Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
‘W HATEVER YOU ’ RE ABOUT to say, don’t,’ Lily said hoarsely, trying to tamp down the flames crackling through her.
‘Not even thank you?’ His voice was mocking but there was a roughness there too, as if he was as thrown by this as she was. ‘You’re usually such a stickler for manners.’
She glared at him. ‘Don’t think this changes anything, because it doesn’t.’
He started to laugh.
‘I’d love to believe you, Lily, but out of the two of us you seem to be the one who doesn’t know her own mind. What was it you said?’ He screwed up his face as if he was trying to remember. ‘Oh, yes. “I don’t feel the same way as I did.”’
She hated him then. But hated herself more for her lack of control, for still wanting him even at a moment like this.
Taking a breath, clinging to what was left of her pride, she met his gaze. ‘Maybe I did respond to you. Because I’m human and seeing you alive made me feel things in the moment. That’s all it was though, Trip, a moment. But marriage, that’s about committing to someone. Sharing their life. I don’t want to fake that just to help you rebrand your image. If and when I choose to get married, it’s going to be to a man who understands what that entails. A man who understands me. A man who solves his own problems. Not makes them for other people. So, basically, not you.’
Heart thudding, she lifted her chin. ‘You need to leave.’
He dropped back down onto the sofa once more, totally unperturbed by her words. ‘And I will, but now that we’re on the same page, why don’t we go through our diaries? Get a date for the wedding.’
Same page? Had he not listened to a word she’d said?
Clearly not.
She watched him stretch out his legs, hating him, hating the pulse of longing that still beat across her skin. He was so sure of himself. So sure of her, so sure that what had just happened was her acquiescing to his stupid plan instead of understanding that it was simply a muscle memory of that hunger they’d once shared.
Across the room, she could see the stairs that led up to her bedroom, the bedroom where Trip had stripped her naked on that very first night they’d spent together. He had stripped too with swift, expert precision, because he would be expert at getting naked with a woman. But she hadn’t cared. She had been too busy staring at—no, drinking in—all those contoured muscles and the smooth, tanned skin and his erection, standing proud.
She had wanted him and wanted to give him everything in return in those feverish hours between dusk and dawn. But that wasn’t a reason to marry him now.
Turning, she snatched up her bag. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said with what felt like admirable calm, given that her body was still throbbing with the aftershocks of his mouth on hers. ‘We’re not on the same page. We’re not even in the same book. And I will not be marrying you any time soon. Or ever, in fact.’
Her nerves were screaming. She’d spent the last six weeks battling her emotions, riding a roller coaster of guilt and need and grief, and now she was in the middle of processing her shock and relief at his sudden reappearance. Not that he cared about any of that. He was too busy making demands, making assumptions.
He had the gall to smile then. ‘You don’t have a choice. I can’t take back what I said. Besides, Mason has already texted me asking when we’re going to make an announcement.’
She had to press her hands against her thighs to stop herself from slapping the complacent smile from his infuriatingly handsome face.
‘For the last time, there’s not going to be any announcement,’ she said flatly. ‘Now get out of my apartment or I will call Security.’
Her breathing jerked as his eyes locked with hers. ‘Why are you making this into such a big deal? It’s nothing in the scheme of things. A year maybe, tops. We’d have to do a handful of public appearances together.’
‘Including a wedding. Our wedding. When we’d have to lie to our family and friends. I’m not going to do that. This is your mess, so you can sort it out. Anyway, I have plans so I’ll be leaving the city. Tonight.’
He tipped back his head, back in control once again. ‘What, and miss all the fun?—’
She glared at him. ‘You and I have a very different idea of fun, Trip. Like I said, I leave this evening, and if you haven’t spoken to these trustees and explained to them that we are not and never have been engaged by the time I touch down, then I will tell them myself.’
His eyes blazed but she was walking quickly and with purpose.
‘Lily—’
He was moving now, coming after her, but she was already opening the front door. She caught a glimpse of his face, blue eyes narrowing in disbelief, and then she slammed the door, pushed the key in the lock and turned it with a rush of relief.
She couldn’t be in the same room as him. Not for another second. In fact, she didn’t want to be in the same city as him, the same continent even. Not when she could still feel the imprint of his mouth on hers and the burn of her own stupidity.
As she stepped into the sunlight outside, she felt a flicker of guilt at having locked him in. After all, he had only just escaped from a prison of sorts. But this was Tribeca, not Ecuador, and there was a spare key by the door. She just needed a head start and to prove that she was serious.
Even after he heard the turn of the key, it took Trip several seconds to realise what had happened.
Watching Lily lose her temper, he’d started to laugh. Because it was funny. She was so angry and outraged even though she had kissed him back.
But it had been a dumb thing to do, he knew that now.
Almost as dumb as kissing her.
He scowled. It was her fault. Lily had always been so uninhibited, so passionate, so responsive to him. Not today. Today her haughty froideur had put his teeth on edge and he’d wanted to throw her off balance.
But mostly he’d just wanted to kiss her.
That was all it had taken for him to lose control. He’d forgotten why he was there in her apartment. All that had mattered was her, making her his again.
Only then she had jerked her mouth from his and he’d known from the storm in her eyes that she was furious at being proven wrong, which was no doubt why she had decided to punish him. Only by the time he’d realised that, she had already turned the key. And then he was locked in.
By the time he’d worked out what she had done he’d been too late to stop her. Even then, he’d assumed she was bluffing, that she’d wanted to have the last word, but, having called out her name a couple of times, he’d finally looked through the peephole and seen that she was gone, presumably on her way downstairs. A quick check of the street had proved that assumption correct and he’d watched, torn between disbelief and fury, as she’d looked up in the direction of the window and waved before climbing into a taxi.
Waved.
As if she didn’t have a care in the world. But then she didn’t. It wasn’t her life, her future, that was being held in the balance.
Trip was back in his own apartment now, but by the time he’d realised Lily kept a spare key in a bowl next to the door he’d been stewing in her apartment for over an hour and a half.
He yanked open the drinks fridge, pulled out a beer, and started pacing back and forth across the huge loft space, oblivious to the dazzling view across Central Park.
He didn’t like being on his own. His ADHD played a part in that. As a child he had been incapable of sitting still quietly, much to his father’s irritation. Now that he was older, he had learned strategies—pacing, doodling, foot-tapping.
But there was so much going on in his head right now. He kept having flashbacks to the men in masks and his body was permanently tense with a dread he couldn’t shift. And that was why this whole business with the shareholders was so unfair. Returning to New York, he had known that somebody would be holding the reins, but on his return he had assumed that he would simply take back what was rightfully his.
Only now he had the board and the shareholders on his back, and that was a real problem.
His mouth twisted. And his solution was currently planning to skip the country.
Picturing Lily’s small, furious face, he winced as his shoulders tensed and he reached round to massage his back.
He opened his eyes and stared around the light, casually elegant apartment. It was his home. Had been his home for nearly seven years and yet he hadn’t thought about it once while he was out there. He hadn’t thought about anything much except staying alive.
And Lily Dempsey.
His fingers tightened around the bottle. He had no idea why she’d kept popping into his head. Perhaps it was the soft rainforest air that would slide over his skin at daybreak almost like one of her caresses. Or maybe it was darkness playing tricks on his mind.
It made it even more aggravating that she was refusing to play ball. Was, in fact, threatening to talk to the trustees.
Jaw tightening, he began to pace again. That wasn’t going to happen. He wouldn’t allow that to happen. He couldn’t. One more mess-up and there was a real risk he could lose control of the business.
‘One hundred and thirty years building a business into a household name and you throw it away for a few seconds of thrill-seeking.’
His feet faltered as his father’s voice sounded inside his head and some of the beer spilled onto the polished concrete floor. He frowned down at it.
Henry Winslow II had forfeited any right to sit in judgement on him, he thought, jerking the bottle to his lips. In fact, none of this would have happened if his father had been the man he’d pretended to be. It was his lies, his deceit that had set this whole mess in motion. Without those letters he would never have accepted his friend Carter’s invitation, never have ended up in a cartel hotspot.
But there was no point crying over spilt beer.
What mattered now was getting Lily to change her mind.
He felt his heart rate pick up. Outside, the sun was high above the tallest skyscrapers and the air would still be shimmering with heat.
Trip gritted his teeth. His skin was suddenly twitchy and taut. Nothing could compare to the heat of her kiss.
The effect Lily had on him was still as baffling to him today as it had been that first night. Before her, all his girlfriends had been of a type. Not through any conscious choice on his part.
But she was different.
Always slightly aloof, and serious and hard-working in a way that was unique among her more glamorous peers. Which was why it had been her name he’d plucked out of the air. She was the perfect woman to help him regain control of his business.
It was a pity, then, that she was so resistant to doing so.
He gritted his teeth.
It was all such a mess. He didn’t want to get married, didn’t want to have to make vows of eternal love and devotion, particularly now, after finding those letters. To do so felt wrong in so many ways.
Remembering the moment when he’d realised that the woman writing them was not his mother, he felt suddenly sick.
For a slice of a second, his mind was a flurry of thoughts, tumbling over one another, colliding, splitting apart, reforming, and he felt the same mishmash of anger and shock and pain. Because Henry wasn’t perfect. He was a liar and a hypocrite and Trip was done trying to please his father, to be like his father.
Or he would be, once he had persuaded the trustees that he was the best man to run the company, and for that he needed Lily Dempsey.
But how could he persuade her?
Then again, maybe that wasn’t the priority. He sat up straight. Right now, he just needed to stop her talking to the trustees. If he did that, then it would buy him some time and then he could concentrate on changing her mind.
‘If and when I choose to get married, it’s going to be to a man who...solves his own problems.’
Lily’s voice echoed inside his head, and he got to his feet. If that was what she wanted, then that was what she was going to get. But first he needed to make a phone call.
The plane was waiting on the runway, sleek and pale grey like a gull at rest.
Lily stared at it, her throat tightening.
Her father, James, was a US senator. She was proud of him. Proud of his values and his work ethic. He was not just a charismatic speaker with catchy sound bites but a doer. Unfortunately, his job was also the reason she had been pushed into the spotlight at such a young age. It hadn’t been all bad. She wasn’t shy like her brother, Lucas, and when she was very young it had been exciting to be on stage at the end of a campaign with all the balloons and the cheering.
That had all changed when certain parts of the media and the unnamed, faceless trolls had decided that she was fair game. Except it hadn’t been fair, and it hadn’t felt like a game. Some of the things that had been said and written about her still had the power to make her chest fill with pain, and a shame that was in itself shaming.
She had tried to keep a low profile, and sometimes that worked. Other times, she was criticised for being aloof and stuck up. But mostly they had lost interest in her because she was single, fully clothed, and the only people she let get close to her were her family and tried-and-tested friends.
Except Trip.
And look at how that was working out for her.
Fleeing felt like too strong a word, but she was definitely escaping from New York, and fortunately her father’s status as Secretary of State for Veteran Affairs meant she could just hop on a plane at short notice.
She was too frazzled to feel more than a pinch of guilt. She felt safe here.
Not that Trip scared her. But the idea of people thinking they were engaged was terrifying. Worse still was the prospect of anyone uncovering the truth. That Trip had needed a name, a wife to make him look like a changed man, and had thought of her because she was reliable, sensible, unadventurous.
That should have been enough for her to throw him out of her apartment.
Instead, she’d let him kiss her.
Not just let. She had kissed him back. And that scared her too. How easily she had softened beneath his mouth. How much she had wanted to be his again in that moment.
Three crew members, two women and one man, were waiting by the stairs to greet her. She smiled politely but none of their faces were familiar. Then again, it had been nearly eighteen months since she had taken the family jet anywhere.
It would be nice to be up in the air and out of reach of everybody, she thought, tossing her bag onto one of the cream leather seats and glancing round the cabin. Was it her imagination or did the cabin seem bigger than she remembered?
Had her father changed planes?
Truthfully, she had no idea, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask any of the stewards and look like some Upper East Side princess. The pilot and co-pilot chose that moment to come and introduce themselves and then it was time to fasten her seat belt. She glanced at her watch. It was a quarter to eight now, so with the time difference she should arrive in London at—
‘Good evening.’
It was a man’s voice and she glanced up, smiling automatically, expecting to see the male steward. The smile froze on her lips.
Trip was standing there, one hand wrapped over the top of the seat beside her, his muscular body filling the aisle.
She stared at him, mute with shock, the memory of that feverish kiss in her apartment swelling up inside her, making her lips tingle as if it had only just happened.
He was the epitome of casual cool in a dark blue polo shirt, pale linen trousers and loafers, clothes that would have looked unremarkable on any other man. But this was Trip. It didn’t matter what he wore. Nothing could diminish that shockingly sensual, dangerously masculine aura that had its own gravitational pulling power. He was the physical embodiment of a risk worth taking.
Or so she’d thought. But not any more.
‘This is where you say what a surprise and a pleasure it is to see me,’ he said softly.
Her throat was suddenly dry and tight, and her hands felt shaky. But, lifting her chin, she met his gaze. ‘But that would mean lying and you wouldn’t want to make me a liar, would you, Trip?’
‘Oh, there are worse things than lying.’ His voice was all smooth and silk, but there was an edge to it that made her skin tighten with warning. ‘Like leaving someone locked in your apartment.’ She saw his jaw tighten, just a little. ‘That was a mean trick, Lily.’
‘You left me no choice. You wouldn’t leave,’ she snapped. ‘And I didn’t ask you to come to my apartment, any more than I asked you to come here. Don’t sit—’ she added but it was too late. Trip had dropped down into the seat beside her.
She glared at him.
‘What do you think you’re doing? Did you not get the message?’
He shrugged and, despite her shock and rising irritation, her eyes tracked the movement of his shoulder and arm muscles.
‘I get so many emails,’ he said, misunderstanding her on purpose. ‘But I did hear on the grapevine that we were heading in the same direction and, as you know, I’m trying to be more responsible and measured, so taking one private jet instead of two seemed like a no-brainer.’
Lily blinked. Her mind was racing. How did he know which direction she was heading? She hadn’t told anyone that she was going to London except...
She felt her jaw tighten remembering how accommodating her mother had been earlier, letting her use the car and borrow the plane.
‘Is that what you said to my mother?’
His blue eyes rested on her face and she saw that he looked neither remorseful nor guilty—or any of the other countless emotions he should be feeling for his behaviour, past and present. ‘After you said you were leaving New York, I called her to get a few more details. Such a charming woman. Compassionate too. She’s very concerned about you.’ His gaze rested intently on her face. ‘Apparently you haven’t been yourself.’
A lump formed in her throat and for a moment she didn’t trust herself to speak. How could her mother betray her like that?
Obviously she’d been devastated when she’d heard that Trip was missing, presumed dead. Equally obviously she was glad he was alive, because that was how any normal person would react.
But there were other emotions too.
Guilt, because up until the moment he’d disappeared she’d been wishing all kinds of ills would fall upon him. And fury. A dull, pounding fury that he should be so reckless, so thoughtless, so utterly solipsistic. So yes, she hadn’t been herself.
‘I was worried about you,’ she said flatly. ‘Everyone was.’
‘Yeah, it’s really upsetting when the stock market has a major wobble.’ He stretched out his legs so that his thigh brushed against hers, not once but twice so that she knew it wasn’t an accident. Gritting her teeth, she jerked her leg away.
‘That’s not why most people were worried. It’s because they care about you.’
There was a small, prickling silence that made her skin sting. ‘And were you one of those people? The ones that cared about me.’
She looked up, caught the glitter in his eyes and felt her cheeks start to burn even though she certainly shouldn’t be feeling anything.
‘Is that why you haven’t been yourself?’
He shifted against the armrest but his gaze didn’t move from her face, the slow burn of those astonishingly blue eyes of his tearing into her, seeing more than she wanted him to see.
Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep, fortifying breath. ‘I’m not having this conversation with you, Trip. No , don’t speak. I don’t want to hear another word. I don’t need to know what weaselly things you said to my mother so you could hitch a ride. You’ve had your fun and now you need to leave.’
‘Can I speak now?’ Trip sat back in his seat. ‘Because I think you should know that isn’t going to be possible. In fact, it’s pretty much im possible given that I don’t have wings or a parachute and we appear to have taken off.’
‘What?’
Her head snapped round to the window and she stared through the glass in horror. Teterboro had disappeared. In its place was an endless, darkening blue sky.
She swallowed hard, then turned to face him. ‘You did that on purpose. You knew the plane was taking off and you distracted me.’
He shrugged. ‘I would have said something sooner, but you told me not to speak. I suppose we could ask the pilot to turn the plane around. It’s a bit diva-ish, but if that’s what you want to do. I’ll let you do the talking—’
And say what? she thought savagely. Her head was starting to pound, and she wanted to scream. But it wouldn’t alter things. There was no way she was going to ask the pilot to turn the plane around and Trip knew it.
She watched as he turned his head imperiously and one of the female stewards appeared at his elbow with almost comical speed. ‘I’d like two glasses of champagne.’
‘I don’t want a glass of champagne,’ she said through gritted teeth as the woman evaporated as swiftly as she’d appeared.
He raised one dark eyebrow. ‘What’s a celebration without champagne?’
She gave a small, brittle laugh. ‘Strangely, having my flight hijacked by you doesn’t feel like a reason to celebrate.’ She was speaking calmly and precisely, as if that might change what was happening. But of course, it didn’t.
‘I was talking about our engagement,’ he said, and his voice had a softness to it that made her shiver.
She felt her face get hot. ‘We’re not engaged.’
‘And yet here we are. Together. Heading off into the sunset.’ He glanced out of the window to where the sun was starting to slip beneath the horizon. ‘It’s almost as if fate is trying to tell you something. As if being “hijacked” by your fiancé is what you want. Only you don’t want to admit it out loud,’ he added, and, for a moment, she couldn’t breathe properly.
She couldn’t understand why she had thought there was more to Trip than met the eye. He was hiding in plain sight. A wealthy, powerful man who took what he wanted, when he wanted it, without any thought for the collateral damage he caused en route to satisfying his whims.
Unfastening her seat belt, she stood up. ‘What I want is to be left alone.’
She snatched her bag and waited for him to move his legs, which he did with a measured slowness that made her fingers tremble. Ignoring him as best she could, she stalked down the cabin to a seat with a table beside it and spent the next hour pretending that Trip wasn’t there.
But even though she was sitting with her back to him, it was impossible not to be aware of his presence. She was like the princess in that fairy tale, and he was the pea beneath all the mattresses. As she listened to him talking to the stewards, she knew exactly how he would be sitting. Not stiffly like her, with her spine digging into the seat, but lolling easily against the leather, his chin tilted upwards, limbs arranged with a kind of louche grace that inspired both envy and longing. What was more, she could picture the cabin crew crowded round him, hanging eagerly on his every word, wide-eyed like children watching a magician perform a series of elaborate tricks.
Steadying her breathing, she reclined her seat a fraction. As well as a headache, her neck was starting to hurt with the effort of not turning round and she felt a little queasy. As a child she’d suffered terribly from motion sickness, but nowadays it was rarely a problem unless she was tired or stressed.
Her lip curled. Thanks to Trip, she was both. Luckily, she had some pills with her so maybe she would take a couple and close her eyes...
She woke up with a start.
Her mouth felt dry and her eyes felt as if they were on back to front. Light was filling the cabin, not artificial light but daylight, and outside the sky was a dazzling blue. What time was it? She glanced at her watch and jerked upright, frowning. She had assumed that she had dozed off for a couple of hours, but it was morning.
‘There she is. Hey, Greta Garbo. Have a nice sleep? I tried to wake you, but you were out for the count.’
As Trip sat down opposite her, she was still too woolly-headed to do anything more than answer truthfully.
‘I get motion sick sometimes, so I took a couple of pills. As soon as we land, I’ll be fine.’
As soon as we land.
The words echoed inside her head and she glanced out of the window, feeling that same quivering apprehension as she had back at the apartment just before Trip had told her he wanted to marry her. Looking down at her watch again, she frowned. ‘Why are we still in the air? It only takes seven hours at most to reach London.’
‘True.’ Trip nodded.
‘So why aren’t we there?’
He smiled then. ‘Probably because we’re not going to London.’
‘What do you mean?’ His answer seemed to have sucked the breath from her lungs so that her voice sounded high and thin.
Now he studied her for a long, level moment. ‘We’re about an hour away from a private airstrip in Siena.’
‘Siena?’
‘It’s in Italy. Near Florence.’
‘I know where Siena is,’ she snapped.
In the weeks since she had last seen him, his hair had grown longer, and he pushed it back from his face. But that wasn’t why her heart began to beat faster.
‘I don’t understand. Was there a problem? Have they had to divert the plane?’ Except that didn’t make any sense because Italy was further away than England.
‘There’s no problem.’
‘Then they must have made a mistake.’ She tried and failed to keep the edge of panic out of her voice. ‘Why else would we be going to Italy?’
His blue gaze was bright and hot and satisfied. ‘Because that’s where I told the pilot to land,’ he said softly.