by Penny Jordan
Lily didn’t know whether to feel relieved or embarrassed when she realised that the Duchess had put their disappearance down to a desire to be alone with one another. Of course it was true that the presence of Marco’s arm around her was hardly likely to convince the Duchess that she had got things wrong, but somehow Lily found it foolishly impossible to move away from his pseudo-lover-like hold.
The rest of the evening passed in something of a tired blur for Lily after the emotional trauma of the day. Of course she managed to stop dwelling on her own feelings when the Duchess showed her and Marco over the long gallery housing the villa’s art collection, her professionalism cutting in whilst she made notes and took photographs.
‘No wonder you’re so professional—you must have been handling these things practically from your cradle,’ Marco commented at one point, picking up her camera.
‘Practically,’ Lily agreed. ‘Not that I ever had much of an interest in fashion. It was always art that fascinated me.’
‘Not modern art, though?’
‘The past feels more comfortable, more established. I feel safer there,’ Lily told him, only realising when she saw the way he was looking at her just what she might have betrayed.
‘Safer?’
‘With art of the past there’s no need for me to trust my own judgement,’ she defended herself.
‘Safety and your desire for it seems to be a recurring theme in your life.’
Lily could feel her heart hammering heavily into her ribs.
‘The price of having parents who quarrelled a lot and being over-sensitive to that quarrelling, I expect.’
She was glad that the Duchess was there, to keep the conversation from getting too personal, glad too of the other guests who’d been invited to join them for dinner, so that conversation around the dinner table was kept general.
Inevitably, though, the evening came to an end, and she smiled a goodnight at the Duchess before walking up the stairs and then along the corridor with Marco to the guest suite.
‘You can use the bathroom first if you wish,’ she said, as soon as they were inside the sitting room. ‘I’ve got some notes I want to type up, so I’ll be working for a while.’
Marco nodded his head.
He wasn’t anywhere near as immune to her as he should be—as he wanted to be, as he must be. Just because she had shown sympathy toward him over Olivia that did not mean … It didn’t mean what? That she wanted him? He could make her want him. They both had a shared history of pain, and a shared need to have that pain assuaged. He could assuage it. He could hold her and take her and show her that there was far more pleasure to be found in his arms than in the arms of a man she feared as well as desired.
What was he thinking? All the old habits and teaching rose up inside him, warning him against allowing her to get under his guard. They might have some common ground, but that did not mean that he could trust her.
‘I’ll say goodnight, then,’ he told her curtly, opening the communicating door between the two rooms.
‘Yes. Yes. Goodnight,’ Lily returned.
It was true that she had work to do, Lily reminded herself, smothering a yawn after the door had closed, leaving her alone in the sitting room to their suite. She sat down at the small pretty desk and opened her laptop, connecting her camera to it so that she could download the photographs she had taken.
Normally within seconds of starting on a task like this she would have been so absorbed in her work that she’d have been oblivious to anything and everything else, but tonight for some reason, even though she was focusing on the photographs she had taken, her real attention was on the mental images stored inside her head—images of Marco from earlier in the evening. Marco smiling at her as the Duchess introduced them as a couple. Marco steadying her arm when shock had jolted through her, Marco telling her about the love he had lost.
Lily rubbed her eyes and got up, walking up and down and trying to clear her head. Her eyes felt gritty and dry. Her head was beginning to ache. She was tired, but she dared not risk going through the bedroom to the bathroom to get ready for bed until she was sure that Marco was asleep. Perhaps she could just lie down on the sofa for a few minutes …
Marco looked at his watch. Was Lily still working? It was over an hour since he’d come to bed, and she’d looked tired when they’d come upstairs. It was concern for the efficient execution of the tour that was getting him out of bed now, not his concern for Lily herself, he assured himself as he pulled on a bathrobe and opened the communicating door.
Lily’s laptop was still open on the desk, quietly humming, but Lily herself had fallen asleep on the sofa, fully dressed.
Why hadn’t she made herself properly comfortable? He told himself that what her obvious discomfort was arousing in him was merely irritation. Why should he be concerned for her, after all? He switched off the laptop, intending to walk away and leave her where she was, but something beyond his control made him go back to look down at her a second time. She couldn’t possibly sleep properly where she was. At the very least she’d probably wake up with a stiff neck, and that was bound to effect her ability to work—which was why she was here. Sofas and chairs were not designed to be slept on, especially elegant antique pieces—as he knew to his cost.
Conversely, the bed in the bedroom was vast, with plenty of room for two people to sleep in it without having to go anywhere near one another. It seemed un-gentlemanly to leave her where she was, as though doing so broke his own expectation of courtesy for someone who was, after all, in his care.
He reached down to wake her up, and then stopped. She would only argue with him and insist on staying where she was, insist that he had the right to the bed. It would be far more expedient to simply pick her up and carry her to the bed than to get involved in an argument in which they’d both fight to be the one to do the right thing.
When he lifted her in his arms she made a small sound that had him catching his breath thinking she was going to wake up, but she merely turned into his body. The sensation of her warmth lying against him sent his heart hammering into his ribs. What was the matter with him? He wasn’t so unable to control his needs that he was now afraid of even this kind of intimacy with her, was he?
He felt Lily snuggle deeper into his hold, exhaling a small sigh of pleasure as she did so. Pulling back the covers, Marco placed her down on one side of the bed, and then removed his robe so that he could get into the opposite side of the bed and switch off the bedside lamp. He saw Lily frown in her sleep and move, seeking the warmth that she’d lost. Marco lay on his own side of the bed, his muscles coiled tightly with tension as he willed Lily not to breach the distance he had put between them.
But no amount of willing Lily to stay where she was on his part had the power to come between Lily herself and the need that sleep and his touch had awakened in her. She moved towards him, sighing softly when she found him, curling up against him with her hand on his arm, her head on his chest. He wanted to push her away, but somehow he couldn’t. Somehow that rebellion inside him was overriding the instinct that told him that allowing such intimacy between them was dangerous.
He had never slept with a woman so intimately—never allowed himself to gather anyone into his arms and simply hold them. He had never wanted to—until now. Such intense intimacy was not something he felt comfortable with. His parents had lived with a great deal of formality. They had always had separate bedrooms. But right now holding Lily so close to him was exactly what he wanted. He drew her closer and felt the tightening of an unfamiliar ache around his heart. Now he knew why he had always rejected this kind of intimacy. He had rejected it because it was dangerous. Because it made you vulnerable to the woman you were holding. Because once you had known it you would never want to be without it—or without her.
Soft morning light filtered in through the room’s curtains, caressing the faces of the two people sleeping together in the centre in the large bed. Lily was held within the protective curve
of Marco’s body, his arm round her. She was oblivious to the intimacy she had sought—and found—during the night hours whilst she had slept.
Marco woke first, his senses enjoying the knowledge that he was holding Lily before he was properly awake and his brain kicked in to tell him what that meant. When it did, though, he still didn’t release her or move away from her. He was trying to work out exactly what it was about holding her that made the intimacy seem not just right but also necessary, he told himself, defending his reluctance to put any distance between them.
She looked so beautiful. She was beautiful—inside and out. She was everything any man could ever want in a woman, and the man who had let her go was a fool to have done so. Marco’s heart slammed into his ribs, and the small involuntary movement he made, as though in denial of his own thoughts and the reality of what they meant, woke Lily from her sleep.
If she kept her eyes closed perhaps she wouldn’t have to wake up, and then she could hold on to her wonderful dream of being held safe in Marco’s arms. Mmm … In her imagination she was there still, and she could feel his heart beating against the hand she had placed on his bare chest. She could feel his heart beating beneath her hand. Lily’s eyes flew open. She was in bed with Marco and he was holding her. How had that happened? Had she somehow sleep-walked into the bedroom and got into bed beside him? She hoped not.
She looked at Marco, who immediately released her and removed himself from the bed, reaching for his robe as he did so, telling her with a dismissive shrug, ‘You didn’t look very comfortable sleeping on the sofa, so I brought you here. I thought there was more than enough room in the bed for both of us.’ His voice was terse, his manner distant. He disappeared into the bathroom before she could say anything.
Thankfully, Lily realised she was still fully dressed. She was uncomfortably aware that she must have been the one to initiate their sleeping intimacy, given the way she had been dreaming about him. Why hadn’t he demanded an explanation of her behaviour? Perhaps because he was so used to sleeping with eager women—women he couldn’t love because he loved a girl who was now lost to him for ever—who longed to be close to him that what she had done had barely registered with him.
Lily’s heart felt very heavy indeed.
They’d had a very busy full day, visiting two more villas in the morning and stopping briefly for a light lunch before continuing on to visit a private villa on one of Lake Como’s small islands. Yet no amount of busyness was enough to push out of her thoughts everything that she’d felt on waking up in Marco’s arms this morning. It was like holding a special golden treasure whose existence was enough to fill her with happiness. Her treasure, though, was fool’s gold—because it meant nothing to Marco. She meant nothing to Marco.
It was now late in the afternoon, and they had stopped in a pretty lakeside town for a cup of coffee at Marco’s suggestion, prior to their return to the villa.
Marco had just gone inside the café to pay their bill, and she was sitting drinking in the relaxing scene around her, when to her horrified disbelief she saw Anton Gillman on the other side of the road. She had assumed and hoped that he had left the area, with the rest of the fashion pack and returned to Milan, but obviously she had been wrong. Lily shrank back in her chair, hoping that he wouldn’t look across the road and see her. For a moment she thought that he wouldn’t, and that she was safe, but then the woman seated at a table close to their own got up, her small lap dog barking shrilly. The sound caught Anton’s attention so that he glanced towards the café. There was nowhere for her to hide, no hope that he wouldn’t see her, and Lily knew that he had when she saw him start to cross the road and come purposefully towards her. It was the worst kind of cruel coincidence.
Lily shuddered to see the admiring looks he was attracting from the woman with the yapping dog. She was quite obviously impressed by his air of authority, his expensive suit and his immaculate grooming. If only she knew the truth about him and his sexual tastes she wouldn’t be so interested in him or so admiring.
Lily wasn’t impressed, though. She was a teenage girl again, sick with fear and loathing because she knew what he wanted from her.
He was smiling at her—that taunting, cruel smile she had never been able to forget.
‘Lily, my lovely.’ His voice caressed her as his knuckles stroked along her jaw, and his gaze registered her immediate terrified recoil from him. ‘Delicious that you’ve remained so … sensitive. I shall enjoy discovering just how sensitive when I finally persuade you to give in to me.’
Inside the café, waiting to pay their bill, Marco saw the tall dark-haired man approaching Lily and recognised him immediately. Her ex-lover. Anger and jealousy surged over him. There were two people ahead of him in the queue to pay, one of them an elderly man who obviously couldn’t see very well, and who was struggling to find the right money. Marco saw the man lean towards Lily, who was out of view. The intensity of the emotion that exploded inside him scorched the truth of his feelings into him. He was jealous. He was jealous of another man’s right to claim Lily’s attention and to claim Lily herself because … Because she meant far more to him than he had previously allowed himself to admit?
The elderly man was still fumbling with his money, and the woman behind him in the queue was tutting in her impatience, but Marco was oblivious to them both. How had it happened? How could it be that Lily had become so important to him? He didn’t know. He only knew that she was—just as he knew that this was the last thing he had ever have wanted to happen. He had built a life that depended on him not becoming emotionally involved with others, on not allowing himself to become emotionally dependent on anyone. How had Lily managed to slip beneath his guard and touch that place within him where he was so dangerously vulnerable? His formidable inner defences were warning him to step back from the danger that now lay ahead of him, to turn round and walk away from it—and from Lily herself.
It was illogical for her to feel so afraid, Lily tried to reassure herself. Anton couldn’t do anything to harm her now. She was an adult, not a teenager, and they were in public. She was in command of her own life. But some fears could not be controlled with mere reason, and this one had lived privately hidden within her for a very long time.
‘Why don’t we take a little walk, you and I?’ Anton suggested. ‘I’m sure your companion won’t mind, Dr Wrightington.’
Lily’s stomach swooped sickeningly. He’d been checking up on her, asking questions about her.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
Too late she recognised it was the wrong thing to say, with its echoes of past refusal.
Where was Marco? Why hadn’t he come back? What if he didn’t come back?
She looked frantically into the café willing Marco to see her and come to her rescue, but she couldn’t see him because of the customers blocking her view. She was alone with Anton. Abandoned by Marco just as she had been abandoned by her father. There was no one to support her, no one to protect her.
Hadn’t it always been that way? Hadn’t she always had to protect herself? Hadn’t she always been alone and uncared for by those she’d longed so much to love her? Her mother, her father, Marco … She was so afraid, so alone. She had to get away, to escape. She stood up, her abrupt movement causing her chair to scrape on the stone beneath it with an ugly grating sound, and her panic increased when Anton took advantage of her fear to take hold of her arm.
In the shop the elderly man had finally paid his bill, scooping up his change with quivering hands, and now the woman was handing over her money.
Marco looked towards the table where he had left Lily. She was standing up now, the man with her taking her arm. They were standing close together. Had Lily forgotten that the man holding her, the man she was about to give herself to, had already let her down once? If so, then perhaps he should remind her. And risk being told that he was interfering where his interference wasn’t wanted, as it had been with Olivia? Risk being accused of trying to ruin he
r life?
In his mind’s eye Marco could see his eighteen-year-old self, humiliated and shamed. He would not be endure that kind of humiliation again.
Turning his back on the scene being played out beyond the interior of the café, Marco continued to wait to pay their bill.
‘Ah, poor Lily—still so afraid of me. How delicious and erotic … even more so now than when you were younger. There is nothing quite like a little bit of fear to add spice to … things.’
Something snapped inside Lily. Instinct and need pushed aside the rules of modern-day life that told her it was her duty to herself and others not to make a nuisance of herself, not to ask anything of anyone, not to expect others to help her or to forge an emotional bond with her that meant she could turn to them in need. In a last despairing surge she turned towards the interior of the café. She could see Marco now. He was paying their bill.
‘Marco …’
The anguished, almost sobbed sound of Lily’s voice calling his name drew Marco’s gaze in her direction. She was looking at him—looking for him. Her free arm—the arm her companion was not holding—was stretched out toward him. She needed him. Lily needed him!
Throwing down a note over twice the value of the coffees they had just had, Marco ran towards the door.
Lily exhaled in relief. Marco had heard her. He was going to help her.
He reached her, grasping her free hand, holding it safe.
‘Make him go away, Marco,’ she begged him wildly, unable to control her distress. ‘Please make him go away.’
‘You heard Lily,’ Marco told Anton, confronting her persecutor and impaling him with a coldly hostile look of warning.
Anton didn’t move, saying mockingly instead, ‘Naughty Lily. You never told me that you have a new … protector.’
Whilst Lily flinched Marco didn’t shift his concentration from the other man’s face. No matter what the relationship between Lily and this man might have been before, it was to him that she was now appealing for rescue and refuge, and Marco’s nature and upbringing would not allow him to deny her either.