The light of the pale autumn sun slanted through the window, brushing Tristan’s smooth butterscotch skin with gold dust, and highlighting the faint cross-hatching of scars on his back.
Lily bit her lip, closing her eyes and sliding her hand into his hair, her whole body throbbing with love and need while simultaneously being racked with pain.
Pain that she sensed in him and longed to heal, if only he’d let her near.
But he wouldn’t. She gasped as he took her hips between his big hands and brought his mouth down on her navel, kissing, sucking, moving his mouth lower…
This was the only closeness she was allowed, and while she craved it with every cell of her being she also knew that it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
She wanted what she could never have.
Not just his body, but his heart.
Modelling would never have been Lily’s first choice of career. She had fallen into it thanks to a combination of chance and financial necessity, shelving her dreams to go to university in order to make the most of the undreamt of riches that were suddenly within her reach.
But at times like this, she reflected hazily as she walked with Tristan across the grand entrance hall at El Paraiso, she was glad that she had. Confidence was easier to fake if you knew how to hold yourself and how to walk.
Although, given the thoroughness with which Tristan had just made love to her, that wasn’t exactly easy. Especially not in four inch heels, and with Tristan, mouthwateringly handsome in black tie, so close beside her. Close enough that she could smell the clean scent of his skin from the hasty, last minute shower they had shared while Dimitri had waited for them in the car below. Close enough to sense the tension in his body, despite his outward show of utter indifference.
They were late.
Lily’s heels made a rapid, staccato rhythm on the marble floor as she struggled to keep up with him. Silently she cursed the fact that she’d spent the car journey here staring into the blackness of the window while her mind mentally replayed the blissfully erotic events of the afternoon in glorious freeze-frame detail, rather than asking Tristan to fill her in on his family. Too late now, she thought in panic. From behind double doors between the symmetrical sweeping staircases that rose on either side of the hallway, she could hear the sound of voices, and her chest constricted with nerves.
‘Wait,’ she croaked, putting an arm on his sleeve.
Tristan stopped. He was composed to the point of complete detachment, far removed from the man who had buried his face in her neck and gasped her name just an hour earlier. ‘Are you OK? You don’t feel sick?’
Lily gave a half-laugh and pressed her hand to her stomach. ‘Yes, but then I do all the time. It’s not that, it’s just…’ she twisted nervously at a strand of hair that had escaped the pins that held it in a sophisticated twist on top of her head ‘…I’m about to meet your family and I don’t know anything about them.’
‘Believe me, that’s a good thing,’ he said acidly, his face hardening as he looked in the direction of the doors in front of them.
‘Tristan, don’t,’ Lily said in anguish. ‘I mean—for example, do you have any brothers and sisters?’
He flinched. Only slightly, but she caught the minute narrowing of his eyes, the tiny indrawn breath. ‘Yes. I have…one brother. Nico. He’s in Madrid, so he won’t be here tonight. Now, if that answers your questions, perhaps we could go in?’
He moved to open the door, but Lily stayed where she was, fighting the nerves that were shredding her insides.
‘Tristan?’
‘What?’ He spun round, not bothering to conceal his impatience. She was standing in the middle of the oppressively grand hallway, her chin lowered, her hands plucking nervously at her dress.
The dress he’d chosen for her earlier, sensing without knowing much about such things that the colour would bring out the pale gold of her skin, and that the low scooped neck would show off the fragile perfection of her collarbones.
It did.
Dios mio, it did…
She bit her lip, looking up at him with smoky, hesitant and unreasonably lovely eyes. ‘Do I look OK?’
Tristan stiffened, straightening his shoulders, his head jerking back slightly as he forced back the almost over whelming urge to cross the stretch of marble floor between them and take her in his arms and kiss her until her lips were bare of gloss and her hair had tumbled from its pins.
He pushed open the door. ‘You look fine,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Now, let’s get this over and done with.’
Lily had never seen a room so luxurious or so chilling.
Long, high-ceilinged and decorated entirely in shades of cream and gold, it made Stowell, with its faded silks and threadbare Persian rugs, look positively down at heel by comparison. And although Scarlet frequently joked about the drafts there, Lily felt an icy chill creep down her spine as she followed Tristan into the crowded room. It was as if the temperature had just dropped several degrees, and almost without thinking Lily felt for Tristan’s hand as they made their way through the crowd towards a group of people at the far end of the room.
She couldn’t be sure exactly how she knew that the tall man with his back to them was Tristan’s father. Perhaps it was something to do with the breadth of his shoulders, a certain arrogance in the tilt of his head that was already familiar. He was talking to another man, gesturing eloquently, confidently with a hand that held a crystal champagne flute. Beside them two women—one about Lily’s age in an impeccable but rather conservative little black dress, one older and wearing a high necked dress in midnight blue—stood mutely.
Draining her glass, the older woman looked up suddenly. She was slender, elegant and immaculately made up in a way that obscured rather than enhanced her considerable beauty. As she saw them a look—shock? fear?—flickered across her face. Before Lily had time to put her finger on what it was, it was gone; replaced by a gracious smile of welcome.
‘Tristan, darling boy! You’re here!’
Juan Carlos Romero de Losada turned round slowly, flicking back the cuff of his expensively tailored jacket and checking his watch before looking at his son.
‘At last,’ he said with a sinister smile. ‘You are precisely one hour and five minutes late.’
Tristan ignored him, leaning across to kiss both women, but Lily felt his hold on her hand tighten. ‘Good evening, Mama, Sofia…’ His lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. ‘Sorry we’re late. We rather lost track of time.’
Lily was aware of all eyes turning in her direction. Her heart was crashing against her ribs as Tristan raised her hand so that everyone could see her fingers laced through his, with the diamond glittering beside her new wedding band. Slowly he brought it to his lips, kissing it gently before saying, ‘I’d like to introduce Lily Alexander. My wife, and the new Marquesa de Montesa.’
For a second it seemed that a spell had fallen on the small group. While all around them the rest of the guests talked and laughed and drank the excellent vintage cava, no one in the circle around the fireplace moved or spoke. Lily glanced at Juan Carlos and felt a sickening thud of horror as she saw the fury rising in his eyes like some dark liquid coming to the boil. Fury that in this setting, in front of his guests, he was powerless to express.
It was Tristan’s mother who broke the terrible silence, stepping forward and kissing Lily on both cheeks with a blast of designer perfume and alcohol fumes.
‘But, my dear, how delightful! You must forgive us for being so unmannerly, but this is such a shock. I had almost given up hoping that Tristan would settle down—and with such a beautiful girl.’ She gave an awkward little laugh. ‘It is almost too much to take in!’
As Lily submitted to Allegra Montalvo y Romero de Losada’s gracious embrace she had the strangest feeling that she were floating amongst the painted clouds and cherubs on the ceiling, looking down on the tableau of figures below. Sofia, whose olive skin had flushed with telltale colour when Tristan had kissed her cheek, now seemed to stiffen and shrink backwards, clearly desperate to move away. Tristan’s father, the oddly compelling Juan Carlos, stepped forward to take Lily’s hand in his.
For an awkward moment she stood, one hand still clasped in Tristan’s, one imprisoned between Juan Carlos’s soft fingers. She could almost feel the animosity between the two men crackling through her, as though she were some kind of conductor.
‘Lily…Alexander?’ Juan Carlos repeated quietly, with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘I think our paths have not crossed before?’
It was a clever question, Lily thought with a stab of anguish. Everyone must have been thinking the same thing—that the idea of her ever having brushed even the most outward peripheries of Juan Carlos’s exclusive social circle was utterly preposterous. Sofia gave a strange snort of amusement, which she quickly suppressed with a swig of cava.
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘No. Of course,’ Juan Carlos continued softly, ‘I would have remembered such a pretty face. You must tell us all about yourself—where you come from and what you do for a living.’
‘I’m a model. I live in London.’