by Lucy Ellis
‘No, it was just one night.’ Lulu couldn’t meet her best friend’s eyes as she said it.
‘One night? Lulu, it was your first time.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ she mumbled. ‘I told you—I lost my virginity to Julien Levolier from dance class when we were both eighteen.’
She raised her eyes to find Gigi looking so doubtful she almost confessed the truth—she’d made it up to get the other girls off her back.
‘I didn’t believe you,’ Gigi admitted. ‘I thought you’d made it up.’
‘Honestly.’ Lulu fiddled with her sleeve. ‘I can be sexually liberated, Gigi.’
‘No, you can’t—well, you haven’t been until now. Why aren’t you seeing him again?’
‘It’s not that sort of thing.’
Gigi’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what he said?’
‘No, it’s what we decided together.’ Of course that wasn’t strictly true either, but the truth stuck in her throat—I was a coward… I insulted his pride… I messed up.
Gigi was quiet for a moment. ‘You don’t want Alejandro to know about your panic attacks,’ she said quietly.
Lulu opened her mouth to deny it, but what was the point? Gigi knew her too well. ‘It’s not his business.’ She looked her best friend in the eye, willing her to disagree. ‘It’s not anyone’s business but my own.’
Gigi squeezed her shoulder but was smart enough not to push. A little part of Lulu wished she would push.
Wedding talk eased them away from the difficult subject, but at length Lulu couldn’t help circling back in on the thing that mattered most to her and asked, ‘Did Alejandro say anything earlier? When I passed out?’
‘He was pretty concerned, Lu. But Félicienne told him you had a little medical condition.’
‘What?’ Could it get any worse?
‘You’re going to have to tell him something.’
No. No, she wouldn’t be telling him anything.
*
The other bridesmaids filled her in as they dressed for the wedding rehearsal dinner.
‘He’s like a polo god,’ explained Susie. ‘He’s won everything, and people pay a mint to watch him play.’
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw him getting out of that helicopter,’ added Trixie, fanning herself. ‘I knew he was coming, but in the flesh he’s just so much more.’
‘What about that footage of him taking a string of ponies into the surf on that Patagonian beach last year?’ said Susie. ‘No shirt. Just muscle and horseflesh. It melted the internet.’
There was a hum of appreciation which left Lulu feeling cross.
‘How would you feel if someone took a picture of you at the beach and put it on the internet so that desperate men could salivate all over it?’ she grumbled.
Susie laughed. ‘It’s just publicity, Lu, and he’ll be used to it…what with his father and all.’
‘His father?’
‘Ferdinand du Crozier—international playboy. He broke up a famous Hollywood actress’s marriage years ago and then he was seen a week later cruising the Med with her children’s nanny! All while he was married to Alejandro’s mother.’
‘Any publicity is good publicity,’ dismissed Adele. ‘Anyway, nowadays Alejandro is virtually a brand. You can buy luggage with his polo team’s imprimatur on it. How do you think he bought himself a state-of-the-art helicopter?’
Lulu had assumed it was leased. It appeared she’d assumed a lot of things. She was still trying to wade through all this information and work out if it was Alejandro or his father who had seduced the nanny…
‘Booooring!’ sang out Susie from the bathroom. ‘Who cares about what he’s worth? He’s a sexual athlete. I would have nailed him.’
A sexual what? Lulu’s chest hollowed.
‘Women throw themselves at him. I know he’s gorgeous, but it’s demeaning, don’t you think?’ said Trixie. ‘Pushing yourself on a man…him knowing it’s because he’s famous?’
The other girls’ gossip, which had battered her a moment before, now sent her stomach cold.
Dieu, was that how he viewed last night? Some desperate woman chasing him because he was famous?
‘He dates the most beautiful women in the world—he wouldn’t be interested in any of us.’ Trixie sighed.
‘He does have a reputation for slaying some pretty impressive names,’ agreed Adele. ‘His last girlfriend was the daughter of a high-profile British politician—she worked for the UN.’
The UN?
Trixie slipped an arm through Lulu’s. ‘You weren’t feeling too crash-hot when you got here, were you, darl? How are you feeling now?’
‘Better.’ The other two bridesmaids were looking at her expectantly. ‘I’m getting over a virus,’ she trotted out, feeling wretched.
‘Something happened,’ she heard Trixie say as she went into the next room to change.
‘Nothing happened,’ came back Susie’s response. ‘We’re talking about Lulu.’
Everything happened, Lulu thought, hanging her head, only it wouldn’t happen again.
Dressed an hour later, with her hair drawn up in an Edwardian-style bandeau—the dress code for today was Downton Abbey—Lulu walked the vast corridors, went down the stairs and into the dining room, where they would be assembling in half an hour.
With each step she compounded her doubts. She’d barely kept it together after her disastrous arrival. Stumbling out of the helicopter, making it a few paces and then crumpling like cellophane.
If Alejandro hadn’t already wiped his hands of her he wouldn’t be looking her up after this.
What was worse was that she couldn’t talk to Gigi about any of it.
Tomorrow was the Big Day.
It had to be perfect. It had to be all about the bride.
And what had she done on arrival? Set the tone for the whole weekend with her mother running to her rescue.
She understood why her maman was so protective. After leaning on her when she was at a young age, now Félicienne only wanted her to have the best of everything and to be safe. But her cossetting wasn’t helping her overcome her anxiety. It only added to it.
And this morning she’d been so scared of what her parents might say or do, and of how Alejandro would react. So she’d insulted him and wrecked any chances of them being together at all this weekend, and then she’d leaned on Gigi and used her to handle her mother.
Nothing had changed. And nothing would ever change if she didn’t face her fears.
She’d come here this weekend determined to change her life and she’d been doing so well. Last night she had moved past her fear and it had been wonderful. And yet this morning she’d fallen back into the old patterns.
Lulu pulled out the chair she’d be seated in this evening and sank onto it, resting her head in her hands. What was she going to do?
Her phone began to play its jaunty tune and, stirred from her painful thoughts, Lulu reached into her purse.
It was just a text from her mother, telling her she’d come to her room and seen she wasn’t there, and she wanted to know where she was and if she was all right.
Lulu was tempted to throw the phone across the room when she sensed movement behind her.
A group of men were passing the dining room and Lulu’s ears pricked up. She recognised those rich, low tones. Holding on tight to the phone she’d wanted to hurl, she edged towards the doorway and watched Alejandro, magnificent in formal evening attire that was tailored to his powerful body like a glove, as he and Khaled and several other men she didn’t know vanished into the billiards room.
He looked nothing like the laid-back guy who had lowered his aviators to meet her gaze at the airport yesterday, or the generous, tender lover who had made her body known to her in ways she’d never even suspected existed last night.
Instead he looked polished, powerful and predatory. The kind of man she would have shuffled to the back of the chorus line to avoid eye contact with back in Paris, because sh
e could never have handled him.
There was surely something dangerous about physical intimacy. It had done something to her usual reserve, shaken everything she believed in, and Lulu found herself following him down the corridor.
But she could hardly follow him into the billiards room. What would she say?
Besides, he was probably already learning from Khaled what a mess she was—all the things she couldn’t do—and now he wouldn’t look at her as if she fascinated him. He would look at her and see someone who was too much work.
That was when Lulu became aware that she was standing in a dark corridor just feeling sorry for herself.
If anyone had found her there how stupid she would have looked.
Sad little Lulu, scared of her own shadow and too damn gutless—as Susie would put it—to grab the things she wanted most in life. Willing to let a man think she was a shallow narcissist in order to cover up how truly pathetic her life was in truth.
Whatever had passed between them she owed him an apology—and if she couldn’t tell him all of the truth, at least she could tell him something, so he wouldn’t go away thinking the worst of her.
*
It was easier said than done.
An hour later she watched him making the rounds of the guests, so tall and broad-shouldered, with his tousled chestnut hair tamed and a slow half-smile making him look as if he knew a secret nobody else did. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him to engineer a casual bumping of elbows, and he had made no move to approach her at all since he entered the room.
She doubted he’d even looked her way. She, on the other hand, couldn’t take her eyes off him.
Lulu fought off the memories but suddenly they were all she had moving through her mind, drawing her attention to the gentle ache that lingered from last night’s unfamiliar activities.
It was her own fault they weren’t together now. She’d asked for this.
A braver woman would just go up to him, draw him aside and discreetly make her apology. But all her bravery from earlier seemed to have fled in the face of all these people and his apparent indifference, and now she just felt as if the room was closing in on her.
Her skin was clammy, her hands were shaking, and to make matters worse her mother kept advancing on her with an agonised expression barely hidden behind her practised social ease.
Lulu had evaded her for some time now, by circulating like a good little bridesmaid among the wedding party members and their partners, clutching a glass of champagne she actually hadn’t touched. By the time they went into dinner she was a jangled mass of nerves.
She dared another flickering glance Alejandro’s way as Gigi rose to announce, just when they were on their third course, that there would be games this weekend.
Amidst the laughter and commentary she was startled when his attention came her way. It was a casual movement. His gaze just seemed to drift over her, and his eyes, when she looked at them, were dark in the candlelight.
For a fanciful moment she was reminded of a leopard, hanging deceptively lazily in the branches of a tree, every muscle in its superb killer’s body seemingly at rest. But those eyes…those eyes held pure predatory intent.
Lulu watched Susie touch his arm, leaning across in all her sexy glory and saying something that made him smile, displaying the easy charm of a man for whom attractive women did and said anything to claim his attention.
It was somewhat disconcerting to see evidence of what she knew would happen. He would move on.
Not with Susie, nor even this weekend, but with someone. And he would forget about her.
But it had never occurred to her she would have to watch other women come on to him this weekend.
The guests were handing a hat down the table, and she was so enmeshed in her thoughts she didn’t pay much attention. She obediently shoved her hand in and took out a small folded piece of paper, ignoring its contents as she glared daggers at Susie across the table.
‘There are four teams,’ Gigi announced, ‘and you’ll only find the prize if you solve the clues for your team in consecutive order. There’s a time limit so—go!’
Chairs scraped…couples paired off. People were taking their champagne with them. There was laughter, a shriek as a girl was swept up into her companion’s arms. Lulu’s heart sank. It was going to be that sort of game.
She could see her mother, saying something to her stepfather and another older woman, and then Félicienne began scanning the room. In a moment Lulu knew she was going to be dragged off with the middle-aged party, as if she were thirteen and not twenty-three.
She watched Susie grab a bottle and was wondering who would be drinking that with her when a hand closed around her elbow.
‘Come on,’ said a darkly familiar voice in her ear. ‘We can win this.’
Alejandro used his big body to block the crowd and the view of her mother as he pushed her into the stream of guests heading out into the draughty hall.
‘But you’re purple and I’m pink,’ she said, her heart hammering, knowing that wasn’t the point.
He snatched the paper easily from her fingers and tore it up, along with his own, tossing it like confetti over his shoulder.
‘Problem solved—now we’re on the same team.’
Lulu felt hope soar up inside her and explode in a cascading spin of light like a Catherine wheel.
He kept her moving, guiding her up the stairs, the warmth of his body bracketing hers. Lulu had never felt so relieved in her life.
She couldn’t help looking up at him, to make sure he was with her and it wasn’t just some elaborate sensory hallucination she was having.
He pushed her ahead of him into the book-muffled quiet of what appeared to be the library and closed the doors behind them with finality.
Lulu knew he hadn’t brought her here for the reason other couples were vanishing into dark corners of the castle.
This was her opportunity to apologise. Even if she couldn’t explain.
‘Alejandro—’
He advanced on her and Lulu found herself edging backwards, towards an old nineteenth-century desk. A thrill darted through her.
Maybe he had brought her here for exactly that reason.
‘If you still want me to be your dirty little secret I’ll do it,’ he said, with that same ruthless focus that had so unnerved her earlier.
Embarrassingly, she experienced a liquid pull low in her pelvis and she took another backward step.
‘No,’ she muttered, ‘it’s not like that.’
‘Then how is it, Lulu?’
‘All I want is for you to not want me any more.’
Her bottom hit the edge of the desk. She would probably be struck down for her lies, because she did want him to want her—she wanted it desperately.
He leaned in, hot and male and crowding her. It was highly exciting. The most exciting thing ever to happen to her apart from last night.
‘Then we’ve got a problem.’
She wanted to tell him that, frankly, this wasn’t feeling like a problem just at that moment.
‘I still want you.’
Lulu made an involuntary sound, embarrassingly a little like a whimper.
His hips nudged hers and she registered that he was powerfully aroused.
‘What’s the problem?’ he growled. ‘Worried your mother’s going to find out?’
Yes. Yes, she was.
‘Certainly not. I’m a grown woman.’
‘Then behave like one.’
And there was the challenge—and also the escape route. Because making love he wouldn’t be asking questions, and she’d have this—one more time, just one. So many lonely nights stretched ahead for her. She’d have this and she’d apologise and then everything would go back to normal. Well, her normal.
In frustration she reached out and pulled on his shirt. A pearl button popped, and then another. Impatiently she ripped his shirt open with both hands, because sometimes life was complicated enough not to
have to deal with buttons.
The sound was almost shocking.
He seemed to like the trashing of his expensive clothes, though, because in answer he lifted her back onto the desk, rucking her skirt up her thighs.
Alejandro ran his palms over them, determined not to rush this. They were as long and smooth as he remembered, and he’d been doing a lot of remembering. The scent of her stirred his senses: violets and woman.
She wore more cream satin—this time with shell-pink inserts falling to the tops of her thighs, where her stockings were clipped by tiny blue suspenders. Alejandro hadn’t known he had a thing for old-time lingerie, but it definitely did something for him—or the woman wearing it did. He smiled at her as he slid his fingers under the satin to stroke her, because it brought back memories, and the old-fashioned cut made her easily accessible to his hand.
Lulu’s chest rose and fell rapidly, a gasp spilling from her lips.
His mouth found hers and he bit down gently on her lower lip, feeling her shudder against him.
He caught her hips in his hands and angled her so that he was cradled against her pelvis. She made a little sound of helpless need and began rocking against him.
He lifted his hands to her beautiful hair but she shook her head.
‘No, no—keep your hands below my shoulders,’ she muttered. She was unbuckling him with shaking hands.
‘Sí.’ Although right now she could ask for her own damn castle and he’d promise it to her. ‘Why?’
She paused to look up and said, quite seriously, ‘I don’t want to wreck my hair.’
Her hair? It did seem to be some sort of elaborate confection. Alejandro swallowed the laughter moving through him. It was astonishing how much lighter he felt when he was with her. Freer.
‘I’m spending the night with Gigi and the other girls. I don’t want them to know.’
Her expression crumpled as she appeared to realise the import of what she’d said.
Again with the secrecy, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to feel her against him again.
They could deal with this secrecy stuff later.
He unclipped her suspenders and slid her pretty vintage panties down over her ankles. He stuffed them in his back pocket and then unbuttoned himself—fast.