by Annie West
When she whirled past him on the arm of her blond partner, Orsino’s breath snared. Her skin had the lustre of pearls and he caught the fleeting scent of crushed berries on the air.
Avidly he traced the thrust of her breasts, barely restrained by the dress’s low décolletage, the perfect slope of her bare shoulders and the delectable curve of her waist. A king’s ransom in gold and rubies glittered at her throat and wrists, yet she outshone them easily.
Every man here desired her. He knew it, felt it in their rapt attention. But, he reminded himself, she’d been even sexier last night as she’d seduced him before the fire in the privacy of their shared sitting room.
Heat poured through him and it took a moment to realise the dancing had stopped and the director was giving instructions at the far end of the room.
He shouldn’t be here. He should be wrestling with those figures on the computer, but after last night Orsino couldn’t settle to work. Last night something had happened. He wasn’t sure what, except that he felt different.
Because Poppy hadn’t scoffed at his work? Because she’d been interested and helpful? No, the difference had more to do with a slip-through-the-fingers sense that they, the two of them, had changed.
He shook his head. His imagination was working overtime. That’s what came of sitting around, inactive, for so long.
‘You’re back.’ He turned to see a man emerge from the throng of extras and join him on the sidelines. It was the one he’d chatted to on the riverbank.
‘You’re a hairdresser?’ Orsino gestured to the bag of supplies in his hand.
‘Stylist, we prefer to be called.’ Then he grinned. ‘Keeping busy with this scene, too. Most of the models don’t have hair long enough to be worn up like they did a few hundred years ago, so we’ve had to improvise. Your Poppy is the exception.’
Orsino ignored the trickle of warmth across his breastbone at the sound of ‘your Poppy’.
‘But her hair’s down around her shoulders.’ Had he missed something?
The other man shrugged. ‘Technically, to fit the time period, she should wear it up, too, but what a waste that would be. Besides, Mischa insisted that in this scene she had to look sultry. As if she’d just got out of bed with her lover.’
Orsino stared, watching as Poppy draped herself closer to her partner while the lighting was adjusted again.
‘Mischa?’ His voice seemed to come from far away.
His companion gave him a curious look. ‘The one who discovered Poppy when she was fifteen. Of course he was a photographer then, not Baudin’s creative director, but they’ve worked together for years.’
Orsino choked down a tide of bile and fury. Mischa and Poppy.
Oh, yes, he knew exactly how close they were.
‘I know Mischa.’ Did the other guy realise he spoke through gritted teeth? It was a wonder he got the words out, given the swamping fury that blindsided him. ‘I hadn’t realised he was involved in this project.’
‘Involved? He brought it all together. That’s how Baudin got Poppy Graham—through Mischa. This series of advertisements is his baby.’
Through a rising red mist Orsino watched Poppy smile up at her partner on the dance floor. He catalogued the man’s tall, slim build. His high, Slavic cheekbones and ash-blond hair. Suddenly so much made sense.
Mischa’s pet project.
Mischa’s model.
Finally Orsino made the connection. The guy with Poppy bore a striking resemblance to the man who’d stolen Orsino’s wife: Mischa. Her old ‘friend’ Mischa, who’d always been jealous of Orsino and hated him for diverting her attention from their work together.
Was the bastard reliving his affair with Poppy vicariously through the male model? Turning it into some twisted fantasy on film he could revisit again and again?
Orsino’s breath hissed into lungs that clamped too tight. He fought for breath, his vision tunnelling to nothing as a long-banished image unfurled in his head.
The street outside their London apartment. A cab’s lights illuminated parked cars and the murky piles of ice that passed for snow in the city. Orsino heard it crunch under his boots as he stepped off the pavement to cross the road.
Ahead a figure exited the lobby’s glass doors, walking at right angles to him. A tall man, his pale hair rumpled. He shrugged into a jacket and, as he passed under a streetlight, Orsino recognised him. Mischa, Poppy’s guide and guru in her modelling career.
The glare of light revealed two other things. First, his shirt flopped loose from his trousers, the buttons askew as if he’d been too distracted to dress properly. This, the man whose world view was driven by the need to look perfect!
Second, what appeared to be lipstick smeared across his collar. And another smudge on his cheek.
‘Sorry? Did you say something?’
Orsino swallowed the growl vibrating in his throat and fought his way back to the present. The ballroom. The man beside him. Poppy looking impossibly sexy, wrapped in the arms of a stranger who looked like the one man on earth he truly hated.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’
Orsino needed space, action, movement. Something to do. Something to focus on other than the buzz of emotion rippling under his skin like swarming ants.
But he couldn’t simply hop in a fast car and drive through the night. His damned faulty eyesight kept him prisoner here.
Watching the filming was the only distraction on offer. If he concentrated hard maybe he’d remember he wasn’t supposed to feel anything but lust for Poppy.
It took hours, testing his patience to screaming point. The evening progressed and it grew cold. His bad hand curled into a useless claw at his side, a legacy of the frostbite. A number of extras sneaked tipples from a flask.
Finally it was over: people everywhere, a bustle as equipment was turned off and moved. Cords were rolled up, instructions shouted, weary shoulders slumping as models in rich silks and velvets streamed past.
Orsino stood waiting.
The tall blond who’d been at Poppy’s side all night walked past, resplendent in a colourful officer’s uniform of another age. Orsino barely spared him a glance. The dresser responsible for Poppy’s jewellery hurried by, clutching a stack of flat leather cases.
The huge room emptied but still she didn’t come when the overhead lights were switched off.
It was dark at the far end of the vast ballroom yet he made out movement, the sound of voices.
Orsino headed towards them.
‘I didn’t, I tell you! You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re drunk.’ He heard the woman’s urgent voice from afar.
‘Don’t lie to me! I saw you with him. You were all over him.’ The man’s words were a slurred roar of rage.
Orsino quickened his pace.
‘It’s the part I’m playing. That’s all. You know I’d never—’
‘Of course you would! You’re all the same, teasing and leading a guy on then dumping him.’
There was a blur of movement and Orsino cursed, lengthening his stride and hoping he didn’t trip over something in the gloom.
‘Ow! You’re hurting me. Let me go.’ Fear threaded the woman’s voice.
The shadows ahead resolved into figures. A man looming over a woman in a shimmery dress, his hand around her wrist as she struggled, her long skirt billowing. And at her side, another woman in a dress he knew to be the colour of dark rubies, her bare shoulders and breasts gleaming in the moonlight from a nearby window.
‘Let her go.’ It was Poppy who spoke, her voice hard and low, vibrating fierce energy.
‘You keep out of this!’ The man released the other woman and swung violently towards Poppy. She backed a step, ducked and in a flash of movement somehow tipped the aggressor over her to sprawl on the floor.
Orsino pounded forward, the taste of fear, like hot metal, searing his mouth. He stumbled over something but righted himself and surged forward, fury and adrenaline powering him.
Poppy stepped back,
spreading her arms wide as if to protect the other woman. The man staggered to his feet, spewing a stream of vicious threats. Head down, he barrelled towards her.
Orsino launched himself, cannoning into him with a bone-jarring thump that made stars wink and spin behind his eyes and pain hammer through every part of him. Half-healed injuries throbbed anew.
Blood roared in his ears as they grappled. He smelled alcohol and sweat, and the rusty tang of blood. Excruciating pain lanced as fists pummelled and a vicious kick connected with his knee.
Sheer rage kept him going.
This … scum had attacked Poppy.
His fist connected with soft belly and again with a hard jaw in a crunch of bone on bone that blasted his good hand into agony.
Then there was nothing except his ragged breathing and the blood pounding like a jackhammer in his head, throbbing fire through his body with every beat.
He staggered to his feet, his knee barely taking his weight. Soft hands reached for him, running over him as if making sure he was all there.
‘My jaw. You’ve broken my jaw.’
Orsino looked at the man sprawled at his feet He recognised him—the guy who’d badmouthed Poppy by the river.
A ripple of bloodlust shuddered through Orsino and he surged forward, only to pull up short when Poppy’s hold on his arm tightened. She dragged at him with all her weight.
Orsino drew a juddering breath and forced himself to stand back.
‘If it was broken you wouldn’t be able to talk.’ It was Poppy’s voice, crisp and unsympathetic.
Orsino swung round to her. His hand trembled as it cupped her face, slipped over the satin perfection of her cheek and brushed the soft richness of her hair.
She looked unharmed.
His heart clenched around a single shaky beat of relief that rose to his throat and shut down his larynx.
He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t. Something welled up inside, like a hot tide, filling him and spilling over.
‘Orsino. Are you all right?’ Then she was warm against him, hands clutching so hard he winced as pain awoke. The rustle of her dress almost drowned out her little cry, half sob, half gasp, as she lifted his bruised knuckles to her lips.
‘You really need to see a doctor.’ Poppy worked to keep her voice firm as she dipped the face cloth into warm water and wrung it out.
Her hands were unsteady, she realised. Her bones had turned to water when she’d seen Orsino locked in that writhing, vicious brawl and they still hadn’t recovered. How she’d found strength to support him back to their rooms she didn’t know.
That he’d managed to limp here defied logic. By rights he should be lying down, waiting for medical attention.
When he’d flown through the air to take down her attacker, fear had held her frozen and disbelieving.
She shook her head. Orsino had fought for her. Disabled as he was he’d thrown himself into danger.
To protect her.
The cloth slipped back into the bowl, her nerveless fingers shaking like silk ribbons before a wind machine.
No one had ever protected her like that.
No one but her mother, whose efforts had been ineffectual against an enraged, drunken brute.
Poppy squeezed her eyes shut, reliving those heart-in-mouth moments when Orsino had put himself between her and danger. When he’d absorbed the blows of a man made unnaturally strong by drink and jealousy.
She knew exactly how powerful drink could make an angry man.
‘Poppy? What is it?’
Her eyes snapped open and she saw her hands twined together so hard the knuckles gleamed white.
‘Why did you do it?’ She whipped round, her full skirt swishing around her legs.
Orsino sat on the edge of the bed wearing only jeans and boots, hair tousled and dark features brooding. Blood oozed from a cut on his collarbone and his lip was swollen. Red marks, soon to be more bruises, marred his body and the hand cradling his plaster cast was bloody.
He’d never looked more devastatingly charismatic, more potently male. Deep, deep inside, something vital melted as her gaze skittered over him.
‘What do you mean?’ His brows drew together.
‘Why did you tackle him?’ Her voice wasn’t her own. It wobbled uncontrollably, like the trembling that started up in her knees.
Orsino reared back, his eyes widening.
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Look at you!’ Her voice rose despite her effort to keep it even. ‘You’re still recuperating from being crushed in an avalanche! No one thought you’d survive. And now you … you …’
Poppy shook her head, her unbound hair swirling around her in a dark cloud. She couldn’t find words because she didn’t understand what it was she felt.
Fear for him, yes. Worry that he’d damaged that arm again, or his ribs, or worse still, his eyes. But something else, too. Something so huge and inexplicable she couldn’t begin to analyse it. It pressed down on her chest, an immovable weight, and clogged her throat when she tried to swallow. Her head reeled as if she’d been clouted in the head—her and not Orsino.
‘I didn’t need you to rescue me. I’m not your responsibility, remember?’ Her breath shuddered into her lungs. ‘It’s not as if you’re …’ She waved a hand in the air.
‘Your husband?’
Her eyes snapped to his. Ebony dark, they stripped her to the core. Despite her ball gown she felt as if she was naked before him. Worse, as if he saw the confused, distraught woman she hid inside.
‘That’s precisely what I am. Your husband.’ His eyes narrowed assessingly.
‘In name only.’
She watched Orsino’s jaw tighten, cords of tension roping his neck.
‘You think I’d leave any woman to that bastard’s mercy?’
Something shifted inside. ‘So you’d have done that for any woman.’
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘But when I saw it was you …’ His stare bored into her, igniting heat to counteract the chill that held her body in stasis. Flames licked her belly, her breasts, her heart.
‘Yes?’
She didn’t want to know. She really didn’t want to know. They’d agreed there was no relationship, no future for them. Just sexual pleasure. But some yearning part of her leaned closer.
‘When I saw it was you I wanted to kill him.’
CHAPTER TEN
His WORDS HUNG in the still air. Orsino couldn’t even bring himself to regret giving so much away. Not when her eyes looked like windows to a soul in torment.
Gingerly he lifted his hand and rubbed his collarbone, almost grateful for the hard throb of pain filling his body. But it wasn’t enough to distract him from her.
‘Poppy?’
He’d stunned her. He read it in her slack jaw and staring eyes. He recalled her sheltered upbringing, her years in a cloistered boarding school for girls that catered to the flowers of Britain’s aristocracy. She’d probably never seen so much as a punch thrown in her life, much less real bloodlust.
For that’s what he’d felt when that lowlife had lunged at Poppy. He’d wanted to pound the guy’s head into the floor so hard he’d never get up again.
Or maybe she was shocked not just at the violence, but at his need to protect her.
Slowly Orsino flexed his fingers and pain screamed up his arm.
Poppy wasn’t the only one in shock. His visceral response to the sight of her in danger overrode everything he thought he knew about the pair of them.
He told himself he’d react the same way if any woman had been in that situation. It was true, but he knew with a certainty that punched a hole through his belly that he wouldn’t have felt the same. As if someone had taken a hunting knife to his guts and yanked them from his body.
How could he feel that away about a woman who was going to walk out of his life soon?
He didn’t want her as his wife. Not after her betrayal, yet still something bound them. Something more profound than sex.
Suddenly Orsino felt wearier than he had since he’d hauled Michael out of the ice. He slumped, the adrenaline finally wearing off enough for his body to feel the full extent of his pain.
‘Orsino!’
She was there beside him, her hands warm and soft on his bare skin. He groaned. How could he feel pain and arousal at the same time?
Dimly he acknowledged either was better than grappling with the conundrum that was Poppy and her place in his world. He’d think about that later. Much later.
‘You need a doctor. I’ll call one now.’
‘No!’ His hand closed around her wrist. ‘Not tonight. Tomorrow’s soon enough. For now I just want to rest.’
‘But what if—?’
‘Please, Poppy. Don’t fuss. I’m bruised and sore but that’s all.’ His grip loosened, his fingers threading through hers.
Still she looked worried; her teeth sank into her bottom lip and her brow puckered.
‘If you want something to do you can help me into bed.’ Suddenly he felt a hundred years old, each movement an exercise in exquisite agony. ‘I’ll even let you share with me.’
He waggled his eyebrows in an approximation of a leer and was rewarded with a huff of laughter. It was the best thing he’d heard all day.
‘Not even you could think about sex right now.’
Orsino let his gaze drop to the creamy swell of her breasts above the low neckline of her dress. Was it still called a neckline when it skimmed the plump flesh just a fraction above her nipples?
His mouth twisted in a smile that stretched his bruised lip. He groaned again and was rewarded with a light caress along his neck and shoulder.
‘I approve of the dress. Take it off.’
‘Soon.’ He looked up, surprised. ‘But only because the designer would have my hide if I damaged it.’
Ten minutes later Orsino lay naked in bed. Poppy lay beside him, demurely covered in a T-shirt of his that hung down her thighs.
He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or thankful that she’d refused to leave him to go upstairs to get her own clothes. But he wouldn’t have missed the sight of her in his T-shirt for anything. Plain grey cotton had never looked so alluring.
Yet even dosed with painkillers he didn’t have the strength left to do more than wrap her close, revelling in the waft of her breath warm across his chest, the weight of her head on his shoulder and one slim leg tangled with his.