She swallowed, glancing up at him through her lashes, suddenly desperate for reassurance, unable to fight this green demon eating her alive from the inside out.
Cesare abruptly stopped at the bottom of the stairs, in front of the open ballroom doors. “Time to face the music.”
His voice was strangely flat. All the emotion had fled from his expression. Meeting her eyes, he gave her a forced smile, as if he already regretted his unbreakable, binding promise to marry her. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
She suddenly wanted to ask him if those were the words he’d say to himself on their wedding day, too. She looked down at her diamond necklace. At her enormous engagement ring.
I can do this, she told herself. For Sam.
Cesare led her into the ballroom, and as she walked across the same marble floor she’d once scrubbed on her hands and knees, she pasted a bright smile on her face as she was formally introduced to London society: the housekeeper who’d been lucky and conniving enough to trap a billionaire playboy into marriage.
* * *
“So the great Cesare Falconeri is caught at last,” Sheikh Sharif bin Nazih al Aktoum, the emir of Makhtar, said behind him. His voice was amused.
“Caught?” Cesare turned. “I haven’t been caught.”
The sheikh took a sip of champagne and waved his hand airily. “Ah, but it happens to all of us sooner or later.”
Cesare scowled. The two men were not close; he’d invited the sheikh as a courtesy, as his company sought to get permission to build a new resort hotel on one of his Persian Gulf beaches. He’d never thought the man might actually come, but he’d showed up at the Kensington mansion in a black town car with diplomatic flags flying, in full white robes and trailing six bodyguards.
Six. Cesare had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Bringing two bodyguards was sensible, six was just showing off. He bared a smile at his guest. “I’m the luckiest man on earth to be engaged to Emma. It took me a year to convince her to marry me.” Which was true in its way.
The sheikh gave a faint smile. “Some men are just the marrying kind, I suppose.”
Cesare raised his eyebrows. “You think I’m the marrying kind?”
He shrugged. “Clearly. You’ve experienced it once and choose willingly to return to it.” The dark eyes looked at him curiously, as if Cesare were an exhibit in a zoo. “As for myself, I’m in no rush to be trapped with one woman, subject to her whims, forced to listen to her complain day and night—” He cut himself off with a cough, as if he’d just realized that saying such things at an engagement party might be poor form. “Well. Perhaps marriage is different from the cage I picture it to be.”
A cage. Cesare felt the sudden irrational stirrings of buried panic. He could hear the harsh rasp of Angélique’s exhausted voice, a decade before.
If you ever loved me, if you ever cared at all, let me go.
But Angélique, you are still my wife. We both gave a promise before God....
Then He will forgive, for He knows how I hate you.
We can go to marriage counseling. He’d reached for her, desperate. We can get past this.
Her lip had curled. What will it take for you to let me go? She narrowed her eyes maliciously. Would you like to hear how long and hard Raoul loves me every time we meet, here and in Paris, all this past year, while you’ve been busy at your pathetic little hotel, trying to make something of yourself? Raoul loves me as you never will.
Cesare had tried to cover his ears, but she’d told him, until he could bear it no longer and went back on everything he’d ever believed in. Fine, he told her grimly. I’ll give you your divorce.
Twenty-four hours later, Angélique had returned from Buenos Aires and swallowed an entire bottle of pills. Cesare had been the one to find her. He’d found out later that Raoul Menendez was already long married. That he’d laughed in Angélique’s face when she’d shown up on his doorstep.
So much for love.
So much for marriage.
Oh, my God. A cold sweat broke out on Cesare’s forehead as he remembered that panicked sense of failure and helplessness. The sheikh was right. A cage was exactly what marriage was.
“Your bride is beautiful, of course,” the man murmured. “She would tempt any man.”
Cesare looked up to see Emma floating by on the dance floor in the arms of Leonidas, his old friend and former wingman at London’s best nightclubs. The famous Greek playboy had a reputation even worse than Cesare’s. Emma’s beautiful face was laughing, lifted to the Greek’s admiring eyes. Cesare felt a surge of jealousy.
Emma was his woman. His.
“Ah. So lovely. Her long dark hair. Her creamy skin. And that figure...” The sheikh’s voice trailed off.
“Don’t even think about it,” Cesare said dangerously.
He held up his hands with a low laugh. “Of course. I sought merely to praise your taste in a wife. I would not think of attempting to sample her charms myself.”
“Good,” he growled. “Then I won’t have to think of attempting to knock your head off your body.”
The man eyed him, then shook his head with a rueful snort. “You have it badly, my friend.”
“It?”
“You’re in love with her.”
“She’s the mother of my son,” Cesare replied sharply, as if that explained everything.
“Naturally,” the other man said soothingly. But his black eyes danced, as if to say: you poor fool, you don’t even see how deeply your neck is in the noose.
Reaching up his hand in an involuntary movement, Cesare loosened the tuxedo tie around his neck. Then he grabbed a glass from a passing waiter and gulped down an entire glass of Dom Perignon in one swallow before he said, “Excuse me.”
“Of course.”
Going to the other side of the dance floor, Cesare watched Emma dance. He saw the way her face glowed. Sì. Think of her. Beautiful. So strong and tender. It wouldn’t be so awful, would it, having her in his house?
As long as they didn’t get too close.
As long as he didn’t try to seduce her.
That was the only way this convenient marriage would ever work. If they kept their distance, so she didn’t get any crazy ideas back about loving him. And he didn’t start thinking he needed her, or let his walls down.
Vulnerability was weakness.
Love was pain.
Cesare’s face went hot as he remembered how he’d felt last year when she’d left him staring after her in the window like a fool. He’d been so sure she’d be back. That she wouldn’t be able to resist him.
But she had. Very well.
While he hadn’t even slept with another woman since their last night together, almost a year ago.
How the world would laugh if they knew that little truth about Cesare Falconeri, the famous playboy. They would laugh—sì—they would, because it was pathetic. Fortunately he had no intention of sharing it with anyone. Not even Emma.
He almost had, the first day they’d arrived here, when she’d been so strangely jealous of the silly blonde housekeeper. He’d almost told Emma the truth, but it had caught in his throat. He couldn’t let her know that secret. He would never allow himself to be that vulnerable to anyone ever again.
You love her, the sheikh had accused. Cesare snorted. Love? Ridiculous. Love was a concept for idealistic young souls, the ones who thought lust was not a big enough word to describe their desire. He’d been that way once. He’d married his wife when he was young and stupid. He’d thought sex meant love. He’d learned his lesson well.
Now his eyes narrowed as he watched Emma smile up encouragingly at Leonidas.
Before he realized what he was doing, he was on the dance floor, breaking up their little duo. “I’d like to dance with my fiancée, if you don’t mind.”
Emma had been in the middle of laughing but she looked at Cesare in surprise, as if, he thought grimly, she’d already forgotten his existence. As if she already suspected her power over him, and knew his weakness.
Leonidas looked tempted to make some sarcastic remark, but at Cesare’s scowl, thought better of it. “Alas, my dear,” he sighed to Emma. “I must hand you over to this brute. You belong to him now.”
She gave another low laugh, and it was all Cesare could do not to give the Greek shipping tycoon a good kick on the backside to help speed him off the dance floor. With narrowed eyes, he took Emma in his arms.
“Having fun?” he growled as he felt her soft body against his, in her slinky gown of silver.
“It’s been dreadful.” She peeked up at him. “I’m glad to see you. I know he’s your friend, but I didn’t think I could take much more. Thank you for saving me!”
“Are you sure?” he said through gritted teeth. “The two of you seemed so cozy.”
She blinked. “I was being nice to your friend.”
“Not much nicer, I hope,” he ground out, “or I might have found the two of you making use of a guest bedroom!”
“What’s gotten into you? You’re acting almost—”
“Don’t say it,” he warned.
She tossed her head. “Jealous!”
Cesare set his jaw. “Tell me, what exactly was Leonidas saying that you found so charming?”