The truth was, nice didn’t come close.
She’d been expecting a medieval structure, cold, gloomy and desolate. This was a soaring mansion that somehow bridged the distance between the past and the present. She craned her neck and stared as they drove past it, until the car came to a gliding stop.
Fallon looked around as the driver got out and opened her door.
They’d stopped beside—
A tent?
“Signorina.”
Confused, she looked up at the man. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”
“Si.”
She stepped from the car. It was a tent, all right. A big one, true, the kind she’d seen at garden parties in the Hamptons, but a tent just the same.
The driver reached in for her suitcase and at that moment the Bridal Dreams crew ran out of the tent to greet her. She hugged Andy and Maurice, exchanged air-kisses with Carla, shook hands with the others and asked the obvious question.
Why were they all hanging around in a tent when there was that big old house just a couple of hundred yards away?
Off-limits, Carla said with a patently false smile. “The owner’s eccentric. He doesn’t want us using it.”
The tent would be their office and dressing room. She’d made catering arrangements for lunch and had a portable john installed in a little cove on the beach.
‘It’s as if we’re camping in the wilderness,’ Carla said with a gaiety anyone could see was false.
“Don’t tell me we’re camping here at night, too,” Fallon muttered, and Carla laughed and laughed.
“Of course not, darling. We all have rooms at an inn just up the coast. It’s a charming little place.”
The others, who’d already seen the inn, groaned so that Fallon knew “charming” was a happy euphemism for not enough hot water, lumpy mattresses and threadbare linens.
Carla was the only smart one. She went back to New York on the second day.
Of course, it made for problems, not having Carla onsite. The stylist or the designer’s rep or somebody else was almost always clutching a cell phone, talking to New York, asking questions, getting things clarified.
Nobody could figure out why Carla had left. It certainly wasn’t the most practical thing to have done but that second morning, Carla’s cell phone had rung, she’d answered it, turned white, glanced up in the direction of the big house on the cliff and the next anyone knew, she was gone.
“Important business in New York,” she’d said, but Fallon didn’t buy it. It just didn’t sound right.
Fallon sighed.
Thank goodness the week was almost over.
Tomorrow morning they’d all fly back to the States, and not a moment too soon. Why she’d ever imagined she’d enjoy being on this godforsaken island was a mystery. She’d had enough of the heat, the rocks, the house or mansion or castello or whatever it was called looming way up there on the cliff.
She didn’t like this place. Nothing about it seemed right, starting on day one when she’d mistaken that big black car at the airport for the one that was supposed to meet her.
That car. That man. Stefano Lucchesi, with the dark and dangerous eyes, the slow smile, the husky, sexy voice.
Ridiculous, how an obnoxious stranger had lodged himself in her mind. She knew the reason: she had zero tolerance for men who thought they owned the world. She’d spent most of the past decade dealing with jerks like that. You damn near tripped over them in every capital on every continent, men who thought that beautiful women were useless and self-indulgent, and that they could be bought or, at least, coerced.
“O’Connell, are you deaf? I said to turn around. Thank you. It’s nice to know you’re still with us.”
Modeling was a strange business. It was full of men like Maurice, all ego and temperament, and ones like Andy, who were gentle and kind.
And on the periphery were the predators.
Handsome men. Wealthy, powerful men. Men who prowled the clubs where the models danced and drank and relaxed after a day’s hard work, who wanted the pleasure that came of wearing stunning arm-candy.
It was, of course, a reciprocal arrangement. The predators got the arm-candy; the girls got the attention, the gifts, the publicity.
Not Fallon. Not since she’d tumbled, hard, for a so-called captain of industry when she was seventeen. She’d given him her heart and her virginity; he’d given her a diamond bracelet and promises, lots of them.
Only the diamond had stood the test of time.
She’d been cautious after that but still, four years later, she’d ended up in a replay of that first relationship. Her lover had been good-looking, rich, notoriously sexy…and he’d given her up when someone new came along.
“O’Connell? Babe, put your hands on your hips, okay? Great. Hold that…”
Her few liaisons since then had been with nice, down-to-earth guys. No I-Am-In-Command egos to deal with. No hunky powerhouses. Nobody to start her pulse pounding excitement at the sight of him, the way it had in that car at the airport when she saw Stefano Lucchesi, saw that beautiful fallen angel’s face…
A tremor raced down her spine.
She was definitely glad this project was almost finished. What she needed was the noise and energy of New York. She could deal with the crowds, the traffic, the weather that was always either too hot, too cold or too wet a lot better than she could deal with this place.
She was thinking crazy things, plus her senses were playing tricks on her. For instance, she kept having this feeling someone was watching her.
She knew about the crazies who stalked celebrities. A friend had suffered that kind of unwanted attention from a fan without a life. The experience, even viewed from the outside, was spooky and frightening.
This was different.
The first time, she’d been on the cliff posing for Maurice with her back to the sea. Suddenly a door in the castle opened and a man stepped into the garden.
Nothing unusual in that. A place like this would employ a gardener. Half a dozen of them, for all she knew.
He’d walked slowly to the low wall that surrounded the garden, tucked his hands into his pockets and just stood there. Watching her. Or maybe watching the mechanics of the shoot. That was what she’d told herself, when he’d remained motionless for the next five or six minutes. People always gathered to watch when you did a shoot on a street corner or at a resort.
Later the same afternoon, the Bridal Dreams bunch had all been down on the beach, Maurice photographing her in the bridal gown, some moody shot he’d print in blacks and grays, with her standing so that the lacy hem of the gown trailed in the water. She’d been posing, smiling, pouting, whatever felt right or whatever Maurice demanded…
And she’d felt it again. Eyes, watching her.
A figure stood on the cliff. A man. Tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, standing with his legs slightly apart, his arms folded across his chest and the wind blowing his dark hair back from his face. The distance was too great for her to make out his features.
The sight of him was intriguing. That hard-looking body. The jeans that fit him like a glove, the black T-shirt, black-lensed sunglasses.
Who was he? Why did the sight of him make her breath catch?
She knew he was watching her, just as she knew he wasn’t a crazy, some guy who’d fallen in love with her photo and wanted to tell her that they came from neighboring galaxies. She knew it in the most scientific way possible.
Her instincts told her so.
Fallon rolled her eyes, just thinking it, and Maurice’s voice pulled her into the present.
“I don’t want smirks, I want pensive,” he shouted.
She nodded, took some deep breaths and gave him pensive.
The man always stayed at a distance, watching her as if he wanted to absorb her into his skin. At the same time he wanted to turn his back and forget he’d ever seen her.
Another scientific deduction. Besides, even if it was true, it made no sense.
> The evidence all pointed to his watching not her but the entire group. He was surely one of the security guards that patrolled the place, and if she hadn’t noticed him right away, that was just because he was good at blending into the scenery.
And if her sun-baked brain gave him more depth than that, painted him as almost cruelly masculine and incredibly sexy, that was her fault, not his.
Fallon blew the hair back from her forehead. Without question, the heat was playing games with her mind.
“Maurice?” She swung toward the photographer, hands on her hips. “Listen, Maurice, enough is enough. I’m melting. My makeup’s running, my scalp’s crawling with sweat.”
“You want me to tell you you still look gorgeous? ’Cause you do.”
“Yeah, right. That’s wonderful, but I’ve had it.”
“Ten minutes more, that’s all. Lift your chin like so.”
“You said ten minutes an hour ago.”
Maurice lifted his chin. Fallon left hers where it was.
“Maurice,” she said firmly, “everybody else has gone. They’re all sitting in the tent, out of the sun, drinking something cold and waiting for you so they can take the van back to the inn.”
“Let them wait. I’m not finished. Look at me, O’Connell. Give me a little more attitude. You’re a bride and your groom’s watching you and you want to show him what you’ve got. Good. Fine.”
Did she want to show the man who watched her what she had? She’d thought about him last night, lying in her narrow, lumpy bed. Imagined his face. Would his eyes be dark? His nose classically Roman? His mouth full, his jaw chiseled?