CHAPTER FIVE
‘WOULDYOULIKE some more tea, signorina?’
Glancing up at Valentina, Lily shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I only ever have one cup.’
She shifted position in her chair and returned her gaze to where it had been fixed for the last twenty minutes to a point about an inch to the left of Trip’s maddeningly handsome face.
They were having breakfast outside beneath swathes of fragrant wisteria.
Beyond the formal gardens with their box hedging and parterres and half-hidden statuary was a rippling landscape of greens in every shade uninterrupted by anything man-made. Just paddocks of grazing horses, rows of olive trees and sloping fields of grape-covered vines and then finally the dark bosky hills that rolled up to meet the cloudless blue sky.
It was her first meal at the villa and the food was excellent, on a par with anything her parents’ housekeeper, Marisa, produced back in New York. She was still a little too tense to fully enjoy her breakfast of delicately scrambled eggs with curling ribbons of crispy pancetta, but that wasn’t Valentina’s fault. She seemed like a nice person and she wasn’t responsible for the actions of her capricious owner.
‘The eggs were wonderful, by the way,’ she said, glancing up at the housekeeper and smiling. ‘And the bread. In fact, it was all delicious.’
Yesterday, probably because of the stress and the leftover effects of anti-nausea pills, she had fallen asleep and unintentionally missed lunch. Waking in the late afternoon, she had showered and changed clothes and, drawn to the miraculous view from her window, she had decided to leave the sanctuary of her room.
Only then had she caught sight of Trip wandering in the garden, looking irritatingly relaxed and handsome, talking on the phone, and she had felt so furious that she had picked up her own phone to call her mother and tell her the truth.
But, swiping right, she had been confronted by the screensaver of her family and, gazing down into her brother’s sweet face, had felt her anger ooze away.
At some point, Trip had knocked on the door and called out her name softly and she had sat, muscles quivering, poised to dart into the bathroom, which at least had a key. He hadn’t come in and she had spent the next few hours alternately hating him and trying to come up with some way to extricate herself without causing collateral damage to everyone she loved.
She failed.
Later, she had watched Valentina set a beautiful candlelit table with a mounting sense of dread as the reality of what she’d agreed to had set in. Maybe Trip had read her mind because it had been the housekeeper who’d knocked on her door that time. She’d opened it and explained that she had a migraine and would not be joining Mr Winslow for supper.
It had felt like a minor victory, albeit in a war she had already conceded. But this morning, gazing out at the mist-covered hills, she had decided that she was done with hiding. She had spent so much of her life keeping her head down, trying not to be seen, not even for the things that she was good at, like her job.
And if anyone should be hiding away it was Trip. It was that thought that had propelled her downstairs and through the elegant sitting room with its marble-topped side tables and exquisite linen-covered sofas.
It was the right thing to do, she told herself. The warm, lemon-scented air was calming and, despite its elegance, the blush-pink house was a comforting backdrop. Hidden slightly by a hedge of paintbrush-tipped cypresses, a shimmering blue swimming pool glittered temptingly like a sapphire in the sunshine.
But the pool and the house were still overshadowed by the breathtaking beauty of its owner, she thought, watching through lowered lashes as Trip shifted back in his chair to squint up at the Tuscan sun that was partly to blame for that annoying but undeniable truth.
Given his behaviour, it should be hiding behind a cloud. Instead, the sun seemed determined to show Trip in his best light, illuminating the extraordinary sculpted angles and curves of his face like a master cinematographer.
Turning her face minutely away from the gravitational pull of his flawless features, she stared determinedly to where the horses, coats gleaming, were tossing their heads fretfully to dispel any curious flies. It looked exactly like—
‘It looks like a painting, doesn’t it?’
Trip’s voice cut across her thoughts and, pulse stumbling, she turned towards him, jolted that he could read her mind. Not that it was the first time. Only then she had wanted him to. Now it didn’t seem fair that he retained that power.
For Valentina’s benefit, she gave an infinitesimal nod of her head. ‘I suppose it does.’ She had no intention of letting him know that he could see inside her head. Or of making this easy for him in any way.
He had thought she would, of course. Coming downstairs this morning, he had acted just as if they were here on holiday. As if this trip were something consensual, something they had discussed with excitement together, when in reality she had been pushed into a corner, trapped into a year-long charade against her will.
Not that Trip cared, she thought, glancing across the table to where he was lounging in the seat opposite her, handsome in pale chinos and a fine pale blue shirt. Now that he had got his own way he seemed to have completely forgotten what he had done to reach this point.
So maybe it was time to remind him.
As Valentina disappeared back into the house, Lily put down her cup.
‘Just a point of information. I know you’re not a details kind of guy, but if this is going to work, then you need to understand that there have to be some ground rules for our “arrangement”. My rules.’
‘You have rules for this?’ That mouth of his curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile, something that banged through her like falling scaffolding. ‘And there was me thinking I was your first.’
Her temper flared.
‘You think this is a joke? You’ve put me in an impossible position. That’s why I’ve agreed to do this, Trip, and I will make the best of it. But the best version of this for me will be to spend as little time as possible with you.’
He studied her for a moment. ‘You are aware that we’re going to be married?’
There was that same slight curve pulling at his mouth as if her words didn’t matter to him. But as he stretched out his legs there were different truths layered beneath his casual manner. She could see them in the slight narrowing of his eyes and the sudden elevation of tension in that mouth-watering body of his.
‘I understand that we will have to spend time together in public, and when that happens, I will behave the way that couples do in a real relationship. You know, the kind where one party hasn’t been coerced into the relationship by the other.’
He eyed her across the table. ‘But our way is so much more stimulating, don’t you think?’
She ignored him. ‘I will make conversation and smile but, just so we’re clear, that doesn’t mean that I want to.’ And she wasn’t going to let him forget it. ‘I don’t want anything from you, except my freedom. Unfortunately, you’ve made me a co-conspirator to your lies, but that doesn’t mean I have to lie when we’re alone. So I won’t be making small talk with you when we’re on our own. It’s bad enough that I’m going to have to play-act in public. I won’t do it in private.’
Private. The word jangled inside her head, made her think of low lighting and locked doors, and her stomach cartwheeled, nipples tightening as every single cell in her body quivered into a state of such heightened awareness that just meeting his gaze made her feel dizzy.
‘Nor are there going to be any “benefits” between us,’ she said stiffly, trying to sound like the opposite of the woman who had melted against him less than forty-eight hours ago.
‘Benefits?’
The skin on her face felt suddenly too tight. ‘You know, intimacies,’ she said quickly, ignoring the pulse of heat that beat up over her throat and face as her brain unhelpfully suggested the range of acts that word might include.
Steadying her breathing, she pushed back her seat. ‘And now that we both know where we stand, I’m going to—’
‘What about kissing?’ He frowned. ‘What’s the rule about that?’
‘What?’ Lily tensed all the way through.
‘Kissing?’ he repeated, his eyes finding hers. ‘Does that count as intimate?’
‘Of course it does,’ she said quickly.
‘Then I’m confused,’ he said, mildly enough but there was a gleam in those blue eyes of his that she felt everywhere. ‘Because the other day when we kissed at your apartment, we were one hundred per cent on our own.’
That shimmering thread between them pulled taut as she realised too late that she had stepped into a trap of her own making. There was no answer to that. Or none that she was willing to share with Trip, here in the beautiful Italian sunshine.
At the time she had been lost in the moment and the press of his mouth on hers and the scent of his skin.
It was only afterwards that she had attempted to rationalise her behaviour as something that had needed to be done. So not rational, but understandable. Because she had hated how it had ended before, with her telling him that she didn’t care what he did or where he went. Or even if he came back.
Kissing had felt right, and the rightness of it and the fierceness of it had taken her breath away, and all of it, all her anger and hostility, had melted away and there had just been heat and need and truth.
Only now there was nothing but lies.
‘There will be no kissing at all,’ she hissed, getting to her feet. ‘If we have to look like a couple, we can hold hands.’
‘And why would we have to do that?’ His gaze was so blue, so deep, she felt as though she were drowning. ‘Just for information purposes, of course,’ he called after her as she stalked back into the house.
She stayed upstairs until lunchtime. When Valentina knocked on the door to tell her the meal was ready she was tempted to pretend she had another migraine, but she couldn’t do that every single time Trip annoyed her. Clutching a novel in front of her like a shield, she followed the housekeeper downstairs.
Lunch was light but just as delicious as breakfast. As one of the maids arrived to clear the table, she was fully intending to retreat to her room to read. Trip had other ideas.
‘We’ll take coffee by the pool. It’s cooler down there. More private,’ he added, reaching out to take her hand, no doubt in retaliation for her words at breakfast. She had no option but to let him, but as soon as Valentina had deposited their coffee onto one of the tables by the sunloungers she snatched her hand away again.
Of course, she didn’t need to worry. Trip needed constant stimulation and within five minutes he had disappeared back into the villa.
Tipping her head back, she gazed up at the cloudless blue sky and then quickly looked back down again. It was too much like looking into Trip’s eyes. Reaching down, she picked up her book and opened it. A light breeze was moving in from the mountains and, liking the feel of it against her skin, she half closed her eyes.
That was better...
‘So what would be the next step?’
Her eyes snapped open and she stared across the rectangle of glittering blue water. Trip was back, a satellite phone pressed against his smooth dark head, sunlight dancing across his face as if it were delighted to see him.
Oh, and he had changed into black swim shorts. Great.
She stared at him, dry-mouthed, conscious suddenly that she was not quite controlling her reaction, but thankfully he was walking away from her, pacing back and forth along the length of the pool, moving with that familiar mesmerising athletic grace. Judging by the tension in his shoulders, it was a business call, although she didn’t really care one way or another. Nothing about Trip was of any interest to her.
Liar, she thought, a beat of heat looping down to her stomach and back up to her throat as she tried not to stare at his semi-naked body.
She hadn’t forgotten how gorgeous he was, but it was still a shock to be within spitting distance of all that bare, golden skin and curving muscle.
Not that she wanted to spit. She wanted to press her lips against his chest and follow the trail of fine dark hairs with her tongue to where they disappeared beneath the waistband of his trunks. Then go lower still to where the hairs thickened, and keep licking until they were both panting and mindless with hunger.
Her throat was so dry now it hurt to swallow and she could feel the back of the chair pressing against her spine. Just for a moment, she allowed her gaze to rest on the ripple of muscle but then it was too much.
Gripping the book tighter, she ducked her head and stared blindly at the words, seeing nothing, reading nothing, her body twitching restlessly against the lounger.
Trip was still pacing, but now he stopped so that he was in profile to her, the outline of his body silhouetted crisply against the blue of the sky, taut, lean, undeniably male. It was no surprise to her and yet she felt the shock of it curl through her body as hot colour flooded her cheeks when he glanced over and found her watching him.
‘I have to go,’ he said softly.
Jerking her gaze away, she stared back down at the lines of type, her heart bumping against her ribs as he came closer.
There was a slight creak as he sat down. She could see his body out of the corner of her eye, but it was his scent that was playing havoc with her nerve endings.
‘What are you doing?’ Her fingers fumbled against the book and she had to flatten herself against the cushions as he suddenly got to his feet and leaned over her.
‘Calm down.’ His eyes narrowed on her face. ‘I’m not going to jump you.’
‘You did before.’ She swallowed, hard, remembering the heat, the fire, the devastating rush of need, her own unthinking impatience to walk through the flames with him. ‘And then you tricked me into flying here with you and you’ve done nothing but threaten and bully and manipulate me ever since, so you’ll forgive me if I’m a little hazy about your intentions.’
He held up his hands as if he were the one being threatened.
‘I was just moving the parasol.’ He gestured up towards the bleached-out sun high above them. ‘So that you don’t get burned.’ His blue eyes rested on the blouse and pants she was wearing. ‘Although you might actually die of heatstroke before that happens. Are you not hot?’
Lily smiled thinly.
Thanks to her mother, she was, because, aside from the jacket she had recognised, Laura had packed the kind of clothes that would be suitable for a romantic holiday à deux. Which was, of course, what her mother thought this was.
She gritted her teeth. Only she didn’t want to wear some conspicuously new and humiliating unworn skimpy bikini or semi-transparent dress in front of Trip any more than she wanted to make small talk with him. Which was why she was dressed in the same clothes that she had worn on the plane. Because, despite the heat of the day, she needed her armour.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she said stiffly.
Trip stared down at her for a moment, his blue gaze momentarily hotter than the sun, and then he shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
She held his gaze. ‘Nothing about this situation suits me, Trip, as you very well know.’
She half expected him to respond but he was already turning towards the pool, and she watched with a mix of fury and envy as he dived into the water. It was the kind of dive that barely made a ripple on the glassy surface, which had to be a first for him, she thought, her heart still beating out of time from that last interaction.
Partly it was the fact that he was one of the richest men in the world, partly it was his extraordinary looks, but there was more to Trip than just the obvious. He had an energy, a presence that changed the atmosphere around him, making it shimmer and ripple like the air above roads in a heatwave. She had seen first-hand how he could cause a kind of seismic ripple to the structure of any building he was in. Even when his muscular outline was distorted by the water, there was something that kept pulling your gaze towards him. Anticipation, maybe, for the moment when he would emerge, godlike, from the water.
As if on cue, he did just that, pulling himself up onto the tiled edge of the pool with effortless grace. Her pulse ticced in her throat as he smoothed back his wet hair, sending water trickling down the hard planes and angles of his back and shoulders.
It was impossible to look away, excruciating to keep looking.
So move, she told herself, but Trip was already walking towards her and then he was sitting beside her, stretching out one long muscular leg and tilting his head up to the sun.
‘Ah, here’s Valentina,’ he said softly, and before she had a chance to react he had taken her hand and lifted it to his mouth.
The housekeeper had brought out a jug of freshly squeezed peach juice and, pressing her lips together in a tight smile, Lily sat fuming while Trip dragged out the conversation on purpose by asking Valentina which peaches she had used. And the whole time, he caressed the back of Lily’s hand with his thumb in a way that made her feel restless and light-headed.
Finally, Valentina left and Lily jerked her hand free of his grip and got shakily to her feet.
He glanced up at her, frowning. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going indoors.’
‘For real?’ His face was expressionless, but she could hear the frustration in his voice. ‘Why? Because I held your hand? I’m following your rules. Maybe you should too, Lily, because you need this to work as much as I do. If it doesn’t, I think life is going to be real hard for you and everyone you care about, so stop fighting me and stop fighting yourself, because this is happening.’
He was right on both counts, she thought as she headed back into the house for the second time that day. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to live with.
Staring after her, Trip felt his hands curl into fists. Yesterday had been a challenging but ultimately satisfying day. Obviously Lily had been furious with him and it had taken longer than he’d thought for her to stop fighting him. But then he’d mentioned Lucas and she had acquiesced with a speed that had confused him.
And unsettled him.
Picking up the jug of peach juice, he poured himself a glass and drank it swiftly. Normally, he found the familiar sweetness calming but now it sat in his stomach like a lump of ice.
He knew Lily’s younger brother. Not well, but enough to know that he was shy and sensitive and probably not equipped to handle the modern media machine. Nor did he know for sure what Lucas had been doing in Zurich, and to be truthful he probably would have never given it a second thought. But then he’d realised that the Dempseys had lied about Lucas’ whereabouts.
There had been no need to join the dots for him to work out why. Among his set there was only one reason people lied about being in Zurich. It was because they were in rehab.
He hadn’t ever planned on using it as leverage, but then Lily wouldn’t give in and he’d been getting impatient. And working and living with Henry Winslow II had taught him that if you found a crack, you pushed on it to see what, if anything, broke.
And Lily had capitulated.
But as victories went, it had been less than satisfying. She had looked small and fragile, just like that time at the auction, and, watching her face grow pale, he hadn’t liked how it made him feel. It wasn’t who he was, whatever she might think. He was impulsive, occasionally thoughtless, sometimes arrogant, but he didn’t lie or cheat or bully or blackmail or do any of the other things she had accused him of doing.
And he didn’t want to hurt Lily. In part that was one of the reasons he’d decided to bring her to Italy.
Because something had happened to him in Ecuador. It might be a cliché but staring down the barrel of a gun had rewired him in some way. All those weeks of feeling vulnerable and alone had made him understand that he could rely only on himself. That he needed to be ruthless. Single-minded. Selfish even.
And then there were the letters. Lily had been the first person he’d seen after reading them and shock had made him colder, and crueller, than he should have been. More like the man he couldn’t not love, but resented and hated. Knowing that had angered him, and he’d felt guilty too for taking it out on Lily, but in the moment it had been easier to blame her for making him feel so out of control.
He’d done the same thing earlier today, his guilt at dragging her into all of this colliding with his frustration at her continuing and pointless refusal to accept the new status quo, and so he’d lashed out at her with the kind of ultimatum Henry had specialised in. And he hated being like his father.
Tilting back his head, he stared into the sun until everything turned white and he was forced to blink. If only he could blank out those pages, unsee those lines of cursive script, but he couldn’t.
It was what he’d hoped would happen in Ecuador. But the blindfold and then the silence and claustrophobic gloom of the jungle had simply made everything inside his head sharper and louder. He’d thought he was going to lose his mind. Only one thing had kept him going: Lily.
He had dreamed about her constantly, often with such clarity that when he’d woken he’d half expected to find her by his side. And when, finally, he’d escaped his captors it had been her eyes that had been like silver stars guiding him onwards whenever he couldn’t see the night sky through the rainforest canopy.
His shoulders tensed.
Obviously, he hadn’t been himself in those days and weeks in the jungle, but in some ways it made sense for him to have imagined Lily. After all, he had ended up in her apartment every night for months, right up until he’d left for Ecuador.
No doubt that was also why hers had been the first name to pop into his head when he’d been squaring up to Mason and the other trustees.
Not that he was planning on explaining any of this to Lily. He didn’t need to.
She hadn’t come quietly or easily, but she was here now, with her rules and that tilt of her chin. And her uncanny ability to find the cracks in his armour.
Remembering how she had thrown his father’s name at him like some verbal gauntlet, he gritted his teeth.
‘And what would he think about you doing this?’Lily had asked. ‘He wanted you to step up. To grow up.’
The answer to that question made him get to his feet abruptly, because it wasn’t Lily’s voice inside his head, but Henry’s, and his chest clenched, tightening hard, tightening around an emptiness that was as familiar as it was painful. He swayed forward. His brain felt as if it were short-circuiting and his hands moved automatically to his face, but it would take more than tapping to quiet his mind. He turned and began to walk swiftly away from the house.
Rereading the same paragraph for the umpteenth time, Lily looked up from her book and sighed. She was sitting on the window seat in her room and it was in many ways the perfect spot to read. Light but not bright, comfy enough to relax but not to doze off. But she couldn’t concentrate. All she could think about was what Trip had said to her earlier.
He was right. She did need this to work. No doubt, news of their engagement would leak out if it hadn’t already, and it didn’t matter that she hated everything about the situation. There was more at stake than her ego. Her throat tightened. Only it was turning out to be so much harder than she had ever imagined.
Her fingers twitched, and she made a fist, trying to banish the memory of how it had felt when Trip had taken her hand out by the pool. She knew that it had been for Valentina’s benefit, oh, and to prove a point, but why then could she still feel the imprint of his touch? Why did it still burn now, sharp and hot like the lick of a flame?
Why then did it make her want more heat? More touch, just more...
Needing to distract herself, she stared through the window at the view. She had been to Rome only once with her parents and she had loved all the art and architecture and the buzz of the moped and the oven-hot streets. But this was the other side to Italy. Lush, rural, so quiet you could hear your heart beating. It was like looking at a painting. Or perhaps the backdrop to a play or a ballet. But there were no dancers waiting nervously in the wings, just horses, heads low as they grazed the lush green grass.
She put down her book.
Her family were sailors. Her dad had a yacht and they spent their summers around Martha’s Vineyard, taking the boat out all the way to the Bahamas and back. She liked horses but they were large and unpredictable, so mostly she was happy to look at them from a distance.
But maybe that was something else that was going to have to change too if she was ever going to take a look around her home for the next few days—weeks?—because there seemed to be an awful lot of them.
As if to prove that point, she heard a whinny from nearby and, leaning forward a fraction, she narrowed her gaze in the direction of the sound.
She was more than a little scared of horses, but perhaps if she could get past her fear then everything else would seem easy in comparison. At the very least it would stop her thinking about Trip. First, though, she was going to change clothes. She was just too hot and she couldn’t keep wearing the same things day after day.
Having changed into a light gingham print dress with puffed sleeves, which was no doubt her mother’s idea of what to wear for some imaginary picnic in the country, she slipped on her sandals and made her way downstairs.
It was easy to find the stables, although only the two-part doors with their hay rails gave any hint that they were for horses, not humans. They shared the same stucco walls and pantiled roof as the main house and were easily the most opulent-looking stables she had ever seen. But there were no horses.
And then she heard it again, the same noise as before, only softer, more of a nickering sound than a whinny. It was coming from a slightly larger building next door, some kind of barn by the looks of it.
The door was shut but it opened easily and she slipped inside, glancing up, momentarily transfixed by the dust motes spiralling lazily down from the ceiling.
And then she saw him.
Trip was standing next to a beautiful chestnut-coloured horse. Given that he was standing in a barn, she would have expected him to be wearing chinos or jeans, but he was still wearing his swim shorts. His one concession to the equestrian setting was that he no longer had bare feet. Instead he was wearing some of those short riding boots.
At first she thought he was on the phone. His head was lowered slightly and one hand was pressing against the side of his face, but then he moved and she saw that it was empty. He seemed to be just standing there. No, not just standing, she thought, her gaze resting on the rise and fall of his chest. He was concentrating.
Abruptly, the horse shook his head and took a couple of steps forward and she saw Trip frown, adjust his breathing, then follow the horse.
Her own breath was trapped in her throat. What was he doing?
Now, Trip was bowing his head again, closing his eyes and for a moment nothing happened and then the horse turned and gently nuzzled his shoulders, and she had a sudden, strong feeling that she was intruding.
Without turning, she took a step backwards and collided with something hard and metallic. A shovel—
‘Ouch!’
‘Lily?’
The horse made an accusatory whickering sound, but it was Trip’s voice that made her legs momentarily weave beneath her, then freeze.
Trip had turned and was walking towards her. In the soft, smothered light of the barn his beauty transcended any words she could muster.
‘Are you okay?’ He was squinting but she felt his gaze like a searchlight. Behind him, the horse was walking over to tug at a net of hay.
‘I’m fine.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I heard the horses, so I thought I’d come and have a look at them.’ Remembering how Trip had followed it around, she said, ‘Is it okay?’
‘Acrux?’ He turned to where the horse was pulling at the hay. ‘He’s good.’ She couldn’t see his face but there was something odd about his voice. A hesitancy, almost as if it was a struggle to speak.
‘He’s beautiful.’
Another hesitation but the tension in his voice dropped a notch. ‘And he’s smart. People think horses are just dumb animals, but they’re not.’
‘Is that why you chose him? His intelligence?’
His face softened. ‘I didn’t choose him. I bred him, raised him from a foal.’
That surprised her. That he could have that focus and perseverance. Something of what she was thinking must have shown on her face, because his mouth curved up at one corner. ‘You don’t believe me.’
‘Well, it does seem a little out of character,’ she admitted. But then it wasn’t the first time he’d caught her off guard. Her body stiffened as she remembered the moment when she’d realised that she’d forgotten to upload her speech.
‘I never thanked you,’ she said slowly. ‘For what you did that night at the auction. Stepping in and just giving a speech like that, it was really impressive. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there, so thank you for that.’
There was a short, slightly startled silence.
‘What made you think of that?’ he said finally.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just you being different from how I thought. From how you were when we had lunch that first time.’
He laughed then, a real laugh, not a mocking one, and she couldn’t stop her eyes from moving towards the sound. It made her feel as if her limbs were filling with a golden light that poured straight from the sun.
‘Yeah, well, that wasn’t my finest hour.’ His eyes moved to find hers. ‘You were pretty impressive though. Seriously bossy, but impressive. I can remember being astonished that you were so young.’
‘To be fair, I’d been working on it for some time.’
He shook his head. ‘Which is why it was so impressive. It didn’t feel like you were phoning it in. You made it feel fresh, exciting. Even though you hated me,’ he added.
She felt herself blushing. ‘I didn’t hate you. Well, maybe I did, a bit, but you were late. And hungover. And distracted.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘But when I took away your phone, you had a lot of good ideas.’
His eyes were clear and steady on her face. ‘We were a good team. And you did thank me that night,’ he added softly and there were no words to describe how the softness in his voice made her feel.
Maybe that was why she forgot for a moment why she was there in Italy. Why it suddenly felt as if it were just two people, talking normally, a couple almost. Instead of what they were, which was actors rehearsing their lines for the opening night.
She took a breath. ‘I don’t know how to do this, Trip,’ she said quietly.
His face stilled then and for a fraction of a second, the doubt and nervousness she was feeling was visible in his eyes. And then it was gone. ‘You’re overthinking it. We’re both in the public eye, Lily. Which means having to play a part sometimes, putting on a mask.’
She felt a jolt of surprise. She didn’t just wear a mask in public, she wore full body armour. It was the only way she could do the job she loved, be the daughter she wanted to be. But she was surprised that Trip felt that way.
‘Remember how we stood up at that auction together.’ He was impatient again now. ‘It’ll be just the same as that.’
Except it wouldn’t be, she thought. At home, with her family, her close friends, she was herself, but here with Trip, she wouldn’t be able to relax. She couldn’t risk letting her guard down and something happening, as it had at her apartment.
‘No, it’s not. You have live-in staff on site. That means I’ll have to be in character almost all of the time.’
His face hardened. ‘What do you want me to say, Lily? Life’s not fair.’
Lily stared at him, her throat tightening. She didn’t need Trip to tell her that it was dog eat dog out there. She knew life wasn’t fair.
‘Okay, maybe that’s the wrong word—’
It was. Expecting her to fake what had once been real was not just unfair, it was unkind.
He cut across her. ‘I don’t know why you’re making it into such a big deal. It’s not as if I’m asking you to do something you weren’t already willing to do.’
Her heart contracted.
‘Yes, you are. We were having sex. In private. Now you’re asking me to be your fiancée, your cheerleader, your guarantor. In public.’
He stared at her, his mouth curving upwards into a shape that was more sneer than smile. She felt her heart thud too hard inside her chest. ‘But I’m not asking you, am I?’ Now his face was dark with impatience. ‘Look, Lily, you know how the world works. People love a story. All we have to do is make them believe it. And you’re a very smart woman, so I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Particularly as you have an incentive. We both do.’
She drew a rough breath. ‘I don’t like that word.’
‘Which one? Story? Incentive?’
‘We,’ she said tersely. ‘There is you and there is me. We implies consent and intimacy, neither of which are present in this current arrangement.’
His gaze narrowed, mouth curving mockingly. ‘You mean current as in this particular moment, because not long ago we were kissing, and it was definitely consensual—’
She could feel the buttons of her dress burning into her skin. The air around them was growing thicker. It was making her breathing go messy and her brain felt fuzzy.
‘That was—’
‘What?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘A bad idea? A mistake?’ He took a step forward and she felt the tension between them snap tight as his eyes fixed on where she could feel her nipples pushing against the checked cotton.
‘You’re lying to me, you’re lying to yourself. You wanted me, Lily, you still do. I don’t know why you won’t admit it—’
He was standing so close she could see the smattering of freckles along his cheekbones, the faint shadow of stubble on his jawline. Too close. But she didn’t need to be that close to feel the truth of his words and even though she didn’t want them to, they did something to her, made her remember how it felt to see him aroused, to know that she had the power to arouse him.
And right now that felt like the only power she had left.
‘So let’s have sex.’ She took a step forwards, hands on hips as if she were a prizefighter throwing down a challenge. ‘Let’s do it. Here. Now. Let’s have sex here in this barn.’
He looked taken aback in about five different ways, and after so many weeks of feeling conflicted and helpless that felt good.
‘What? You said it yourself. I want you, you want me. It’s just bodies, and it’s not as if we can have sex with anyone else. It might as well be here as anywhere else.’
She reached for him, her fingers clumsy against his shirt, pulling him closer, and she felt him tense, his hands moving to her hips, steadying her, stopping her—
‘What are you doing?’ His voice was hoarse but he wasn’t pushing her away and she could feel him against her stomach, the hardness of him making her shudder inside and arch against him.
As if he weren’t the man she had tried to run from. The man who was blackmailing her, as if she were just heat and need.
‘Lily, no, not like this—’
It was the gentleness in his voice that made her stumble backwards and she stared up at him, her face burning, and she knew that she was crying. She didn’t feel powerful any more. She had wanted to punish him, to make him hurt as he was hurting her, and she knew only one way to do that, because sex was when she had felt his equal.
Not any more.
She was just a tool, a means to an end.
‘If not like this, then how?’
Her face was wet, but she didn’t brush the tears away, instead she crossed her arms. ‘Like before maybe? Is that how you want it to be? Because that can’t happen. Not ever.’ Her voice was shaking now. ‘Do you think because I’m not beautiful like you that I don’t have feelings? That I don’t care that—’
She pressed her hand against her mouth. She had said too much. So much more than she wanted him to know.
He looked stunned, his eyes wide and bluer than she had ever seen them.
‘Lily—’
But she was already moving, stumbling through the door and out into the sunlight and then she was running, running from the pain in her heart and the pity in his eyes.