He looked at her as though she was the most perfect specimen on earth. And even as she wondered why she couldn’t find the words, she knew.
She didn’t want him to stop.
She didn’t want him to see her flaws.
And when he learned the truth, he would. It would change things. Would he even want to be with her once he knew who she was and why she’d lied?
She was breaking his cardinal rule and it was breaking her heart.
She fell asleep with the secret in her heart and Rio’s arm around her. She fell asleep with no answers and very little hope.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WHY DO WE not spend some time on Arketà next?’ he murmured, flipping the pages of a newspaper, his eyes resting on hers.
Tilly’s pulse trembled like a guitar string being plucked. ‘Your island?’
‘My other island,’ he said with a teasing smile.
‘I told you—I have to get back,’ she said, dropping her eyes to the table to shield her uncertainty from him.
‘So? Next weekend, then.’
She shook her head, consternation drawing her brows together. ‘I have something on,’ she mumbled.
‘What is it?’
‘Just a thing.’
His expression was pleasant, but she could see the ice-like determination in his eyes. He was assessing her, as though she were a problem he needed to solve.
‘Training for a mission to Mars?’ he said with mock seriousness. ‘Adopting a guide dog? Running in the marathon?’
Her smile was cursory. ‘Just a thing. It’s not a big deal.’
‘So cancel it.’ He shrugged, his eyes still hard and unyielding. ‘I will have my plane collect you.’
‘Your plane?’ she said, and the chasm between them seemed to grow. ‘You’ll have your plane come and get me and take me to your island? Your other island?’
He was as rich as Croesus. And she was not. She was nothing like he thought. In the normal course of events they would never have crossed paths, and they’d never have become lovers. He was sleeping with Cressida, not Matilda.
Sharp spikes of feeling stabbed at her heart.
Cressida was the kind of woman he made a habit of dating. Cressida with her expensive jewellery and haute couture and luxury handbags and Bugatti Veyron and Cartier account.
Cressida with her VIP entry to any party around the world, with her private jet to match his, her penchant for rich, gorgeous men.
‘Except for Marina, have you ever been in a serious relationship?’ she asked jerkily, her eyes not meeting his.
He put the newspaper down on the table, his expression impatient. ‘I have dated. Why do you ask?’
‘I just...’ She shook her head. ‘Am I your type?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know if I have such a thing as a “type”,’ he said finally.
‘But, I mean, you usually date women like me, right? Women who have trust funds and move in the same circles as you?’
‘As us,’ he said, with no idea of how the slight correction hurt. ‘And, yes. Naturalmente.’
‘Why naturalmente?’
He expelled a breath. ‘What is this about, Cressida?’
‘I’m just trying to understand you better,’ she hedged quietly.
‘I have never had a serious relationship,’ he said through compressed lips. ‘I have dated many women...’
‘And by that you mean slept with?’
He dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘I date, yes, but primarily these relationships are about sex. For me and for them. I do not lie about my intentions, if this is what worries you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head, her throat thick and scratchy. She knew quite definitively where he came down on the whole honesty issue. ‘Have you ever dated—slept with—someone who didn’t have millions of pounds?’
He laughed, then, apparently finding the question ridiculous. ‘I do not ask to inspect their bank statements at the door to my bedroom.’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘I just mean someone normal.’
‘I know what you mean, yet I do not understand why you’re asking me this now.’
She forced a smile to her face. ‘I’m just trying to understand you, that’s all.’
He picked up the paper again, flicking a page abruptly. ‘I do not find it easy to trust. Marina taught me well,’ he said finally. ‘I do not want to sleep with women who might have ulterior motives.’
She sucked in an indignant breath, shocked to imagine him ever thinking that of her. ‘Just the ones you’re using for sex?’ she snapped back.
His confusion was obvious. ‘Why are you so angry about this? I have casual sex with women, and yes, generally they’re moneyed. So what? What does it matter?’
‘It matters,’ she said finally.
‘Fine.’ He closed the paper again. ‘If you want to discuss our sex lives, let’s come back to yours. You exercise no judgement in the men you take to your bed. Is that any better than my approach?’
Fury whipped through her. She scraped her chair back and glared at him—but, damn it, the tears that had been stinging her eyes for days fell from her lashes.
He narrowed his gaze, his expression shifting.
He swore darkly in his own language, staring at Tilly as she battled tears, and felt like a first-class moron.
She had been looking for reassurance that she was special, and instead he’d made her feel like the last in a long line of wealthy lovers. And then he’d basically called her a tart into the mix.
‘How dare you?’
She was so beautiful, even when tears were staining her cheeks, sending little wobbles of moisture down her face. She dashed them away, and her chest heaved with the effort of breathing.
‘You are not like the women I’ve been with. I have told you this. Money, background—none of this matters to me with you. It is you I have fallen in love with, Cressida. You. Cressida Wyndham. The last woman on earth I would have thought I had anything in common with, and you have dug your way into my heart.’
She sobbed again, her tears falling faster now.
He couldn’t understand it. ‘Please, do not cry,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t want to argue.’
She sniffed, but nodded.
The future she had held such hopes for was looking almost impossible to grab.
He turned his attention back to the paper and pretended to read. Something was worrying her. Something he didn’t understand and certainly couldn’t help her with unless she chose to speak to him. She was on edge—like a cat on hot tin.
He turned the page again—and froze as his beautiful lover appeared before him, her head bent, dark sunglasses covering her eyes, and her hand held by a man with scruffy blond hair and a ring through his nose.
‘Would you care to tell me how you can be in two places at once?’ he heard himself ask, the question calm despite the volcanic lava hammering him from the inside out.
Across the table, Tilly froze too. Her eyes met his with a tangle of confusion and then slowly dropped to the newspaper.
Even upside down she could read the headline.
HEIRESS WEDS LOVER!
SECRET CEREMONY!
DETAILS HERE!
Her stomach swooped and she gripped the table for strength.
Her eyes were enormous in her face as he lifted the page and she skimmed the first bold paragraph.
Shock and a thousand questions slammed into her. The press were always printing outrageous stories about the somewhat outlandish heiress. Surely this was just another? It couldn’t be true.
Her eyes dropped to Cressida’s hand; an enormous diamond ring glinted from her finger.
She’d married him? Ewan Rieu-Bailee, the man she’d been tangled with earlier in the summer?
Rumours weren’t fact, and yet the picture was pretty damning.
As was the look Rio had for Tilly.
She darted a tongue out, moistening her lips. ‘That’s not me.’
�
�Obviously,’ he said sarcastically, still staring at her.
It was a look that spoke volumes. It said everything she had been shouting at herself. Confusion, disapproval, anger, mistrust.
‘She married him...’
Tilly thought back to their conversation. ‘I have a wedding to go to. And Daddy would never approve.’
Her own wedding?
Her heart turned over as she thought of Art Wyndham and how furious he’d be. And Tilly had unwittingly played a part in the whole thing! She would never knowingly hurt her boss—she adored him. And yet she’d been a crucial instrument in allowing Cressida to skive off and get married, with the whole world none the wiser.
‘Oh, God,’ she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut, no longer able to meet the full force of his interrogating glare. ‘I had no idea.’
‘You are not Cressida Wyndham.’
Though he hadn’t spoken them particularly loudly, the words reverberated through the small cabin with the force of furious bullets.
‘Who are you?’
‘I...’ She stared at the picture and the world collapsed around her.
‘Who are you?’ Now he shouted, his temper impossible to contain. He scraped his chair back so that he was standing, staring at her as if she’d sprouted four heads.
Tilly was shaking, her whole body quivering. She propped herself on the table, needing strength and support.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I’m... I’m the same person you fell in love with. My name is different, that’s all.’
‘You have been lying to me. You have been in my bed, in my arms, and I know nothing about you.’
‘You know everything about me,’ she whispered, reaching out and curling her fingers around his forearm. ‘I’m not Cressida, but I’m still me.’
‘And who is that?’ he demanded, his eyes narrowed, his expression grim.
‘I’m...’
Nausea was a wave and she was surfing it unrelentingly, occasionally dipping beneath the surface to the point when she thought she might vomit.
‘My name is Tilly. Matilda. I work for Art Wyndham.’
His eyes, so grey when he was in a state of passion, almost blue when he laughed, were dark now, like a bleak, storm-ravaged night.
‘Did Art set this up? What possible purpose could he have for sending you here?’
‘No,’ she whispered, her pulse thready as she denied the older man’s involvement in this.
But Rio was jumping two steps ahead. ‘Was he hoping I’d drop the price if you asked it of me? That the inducement of you in my bed would be some kind of a bargaining chip?’
‘No—no!’ She shook her head violently, repulsed by even the suggestion. ‘He doesn’t know. It’s... Cressida asked me...we’re so alike, you see.’
He stared down at the picture. The woman had long red hair like Cressida—no, like Matilda. Pale skin, and, yes, a wide mouth. But there were differences too. A thousand of them. Though perhaps not to the untrained eye. It was simply that he was the world expert in all things Cressida—no, Matilda.
‘You lied to me.’
She nodded. That was undeniable, something she would always regret. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t make him understand her reasoning.
‘I... I didn’t even know you when I agreed to do this.’
His lips twisted in a cruel smile. ‘You know me now, though, and still you have been lying to me. Why?’
She opened her mouth and closed it again, her eyes shifting to the paper. She stared at Cressida, and the sense of having been betrayed filled the room. Not just for Rio, but for Tilly, too.
Cressida had used her.
Tilly had provided cover for Cressida to do something Tilly would never knowingly have been involved in. Her marriage to this man was a disaster. He’d already cheated on Cressida publicly, joked about getting her addicted to drugs... He was bad news. And now he was Mr Cressida Wyndham.
‘Well, Matilda?’ asked Rio, and the sound of her name on his lips did something odd to her heart.
It squeezed as though a band was being tightened around it. She had dreamed of him saying her name! But not like this. Not with derisive anger and disgust.
She no longer felt bound by secrecy. Cressida’s news was in the papers; there was nothing left to protect.
Except herself.
The idea that she’d taken money so that Cressida could scamper off and marry a man no one in their right mind would approve of made Tilly feel dirty and mercenary. Rio was already looking at her as though she were filth on his shoe; how would he react if he knew she’d been paid? That this was a business deal for her, first and foremost—a chance to profit from a genetic twist of fate that had made her and Cressida twins that weren’t related?
After so many lies, surely honesty had to be the way forward. She needed to trust him enough to tell him the truth. He’d said he loved her. That meant that he loved all of her. What was in a name?
‘Who I am doesn’t change what we are.’ She moved to him with urgency and pressed her hands to his broad, strong chest. ‘I lied about my name.’ Her words were hoarse with urgency. ‘Nothing else. Nothing else.’
Her fingers splayed wide and then his mouth was crushing down on hers with ferocious intensity. His hands pushed at her shoulders, tangling in her hair, and her heart skidded in her chest with a kind of relief she’d never imagined.
It was going to be okay.
This made sense.
She kissed him back and her fingers sought flesh, pulling at his shirt and lifting it so she could run her fingers over his ridged abdomen.
His hands dragged over her sides and she ground her hips against him, needing him, needing to remind him of what they shared. It was a primal imperative, a certainty that she wouldn’t allow him to forget.
Her mouth clashed with his in a fierce meshing of teeth, tongues and lips, angry and desperate. His mouth was demanding and she met his demands, explaining in that kiss that she was still the woman he loved.
He swore into her mouth—a guttural expression of his anger and darkness as he lifted her, hooked her legs around his hips and pushed her back against the wall. His weight held her captive.
She groaned and tasted salt. Sweat? No, tears. Her tears.
‘I love you,’ she promised him through her kisses and her tears, and he pulled away, his hands lifting her from the wall and carrying her through the cabin to his bedroom. The bedroom she’d woken in that morning, feeling that all was right in the world.
His expression was a hard mask of disbelief. He laid her down on the bed—not gently, but not roughly either, just matter-of-factly. Tilly had the sense that he was as focussed on her as he would be a competitor in the boardroom. There was determination in the steel glint of his eyes as he brought his mouth back to hers, as though he was weighing her strengths and weaknesses and developing a plan.
But, for Tilly, this was what she needed. He was angry, and she understood that, but still he wanted her—because he knew, deep down, that there was rightness in what they were. Was he angry at himself for wanting her even now?
He pushed out of his shorts and relief speared through her.
It would be okay. It couldn’t not be.
His body was heavy on hers and his tongue insistent as it lashed hers. Her body responded in ways she couldn’t control. Fires were spinning through her and she had no control to stop what was happening; she had no control over anything. She was at his whim and at his mercy, his for the taking for ever and ever. Did he realise that she was his? Utterly and always?
‘I love you,’ she said again, and the words were tumbling out of her. She needed him to understand. ‘I didn’t come here to lie to you. I didn’t even know you’d be here.’
His expression showed impatience. Was he listening? Did he hear her? His fingers pulled at her panties and she stared up at him, then reached for his face, cupping his cheeks, holding him still.
‘Look at me,’ she said, with a vo
ice that trembled and a heart that was hammering wildly. ‘Look at me and tell me you don’t know me,’ she implored, her eyes scanning his face, willing him to remember what they were.
His grunt was impossible to interpret, but the pressing of his arousal at her core was everything she needed. She sobbed with dark desire—when they made love she would feel better. He would feel better. This just made sense.
‘You want me?’ he asked through gritted teeth, his hands trapping her wrists and pinning them out to her sides.
Tilly’s face was covered in tears, her cheeks pink, her hair in disarray. There were scratches on her from his stubble; she was marked. She was his. But he needed her to say it. He needed her to surrender completely to him. Even then, would it be enough? To overlook her betrayal and manipulations?
‘Yes,’ she moaned, writhing, hot beneath him.
His smile held no humour; it was a twist of his lips. If Tilly had seen it she would have described it as cruel. But her eyes were shut. She was waiting for him to give her everything she needed, to remember that he loved her.
He thrust inside her and she cried out as relief exploded like fireworks in her blood.
‘Yes!’ she shouted again.
‘Do you love me?’ he demanded, pulling out.
His desertion was a physical ache low in her abdomen. She lifted her hips, trying to find him, to welcome him back but a muscle jerked in his cheek.
‘You said you love me.’
‘I do,’ she groaned, her eyes clashing with his, begging him, silently communicating the truth of her heart.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe you.’
And he thrust into her again.
Her grief and shock were quickly pushed sideways by the desire that was rocking her. But they were there still, in the back of her mind, like little bombs of reality she couldn’t detonate just yet.
She didn’t realise that she was saying it over and over again. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you...’ like an incantation that would wrap him up in the magic they’d created.
He swore in his own language and his mouth dropped to hers. He kissed the words angrily into her being, silencing her finally, leaving only the sound of their heavy breathing and the cracking whip of desire in the room.
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