by Jennie Lucas
“Not ready yet?”
She twisted in the chair to see Cesare in the doorway. He was wearing a tuxedo a little different than the one in Paris—less classic, more cutting edge. But with his dark hair and chiseled good looks, he melted her, whatever he might be wearing. Even wearing nothing.
Especially wearing nothing.
She gulped, turning away. She couldn’t stop thinking about the two hot nights he’d made love to her. So long ago now. Almost a year since he’d touched her...
“You look beautiful,” he said huskily, coming into her bedroom.
“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.” Their eyes met in the mirror. Her cheeks turned pink.
“You’re just missing one final touch.” Coming up behind her, he pulled a sparkling diamond necklace from his pocket and placed it around her neck. Emma’s lips parted as she saw it in the mirror, huge diamonds dripping past her collarbone. Involuntarily she put her hand against the necklace, hardly able to believe it was real.
“Almost worthy of the woman wearing it,” he murmured.
“You...you shouldn’t have.” Nervously she rose to her feet, facing him. Realizing her fingertips were still resting against the sparkling stones, she put her hand down.
“It’s nothing. A mere trinket.” His black eyes caressed her. Leaning forward, he brushed long tendrils of glossy black hair from her bare shoulders, back from the necklace, and whispered, “Nothing is too good for my future wife.”
Emma felt the warmth of his breath against her bare skin. She shuddered with a sudden pang of need. Of desire.
She couldn’t let herself want him like this. Couldn’t. It left her too vulnerable. And the one thing she knew about Cesare was that he detested needy women. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, be one.
And yet...
Turning away, she went back to the mirror and put on her bright red lipstick with a shaking hand. She tried to ignore his gaze as she ran the red tube carefully over her lips. Sitting back on the bed, she reached for her high-heeled shoes, gorgeous Charlotte Olympia pumps with bamboo on the platform sole and pink cherry blossoms crisscrossing the straps. Emma had seen them in a shop on Sloane Street and in spite of her best efforts—since they were quite expensive—had fallen instantly in love with the 1930s Shanghai glamour.
“Mr. Falconeri said you’re to have whatever you wish, madame,” the salesgirl had insisted, and Emma, with baby Sam in his stroller next to Cesare’s personal bodyguard, had quickly succumbed. It was so wrong to buy shoes that were so expensive. Wrong to want something so forbidden. So clearly out of reach. Emma looked at Cesare.
Or was it?
She rose to her feet, her long black hair tumbling over the low cowl neck of her gown, which melted like liquid silver against her body. She felt transformed—like a glamorous, mysterious starlet from a black-and-white film. She’d never felt so beautiful, or less like the plain, sensible person she’d always been. She took a deep breath, and looked at Cesare.
“I’m ready,” she said softly.
He stared at her. She saw his hands tighten at his sides as his gaze slowly went down the length of her dress. And when he spoke, was it her imagination or was his voice a little strained?
“You look...fine.” Clearing his throat, he held out his arm. “Ready to meet the firing squad?”
“That’s how you refer to your friends?”
He gave her a wicked grin, quirking his dark eyebrow. “You should hear how they refer to me.”
“I already know.” As she took his arm, Emma’s smile fell. “You’re the playboy who will never be caught by any woman.”
He winked at her, a gesture so silly and unexpected that it caused her heart to twist in her chest. “They’ll understand when they meet you.”
Their eyes locked, and the squeeze on her heart suddenly became unbearable.
I love you. The words pushed through her soul, through her heart. I love you, Cesare.
It was a realization so horrible, Emma sucked in her breath in a gasp so rough and abrupt that it made her double over, coughing.
He rubbed her back, his voice filled with concern. “Are you all right?”
She held up her hand as she regained her breath. Downstairs, she could hear the rising noise of guests arriving at the Kensington mansion for the engagement party. All of his snooty rich friends, and their beautiful girlfriends—half of whom Cesare had probably slept with over the years. Half? Probably more.
“Cara?”
She finally straightened, her eyes watery. “I’m fine,” she said, wiping her eyes. It was a lie.
She loved him.
Almost a year ago, she’d left him in despair, believing they had no chance for a future. But now, after just two weeks of wearing his engagement ring on her hand, an awful, desperate hope had pushed itself into her soul. Against her will.
She was in love with him. The truth was she’d never stopped loving him. She was utterly and completely in love with her former boss, the father of her baby.
A man who was going to marry her out of pure obligation. Who didn’t even want to touch her. Who wanted their marriage to be in name only. For their son’s sake. A shell. A sham...
“Emma?”
She couldn’t let him see her face. Couldn’t let him guess what she felt inside. Pretending not to see his outstretched arm, she walked swiftly ahead.
“Wait,” he said sharply.
Emma stopped. She took a deep breath, and looked back at him in the hallway.
Smiling down at her in a way that caused his eyes to crinkle, he took her arm and wrapped it around his own. “It’s an engagement party. We should enter the ballroom together.”
Together. How she wished they could truly be together.
“Are you cold?” He frowned. “You’re trembling.”
“No... Yes... Um.” She twisted her ankle deliberately. “It’s the shoes.”
He snorted, looking at the four-inch heels. “No wonder.”
As they walked down the stairs, she clutched his arm as if her beautiful shoes were really the problem, trying to convince herself everything would be just fine. All right, so she was in love with Cesare and he’d never love her back. All right, so her whole body yearned for him to touch her, but he insisted on separate bedrooms and was likely planning to hook up with the next gorgeous actress who struck his fancy.
But they had a child together. Their marriage would be like a business partnership. That counted for something, didn’t it?
Didn’t it?
Her throat tightened.
As they approached the mansion’s ballroom, she saw his friends—tycoons, actresses, diplomats and royalty. The women were thin and young and beautiful, in chic, tight clothes with no stretch marks from pregnancy. They all turned to look at her speculatively. She could see their sly assumption: that Emma had gotten pregnant on purpose. That was how a gold-digging housekeeper trapped an uncatchable playboy.
Their expressions changed as they looked from her to Cesare. And she realized that being in love with him just made Emma exactly the same as every other woman in the room. They all wanted him. They all broke their hearts over him.
She swallowed, glancing up at him through her lashes, suddenly desperate for reassurance, unable to fight this green demon eating her alive from the inside out.
Cesare abruptly stopped at the bottom of the stairs, in front of the open ballroom doors. “Time to face the music.”
His voice was strangely flat. All the emotion had fled from his expression. Meeting her eyes, he gave her a forced smile, as if he already regretted his unbreakable, binding promise to marry her. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
She suddenly wanted to ask him if those were the words he’d say to himself on their wedding day, too. She looked down at her diamond necklace. At her enormous engagement ring.
I can do this, she told herself. For Sam.
Cesare led her into the ballroom, and as she walked across the same marble floor she’d once scrubbe
d on her hands and knees, she pasted a bright smile on her face as she was formally introduced to London society: the housekeeper who’d been lucky and conniving enough to trap a billionaire playboy into marriage.
* * *
“So the great Cesare Falconeri is caught at last,” Sheikh Sharif bin Nazih al Aktoum, the emir of Makhtar, said behind him. His voice was amused.
“Caught?” Cesare turned. “I haven’t been caught.”
The sheikh took a sip of champagne and waved his hand airily. “Ah, but it happens to all of us sooner or later.”
Cesare scowled. The two men were not close; he’d invited the sheikh as a courtesy, as his company sought to get permission to build a new resort hotel on one of his Persian Gulf beaches. He’d never thought the man might actually come, but he’d showed up at the Kensington mansion in a black town car with diplomatic flags flying, in full white robes and trailing six bodyguards.
Six. Cesare had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Bringing two bodyguards was sensible, six was just showing off. He bared a smile at his guest. “I’m the luckiest man on earth to be engaged to Emma. It took me a year to convince her to marry me.” Which was true in its way.
The sheikh gave a faint smile. “Some men are just the marrying kind, I suppose.”
Cesare raised his eyebrows. “You think I’m the marrying kind?”
He shrugged. “Clearly. You’ve experienced it once and choose willingly to return to it.” The dark eyes looked at him curiously, as if Cesare were an exhibit in a zoo. “As for myself, I’m in no rush to be trapped with one woman, subject to her whims, forced to listen to her complain day and night—” He cut himself off with a cough, as if he’d just realized that saying such things at an engagement party might be poor form. “Well. Perhaps marriage is different from the cage I picture it to be.”
A cage. Cesare felt the sudden irrational stirrings of buried panic. He could hear the harsh rasp of Angélique’s exhausted voice, a decade before.
If you ever loved me, if you ever cared at all, let me go.
But Angélique, you are still my wife. We both gave a promise before God....
Then He will forgive, for He knows how I hate you.
We can go to marriage counseling. He’d reached for her, desperate. We can get past this.
Her lip had curled. What will it take for you to let me go? She narrowed her eyes maliciously. Would you like to hear how long and hard Raoul loves me every time we meet, here and in Paris, all this past year, while you’ve been busy at your pathetic little hotel, trying to make something of yourself? Raoul loves me as you never will.
Cesare had tried to cover his ears, but she’d told him, until he could bear it no longer and went back on everything he’d ever believed in. Fine, he told her grimly. I’ll give you your divorce.
Twenty-four hours later, Angélique had returned from Buenos Aires and swallowed an entire bottle of pills. Cesare had been the one to find her. He’d found out later that Raoul Menendez was already long married. That he’d laughed in Angélique’s face when she’d shown up on his doorstep.
So much for love.
So much for marriage.
Oh, my God. A cold sweat broke out on Cesare’s forehead as he remembered that panicked sense of failure and helplessness. The sheikh was right. A cage was exactly what marriage was.
“Your bride is beautiful, of course,” the man murmured. “She would tempt any man.”
Cesare looked up to see Emma floating by on the dance floor in the arms of Leonidas, his old friend and former wingman at London’s best nightclubs. The famous Greek playboy had a reputation even worse than Cesare’s. Emma’s beautiful face was laughing, lifted to the Greek’s admiring eyes. Cesare felt a surge of jealousy.
Emma was his woman. His.
“Ah. So lovely. Her long dark hair. Her creamy skin. And that figure...” The sheikh’s voice trailed off.
“Don’t even think about it,” Cesare said dangerously.
He held up his hands with a low laugh. “Of course. I sought merely to praise your taste in a wife. I would not think of attempting to sample her charms myself.”
“Good,” he growled. “Then I won’t have to think of attempting to knock your head off your body.”
The man eyed him, then shook his head with a rueful snort. “You have it badly, my friend.”
“It?”
“You’re in love with her.”
“She’s the mother of my son,” Cesare replied sharply, as if that explained everything.
“Naturally,” the other man said soothingly. But his black eyes danced, as if to say: you poor fool, you don’t even see how deeply your neck is in the noose.
Reaching up his hand in an involuntary movement, Cesare loosened the tuxedo tie around his neck. Then he grabbed a glass from a passing waiter and gulped down an entire glass of Dom Perignon in one swallow before he said, “Excuse me.”
“Of course.”
Going to the other side of the dance floor, Cesare watched Emma dance. He saw the way her face glowed. Sì. Think of her. Beautiful. So strong and tender. It wouldn’t be so awful, would it, having her in his house?
As long as they didn’t get too close.
As long as he didn’t try to seduce her.
That was the only way this convenient marriage would ever work. If they kept their distance, so she didn’t get any crazy ideas back about loving him. And he didn’t start thinking he needed her, or let his walls down.
Vulnerability was weakness.
Love was pain.
Cesare’s face went hot as he remembered how he’d felt last year when she’d left him staring after her in the window like a fool. He’d been so sure she’d be back. That she wouldn’t be able to resist him.
But she had. Very well.
While he hadn’t even slept with another woman since their last night together, almost a year ago.
How the world would laugh if they knew that little truth about Cesare Falconeri, the famous playboy. They would laugh—sì—they would, because it was pathetic. Fortunately he had no intention of sharing it with anyone. Not even Emma.
He almost had, the first day they’d arrived here, when she’d been so strangely jealous of the silly blonde housekeeper. He’d almost told Emma the truth, but it had caught in his throat. He couldn’t let her know that secret. He would never allow himself to be that vulnerable to anyone ever again.
You love her, the sheikh had accused. Cesare snorted. Love? Ridiculous. Love was a concept for idealistic young souls, the ones who thought lust was not a big enough word to describe their desire. He’d been that way once. He’d married his wife when he was young and stupid. He’d thought sex meant love. He’d learned his lesson well.
Now his eyes narrowed as he watched Emma smile up encouragingly at Leonidas.
Before he realized what he was doing, he was on the dance floor, breaking up their little duo. “I’d like to dance with my fiancée, if you don’t mind.”
Emma had been in the middle of laughing but she looked at Cesare in surprise, as if, he thought grimly, she’d already forgotten his existence. As if she already suspected her power over him, and knew his weakness.
Leonidas looked tempted to make some sarcastic remark, but at Cesare’s scowl, thought better of it. “Alas, my dear,” he sighed to Emma. “I must hand you over to this brute. You belong to him now.”
She gave another low laugh, and it was all Cesare could do not to give the Greek shipping tycoon a good kick on the backside to help speed him off the dance floor. With narrowed eyes, he took Emma in his arms.
“Having fun?” he growled as he felt her soft body against his, in her slinky gown of silver.
“It’s been dreadful.” She peeked up at him. “I’m glad to see you. I know he’s your friend, but I didn’t think I could take much more. Thank you for saving me!”
“Are you sure?” he said through gritted teeth. “The two of you seemed so cozy.”
She blinked. “I was bein
g nice to your friend.”
“Not much nicer, I hope,” he ground out, “or I might have found the two of you making use of a guest bedroom!”
“What’s gotten into you? You’re acting almost—”
“Don’t say it,” he warned.
She tossed her head. “Jealous!”
Cesare set his jaw. “Tell me, what exactly was Leonidas saying that you found so charming?”
Sparks were starting to illuminate her green eyes. “I’m not going to tell you.”
He glared at her. “So you admit that you were flirting.”
“I admit nothing. You are the one who said we shouldn’t ask each other questions!”
“About the past, not the present!”
“That’s fine for you, because as you well know, you are my only past, while your past could fill every bedroom in this mansion. And probably has!”
Her voice caught, and for the first time he heard the ragged edge of repressed tears. He frowned down at her. When he spoke again, his voice was low, barely audible over the music. “What’s wrong?”
“Other than you accusing me of flirting, while I torture myself with questions every time I meet one of your beautiful guests—wondering which ones you’ve slept with in the past? And suspecting—all of them!”
Her voice broke. Her green eyes were luminous with unshed tears. He glanced around uneasily at the women around them. Emma was right. He’d slept with more than one of them. No wonder she was upset. He’d nearly exploded with irrational jealousy, just seeing Leonidas talking to her.
Pulling her tighter in his arms, he swayed them to the music, continuing to dance as he spoke to her in a low voice.
“They were one-night stands, Emma. Meaningless.”
“You called our first night together meaningless, too. The night we conceived our baby.”
He flinched. Then emotion surged through him. He glared at her.
“This is why I wanted our marriage to be in name only. To avoid these arguments and stupid jealousies.”
“You mean the way you practically hit your good friend in the face for the crime of dancing with me and making me laugh?”
For a moment, he scowled at her. Then, getting hold of himself, he took a deep breath.