by Lucy King
Be careful of the flipping dress.
As if he could do anything he wanted with her and all that mattered was that she looked presentable afterwards.
Not that she’d even managed that. Her hair was a mess and her face was still burning—although hopefully if anyone noticed they’d assume it had something to do with the hideousness of standing in the drive with Lily, Kit and Marcus while Zoe smiled widely, turned and, to the cheer of the guests, tossed the bouquet high into the air.
And as for her lack of underwear... Well, even though technically it wasn’t her fault, who went commando at a wedding where there was the possibility of a breeze or an ignominious fall to the ground courtesy of four-inch heels?
It was as if she’d been taken over by someone else today. Someone who wasn’t cool and collected and totally unflappable, but tense and jumpy and chaotic. Someone who was ruled by emotion instead of reason. Someone who did things like have sex in the open air with a thoroughly unsuitable man.
And now all those things that had seemed so exciting half an hour ago—the recklessness, the loss of control, the overwhelming desire to slake the clawing lust—now just seemed wrong. Shameful somehow.
Even though physically she’d adored what she and Marcus had done—who was she to deny the fabulousness of two earth-shattering orgasms in quick succession?—she was beginning to realise that she’d just become one of his conquests. One in a very long line of women he’d taken to bed and then forgotten about. Not that there’d been a bed involved, but still.
It shouldn’t really have mattered, but, annoyingly enough, it did. Because while she was under no illusion about him, maybe by assuming a quickie with Marcus would deal with the attraction she felt for him, she’d been under an illusion about herself. She’d had a better time with him than she’d expected to. Hadn’t thought that kind of pleasure actually existed. Was kind of knocked sideways by the fact that it did, and that she’d experienced it. And while she’d never fall for the mistake of thinking she could be the one to reform him, even if she wanted to, which she didn’t, if she hung around she could well find herself wanting more instead of closure.
Given everything she’d endured today and the way her emotions had got the better of her it wasn’t entirely surprising. Her confidence and her self-belief had been bashed. Things she’d always thought she’d known had been proved false. And as for her emotions, well, those were all over the place.
But however justifiable her behaviour today had been she still didn’t like it. She didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t have the energy to work it out.
Nor did she have the energy for the night of heaven Marcus was no doubt planning, tempting though her body clearly thought it was. She needed space, time and distance to figure out that today was nothing more than a blip, that the sex, even though spectacular, had been just that and that she’d be back to normal in a jiffy.
So, all in all, she thought, watching the bouquet sail through the air and land in Marcus’ hands, it was lucky she’d booked herself on the seven-o’clock train back to London.
* * *
God only knew where the suggestion he join Celia in the drive for the throwing of the bouquet had come from. All Marcus knew was that he’d caught that flash of vulnerability again and he’d found himself wondering how the hell he could have ever thought her uptight and judgemental when she clearly had a core of marshmallow. A deeply hidden core of marshmallow, admittedly, but there nevertheless.
And as a result of the glimpse he’d got of it, he was now waving goodbye to Dan and Zoe, who were heading off on a two-month honeymoon in South America in a vintage convertible, while clutching a bunch of pale pink roses and feeling a bit of a berk. But he reckoned he could live with that. Especially if it meant that Celia felt obliged to express her gratitude for his chivalry in bed later.
As his pulse began to race at the thought of the long, hot, steamy night ahead, during which he’d make sure she expressed her gratitude over and over again, Marcus wondered if she’d be up for meeting up once back in London.
Now that they’d lost the hostility he wouldn’t mind getting to know her a bit better. He might have been acquainted with her for close on the twenty years he’d known Dan, but he didn’t really have a clue how she worked. As an adolescent he hadn’t been interested, at eighteen he’d just wanted to get into her pants and as an adult the animosity had acted as a barrier to thinking of her as anything but a thorn in his side. Now, though, he was thinking he’d quite like to find out.
Which was odd because up to this point he’d never really wanted to explore the minds of the women he’d dated. It wasn’t that he didn’t think they’d be all that interesting. In fact, he was sure they would be, because he didn’t date bimbos. The women he went out with were bright and entertaining, yet despite that he’d just never been sufficiently engaged to want to try to dig all that far beneath the surface, even with those who lasted weeks instead of only one night. He didn’t really know why this was, it was just the way it had always been.
Celia, however, intrigued him. Her mind, her work ethic, her ambition and her drive as much as the spectacular body beneath the dress. With hindsight she always had fascinated him, even when she’d been needling him. Maybe particularly when she’d been needling him. And he didn’t really know the reason for that either.
What he did know, however, was that he’d like to see more of her. Literally, of course, because he still hadn’t seen her naked, but also because this thing between them deserved a lot more exploration.
And while anything long-term clearly wasn’t an option when they had polar-opposite views on marriage and family, that didn’t mean that if she was up for it they couldn’t have some fun in the meantime, did it?
In fact, why wait till later? he thought, lowering his hand and vaguely wondering if it would be all right to just dump the flowers on the ground as his heart began to thump. Why not whisk her away now as he’d implied earlier he wanted to? She was right there, standing beside him and waving as the car headed down the drive. What could be quicker than sending her up to get her stuff and then dragging her off to his hotel? Or hers. He wasn’t fussy.
‘So another couple bites the dust,’ he murmured, deciding as he watched the red brake lights disappear round the corner that etiquette probably took as dim a view of abandoning the bouquet as Celia would of him throwing her over his shoulder and carting her off.
‘In a cloud of dust,’ she said, screwing her face up in disgust and now flapping her hand in front of her face to wave it away. ‘Do you mind?’
‘What about?’
‘Your best friend’s just got married,’ she said. ‘Your relationship will change.’
Contemplating the idea, Marcus figured that Celia was probably right about that, although he wasn’t unduly worried. It wasn’t as if he and Dan saw each other all the time. They met up once, maybe twice a month at the most, and he couldn’t see why that should change. ‘Zoe doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman who’d ban her husband from seeing his friends,’ he said.
‘No. She’s lovely. And I think they’re going to be very happy.’
This she said with what he would have thought was a trace of wistfulness if it had been anyone other than Celia, but, because it was Celia, she was probably not considering her own happiness but the way her relationship with her brother would change.
But then to his faint alarm she sighed deeply, and he shot her a quick glance only to find a kind of dreamy expression on her face that he’d never have expected.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, not sure quite what to make of it.
‘Fine,’ she said, giving herself a quick shake and smiling at him brightly—too brightly, perhaps. ‘You?’
‘Never felt better.’ Oddly enough, it was true. He might not have slept in the past twenty-four hours but he felt great. Amazing the e
ffect some seriously wild, uninhibited, unexpected sex could have on a man...
‘Congratulations, by the way,’ she said, her smile still fixed in place, her eyes oddly unreadable.
‘What for?’
‘That,’ she said, glancing down at the bunch of flowers he was still, for some unfathomable reason, holding. ‘It means you’re next.’
Marcus gave a theatrical shudder to mask the less theatrical one he felt deep inside. ‘Hell will freeze over first,’ he muttered.
‘Then you really shouldn’t have caught it.’
‘I like to win.’ And he had, even though Kit and Lily had put up an excellent good-natured battle. Celia, come to think of it, hadn’t put up any kind of a fight. She’d just stood there looking as if she’d been miles away.
‘And what will you do when word gets out? You’ll be swamped.’
‘I’ll use you as my shield.’
She tilted her head and looked at him sceptically. ‘Meaning what exactly?’
Who knew? All he knew was that as long as they had mileage, and they clearly did what with the electricity that was bouncing back and forth between them, he’d be pursuing it. ‘Meaning go and get your things, Celia, and say your goodbyes.’
‘I’m just about to.’
‘Good.’
She took a deep breath and pulled her shoulders back, her smile fading a little. ‘About us leaving together, Marcus...’
‘What about it?’
‘We won’t be.’
That was fair enough. Her parents were here and he could understand her desire for discretion. He was perfectly happy for them to leave separately and meet up later. ‘Fine,’ he said easily. ‘Where were you planning on staying tonight?’
‘At home.’
He went still at that. Frowned. ‘What?’
‘I’m heading home,’ she said, drawing out the syllables as if he were a bit slow on the uptake, which he was because he was having trouble processing what she was saying. ‘So if you’ll excuse me I’d better get a move on.’
Leaving him standing there like a tongue-tied brainless idiot, she turned and set off for the house at such a cracking pace she was practically through the front door by the time his brain had kicked in and he realised that she really was intending to leave and that if he wanted to stop her he was going to have to be quick.
Setting his jaw, he strode after her, dumped the roses on the table just inside the door, which was groaning with presents, and when he saw her halfway up the stairs swiftly crossed the hall. ‘You’re leaving now?’ he said, wondering why she’d changed her mind.
‘I have a train to catch,’ she said without breaking stride. ‘In just under an hour.’
‘You weren’t planning to stay?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I knew this wouldn’t be the kind of wedding that goes on till dawn and I have to be at work early tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’
‘So?’
Taking the stairs two at a time, he caught up with her in a matter of seconds. Long enough for it to get into his thick skull that she had no intention of changing her plans despite what had happened earlier. Which disappointed him more than it ought to, although he didn’t have time to wonder about that right now.
At the top of the stairs he gripped her wrist and she stilled, but he could feel her pulse racing beneath his fingers, which he didn’t think was hammering just from the exertion of climbing the stairs. ‘What’s going on, Celia?’
‘Nothing’s going on,’ she said flatly, tugging her hand away and rubbing her wrist. ‘I just have to get back, that’s all. I really do.’
He believed her because her dedication to her work was something only an hour or so ago he’d been admiring. Now, though, it just pissed him off because basically she was letting him know in no uncertain terms that, regardless of the attraction that still existed between them, continuing where they’d left off was at the bottom of her list of priorities. While it was at the top of his.
‘You know, you really need to address that work-life balance of yours,’ he drawled, oddly hurt by the idea she attached so little importance to it.
‘To make it more like yours, you mean?’ she said, marching across the landing towards a bedroom.
He followed her through the door and leaned back against a wall as he watched her pick up a suitcase, drop it on the bed and fling the top back. ‘Working on a Sunday isn’t normal.’
‘It is if you have a tricky deal that needs to be pushed through in record time. Not to mention a document that’s gone missing and of which I have the only copy.’ She scooped up a handful of clothes, dumped them beside the suitcase and began folding and packing, folding and packing, still looking everywhere but at him. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, what with you now being a man of leisure.’
The mocking judgemental tone that he’d assumed had gone was back, and it annoyed him even more. ‘I’ve put in my fair share of weekends at work.’
‘At the moment I work every weekend,’ she said pointedly, and he found himself frowning and wondering, what the hell was this? Some kind of competition? ‘Taking today off was a luxury,’ she added, ‘and I need to make it up.’
‘What about what happened this afternoon?’
‘What about it?’ She paused in the folding/packing thing she had going on and stared at him as if she didn’t have a clue what he was getting at. Which wasn’t entirely surprising since he wasn’t sure he had a clue what he was getting at. So she didn’t want to spend the night with him. What was the big deal? Why was he pursuing it? And, actually, wasn’t he beginning to sound a bit pathetic? A bit needy? A bit desperate?
He was, so he bit back the urge to ask her if the afternoon had meant anything to her, because it clearly hadn’t, and stamped out the disappointment swirling around inside him.
‘Forget it,’ he said, fixing a cool smile to his face and reminding himself that it hadn’t meant anything to him either. It had been good sex, nothing more, and it wasn’t as if he’d never had good sex before.
She sighed and stopped folding. ‘Look, Marcus, this afternoon was fun but we both know it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.’
Did they? He’d thought that they’d been about to go back to his hotel room, and had hoped that things might carry on when they got back to London, but clearly he’d been picking up the wrong signals. No matter. ‘I know it wouldn’t have gone anywhere,’ he said, and she was right. Ultimately it wouldn’t.
‘Yet you’re sounding like you thought this was more than it was.’
He had. Maybe. A bit. For a moment. ‘Evidently my mistake.’
‘It’s unlike you to make a mistake about something like this.’
It was. Which was undoubtedly why he was feeling so wrong-footed. The thing making his stomach churn was confusion at the unexpected turn of events, that was all. ‘I blame the champagne.’
‘Did I ever agree to leave with you?’
No, dammit, she hadn’t, he realised belatedly. He’d jumped to that conclusion all by himself and he’d been an idiot to do so. ‘No.’
‘So that’s it, then,’ she said as if there was nothing more to be said. ‘Just think of me as another of your conquests.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘But it was fun.’
‘It was.’
‘And so what I needed,’ she said with a smile, looking at him finally, ‘so thank you for letting me use you.’
Her words sank in and for a moment Marcus didn’t know what to say. For the first time in years, he was speechless, because of all the things that he’d thought about since they’d had sex it had never once occurred to him that she’d used him.
If he’d contemplated her motives he’d have com
e up with something pretty much along the same lines as his. Overwhelming desire. Years of pent-up build-up. Irresistibility. An interest in seeing where things might go. He’d never have guessed that all she was after was a one-night stand. And didn’t that make him a fool because he’d told her that he and the women he slept with were always on the same page, yet here he was, not just on another page but in a different book entirely.
So much for the idea that Celia was vulnerable, he thought, feeling something inside him that had momentarily thawed ice over again. So much for the thought she needed protecting. She was made of steel. She had no soft centre. And he’d been a complete and utter idiot to imagine otherwise, because he might be many things but he didn’t use people, whereas she had absolutely no qualms about doing such a thing.
‘No problem at all,’ he said, pushing himself off the wall and making for the door, wiping Celia and the afternoon from his head with the kind of ruthless determination that had got him back on track and made him a millionaire at twenty-five. ‘Happy to have helped. Have a good journey home and I’ll see you around.’
SIX
Over the next month Celia was so flat out at work that Marcus barely crossed her mind. She had a deal to think about. Contracts. Documents. Emails and calls and meetings and an ever overflowing in tray. She didn’t have the mental space or the time to think about that afternoon. Except in the early hours of the morning when she did make it to bed and couldn’t sleep, of course. Then, dizzy with exhaustion, she let herself remember and indulge, knowing that come daybreak the memory would be buried beneath work, work and more work.
Despite his parting shot, she hadn’t seen him around. She hadn’t expected to. For one thing, Dan—their only real reason for coming across each other—was still on honeymoon, and for another, why on earth would Marcus choose to put himself in her path after she’d deliberately told him that she’d used him?