To Catch a Star

by Romy Sommer

  She straightened her back and met his angry gaze. “It wasn’t a lie.”

  She wished the bloody ring to the depths of the ocean. It should have stayed lost, and Christian along with it. She didn’t want to feel this way.

  “What now?” he asked. “Do you pay me to go away quietly too, the way my mother was sent away? And what if I refuse? What if I take this to the media?”

  She hadn’t thought this through properly. She hadn’t planned on telling him at all. It wasn’t like her to make such impetuous, rash decisions. Look what happened when she did.

  She hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what this might mean for Westerwald. Oh God, she’d let her heart get the better of her and she’d betrayed her country. The country she’d once thought she loved more than any man.

  But she no longer cared about her nation. It would survive. She only cared about this man she loved more than she’d ever loved anyone.

  A man who’d cracked the ice in her heart. Now she had to do the best she could to hold it together. For all of them.

  “No,” she said quietly. “The only thing I ask is that you think long and hard before you go to the press.” She blinked against the tears burning her eyes. “Talk to Max before you do that. Please.”

  There was nothing else she could do, or say, without making it worse. She’d lost him now. She’d finally managed to erect a barrier between them so impenetrable he couldn’t cross. A barrier she’d erected to protect herself. Except it hadn’t worked. The cracks were there anyway, in spite of all her efforts.

  She moved to the door.

  Christian didn’t stop her. He didn’t even look at her.

  She opened the door and paused on the threshold. “You might want to alert Pippa to the fact that she’s about to get very, very busy on your behalf.”

  Then she shut the door behind her. Barely able to see, she began the long walk away from him.

  The cab couldn’t get Tessa any closer than the street corner where Christian had taken that fateful leap into her car. She passed through the security check point blocking the cul-de-sac and stood on the pavement, looking up at the familiar grand townhouse before her.

  The front door stood open and voices spilled out. She climbed the stairs, dodging out of the way of two men in décor-company uniforms who stumbled out the door carrying empty packing crates.

  Pandemonium reigned inside, with people shouting instructions, men on ladders polishing the chandeliers, and even more people bearing packing crates.

  The house had been transformed. All the furniture had been moved, and in its place was a sea of red and white. She wandered through the rooms, avoiding the workers, who ignored her as they carried on with their tasks, into the formal dining room and drawing room, which had been opened up to create one large banquet hall.

  The décor was tasteful and romantic. The room even smelled of flowers, though those would only be brought in on the morning of the wedding.

  It was perfect.

  “You’re back early!” Lee rushed towards her, wrapping her in a bear hug.

  Anna approached, clipboard held tight to her chest. “Did I get it wrong?” she asked, biting her lip. “I thought you were only due back much later today?”

  “I was.”

  Lee looked at her strangely. “What brought you back early – Paris not exciting enough?”

  “Not a what, but a who, I think,” another male voice said. Anton. What was her dress designer doing here? “You’re not looking like the radiant bride who’s just seen her beloved,” he observed.

  Lee pulled her back into another hug. “What happened in Paris, chica?”

  There were a lot of things she should have said. I’m just a little tired. How are you? This place looks incredible. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done. Blah, blah, blah.

  All the words that were polite and right and meaningless. The words that diverted attention away from what she was feeling and thinking.

  But honesty seemed to be contagious, and she couldn’t bring herself to lie to her friends. Her real friends. Truer than the Carolines of the world.

  “I had sex with Christian,” she blurted out.

  Only it hadn’t been just sex. They’d made love. The tears threatened a rematch.

  “We can’t talk here,” Anton said, glancing around at the servants, who were busy polishing the mirrors and laying out cutlery. “Let’s go somewhere private.”

  Tessa led them upstairs to her suite, marvelling as she did so that she was able to hold it together enough to put one foot in front of the other.

  Since she’d walked out of that hotel room in Paris she’d felt the cracks growing. Like a frozen river in the spring, the water surging beneath the frozen surface was building and building, and any moment now the ice would shatter.

  Lee shut the door to her suite behind them. “That’s fantastic! Tell us everything.”

  Anna pinned him with a glare. “Has it escaped you that she’s engaged to someone else?”

  Lee shrugged. “It’s a terrible shame to waste such a grand wedding, of course, but it can’t be helped.”

  “And a terrible waste of one of my creations,” Anton added. He turned to Tessa with a smile. “Though you can always use it for the next wedding.”

  “I’m still marrying Stefan,” she said.

  Three astounded faces looked back at her.

  “So you got him out of your system?” Lee sounded disappointed.

  She shook her head. “No. Now I feel worse than ever. I love him.”

  There, she’d said it. Though the admission made her head want to explode.

  “So why are you marrying someone else?”

  She was so tired of answering that question. It only made her head hurt to have to repeat it. “Because he’s the perfect man for me.”

  The words were starting to sound rehearsed.

  Anna pulled her down to the sofa and wrapped a comforting arm around her. “Because the wedding is too far down the line. The invitations have been set out, the RSVPs are in.”

  Tessa nodded. Wild, hysterical laughter started to bubble up inside her. She choked it back. “If I walk away from Stefan now, I’ll never be able to show my face in public again.”

  “What does it matter what the public thinks?” Lee asked.

  The one non-Westerwaldian in the room. He didn’t understand.

  She shrugged, trying not to let the pain scraping her throat raw break loose. “It doesn’t matter why. It’s over, and there’s no going back. I’ve burned that bridge.” Christian would never want her now, not with what he believed of her.

  “You have to tell Stefan,” Anna said gently.

  Oh my God. Stefan. She’d been so wrapped up in her own anguish she hadn’t given him a moment’s thought. But Anna was right. She had to tell Stefan. She couldn’t live a lie for the rest of her life.

  He would be home in two days.

  What if he wanted to call off the wedding? Then in the eyes of the world she would have been dumped twice. As far as society and the papers were concerned, she already had one failed engagement behind her. There were no second chances. Her mother was the proof of that.

  Besides, Anna had worked overtime to move the rehearsal dinner. She’d even managed to book the Landmark Café.

  The hysteria bubbled up and over. But it came out as tears. Scalding hot, painful tears that she had no power to stop.

  “Let it out,” Anna said, cradling her and patting her back. “It’s been a long few weeks. You’ll feel much better after a good cry.”

  She’d cried a lot these last two days and it hadn’t helped. Tessa didn’t feel better. She felt worse.

  She’d barely got out of bed. She’d lain beneath the duvet, her laptop propped up beside her, and she’d watched every one of Christian’s movies. Twice. Then she’d started on the TV interviews. Talk shows where he talked nonsense and charmed everyone. Red-carpet appearances where he wore a different woman on his arm every time. Charity b
enefits where he handed over great big dummy cheques.

  She watched them all from a bed littered with tissues and chocolate wrappers.

  She checked her messages constantly, but there was nothing from Christian. Not that she expected to hear from him ever again. That didn’t stop her from hoping.

  There was nothing from Stefan either, though there was nothing unusual in that. There’d been a time she’d liked that he wasn’t clingy and respected her space.

  But she was done crying now. When she rose on the day of her wedding rehearsal, a strange new calm settled over her. A frozen calm. She was all cried out and she could feel nothing.

  Just the way she’d wanted to be.

  Tessa paced the pavement outside Stefan’s apartment building. She knew he was home. She’d watched from the café across the road as the cab dropped him off and he’d entered the building. She’d watched the lights come on in his apartment.

  A bitterly cold wind swept down the narrow street between the buildings. She shivered. She should get inside and get this over with before she caught pneumonia. A hacking cough and runny nose was not a pretty sight on a bride. Assuming there was still a wedding.

  She could still walk away. She could head straight to the cathedral for the rehearsal and pretend that nothing had happened.

  But that wasn’t fair to Stefan. What if he heard from someone else? He deserved better.

  And now that Christian had opened this floodgate inside her, the thought of being anything but honest repelled her.

  Christian had warned her there would be no turning back. She’d thought he meant physically, and perhaps he had.

  But there were other things that could not be undone. She couldn’t erase the memories. She couldn’t go back to the person she’d been before she’d bared her soul to Christian.

  From the very beginning, he’d seen beneath the surface to the woman within. He’d been so determined to let her loose – and he’d achieved his goal.

  No, there was no going back. She could only move forward.

  She had to do this.

  She pressed the buzzer for Stefan’s apartment and waited. She wanted to throw up with the tension in her stomach, but that wouldn’t help any.

  Stefan’s face appeared on the video intercom. “Teresa, what are you doing here? Come on up.”

  He buzzed the door open, and she pushed it wide and stepped into the foyer. She’d always loved this building. It was an art deco apartment block, newly renovated but with all its original fittings. Now it only reminded her of the hotel in Paris.

  She stepped into the wood-panelled lift, and remembered Christian kissing her in the lift in Paris.

  She’d walked away from Christian in Paris. And now she might lose Stefan too.

  But she had to do this.

  Stefan’s apartment door was already open and he waited for her. “This is a delightful pleasure. I only expected to see you at the rehearsal.” Then he saw her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk.”

  She stepped past him into the apartment and removed her coat. He hung it on the coat rack then followed her into the living room. Sparsely furnished, with parquet floors and bay windows. This apartment was so much like her father’s office. Masculine, clinical.

  Thank heavens they’d agreed to live in the Adler townhouse after they married. Though it was not much less clinical.

  For a fleeting moment she wondered what Christian’s beach-house looked like.

  She blinked against the sudden burn and turned to face Stefan. “Are we doing the right thing?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “All my life I’ve had these ideas of what my life was supposed to be, rules that I was supposed to follow, but I’m not so sure about them anymore.”

  He frowned. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I met someone else. I slept with someone else.”

  “Christian,” Stefan guessed. He didn’t look particularly worried. He looked as calm and sensible as always. As calm and sensible as she usually was. “Do you plan to see him again?”

  “Never.”

  “Have you changed your mind about marrying me?”

  “No, of course not! I still want to marry you. But I’ll understand if you don’t want to marry me.” She twisted her hands together, waiting breathlessly for his answer.

  He nodded slowly. “Nothing has changed for me. I still want a marriage uncluttered with messy emotions. But I need someone who’s got my back. You need to commit to this. So if you want to throw our partnership away for a bit of leg-over, then you have to decide now.”

  She flinched at his choice of words.

  Compared to Christian’s volatility, Stefan’s rational and unemotional manner was a stark contrast. It was also cold and distant. Was that what she was like too?

  But this was what she wanted. At least Stefan wouldn’t profess his love one moment and accuse her of being a cold-hearted Mata Hari the next. Passion was fickle and painful.

  So what if she never felt emotions again? So what if the world thought her hard-hearted? Better that than being thought loose and immoral. Better that than this constant pull of lust and fear and love.

  She lifted her chin. “I’m sure,” she said.

  Stefan pulled her close and hugged her. She rested her cheek against his shoulder.

  No sparks at all.

  His touch made her feel calm and secure rather than lit up inside. She blinked away her tears of relief and hugged him back. And if there was a little desperation mixed with her relief, then no one needed to know.

  Maybe one day Christian would understand that she’d done the right thing. She’d made the same hard decision his parents had made. Sacrificing personal happiness because it was the right thing to do.

  Chapter 20

  It was snowing again, filling the footprints on the pavements and on the cathedral steps, creating a fresh slate.

  Inside the old monastery buildings, a room had been prepared as a bridal chamber. Stark compared to the lavish hotel rooms most brides choose, but it was a haven compared to her own home, currently under siege by caterers and florists and musicians.

  The bare little room was more than adequate for Tessa’s needs. Bright light streamed in through tall arched windows, making the day appear deceptively warm.

  Anton and Marie fluttered about her, fussing over the dress, touching up her make-up. Amidst their fussing, Tessa stood in an island of calm. She felt numb inside.

  The scent of jasmine wafted over her from the imported buds Marie had dressed into her carefully styled hair. “You’re the prettiest bride I’ve ever seen,” she said, dabbing her eyes.

  Tessa faced her reflection in the mirror and carefully fastened the new earrings from Stefan in place. The gift from Tiffany’s, her something new and something blue. The gems that sparkled in the delicate gold earrings were the exact shade of Christian’s eyes.

  The woman in the mirror looked back at her, composed, regal. But something was missing.

  She had everything she’d ever wanted, but she didn’t have the one thing she needed.

  Anton stepped away to answer the knock at the door.

  For a moment, Tessa’s heart beat a staccato rhythm. Frantic hope blossomed. Then her gaze met her father’s in the mirror. He smiled, proud, happy, as he stepped into the room and she managed to smile back.

  She had to remember what she’d told Christian. This marriage wasn’t for her. It was for her family. Their families. Not only the hundreds of years of tradition and expectation, but the new family they’d create together. Stronger, united.

  But for a fleeting moment she heard Christian’s voice. You still all keep together, marry each other, exclude anyone who isn’t like you.

  She didn’t want to be like that. She’d never wanted to be like that.

  She wanted to hold Christian’s baby in her arms.

  But he hadn’t offered her that. She pressed her eyelids closed against the tears. No
t so numb after all.

  “You are beautiful.” Her father leaned forward to kiss her forehead. He so seldom showed affection that the gesture brought more tears to her eyes.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry.

  “It’s waterproof mascara,” Marie said, smiling knowingly. “You’re allowed to feel emotional today.”

  “We’ll be waiting for you inside the church, darling,” said Anton. He squeezed her hand as he passed, then he and Marie were gone and it was just her and her father.

  “Are you happy, Tessie?”

  He hadn’t called her that since she was a little girl, still young enough to crawl into his lap whenever she was scared.

  She was scared witless now.

  She nodded.

  “Look at me.” He lifted her chin. “This is your last chance to back out. Once you walk down that aisle, there’ll be no turning back. Are you sure Stefan is the right man for you?”

  She wasn’t sure. But what she was sure of was that Christian hated her. And he would be leaving Paris now, on his way to the Caribbean.

  And without him, the world just seemed grey and so cold, as if all the vitality had leached out of it.

  “Of course I’m happy. I’m getting married today.” This was everything she’d ever dreamed. The big white wedding to a man so perfect he was almost too good to be true. A good man, from a good family, with a wonderful career ahead of him. He was going to take her to interesting places and then they were going to have a family, and they would settle back here in Westerwald and Stefan would change the world.

  Her father took her hands in his. “Space in a marriage is a good thing, but too much space… that simply means you don’t have enough holding you together.” He drew in a rough breath. “I should know. Your mother and I wanted such different things. We thought we could make it work if we just gave each other enough space. Instead, we became strangers who shared the same house. We resented each other. I worry that’s what your future will hold.”

  “Stefan and I are nothing like you and her. We’re very much alike. We’re partners. We like the same things.”

  He smiled sadly. “Do you? Then why do you do them apart?”

  There was no way she could cross her fingers without her father seeing. So she raised her gaze to his, prayed his bullshit radar was defective today, and lied to his face. “I want to marry Stefan.”