his eye.
‘Of course. The face that launched a thousand products. You’re the girl from the perfume advertisements?’
Lily nodded, jumping like a startled deer as he reached out and took hold of her wrist, raising it slowly. Her first thought was that he was going to kiss her hand, but he turned it palm upwards and his thumb brushed the blue-veined skin of her wrist. Then he bent his head and breathed in.
‘Every time I see one of those adverts I wonder if the perfume smells as good as you make it look,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But I never actually imagined it would be possible.’
His voice seemed to reach down inside her and caress her in places she’d never been touched before. His English was perfect, but the Spanish accent ran through it like wine through water. Lily had to force herself to focus on his words. To reply to them.
‘I’m not wearing it,’ she stammered. ‘Not tonight. I’m not wearing anything.’
Oh God. Had she really said that?
‘Really?’ His mouth curved into a smile that would have melted ice caps, and yet didn’t quite manage to warm those cool blue eyes. ‘What a very appealing image that conjures up.’
For a heartbeat he looked at her, and then he turned away.
And that was how he did it, Lily thought as heat and liquid excitement cascaded through her, drenching her body from within while her logical mind switched off and shut down. Whoever he was, he had a way of drawing you in with one hand and then slamming the door in your face with the other. It wasn’t nice, but, God, was it effective. She felt disorientated, unhinged by what had happened, as if he had kidnapped and brainwashed her, and then thrust her back out into ordinary life.
Lily was aware of Scarlet desperately trying to catch her eye, but then Tom pulled her forward and was saying, with mock formality, ‘Scarlet, I want you to meet Tristan Romero de Losada; Montalvo, Marqués of Montesa, and my oldest friend.’
Lily’s heart gave a violent jolt, as if electrical pads had just been pressed to her chest.
Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo?
Oh, God. How could she not have recognised him?
But the truth was that none of the grainy, long-lens photographs in the tabloids or close-up red-carpet shots in the glossy magazines could have prepared her for the impact of seeing the Marqués of Montesa in the bronzed and beautiful flesh.
Introductions over, Scarlet came over to her and Lily seized her arm and dragged her a little way away, back towards the castle and the rest of the party.
‘Tom’s best friend is Tristan Romero de Losada? From the uber-aristocratic Spanish banking family?’
Scarlet looked amused. ‘That’s right. They’ve been best friends even longer than we have, since they were locked up together in some grim Dickensian prep school as little boys.’
Lily’s head was spinning. The lingering pleasure from his kiss mixed with shock and shame that she could have been so easily taken in. ‘But Tom’s so nice,’ she faltered, ‘and he’s…he’s…wicked.’
‘Lil-y,’ said Scarlet reproachfully. ‘You should know better than most not to believe everything you read in the papers—or at least to understand that it’s never the entire story. Tom won’t hear a word against him—apparently Tristan practically saved his life on more than one occasion when Tom was bullied at school. Anyway,’ she said, turning to Lily with a speculative look, ‘how come you seem to know so much about him? Since you’d rather read Nietzsche in the original than a tabloid newspaper, you seem very well informed.’
‘Everyone knows about him,’ Lily muttered darkly as they walked back towards the castle. ‘You don’t even have to read the tabloids. The broadsheets and the financial pages mention the Romero name pretty regularly too, you know.’ Most reporters were torn between disapproval and awe at the breathtaking ruthlessness that had ensured that the Romero bank had ridden out all the economic storms of modern times and remained one of the most significant players in global finance, and the Romero family one of the richest and most powerful in the world.
‘Anyway,’ she said, aware that she sounded like a sulky child, but unable to stop herself, ‘what’s he come as? James Bond? He’s hardly a myth or a legend.’
‘Darling, he hasn’t come as anything. He’s the one person for whom Tom makes an exception to the fancy dress rule. He’s come as himself—legendary Euro Playboy, mythical sex god. He’ll have left some party on a yacht in Marbella or the bed of some raving beauty in a chateau in the Loire and come straight here.’ She gave a gasp of laughter, which she quickly stifled, and leaned closer to Lily’s ear. ‘In something of a hurry, I’d say. Check out his shirt. It’s buttoned up all wrong.’
Glancing backwards, Lily’s eyes went automatically to his chest. Scarlet was right. Beneath the dark, slightly crumpled jacket of his perfectly tailored suit, his white shirt was untucked, the collar open, lopsided, showing an expanse of deep golden flesh and one sculpted collarbone.
She wasn’t sure which was worse: the instant rush of hot indignant anger that the kiss that had turned her inside out with longing had been given so casually, so randomly by a man whose body was barely cold from another woman’s bed.
Or the low down ache of desire, and the shameful knowledge that she didn’t care. That she just wanted to kiss him again.
‘Everything OK?’ said Tom out of the corner of his mouth. They had walked back across the field to the party and were now striding across the lawn towards the marquee where the bar was. Tristan gave a curt nod. ‘Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get away.’
‘Not a problem. For me, anyway, although your extensive collection of female hangers-on have been getting increasingly restless. I was running out of answers for where you could be.’
‘A house party in St Tropez is the official story.’
Tom threw him a swift grin. ‘It must have been some party. Perhaps you’d better do your shirt up properly, old friend, or we might have a riot on our hands.’
Tristan glanced down with a grimace. Dressing quickly when he’d landed his plane at the nearby airfield, he’d been so tired he’d hardly been able to see straight. Hardly the ideal circumstances to get ready for what was always dubbed the social event of the year. The mild air pulsed with music from one of the marquees around the lawn, an insistent reminder that yet another sleepless night lay ahead of him.
‘So that’s the official story,’ said Tom soberly, ‘but what’s the truth?’
‘Khazakismir,’ Tristan replied tonelessly, looking straight ahead and unbuttoning his shirt as they walked across the lawn towards the tented bar.
Tom winced at the name. ‘I hoped you weren’t going to say that. News coverage here has been patchy, but I gather things are pretty grim?’
The name of the small province in a remote corner of Eastern Europe had become synonymous with despair and violence in the course of a decade-long war, the original purpose of which no one could remember any more. Power rested in the bloodstained hands of a corrupt military government and a few drugs barons, who quashed any sign of civil unrest quickly and ruthlessly. Reports had filtered through in the last week of a whole village being laid to waste.
‘You could say that.’ A door in Tristan’s mind swung open, letting the images flood back into his head for a moment before he mentally slammed it shut again. ‘One of our drivers was caught up in it. His family were killed—everyone apart from his sister, who’s pregnant.’ His mouth quirked into a bitter smile. ‘It seems that the military were keen to make use of the brand new cache of weaponry they have courtesy of funds from the Romero bank.’
Pausing at the entrance to the marquee, Tom laid a hand on his arm.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Fine,’