slight frown appeared on her brow as she stared, an unanswerable question in it, a frown that then lessened as her generous mouth curved hesitantly.
His knotted stomach made a most peculiar twisting motion.
No, not classically pretty but striking. Mesmerising.
He couldn’t look away.
And she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze from him either, a moment in time existing only for them, two eye-locked strangers.
And then a shadow appeared behind her and she blinked, the sun-bound spell woven around them dissolving as quickly as it had formed.
The shadow was Javier emerging from the sunroom to join his own party.
He spotted Benjamin and nodded a greeting while his right hand settled proprietorially on the dancer’s waist.
It came to him in an instant that this woman, the slowly forming smile on her face now frozen, was Javier’s fiancée.
By the time Javier had steered the dancer to stand before him by the fountain, Benjamin had swallowed the bite of disappointment, shaken off the last of that strange spell and straightened his spine.
He wasn’t here to party or for romance. He was here for business.
‘Benjamin, it’s good to see you,’ Javier said. ‘I don’t think you’ve met my fiancée, Freya, have you?’
‘No.’ He looked straight at her. A hint of colour slashed her high cheekbones. ‘A pleasure to meet you.’
Under different circumstances it would have been a pleasure but now the spell had broken all that remained was a faint distaste that she should have stared so beguilingly at him when engaged to another man.
But that was all the introduction Javier deemed necessary between his oldest friend and new fiancée, saying, ‘Have you seen Luis yet?’
‘Not yet but I am hoping to rectify that now.’ Then, dismissing the striking vision from his consideration, Benjamin added evenly, ‘We need to talk. You, me and Luis. In private.’
There was a momentary silence as Javier stared at him, eyes narrowing before he nodded slowly and caught the attention of a passing waiter. ‘Find my brother and tell him to meet me and Senor Guillem in my study.’ Dropping his hold on his fiancée’s waist, he turned and strode back into the summer room without another word.
Two months later...
Smile, Freya, it’s a party and all for a worthy cause.
Smile for the cameras. Smile for your fiancé, still not here but expecting you to turn on the charm even in his absence.
Smile for the gathered strangers, pretend you know them intimately, let them brush their cheek against yours as you greet each other with the fake air kisses that make your stomach curdle.
Smile, there’s another camera. Smile as you nurse your glass of champagne.
Smile at the waiting staff circling the great ballroom with silver trays of delicious-smelling canapés but do not—not—be so gauche as to eat one.
Just. Smile.
And she did. Freya smiled so much her face ached, and then she smiled some more.
Being promoted to Principal Dancer at Compania de Ballet de Casillas came with responsibilities that involved more than pure dance. Freya was now the official face of the ballet company and at this, its most exciting time. The new state-of-the-art theatre the Casillas brothers were building for the company opened in a couple of months and it was her face on all the billboards and advertisements for it. She was the lead in the opening production.
Her, Freya Clements, an East London girl from a family so poor that winters were often a choice between heating and food, a Principal Dancer. It was a dream. She was living her dream. Marriage to Javier Casillas, joint owner of the ballet company, would be the...she almost thought icing on the cake but realised it was the wrong metaphor. Or was it the wrong simile? She couldn’t remember, had always struggled to differentiate between them. Either way, she couldn’t think of an appropriate metaphor or simile to describe her feelings about marrying Javier.
Javier was rich. Very, very rich. No one knew how much he and his twin Luis were worth but it was rare for their names to be mentioned in the press without the prefix billionaire. He was also handsome. He had chosen her to be, as he had put it, his life partner. When she looked at him she imagined him as her Prince Charming but without the title. Or the charm.
It didn’t matter that he was morose and generally unavailable. It was better that way. Marrying him gave her deteriorating mother a fighting chance.
In exactly one week he would be her husband.
The entire ballet company was, as of that day, on a two-week shutdown so the new state-of-the-art training facilities and ballet school that went hand in hand with the new theatre could be completed. Javier had decreed they would fit their nuptials in then so as not to disturb her training routine.
Where was he? He should have been here an hour ago. She’d snuck away to the Ladies to call him but found her phone not working. She couldn’t think what was wrong with it but she had no signal and no Internet connection. She would try again as soon as she had a minute to herself.
The media were out in force tonight, ready for their first public glimpse of the couple, beside themselves that Javier, son of the ballet dancers Clara Casillas and Yuri Abramova, a union that had ended in tragedy and infamy, was to marry ‘a ballerina with the potential for a career as stratospheric as his mother’s had been’. That had been an actual quote in a highbrow Spanish magazine, translated by her best friend, fellow ballerina and flatmate, Sophie, who had mastered the Spanish language with an ease that made Freya ashamed of her own inadequacies. In the two years she had lived and worked in Madrid she had hardly picked up the basics of the language.
Many of the company’s corps de ballet were in attendance that night, window dressing for the attending patrons of the arts whose money and patronage were wanted. Sophie had begged off with a migraine, something she’d been suffering with more frequently in recent weeks. Freya wished she were there. Just having Sophie in the same room soothed the nauseous panic nibbling in her stomach.
Just smile.
So she stretched her lips as wide and as high as she could and accepted yet another fake air kiss from another of Europe’s richest women and tried not to choke on the cloud of perfume she inhaled with it.
A tall figure stepped into the ballroom of the hotel the fundraiser was being held in.
Her stomach swooped.
It was him. The man from her engagement party.
Benjamin Guillem.
The name floated in her head before she could stamp it out.
It was a name that she had thought of far too often since the party two months ago. His face had found itself floating into her daydreams too many times for comfort too. And in her night dreams...
Suddenly aware of the danger she was placing herself in, she shifted her stance so he was no longer in her eyeline and smiled at an approaching elderly man.
She must not stare at him again. If he came over to speak to her she would smile gracefully exactly as she had to the other guests and this time she would find her tongue to speak in the clear voice she had cultivated through the years; chiselling the East London accent out of herself so no one in this moneyed world ever doubted she belonged.
She’d never been so tongue-tied before as she had the first time she’d seen him. She had literally been unable to say a word, just stared at him like some kind of goofball.
Her senses were on red alert, though, and as hard as she tried to concentrate on what the elderly man was saying—something