The Morning After

‘It was Susie who took great delight in telling Todd all about the embrace which followed,’ she added. ‘She knew exactly who you were.’

‘And that part, I concede, was a set-up. But only in as far as I promised to get you out of the way so she could talk to Hanson. As to the rest—she was then and still is totally in the dark!’

Did she believe him? Annie shifted restlessly. She wanted to believe him. It was easier on her pride to believe that Susie knew nothing of what had been planned on this island for her arch-rival Annie Lacey.

‘So, why are you telling me all of this?’ she asked carefully.

‘Because,’ he said quietly, ‘I need your support when Hanson gets here. I need you to help convince him that Susie is the innocent party in all of this, and that you really don’t mind that Susie has taken the Adamas scoop from you.

‘It’s important to her, Angelica,’ he added roughly, when her cool face gave him no hint at all as to what she was thinking. ‘It is important to Hanson that he is offered a way to—give a little where she is concerned! He is in love with Susie, but, as you once told me yourself, he is capable of never forgiving her if he truly believes she collaborated with me against you.

‘Please,’ he appealed, ‘in the face of what those mockups tell us, show a little compassion for someone less fortunate in love than yourself and back me up in all of this.’

She moved at long last, shifting out of her cool, still stance to turn back to the array of photo work littered across the table. Her fingers flittered across those of Susie and settled on one of César and herself. It was one in which the photographer had captured the moment when César had slid the rings onto her finger. His dark head was bent, his lean profile taut, his mouth straight and flat and grim. But the eyes were alive—looking at her while she looked at the rings—alive with a burning, helpless—

‘No…’ she whispered, beginning to gather up with trembling fingers every mock-up lying there. ‘I d-don’t care what you do with the Adamas thing. Susie can keep it. It doesn’t matter a jot to me. But—’ she turned, clutching the mock-ups possessively to her chest ‘—I won’t allow you to publish these, César. I won’t,’ she warned him defiantly. ‘I won’t let you make a public spectacle out of these!’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘“A SPECTACLE”?’ César’s lean body came out of its casual resting position to shoot stiffly to its full, impressive height in affront. ‘What do you mean, “a spectacle”?’ he demanded. Then he added icily, ‘Are you saying that you look on our marriage as a joke?’

‘No!’ she sighed, wondering how a man with all his arrogance could be so damned touchy sometimes! ‘But look at these, César!’ she pleaded, her hand coming out shakily to offer the mock-ups. ‘Look how beautiful they are. How—special!’ she cried. ‘Too special to have them made a public mockery of!’

‘A mockery?’ His frown was dark, his face an angry map of puzzled indignity as he looked from her anxious face to the mock-ups then back again. ‘I don’t understand. Why should anyone want to mock them?’

‘Because out there I am still Annie Lacey the notorious man-eater!’ She spelled it out rawly. ‘And they’ll be shocked that you of all people would marry me!’

‘Who?’ he demanded. ‘Who, in your estimation, is that crass-minded?’

Her eyes closed briefly on a tense, tight sigh. ‘The Press,’ she said. ‘They can be so vicious when they get their teeth into someone—you know that! They’ll slay you the moment they see these photographs!’ Her chest heaved on a wretched indrawn breath.

‘Then they’ll dredge it all up again, replay the whole Luis Alvarez nightmare again. They’ll mock Todd for printing the wedding pictures of his long-term on-and-off lover—and you for being stupid enough to take me on! Th-then they’ll mention your sister,’ she concluded thickly, ‘and wonder how you could marry the woman who wrecked your own sister’s marriage!’

‘So you would prefer to hide our marriage away like some dark secret rather than face the world with what those pictures show as the truth?’ Sighing tightly, he came to take the mock-ups from her and tossed them contemptuously aside. ‘Is this your novel way of telling me I have misread our whole relationship?’ he said in a clipped voice.

‘No!’ She groaned at the interpretation that he had put on her words. ‘Our marriage was a very special moment in my life! Those pictures make it special because they say so much to both of us!’ Her eyes burned into him with a dark blue appeal. ‘You’re special to me,’ she told him achingly. ‘I’m thinking of you! I want to protect you! Not myself,’ she dismissed. ‘I couldn’t care less about what they want to throw at me. But—’

He laughed! He was scornful, but he actually laughed. ‘Do you mean,’ he enunciated in choking disbelief, ‘that you’re making all this fuss—for my sake?’ His hand snaked out, capturing hers so that he could tug her up against him. ‘Look at me, Angelica,’ he commanded grimly. ‘Look into this face and tell me what you see.’

She looked, her eyes pained with love and bright with the unshed tears of her own uncertainties.

‘Does this look like the face of a man who worries about what other people say or think about him?’ he demanded. ‘Does it?’

No, it did not. It looked like the face of a man hewn from the hardest, smoothest rock—a man as invincible as his Adamas trade-name implied him to be. The Spanish conquistador. The Apache chief. The face of arrogance personified.

The man she loved.

‘But your sister isn’t hewn from the same invulnerable mould as you, is she?’ she pointed out wretchedly.

‘Cristina?’ He frowned, then bit out, ‘To hell with Cristina. I’ve already spoken to her—told her the truth. She accepted it—painfully,’ he acknowledged on a small, tight grimace that said that the truth had not been easy to take. ‘But Cristina will be no problem to us. Unless,’ he then added with a sudden sparkling wry humour, ‘you allow for the way her guilty conscience will probably have her hounding you for the rest of her life—looking for her own redemption.’

‘You’re sure?’ she murmured uncertainly.

‘I am very sure,’ he huskily confirmed.

Her soft mouth quivered. ‘Then let go of my hand.’

‘Why?’ He frowned.