CHAPTER EIGHT
CLARAADJUSTEDTHEband of her dress one last time before deciding she was ready. She hoped the ambassador’s reception would be more exciting than it sounded. She hoped her boobs didn’t fall out of her dress. She hoped her princess lessons paid off and she didn’t embarrass Marcelo. Somehow, she had to contain the excitement that had been careering through her since their kiss that hadn’t been quite a full-blown kiss but still a kiss. Excitement always made her motormouth worse and dulled her impulse control, and she had never, in her entire life, felt anything like this before.
She’d relived the moment approximately once every minute. Sometimes twice.
If Alessia hadn’t interrupted them, how far would they have gone? How far would she have let it go?
The more pertinent question was how far did she want it to go? She knew her attraction for Marcelo had exploded. She knew she adored his company. She knew she adored him, and not just because he’d saved her life or brought her the most beautiful piece of jewellery in the world.
The problem was her complete lack of experience with men. Just because she’d liked being held in his arms and had practically swooned with desire at their way too brief kiss did not mean she’d like anything else. Just because the mere thought of his hands roaming her body sent thrills racing through her did not mean the reality would be anything like it.
And what about his expectations? Clara would never second-guess another person’s thoughts.
Luckily she’d put all her jumbled questions in order by writing them down, and she shoved the note into her clutch bag before taking one last deep breath and leaving her bedroom.
She laughed when Marcelo took one look at her in the living room where he was waiting for her and his eyes practically fell out of his head.
‘Now that is a reaction I like!’ she said, delighted at such a visceral reaction.
He rose from the sofa. ‘Dio, bella, you look amazing. That dress...’ He smacked a kiss to his fingers.
Loving the compliment, she beamed. ‘You look amazing too. I keep thinking you should only wear jeans and T-shirts because you look so sexy in them but you’re just as sexy in a tuxedo.’
His laugh sounded very much like a groan. ‘Clara, I’ve spent the last two hours trying my best not to think sexy thoughts of you and then you come out with that while wearing a dress like that? Are you trying to kill me?’
‘Let’s wait until we’ve been married a few months before I try that, eh?’
Marcelo rubbed the back of his neck and suppressed another groan. He didn’t see how he would make it to their wedding day without losing his mind, never mind a few months into it. Especially when Clara wore dresses like this one, a red velvet toga-style dress with the thick straps constituting the top half skimming either side of her full breasts to the diamond-studded sash tied around her waist. Her hair had been left loose, one side tucked behind her ear showing off diamond waterfall earrings. Her only other jewellery was her engagement ring. It sparkled as brightly as she did.
He could hear voices beyond the walls of the living room. His team were gathering.
‘Ready to meet your public?’ he asked.
‘As ready as I’ll ever be. Do you have a gag ready if needed?’
Stepping before her, Marcelo gazed deeply into the, oh, so expressive dark brown eyes. Dio, he longed to kiss her. Instead, he satisfied himself with tracing the back of a finger lightly down her cheekbone, and was gratified when her lashes fluttered and she shivered.
‘You’ve got this, bella,’ he assured her quietly, praying that he was right. ‘The press will be camped outside the embassy and will take pictures of us together, but that will be your only contact with them. For the function itself, if you feel at any point that things are getting too much and that you’re losing control, take my hand and squeeze it hard.’
‘That sounds like a plan but you might find I spend the whole function squeezing it.’
‘You’ve got this,’ he repeated.
Her eyes softened. ‘I hope so. For your sake.’ And then a flare of the mischief he was becoming so familiar with flashed. ‘Sure you don’t want to bring a gag as backup? Just in case?’
Bursting into laughter, he took her hand and kissed the knuckles.
A short while later, they climbed into the back of their car. As Clara arranged herself next to him to minimise creases to her dress, Marcelo reflected that, for once, he was attending a royal function without dread of the certain tedium.
Whatever happened when they got home, whether she took the plunge and joined him in his bed or not, having Clara on his arm guaranteed the event would not be boring.
For that alone, he was grateful to have Clara Chaos in his life.
The reception was far more gruelling than Clara had anticipated. Held in the ambassador’s residence in what looked from the outside to be a magnificent town house, it was filled with glamorous women and dashing men.
Trying to remember everything that had been drilled into her, especially the need to think before speaking, was a nightmare and much harder in practice than in theory.
They all wanted to talk to her. Funnily enough, everyone seemed to want to know about her relationship to the British royal family. There were more than a few crestfallen faces when she told them she’d never met anyone more senior than a viscount, and that had been at a garden party when she was a child.