af6-52ad-ad73-136d405cd0a5">
Lulu was the only wallflower maid of honour in the history of wedding receptions. But perhaps it was for the best. Lulu wasn’t even sure she was going to be able to stand up for the first dance.
‘Lulu.’ Alejandro was beside her, extending his hand.
She wanted to slap it. She also wanted to grab hold of it like a lifeline. She gripped him. Dug her nails in a little.
The moment his arm came around her his hand settled at her waist. With his other hand in hers she felt all the fury and hurt and confusion rise up inside her, making it impossible for her to speak.
Alejandro had none of those problems. ‘I know you’re angry with me, Lulu, but we need to talk in private. ‘
She suddenly wanted to cry. Very much.
‘Anything you have to say to me you can say here.’
His hand tightened at her waist and Lulu wondered, crazily, if he might pick her up and throw her over his shoulder and haul her out of there. But why would he do that? She wasn’t Gigi. She wasn’t intrinsically loveable. Her limitations meant she wasn’t going to have a normal life.
‘The condom broke.’
For a moment Lulu was too busy swimming in self-pity to pay much attention, and when she did she didn’t have a clue why he was saying this to her. Why had he said ‘condom’ in the middle of the wedding waltz?
The. Condom. Broke.
The words broke across her mind’s eye as if they’d been lit up in fireworks across a night sky.
LUCY ELLIS creates over-the-top couples who spar and canoodle in glamorous places. If it doesn’t read like a cross between a dozen old fairy tales you half know and a 1930s romantic comedy it’s not a Lucy Ellis story. Come and read a rambling exposition on her books at lucy-ellis.com and drop her a line.
Kept at the
Argentine’s Command
Lucy Ellis
For my dear dad, who is 80 this year. May he see many more stories to come.
Contents
ALEJANDRO NOTICED HER on boarding because she was easily the sweetest view on offer: a drop of honey on a dull day.
A slightly built girl, sitting with her long slender legs crossed at the knee, her head was bent as she read, causing her mop of artfully arranged blue-black curls, cut short at the back and longer towards the front, to topple forward around her face. She wore the highly feminised clothes of an earlier era in a way he recognised was a fashion statement.
As he made his way down the aisle towards his seat she lifted her eyes from her e-reader and they locked with his.
Those curls, he discovered, framed delicate features. She had a short upturned nose, big dark brown eyes and a mouth like a red rosebud. Her eyes widened, but there was nothing inviting in the way she looked at him. In fact her gaze dropped skittishly away. She reminded him of one of his fillies at home on the estancia, toeing the ground for some attention and then shying away.
He didn’t mind shy—he could work with it fine.
Sure enough, her gaze swung upwards again, back for another look, a little bolder this time, and her lavish rosebud of a mouth quivered with the beginnings of a smile.
He returned her smile—the barest tilt of his mouth, because he was out of practice with the gesture. She responded by blushing and ducking her eyes back to the little screen.
He was hooked.
He was also barely in his seat before she gestured for assistance from a flight attendant. He watched in bemused interest as for the next twenty minutes Brown Eyes kept the cabin crew on their toes with a steady stream of what appeared to be trivial requests. Glasses of water, a cushion, a blanket... It was only when she began whispering furiously to the by now harassed female flight attendant that the points she’d scored with him for being pretty to look at flew out of the window.
‘No, I really cannot move!’ Her raised voice—demanding and shrill, despite the sexy French accent—had Alejandro putting down his tablet.
When the flustered flight attendant came up the aisle he leaned out and asked what the problem was.
‘An elderly gentleman is finding it difficult to make the trip to the facilities,