forced herself to study the Atraeus bride in the painting again. It was the perfect reality check.
Her pale, demure gown was the epitome of all things virginal and pure. Nothing like Carla’s flaming red silk dress, with its enticing glimpse of cleavage and leg. The serene eighteenth-century bride was no doubt every man’s secret dream. A perfect wife, without a flirty bone in her body. Or a stress condition.
Lucas’s gaze sliced back to Carla. “I’ll take you back to the party. Dinner will be served in about fifteen minutes.”
He was jealous.
The thought reverberated through her, but for the first time in two years what Lucas wanted wasn’t a priority. Her rules had just changed. From now on it was commitment or nothing.
Her chin firmed. “No. I have an escort. Zane will take me back to the party.”
For a long, tension-filled moment Carla thought Lucas would argue, but then the demanding, possessive gleam was replaced by a familiar control. He nodded curtly then sent Zane a long, cold look that conveyed a hands-off message that left Carla feeling doubly confused. Lucas didn’t want her, but neither did he want Zane anywhere near her.
And if Lucas no longer wanted her, if they really were finished, why had he bothered to search her out?
Three
Lucas Atraeus strode into his private quarters and snapped the door closed behind him. Opening a set of French doors, he stepped out onto his balcony. The wind buffeted the weathered stone parapet and whipped night-dark hair around the obdurate line of his jaw. He tried to focus on the steady roar of the waves pounding the cliff face beneath and the stream of damp, salty air, while he waited for the self-destructive desire to reclaim Carla to dissolve.
The vibration of his cell phone drew him back inside. Sliding the phone out of his pocket, he checked the screen. Lilah. No doubt wondering where he was.
Jaw clenched, he allowed the call to go through to his voice mail. He couldn’t stomach talking to Lilah right at that moment with his emotions still raw and his thoughts on another woman. Besides, with a relationship based on a few phone calls and a couple of conversations, most of them purely work based, they literally had nothing to say to each other.
The call terminated. Lucas found himself staring at a newspaper he had tossed down on the coffee table, the one he had read on the night flight from New York to Medinos. The paper was open at the society pages and a grainy shot of Carla in her capacity as the “face” of Ambrosi Pearls, twined intimately close with a rival millionaire businessman.
Picking up the newspaper, he reread the caption that hinted at a hot affair.
He had been away for two months but by all accounts she had not missed him.
Tossing the newspaper down on the coffee table, he strode back out onto the balcony. Before he could stop himself, he had punched in her number on his phone.
Calling her now made no kind of sense.
He held the sleek phone pressed to his ear and forced himself to remember the one overriding reason he should never have touched Carla Ambrosi.
Grimly, he noted that the hit of old grief and sharp-enough-to-taste guilt still wasn’t powerful enough to bury the impulse to involve himself even more deeply in yet another fatal attraction.
When he had met Carla, somehow he had stepped away from the rigid discipline he had instilled in himself after Sophie’s death.
The car accident hadn’t been his fault, but he was still haunted by the argument that had instigated Sophie’s headlong dash in her sports car after he had found out that she had aborted his child.
Sophie had been beautiful, headstrong and adept at winding him around her little finger. He should have stopped her, taken the car keys. He should have controlled the situation. It had been his responsibility to protect her, and he had failed.
They should never have been together in the first place.
They had been all wrong for each other. He had been disciplined, work focused and family orientated. Sophie had skimmed along the surface of life, thriving on bright lights, parties and media attention. Even the manner in which Sophie had died had garnered publicity and had been perceived in certain quarters as glamorous.
The ring tone continued. His fingers tightened on the cell. Carla had her phone with her; she should have picked up by now.
Unless she was otherwise occupied. With Zane.
His stomach clenched at the image of Carla, mouthwateringly gorgeous in red, her fingers twined in Zane’s tie, poised for a kiss he had interrupted.
He didn’t trust Zane. His younger brother had a reputation with women that literally burned.
The call went through to voice mail. Carla’s voice filled his ear.
Despite the annoyance that gripped him that Carla had decided to ignore his call, Lucas was riveted by the velvet-cool sound of the recorded message. The brisk, businesslike tone so at odds with Carla’s ultrasexy, ultrafeminine appearance and which never failed to fascinate.
During the two months he had been in the States he had refrained from contacting Carla. He had needed to distance himself from a relationship that during an intense few days in Thailand had suddenly stepped over an invisible boundary and become too gut-wrenchingly intimate. Too like his relationship with Sophie.
Carla, who was surprisingly businesslike and controlled when it came to communication, had left only one text and a single phone message to which he had replied. A few weeks ago he had seen her briefly, from a distance, at her father’s funeral, but they hadn’t spoken.
That was reason number two not to become involved with Carla.
The ground rules for their relationship had been based on what she had wanted: a no-strings fun fling, carried out in secret because of the financial scandal that had erupted between their two families.
Secrecy was not Lucas’s thing, but since he had never planned on permanency he hadn’t seen any harm in going along with Carla’s plan. He had been based in the States, Carla was in Sydney. A relationship wasn’t possible even if he had wanted one.
The line hummed expectantly.
Irritated with himself for not having done it sooner, Lucas terminated the call.
Grimly, he stared at the endless expanse of sea, the faint curve of the horizon. Carla not picking up the call was the best-case scenario. If she had, he was by no means certain he could have maintained his ruthless facade.
The problem was that, as tough and successful as he was in business, when it came to women his track record was patchy.
As an Atraeus he was expected to be coolly dominant. Despite the years he had spent trying to mold himself into the strong silent type who routinely got his way, he had not achieved Constantine’s effortless self-possession. Little kids and fluffy dogs still targeted him; women of all ages gravitated to him as if they had no clue about his reputation as The Atraeus Group’s key hatchet man.
Despite the long list of companies he had streamlined or clinically dismantled, he
