Pride After Her Fall

by Lucy Ellis

  Lorelei had no intention of sitting on a shelf. She had seen too much of it growing up with Raymond. Womanisers left her cold. If Nash wanted to pursue her, he was going to have to do just that.

  No? Nash looked long and hard at that unexpected negative. No?

  ‘Can I ask if it’s personal, or Paris?’

  ‘I’m fond of Paris,’ she demurred. ‘But not tonight.’

  Nash regarded her bright curls, her glossy slightly parted lips, her guarded eyes watching him.

  ‘I’d be happy to go to dinner with you here in Monaco,’ she suggested slowly.

  So much for the disappearing hot blonde.

  He almost smiled. Almost.

  For some reason he didn’t really mind.

  She had the brakes on. He could almost see the marks on the road.

  He didn’t have to think about it. Any intention he’d had of fast-forwarding this evening suddenly seemed crass, and in his mind’s eye he’d already put it aside in favour of a long, slow build-up. Lorelei, clearly, would be worth it. Given the slightly haughty look on her face, she set a high value on herself—and who was he to argue with that?

  ‘Monaco it is,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘THAT woman, she’s got a media profile.’

  John Cullinan’s voice came stridently over the speakerphone.

  Nash strolled naked across the bedroom of his penthouse apartment, towelling his hair dry.

  He had left Lorelei’s home only a few hours before and felt comfortable that he’d dealt with his unlooked-for attraction to her. He was old-style enough to appreciate her definite No, not tonight, not Paris. It showed her to be discriminating, which pleased him, but he was confident a few dates would suffice and she’d let him into her bed. It was the primary goal.

  He liked to set goals.

  At his non-response Cullinan continued, ‘Her da’s banged up in one of those low-security places out in the countryside. There was a celebrity trial a couple of years back. He defrauded a washed-up French actress out of her savings. But the star turn was the daughter. She turned up every day at the trial in a different outfit, stole the show. Seemed to enjoy the limelight.’

  Nash threw down the towel and checked the time by his watch sitting on the bedside table.

  ‘She doesn’t even work for that goddamned charity.’

  Nash stilled.

  ‘Who doesn’t work for the charity?’ he asked, nice and low.

  ‘Lorelei St James. And, get this: there’s a string of high-profile men she’s been linked to. That dot-com billionaire who dropped a fortune on the casino last year, a Hollywood producer, the financier Damiano Massena—pretty much any guy with a bit of a name and she’s there. She targeted you today, boyo.’

  Nash was caught off guard.

  ‘You’ve got an overactive imagination, John.’

  ‘Just doing my job. You can’t afford the press. This woman likes the press.’

  ‘Don’t they all?’ Nash muttered under his breath. ‘The press conference is all you need to worry about, mate. Are we clear?’

  ‘Clear.’

  Nash cut the connection, running a hand through his damp hair.

  He didn’t want this information. But now he had it, what was he going to do with it?

  There was one option, he thought. He didn’t have to do anything about it. So she had a crim for an old man? Big deal. So did he. She had a past. Again, big deal. So did he. She was a beautiful grown-up woman who had lived in the world just like him, not a boring ingénue. Part of what attracted him to her was that life experience, her maturity.

  It would be highly suspicious if she didn’t have a past.

  She had a past with ‘a string of high-profile men.’

  He stood over his suit, laid out over the back of a chair—the suit he’d pictured Lorelei pressing her long, lithe body against, with him in it, as he danced with her, resting his hand on that sweet place at the bottom of her spine.

  He laid that same hand on the back of his neck, where the tension seemed to be gathering at a rate of knots.

  He pictured Lorelei in the arms of another man, and another. The woman in the backless gown remained the same, the suit was the same, but different guys. He frowned and dismissed it.

  He reasoned that Cullinan didn’t like her because she’d shown him up in the American Bar. The recollection of which had a bit of a smile tugging on his lips.

  Relaxing, he retreated into the bathroom, palmed his electric razor and went to work on a beard that would be back in the morning.

  Besides, if she was after some limelight wouldn’t she have jumped at Paris?

  How many media-savvy socialite blondes had he walked out of restaurants and into a posse of click-happy paparazzi who’d just happened to get a clue as to where he was dining and with whom?

  He was accustomed to women with agendas. Years ago, when he’d still been green about the limelight, a young banking heiress had decided she wanted a racing-car driver. He’d been twenty-four, idealistic and he’d put a ring on her finger. Not an engagement ring—he hadn’t been that naive—but he’d imagined that was what it took to assure her fidelity. She’d slept around on him from the beginning, and when they’d broken up she’d hit the media with the credentials of a seasoned campaigner.

  It was the origin of all the stories about him. His heiress had turned him into a legend of infidelity, citing women he had never known. Her public profile had assured that she’d gone on to a career as consort to a series of high-profile men.

  He’d gone on to a legendary driving career and a reputation for moving through women faster than he sped around any track. The media had been insatiable for stories about him. He had fed them with his policy of never lingering with one particular woman too long, there was no getting away from that, but he had never courted public attention. It had come after him, and consequently he had no illusions left about the negative side of publicity, about its effect on his attempts to lead a semi-normal life, and especially about the women who hustled their way into that life.

  Yet here he was, deluding himself…

  The razor dropped into the basin and he let it buzz there uselessly, leaning the heels of his hands on the sink and eyeing himself in the mirror.

  Did he really need to give himself the lecture? At this stage in his life? Hadn’t he already been here before?

  If Cullinan was right, this was a woman who liked the limelight, who liked famous men, and she’d turned up at that hotel today and lied to his face that she had no idea who he was.

  He vented a dry laugh. He’d been here so many times it was like a stuck record. In former days he would have just taken what was on offer and ignored the fallout. But he had more to protect this time around. Because right now, with his racing career once again poised in the wings, he was going to do things differently.

  His expression hardened.

  He knew what he had to do. He just didn’t want to do it. But he couldn’t in good conscience sleep with a woman and then dump her. He could be ruthless in his personal relationships, but he wasn’t a bastard.

  He snagged his cell before he could change his mind and put through a call.

  She answered after several rings. ‘Bonjour, Nash.’

  Her voice was lilting, husky…inviting him in.

  For a second he forgot all his misgivings and he was back on the side of that highway, watching her standing uncertainly by her car. The difficulty he’d had in driving away…

  Something about this wasn’t familiar. None of this was familiar. This. Her.

  No, he hadn’t done this before…

  Damn.

  ‘I’m ringing to cancel,’ he said bluntly.

  There was a silence.

  ‘It wasn’t a good idea to begin with. I’ve got a lot of work on and I can’t give you the time you deserve.’ He knew these lines by heart. ‘I apologise if I’ve messed up your evening’s plans.’

 
He waited for the explosion. In his experience a woman on the make rarely remained neutral.

  ‘You didn’t know this earlier today?’

  She didn’t sound angry, she sounded genuinely at a loss, her voice almost uncertain, and for a moment it loosened his grip on all that life experience. He hesitated, because right now he was remembering he’d seen a lot of other things in Lorelei St James beneath the glossy exterior. Things he couldn’t think about now or they’d undermine what was the right decision. The only decision.

  ‘I did, but you’re a beautiful girl, Lorelei. I let that distract me.’ He paused to let it sink in. ‘But, like I said, it’s a busy time.’

  ‘I distracted you?’ Her tone had cooled to match his. ‘Do you ask women to dinner who don’t distract you, Nash?’

  He released some of the tension in his chest. ‘Okay, I’ll lay it out for you.’ He made his voice harder, grittier. ‘The reality is you’ve got a media profile, Lori, and that’s not going to work for me.’

  There was a flat, astonished silence.

  ‘Let me see if I understand this,’ she said slowly. ‘You no longer want to take me to dinner because you’ve read something about me in the newspaper?’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t want to take you to dinner because I don’t want to read about me in the newspaper.’

  He knew she’d taken his meaning because there was a pregnant pause.

  ‘I’m sure that gets old for you quite fast,’ she said, in a stiff little voice he didn’t quite recognise as hers.

  She paused but only to catch her breath.

  ‘Is this about my father?’

  He heard a note of that desperation she’d displayed on the street with her car, felt the give of his tightly leashed control and the threatened spill of emotions and desires he refused to give in to. Something about the way she kept going, revealing herself so openly, reminding him how unable to protect herself she had seemed this afternoon, made this intensely personal—and it was working against his usual detachment.

  He focused on pulling it back. He was good at this. Reining it in. Being single-minded. He reminded himself it had been a long day, and this woman had contributed to some of that length with her theatrics.

  ‘No, sweetheart, it’s about you and your lack of visible support and me being flesh and blood. I made a mistake.’

  He put finality in those four words. The conversation needed to end.

  There was a sudden flash of silence.

  His words echoed back at him, the harshness of the message he was giving her making him flinch even as he knew he’d given women the brush-off before. Blunt always worked, and the only casualty of this would probably be her ego.

  ‘Mais, oui, you’re a busy man.’

  This time the heat in her voice was unmistakable and he relaxed a fraction. Angry was good. He could put an angry, indignant woman behind him.

  ‘How inconvenient of me to distract you from what’s important,’ she bit out. ‘Here was I, thinking you were a gentleman, but you’re just a man, aren’t you? Like all the rest.’

  He heard the catch in her voice.

  ‘And not a very nice one.’

  The phone went dead.

  He dumped the cell, frustrated. For a moment he felt her in his arms again, the warmth of her, the delicacy, saw the way her tilted eyes grew round when she was uncertain. It was that uncertainty he’d heard threaded through her voice just now, and for a moment he knew he’d hurt more than her ego. For a moment he considered the alternative that she might have been genuine. That the witty, surprisingly refreshing woman he’d talked to in her kitchen this afternoon was the genuine article.

  Then he dismissed it.

  She was right. He wasn’t a very nice man and that had brought him a long way.

  What remained was the fact he’d blown off two meetings to spend time with a woman he didn’t know, and it was time to play catch up. He hadn’t got anywhere without being single-minded. He needed to get his focus back where it belonged.

  He dressed, made the calls necessary to bring the people who could make things happen together.

  Santo’s Bar. Half an hour.

  *

  It was a quick drive from his apartment to the waterside bar. Nash, however, found himself taking the scenic route, driving down the glittery Monaco boulevards, remembering the first time he’d raced here. The narrow grid, the excitement of the danger inherent in this course above all other road circuits… He’d won and his life had never been the same again.

  It had been an extraordinary ride—that race and all the races that had come before and after it, building up his motor-design business, Blue, the journey to this town, to this moment. It had happened against the odds, given his beginnings. He’d come from a background of squanderers. Money, talent, opportunity—all squandered on drink and women and bad bets. And that was just his old man.

  Success had come quickly to him. Probably too quickly. He’d had a raft-load of hangers-on at the beginning of his career whom he’d bailed out financially. His father, his brother, old friends… They’d all viewed him as a lucky bastard, but he knew different. He’d worked bloody hard to get where he was, and he had learned to hold on to what he’d earned. He damn well didn’t need another person who wanted something from him…

  And just like that he was thinking about Jack. His brother.

  He wasn’t risking it again.

  His expression hardened and he told himself if his gut was tied in knots it was only because Lorelei St James was clearly a premium lay and he wouldn’t be having any. Animal attraction. It was why even now he swore the scent of her was still in the car, making him restless, angry, and making it hard to remember why he was denying himself.

  *

  Had she simply imagined it?

  Had he really blown her off?

  How had he phrased it? She had a media profile.

  It was the trial. It could only be the trial.

  Lorelei sank down onto the chaise in her bedroom and thought hard. What else could he have discovered? It wouldn’t be difficult. She knew she had a social profile. She never Googled herself but she was aware that, like her friends, her name came up on different gossip websites.

  She’d dated some known names in the past, but not seriously. She’d never been serious…or only once, when she was still a young girl and had thought a man telling you he loved you was reason enough to start planning a future—until you discovered he loved what he imagined was your trust fund. She’d never had one. Just a well-to-do grandmaman who’d kept her on a short leash and a small inheritance now gone.

  Grandy had left most of her fortune to her charities. Lorelei knew she wouldn’t have been human if she didn’t sometimes think wistfully of how useful even a fraction of that money would be now, but she understood that Antoinette was punishing Raymond and not her. She had known one day Lorelei would be bailing him out.

  Inevitably that day had come to pass. Unfortunately it had put the one thing Grandy had left her at risk: the villa.

  But she wasn’t thinking about that now. She needed to think about filling her evening, seeing as Nash Blue had changed his mind…

  Possibly because he’d found a better option. A woman who was happy to go to Paris with him.

  Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. She snatched up her phone and began scrolling through the address book. Two could play at that game. She had simply masses of people she could call up…men who would break their necks tearing up the hill to take her to dinner. Her thumb hovered over names. Her heart fluttered hard in her throat. Why couldn’t she just call?

  Because… Because…

  Fifi jumped up onto her lap, trying to climb her chest.

  ‘Because I didn’t want to be with anyone but him tonight,’ she said, burying her face in her baby’s warm fur. ‘Dammit, Fifi, I was looking forward to tonight. I was… Oh, I’m being ridiculous. I’ll make a call.’

  She pressed Damiano Massena’s number and he answe
red almost immediately. Clearly he didn’t have a problem with her being a so-called distraction! But then, they had known each other for years on the party circuit. He was in town. He knew of an opening. It was always fun to go to an opening, and she knew he wouldn’t press for anything more than her company. They’d sorted out that little crease in their friendship years ago. He was a womaniser and she was strictly hearts and flowers—not his type. He’d pick her up in an hour.

  ‘Make it half an hour,’ she insisted, pulling down the zipper on her dress. The last thing she wanted to do was sit around on her own.

  She ended the call and let the dusky pink romantic confection she had chosen so carefully to wear tonight drop to her feet. She stepped out of it, leaving it puddled on the floor as she headed to the wardrobe. She’d put on something short and funky and guaranteed to get her all the male attention she could handle.

  She tugged down a little gold party dress from its hanger. She’d go out, gossip, dance, amuse herself. Forget this had ever happened.

  But she’d hold on to the fact he’d spoken so flatly, unemotionally, allowing nothing to alleviate his message: I’ve changed my mind. You’ve got nothing I want.

  Turning around, she caught her reflection in the mirror—a tall, slender girl in an ivory slip and a simple string of pearls, who had dressed tonight with a particular man in mind. Her make-up understated, her hair smoothed carefully back into a deceptively simple knot.

  The woman she actually was.

  Unexpectedly a surge of sadness welled up from some place deep inside her. Was she never going to be allowed to be herself?

  Lorelei inhaled sharply, ruthlessly dragging it all back in.

  Irritated with her thoughts, and herself, she peeled off the slip and began the process of dressing as the woman she needed to be.

  *

  Santo’s Bar was noisy, but it had shadowy corners where a couple of famous faces and the two founders of one of motor racing’s more famous constructors could blend into the dark maroon leather and oak décor.

  Nash sat on a light beer. He’d been off the hard stuff for almost four years. He didn’t miss it, but every now and then a glass of single malt would have hit the spot. This was one of those nights.