Chapter 59 Rafe
RAFE
Afterward, I pull her panties back up to cover the mess I left behind. She tugs her skirt down and covers her tits again, the rosy nipples disappearing. There’s a beautiful flush on her cheeks.
We don’t play tennis.
“I’m still angry at you,” she tells me, and heads toward the steps without looking back.
“We have the interview at four!” I call.
“I know!” She calls back, and disappears up the gardens toward the villa.
I head in the opposite direction and dive into the lake to try to calm my racing heart.
Three hours later we’re sitting on the terrace next to each other, a few minutes before the journalist is set to arrive, with Karim setting up everything around us.
Paige has showered too. We’re both sitting there with damp hair and only a foot of distance between us, about to pretend to be madly in love.
She has her arms locked over her chest.
I should have told her myself. Of course I should have.
But she shouldn’t have gone off like that. I’m doing all of this for her, and she can’t see it. I can’t tell her that either.
I can barely understand it myself.
“Are you still angry?” she asks me, and makes a show of looking at her nails.
I glance her way. “Angry? No.”
“You look it.”
“And you look furious.”
She looks over at me, her eyes once again a cool, dark chocolate. “I have a reason to be. But you’re definitely angry.”
I shake my head slowly and look to confirm that Karim is well beyond hearing distance. “Angry, no. But I’m not someone who does that. I don’t fuck my wife on a tennis court in the garden for anyone who walks by to see. I don’t have sex without a condom. I don’t lose myself, darling, yet here I am.”
Her eyes widen. “You’ve never? Without a condom?”
“No,” I say tightly. Feeling her heat without one has scarred me. I’m already craving her again.
She swallows, but that’s the only sign of emotion on her controlled face. “And for anyone to see? The security is pretty tight here. You’ve told me that yourself. Given me a list, in fact, of how to make sure the gate closes properly and that the alarm works.”
“I employ people who have access.”
“I don’t mind if they saw.”
“I fucking do,” I mutter.
Her eyebrows rise, and there’s that glittering in her eyes again. We’re back to taunts. It’s a familiar piece of clothing to wear with her, but it’s not my favorite one anymore.
My favorite is her in my arms late at night, soft, feverish confessions whispered against my neck.
“I didn’t know you valued your modesty so much.”
I turn toward her. “I don’t. I value my wife’s.”
Her mouth parts, like she doesn’t have a single response to that. Karim steps up to join us and looks between us with practiced ease. He’s good at that. Practical and productive, and he never oversteps.
“The journalist is here. Are you ready?”
I nod and reach up to adjust the collar of my shirt. “Yes. Only preapproved questions,” I tell him.
“I’ll remind her,” Karim says, and disappears to fetch the journalist. This is the first sit-down interview I’ve given in years. The first one with Paige. It’s another opportunity to tell our rehearsed love story and get the word out there that I am, in fact, the love of her life.
Even if I bear the marks of her nails on my back at the moment.
Paige takes a deep breath beside me, and when I look over, there’s an easy smile on her face. She doesn’t look thoroughly fucked and annoyed. She looks happy.
A new bride.
The journalist introduces herself as Manon. “Thank you for agreeing to this,” she says. She speaks in clipped, international English, with a faint French accent. She must be Luster’s European correspondent.
The pleasantries don’t take long. She asks Paige how it is to work with her husband.
“We work surprisingly well together,” Paige says. “It was a shock to me.”
I drape an arm along the back of Paige’s chair. “It wasn’t to me. I saw her potential from the start. Paige is a brilliant businesswoman.”
“That’s his pickup line,” Paige says, and laughs with the interviewer. The mood is easy, if one ignores the tension underneath it.
I can only hope the interviewer doesn’t pick up on it.
Manon asks about our wedding, our dating story, about Mather & Wilde becoming a Maison Valmont brand. We handle all of it deftly. The answers are well rehearsed by this point.
“There have been some rumblings in the press about Ben Wilde, your uncle,” Manon says. “He is, as I’m sure you’re aware, a well-known icon in the American fashion industry. What is the situation there?”
I sigh, like I’m tired of the subject, and take the lead on it. Tell her as close to the truth as I can.
Paige nods beside me.
I don’t want her to have to go on the record defaming her only living family.
But Manon clearly wants Paige’s words. “You are no stranger to the world of design either.” She gives Paige a friendly smile. “You’re the granddaughter of Rhett and Jane Wilde, who transformed a Gloucester shipyard into a fashion brand that makes bags and leather goods.”
“That’s right,” Paige says. Her voice is upbeat. “I’m proud of our history.”
“Your parents were both key members of the executive team, together with your uncle, before their tragic death eight years ago.” Her smile turns consoling. “I’m so sorry about your loss.”
This topic was not preapproved.
I feel Paige tense beside me and watch as her hands come to knot in her lap. “Thank you,” she says.
“What do you think they’d say about the company’s direction, and your marriage, if they were here today?”
Anger licks down my spine, so fast it makes me lightheaded. Paige is breathing fast beside me. Her eyes flick from the interviewer to me in a way I’ve seen before.
“Paige?” Manon asks. “I understand if this is a sensitive topic, but I wanted to give you the chance to express yourself. It would help people understand the division that’s arisen between you and your uncle, I believe, if we could hear more of your perspective.”
Paige is spiraling.
I can see it in her shaking hands and her fast breathing. She hasn’t said a word.
“This interview is over. Please wait inside,” I tell the journalist, and nod to Karim to come over.
Her eyes widen in shock. But I don’t care what she thinks. I care about my wife, who’s about to start hyperventilating beside me. I pull her up and out of the chair. We need to be anywhere but here.
This is why I never do interviews, I think, and wrap my arm around Paige.