by Fiona Brand
Lucas’s expression was distracted. “She’ll adjust. She’s being well compensated.”
Zane went still inside. “How, exactly?”
Lucas shuffled papers. “The usual currency. Money, promotion.”
Zane could feel his blood pressure rocketing. “Carla won’t like that.”
“Tell me about it.” Lucas shot him a tired grin. “Women. It’s a juggling act.”
And one in which Lucas, with his killer charm, had always excelled.
Suspicion coalesced into certainty. Despite the engagement to Carla, Zane was certain that Lilah was still in the picture for Lucas. Maybe he had it all wrong, but he couldn’t allow himself to forget that Lucas had bought Lilah an engagement ring.
He could still see the catalog picture Elena had shown him. The solitaire had been large and flawless. Personally, he had thought the chunky diamond had been a mistake. He would have chosen something antique and lavish, maybe with a few emeralds on the side to match her eyes.
Zane’s jaw clenched against the fiery urge to demand to know why, now that Lucas was engaged to Carla, he couldn’t leave Lilah Cole alone.
Irrelevant question. Atraeus men had a long, well-publicized history of womanizing. He should know; he was the product of a liaison.
Letting out a breath, Zane forced himself to relax. “How long do you want me to mind her this time?”
Lucas shrugged. “The weekend. Long enough to get her through the media frenzy that’s going to break following the announcement at the press conference—” he checked his watch “—today.”
Zane’s temper frayed at the possessive concern in Lucas’s voice. “Sure. We got on okay on Medinos.” He drilled Lucas with another cold look. “I think she likes me.”
Lucas looked relieved. “Great, I owe you one. I know Lilah isn’t your normal type.”
Zane’s brows jerked together. “What do you mean, not my type?”
Lucas placed his briefcase on the desk and began loading files into it. “Lilah’s into classical music; she’s arty. I think she paints.”
“She does. I like art and classical music.”
He snapped the case closed. “She’s older.”
Lucas made the age gap sound like an unbridgeable abyss. “Five years is not a big gap.”
Lucas’s cell broke into a catchy tango.
Jaw compressed, Zane watched as Lucas snatched up the phone. “Nice tune. Bolero.”
Lucas shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. This is my secretary’s phone. Mine’s, uh, broken.” He held the cell against his ear and lifted a hand in dismissal. “Hey, thanks.”
“Not a problem.” Jaw taut, Zane took the creaking elevator to the ground floor. If he had stayed in the office with Lucas much longer he might have lost his temper. He had learned long ago that losing control was the equivalent of losing, and with Lilah Cole he did not intend to lose.
He had to focus, concentrate.
A whole weekend. Two days, and nights.
With a woman so committed to marriage she had written a blueprint for success and developed a points system for the men who had scored highly enough to make it into her folder.
* * *
Lilah slid dark glasses onto the bridge of her nose and braced herself as she stepped out of her taxi into the midmorning heat of downtown Sydney. Two steps toward the impressive doors of the hotel where the press conference was being held, and a maelstrom of flashing cameras and shouted questions broke over her.
Cheeks hot with embarrassment, she tightened her grip on the ivory handbag that matched her stylish suit, and plowed forward. Someone tugged at the sleeve of her jacket; a flash blinded her. A split second later the grip on her arm and the reporter were miraculously removed, replaced by the burly back of a uniformed security guard. The mass of reporters parted and Zane Atraeus’s dark gaze burned into hers, oddly calm and assessing in the midst of chaos. Despite her determination to remain calm in his presence, to forget the kiss, a hot thrill shot down her spine.
“Lilah, come with me.”
For a split second she thought he had said, “Lilah, come to me,” and the vivid intensity of her reaction to the low, husky command was paralyzing.
She had already had two negative experiences with Atraeus males. Now wasn’t the time to redefine that old cliché by fantasizing about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, again.
The media surged against the wall of security, an elbow jabbed her back. She clutched Zane’s outstretched hand. He released her fingers almost immediately and scooped her against his side, his muscled heat burning into her as they walked.
Three swift steps. The glass doors gleamed ahead. A camera flashed. “Oh, good. More scandal.”
She caught the edge of Zane’s grin. “That’s what you get when you play with an Atraeus.”
The hotel doors swished wide. More media were inside, along with curious hotel staff and guests. Lilah worked to keep her expression serene, although she was uncomfortably aware that her cheeks were burning. “I didn’t ‘play’ with anyone.”
“You went to Medinos. That was some first date.”
The nervy thrill of Zane turning up to protect her evaporated. “I didn’t exactly enjoy the experience.”
As first dates went it had been an utter disaster.
Zane ushered her into an open elevator. The heat of his palm at the small of her back sent a small shock of awareness through her. Two large Medinian security guards stepped in on either side of them. A third man, blocky and muscled with a shaven head, whom she recognized as Spiros, took up a position by the door and punched buttons.
Lilah’s ruffled unease at Zane’s closeness increased as the elevator shot upward. “I suppose you’re in Sydney for the charity art auction?”
“I’m also doing some work on the Ambrosi takeover, which is why Lucas asked me to mind you.”
The last remnants of the intense thrill she had felt when Zane had come looking for her died a death. “I suppose Lucas told you what happened last night?”
“He said you found him with Carla at his apartment.”
Lilah’s blush deepened. Zane made it sound like she had been involved in some kind of trashy love triangle. “I didn’t make it to his apartment. Security—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
Lilah’s gaze narrowed. The surface calm she had been clinging to all morning, ever since she had seen the morning paper, shredded. “Since Medinos, I haven’t been able to get an appointment to see Lucas. I got tired of waiting. I was there to resign.”
The doors slid open. Adrenaline pumped when she saw the contingent of press in the lobby of the concierge floor, although these weren’t the sharp-eyed paparazzi who had been out on the street. She recognized magazine editors, serious tabloids, television news crews.
She took a deep breath as they stepped out of the elevator in the wake of the security team.
Zane’s fingers locked around her wrist. “If you run now, what they’ll print will be worse.”
“Any worse than ‘Discarded Atraeus Mistress Abandoned on Street’?”
Zane’s expression was grim. “You should have known Lucas was playing out of your league.”
Something inside her snapped. “Is it too late to say I wish I’d never met Lucas?”
The moment was freeing. She realized she had never actually connected with Lucas on an emotional level. Marriage with him would have been a disaster.
Zane’s gaze captured hers, making her heart pound. “How worried are you about the media?”
Lilah blinked. The focused heat in Zane’s eyes was having a mesmerizing effect. “I don’t have a TV and I canceled my newspaper subscription this morning. Dealing with the media is not my thing.”
“Is this?”
His jaw brushed her forehead. Tendrils of heat shimmered through her at the unexpected contact. His hands framed her face. Dimly, she registered that he intended to kiss her. In the midst of the hum of security, press and hotel staff,
time seemed to slow, stop. She was spun back two years to the seductive quiet of the empty reception room, eleven days ago to the flight to Medinos.
She dragged in a shallow breath. She needed to step back, calm down, forget the crazy attraction that zinged through her every time she was near Zane. Constantine and Lucas had both gone through gorgeous women like hot knives through butter, but Zane had a reputation that scorched.
His breath feathered her lips. She closed her eyes and his mouth touched hers, seducingly warm and soft. A shock wave of heat shimmered out from that one small point of contact.
He lifted his head. His gaze, veiled by inky lashes, locked on hers. Instead of straightening, his hands dropped to her waist. The heat from his palms burned through the finely tailored silk as he drew her closer.
The motorized whirr of cameras and the buzz of conversation receded as she clutched at Zane’s shoulders and angled her jaw, allowing him more comfortable access. This time the kiss was firmer, heated, deliberate, sizzling all the way to her toes. By the time Zane lifted his mouth, her head was spinning and her legs felt as limp as noodles.
The smattering of applause and wolf whistles shunted her back to earth. She stared at the forest of microphones trying to break through the wall of security, her wild moment of rebellion evaporating.
The phrase “out of the frying pan and into the fire” once more reverberated through her. “Now they’ll think I’m sleeping with you as well.”
Zane’s arm locked around her waist as he propelled her through the reporters and into the room in which the press conference was being held. “Think of it this way, if you’re with me, at least now they’ll wonder who dumped whom.”
Forty-five minutes later the official part of the press conference was over. Lucas and Carla, Lucas’s mother, Maria Therese, and Constantine’s P.A. Tomas had left in a flurry of publicity over their engagement announcement and the further announcement that Sienna and Constantine were expecting a baby.
Zane flowed smoothly to his feet. “Now we leave.”
Relieved that Lucas’s announcement had taken the unnerving focus of the press off her, Lilah hooked the strap of her handbag over her shoulder.
Two steps onto the still crowded floor and an elegant blonde backed by a TV crew shoved a mike at Zane. “Can we expect another engagement announcement soon?”
“No comment.” Zane lengthened his stride, bypassing the TV crew and the question as he propelled her toward the elevator.
Even though Lilah knew that Zane’s lack of response was the only sensible option, his comment left her feeling oddly flat and definitely manipulated.
The end of the nonrelationship with Lucas had not mattered. Standing on the pavement the previous evening while a reporter had snapped her witnessing Lucas and Carla locked in a passionate clinch had not been a feel-good moment. But, as embarrassing as her association with Zane’s brother had turned out to be, after the toe-curling intimacy of the kisses in front of the media, in that moment she felt the most betrayed by Zane.
Five
Zane hustled Lilah out into a private underground parking lot and opened the door of a gleaming, low-slung black Corvette. He waited for Lilah to climb into the passenger-side seat then walked around the vehicle and slid behind the wheel.
He had been annoyed enough with Lucas to want to stake a claim on Lilah, although he hadn’t planned on doing it in quite such a public way.
He also hadn’t expected Lilah to kiss him back quite so enthusiastically. Although ever since they had hit the elevator on the way down she had been cool and reserved and irritatingly distant.
He lifted a hand as Spiros and the two security guards climbed into a black sedan.
He fastened his seat belt. The back of his hand brushed Lilah’s. The automatic jolt he received from the brush of her skin against his increased his irritable temper. A temper that, just days ago, he had not known he’d possessed.
The dark sedan the bodyguards had climbed into cruised out of the parking building. Seconds later, Zane followed, emerging into the glare of daylight.
He transferred his gaze to the woman beside him. Dressed in her signature ivory and white, her hair smoothed into a loose, elegant confection on top of her head, smooth teardrop pearls dangling from tiny lobes, Lilah looked both cool and drop-dead sexy. The fact that he had kissed off her lipstick, leaving her lips bare, only succeeded in making her even more sensually alluring.
Grimly he noted that the same addictive fascination that had tempted him to lose his head two years ago was still at work. Lilah Cole was openly and unashamedly husband-hunting. She was the kind of woman he couldn’t afford in his life, and yet it seemed he couldn’t resist her.
Lilah stared straight ahead, her purse gripped in her lap. “I know I’ve been invited to lunch with your family, but with everything that’s happened, maybe that isn’t such a good idea. If you drop me off, I can get a taxi back to the office.”
Zane’s jaw tightened at the subdued, worried note in Lilah’s voice. Lucas should have known better; he should have left her alone. “It’s lunchtime. You need to eat.”
She looked out of the passenger window. “I had cereal and toast for breakfast. I’m not exactly hungry.”
Zane found the thought of Lilah crunching her way through cereal and toast before facing the press oddly endearing. He wondered what kind of cereal she ate then crushed his curiosity about her.
He braked for a set of lights. “Lucas would probably be relieved if you didn’t show.”
The words were ruthless, but he had gotten used to seeing Lilah calm and businesslike, with all her ducks in a row. For two years it had been a quality that had irritated him profoundly. Incomprehensibly, he now found himself looking for ways to get her back to her normal, ultraorganized self.
Her gaze snapped to his. “What Lucas wants or does not want is of no concern to me.”
Zane felt suddenly happier than he had in days. The lights changed, he put the car in gear and accelerated through the intersection. “I can take you somewhere else to eat if you want.”
Her head whipped around, her green gaze shooting fire. “On second thought, no.”
“Good. Because we’re here.”
He watched Lilah study the elegant portico of the Michelin star restaurant as if the fluted columns represented the gates of Hades. “You’re a manipulative man.”
“I’m an Atraeus.”
“Sometimes I forget.”
He found himself instantly on the defensive. “Because I’m also a Salvatore?”
He did not voice the other lurking fear that had reared its head since his conversation with Lucas, that it was because he was only twenty-four.
She frowned, as if his shadowy past had not occurred to her. “Because sometimes you’re…nice.”
“Nice.” His brows jerked together.
She looked embarrassed. “I read the article about you on the charity website. I know that you wear those three earrings to help kids relate to you when you do counseling work. You can try all you like to prove otherwise but, from where I come from, that’s nice.”
Lilah breathed a sigh of relief when Zane pulled in at her apartment’s tiny parking area. Lunch had been just as stilted and uncomfortable as she had imagined. Thankfully, the service had been ultraquick and they had been able to leave early.
Zane walked around and opened her door. Lilah climbed out of the low bucket seat, acutely aware of the shadowy cleavage visible in the V of her jacket and of the length of thigh exposed by the shortness of her skirt. When she had dressed that morning, the suit had seemed elegant and circumspect but it was not made for struggling out of a low slung ’Vette.
Zane’s gaze locked with hers, making her feel breathless. She clamped down on the uncharacteristic desire to boldly meet his gaze.
Arriving at the front door of her apartment with a man was what she liked to refer to as a dating “red zone.” She and Zane were not dating, but the situation had somehow become more
fraught than any dating scenario she had ever experienced. After the kiss earlier, it would not be a good idea to allow Zane inside her house.
She gave him a bright, professional smile. “It’s okay, you don’t have to see me in. Thanks for the lift.”
Zane closed the ’Vette’s door and depressed the key lock. “Not a problem. I’ll see you to your door.”
“That won’t be necessary.” She aimed another smile somewhere in his general direction as she rummaged in her handbag for her door key.
Zane fell into step beside her. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a reporter staked out over there.”
Lilah’s head jerked up. She recognized the car that had been parked outside of Lucas’s apartment the previous night. Her heart sank. “He must have followed us.”
“The car was here when we arrived. According to Lucas, you were the one who was followed last night. The press has probably been staking you out ever since you returned from Medinos. In which case, I’d better see you safely inside.”
Resigning herself, Lilah walked quickly to the large garage-style door, her cheeks warming as she saw the down-at-heel building through Zane’s eyes. A converted warehouse in one of the shabbier suburbs, she had chosen the building because it had been cheerful, arty and spectacularly cheap. The ground floor apartment included a huge light-filled north-facing room that was perfect for painting.
Zane, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice how shabby the exterior was, a reminder that he had not spent all of his life in luxurious surroundings.
Unlocking the door, she stepped inside the nondescript foyer, with its concrete floors and cream-washed walls.
Zane slid the door to enclose them in the shadowy space. “How many people live here?”
“A dozen or so.” She led the way down a narrow, dim corridor and unlocked her front door. Made of unprepossessing sheet metal, it had once led to some kind of workshop.