The Morning After

Annie didn’t bother to listen. She had, in fact, effectively switched off—something she had learned to do early on in her career, when time had dragged heavily during long, tedious waits between short, hurried shoots.

The inside of the bungalow revealed a surprisingly large sitting room furnished in prettily covered rattan. A pair of plate-glass sliding doors stood open on a view that drew her attention, and she walked over to gaze out at it while the two men finished their conversation.

Then a door closed quietly and there was silence behind her—the kind of silence that began to shred her nerve-ends as she tried to pick out just where César was without her having to turn to find out.

She felt a real reluctance to look him fully in the face. She hadn’t done so, she realised—not voluntarily, anyway—since the night they’d shared a bed.

The chink of ice on glass told her that he was over by the little bar she had spied as she’d come in. And her nerves shredded a bit more when he came to stand directly behind her, a bronzed forearm lightly covered with silky, black hair appearing in her vision. He was holding a tall glass filled with something clear and refreshing, tiny bubbles swirling up from the chunks of ice settled at its base.

‘Nothing too alcoholic,’ he said. ‘Mostly tonic, a splash of lime and the smallest tot of gin.’

‘I don’t drink spirits,’ she informed him coolly, refusing to accept the glass.

‘I have noticed,’ he drawled, refusing to withdraw it. ‘Another lesson taught by Alvarez?’ he asked. ‘I believe you were very drunk when you were seen being led into the bedroom that night.’

‘Your bedroom,’ she punctuated tightly.

‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry I ever said that but yes, it was mine.’

She swallowed on whatever was thickening her throat. His bedroom—his apartment. His bedroom—his island. It was as if he had to be connected with all the real traumas in her life.

‘I sold the apartment, Angelica,’ he inserted quietly. ‘I never stepped foot in it again after that night. I could not cope with the vision of the woman I wanted for myself lying in the arms of another man. Any man,’ he extended roughly. ‘The fact that it happened to be Alvarez only helped to generate my contempt of him—not my contempt of you.’

‘You can say that now, with hindsight.’ She smiled sceptically.

‘It is the truth,’ he stated. ‘You were drunk. Everyone who saw you allowed you that much at least. So did I.’

Yes, she had been drunk. Giddy, hiding all her hurts from the world behind a screen of careless gaiety. ‘I suppose you are now making the assumption that, being drunk, I probably encouraged him to do what he did.’ She didn’t want it to, but her voice sounded husky with hurt.

He sighed again, reaching around her with his other hand so that his body had to make a glancing contact with her own as he firmly took hold of her hand and lifted it, pushing the glass into her palm.

‘I am learning,’ he murmured while she stood breathlessly cocooned in the circle of his arms, ‘to make no assumptions about you, Angelica. And no,’ he added, ‘I do not believe you encouraged him—because you tell me it was not so. And, although you may not have noticed, I have believed every word you’ve ever said to me without needing corroboration. The truth, you see, tends to glow like a challenge in your beautiful, defiant eyes.

‘So take the glass,’ he urged. ‘Drink to quench your thirst, and maybe to steady your nerves a little for what is to come.’

Her fingers tightened around the glass.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured, as though she had just conceded some obscure but precious point, while Annie had to fight a new battle with the tears that wanted to fall from her eyes.

Then he was stepping back and she found that she could breathe again, but the glass chattered against her teeth as she lifted it to her quivering mouth.

‘Now.’ With distance between them, he sounded more like his normal, arrogant self. ‘Over to your left there is an en suite bedroom set aside for your exclusive use. I have a matching one to your right. You have just under an hour, Angelica, to turn yourself into the beautiful bride I expect to see when I meet you back here.’ With that he turned and walked away.

* * *

A beautiful bride.

Annie stared at herself in the full-length mirror and wanted to throw something at it to smash to smithereens the person she saw looking back at her.

Professional training gave her the expected bridal look, the equipment to do it having been provided by a man hell-bent, it seemed to her, on causing her everlasting pain.

The gown she’d found waiting for her was white, frothy, lacy, unashamedly romantic, with flamboyant off-the-shoulder sleeves edged with a deep ruffle of the finest hand-stitched lace—the same lace that floated around the low scooped neck of the fitted bodice and was sewn into the hem of its full, ballerina-length skirt.

The whole confection was about as far away from what anyone would expect Annie Lacey to wear for her wedding as a gown could get. Shy, frivolous, sweet—virginal.

And she felt a bigger fraud than ever.

A light tap at her door had her turning to face it just as César let himself into the room. Her breath caught on a silent gasp, her blue eyes darkening in surprise at how he looked.