pressures of the modeling world. He’d become the barrier that her controlling mother could never break down.
He’d let Leila make her own decisions regarding her career and she had become strong. She owed him everything – including the truth that burned in her soul.
“Rafael da Souza is without a doubt the most handsome man here,” a ravishing starlet said, a champagne flute dangling from her jeweled fingers and lust glittering in her blue eyes that were fixed on him.
“I agree,” Leila managed to say in a controlled tone, her Brazilian blood bitten with jealousy that this young woman would openly flaunt her desire for Rafael in front of her! “But then, I’ve always thought he was the most handsome man I’ve ever met.”
“You know him?” she asked, looking at Leila then.
Leila forced a smile, knowing the second when the actress recognized her. “I’m his wife.”
And after delivering that statement, Leila walked straight toward her husband. She lifted a flute of champagne off a tray as Rafael turned to talk to a beautiful woman who’d just approached him.
A woman whom he seemed glad to see!
Leila downed the fine wine so fast that her head took a dizzying spin. She refused to rationalize that women threw themselves at Rafael often, for his finely chiseled features and intense dark eyes were too magnetic for any woman to resist, including herself. But he was her husband!
Her sting of jealousy was warranted. Wasn’t it?
She wouldn’t sit on the sidelines tonight and watch others flirt with him! God forbid if he welcomed their attention, as he seemed to be doing now with this green-eyed beauty at his side.
“There you are,” Leila said in an affected purr as she slipped her arms around his muscled one, bringing his startled gaze snapping to hers. “I’ve missed you.”
His brows slammed together, then smoothed one trebling pulse later. “Have you now?”
“I thought perhaps you’d give me a tour of the yacht.”
“Later,” he said, and flicked an apologetic look at the other woman.
Before Leila could protest, the woman who’d garnered Rafael’s attention spoke directly to her. “I’ve admired your work for years. You make modeling look effortless when I know it is very hard work.”
Again she trotted forth her patent smile when she felt anything but pleasant. Her head was still in the clouds from drinking two glasses of champagne on a nearly empty stomach.
“Are you a model?” Leila asked the woman who was as tall as she, enviably lithe and naturally beautiful with a crown of soft brown curls and arresting jade-green eyes.
“Katie is a costume designer,” came a deep voice behind her, a voice laced with a distinct English accent. “An excellent one, I may add.”
Leila whipped around and stared up at the intruder. The bottom fell out of her queasy stomach as a pair of royal-blue eyes locked on hers.
“Nathaniel,” Leila said, noting that the film star was as tall and broad shouldered as Rafael. That their family resemblance was further established with features that were just as finely chiseled.
The look of love Nathaniel and Katie exchanged caught her by surprise. The celebrated star wasn’t acting now. This was genuine affection.
“Katie and I were sorry you couldn’t make the wedding,” Nathaniel said, moving to his wife now and slipping an arm around her shoulders.
“As was I,” she replied, her apologetic smile flicking from him to Rafael.
The accusatory glint in her husband’s intense eyes scorched through her. He didn’t add that she would have known who Katie was if she had accompanied him to his brother’s wedding. He didn’t have to, for his eyes said it all.
The yacht took a sudden dip and her stomach heaved along with it. Terrified she’d become ill in front of the world, she muttered an apology and fled toward the lower deck and the toilets.
She kept the contents of her queasy stomach, only to find that Rafael had stayed on her heels and was waiting for her to exit.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
She shook her head, for how did one explain one was sick at heart?
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I drank too much champagne on an empty stomach. The movement of the boat made me woozy. Being on the water always does that.”
His brow narrowed, as if considering her words. “That is a convenient answer.”
“It’s the truth. I find these parties cloying,” she said. “Maybe I’ve just been on too hectic of a schedule of late to appreciate the party crowd, but right now I’d kill for some quiet time where I could just relax.”
He gave a curt nod. “Then let’s leave.”
She pressed a hand against the muscled wall of his chest and shivered at the heat and power beneath her palm. “Stay and enjoy your party.”
He closed his hand over hers, but his dark gaze gave nothing away of what he felt. “I wouldn’t dream of it. If we part company on the first night, the paparazzi will have a field day with speculation.”
All for show.
Nobody understood the need for publicity stunts more than she. She’d lend Rafael her support, and he’d do the same for her at the premier of Bare Souls. She never doubted he’d be there for her.
But would he once he’d learned what she’d kept from him?
“Besides,” he continued, “I’ve thought of nothing except getting you alone.”
“Very well,” she said. “Get me out of here.”
Rafael kept his thoughts secreted on the short boat ride from the yacht to the dock. He’d said nothing when the boat had picked up speed and Leila had taken his hand in a death grip.
The tremors rocketing through her told him everything he needed to know then. She wasn’t fine by any stretch of the imagination. She was putting on a brave front, and if there was one thing he understood, it was how to stand tall in the face of adversity.
His troubled childhood had taught him that bitter lesson!
That’s when he’d buried his own pain of being William Wolfe’s unwanted bastard into learning the intricacies of computers, discovering what made them work, and what to do to make them work better.
He suspected Leila did the same with her modeling. That was her escape, or perhaps her triumph and celebration, over her bout with anorexia.
His gaze lifted to La Croisette and the cluster of fans, paparazzi and celebrities moving about. The tents crowding the beach were the same, though the lights were more subdued. More intimate.
At one time they’d have enjoyed the nightlife. Now he selfishly wanted Leila to himself. The question remained if she was still eager to be alone with him.
“Would you like to take in the sights before turning in?”
