by Various
She had failed to win a place with any company.
After that nothing seemed to matter much. She had lost everything she cared about, and it simply became a matter of survival, which meant finding somewhere to live and a means of income. The advertisement for the job at the Pink Flamingo had caught her eye because it contained the word dancing.
It was only as she’d stepped into the beer-and-nicotine-scented gloom when she’d gone to see about the job that she realised what kind of dancing it was. Horrified, she had told the oily man into whose seedy office she was shown that she had made a mistake, but after running his eyes shrewdly over her he had offered her a job behind the bar.
Realising she had no choice but to accept it had been one of the lowest points of her life.
But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She had survived the past two months by using the self-discipline she had acquired during her years at ballet school to block out the bad stuff and focus on small pleasures and triumphs: sharing a coffee with Kiki in Larchfield’s shabby kitchen, seeing the pride on the faces of the little girls in her ballet class when they learned a new position. And now this…relaxing in a warm, scented bath as the twilight deepened beyond the windows and the scent of gardenia filled her senses. This was bliss. Heaven. In fact the pleasure of the moment was so exquisite that it almost made the past two miserable months worth it, just to feel this good.
She breathed in again, lifting her feet out of the water and resting them on the edge of the bath, flexing her toes and feeling the taut muscles in her insteps soften. The only sound was the trickling of the water, and the soft sigh of her own breathing, and she suddenly realised how much she’d missed silence. At Balfour she had taken that—like so much else—completely for granted. She simply hadn’t realised what a luxury it was to lie in bed and not be kept awake by cars revving their engines in the street below, by people shouting and the noises of fights and drunken laughter.
She closed her eyes, steadying the rhythm of her breathing, emptying her mind and consciously relaxing her body. Her chin sank beneath the water as the tension ebbed from her neck. She should probably get out, she thought distantly, but it felt too good just to lie there. She inhaled, exhaled, slipping farther down in the water, losing herself in the swirling darkness behind her closed eyes as warmth and peace enveloped her, and she finally felt safe enough to let go…
She came to the second her nose touched the water. Instinctively sucking in a breath she was suddenly choking on water, gasping and spluttering as her lungs filled, flailing wildly as she struggled to raise herself upright.
Someone was holding her, lifting her high out of the water. Angels? She waited for the moment when she would look down and see herself lying there in the bath, but her body felt all too present as she felt the iron-hard chest she was being held against, and the tawny tiger’s eyes that were looking down into her face were a far cry from angelic.
She wasn’t dead, then.
It was much worse than that.
She was lying in Luis Cordoba’s arms, and she was stark naked.
She wasn’t dead.
Seeing her like that—so still, her hair floating around her face like seaweed, and not a breath or a ripple disturbing the mirror-flat surface of the water—he had felt a moment of panic, along with the painful stirring of memories long buried.
Dropping her slippery, glistening body unceremoniously onto the bed he turned to pick up the bathrobe she’d dropped on the floor beside the bath.
‘Here. Put this on,’ he drawled acidly. ‘There’s little point in bothering to save you from drowning if you then catch your death of cold.’
Still coughing, she sat up, bringing her long legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms tightly around them. Grabbing the bathrobe from him she clutched it against her. ‘Don’t look,’ she croaked, ‘Please…’
With elaborate courtesy Luis turned and walked over to the large windows, staring out into the blue dusk, his heart still beating sickeningly hard. ‘Considering you work in a lap-dancing club, isn’t the modesty a bit misplaced?’
‘I don’t dance there—I work behind the bar,’ she said through chattering teeth. And then she added almost in an undertone, ‘I don’t dance anywhere any more.’
‘Can I turn round now?’ Why did he feel relieved?
‘Yes.’
She was sitting huddled up against the bed’s plump, padded headboard. Her damp hair was pushed back from her face, emphasising the sharpness of her cheekbones and the shadows beneath her eyes. Eyes that were looking at him as if she were expecting him to tie her up and ravish her at knifepoint.
‘I’m sure I wouldn’t have drowned,’ she said miserably. ‘I would definitely have woken up when—’
Luis cut her off with a sharp, impatient sound. ‘Forgive me for not testing that theory. Next time I’ll wait until you’ve been under the water for a few minutes before I haul you out.’
And have one more life on his conscience.
‘There won’t be a next time.’ She drew the robe more tightly around her, pulled her knees more closely to her body, her eyes sapphire pools of anguish. ‘There shouldn’t have been a this time. What were you doing watching me in the bath?’
‘You didn’t answer when I knocked, so I came in,’ he said coldly. ‘I half expected to find you’d escaped through the French windows and bolted into the night, but I wasn’t prepared for a suicide bid.’
‘It was not—’ she retorted hotly, and was about to argue more when there was a knock on the door.
‘That’ll be dinner,’
‘Dinner? But—’
She sprang to her feet as two pretty room-service staff brought in cumbersome trolleys laden with silver-domed dishes and, with much blushing and fluttering of eyelashes, asked Luis where he’d like them. He ignored the obvious double entendre that would have sprung from his lips without a second thought in his old life. ‘Obrigado. Just leave them there,’ he said, with the briefest of smiles before turning back to Emily. ‘You seemed too tired to want to go down to the restaurant. I thought you’d prefer to eat up here. Is that OK?’
Emily tried not to let the shock that ricocheted through her show on her face. She waited until the door had closed behind the pretty waitresses before turning to him, unable to keep the outrage from her voice. ‘No, it’s not OK! It’s impossible. I bet they think that we’re…’ She could feel a tide of colour wash into her cheeks. ‘That we’ve…’
Utterly unmoved by her discomfort Luis was already uncovering dishes and pouring wine. ‘Just had sex?’ he suggested.
‘Exactly!’
‘Frankly, querida, I doubt it.’ Coming towards the bed with a plate of smoked-salmon sandwiches and two glasses of wine Luis smiled lazily, but his eyes were cold. ‘If we had you wouldn’t be so bad tempered. Now, come and eat.’
She watched in alarm as he swung his long legs onto the bed and leaned back against the pile of pillows. ‘B-but I’m not dressed,’ she stammered.
‘Believe me, you look a lot more respectable like that than in that awful cardigan.’
She took a deep breath, determined to rise above his taunting. ‘Look, I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want—’
But Luis cut her off, his voice suddenly edged with steel. ‘The thing is, amada, right now I’m not overly bothered about what you want. This isn’t just about you, I’m afraid. It’s about your family. Your father. He’s just lost his wife—do you really think now was a good time for him to cope with losing a daughter too?’
Emily gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I think it was the perfect time, since he’d just gained another one to take my place.’
Luis speared her with his gold-flecked eyes and nodded slowly. ‘I thought as much. This is about Mia, isn’t it?’
‘No. No, it’s not about Mia at all,’ Emily said despairingly, sinking down onto the bed, as far away from him as possible, and taking a huge mouthful of wine. As its heat stole down inside her she could
feel her defences slipping, melting away like snow in the glare of the sun. After two months of bottling it all up the urge to talk was suddenly overwhelming. ‘I have nothing against Mia herself—she seems very sweet. It’s hardly her fault.’
‘What’s not her fault?’
Pain knotted in Emily’s throat, making it difficult to swallow the mouthful of smoked-salmon sandwich. ‘That my father—sorry, our father—’ she corrected, her voice dripping with irony ‘—was so weak and stupid that he had a meaningless one-night stand with a woman he’d never met the night before his wedding and got her pregnant.’
She waited. Waited for his expression of surprise at this revelation about Oscar Balfour—irreproachable pillar of the establishment.
It didn’t come.
‘No,’ he agreed nonchalantly, taking another sandwich and devouring it in one bite. ‘Accidents happen. You certainly couldn’t blame Mia for the circumstances of her own conception. Anyway, what does it matter now? Oscar still married your mother and remained happily married to her for—what—twenty years?’
She frowned, staring down at the crust of bread between her fingers, crumbling it into tiny pieces. ‘But it was based on lies,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘A good relationship can only be based on trust and truth. Love means not having secrets from someone, not having to hide anything.’
‘Does it really?’ he said softly, and with infinite scorn, as if what she had said was utterly facile. ‘And what if there are things the other person would be better off not knowing?’
She lifted her head, forcing herself to look at him. ‘Better for them, or better for you?’
He looked back at her. His eyes were narrowed, but for a fraction of a second she thought she saw something in them that was almost like uncertainty. ‘Better for you both.’
‘You have to trust the person enough to forgive you,’ she said, emotion turning her voice husky. ‘You have to give them a chance.’
He turned his head away from her and looked down. A lock of hair fell down over his eyes, making him look suddenly strangely unguarded. Emily felt a painful lurching sensation in her chest.
‘And your father didn’t do that?’ he said tonelessly. ‘He didn’t tell her, even when Mia came?’
Emily shook her head, not wanting to remember those dark days after Mia had shown up. Days that slipped by like sand in a bottle. ‘My father told us all to make sure she didn’t suspect a thing.’ She gave a bleak smile. ‘Mia pretended to be the new housekeeper, which wasn’t a great start to her life as a Balfour, but Mum had such little time left by then.’
Luis shrugged, leaning over to pick up the wine bottle from the bedside table. ‘There you are, then. At least he spared her the pain of finding out.’
‘What? So you think that makes it OK?’ Angrily she snatched her glass away just as he was about to fill it, so that wine spilled onto her bare legs.
A muscle jumped beneath the bronzed skin of his cheek. The room suddenly seemed very still. ‘I think it doesn’t alter the fact that your parents had a good, happy marriage,’ he said slowly.
Emily gave a snort of low, cynical laughter. ‘Oh, right. Your definition of a happy marriage being one where you can screw around as often as you like and it doesn’t matter as long as the other person doesn’t find out? What a lucky woman the future Crown Princess of Santosa is.’
‘That’s different.’ As if in slow motion she watched him reach out and catch the drip of wine that was running down her shin with his thumb. ‘When I marry it’ll be a business arrangement. Love will have no part in it, and I expect the future Crown Princess of Santosa will fully understand that.’
Emily turned to stone beneath his touch, terrified by the fire that was crackling along her nerves, like the fuse of a bomb. ‘A business arrangement?’ she rasped. ‘The terms of which will make it perfectly OK for you to sleep with whoever you like. And will she be free to do the same?’
‘As long as she’s discreet,’ he said softly, following the wet trail of the wine down her leg and over her ankle. ‘Jealousy is a nasty disease to which, thankfully, I’m completely immune. I’m a realist. Marriage fulfils a lot of needs—in my case practical, in your father’s case emotional. He loved Lillian, and one last fling before his wedding doesn’t alter that. It meant nothing.’
‘That’s the bit I don’t get,’ Emily said, forcing her mind to stay focused on the subject, and not on the sparks of pleasure his touch had ignited beneath her skin. ‘Why do it, then? Why have sex with someone if it means nothing?’
In the soft lamp light his face was beautiful but impossible to read. Thoughtfully he slid his hand beneath her instep, turning her foot round and studying it. Emily felt it flex helplessly, her toes curling downwards as if they had a life of their own. All the nerves of her body seemed suddenly to be concentrated in that foot, making it tingle as if with pins and needles. Distantly she remembered the sensation she used to get in her feet before a performance, how it felt as if they were coming alive.
‘If you have to ask the question you probably wouldn’t understand the answer,’ Luis said dryly, his thumb massaging her high arch. ‘Sexual attraction isn’t something you can rationalize, or sometimes even control. It’s called being human. Oscar might be your father but he’s still just a human being.’
‘I know that.’ Her voice was quivering and breathless.
‘And yet it seems to me that you want to punish him for it.’ He ran his fingertips over the hard, shiny calluses at the base of her toes, adding softly, ‘You have the most extraordinary feet.’
Sharply she pulled her foot from his grasp and stood, pacing over to the fireplace, desperate to get far enough away from him to think clearly—focus on the conversation they were having, not the very separate line of communication her body suddenly seemed intent on pursuing. ‘It’s not like that. I’m not punishing him. I just feel…betrayed. Everything feels like it’s falling apart…with my mother and Mia and now Zoe and that…that…stuff in the paper today. It’s like the whole family is damned or something—like some awful fairy tale where the wishes that the good fairy has given to the princesses turn out to be curses. The money and the good looks—they’ve just brought temptations that it seems no one can resist.’
‘Except you.’ He had got up and followed her to where she stood. Her back was towards him but in the mirror above the fireplace their eyes met and she felt her blood heat as he smiled right into them. ‘As I recall, you resisted most forcefully last year.’
‘Yes.’ She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. ‘Because I want more than that.’
He dropped his gaze, and she felt a split second of relief. But then he slid his hand beneath her hair and she stiffened again, gripped by emotions and sensations she couldn’t identify or control. Or resist.
‘Than what?’ He said softly, gently stroking the back of her neck.
‘Than quick…meaningless…sex.’ She gasped.
‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’ In contrast to her own voice, his was as smooth and slow and rich as sun-warmed honey.
‘And what makes you think I haven’t?’
It was a desperate attempt at bravado, but in the mirror she caught a brief glimpse of the golden gleam in his eyes as he bent his head and brushed his lips against her ear. Instinctively she flinched violently away from the thousand-watt electric shock that his touch sparked through her whole body.
He laughed softly. ‘That.’
Trembling, breathing as heavily as if she’d just run a marathon, Emily faced him. Cheeks flaming, she pulled the collar of the robe up around her neck and raised her chin defiantly and attempted what she hoped was a scornful laugh. ‘Just because I’m not willing to fall into bed with you the moment you click your fingers.’
Luis caught hold of the tie belt of the robe and pulled her gently towards him. ‘I see,’ he said gravely, wickedness glittering in the depths of his eyes, ‘you expect foreplay too, do you? Something like this…’<
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She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could make the words come out his lips had covered hers and darkness had exploded inside her head, obliterating everything but him: the heat and closeness of his body, the scent and taste of him. She was shocked rigid, shocked into helplessness, unable to think, to respond sensibly. She should be pulling away, but all she seemed to be capable of was standing as still and stiff as Joan of Arc at the stake with the flames licking up around her…
Devouring her.
She was trembling uncontrollably, parting her lips beneath the firm pressure of his, opening her mouth to the gentle probing of his tongue. A whispered, shuddering sigh escaped her as he moved his mouth from hers and began to kiss a path downwards to the angle of her jaw and her earlobe, and the hand that had been resting on her hip slid across her midriff, making her quiver and gasp as the feelings that had haunted her unsettled dreams since that night at Balfour zigzagged through her again.
He laughed softly, a warm breath that fanned her ear and spread goose bumps over her skin as he straightened up and took her chin between his fingers, tilting her face up to his so that she had no alternative but to look into his eyes.
It was as if the sun had gone out. They were as dark and cold and empty as a moonless midnight sky.
‘I thought as much,’ he murmured in a voice that sent shivers down her spine. ‘Beneath that prim exterior you’re human too, Miss Balfour.’
Emily jerked backwards, blinking dumbly, her head reeling as sense returned and she realised that she’d just walked right into the trap he’d sprung for her. ‘How could you?’ she whispered, shrinking away from him, pulling the robe around her as if it were a suit of armour. ‘You did that on purpose. You manipulated me. You made me—’
‘Made you? No. I merely showed you how easy it is to be led into temptation. Just remember that before you stand in judgement of others.’
He turned and walked across the room in the direction of the French doors. Emily ducked her head, gritting her teeth against the tears of shame and fury that burned like red-hot needles behind her eyes, just willing him to be gone and leave her alone with her humiliation and her hot, shameful longing.