The Man Who Risked It All

‘Well, don’t.’ Sitting forward again, she spooned up some of the crème caramel but couldn’t quite make herself lift it to her mouth. So she laid it back in the dish, glanced up, saw the way he was studying her. The shimmering glint going on between those sooty eyelashes made her feel more prickly the longer his scrutiny went on.

‘What?’ she snapped when she could stand it no longer, defiant and defensive at the same time.

‘I think I have inadvertently hit a tender nerve,’ he drawled slowly.

‘No. I just don’t understand your sudden interest.’

‘You are my wife—’

‘Estranged wife.’ Why did that sound so wrong right now? Reaching out to pick up her wine glass, Lexi sat glaring into its contents. So they were sitting here, eating a meal together like husband and wife. So they were intending to go from here to the same bed and—well—do what married couples usually did and sleep together—in every sense. Half an hour ago they’d almost missed dinner and headed straight for the bed. But none of the above made them a married couple, and definitely did not make him a husband and her a wife.

It never had the last time she’d lived here as his wife. She’d been plonked in a suite two wings away from him like some bad germ it was best to keep as far away from him as possible. And he hadn’t complained. He hadn’t kicked up a fuss or had her moved to the suite next door to him like he’d done this time. He’d visited her like a reluctant but rigidly polite host, with polite knocks on her door and polite enquiries as to her health, every single morning before he’d left for work, she recalled; and she felt the same bleak emptiness fill her now that had used to fill her up back then.

He’d looked so tall and breathtakingly handsome, wearing a business suit that had made him look oddly younger—when it should have been the other way round. Because the guy who’d lived in shorts and a T-shirt all through the summer should have looked the younger one.

‘Lexi …’ he prompted softly.

‘I don’t have a father,’ she announced.

‘Everyone has a father, cara,’ he drawled.

‘Well, I don’t. Now, change the subject.’

He was lounging back in his chair now, which placed his face out of the flickering light from the candles so she couldn’t read his expression. But she could feel the cogs in his brain turning over, feel him pondering whether to push her a bit more into opening up for him.

Then he took in a short breath. ‘If it upsets you this much then I offer you my apologies,’ he said smoothly. ‘I agree. Let’s change the subject.’

But now he was willing to do that Lexi found herself changing her mind too. ‘No. Let’s finish what you’ve already started and get it over with. So what do you want to know. My full family tree? OK.’ She sat back again, tense as a skittish cat and defiant with it. She tossed her hair back from her face. ‘Mother—Grace Hamilton. Actress but not famous.’ She lifted her hand up to place Grace like an imaginary branch in the air in front of her, her fingers trembling as she did. ‘Father—unknown. Because Grace was very vague about things she did not want to face and there was no name on my birth certificate.’ She placed him in the air next to Grace. ‘Oh, and I forgot to put my grandmother up there. Anyone else?’ She pretended to ponder that, with her eyes flashing all kinds of aggression, while Franco just reclined back in his chair and listened with an infuriatingly impassive silence. ‘A hamster called Racket,’ she remembered. ‘I wanted a dog, but I wasn’t allowed one because we moved around too much. Then there is Bruce, of course.’ As she spoke Bruce’s name she dared Franco with the sparkle in her eyes to say a single thing. ‘Bruce is the only person who has ever been and remained a constant part of my life … I wonder where I should place him on my tree?’

‘Father figure?’ Franco suggested, with a silken stealth that raised Lexi’s hackles so much she thought for a second she was going to leap up and hit him.

‘You need to wash your mouth out with soap.’ She made do with sending him a withering glance. ‘At least he’s always cared what happened to me.’

‘And lusted after you like a seething old lecher.’

‘How dare you say that?’ Lexi gasped out.

‘I dare because he is

twelve years older than you, yet he could never look at you without stripping your clothes off.’

Stung by that shocking observation, she hit right back. ‘Well, better a sleazy old lecher than a two-timing young one.’

Franco’s dark head went back. ‘Are you calling me a lecher?’

‘What do you call a guy who pursues a stupid, innocent girl with the sole intention of bedding her for a bet?’

‘The bet was—unfortunate,’ he growled, with an impatient movement of his hand that Lexi read as downright haunted guilt. ‘It had nothing to do with what you and I were really about.’

‘Tell that to your golden friends.’ Lexi laughed, and it wasn’t a nice laugh. ‘And let us not gloss over the fact that you collected your winnings,’ she added for good measure.

‘There was a reason why I did that,’ he said tightly.

‘I’m all ears,’ encouraged Lexi.

‘We were discussing Bruce Dayton’s unhealthy obsession with you,’ he muttered, losing all that super cool sophistication he’d brought to the dinner table.

‘Bruce has been good to me.’