‘Our transport’s here.’
‘Transport?’
She followed his gaze out of the window. And she forgot about feeling about an inch high. She forgot about feeling in the wrong. Forgot everything but the need to hold herself upright by clinging onto the windowsill.
There was a stonking great black helicopter sitting on the hill.
*
Leaving the bed and breakfast, Alejandro peeled off a couple of large notes to cover the picture they’d knocked off the wall and the broken lamp.
Mrs Bailey gave them a knowing look. ‘Not married long, then?’ she said, and Lulu wanted to die.
If she’d been a normal sort of girl it would have been funny. This morning would have been the start of something wonderful—but it wasn’t.
Instead she felt all knotted up inside, and with a murmur of goodbye and thanks she hurried outside, insisting on carrying her own case.
Perhaps it was foolish to ask him what he’d said to Mrs Bailey, given the mood between them.
‘Why would she think we were married?’ she asked as he led the way across the gravel to dump their luggage in the car.
According to Alejandro, a staff member from the castle would be driving his car in for him. If she’d needed any indication beyond a helicopter that Alejandro occupied a different stratosphere from her, his casual expectation that employees would take care of things settled the issue.
He opened up the boot, grabbed her bag and dropped it in.
Lulu bit her lip to stop herself from mentioning the crystal…
‘I didn’t say anything, querida, if that’s your question. I think it must have been all the noise you were making.’
With that he flashed her a challenging look, locked up the car and led the way towards their behemoth transport.
It was a short and thankfully uneventful flight before Dunlosie Castle came into view.
The place Lulu had been so anxious to reach yesterday was now the last place she wanted to be. All she wanted to do was lick her wounds in private. But at the same time she was so frustrated with herself she could scream.
She gazed out over the view of the nineteenth-century castle built around the original twelfth-century
ruin on the shores of a loch, still smarting from his words.
He might be angry with her, but he didn’t have to make her feel self-conscious about making the wrong sounds during sex. She couldn’t help the sounds she made. Any more than she could help it that she was not going any further with him.
‘As far as wedding gifts go,’ he drawled, ‘it’s a jaw-dropper.’
She whipped her head around, because it was the first thing Alejandro had said to her since they’d boarded.
‘What wedding gift?’
‘Khaled gave Gigi the deeds to the castle last night.’
Lulu bit her lip and for an awful moment wondered if her best friend was going to up sticks and move here.
‘Want one?’
What? Lulu didn’t know how to answer that. Of course she didn’t. But it was impossible to read him, so she wasn’t sure if he was having a go at her again.
Well, he could believe what he liked. About her being jealous…about her wanting the things Gigi had. Even if she did.
She did.