Chapter Ten #2
That call was followed by another call, and another, and soon they were turning into the lush green ground of the polo club on Long Island. And then Poppy was being whisked off to the VIP hospitality area while Caius went to join his team.
Poppy gave up the notion she’d speak to him now and settled in for the afternoon of watching her first polo game. It was mesmerising. The horses were sleek and lean and the men—one of whom was another European prince she recognised—were honed and muscular.
None more so than Caius. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He moved with the horse as one. She’d known he was a good horseman after seeing him in Valdere, but here, he was part of the horse, moving so fast sometimes he was a blur.
At one point, during a break, she saw him laughing, head thrown back, surrounded by teammates. He looked really happy. He was back in his milieu. Maybe the distance he’d been imposing was the start of him reintegrating with his old life.
Maybe she had it all wrong and he had no intention of wanting to spend more time with his daughter than he’d already committed to?
Maybe the lack of sex had made him see what he was missing. Maybe he just didn’t want her any more and was avoiding having to reject her if she came onto him? Poppy’s head hurt with all the maybes.
When his team had won and the trophy was to be presented, one of the officials came up to Poppy and said, ‘Queen Poppy, you must do us the honour of presenting the trophy.’
Poppy couldn’t very well refuse but she was uber-conscious of herself as she made her way to the little podium.
She was wearing a light blue wrap dress that flattered her curves and matching wedge sandals.
Hair pulled back into a loose chignon. But she hated the little prick of insecurity that she cut an ungainly figure.
Caius came and met her at the podium and held out a hand to help her up the steps.
She savoured the physical contact in spite of all of the unknowns and her senses went into overdrive when she registered the smell of earthy, sweaty male.
His shirt was soaked and his jodhpurs were moulded to his powerful thighs.
Hair damp and curling at his neck. Streaks of muck on his face.
Poppy almost forgot what she had to do, she was so overcome with piercing lust. But somehow she managed to hand over the trophy without dropping it and Caius pulled her closer, saying sotto voce, ‘We should kiss.’
Something lanced her that he was saying that instead of just doing it. The chasm between them yawned wide open. ‘It’s OK, Caius, you can kiss me.’
He did, but it was an all too brief brush across the lips. Nevertheless it ignited every nerve-ending. Poppy could feel herself sweating and she knew it wasn’t the heat. She wanted to go to some private place with Caius exactly as he was and have him make love to her, hard and fast and—
‘I’ll just shower and change and then we’ll go, OK?’
She nodded abruptly, terrified she’d do something crazy like grab his shirt and beg him to make love to her.
Poppy didn’t try to talk to Caius on the way back to the apartment because of the driver and because, truthfully, she wasn’t sure what to even say, but when they walked back in the door Poppy turned to him before he could escape again. ‘We should talk, Caius. You can’t keep avoiding me for ever.’
He looked wary. ‘I wanted to give you space.’
Poppy walked into the main living room and kicked off her wedges. She turned around. ‘I needed space on that one day, to go for a walk, not for you to go out of your way to treat me like I’ve had the plague.’
‘That wasn’t my intention.’
‘What’s going on, Caius? You know the doctor has said everything is OK. It was nothing serious. You don’t have to keep your distance in case you harm me, or the baby.’ She wasn’t quite ready to spell out how much she wanted him, not when he was being so distant.
And then before he could say anything she blurted out, ‘You looked happy today, Caius. Happier than I’ve seen you before.’
Caius thought of that moment with his friends on the polo pitch.
He hadn’t been happy, not really. He’d been happy to see Poppy among the crowd and then she’d looked at him and for some reason he’d needed her to think he was happy so he’d laughed, but the emptiness inside had mocked him. Because this charade was over.
Today he’d seen a glimpse of the world he’d left behind, hedonistic and frantic, and he’d felt no remorse or hunger for it.
He’d tried to pretend he could be part of Poppy’s world, but he couldn’t, because this wasn’t the serene, boring, arranged marriage he’d always envisaged for himself. It was anything but serene and boring. It was alive and electric and full of desires that terrified him with their intensity.
Today, when she’d come up onto the stage to give him the trophy, he’d wanted to rip her dress open and feast on her and then bury himself so deep inside her he’d never get lost again.
And he’d wanted to do that to sate the beast inside him, but also, and more disturbingly, so that he could ignore the way she made him feel.
He had an awful suspicion he needed her for his very survival.
The fact that he’d lost his bearings so completely and had blindly put himself at risk of needing someone with an emotional intensity he’d avoided his whole life was…absolutely terrifying. It spelled chaos and destruction.
He said, ‘I’ve been playing make-believe, Poppy. Trying to make-believe that this can work.’
Poppy stood before him and a part of him marvelled at her regal grace. She was a queen and she was every inch a queen now. A fertile goddess. And she deserved more than a man who wasn’t worthy of her.
She frowned now. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about the fact that the honeymoon is over. We’ve given everyone a show and now we can get on with our original plan, which was to appear together for occasions and maintain our separate lives.’
‘You’re still blaming yourself for the baby.’
Caius shook his head even as that image of Poppy’s pale, stricken face came into his mind. ‘No, I know it wasn’t my fault. Our fault.’ But he had used sex to avoid dealing with his emotions and he could never forgive himself if that was what had led to the scare.
He said, ‘Since being back in New York, I’ve realised how much work I have to do here.’
‘What about our daughter?’ Poppy’s voice sounded a little faint.
Caius had a flashback to when Poppy had told him she was pregnant in this very room, and it nearly felled him to think of all that had happened in the meantime.
‘I will be in her life, as much as I can be, but she will be better off with you, in Valdere.’ Before he could stop it, Caius had a vision of a little girl with dark red hair, running to him, and it filled him with an almost giddy feeling.
He shut it down. He did not know the first thing about being a father and he did not have the emotional skills to be able to deal with a daughter.
The prospect that he would disappoint her was far greater than any fantasy alternative.
‘You need to go back to Valdere, Poppy.’
Poppy wasn’t sure how she was still standing. She hated Caius in that moment. Because he was rejecting her with the cold precision of a knife sliding through her ribs. Straight to the heart.
And she shouldn’t be surprised, because she had known. Because even if he hadn’t shut down her attempt to ask him if he saw a future for them, from the very start—that day on the hill on the lake island—he’d laid out how it would be. Humiliation crawled over her skin.
He no longer even wanted her.
She desperately needed to claw back any sense of control she could. ‘You originally only wanted to be married for a year.’
His face looked stark, stripped of all emotion. ‘Yes.’
‘I’ll change the marriage agreement. I think a year is more than enough.
It’ll be better for the baby not to have any memory of a marriage that is a charade.
’ Great, now she was calling their daughter the baby.
But she couldn’t bring herself to say daughter in front of him.
All the dreams she’d dared to dream of them being a family, finding some sort of happiness against the odds, mocked her viciously now.
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘It is. We can liaise about any future requirements to meet through our teams.’
Before Poppy’s veneer of ice could crack she turned and went to the door. As she put her hand on the knob Caius said from behind her, ‘Poppy, wait.’
But she didn’t want to hear it. Was he going to apologise? The thought made her insides curdle. She just said, ‘Goodnight, Caius.’ And left.
The following morning Poppy was on a private jet back to Valdere, along with a doctor and nurse.
Caius had insisted. As if he cared. He might still care about the baby, but he’d never cared for her.
He’d wanted her, yes, and he’d just seduced her into thinking it was more with his well-worn seduction routine.
But the man she’d seen at the polo match—vibrant and surrounded by his peers?
That had been the old Caius Mansur de Roche and he was obviously eager to get back to what he did best.
She would never forgive him, or herself, for allowing him to sneak so deep under her skin that he could inflict maximum damage.
Her daughter kicked under her ribs and Poppy put a hand over her bump. All she could do now was get on with the job of running her country and ensure that, above all, Caius didn’t hurt their daughter.
She somehow managed to keep a lid on the seething, roiling emotions threatening to rise up and pull her down, but she couldn’t hold it in when she saw Stephen waiting for her.
He managed to get her into the back of a car before anyone saw her distress but, through a waterfall of tears, she said, ‘I’ve been so stupid. ’
He shook his head, and hugged her and pulled back and said, ‘No, sweetie, you’ve just been human and fallen in love.’