His Mistress, His Terms

by Trish Wylie

  ‘All right.’ He frowned a small frown of confusion when she opened her eyes. ‘Now that one I’m gonna need some help with.’

  ‘You haven’t met my family.’

  A flash of amusement crossed his face, ‘You told me I was never, ever getting to meet your family.’

  ‘And why do you think that might be?’

  ‘Is there some kind of secret hereditary insanity you need to tell me about?’

  She grimaced. ‘That’s debatable.’

  ‘Having spent time with you I might have already had a hint or two.’

  She smirked at him. ‘You’re a funny guy. But, really, you have no idea. My parents could crash the entire Fitzgerald family reputation at one sitting.’

  ‘I doubt that somehow.’

  Merrow laughed sarcastically. ‘Trust me.’

  Alex stood tall and pushed his hands back into his pockets. ‘Explain.’

  ‘You do know you put your hands in your pockets way too much. It’s almost fidgeting. Are Fitzgeralds allowed to fidget?’

  ‘It’s to stop me putting my hands on you.’

  ‘I don’t remember complaining when you do that.’ She smiled a mischievous imp of a smile up at him.

  ‘You see, that look doesn’t help. Now stop changing the subject.’ He pulled a hand from his pocket long enough to check his wrist-watch before putting it back out of harm’s way. ‘We have about ten minutes until Mickey gets back. At least five of which I’ll need to kiss you in a way I definitely can’t kiss you in front of a client. So hurry up and explain.’

  ‘My parents are very free-spirited, they never married—’

  ‘If you think for one minute there’s never been a Fitzgerald born outside of marriage, then you’re wrong.’

  ‘Your family is wrapped in up politics and industry, right? Generations’ worth of it?’

  ‘Yep, one Taoiseach, two Tánaistes and one President, though in fairness there were other Fitzgeralds who weren’t a part of the family. And we’ve had at least three heads of state companies.’

  Merrow grimaced again, tilting her head from side to side as he reeled it off as if Prime Ministers, Deputy Prime Ministers and Heads Of State were no big deal. ‘You see, as far as my lot are concerned, that makes your lot the equivalent of the spawn of Satan. And they’d tell them that, and why, if someone was stupid enough to ask why.’

  Alex’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m taking my hands out of my pockets now…’

  ‘No, Alex—’ she dodged back out of his reach ‘—you need to understand this. Putting your family and my family in the same room would be like standing in the centre of the big red and white target on Easter Island.’

  He stood still for a moment, and when she looked up at his face he was wearing a half bemused/half affectionate expression. ‘And this is what the problem has been? This is what was getting in the way?’

  ‘Dammit!’ She stamped her foot in frustration. ‘If we try this and it goes anywhere then you automatically merge anarchy into your family! My family would end up in the papers right alongside yours and yours would take the biggest dent to its sense of pride.’

  ‘We’ve survived the odd scandal before.’

  She dodged his hands again, blinking rapidly to clear her vision. ‘I can’t do it to you, Alex, really I can’t. I would never do anything that might hurt you or your reputation. I love my family, with all my heart and soul I do. But I really like you and I can’t—’

  ‘Stop it.’ He sidestepped her dodge and caught her up in his arms, hauling her in close to his body and ducking his head down again. ‘Stop it, O’Connell. You’re getting upset about stuff that hasn’t even happened.’

  ‘It would happen.’ She lifted her hands to his chest, grabbing fistfuls of shirt, because she couldn’t not touch him, couldn’t stop herself from anchoring to his strength. ‘I just think we both need to have our eyes open and—’

  He lifted a long finger and pressed it firmly against her lips. ‘Shut up a minute.’

  She frowned at him, and he smiled a slow, deliciously sexy smile before moving his hand to cup her cheek. ‘I’m going to kiss you now, if nothing else to get you to stop talking. But first you’re going to listen to me. Because we’re going to make a new rule.’

  ‘You hate rules.’

  ‘No, I hate rules I don’t know, there’s a difference,’ He ran his thumb up and down against her cheek, and watched as her eyes grew heavy. ‘No more worrying about this. You’re going to meet my family at the party next weekend, and the weekend after you’re going to take me to meet your family.’

  ‘It’s my mum’s birthday that weekend.’

  ‘Well, then, that’s ideal.’ The thumb moved to the corner of her mouth. ‘And in the meantime, you and I are going to put our families out of our minds and we’re going to start over. We’re going to date; we’re going to go out to dinner, spend time with each other’s friends, go the movies, go for walks, curl up on the sofa and watch a DVD. But what we’re not going to do, much as it kills me to suggest it, is make love to each other. So no sleep-overs for the foreseeable.’

  Merrow’s eyes widened.

  ‘That plan really sucks.’

  Alex chuckled, his warm breath fanning her face, his voice a husky rumble. ‘I know it does, but we skipped all the preliminaries before—not that I’m complaining, you understand—but maybe what we need is to take a step back in order to catch up. So kissing is still allowed…’

  He brushed his mouth across hers to prove the point, and she sighed when he leaned back. ‘Touching is fine up to a point…’ he brushed his thumb over her bottom lip, touching his fingernail just inside the moist edge ‘…and PDAs are about to go into overload, just so you know. But that’s it. We talk more, about the things we like and enjoy…and I don’t mean sex-related things we like and enjoy. I mean stuff that turns on our minds.’

  ‘You turn on my mind.’

  He smiled that damn hint of a smile and Merrow let her knees give enough to push her body closer into his. ‘Now, play nice, O’Connell, ’cos this is going to cost me just as much as it costs you. But if we survive both of our families then all bets are off.’

  ‘I still think this plan sucks.’ She stood up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his for a long, slow, deep kiss that left her wanting so much more than she was apparently allowed for the next couple of weeks.

  ‘I know. But humour me.’ He groaned when she ran her tongue along his lips. ‘Just this one time.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘Right now I hate me too.’ Alex turned his head, raising a forefinger. ‘Five more minutes, Mickey, old pal. I’m just kissing my girlfriend.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘YOU’RE Merrow, right?’ The stunningly beautiful young woman grinned broadly at her, dimples appearing in both her cheeks. ‘I love that name. But not anywhere near as much as I’m lusting after that dress!’

  She muttered something very fast in fluent French that went clean over Merrow’s head.

  ‘I’m sorry—you are?’

  She laughed, the sound musical and lilting, and without even knowing an answer Merrow liked her. She was full of life, so very vibrant. And had just enough sparkle in her hazel eyes to let Merrow know they were probably kindred spirits in the mischief department…

  ‘Hell, I’m sorry. I forget sometimes that my infamy isn’t known by all and sundry.’ She stretched out a long-fingered, fine-boned hand. ‘I’m Ashling Fitzgerald, Alex’s sister. But you can call me Ash, everybody does.’

  ‘When they’re not calling her a pain in the ass.’ Alex’s friend Gabe, even taller when viewed right side up, tilted his head down to Merrow’s ear to mutter the words and then tossed an olive in his mouth, smirking at Ashling on his way past.

  Ash waved a hand in dismissal while Merrow shook her other hand. ‘Pretend he doesn’t exist. I’ve been doing it for years.’

  He took a step backwards to lean in and say something into Ash’s ear that brought a fai
nt flush to her creamy complexion and she turned to look up at his face, her eyes narrowing briefly before her lips moved in reply. Gabe’s gaze dropped to her lips as she spoke, his broad shoulders shaking as he walked away.

  Merrow’s brows rose in question, her eyes sparkling knowingly as Ash looked back at her. Because she knew that kind of look between two people, didn’t she?

  ‘Alex said there was nothing going on with you two.’

  Her flush grew but she smiled another dazzling smile, waving her hand again. ‘The lump? No. I’ve known him since I was in nappies, and he’s spent half his life with a really bad case of pants-worn-outside-trousers syndrome when it comes to rescuing me from situations he deemed to be inappropriate.’

  Merrow nodded, her tongue firmly stuck in her cheek. ‘Mmm-hmm. I see.’

  And she really did. In fact, it was reassuring to know she might not be the only woman in the world with the kind of attraction to a man that went beyond common sense. It bonded her to Ash in a way.

  Ash turned her face to one side, her eyes narrowing briefly, and she then smiled. ‘Oh, I think you and I are going to get along just grand! It’s about time I had a partner in crime.’

  Gabe came back with a plate groaning under the weight of food. ‘She recruiting you to her campaign of terror, then, Merrow? I hope you have a good solicitor.’

  Ash nudged him hard enough in the stomach to make him lose an hors d’oeuvre to the floor. ‘The only solicitor I’ll need these days will be to get a Restraining Order to keep you away from me.’

  ‘Ah-h-h, and the battle begins all over again.’ Alex slipped an arm around Merrow’s waist, planting a PDA kiss on her forehead before he attempted to steal food off Gabe’s plate. ‘You wouldn’t think they hadn’t seen each other in eight years, would you?’

  Gabe held the plate out of his reach. ‘Get your own, squirt. The buffet’s that way.’

  Merrow smiled as she watched the warm interaction between the three of them. It was easy to tell they were a tight-knit unit. And even if she didn’t have a right to feel like a part of that unit, it made her believe—if just for a moment—that she wasn’t really all that different from them. Though she was very glad she had on heels again, even if her feet were starting to hurt a little. Without them, surrounded by the three giant beautiful people, she’d have felt like a midget.

  But so far, so good, and if the rest of the party-goers were this much fun then Merrow really wasn’t going to have a problem with the world of the Fitzgeralds. It all seemed perfectly ordinary to her.

  Well, if you removed the largest estate she’d ever been on outside of a National Trust property, and a seventeenth-century mansion that could probably have housed half the population of the island they lived on, that was.

  While Gabe and Ash launched into a thrust and parry of words, Alex focussed his gaze on Merrow, a smile lifting his mouth at the sight of the similar smile on her lips. He tightened his arm around her waist and lowered his head to her ear to whisper, ‘Surviving, O’Connell?’

  She turned her face to his and smiled a very different smile, the kind that once again tested his resolve on his fantastically stupid plan not to make love to her for two weeks. Well, eight days and roughly two and a half hours—not that he was counting. Much.

  ‘So far. Though I’m planning on forcing your sister to tell me every embarrassing story from your childhood, just so you know.’ She laughed when he slapped a palm against his chest, mock outrage written on his face.

  ‘My childhood? Good luck with that. I was the model child, I’ll have you know.’

  Ash stopped sparring with Gabe long enough to interject, ‘Disgustingly, I’m afraid that’s true.’

  ‘You balanced him out.’

  She ignored Gabe’s droll comment. ‘But I can show you lots of embarrassing pictures if that helps?’

  Merrow’s face lit up with wicked glee. ‘I’d love that. Lead the way.’

  Reluctantly Alex allowed his sister to link arms with Merrow, stealing her away from his side. But he was smiling as he watched them walking away, their heads close together as they talked. If they could be friends that would help, and with Ash back in the country and Merrow enjoying herself at the party, the world felt, well, pretty fine, actually.

  It gave him a brief moment of what felt distinctly like hope. He even allowed himself to wonder how she’d react if he told her the thoughts he’d been having of late regarding something resembling the word ‘future’?

  Frowning down at his feet as he mulled that one over, he absent-mindedly turned over a piece of food on the floor with the shining toe of his shoe.

  There was a deep sigh from his side.

  ‘You’ll grind that into the carpet, you moron.’ Gabe bent over and scooped it off the floor into his hand.

  ‘And you’ll make someone a lovely wife some day, you big girl.’

  ‘Hey, once a housekeeper’s son, rich boy…’

  Alex ignored the comment. ‘Where did you say the food was?’ He nodded at Gabe’s plate. ‘If there’s any left, that is…’

  ‘We’ll have to get together in Dublin some time.’

  Merrow smiled as Ash guided her through the crowd and into the long hallway with the huge staircase that seemed to wind upwards and outwards for ever.

  ‘I’d like that.’

  It was the truth. She had a suspicion that Alex’s sister would fit in very nicely as a fifth musketeer. But then, if things went pear shaped—which realistically they still could—even that relationship would add to the fallout, wouldn’t it?

  She couldn’t keep allowing herself to get sucked in by all the ‘perfectness’, could she? Just because so many things seemed to ‘fit’ didn’t mean she should pretend there weren’t just as many things that didn’t.

  But the thought that she now had to hold back from a potential new friend made her feel, well, sad, she supposed. And the chance of losing Alex from her life had already created a gaping emptiness in her chest of late. Neither one a feeling Merrow much cared for.

  ‘You can take me to where you got that dress. It’s vintage, isn’t it?’

  Merrow nodded, looking down at the dusty rose organdy that crossed the bottom of her heart-shaped bodice and splayed out into a panel that fell over one side of her wide skirt, the subtle painted floral accent studded with sequins shimmering in the light. It had so been ‘the one’ and, judging by how Alex’s eyes had glowed when he’d first seen her in it, it had been worth every single extortionate cent.

  Wearing it she actually felt that she wasn’t all that out of place amongst the elite…

  ‘Nineteen fifties.’

  ‘Well, it’s sensational and you look beautiful in it,’ Ash enthused, and then turned to point out one of the pictures in front of them. ‘This is baby Alex.’

  Merrow laughed. ‘Oh, now that is embarrassing!’

  Ash laughed. ‘Isn’t it? He was a ridiculously cherubic baby. All the more casual pictures are on this wall; the formal shots are in the library. We call this the Family Gallery.’

  Hmm. A bit of a different set-up from the hodge-podge of eclectic picture frames Merrow’s family had littering every available space on walls and shelves in their cabin…They’d never had a formal shot taken in their lives. And the ‘family gallery’ had some pretty bohemian shots for the uninitiated…

  She glanced briefly at Ash as she released her arm and looked at the pictures. Feeling as if she were being scrutinised from time to time, Merrow wandered along the wall, seeking out Alex’s face in each picture. But surely that had to be paranoia? It was more an indication of how a part of her felt as if she were invading a magical world she could only briefly visit—because she’d always be an outsider, wouldn’t she?

  She saw baby Alex became toddler Alex, toddler Alex joined by baby Ash, every picture showing a happy, normal family just occasionally framed by the backdrop of mansion house to hint they were that little bit different…

  Another glance at Ash as she to
ok a sideways step reaffirmed her feeling of being scrutinised. But Ash simply smiled as she reached a hand out to point at a picture in the centre. ‘He’s six in this one.’

  The more pictures she looked at, the more perfect the world of Alex’s family seemed to her. They all looked so happy and in every shot Alex was confident, smiling—the golden-boy heir to the Fitzgerald crown…

  ‘That one was taken when he was twenty—the first year he ran the Dublin Marathon. You’ll know he set up a charity of his own for leukaemia kids and still runs the marathon for it practically every year. He was one hell of an act for me to follow, the brat…’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ Merrow stared at another picture of Alex with an ancient camera slung around his neck. He was maybe fourteen or fifteen, with a gangly Gabe on one side of him and a grinning pigtailed Ash on the other, their arms over each other’s shoulders. Like three little musketeers.

  ‘Mmm.’ Ash moved in close to her side and linked her arm again. ‘That would be Alex. You know what they say about still waters. Well, he was always the perfect son and never made a big deal out of it—regardless of the responsibilities that came with it. Everything seems to come so easy to him—like he never considers anything he does as being anything out of the norm. But it is. I know that better than most. But then I’m not the perfect one in the family. Like the lump said—I balance him out.’

  And there was that word perfect again. Surely there had to be something dark and horrible in his past—some indiscretion or at the very least a broken heart?

  It would help. Because for Merrow, too perfect held way more pitfalls than flawed. Flawed she understood. Flawed and her were old friends. Yup—the countries of flawed and chaotic bordering on the land of the ridiculous were all places she visited regularly…

  But the prospect of a brief visit to the land of perfect was tempting. Especially if it meant she got to be there with Alex. Her stupid heart was already committed to the idea of a holiday—if her head just wouldn’t keep thinking she’d be giving up her passport at the border…