had learned he’d inherited everything, in the form of the estancia and all the debts his father had collected, and gained nothing but his mother’s endless demands for more money, his wife’s desire for freedom and the everlasting dissatisfaction of his disinherited sisters he’d carried around the feeling that he’d let them all down.
Fragile women required a lot more than he was able to give.
‘I want to know why you’re laughing at me,’ she insisted.
‘I’m going to kill him.’
‘Kill who? What are you talking about?’
‘Fate. The universe. Khaled Kitaev.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘I’m padrino de boda, querida.’
She had a blank look on her face that made him want to spin this out a little longer, because watching her lose a little of that tight composure was almost worth the hassle.
He relented and filled her in. ‘Best man.’
She dropped her device and it slithered through her satin skirt and thumped at her feet.
‘You can’t be!’
‘I am.’
‘But we don’t like each other.’ She clamped her mouth shut, as if she couldn’t believe that had just slipped out.
No, maybe not, but he’d just discovered he did like her. She might be spoiled and self-centred, but he lived in a world where most women fell at his feet.
Lulu Lachaille would fall, if he applied the right pressure here and there, but she wasn’t going to trip herself up.
She might just be what he was looking for this weekend after all.
Distraction from the spectacle that was a wedding, where everybody mouthed belief in fidelity and love ever after but nobody in his world practised it.
Although he had to admit Khaled and Gigi did seem to be that rarest of unions—a couple who genuinely liked one another.
And he liked Gigi’s little friend, with her pretty curls and her rosebud pout and her French girl’s way of looking as if she was bored and it was his job to entertain her.
‘I wouldn’t say I don’t like you,’ he said, checking out her pretty knees, just visible under the froth of her netted underskirt. Her hands went there immediately, smoothing it down.
‘Not in that way,’ she said crossly. ‘I don’t want you to like me that way at all. I mean in a platonic sense. In a maid of honour and best man duty sense.’
‘Now I’m a duty? Careful, querida, you’ll damage my ego.’
‘I doubt that,’ she said repressively.
He grinned.
She looked decidedly flummoxed.
‘You’ll need to make an effort, then,’ she blurted out almost defensively.
‘I intend to.’
Lulu tried to ignore the fact that she felt hot all over. Was he flirting with her?
‘I’m serious. You’ll have to be polite to me so people don’t notice anything’s wrong.’
But something is wrong, thought Lulu, checking him out surreptitiously. Why did he have that sexy half-smile sitting at the corner of his mouth? He kept looking at her and she didn’t want him to look at her. It made her feel most unlike herself.
‘The best man has duties with the maid of honour,’ she persevered staunchly, feeling as if she was drowning in something and holding on to talk of the wedding as a life buoy.
‘Sí, I believe he does.’
Not those kind of duties. The thought just appeared in her head. It should have embarrassed her, and her heart was racing crazily, but a big part of her was actually enjoying the attention.
Alejandro du Crozier was flirting with her and she wasn’t diving for the nearest manhole to escape.
Probably because she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him again after this weekend.
It wasn’t as if he was going to ask her out. This was just a straightforward few hours in a car together, and then there was the weekend... Maybe it would be okay just to pretend for a few hours that she was normal and he was...interested?
That was when the car gave a bit of a lurch, and the sound of rubber dragging on the road had Lulu gripping her seat.
Alejandro said something filthy in Spanish even as he braked, and all the heat that had been building between them dissipated with the reality of the car coming to a stop at the side of the road.
Lulu forgot how much she’d been enjoying herself as her old friend panic set in and she looked around wildly. ‘What’s going on? Why are we stopping?’
There was no way she was getting out here, in the middle of nowhere!
‘It’s a flat. The back left tyre is shot.’
At least it wasn’t electrical. Lulu slumped a little in her seat. She could stay where she was, safe and sound, and it wouldn’t take too long. She could manage this. But she needed to dial down the panic. She cast about for something to pin her focus to in the car and remembered her phone.
In the silence that followed she glanced up, only to find he was watching her. She really didn’t want him to notice how nervous she was. ‘Well, fix it,’ she said defensively, before returning her attention to the screen.
Fix it?
Alejandro cut the engine and eased back in his seat to take a good look at what exactly he had on his hands.
One hundred and thirty pounds, at a guess, of Paris-bred entitlement—and he damn well wasn’t her mechanic. His gaze dwelt on her soft, petulant mouth. Although there was something he wouldn’t mind fixing.
He reached across, plucked her phone from her hands and tossed it onto the back seat.
Time to take the edge off his distracting sexual interest in her.
Lulu gave him a puzzled look. He’d sort that out for her too.
He leaned in.
Her eyes widened, her breath came short, but she didn’t exactly push him away as he slid his fingers through the astonishingly silky weight of curls behind her head and fitted his mouth with practised ease to hers.
Her muffled yelp gave him the opportunity to invade her warm mouth. He had planned to make this quick. He didn’t linger where he wasn’t wanted. Only Lulu wasn’t struggling, and she made no attempt to push him away. Instead her hands unfolded over his shoulders and then, almost tentatively, she was kissing him back.
He let her.
This
