‘Trust?’ She made a hard sound of scorn. ‘Don’t talk to me about trust,’ she derided. ‘I will never trust another human being again.’
No answer to that. Annie waited, seething in silence, for him to pile the blame back on her, as he had so competently done with everything else, but nothing came. He just tightened his mouth and increased their speed, and let the animosity that she was determinedly generating try its best to choke the very air around them.
They landed beside a row of low palm trees that formed a line of shelter from the fiercest heat of the sun along the inevitable crescent-shaped beach.
Annie waited patiently while César shut down the engine then jumped down to come around and help her alight. As they ran clear of the steadily slowing blades Annie noticed the scattering of pretty, red-roofed bungalows almost hidden from view amongst a rich mixture of tropical shrubs and trees.
A man, tall and tanned and leanly built, met them with a welcoming smile and a warm shake of their hands. He was American, and older than he looked at first glance. It was obvious that he knew César well because after the initial introductions, and—she supposed—the expected congratulations, he fell into warm conversation with César as he led them along a path towards one of the bungalows.
Annie didn’t bother to listen. She had, in fact, effectively switched off—something she had learned to do early on in her career, when time had dragged heavily during long, tedious waits between short, hurried shoots.
The inside of the bungalow revealed a surprisingly large sitting room furnished in prettily covered rattan. A pair of plate-glass sliding doors stood open on a view that drew her attention, and she walked over to gaze out at it while the two men finished their conversation.
Then a door closed quietly and there was silence behind her—the kind of silence that began to shred her nerve-ends as she tried to pick out just where César was without her having to turn to find out.
She felt a real reluctance to look him fully in the face. She hadn’t done so, she realised—not voluntarily, anyway—since the night they’d shared a bed.
The chink of ice on glass told her that he was over by the little bar she had spied as she’d come in. And her nerves shredded a bit more when he came to stand directly behind her, a bronzed forearm lightly covered with silky, black hair appearing in her vision. He was holding a tall glass filled with something clear and refreshing, tiny bubbles swirling up from the chunks of ice settled at its base.
‘Nothing too alcoholic,’ he said. ‘Mostly tonic, a splash of lime and the smallest tot of gin.’
‘I don’t drink spirits,’ she informed him coolly, refusing to accept the glass.
‘I have noticed,’ he drawled, refusing to withdraw it. ‘Another lesson taught by Alvarez?’ he asked. ‘I believe you were very drunk when you were seen being led into the bedroom that night.’
‘Your bedroom,’ she punctuated tightly.
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry I ever said that but yes, it was mine.’
She swallowed on whatever was thickening her throat. His bedroom—his apartment. His bedroom—his island. It was as if he had to be connected with all the real traumas in her life.
‘I sold the apartment, Angelica,’ he inserted quietly. ‘I never stepped foot in it again after that night. I could not cope with the vision of the woman I wanted for myself lying in the arms of another man. Any man,’ he extended roughly. ‘The fact that it happened to be Alvarez only helped to generate my contempt of him—not my contempt of you.’
‘You can say that now, with hindsight.’ She smiled sceptically.
‘It is the truth,’ he stated. ‘You were drunk. Everyone who saw you allowed you that much at least. So did I.’
Yes, she had been drunk. Giddy, hiding all her hurts from the world behind a screen of careless gaiety. ‘I suppose you are now making the assumption that, being drunk, I probably encouraged him to do what he did.’ She didn’t want it to, but her voice sounded husky with hurt.
He sighed again, reaching around her with his other hand so that his body had to make a glancing contact with her own as he firmly took hold of her hand and lifted it, pushing the glass into her palm.
‘I am learning,’ he murmured while she stood breathlessly cocooned in the circle of his arms, ‘to make no assumptions about you, Angelica. And no,’ he added, ‘I do not believe you encouraged him—because you tell me it was not so. And, although you may not have noticed, I have believed every word you’ve ever said to me without needing corroboration. The truth, you see, tends to glow like a challenge in your beautiful, defiant eyes.
‘So take the glass,’ he urged. ‘Drink to quench your thirst, and maybe to steady your nerves a little for what is to come.’
Her fingers tightened around the glass.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured, as though she had just conceded some obscure but precious point, while Annie had to fight a new battle with the tears that wanted to fall from her eyes.
Then he was stepping back and she found that she could breathe again, but the glass chattered against her teeth as she lifted it to her quivering mouth.
‘Now.’ With distance between them, he sounded more like his normal, arrogant self. ‘Over to your left there is an en suite bedroom set aside for your exclusive use. I have a matching one to your right. You have just under an hour, Angelica, to turn yourself into the beautiful bride I expect to see when I meet you back here.’ With that he turned and walked away.
* * *
A beautiful bride.
Annie stared at herself in the full-length mirror and wanted to throw something at it to smash to smithereens the person she saw looking back at her.
Professional training gave her the expected bridal look, the equipment to do it having been provided by a man hell-bent, it seemed to her, on causing her everlasting pain.
The gown she’d found waiting for her was white, frothy, lacy, unashamedly romantic, with flamboyant off-the-shoulder sleeves edged with a deep ruffle of the finest hand-stitched lace—the same lace that floated around the low scooped neck of the fitted bodice and was sewn into the hem of its full, ballerina-length skirt.
The whole confection was about as far away from what anyone would expect Annie Lacey to wear for her wedding as a gown could get. Shy, frivolous, sweet—virginal.
And she felt a bigger fraud than ever.
A light tap at her door had her turning to face it just as César let himself into the room. Her breath caught on a silent gasp, her blue eyes darkening in surprise at how he looked.
He was dressed almost entirely in white himself. White trousers of the finest, finest cotton. White cotton over-shirt with a mandarin collar fastened from tanned throat to waist by what looked like sapphire studs—the genuine article, she assumed, knowing who he was. No tie—the shirt did not warrant a tie. It was as he turned slightly to close the door behind him that she saw the white silk ribbon holding his jet-black hair in place.
‘The accepted dress of a Venezuelan,’ he answered her curious look. ‘It is called a Liqui-Liqui.’
Strange man, she found herself thinking achingly. An unconventional man. A man with such conflicting sides to his character that she found it impossible to work him out. Sometimes proud, coldly conventional, sometimes so avant-garde that he shocked her—like now.
My God, she thought hectically. He’s really a complete stranger to me. And I’m about to marry him!
A shudder ran through her—of horror or fear or excitement she wasn’t sure, because he had her so confused that she really could not be sure of anything any more.
He had come to a standstill one long stride into the room, his green gaze narrowed on her as it travelled slowly from the dainty white satin shoes on her feet to the top of her golden head. Annie waited in mute defiance for him to make some remark about the distinct lack of decoration on her head.
Sheer habit had made her dress her hair to suit the garment she was wearing; the long hair had been caught up in a sil
ky twist at her crown, then she’d teased fine silken strands to fall around her face so that they accentuated the delicate line of her long, slender neck, but she’d drawn the line at adding the lace veil with its circlet of blue rosebuds—a crowning hypocrisy she refused to comply with.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said gruffly.
She didn’t bother to answer. She was Annie Lacey, after all—professional model. She knew how good she looked.
So a short silence followed, one which oddly caught at the tiny muscles in her stomach and tied them into knots. This should not be happening, she told herself wretchedly. Neither of us wants it. None of it is real.
‘Here.’ He broke the silence, walking towards her with a flat velvet box in his hand.
Annie instantly recognised it for what it was, and snapped her hands behind her back. ‘No, I won’t wear whatever it is,’ she refused.
‘Why not?’ A sleek black brow rose in question.
She gave a stubborn shake of her head. ‘I don’t need your jewels, Mr Adamas,’ she used the name bitingly. ‘Only your real name for appearance’s sake.’
‘Still fighting me, Annie?’ He smiled. But it wasn’t the teasing note in his voice that made her quiver, it was the use of her pet name falling for the first time from his beautifully sculptured lips that did it.
She struggled for breath. ‘I think I’ve been remarkably compliant, if you must know,’ she told him. ‘But I draw the line at looking as if you bought me with—those.’ Her eyes flicked a contemptuous glance at the unopened box. ‘Keep them for your next wife,’ she suggested tartly. ‘Since this one is already praying for deliverance before the rest of this month is out.’
He should have got angry. She’d certainly intended provoking him into it. But he didn’t; his green gaze studied her stiff face for a moment before he said quite gently, ‘Five million dollars is a lot to pay for a wife, Angelica.’ And as her mouth dropped open in stunned disbelief he tossed the velvet case onto the bed behind her. ‘But I am willing to pay it for just one kiss from your sweet lips.’
She was still too busy struggling with the cost of whatever was in the box to realise his intentions. So when his mouth closed gently over her own she found herself returning the kiss without really being aware that she was doing it.
‘You just earned your prize,’ he murmured gruffly as he lifted his head. Then he added tauntingly, ‘Or were you too busy counting dollar signs to notice?’
She blinked up at him, taking a moment or two to realise just what he was getting at. Then her blue eyes flared on a surge of anger and she spun around, lurching to grab at the velvet case then twisting to thrust it right back at the arrogant swine.
But he was already over by the door. ‘Five minutes,’ he warned. ‘Wear them or not. I really do not care. They now belong to you.’
‘But I don’t want them!’ she shouted at his disappearing back.
‘And neither, querida, do I.’
She wore them in the end. Out of sheer cussedness or because she had the oddest feeling that she’d managed to offend him over the dratted things, she wasn’t sure. But it was certainly with a grudging defiance that she eventually opened the box and found herself staring at the most beautiful necklace she had ever seen in her life.
Sapphires—exquisite dark blue sapphire hearts circled by tiny diamonds and linked together by the finest white gold, each setting a perfect match to the next—and the next and the next! There were over a dozen of them in all, fashioned to balance the larger central stone that quite literally took her breath away.
But that wasn’t all. Nestled in the sensual curve of each sapphire heart sat a diamond—heart-shaped again, and seeming to flash a message at her that she refused to read. It had to be her imagination, she told herself breathlessly, because the white gold claw grips which held the two jewels together took on the shape of fingers to her mesmerised eyes, as though each pair of hearts rested in the palm of a delicate hand.
She couldn’t wear these! She couldn’t!
Yet, when a warning knock sounded at her door, she found herself tremulously fixing the necklace round her throat before she hurried from the room.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured when she eventually joined him, and once again she gained the impression that her compliance had actually managed to move him.
Feeling tense and nervous, she reacted with bad grace. ‘Well,’ she snapped, ‘where is this charade supposed to take place?’
A small nerve twitched in the corner of his straight mouth. ‘Here,’ he answered quietly. ‘Right here.’ And indicated with an outstretched hand the open glass doors.
‘Outside?’ she questioned in surprise.
‘It is traditional.’ He nodded gravely.
A frisson of something frighteningly close to yearning shivered through her. No. She swallowed tensely. She couldn’t go through with it. Not like this. Not with all the—
‘Come, Angelica.’ His hand closed gently around her slender waist.
‘N-no,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t do this. It isn’t right. I feel a fraud. I…’
César turned her fully to face him, a hand coming up to cup her chin gently. ‘Don’t lose courage now,’ he entreated softly. ‘Everything will be fine, you’ll see. Trust me.’
Trust him. He kept on telling her to trust him, but how could she when he had done nothing but trick and deceive her from the first moment they’d met?
‘Please,’ he murmured deeply, as if he could read her thoughts as his own. ‘Please?’
His eyes held onto hers, dark green and probing, seeming to reach right inside her to some tiny, frightened point of need and soothe it gently. Her body quivered on a shaky little sigh, her mind going fluffy as it began to lose its grasp on reason.
A flash bulb popped.
‘Are we ready?’ a soft voice intruded.
Annie turned her head, seeing what her dazed mind interpreted as an angel standing in the open doorway to the room—a small, dark-skinned angel with snowy white hair, white flowing robes and a beautiful smile.
She blinked in an effort to clear her head, glanced hazily back at César, who had not moved his gaze from her face.
She felt trapped suddenly, lost, drowning in the compelling expression in his eyes. So much so that she didn’t see the second flash bulb pop, did not even notice the photographer who was capturing in full Technicolour Annie Lacey decked out in white lace and sapphires, gazing into the eyes of the man she was about to marry.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS over. And the moment they found themselves alone again Annie seemed to lose complete grip on reality.
Strain, she told herself in some vague corner of her mind. You’ve cracked beneath the strain, and dropped weakly down into a nearby chair.
César had disappeared into his own room. He had murmured a reason for going at her but she hadn’t absorbed the words. Her mind seemed to have completely shut down. Nothing going in—nothing much coming out. It was a strange, lost, floaty feeling that kind of buffeted her gently from the inside, holding her slack-limbed and still.
Coming back from his bedroom, César stopped dead, his gaze homing in on her frail white figure, looking more lost and vulnerable than he had seen her to date. A moment’s anguish passed across his face, forcing his hands into two tense fists before he grimly relaxed them; then he was moving forwards to go and squat down beside her.
Carefully he reached for her hands. They were cold, and gently he began chafing them between his own. ‘Surely it was not quite this bad an ordeal?’ he mocked, infusing a teasing lightness into his tone.
She turned her head to look at him, her eyes like two huge sapphires in her lovely white face. ‘Why the photographer?’ she asked.
His shrug was careless. ‘He came with the package,’ he said. ‘Why, did he bother you?’
‘No.’ Nothing bothered her. Not any more. She looked away again, her eyes drifting sightlessly back to the open windows where a soft, warm breeze disturbe
d the curtains pulled back by thickly plaited ties.
A knock came at the door; César laid her hands back on her lap before standing up and moving away. Annie looked down at them, stretching out the fingers where two new rings glinted in the light—one a hand-crafted, intricately woven band of the richest, purest gold, the other a beautiful sapphire and diamond ring designed to match the necklace at her throat. When César had slipped it on her finger directly after he had slid the gold band there she’d been too surprised to protest.
Now she just stared at it and wanted to weep.
A movement in front of her brought her unblinking gaze upwards. César was standing over her, a cup of something steaming hot in his hands. Silently he handed it to her. Annie caught the scent of a good old-fashioned cup of tea, and sipped gratefully at it until she felt life begin to return to her body at last.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured finally. ‘That was thoughtful of you.’ Then, because he was just standing there watching her with a concerned frown marring his attractive face, she added wryly, ‘I’m sorry. I seemed to lose contact with myself for a few minutes there.’
‘But you feel better now?’
‘Yes.’ She flexed one of her hands and watched the colour seep back into the bloodless skin. ‘Odd—to have such a reaction to something that is, after all, only a sham.’
He didn’t answer, something vaguely disturbing in his still, quiet stance. Then, before she could try to work out what was troubling him, he made a move that was rather like a gesture of contempt.
‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘The whole thing was an absolute farce. With hindsight I cannot think of a more flippant way to make such solemn vows.’ He sounded harsh and bitter. Annie glanced at him in surprise, but he was already turning away. ‘Take your time. Enjoy your tea,’ he invited as he strode tightly towards his own room. ‘Then get changed and we will get out of here. The quicker we can be alone, the quicker we can put all of this from our minds!’
The Morning After Page 11