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Authors: Penny Jordan

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BOOK: Passion and the Prince
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‘I’m so sorry.’ She tried to step back from him, but instead of releasing her his hold on her tightened. He was so lost in his pain that he was barely aware he was holding her, Lily suspected.

‘I couldn’t protect her and she died. I tried, but I failed.’ Now that the seal damming his past had been pierced the feelings he had locked away for so long flooded past his defences, leaving him powerless to stop
himself from revealing the self-contempt he had always tried to keep hidden.

‘We grew up together. A marriage between us was what our families had always hoped for. It seemed the right thing to do. We got on well together. She understood the demands of my position. I thought that she knew me and I knew her. I believed I could trust her with anything—my hopes, my doubts, our future together. I believed she trusted me, but I was wrong.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lily repeated ‘She’d always told me she was happy with our parents’ plans for our shared future. I didn’t know that she wasn’t. She lied to me.’

‘Perhaps she didn’t want to hurt you and was trying to protect you?’ Lily suggested gently, wanting to ease his pain.

Marco looked at her.

At no time had anyone—not Olivia and not even himself—suggested that Olivia might have wanted to spare him pain. Lily’s words, her gentleness and her concern for him, felt like the comforting and healing effect of warm sunlight on an unbearably dark, cold place. But he was giving in to something he must not give in to. He was letting the dangerous sweetness that Lily had brought him overwhelm reality. There were still anomalies in Lily’s way of life that logic insisted did not add up ‘We’d better get back to the reception. The Duchess will be wondering where we are,’ Lily warned him.

‘In a minute. First I want you to explain to me what you were doing working in that photographic studio, given what Melanie said about your childhood. I would
have thought that it would be the last place you’d want to be after what. I’ve now learned about you.’

‘I was standing in for my half-brother,’ Lily admitted. Now he knew about her parents she felt strong enough to tell him the truth, and then at last he would believe her. ‘My father married a second time. My stepmother was very kind to me. She’s remarried now—my father died ten years ago—but my half-brother has turned our father into a hero figure and wants to follow in his footsteps.’

She gave a small sigh. ‘He texted me asking me to stand in for him because he knew I was in Milan. I hadn’t realised then that he’d asked your nephew to model for him.’

She was telling him the truth, Marco recognised on an unsettling surge of uncomfortable guilt. ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of that before?’

‘I didn’t think you’d believe me,’ Lily told him wryly.

‘I probably wasn’t ready to listen even if you had. I’m sorry I misjudged you. ‘

‘Something like that,’ Lily agreed. It was impossible for her to tell him now that she had wanted to keep a distance between them because she had feared the effect he had on her. After all, now she not only knew that he did not reciprocate the desire she felt for him, she also knew he was still mourning the girl he had expected to marry.

She started to walk towards the door, conscious of her duty to the Duchess and her work, but came to an abrupt halt when Marco caught up with her and asked, ‘And Anton? Tell me about him?’

Lily’s breath escaped in a soft hiss of anxiety. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

She was lying, Marco knew, but instead of feeling the sense of condemnation against her he would normally have felt instead he felt an unfamiliar stirring of—of what? Curiosity? Or was it something more personal than that? Something that was in fact concern for her?

Whilst he battled with his own thoughts Lily continued walking back to the reception. She looked so vulnerable and so determined to be strong. No one should have to find strength on their own, without someone who cared about them to help them. He knew the desolate wilderness that place was. He couldn’t let Lily struggle in it. He strode after her, catching up with her to put his hand under her elbow so that they re-entered the reception together.

Lily didn’t know whether to feel relieved or embarrassed when she realised that the Duchess had put their disappearance down to a desire to be alone with one another. Of course it was true that the presence of Marco’s arm around her was hardly likely to convince the Duchess that she had got things wrong, but somehow Lily found it foolishly impossible to move away from his pseudo-lover-like hold.

The rest of the evening passed in something of a tired blur for Lily after the emotional trauma of the day. Of course she managed to stop dwelling on her own feelings when the Duchess showed her and Marco over the long gallery housing the villa’s art collection, her professionalism cutting in whilst she made notes and took photographs.

‘No wonder you’re so professional—you must have been handling these things practically from your cradle,’ Marco commented at one point, picking up her camera.

‘Practically,’ Lily agreed. ‘Not that I ever had much of an interest in fashion. It was always art that fascinated me.’

‘Not modern art, though?’

‘The past feels more comfortable, more established. I feel safer there,’ Lily told him, only realising when she saw the way he was looking at her just what she might have betrayed.

‘Safer?’

‘With art of the past there’s no need for me to trust my own judgement,’ she defended herself.

‘Safety and your desire for it seems to be a recurring theme in your life.’

Lily could feel her heart hammering heavily into her ribs.

‘The price of having parents who quarrelled a lot and being over-sensitive to that quarrelling, I expect.’

She was glad that the Duchess was there, to keep the conversation from getting too personal, glad too of the other guests who’d been invited to join them for dinner, so that conversation around the dinner table was kept general.

Inevitably, though, the evening came to an end, and she smiled a goodnight at the Duchess before walking up the stairs and then along the corridor with Marco to the guest suite.

‘You can use the bathroom first if you wish,’ she said, as soon as they were inside the sitting room. ‘I’ve
got some notes I want to type up, so I’ll be working for a while.’

Marco nodded his head.

He wasn’t anywhere near as immune to her as he should be—as he wanted to be, as he must be. Just because she had shown sympathy toward him over Olivia that did not mean … It didn’t mean what? That she wanted him? He could
make
her want him. They both had a shared history of pain, and a shared need to have that pain assuaged. He could assuage it. He could hold her and take her and show her that there was far more pleasure to be found in his arms than in the arms of a man she feared as well as desired.

What was he thinking? All the old habits and teaching rose up inside him, warning him against allowing her to get under his guard. They might have some common ground, but that did not mean that he could trust her.

‘I’ll say goodnight, then,’ he told her curtly, opening the communicating door between the two rooms.

‘Yes. Yes. Goodnight,’ Lily returned.

It was true that she had work to do, Lily reminded herself, smothering a yawn after the door had closed, leaving her alone in the sitting room to their suite. She sat down at the small pretty desk and opened her laptop, connecting her camera to it so that she could download the photographs she had taken.

Normally within seconds of starting on a task like this she would have been so absorbed in her work that she’d have been oblivious to anything and everything else, but tonight for some reason, even though she was focusing on the photographs she had taken, her real
attention was on the mental images stored inside her head—images of Marco from earlier in the evening. Marco smiling at her as the Duchess introduced them as a couple. Marco steadying her arm when shock had jolted through her, Marco telling her about the love he had lost.

Lily rubbed her eyes and got up, walking up and down and trying to clear her head. Her eyes felt gritty and dry. Her head was beginning to ache. She was tired, but she dared not risk going through the bedroom to the bathroom to get ready for bed until she was sure that Marco was asleep. Perhaps she could just lie down on the sofa for a few minutes …

Marco looked at his watch. Was Lily still working? It was over an hour since he’d come to bed, and she’d looked tired when they’d come upstairs. It was concern for the efficient execution of the tour that was getting him out of bed now, not his concern for Lily herself, he assured himself as he pulled on a bathrobe and opened the communicating door.

Lily’s laptop was still open on the desk, quietly humming, but Lily herself had fallen asleep on the sofa, fully dressed.

Why hadn’t she made herself properly comfortable? He told himself that what her obvious discomfort was arousing in him was merely irritation. Why should he be concerned for her, after all? He switched off the laptop, intending to walk away and leave her where she was, but something beyond his control made him go back to look down at her a second time. She couldn’t possibly sleep properly where she was. At the very least she’d
probably wake up with a stiff neck, and that was bound to effect her ability to work—which was why she was here. Sofas and chairs were not designed to be slept on, especially elegant antique pieces—as he knew to his cost.

Conversely, the bed in the bedroom was vast, with plenty of room for two people to sleep in it without having to go anywhere near one another. It seemed un-gentlemanly to leave her where she was, as though doing so broke his own expectation of courtesy for someone who was, after all, in his care.

He reached down to wake her up, and then stopped. She would only argue with him and insist on staying where she was, insist that he had the right to the bed. It would be far more expedient to simply pick her up and carry her to the bed than to get involved in an argument in which they’d both fight to be the one to do the right thing.

When he lifted her in his arms she made a small sound that had him catching his breath thinking she was going to wake up, but she merely turned into his body. The sensation of her warmth lying against him sent his heart hammering into his ribs. What was the matter with him? He wasn’t so unable to control his needs that he was now afraid of even this kind of intimacy with her, was he?

He felt Lily snuggle deeper into his hold, exhaling a small sigh of pleasure as she did so. Pulling back the covers, Marco placed her down on one side of the bed, and then removed his robe so that he could get into the opposite side of the bed and switch off the bedside lamp. He saw Lily frown in her sleep and move, seeking
the warmth that she’d lost. Marco lay on his own side of the bed, his muscles coiled tightly with tension as he willed Lily not to breach the distance he had put between them.

But no amount of willing Lily to stay where she was on his part had the power to come between Lily herself and the need that sleep and his touch had awakened in her. She moved towards him, sighing softly when she found him, curling up against him with her hand on his arm, her head on his chest. He wanted to push her away, but somehow he couldn’t. Somehow that rebellion inside him was overriding the instinct that told him that allowing such intimacy between them was dangerous.

He had never slept with a woman so intimately—never allowed himself to gather anyone into his arms and simply hold them. He had never wanted to—until now. Such intense intimacy was not something he felt comfortable with. His parents had lived with a great deal of formality. They had always had separate bedrooms. But right now holding Lily so close to him was exactly what he wanted. He drew her closer and felt the tightening of an unfamiliar ache around his heart. Now he knew why he had always rejected this kind of intimacy. He had rejected it because it was dangerous. Because it made you vulnerable to the woman you were holding. Because once you had known it you would never want to be without it—or without her.

Soft morning light filtered in through the room’s curtains, caressing the faces of the two people sleeping together in the centre in the large bed. Lily was held within the protective curve of Marco’s body, his arm
round her. She was oblivious to the intimacy she had sought—and found—during the night hours whilst she had slept.

Marco woke first, his senses enjoying the knowledge that he was holding Lily before he was properly awake and his brain kicked in to tell him what that meant. When it did, though, he still didn’t release her or move away from her. He was trying to work out exactly what it was about holding her that made the intimacy seem not just right but also necessary, he told himself, defending his reluctance to put any distance between them.

She looked so beautiful. She
was
beautiful—inside and out. She was everything any man could ever want in a woman, and the man who had let her go was a fool to have done so. Marco’s heart slammed into his ribs, and the small involuntary movement he made, as though in denial of his own thoughts and the reality of what they meant, woke Lily from her sleep.

If she kept her eyes closed perhaps she wouldn’t have to wake up, and then she could hold on to her wonderful dream of being held safe in Marco’s arms. Mmm … In her imagination she was there still, and she could feel his heart beating against the hand she had placed on his bare chest. She
could
feel his heart beating beneath her hand. Lily’s eyes flew open. She was in bed with Marco and he was holding her. How had that happened? Had she somehow sleep-walked into the bedroom and got into bed beside him? She hoped not.

She looked at Marco, who immediately released her and removed himself from the bed, reaching for his robe as he did so, telling her with a dismissive shrug, ‘You didn’t look very comfortable sleeping on the sofa, so I
brought you here. I thought there was more than enough room in the bed for both of us.’ His voice was terse, his manner distant. He disappeared into the bathroom before she could say anything.

Thankfully, Lily realised she was still fully dressed. She was uncomfortably aware that she must have been the one to initiate their sleeping intimacy, given the way she had been dreaming about him. Why hadn’t he demanded an explanation of her behaviour? Perhaps because he was so used to sleeping with eager women—women he couldn’t love because he loved a girl who was now lost to him for ever—who longed to be close to him that what she had done had barely registered with him.

BOOK: Passion and the Prince
4.57Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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