by Dani Collins
“But we’re going straight home,” Jaya insisted. “Aren’t we?”
“We’ll use the family suite here tonight.”
“Theo—” Jaya began.
“Please let us do this.” Adara set a light touch on her arm. “Theo never asks me for anything.” Leaning in to buss Jaya’s cheek with her own, she whispered, “Please don’t give up on him.” With a tight smile of concern, she and Gideon hurried away.
Speechless, Jaya watched them depart. “This is crazy. Why did you do that?”
“Crazy? We both know we need to talk.”
She hugged herself into her wrap, cold despite their staying inside. As he nudged her toward the elevators, she stumbled.
“I don’t want to talk,” she mumbled. This was her problem, not theirs. She had known what she was marrying. Maybe he would come to love her eventually, but not if she forced it.
“There’s a switch.” He eyed her as he brought out his card and got them into the private elevator.
“What is?”
“You being the one who doesn’t want to talk. Especially after you taught me it’s the only way to fix things. Why are you trying to take that away from me now?”
“I’m not,” she protested as they entered the family suite. “I just don’t see any use this time.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to hear again that you don’t love me and never will!” The outburst surprised even her. She pulled her wrap tighter around her throat, turning away to hide her hurt.
He drew a long, harsh breath then heavy silence descended.
She waited.
Nothing.
A choking little cry of protest escaped her. “And there you go again, withdrawing—”
“It’s not easy for me, Jaya! I don’t even know how to love, not properly. I still feel awkward kissing my son, like the more I want and need him in my life, the more likely he’ll be snatched away.”
“Not by me! I’m not trying to take away your heart either. Love isn’t something to dread.”
“I know that,” he cut in. “But people knowing how I feel... When that woman said we were in love tonight, I lost a bit of sanity. I couldn’t bear for them to know how much you mean to me. It makes me too vulnerable.”
It wasn’t the statement she was looking for, but it was close enough to make her turn and look at him. “Do you mean that?”
“The last thing I feel toward you is dread, Jaya. When I walk through the door, I’m relieved, like some kind of unidentified pain has stopped. I’m so damned happy to see you, it’s embarrassing. Is that love? You tell me. I’ve never felt like this toward anyone. It sure as hell isn’t anything like what I feel toward my sister,” he growled.
She pressed a hand to her diaphragm, reminding herself to keep breathing because she felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. Somehow she found her voice. “Each time I see you, I’m filled with intense joy, like I’m finally home and safe again, no matter where we are.”
Reaction seemed to spasm across his features. “When you say things like that, I almost don’t want to believe it. It means too much and I trained myself not to care, not to want, but I crave those things you say, Jaya. They make me start to hope.”
“For what?” A fragile bubble of optimism was building in her, but she was afraid to grasp it in case it burst.
He visibly struggled, feet shifting, glance cutting to the door before he hardened his stance and lifted his chin, no defenses anywhere on him as he revealed both somber vulnerability and an achingly tender warmth toward her.
“That you might come to love me one day.”
Her own controls fell away, leaving her floating in a void, jaw slack, mind wiped clean by shock. A hot pressure flared in the back of her throat, urging her to speak, but all she could say was, “I’m such an idiot.”
Before she could cover her face and absorb how appallingly stupid she’d been, she glimpsed how her words affected him. The tightening and closing, the dimming of his eyes.
“I thought if I told you how much I love you, it would scare you,” she blurted, lurching forward a step. “I’d make you feel too much pressure. Like you were failing me because we’re not equal, but I shouldn’t have held back. I should have told you.”
“That you love me,” he clarified in a voice that rocked between disbelief and shaken anticipation. He came forward to grasp her arms. “That’s what this is? This feeling like if we have a disagreement, I’ll die of loneliness? That if I’m hurting I don’t want anyone around except you, and if you’re there I can bear anything, that’s it? That’s love?”
She nodded, blinking matted lashes. A tickle of wetness ran onto her cheek. “That’s how it is for me. I want to tell you things I’d never admit to another soul.”
He cupped her face in gentle fingers, his eyes blazing with heat and admiration and adoration. “Then Jaya, I have loved you for a very long time.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her heart had grown too big for her chest. Her mouth wouldn’t form words because her lips were quivering.
He soothed them with the pressure of his own. The tender kiss deepened by degrees past sweet wonder into heat and passion and a deep need to express their love completely. They knew each other’s signals and they were even more evocative now. He cupped her breast and held her heart. She pressed her lips to the pulse in his throat and only a very fine, translucent wall separated her from his lifeblood.
“Oh, Theo, I’m sorry—”
“Shh, I shouldn’t have made you wait, either. I just didn’t know...”
“I know. I love you.” She kissed him again, unable to control the outpouring of emotion, passion, her need to connect.
He slowly drew back, but only to offer a smug smile. “I scored us a free night of babysitting.”
“How could I not love you for that?” She was bursting with joy at how carefree he looked. Like he’d fully broken free of his shell and all of him was available to her.
He swooped to whisk her off her feet and into the cradle of his arms, making her gasp in surprise. As he started for the bedroom, she toed off her shoes so they clunked to the floor.
“Are we going to sleep at all tonight?” she teased.
“You say when, you know that.” He set her onto the bed and followed her in one motion, his strength and power entwining with hers in the familiar way she’d come to love. “But I’ll make it worth staying up if you do,” he cajoled.
He did, fulfilling her completely when, hours later, they were trembling with sexual exhaustion. Still panting, damp skin adhered and bodies locked in ecstasy, he smoothed her hair from her cheek with a shaking hand and looked into her eyes. “I love you. I will love you forever. Thank you for being my wife.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from PLAYBOY’S LESSON by Melanie Milburne.
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Ten years ago one devastating night changed everything for Austin, Hunter and Alex. Now they must each play their part in the revenge against the one man who ruined it all.
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CHAPTER ONE
EVEN BY CHATSFIELD standards Lucca had to admit this latest one of his to hit the London tabloids was a doozy. He lounged in the chair opposite his father’s new broom, Christos Giatrakos, and gave one his trademark lazy smiles. ‘What was it that got up your nose? The handcuffs or the studded leather codpiece?’
What the newly appointed CEO of the Chatsfield Hotel chain lacked in terms of a sense of humour was more than made up for in ice-cold ruthlessness. The Greek’s face was set like marble, his blue eyes glacial and his mouth set in a line so thin it hinted at a streak of cruelty underpinning his intractable personality. ‘We’re used to reading your sordid exploits in the tabloids, but this news is all over the internet. You’ve brought nothing but shame to the brand of this hotel with the way you carry on your affairs.’
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lucca didn’t bother disguising a yawn. Bor-ing. Heard it all before. A hundred...probably trillions of times. He rocked back on the legs of the chair, expertly balancing his weight as he kept his gaze trained on the hardened CEO. He was used to showdown meetings like this. He enjoyed them. It was his way of making up for the way he had disgraced himself by wetting his pants when he was called into the headmaster’s office at boarding school when he was seven. He never allowed himself to be intimidated.
Never.
‘The only thing that’s predictable about you is your unpredictability,’ the CEO continued. ‘Since you’ve consistently refused to clean up your act, it will now be cleaned up for you.’
‘It was just a party that got a little out of hand,’ Lucca said. ‘The press made it out to be an orgy. I didn’t even sleep with any of those girls. Well, maybe just the one, but that was because I was handcuffed to the bed at the time, so what else was I supposed to do?’
A muscle in the CEO’s jaw pulsed. On. Off. ‘Your father is refusing to give you a single penny of your allowance from the Chatsfield Family Trust unless you agree to fulfil the assignment I have appointed you. It will make quite a change for you working for a living instead of being a professional party boy with nothing better to do than get laid by a host of wannabe starlets and trashy gold-diggers.’
Lucca set his chair legs back down on the carpeted floor with a little thump. He had an exclusive art auction he wanted to attend in Monte Carlo next week. He was building a private collection of miniature paintings and there was one in particular he wanted to get his hands on. His gut instinct told him it would be worth millions in a few years. He didn’t want to be exiled to some godforsaken place and miss out on the deal of a lifetime, but neither did he want to forfeit his allowance.
The way he saw it, his family—his train wreck of a family—owed it to him.
‘What sort of mission?’
‘A month working at the Chatsfield Hotel on the island of Preitalle in the Mediterranean.’
Lucca mentally breathed out a sigh of relief. The royal principality of Preitalle was a short ferry trip or helicopter ride to Monte Carlo. But he figured it might be in his interests to appear unhappy about being exiled. His father’s CEO wanted to dish out punishment and he clearly was enjoying doing it. Just like that headmaster.
Bastard.
‘Doing what?’ He feigned a suitable amount of apprehension. That was all part of his game. Give the opponent what they want but only on the outside. Inside he was totally in control. Totally.
The CEO’s cold eyes gleamed with malice. ‘Working alongside Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte as she plans her sister Madeleine’s wedding at the end of the month.’
Lucca threw his head back and laughed so loudly the sound bounced off the walls and came back at him like an echo in a canyon. ‘You’re joking, right? Me? Plan a wedding? I know nothing about wedding planning. Parties? Yes. Weddings? Zilch. Can’t even remember the last time I went to one.’
‘Then this will be a perfect opportunity to learn.’ Christos clicked his pen on and off again as he eyeballed him. On. Off. The annoying sound was in perfect time with that muscle in his jaw. On. Off. ‘You’re reputedly an expert at knowing what women want. Here’s your chance to finally put that expertise to good use.’
Lucca decided to play along. How hard could it be? With the wedding this close, the bulk of the planning would have already been done. He would leave the last-minute work to the people who knew how to do this sort of stuff while he had a bit of time out on one of the beaches on Preitalle.
He was getting a bit tired of the London scene in any case. It used to be so much fun, courting scandal, poking fun at the establishment, doing the most outrageous things he could think of just for the heck of it. Exploiting every situation to his advantage. But there was only so much partying and nightclubbing and sleeping around any man could do. It was exhausting.
Even—dared he say it—boring?
Besides, he wanted more time to concentrate on his art. Not just the ones he was collecting but his own etchings. His passion for drawing had been present from the moment he had been old enough to hold a pencil in his hand. Drawing was his way of retreating into a private world where he could be quiet and centred. It had been his way of anchoring himself during his chaotic childhood. The eye of the family storm could bluster and blow all around him but he could always escape to his inner world of creative peace. He had spent hours sitting cross-legged beneath Graham Laurent’s painting of his mother, desperately trying to capture the features that were fast fading from his memory, yet somehow resolutely captured for all time in the portrait before him. He enjoyed the process of creating those first scratches of a pencil on a tiny canvas to the end result of having a framed miniature painting with his signature in the right-hand corner.
Spending the month of June in the Mediterranean would be just the ticket to indulge that passion instead of his more base ones. It would be easy. He would jump through the hoops and have a whoop of a time doing it.
‘So—’ he rocked back in his chair again ‘—what does the little princess think about having an offsider?’
* * *
‘An offsider?’ Lottie looked at her sister, Madeleine, in wounded affront. ‘Why do you think I need someone to help me? Don’t you think I’m up to the task of planning your wedding? Did Mama suggest it? Papa? One of the palace officials?’
Madeleine held up her hands as if warding off a barrage of enemy fire. ‘Whoa, there! No need to shoot the messenger. It’s part of the deal with conducting the reception at the Chatsfield Hotel. It’s come from the top level of management but I’ve given it my full approval. The CEO is sending a representative of the Chatsfield family to work alongside you in the interest of public relations.’
‘But I’ve already done all the planning.’ Lottie rapped her knuckles on the encyclopedia-thick folder she had brought with her. ‘Every minute detail is set out in there. The last thing I need right now is someone coming in to change everything at the last minute.’
Madeleine lounged back in her seat and elegantly crossed one leg over the other as she inspected her newly painted toenails. ‘I think it will be good for you to have someone to share the workload with.’ She looked up wit
h an I-know-better-than-you look that always grated on Lottie’s nerves like a rasp on a raw wound. ‘Someone young and hip and a little more in touch with the party scene.’
Lottie narrowed her gaze as the back of her neck began to prickle. ‘Who are they sending?’
‘One of the twin brothers.’
She knew her sister thought her a little out of touch with the modern world but did she have to make it so obvious by recruiting someone who did nothing but party? The Chatsfield twins, Lucca and Orsino, were notorious bad boys who were in and out of the press almost weekly with their wild exploits.
Hells bells...please let it not be... ‘Which one?’
‘Lucca.’
Lottie blinked. Twice. Three times. ‘Did you say...?’
Madeleine nodded. ‘Yup.’
Lottie gulped. ‘The one whose photograph has been splashed all over the internet? The one in that hotel room wearing nothing but a studded leather—whatever it’s called?’
‘Codpiece.’
She clapped a hand over her forehead. ‘Oh, dear God.’
‘I’m sure he’ll behave himself impeccably while he’s here,’ Madeleine assured her. At least even the scandalous Lucca Chatsfield had drawn a line at posting a selfie of that picture on Twitter, Lottie thought.
‘Word has it his allowance from the Chatsfield Family Trust will be cut off if he doesn’t.’
Lottie dropped her hand and scowled at her sister. ‘So I’m to be some sort of behaviour modification coach or something? Who on earth thought of this ridiculous scheme? Are you sure it’s not a joke? Tell me it’s a joke.’
‘It’s not a joke,’ Madeleine said. ‘In fact, I think it’s going to be good for us in the long run. You know how everyone is always saying how backward and irrelevant we royals in Preitalle are. We don’t have quite the same standing as other European royals. But if we show how embracing we are of modernity it could make our future in this region so much more secure. Lucca Chatsfield has been at every high-profile party in England, Europe and America. He moves in circles most people can only dream about. Rock stars, celebrities, actors and film directors—you name it. Having him involved in the organising of my reception will heighten my popularity—I’m absolutely sure of it.’