Dani Collins – Hot Picks: Secrets And Lies: His Mistress with Two Secrets (The Sauveterre Siblings) / More than a Convenient Marriage? / A Debt Paid in Passion (страница 3)
Cinnia’s eyes were widening to the point they stung. She was pretty sure they were going to fall right out of her head.
She watched Trella’s gaze narrow as the full scope of where they were and why penetrated her side. Cinnia’s blood pressure had been stable so far, but her limbs began to tingle and her head went so hot she felt like her hair was on fire. She was pretty sure whatever breaths she was managing to draw lost all their oxygen before hitting her lungs.
“Are you…okay?” Cinnia asked hesitantly. She didn’t know exactly what Trella had been through when she had been kidnapped, but she knew it had left her afraid of men for a long time. Afraid of a lot of things.
Trella, being an enormously resilient and self-deprecating person, let out a choke of hysterical laughter and rolled her eyes. It was a “look where I am,” and her shrug conveyed that she was dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, but not one caused by something traumatic.
“How about you?” she challenged with wry cheer, then sobered. She frowned at Cinnia’s middle. “Is it…?” She glanced around.
Henri’s. That’s what she was asking.
Cinnia’s eyes teared up. Please don’t tell him, she silently pleaded.
This was part sitcom, part Greek tragedy. Her own hysterical laugh pressed for escape, but her tight throat wouldn’t release it.
Trella straightened her spine so she was that little bit taller than Cinnia. She gave her wavy dark hair a toss.
“We’ll pretend this didn’t happen.” She was a stunning woman in her midtwenties, but she looked nine years old, hiding stolen candy and bravely pretending it wasn’t in her red-hot hand.
This was the sister Henri had told Cinnia had existed in his childhood, the brat who had driven him crazy getting herself into trouble, always needing her big brother to step in and fix it.
Cinnia wanted to hug her again. She was so proud of Trella, even if conquering her past had led to a complicated future.
And she desperately wanted to share this moment with Henri, instinctively knowing that after the shock, this sign of healing in Trella would be a much-needed bright spot.
Or not. Worrying about any Sauveterre would sit heavily on him. Taking care of his mother and sisters was as much responsibility as he was willing to shoulder. That’s why he’d drawn such a hard line against marrying and procreating.
A wistful sigh filled her, but she held it in. Ironic that she wanted to be there for him as he dealt with his sister’s news knowing full well he would lose his mind once he learned Cinnia was carrying his child.
I told you from the beginning I would never marry you.
Her heart clenched afresh, abraded and stung. Scorned.
“Ms. Whitley,” the nurse said behind her. “I can take you now.”
“It’s really good to see you,” Cinnia said to Trella, holding out her arms for another quick hug. “I’ve missed all of you.”
Most of Cinnia’s interactions with Henri’s family had been over the tablet, but she felt the loss of connection to the Sauveterre clan quite deeply.
“I would ask you to give my regards to everyone, but…” Cinnia trailed off.
Trella’s arms were firm and strong around her. She pulled away slowly, tilting her head so they were eye-to-eye. Would her baby have those Sauveterre eyes, Cinnia wondered with a pang? Babies?
“You and I can stay in touch now,” Trella said with a conspiratorial twitch at the corners of her mouth. Her expression sobered to concern. “Can I call you? I’d like to know why…”
Cinnia knew that keeping the pregnancy from Henri was a losing battle. She just wanted a plan in place before he found out so he wouldn’t feel trapped. Trella was far too close to her siblings to keep her own pregnancy a secret from them for long. Once she spilled those beans, Cinnia’s condition would be quick to follow.
But if she could buy a little time to get her ducks in a row, maybe find out exactly how many babies she was actually having…
She nodded. “If you’re still in London at the end of the week, why don’t we have dinner?”
Two years ago…
CINNIA WAS NOT a social climber, but her roommate, Vera, was. Cheerfully and without apology. Thus, when Vera wangled opening-night tickets from the owner of the hottest new nightclub in London, she demanded Cinnia accompany her.
“I told him about your title,” Vera said. “That’s how I got him to say yes to our coming.”
“The title that belongs to my great-uncle a million times removed whom I’ve never met and who wouldn’t know me from Eve?”
“I might have exaggerated how close you are. But I told him about your granny’s vintage tiara and since his theme is ‘flappers and gangsters,’ and he wants window dressing, he said we could come as staff. No swag,” Vera said with a dismayed wrinkle of her nose. “Just mingle with the guests. Be first on the dance floor, that sort of thing.”
Cinnia was reluctant. Her weekends were her only time away from her job at a wealth management firm to put the pieces in place for striking out on her own. She had set September as her goal and had a mile-long list of to-dos to make it happen.
“You work too hard,” Vera groaned. “Look at it as a chance to rub elbows with potential clients. This will be wall-to-wall, top-tier, A-list celebs.”
“That’s not how it works.”
Cinnia’s mother saw a different opportunity when Cinnia spoke to her over the tablet. “Tell me I can’t wear the tiara so I can tell Vera there’s no point.”
“Nonsense. We’ll get my dress out of storage, too. It’s time they both saw some use. You, too, for that matter.” Her mother had purposely held a Roaring Twenties party on her tenth anniversary so she could wear her grandmother’s modest, heirloom tiara. She had had a beaded dress made special for the occasion.
“You wouldn’t get the tiara from the safe-deposit box when we were broke and I wanted to sell it, but you’ll let me wear it to a nightclub?” Cinnia asked, askance.
“This is why I kept it, for you girls to wear on special occasions. Go. Have fun. There’s bound to be some nice men there.”
“Rich husbands, you mean? They don’t sell them at the bar, Mum.”
“Of course not. It will be an open bar for something like this, won’t it?” her mother returned tartly.
There was a reason she and her sisters called their mum Mrs. Bennet. She was forever trying to find their golden ticket of a husband. There was also a reason she was so determined to do so. The Whitleys had descended from aristocracy. The blue blood cells had been significantly diluted by bright, peasant red, but Milly Whitley was determined that her daughters would make good matches and the Whitleys would return to the lofty position they’d all enjoyed before Mr. Whitley had died and his fragile financial house of cards had toppled around them.
Until then, they would dress the part and hang on to a house that was a money pit and they would attend the sorts of occasions that told the world they hadn’t gone anywhere.
“I daresay you’ll find a better class of suitor than your usual struggling students and apron clingers,” her mother added snobbishly.
All they needed was one man with deep pockets.
Or, as Cinnia had said countless times, they could all get proper jobs like normal people.
Her two middle sisters decried that as blasphemy.
Priscilla, her first younger sister, was a model. Genuinely pretty, but not in high demand. Two years out of school and she had barely worked at all. She just needed a better head shot or a new outfit or a change of hairstyle and her career would take off, she kept assuring them. Completing a course in hairstyling or something useful like that would only hold her back.
Nell, their stunning little party girl, didn’t need a job. Boys already bought her things and she was the one who would land them the Big Fish when the time came. If Cinnia could somehow keep her in school long enough to complete her A levels without getting pregnant, she’d be thrilled.
Thankfully Dorry had a brain and ten times anyone’s ambition to use it. Their youngest sister had been babysitting from the moment she was old enough to wipe a nose and currently had a job in a fish-and-chip truck, much to their mother’s repulsion. Dorry squirreled her money before anyone saw it and kept her head down, usually bent over a book. If something happened to Cinnia, she had every confidence her baby sister would keep the rest of them fed and sheltered.
She was trying not to put that on poor Dorry. After trying to help her mother win a fight against owing back taxes and other debts associated with her father’s estate, Cinnia had taken an interest in wills and estate planning. As careers went, it paid well enough, was stable and flexible and she found it intellectually challenging.
Her mother said she might as well be an undertaker.
Vera said, “No matter what, do not tell any men we chat up what you do for a living. Not unless we’re trying to get away from them.”
Cinnia didn’t have Vera’s interest in meeting men. Her mother’s lack of a career to fall back on had been their downfall. All Milly was qualified to do was take in university students as boarders because she had a big house, which was how she paid the bills, much to her everlasting embarrassment. She spun it as a lark when people asked about it. She liked to be surrounded by young people, she said, playing eccentric.