knotted her inside. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I have it on good authority that the news of our marriage is about to explode onto the front pages.’ He waited while her hand clenched on the receiver, then asked sharply, ‘Are you there?’
‘Yes.’ She said crisply, ‘Thank you for telling me. I’ll ring my parents straight away and let them know.’
‘Do they know about the marriage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sensible of you to tell them,’ he said calmly. ‘When do you go home?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’
He asked for the details of her airline and arrival time, then said, ‘I suggest you change your booking to get off the flight in Rome.’
‘That’s being paranoid,’ she said brusquely. ‘I’ll be fine. No one will be expecting me anyway—the airline won’t tell anyone when I’m due in, and my parents are the only other people who know. They’re certainly not going to confide in any nice, inquisitive journalist.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said calmly. ‘Have a safe flight home.’
And he hung up.
Blinking back stupid, unnecessary tears, Lauren put down the receiver. She felt like an animal in hiding, every sense strained to the point of pain while wolves closed in on her.
BUT even though Lauren had prepared herself mentally and emotionally on the long flight, the pack of photographers and reporters that greeted her at Heathrow both shocked and scared her. Light exploded in her face as they bayed her name and took photographs.
‘Look this way, Lauren!’ ‘Hi, Lauren—can you tell us about this marriage to—?’ ‘Lauren, Lauren, over here!’ until command and shouted comment blended into a din that mercifully blocked out individual yells.
Shaking inwardly, she clamped her lips together, tuning them out while she searched for the quickest route through the milling mass. And then salvation arrived, in the form of two burly men stamped with the indefinable mark of security personnel.
‘This way, please, Ms Porter,’ the largest and most solid one said in her ear while the other commandeered her luggage trolley as a shield.
Locking every muscle against a cowardly impulse to run, she allowed herself to be escorted away from the hordes and along a corridor. They stopped outside a door and the one in front held it open.
Bewildered, Lauren went through.
And stopped as the door closed behind her and Guy Bagaton rose to his feet, big and vital and ablaze with raw power. Her heart jumping in incredulous joy, she managed to say in a brittle voice, ‘Oh—hello. I gather that the news has broken?’
‘This morning.’ He sounded as fed up as he looked, but his size and that indefinable air of competence and authority was hugely reassuring.
Shivering, she rubbed her arms; the impersonal room reminded her sharply of that other room a world away when she and this man had exchanged the vows that now bound them in a false relationship.
‘I see,’ she said unevenly. ‘I expected interest, but nothing like that pandemonium. How did they know I was coming in today?’
With cold contempt he said, ‘There’s always someone who’ll spill the beans.’ Eyes as bright and burnished as fool’s gold narrowed. ‘You look tired. Didn’t you get any sleep on the flight?’
‘Not a lot.’ And now her head was pounding, excitement and shock producing a wild mixture of sensations: intense relief, because she trusted him to deal with any situation, and a fierce sensual charge honed by absence. ‘The plane was seething with high school students embarking on a year’s exchange in Europe. They settled down for an hour here and there.’
‘I see. Come on, let’s go.’ Still frowning, he took her arm and steered her towards a boarding bridge.
Although a debilitating combination of exhaustion and astonishment tempted her to let him take over, she croaked, ‘What’s happening? Where are we going?’
‘Dacia.’
Blinking, she wondered where Dacia was, before remembering a small princedom in the Mediterranean Sea. She balked, trying to stop. ‘Why?’
With an expression as grim as his voice, Guy exerted just enough strength to urge her on. ‘Your parents are already there.’
What on earth was going on? Her mind spun stupidly so that all she could say was, ‘But my father can’t travel by air.’
‘He can if he has a nurse with him,’ Guy told her, escorting her along the bridge. ‘He’s fine; I’ve just been speaking to your mother. I’m sorry you had to run the gauntlet back there.’
Summoning the last remnants of common sense, Lauren dug her heels in. ‘Wait. I’m not sure this is a good idea. What’s going on? Why Dacia, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Because it’s quiet and peaceful and you wanted to be out of the limelight,’ Guy said evenly. ‘A few days there will see the media frenzy die—there’s nothing so stale as last week’s news.’
‘But I—’
‘Your parents agreed that this would be the best idea.’
‘But I don’t understand—’
He rasped, ‘It’s all I can do to protect you from the sort of gossip that could destroy your life.’
‘What? In this day and age? You’ve got a very naïve attitude to modern society if you think that a marriage of convenience is going to do more than mildly titillate readers.’
Flint-hard and formidable, Guy said brusquely, ‘You’re the one who’s completely naïve. To start off with, you might as well kiss your career goodbye.’
The pain in her breast solidified into a rock, so big she couldn’t breathe properly. ‘Don’t be ridiculous—’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ he ground out, eyes cold as frozen fire. ‘Unless you’ve got enough incriminating evidence to blackmail him, Corbett’s not going to keep you once he knows that you and I were lovers. And with journalists combing through Sant’Rosa and Valanu, it won’t be long before he does know.’
‘It won’t matter,’ she said dully. It hurt that he should still believe that ancient piece of gossip.
And that was dangerous, because she shouldn’t care what he thought of her.
Guy said harshly, ‘He doesn’t strike me as a man who’s happy sharing his women, and I doubt if he’d surrender to blackmail.’ Contempt darkened his face and thinned his mouth.
‘No,’ she said, her voice muted. ‘He wouldn’t.’
