Фиона Бранд – A Tangled Affair (страница 2)

Jaw tight, Carla continued to inch forward, her heart pounding at the reporter’s intrusive question, which had been fired at her like a hot bullet.

And which had been eating at her ever since Sienna had broken the news two weeks ago that she had agreed to marry Constantine.

Tonight, though, she was determined not to resent the questions or the attention. After two years of avoiding being publicly linked with Lucas after the one night the press claimed they had spent together, she was now finally free to come clean about the relationship.

The financial feud that had torn the Atraeus and Ambrosi families apart, and the grief of her sister’s first broken engagement to Constantine, were now in the past. Sienna and Constantine had their happy ending. Now, tonight, she and Lucas could finally have theirs.

A throaty rumble presaged the glare of headlights as a gleaming, muscular black car glided in behind her.

Lucas.

Her heart slammed against the wall of her chest. He was staying at the castello, which meant he had probably been at a meeting in town and was just returning. Or he could have driven to the small town house she and Sienna and their mother were renting in order to collect her. The possibility of the second option filled her with relieved pleasure.

A split second later the way ahead was clear as the media deserted her in favor of clustering around Lucas’s Maserati. Automatically, Carla’s foot depressed the accelerator, sending her small sports car rocketing up the steep, winding slope. Scant minutes later, she rounded a sweeping bend and the spare lines of the castello she had only ever seen in magazine articles jumped into full view.

The headlights of the Maserati pinned her as she parked on the smooth sweep of gravel fronting the colonnaded entrance. Feeling suddenly, absurdly vulnerable, she retrieved the flame-red silk clutch that matched her dress and got out of the car.

The Maserati’s lights winked out, plunging her into comparative darkness as she closed her door and locked the car.

She started toward the Maserati, still battling the aftereffects of the bright halogen lights. The sensitivity of her eyes was uncomfortably close to a symptom she had experienced two months ago when she had contracted a virus while holidaying with Lucas in Thailand.

Instead of the romantic interlude she had so carefully planned and which would have generated the proposal she wanted, Lucas had been forced into the role of nursemaid. On her return home, when she had continued to feel off-color, further tests had revealed that the stomach ulcer she thought she had beaten had flared up again.

The driver’s side door of the car swung open. Her pulse rate rocketed off the charts. Finally, after a day of anxious waiting, they would meet.

Meet.

Her mouth went dry at a euphemism that couldn’t begin to describe the explosive encounters that, over the past year, had become increasingly intense.

The reporter at the gate had put his finger on an increasingly tender and painful pulse. Resurrect her relationship with Lucas?

Technically, she was not certain they had ever had anything as balanced as a relationship. Her attempt to create a relaxed, fun atmosphere with no stressful strings had not succeeded. Lucas had seemed content with brief, crazily passionate interludes, but she was not. As hard as she had tried to suppress her type A tendencies and play the glamorous, carefree lover, she had failed. Passion was wonderful, but she liked to be in control, to personally dot every i and cross every t. For Carla, leaving things “open” had created even more stress.

Heart pounding, she started toward the car. The gown she had bought with Lucas in mind was unashamedly spectacular and clung where it touched. Split down one side, it revealed the long, tanned length of her legs. The draped neckline added a sensual Grecian touch to the swell of her breasts and also hid the fact that she had lost weight over the past few weeks.

Her chest squeezed tight as Lucas climbed out of the car with a fluid muscularity she would always recognize.

She drank in midnight eyes veiled by inky lashes, taut cheekbones, the faintly battered nose, courtesy of two seasons playing professional rugby; his strong jaw and firm, well-cut mouth. Despite the sleek designer suit and the ebony seal ring that gleamed on one finger, Lucas looked somewhat less than civilized. A graphic image of him naked and in her bed, his shoulders muscled and broad, his skin dark against crisp white sheets, made her stomach clench.

His gaze captured hers and the idea that they could keep the chemistry that exploded between them a secret until after the wedding died a fiery death. She wanted him. She had waited two years, hamstrung by Sienna’s grief at losing Constantine. She loved her sister and was fiercely loyal. Dating the younger and spectacularly better looking Atraeus brother when Sienna had been publicly dumped by Constantine would have been an unconscionable betrayal.

Tonight, she and Lucas could publicly acknowledge their desire to be together. Not in a heavy-handed, possessive way that would hint at the secretive liaison that had disrupted both of their lives for the past two years, but with a low-key assurance that would hint at the future.

As Ambrosi’s public relations “face,” she understood exactly how this would be handled. There would be no return to the turgid headlines that had followed their first passionate night together. There would be no announcements, no fanfare … at least, not until after tomorrow’s wedding.

Despite the fact that her strappy high heels, a perfect color match for the dress, made her more than a little unstable on the gravel, she jogged the last few yards and flung herself into Lucas’s arms.

The clean scent that was definitively Lucas, mingled with the masculine, faintly exotic undernote of sandalwood, filled her nostrils, making her head spin. Or maybe it was the delight of simply touching him again after a separation that had run into two long months.

The cool sea breeze whipped long silky coils of hair across her face as she lifted up on her toes. Her arms looped around his neck, her body slid against his, instantly responding to his heat, the utter familiarity of broad shoulders and sleek, hard-packed muscle. His sudden intake of breath, the unmistakable feel of him hardening against the soft contours of her belly filled her with mindless relief.

Ridiculous tears blurred her vision. This was so not playing it cool, but it had been two months since she had touched, kissed, made love to her man. Endless days while she had waited for the annoying, debilitating ulcer—clear evidence that she had not coped with her unresolved emotional situation—to heal. Long weeks while she had battled the niggling anxiety that had its roots in the disastrous bout of illness in Thailand, as if she was waiting for the next shoe to drop.

She realized that one of the reasons she had not told Lucas about the complications following the virus was that she had been afraid of the outcome. Over the years he had dated a string of gorgeous, glamorous women so she usually took great care that he only ever saw her at her very best. There had been nothing pretty or romantic about the fever that had gripped her in Thailand. There had been even less glamour surrounding her hospital stay in Sydney.

Lucas’s arms closed around her, his jaw brushed her cheek sending a sensual shiver the length of her spine. Automatically, she leaned into him and lifted her mouth to his, but instead of kissing her, he straightened and unlooped her arms from his neck. Cold air filled the space between them.

When she moved to close the frustrating distance he gripped her upper arms.

“Carla.” His voice was clipped, the Medinian accent smoothed out by the more cosmopolitan overtones of the States, but still dark and sexy enough to send another shiver down her spine. “I tried to ring you. Why didn’t you pick up the call?”

The mundane question, the edged tone pulled her back to earth with a thump. “I switched my phone off while I was being interviewed then I put it on charge.”

But it had only been that way for about an hour. When she had left the private villa she was sharing with her mother and Sienna, she had grabbed the phone and dropped it in her purse. His hands fell away from her arms, leaving a palpable chill in place of the warm imprint of his palms. Extracting the phone from her clutch, she checked the screen and saw that, in her hurry, she had forgotten to turn it on.

She activated the phone, and instantly the missed calls registered on the screen. “Sorry,” she said coolly. “Looks like I forgot to turn it back on.”

She frowned at his lack of response. With an effort of will, she controlled the unruly emotions that had had the temerity to explode out of their carefully contained box and dropped the phone back in her clutch. So, okay, this was subtext for “let’s play it cool.”

Fine. Cool she could do, but not doormat. “I’m sorry I missed meeting you earlier but you’ve been here most of the day. If you’d wanted we could have met for lunch.”