Feeling tense and nervous, she reacted with bad grace. ‘Well,’ she snapped, ‘where is this charade supposed to take place?’
A small nerve twitched in the corner of his straight mouth. ‘Here,’ he answered quietly. ‘Right here.’ And indicated with an outstretched hand the open glass doors.
‘Outside?’ she questioned in surprise.
‘It is traditional.’ He nodded gravely.
A frisson of something frighteningly close to yearning shivered through her. No. She swallowed tensely. She couldn’t go through with it. Not like this. Not with all the—
‘Come, Angelica.’ His hand closed gently around her slender waist.
‘N-no,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t do this. It isn’t right. I feel a fraud. I…’
César turned her fully to face him, a hand coming up to cup her chin gently. ‘Don’t lose courage now,’ he entreated softly. ‘Everything will be fine, you’ll see. Trust me.’
Trust him. He kept on telling her to trust him, but how could she when he had done nothing but trick and deceive her from the first moment they’d met?
‘Please,’ he murmured deeply, as if he could read her thoughts as his own. ‘Please?’
His eyes held onto hers, dark green and probing, seeming to reach right inside her to some tiny, frightened point of need and soothe it gently. Her body quivered on a shaky little sigh, her mind going fluffy as it began to lose its grasp on reason.
A flash bulb popped.
‘Are we ready?’ a soft voice intruded.
Annie turned her head, seeing what her dazed mind interpreted as an angel standing in the open doorway to the room—a small, dark-skinned angel with snowy white hair, white flowing robes and a beautiful smile.
She blinked in an effort to clear her head, glanced hazily back at César, who had not moved his gaze from her face.
She felt trapped suddenly, lost, drowning in the compelling expression in his eyes. So much so that she didn’t see the second flash bulb pop, did not even notice the photographer who was capturing in full Technicolour Annie Lacey decked out in white lace and sapphires, gazing into the eyes of the man she was about to marry.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS over. And the moment they found themselves alone again Annie seemed to lose complete grip on reality.
Strain, she told herself in some vague corner of her mind. You’ve cracked beneath the strain, and dropped weakly down into a nearby chair.
César had disappeared into his own room. He had murmured a reason for going at her but she hadn’t absorbed the words. Her mind seemed to have completely shut down. Nothing going in—nothing much coming out. It was a strange, lost, floaty feeling that kind of buffeted her gently from the inside, holding her slack-limbed and still.
Coming back from his bedroom, César stopped dead, his gaze homing in on her frail white figure, looking more lost and vulnerable than he had seen her to date. A moment’s anguish passed across his face, forcing his hands into two tense fists before he grimly relaxed them; then he was moving forwards to go and squat down beside her.
Carefully he reached for her hands. They were cold, and gently he began chafing them between his own. ‘Surely it was not quite this bad an ordeal?’ he mocked, infusing a teasing lightness into his tone.
She turned her head to look at him, her eyes like two huge sapphires in her lovely white face. ‘Why the photographer?’ she asked.
His shrug was careless. ‘He came with the package,’ he said. ‘Why, did he bother you?’
‘No.’ Nothing bothered her. Not any more. She looked away again, her eyes drifting sightlessly back to the open windows where a soft, warm breeze disturbe
d the curtains pulled back by thickly plaited ties.
A knock came at the door; César laid her hands back on her lap before standing up and moving away. Annie looked down at them, stretching out the fingers where two new rings glinted in the light—one a hand-crafted, intricately woven band of the richest, purest gold, the other a beautiful sapphire and diamond ring designed to match the necklace at her throat. When César had slipped it on her finger directly after he had slid the gold band there she’d been too surprised to protest.
Now she just stared at it and wanted to weep.
A movement in front of her brought her unblinking gaze upwards. César was standing over her, a cup of something steaming hot in his hands. Silently he handed it to her. Annie caught the scent of a good old-fashioned cup of tea, and sipped gratefully at it until she felt life begin to return to her body at last.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured finally. ‘That was thoughtful of you.’ Then, because he was just standing there watching her with a concerned frown marring his attractive face, she added wryly, ‘I’m sorry. I seemed to lose contact with myself for a few minutes there.’