Magnate's Make-Believe Mistress

by Bronwyn Jameson

  “That was quite a day you had planned,” Isabelle said, impressed despite herself.

  “I thought I would have my work cut out,” he admitted, and although his tone maintained the lightness of the preceding banter, there was something in his gaze that coiled tight in Isabelle’s stomach. Then he grinned, a ridiculously sexy and satisfied smile that belied any question of doubt. “For you, Isabelle, I had planned a serious day of wooing.”

  Wooing. It was such a delightfully old-fashioned word and such a romantic notion that Isabelle couldn’t help being charmed. She would not allow the tender loop of warmth to take hold, however, because it was only a word…a word wrapped up in that cockiest of grins. His plan had been to woo her into his bed, not to romance her, and for that he’d needed no fancy props. He’d only needed the beguiling directness of his tongue.

  “You don’t have to impress me with grand gestures,” she said, “or with your expensive toys.”

  “Not even the helicopter?”

  “Not even.”

  “I see.” The tilt of his smile shifted from cocky to unholy as his hand drifted from her shoulders to the small of her back. “In that case, I shall have to impress you in other ways.”

  “Will this involve us leaving this bed?”

  His fingertips traced the curve of her buttocks. A languid, tantalising signal of intent. “Not for a very long time.”

  “Stay,” Chessie implored on Monday morning. “There is no reason not to.”

  Only guilt, Isabelle thought, because when Cristo suggested that she stay on at Chisholm Park until the wedding, her acceptance had come easily and without any consideration for her sister’s plight. Perhaps because he’d asked while looking deep into her eyes and filling her just as deeply with the heavy heat of his desire.

  “Why don’t you come out here?” Isabelle said into the phone. “There is no reason not to.”

  “There is, actually,” Chessie replied after a beat of pause. “Colin has tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show.”

  “Colin?”

  “Crash. His real name is Colin Ashcroft, but I am so over nicknames. Did you know he was at school with Cristo? And he paints. Seriously good stuff.”

  Isabelle frowned, uncomfortable with Chessie’s familiarity with the intriguing butler. “You’re not getting too friendly, are you?”

  “Romantically? Good grief, no. Colin is looking after me, which I’m sure is the job he’s been assigned with you and Cristo out of town. Plus, he knows people.” Chessie managed to imbue those last few words with enough profundity that Isabelle knew she meant Justin Harrington. “I would rather be picking his brain than mouldering away in the country.”

  After being assured there was little mouldering in Herting Green, Chessie consented to come out early the following week, after she’d pored over all the exhibits and Kew Gardens and several other must-sees for an apprentice landscape designer.

  Isabelle tried not to be too selfishly pleased to have Cristo and Chisholm Park to herself for a whole week. She loved the place and the effortlessness with which she fitted in. Even when he was working, sometimes at the Luton offices, sometimes in lengthy phone conferences from home, she didn’t rattle around or feel lost. She pitched in and helped Meredith and the stable staff. Chloe was even teaching her to ride on the quietest of ponies. Those regular doses of reality helped balance out the fairy-tale aspects of being Cristo Verón’s lover.

  She vowed to maintain that make-believe, to keep things light, to remember that he’d not promised anything beyond the wedding, but her vows were tested from day one. That was the polo tournament, when he capitulated to her wishes and took her to see the final games. It should have been easy to keep her perspective, seeing him greeting friends in the posh and privileged crowd, but he moved just as easily amongst the grooms and spent most of the afternoon at Isabelle’s side.

  She wasn’t sure if she liked the frantic pace and violent clashes; she found it easier to watch Cristo, to revel in his exhilaration and the pride he took in Chloe’s game. Driving to the grounds she’d learned that his young groom was replacing Madeleine on the team. “I will not allow her to get away with yesterday’s stunt,” he said shortly. “She put you and the pony in needless danger.”

  Chloe, it turned out, was well up to the task.

  “She’s good,” Isabelle decided, watching her slight figure ride another player off the ball with fearless gusto. Cristo nodded, an answer to her question and a signal of approval when his brother pounced on the loose ball and fired an effortless goal to put the Hawks into the lead. Whatever else he said was lost in the roar of applause and in Isabelle’s response when he swung her up in a close embrace and kissed her soundly. Not a peck but a full-blooded this-is-my-woman kiss for all to see.

  “Is that how you celebrate every goal?” she asked.

  Cristo’s grin grew warm as he slid her down his body until her feet touched ground. “You should see how I celebrate a win.”

  Isabelle did get to see that night, when he swept her home and made good with another of his promises. Champagne sipped from her skin, he told her, tasted sweeter than any victory. And Isabelle kept her perspective by noting that the champagne was an obscenely expensive vintage. The stuff of fairy tales, it bore no relation to her real life.

  Another day he took her sightseeing in a helicopter bearing the Chisholm Air logo. His logo, to all intents and purposes, because he casually admitted that he owned a majority share in the company. She’d figured as much, but this confirmation of his wealth put him in a different stratosphere. One where she could not exist without an oxygen mask or a housekeeper’s uniform.

  Then he brought her down to reality by taking her to dinner at the village pub, this time on foot so he could introduce her to Gisele, the mare who’d almost died while he was in Melbourne and who was now recuperating nicely. Watching him stroke her neck, listening to the deep affection in his voice as he told her about the pony’s courage and bravery, turned Isabelle’s heart upside down and inside out.

  Another evening he brought home an extravagant picnic basket and drove her in the Aston to a secluded spot by the lake. “I had tickets to Glyndebourne tonight,” he admitted later, stretching out beside her on the picnic rug. His hand dipped lazily beneath her skirt. “I hope you don’t mind, but they frown on making out on the lawns there.”

  “Stuffy of them,” she replied. “I’m glad we didn’t go.”

  “Because you fancy making out on the grass or because you don’t like the opera?”

  “I’ve never been.”

  His hand drifted higher. “So you’re an opera virgin?”

  “I guess I am,” she managed, although his questing fingertips made her feel very unvirginal.

  “How do you know you don’t like something you’ve never tried?”

  Isabelle’s eyes drifted shut. She didn’t want to talk, especially about opera. She wanted those clever fingers to really apply themselves to something she did like. But they’d stilled, and when she peered beneath her lowered lids she found him waiting patiently for her answer. “I don’t care much for operatic melodrama,” she said. “Had enough of it in my childhood.”

  “Your parents?” he guessed, giving up the seductive intent and turning her until her face rested on his sun-warmed chest. “Tell me about them.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “As is many an opera.”

  She huffed out a laugh. “Then I guess I will start with the opera, which is where my parents met. Working,” she added. “My mother was a moderately successful soprano, my father a set director.”

  “Your love of music is no accident, then?”

  “There was always music,” Isabelle said with a shrug. “At home, and the lessons they signed us up for. Piano, drama, voice, art. Luckily neither Chessie nor I had the talent or the desire to pursue them.”

  “Luckily?”

  Usually she hated talking about her upbringing, but in the sun-tinged evening with his han
d idly stroking her hair she felt relaxed and encouraged. He wanted to know—he wanted to know her. “I would not want the life of my parents,” she replied with heartfelt fervour. “They travelled constantly, often not together because they were working on different productions. They didn’t even have a home.”

  “Did you travel with your mother?” he asked. The play of his hand in her hair was no longer lazy; its weight rested a moment, strong and comforting.

  “When I was a baby, yes, but then I needed to start school and my mother was pregnant with Chessie. We moved in with my grandparents in Melbourne—Poppy was alive then, too—and that was a disaster.” A rueful smile ghosted across her lips. “So many fights, about everything. My father left and my mother started taking jobs, as well. In the end we just spent more and more time with our grandparents.”

  “What happened to your parents?”

  “They visited between seasons, they sent cards and presents for our birthdays, but then my father died. I don’t know what happened, but after the funeral there was a big row—Mother brought this horrid new man with her—and we didn’t see her again. It was okay,” she hastened to add. “In fact, after all the clashes, there was finally some peace in the house, and Gran…she was wonderful.”

  “I know.”

  Intrigued, Isabelle rolled onto her side and pushed up onto her elbow. “How do you know?”

  “She taught you everything you know, and look how you turned out.”

  Isabelle smiled into his eyes, unable to hide the pleasure she took from that compliment. It was the perfect ending to the conversation, the perfect endorsement of the grandmother she’d adored, and when he reached for her, his hand strong and warm on her neck, and drew her down into his kiss, she felt an overwhelming swell of emotion inside.

  She loved him, not only for this perfect evening or the connection they’d forged this past week, but because of everything she knew of him. His responsibility to his family, his protectiveness of Amanda, his regard for his staff and his animals, his loyalty to the Delahuntys and his stepfather’s memory. Even his exasperated dealings with Vivi reflected his deep affection. Every day there was something else, some new facet, and yet she had barely scraped the surface of Cristo Verón.

  There was still so much to learn, and for an instant she felt a mild rush of panic because she had so little time and soon this idyll would be over. But then his hands slid up her thighs to cradle her buttocks, and the kiss took fire and burned through her anxiety, leaving only the purest of truths.

  She loved him, and for now that was enough.

  Thirteen

  “Are you expecting visitors?”

  Chloe waved her polo stick in the direction of the driveway, and Isabelle turned in her saddle—gingerly, since she still didn’t trust herself not to spook her horse with a clumsy movement—and caught a familiar silhouette gliding in and out of view between the trees. Tonight Cristo was flying to Russia, an unavoidable meeting, and for a moment she’d hoped he might have cut short today’s business. But no, this was the town car not his Aston Martin.

  “My sister,” she told Chloe. How like Chessie to arrive a day early and without warning…although she rather fancied shocking Chessie with her brand-new skill. In jodhpurs and long boots borrowed from Chloe, she even looked the part. “Can we ride down and greet her?”

  “Don’t see why not.” Turning her pony around, Chloe whistled her dog Otto to heel and led their sedate procession across the parkland toward the house. Isabelle’s intrepid skill was yet to progress beyond a walk. “Keep a firm hand on your reins,” Chloe called over her shoulder. “Dini has quite a fondness for the shrubbery.”

  Isabelle kept a firm hand on her reins and a firm eye on her pony in case appetite overwhelmed his calm nature. She paid no heed to the car or its occupant until Chloe said, “Your sister doesn’t exactly travel light, does she?”

  The driver added another piece to the mountain of matched luggage at the foot of the stairs, and Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t think that’s Chessie’s.” In fact she knew it wasn’t, even before a stylishly attired stranger stepped from behind the car and into view.

  From this distance she bore no physical resemblance to Cristo, and yet Isabelle instinctively knew that this was his mother.

  “It’s Vivi,” Chloe confirmed. “I wonder what she’s doing here?”

  “Another wedding emergency, I imagine.”

  “Could be that.” Chloe’s eyes twinkled above a cheeky grin. “Or she’s come to scope you.”

  “No,” Isabelle said weakly. Then more strongly, “She has no reason to do that.”

  “You’re the first girlfriend Cristo has ever brought here. I imagine that is reason enough.”

  As that message sunk in, Isabelle’s heart skittered again. The first girlfriend he’d brought here. If Vivi knew—Vivi, who wanted him married to Madeleine—then that might explain her arrival. It certainly explained the sick pitch of Isabelle’s stomach.

  “Do you want to ride up and say hello?” Chloe asked.

  “Good grief, no!”

  And before she could laugh off that horrified response, the distinctive sound of a helicopter’s approach had Otto barking and spinning in mad circles and Isabelle grabbing a better grip on Dini’s reins. Chloe narrowed her gaze at the sky overhead before declaring, “The cavalry has arrived. You’re saved!”

  The cavalry was only one—but the right one, Isabelle reminded herself as she hurried from the stables to the helipad. With nerves threatening to chew holes right through her, she needed his reassurance as badly as her next breath. A quick word explaining that Vivi had called him home to discuss a wedding-planning issue. A smile, a kiss, an arm flung around her shoulder and an invitation to “Come meet my mother.”

  Any of the above would have worked, but then Isabelle saw him appear from beneath the whirling beat of the craft’s rotors and straighten. She’d seen him in a suit and tie before—this past week she’d watched him dress from naked skin into full business attire on many a morning—but there was something in his bearing right now that pulled her up short. Shadowy wisps of foreboding fluttered through her, halting her headlong rush to intercept him.

  Perhaps it was the dark aviator shades. Perhaps the flat set of his mouth, the tightness of his jaw. And perhaps it was the manner in which he’d arrived, sweeping in by helicopter in answer to his mother’s summons. Whatever the cause, suddenly the stretch of lawn between them opened into a chasm of doubts. She’d spent a week in his company, she’d witnessed one sliver of his life and she’d allowed herself to believe she might fit. Standing there in her borrowed clothes, she felt like a fraud and a fool. The places she fit best were alongside Meredith in the kitchen and Chloe at the stables.

  She would have turned tail and scarpered back to the stables if Meredith hadn’t appeared from the back of the house, gesturing for her to come. Damn. In the mudroom she pulled off her boots and took stock of herself in Chloe’s too-tight breeches and a no-longer-clean polo shirt. She wanted to run upstairs and change, but before she made the stairs the phone started to ring and she paused a moment too long. Meredith hurried through from the kitchen bearing a tea tray, and when she spotted Isabelle her relief was instant. “Will you take this through to the morning room for me, Isabelle? I’m expecting a call from Colin. This is likely him now.”

  What could she do?

  Approaching the room, her feet grew heavy. The door stood ajar, and she could hear the two voices clearly. Vivi was bemoaning her morning’s travel at melodramatic length. “My son owns half the private jets in this country,” she sniffed, “and I am forced to fly commercial.”

  “No one forced you.”

  “You did, holing up down here with this Isabelle who I am hearing about from all quarters. Of course I needed to see what the fuss was all about.”

  “You are reading too much into this,” Cristo said, his voice dismissively cool.

  Apparently his mother could not be dismissed so easi
ly because she went on, undeterred. “Madeleine tells me she works as a house cleaner. Is this true?”

  “Yes,” Isabelle said. “Quite true.”

  Years of practice came to the fore as she glided into the room and across the Aubusson rug to the tea table. The silence was perfect—not one rattle of cups, not a tinkle of spoons. She put down the tray with smooth efficiency and prepared to pour.

  “Tea, Mrs…?” She left the query hanging, since she did not know Vivi’s present name.

  “Marais,” the woman supplied, her smile warmer than Isabelle had expected. Up close she bore quite a likeness to her daughter, and like Amanda her eyes shone with undisguised interest as she took Isabelle in. “But you, Isabelle, shall call me Vivi as all my children do.”

  There was a beat of pause, an awkward moment. Isabelle did not know quite what to say. She’d been prepared for Vivi’s coolness, hostility even, but this apparent amiability had thrown her.

  “Speaking of children,” Cristo interjected smoothly, but his eyes sparked with irritation as he moved to Isabelle’s side and encouraged her to sit. “Where is your toyboy?”

  “Patrizio has a showing,” Vivi replied, seemingly unperturbed by her son’s barb. “He will be following in a few days. I came early because I could not wait to meet your Isabelle.”

  Cristo said something low, foreign.

  “Don’t be rude,” Vivi snapped.

  “I learned my manners from you, Mother.”

  “Rubbish, we both know you have far better manners than I. Now—” she turned her attention to Isabelle “—I believe you are coming to the wedding? My son has not told me, but Amanda says this is so. We will need to rearrange the tables slightly, but this is not a problem.”

  “Amanda was kind to invite me, but I haven’t decided if—”

  “Why ever would you not?” Vivi interrupted. Then she looked from Isabelle to Cristo, her expression disingenuous. “Oh dear, have I put my shoe in it? When Amanda told me that Isabelle was your date for the Delahunty event and that you’d brought her to stay at your home, naturally I assumed this was more than an amourette….”