took Leila’s arm and escorted her across the elegant lobby, thankful that they met nobody along the way inclined to ask for an autograph or a quick chat. They were left alone still as they took the elevator to their floor, but Rafael didn’t draw a decent breath until he shepherded his wife into their suite and closed off the world behind them. He’d asked for and received a magnificent view of the sea, complete with a private balcony.
“It’s breathtaking,” Leila noted, pulling free of him and crossing to the bank of windows, and Rafael thought how the view paled in comparison to her beauty. “When did you arrive?”
“Yesterday. I came straight from London.”
She faced him then, and backlit with the sun it made her look more fragile and pale. “Were you able to spend much time with your family?”
“I flew in the day of the wedding and left the next morning,” he said, then shrugged when her smooth brow pulled into a frown. “Like you, my schedule was incredibly tight.”
She nodded at that and looked away. How ironic that he’d kept bits of his past secret from her, yet he disliked it when the tables were turned. He simply saw no sense in divulging how despicable his father had been to him, how he’d suffered emotionally while his siblings had endured that plus physical abuse.
Some things were better left buried. He certainly couldn’t see any reason to exhume the dark secrets of his past to his wife.
A good part of his success in business had hinged on his gut feeling to strike deals at opportune moments. This was no different.
“We should coordinate our schedules,” he said, smoothly steering the conversation away from his family and their murky past. “My publicist stressed the importance of us showing support for each other and our projects during the festival, though I can’t imagine not being there for you.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll get my mobile.”
Was there a quaver of distress in her voice?
He glanced back only to find her riffling through a brand-new designer purse, seeming simply distracted. She was unquestionably the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, but her life was as screwed up as his.
They had been two rising stars who’d collided in a glitter of passion. She had reached the pinnacle of a career that now dictated the way she must live.
Leila was a millionaire in her own right – her name a brand that was copied. Emulated. She had endorsements. Fame. A demanding life far apart from his own.
This past year Rafael had moved from the realm of millionaire to billionaire, and the fasttrack world of computer technology meant he always had to stay one step ahead of the competition. He’d honed his rapier-edged instincts in fighting his way to the top of his world, and now he wondered if the changes he saw in Leila had been there all along. If he’d simply been too comfortable with his marriage to recognize his wife wasn’t her usual bubbly self.
She certainly seemed more sure of herself than in the past, yet there was a vulnerability about her that hummed about the edge of her success like a nervous hummingbird seeking nectar. There was something wrong that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
They’d both achieved their goals, but at what price to their personal life? Was their marriage still as strong as it once had been?
He’d find out this week that they’d be together; he’d already planned to spend the bulk of his time in his wife’s company. He’d missed her more than he could possibly express, for tender words had never been easy for him to grasp, much less admit.
It had always been easier to show her how much he loved her with gifts. Like his latest smartphone.
Rafael ran his thumb over the sleek new mobile that was the cutting edge of technology. This was his baby. The wireless device of the future that was featured in the movie Bastion 9, which would premiere here tonight.
But while the phones he’d donated for the elite festival gift bags were silver on black, like the ones that would go on sale tomorrow around the world, this device had a one-of-a-kind liquid magenta shell enhanced with thin black swirls.
Her color.
His mobile was the companion to hers, a reverse of the colors. His and hers phones. A design he’d created as the logo for her own personal line that she’d yet to launch.
“I found it,” she said, holding her old mobile up and squinting at the screen.
He held his palm out for it. “It’ll take me a moment to exchange the chip into the new one.”
Excitement lit her eyes as she crossed to him. “Is that the new device that’s all the buzz?”
He nodded.
“I didn’t know they came in color.”
“They don’t, or at least not for a year and even then never with this design.”
She reached out and laid her hand on his, stilling him. “Is this design your creation as well?”
“It is,” he said, his body surging to life once more by her touch, by the wonder glowing in her eyes.
Her brow furrowed the slightest bit as she studied the intricate swirls. He knew the exact moment she understood the design was much more than lines and curlicues, when she realized this was cursive writing in Portuguese.
“‘My only love,’“ she read, then pressed two fingers to her lips. “It’s perfect.”
He’d thought so too. Had believed she was the only woman he’d ever love from the first moment he’d met Leila five years ago.
Leila had been well into making a stunning comeback in the modeling world, but she’d still been a painfully thin waif with soulful eyes.
And it had been obvious she was very much under her dominating mother’s control. He’d clashed with the “stage mother” immediately, for at the time he was just a developer in a huge software company in London. A nobody, save the unwanted notoriety of being William Wolfe’s bastard, a fact he desperately tried to hide for the shame that it brought on his mother.
Leila Santiago had been the star, hired as the hot model to tout the cutting-edge personal music player he’d developed that recorded and held hundreds of songs.
He’d stood in the shadows of the set watching her, just as he’d watched his siblings play together from afar all those years ago. The longer he’d observed Leila, the more he realized she was dancing to the whims of her domineering mother.
Then as now, Leila’s gorgeous eyes had met his. For a moment he’d seen the pain and uncertainty choking her. Seen the loneliness in her that mirrored his own.
That one look had called to something buried deep inside him. Bare Souls.
She, the lost waif in need of a hero, and he, the unwanted boy desperately needing to find the one person who’d make him feel whole. Make him feel worthy.
Everyone on the set had planned to hit the pubs after the shoot and Rafael had looked forward to getting to know Leila better, but her mother had made it clear that Leila needed to work out instead.
Though Leila seemed at her
