with Bianca three years ago. Long before I’d ever heard your name. Are you going to carry a grudge because I had a sex life before we got married?”
She bit down on her lip. “It’s not the fact you had sex before you met me,” she retorted darkly. “So much as the fact you’re insistent on keeping them all on speed dial.” She angled her head so that he was met by her determined profile and the jut of her chin.
He furrowed his brow. “I can’t cut off contact with everyone I’ve ever been involved with.”
Annie narrowed her eyes at the casual reference to the scores of women he’d adored and desired before meeting her. Rejection and envy warred inside of her and Annie’s desire to wound him equally asserted itself. “Fine. Then put yourself in my shoes for a minute.” She pressed a finger into his chest to emphasise her point. “Imagine that I’ve spent the last six months sleeping with whomever caught my fancy just to get you out of my head. Imagine I treated sex as a perfect way to expunge you from my mind.” Her lips twisted with relish at the very idea of finally being able to forget her husband. “Now imagine all those sexy, gorgeous men were a constant, ongoing presence in my life. And then tell me I’m being difficult and demanding.”
The Sheikh's Million Dollar Bride & The Billionaire's Ruthless Revenge (Clare Connelly Pairs Book 6) Page 21
