by Abby Green
* * *
‘A nightcap?’
Lexie looked at Cesar and nodded. ‘That’d be nice, thanks.’
She watched as he turned and went to the drinks cabinet, her eyes devouring his tall, lean form sheathed in a dark trousers and a light shirt. He’d already shrugged off his jacket.
Lexie was reeling after the day. Not wanting Cesar to see how overwhelmed she was, she made her way out to the terrace that was accessible through the living room too. She heard the faint sound of a mobile and Cesar’s deep tones as he answered.
A quiver of relief went through her—a moment alone, to try and assimilate everything. She sucked in the evening air, hoping it might cool her hot cheeks. They’d felt permanently hot since Cesar had made love to her that morning.
Afterwards, when she’d been sated and replete, he hadn’t let her burrow back under the covers as she’d wanted to. He’d all but washed and dressed her, picking out a pretty shirt and jeans, sneakers.
They’d left the hotel and a car had taken them up to the impressive St George’s castle, with its breathtaking views of the city. Peacocks had strutted on the paths, fanning their colourful tails much to the delight of the tourists.
Then, as if reading Lexie’s mind, he’d taken her on one of the old yellow trams down a steep hill. It had been so packed that Cesar had pulled her into his body in front of him, arms wrapped tight around her. By the time he’d pulled her out at another stop she had been thoroughly turned on.
She’d found herself being led though a dizzying labyrinth of ancient streets. Cesar had explained that it was the Alfama—the old Arabic quarter.
Beautiful murals decorated walls at the ends of alleyways, little children darted dark heads out of tiny windows and called, ‘Bom dia!’ Washing hung on lines between houses.
They’d had lunch there, on a tiny terrace overlooking the river. Afterwards they’d wandered some more, Lexie’s hand tightly in Cesar’s. At one point she had tugged gently, and when he’d looked at her she’d asked, ‘No paparazzi?’
Something had flashed across his face but he’d smiled and said, ‘No. Not here.’
Something very dangerous had infused Lexie’s blood to think that here they were truly anonymous. That Cesar hadn’t automatically thought of the bigger agenda.
Dangerous.
The car had reappeared then, as if by magic, and had taken them to see the stunning sixteenth-century monastery where Vasco Da Gama was buried in Belem. Afterwards Cesar had pointed to a blue-canopied shop nearby, where a queue literally about a mile long waited patiently.
They’d joined the back of it. Lexie had looked at Cesar, but he’d said enigmatically, ‘Wait and see. Then you’ll understand why all these people are here.’
Eventually, when they’d reached the shop itself, Cesar had spoken in flawless Portuguese. He’d handed Lexie what looked like a small custard tart.
‘Taste it,’ Cesar had urged as they’d found stools in the heaving shop with its beautiful ornate interior.
Lexie had obediently bitten into the flaky pastry and the smooth warm custard had melted on her tongue. She’d groaned her appreciation, much as everyone else had.
When she’d been able to speak again she’d said, ‘That was probably one of the best tarts I’ve ever tasted in my life.’
A smug Cesar had just said, ‘See?’
And then they’d queued again for more.
After they’d taken a circuitous sightseeing route back to the hotel, instead of leading her up to the suite Cesar had taken Lexie down to the spa, where he’d consulted in Portuguese with the receptionist, who had gone bright pink and giggly. Lexie might almost have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been feeling a disturbing rise of something else. Jealousy.
Cesar had turned to her. ‘See you in a couple of hours.’ And after pressing a swift kiss to her mouth he’d left Lexie there, gaping at his retreating form.
Two women had emerged and Lexie had been taken in hand—literally. The full works of an all-over beauty treatment, followed by a full body massage.
Then, when she’d floated back to the suite, Cesar had been waiting with champagne, and once Lexie had changed into the dark pink off-the-shoulder dress she’d brought with her they’d gone to dinner.
And now...now...Lexie took in the sparkling view of one of the oldest cities in Europe and felt overwhelmed. No more in control of her emotions than she had been ever since they’d queued a second time for the glorious pasteis de natas in Belem. When Cesar had looked so carefree and years younger.
Conversely, it had reminded Lexie that she harboured dark secrets, and they were rising up within her now—because she was going to be coming face to face with a very personal old scar on set the following week. The thought of it terrified her, and she knew she was feeling more vulnerable about it because being with Cesar...being intimate for the first time...had ripped away some vital layer of protection.
‘Sorry, I had to take that call.’
Lexie tensed at Cesar’s deep voice. He came alongside her and handed her a small glass of port. She forced a smile and tipped it towards him after sniffing it appreciatively. ‘Appropriate—given we’re in the land where port is made.’
Cesar inclined his head. He looked absurdly suave and gorgeous this evening. Tall and imposing. Yet with that very definite edge of virile masculine energy.
Lexie took a quick sip of her drink. It was smooth and luxurious. Her feeling of vulnerability and the darkness on her soul made her want to avoid Cesar’s far too incisive gaze. Even now he was regarding her speculatively. She felt raw after the day, and on some perverse level she almost felt angry with him—for charming her, for making her fall for him.
A rogue desire to crack that impenetrable façade he wore so well made her ask, ‘So how come you’re not married...?’
Lexie immediately wanted to claw the words back. Regretting the impulse.
Cesar’s gaze narrowed predictably and Lexie squirmed, cursing herself. Thinking frantically of a way to save herself, she sought to mitigate it by saying lightly, ‘You’re a catch. I mean you have all your own teeth, your breath isn’t bad. You own property...’
Somehow Lexie was afraid she hadn’t fooled him. Her voice had sounded too breathy, slightly desperate. She took another sip of the port.
But when she looked back at him he was smiling wryly. ‘No one’s ever mentioned the boon of having my own teeth before.’
No, thought Lexie, she’d bet they hadn’t. They’d probably looked at him and seen a walking, talking dollar sign. Inexplicable anger rose up within her to think of women seeing him as a target, and then just as quickly dissolved. Cesar was so cynical that he would never be taken for that kind of a fool.
Suddenly loath to think that he might consider her a vulture like that, she said quietly, ‘Thank you. Seriously, this day has been...amazing. I never expected it.’
Something painful gripped her inside. Their time was finite.
Not wanting to think about that, she figured she had nothing to lose so she dived in, telling herself she wasn’t genuinely curious. ‘Have you ever come close? To being married?’
Cesar tensed. His fingers tightened fractionally on his glass. Then the line of his mouth flattened. ‘I was abandoned at an early age and then left in the hands of two people who were little better than uninterested caretakers. They resented the fact that my blood was not pure. That experience hardly left me with the qualifications to create a warm, inviting atmosphere conducive to family and such frivolous things.’
Lexie’s insides clenched in rejection of that. Creating a family, a home, was not frivolous. Cesar’s words, however, had been emphatic. She realised something about herself then, in a blinding flash of clarity: on some fundamental level she hadn’t given up hope for herself. She hoped that some day she might h
ave a second chance and her own rather dismal experience of what a family was could be proved to be the exception rather than the rule.
‘Your half-brothers...’ she offered huskily. ‘They looked happy in the wedding pictures.’
Cesar’s jaw tightened. ‘They’re different. They had a different upbringing, different perspectives.’
Lexie thought of his grandmother, cruelly making him cut out and paste pictures of them growing up with their mother—his mother. Together.
‘They had your mother... But I wonder if it was any easier or better for them just because she was there?’
‘Perhaps—perhaps not,’ Cesar said, but it rang hollow.
Lexie wanted to slide her arm around him but didn’t. ‘Are you going to see them again?’
He glanced at her and his face was hard. As it had been when he’d looked at the portraits of his grandparents.
‘I have nothing in common with them. Especially not now.’
He turned to face her more fully and Lexie almost shivered at the frost in his eyes.
‘I made a decision a long time ago never to marry and have children.’
‘Why?’ Lexie breathed, not liking how that declaration seemed to affect her physically. How it felt as if he was giving her a distinct message.
‘Because I vowed that the castillo is no place for a child. The legacy of my family is tainted, built on obsessive greed. Snobbery. When I die the castillo will be left to the local town and they can do what they like with it. And all the money will go to various charities and trusts. That’s what I’m building it up for now.’
‘But...’ Lexie searched wildly for a way to penetrate the cool shell that surrounded Cesar. ‘You said yourself that you wanted to renovate the castillo, but...why bother? Why not just leave it behind now?’
Cesar looked at her then, and for a second Lexie saw bleakness in those green depths. A bleakness that resonated in her because she knew what it felt like herself.
‘Because...’ he was grim ‘...it’s in my damn blood like some kind of poison.’
Lexie was stunned into silence. She didn’t like the way she wanted to do something to comfort Cesar. Touch him. And even though he was only inches away it felt as if a chasm yawned between them.
Huskily she said, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
His mouth tipped up but it was a parody of a smile, a million miles away from the smiles she’d seen earlier.
‘What about you, Lexie? Do you wish for a cottage with a white picket fence and a gaggle of cherubic children?’
For a second Lexie felt nothing. The words seemed to hang suspended in the air between them. But then it was as if a roaring flood was approaching and gathering speed from a long way off. Pain. Incredible pain.
A kaleidoscope of images bombarded her—a tiny baby, crying lustily. Nurses with rough hands and judgemental looks. Officials. And then...nothing. Silence. More pain.
‘Lexie?’
She blinked. Cesar was watching her, his eyes narrowing. Face stark. From somewhere she found a brittle smile and said through the ball of emotion growing in her chest, ‘You forgot the dog...there’s a dog there too.’
‘Ah...yes, of course. No idyllic picture would be complete without a dog.’
Cesar put down his glass and took Lexie’s from her too. He reached for her with both hands and pulled her into his body. Lexie felt cold, and she shivered lightly. She desperately wanted to drive away the chill and feel warm again. She desperately wanted to blank out the dark images she’d just seen.
Coming up on her tiptoes, Lexie reached up and brought her arms around Cesar’s neck, pressing her whole body against his. She saw the flare in his eyes and felt herself start to thaw from the inside out.
‘Kiss me, Cesar.’
Cesar smiled briefly before a look of almost feral intent crossed his face. He moved his hands up to Lexie’s face.
The kiss was fierce and passionate, and before Lexie lost all ability to think clearly she knew that they were both running away from the demons nipping at their heels. This time, though, it didn’t feel like kinship—it felt bleak.
* * *
Much later Cesar lay awake in the dark room. Traces of the constriction in his chest brought on by Lexie’s questions were still there, faintly. Even though his body hummed with much more pleasurable sensations.
She was curled into him now, her naked curves keeping him at a level of near constant arousal. If it wasn’t so damned intoxicating he could almost resent her for her effect on him.
Her breath was feathering softly across his chest, light and even, and her hair was soft and silky. One hand lay right over the centre of his chest, where he’d felt the constriction most keenly earlier.
‘So how come you’re not married?’
Other women had asked him that question with a definite look in their eyes. Lexie hadn’t had that look. He never talked to anyone about his upbringing, but he seemed to be incapable of holding it in whenever those huge blue eyes were trained on him.
He’d told her...everything. He’d never even articulated his plans for the castillo to his friend Juan. He’d never told another soul. And when he’d told her something incredibly bleak had hit him. Bleak enough to drive him to taunt her, ask her if she pictured herself in that idyllic scenario.
And she’d looked for a moment as if he’d run a knife right through her belly. Pale. Stricken. Shocked. Clearly the thought was anathema to her, even though she’d joked about a dog.
Cesar went cold in the bed beside Lexie as something slid home inside him. The joke was on him, because for the first time in his life he was aware of a yearning sensation, a yearning for something he’d always believed to be utterly beyond his reach.
* * *
The following morning Lexie woke up alone in the bed. She sagged back against the pillows with not a little relief. Images from the night flooded her head and her cheeks reddened even as a tight knot of tension made her belly cramp.
She’d been able to drive away the demons for the night, but now they were back. The conversation with Cesar replayed in her head. The bleakness she’d felt when he’d spoken about the castillo, about leaving it behind so no child would have to endure what he had.
It shouldn’t be affecting Lexie like this. If anything it should be inciting a sense of protection within her. A sense that as long as she could count on Cesar’s obviously deeply rooted cynicism then she would be okay too.
But she couldn’t keep fooling herself. That discussion with Cesar had told Lexie that she wasn’t half as cynical as she’d always believed she was. It had told her that at a very deep core level she did harbour a fantasy. A fantasy of family and security and happiness. Fulfilment. It might not be dressed up in a vision of a cute cottage with a white picket fence and a dog and children, but it wasn’t far off.
And it made Lexie feel physically ill, almost as if she’d betrayed herself, to realise that. She’d been betrayed in the worst way possible by the very people who should have loved and protected her. And she’d always vowed to herself that she’d never allow that to happen again.
She’d vowed it. But deep down she hadn’t wanted to become that hard inside.
Lexie could see now that that was why she’d allowed herself to believe she could trust Jonathan Saunders, even briefly. Even then she’d been trying to prove to herself that she could trust again. That she could believe that she wouldn’t be betrayed. But he had betrayed her. And that should have proved to her that she’d been right all along not to trust. It should have shored up her defences. Made her even stronger.
But it hadn’t.
Because Lexie knew that any illusion of feeling in control of what was happening between her and Cesar Da Silva was exactly that. An illusion. And this man had the power to show her the
true extent of how flimsy her defences had always been.
CHAPTER NINE
‘WOULD YOU MIND if we returned to the castillo this morning? Something’s come up that I have to attend to in the vineyards.’
Lexie was in the bedroom and had just finished dressing in the jeans she’d worn the day before and a stripy Breton top. For a second Cesar’s words didn’t even compute because she was just drinking him in, looking impossibly handsome in jeans and a light wool sweater.
Then the words registered and relief rocked through her. She’d been dreading facing Cesar so soon after her recent revelations.
‘No,’ she said quickly—too quickly. ‘I don’t mind at all. There’s some heavy scenes next week so I’d appreciate some time to prepare...’
Anxiety at the prospect of what lay ahead for her gripped her again.
Cesar crossed his arms and lounged against the door. Instantly Lexie’s skin prickled with awareness. She could feel her nipples drawing into tight buds. Even more reason why she would relish some space from this man...
‘You don’t have to sound so eager.’
She blushed and glanced away for a second, feeling churlish. ‘It’s not that I want to leave...you’ve been so generous...’
Cesar closed the distance between them so fast her head spun. He looked stern. ‘You don’t have to thank me.’
Lexie said weakly, ‘Yes, I do... It’s polite.’
‘I don’t want your politeness,’ Cesar growled softly. ‘I want you.’
He cupped the back of her head and kissed her. Lexie clung to his arms to stop her legs from buckling.
When he drew back she opened her eyes. Lord, she could barely breathe.
‘Maybe I can convince them they don’t need me,’ Cesar said roughly.
It took a second for his meaning to sink in and then, despite the lurch in her chest, Lexie said hurriedly, ‘No, you should go back. And I do need to prepare for next week.’
‘You’re staying with me in my apartment, though.’
She opened her mouth to object and saw the glint of determination in Cesar’s eyes. She sighed, feeling weak. ‘Okay.’