Chapter Three
LUCA WITHDREW HIS PHONE. Within seconds, he was speaking in rapid Italian. Jade didn’t catch anything except the list of names.
“Smythe-Camden. Noel Atbridge. Snell? Sì. Ciao.”
Her heart lurched.
“What did you just do?” she asked as he tucked his phone away.
“Froze their investment accounts. Chilled them,” he corrected with a small shrug.
The blood in her veins congealed. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“Your father wants to know who I am.”
Jade dropped her jaw. She didn’t know anyone who was deliberately antagonistic toward Noel Atbridge and was as panic-stricken as she was awed by how casually Luca had taken that route with him.
“Don’t make things worse for Mum,” she said.
“He won’t go after her.” He spoke pithily, as though it should be obvious.
“I’m not one of your father’s overbred cronies, but I’ve made a lot of money for many of them.
I’m well-regarded in the world of international finance.
Once your father realizes I could be useful to him, I’m confident he’ll see the advantage in ensuring my child’s grandmother is kept comfortable.
If he doesn’t, I will take over the cost of your mother’s care. Dismiss those worries from your mind.”
He sounded just like her father, talking about people being useful and playing every circumstance to his own advantage. If her stomach hadn’t already been acidic and wobbly, that would have done it.
Because she was well-acquainted with the cost of being under the thumb of someone like that.
“I need to make some calls,” he said. “Do you mind?”
She choked and waved a hand. She was so rarely asked what she wanted, she didn’t even bother considering whether she minded or not.
She would have checked her own phone if it hadn’t been in her tote in the boot.
There were probably work emails to answer.
Giselle would be asking for photos of the gown she had provided.
The second Giselle had heard about Jade’s nuptials, she had decided to expand into bridal wear despite the company having no inventory, no storage and no knowledge of that extremely competitive, high-overhead market.
The pressures of her job were one of the reasons Jade hadn’t realized she was pregnant. It was the reason she was pregnant, she acknowledged darkly.
Giselle’s demands were boundless. Keeping His Lordship happy meant keeping her employer happy so, when Giselle had said, “You’re coming to my party,” Jade hadn’t felt she had a choice.
Giselle had bullied her into a too-short cocktail dress and had Jade’s makeup applied by her own technician. Jade’s hair had been set into curlers, then arranged in a waterfall down her back, her feet shoved into torturous six-inch heels.
Jade had hated everything about it, especially the fact that men had noticed her. Garnering attention had never felt safe for her so she much preferred to be a wallflower.
No luck that night. Giselle had been both proud and jealous, keeping Jade firmly at her elbow as guests arrived, forcing Jade to dance with her and pretend to drink and act as though everyone around her was the height of entertaining.
All the while, Jade had suffered her own brand of envy.
Why couldn’t she be like these people? Not that she admired them or coveted their wealth and status.
No, the yearning came from the child inside her, the one who had never belonged.
The one who had been pushed around and pushed aside.
Always judged and never given the freedom to twerk or party her cares away or be anything but somebody’s dirty little secret.
Even Giselle was smug and evasive when asked about her, refusing to introduce Jade properly or define their relationship.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she replied to requests for introductions. “She’s my mystery guest.”
The ballroom of Fellcrop Manor had been turned into a nightclub with a DJ installed at one end, a bar at the other.
The doors to the terrace were open, the pool glowing blue and steaming against the chilly March night.
Some guests had already stripped naked and plunged in.
Giselle wasn’t there yet, preferring to hold court between forays into the writhing crowd of dancers.
Jade was counting the minutes until Giselle was drunk enough that she wouldn’t notice her slip away when Giselle squealed with excitement.
“I love this song!” She waved everyone to the floor, starting to pull Jade with her when she jerked to a halt. “What’s he doing here?”
Jade turned her head and her pulse spiked in startled reaction. Attraction. She’d felt pinned by the stranger’s stare, both threatened and excited.
He stood near the bar with a drink half raised to his lips, as though he’d been arrested for a split second before he smoothly finished lifting his glass to his mouth.
Most people were dressed in shiny, revealing clothing. That compellingly handsome man wore a buttoned shirt open at his throat and dark gray suit trousers. His sleeves were rolled up his forearms as though the heat of the gyrating dancers had forced him to strip away his tie and jacket.
“Who is he?” Jade asked.
“Let’s powder our noses, then I’ll introduce you.” Giselle grabbed Jade’s elbow and spun her firmly toward the entrance foyer and up the grand staircase.
Jade was grateful for the breather, mind still on the stranger, wondering why he’d had such an impact on her when he was clearly out of her reach.
She was straight and longed for a steady relationship.
Her life was painfully lonely at times, but she knew a party like this was the last place to meet someone.
Her one serious boyfriend had made it clear that she needed to shop outside these circles.
I love you, Jade, but I can’t be with you. You know why.
The pain of Wyatt’s rejection made this sharp tug of attraction within her all the more dangerous.
She blamed her flush of heat on dancing and self-consciousness, but it was much cooler here in the upper hall.
She was no longer under that stranger’s gaze, but she was still tingling, aware of the way this dress scooped low across her breasts, dangling dangerously off spaghetti straps before it skimmed her hips and stopped at the tops of her thighs.
“You go ahead,” Jade said after she and Giselle had reapplied their lipstick. “I need an extra minute. I’ll catch up.”
Giselle gave her a calculating look. “You’re right. Your hair needs fixing.”
Jade recognized that tone of criticism. Whether it was grades or a father’s attention or a man’s interest, she was seen as competition that needed to be knocked down a peg.
“Don’t be long,” Giselle ordered on her way out, eager to get to the newcomer and stake her claim.
It was definitely time to leave.
Jade locked Giselle out of the toilet and took a few steadying breaths.
Could she even get out of here? A brief glance out the window showed a line of cars still fighting their way in, keeping the valets hopping.
Ordering a rideshare would be pointless.
Walking to the train station in these heels was a recipe for trench foot.
Also, she needed her things from Giselle’s suite. That was over in the family wing, down the hall on the far side of the stair landing. Perhaps if she retrieved her phone, she could get a rideshare to pick her up at the end of the drive.
She stepped out of the powder room and started toward Giselle’s suite, but a gaggle of women was coming up the stairs. Jade recognized one of them—her half sister, Abigail.
Giselle’s reason for insisting Jade come to this thing became crystal clear. She wanted Abigail to see her and have their father’s affair slapped in her face. What a psychotic cow.
Jade hurried through the nearest open door, pressed it closed behind her, then flicked the lock for good measure.
“Hiding from someone?” a male voice asked over the now-muffled thump of the music.
Jade squeaked in surprise and spun to face him.
They were in what looked to be Giselle’s father’s library. There was a wall of bookshelves, a row of closed drapes, a sofa with matching chairs facing a flat-screen television, and a heavy desk with a single lamp glowing upon it.
The mystery man tucked his phone into his trouser pocket. There was enough light for her to see that he skimmed a look of male appreciation from her eyebrows to her open-toed shoes.
She tried not to like it, but her blood instantly fizzed as though she had champagne in her veins.
“I—am,” she admitted, shoulder blades pressed to the door.
On the other side, uproarious laughter indicated that whatever party drugs were circulating were taking effect.
“Do you need assistance?” he asked with polite concern. “An escort?”
“No. Thank you.” She was disconcerted all over again, both by the impact his dark good looks had on her and the fact that few people besides Mum and Kandili ever offered her help. She was the original Cinderella, expected to clean up after others and never think of herself.
“It’s just someone who doesn’t like to see me,” she said dismissively.
“Someone with poor judgment, I assume.” He turned to the sideboard, where he poured out a second glass of what she suspected was Sir Smythe-Camden’s limited-release, fifty-year-old Macallan. He brought the glass to her. “I, however, am delighted to see you. I thought you had left.”
His seductive Italian accent sent swirls of pleasure through her abdomen. The lamp on the desk threw shadows into his long cheeks and made his eyes glitter like chips of obsidian, holding her gaze as she tentatively tasted the scotch. When it stung her tongue, she reacted with a full-body blush.
“I don’t really drink,” she said, trying to explain the pink that must be staining her cheeks.
“Pour it into mine.” He held out his glass.
She did, then watched him sip, mesmerized by the shape of his mouth—the widely set peaks of his upper lip, his bottom lip square and stern, the ironic curl at the corner.