at the front door was a tall, striking woman leaning on a walking stick. Black hair was pulled back from an angular, handsome face.
‘I have no idea why my mother can’t let one of the maids get the door.’ But there was affectionate indulgence in his voice and Milly had a vivid image of the boy beneath the man, the unguarded person beneath the cynical, hard-edged adult in control of an empire. He was a loving son and she had a moment of piercing happiness that she had agreed to this unexpected charade.
‘She probably just can’t wait to see you.’
‘To see us...’ The limo swerved smoothly to a halt and, as they emerged from the car, she felt the heavy weight of his arm sling over her shoulders. ‘We are, after all, the loving couple,’ he whispered into her ear and the warmth of his breath made her want to squirm. ‘At least before the rot sets in...’ And, to prove his point, he curved his hand under her hair to caress the nape of her neck.
And then, barely breaking stride, with such naturalness that anyone would have been forgiven for thinking that what they had was real, he paused, dipped his head and covered her mouth lightly with his.
Just a brief meeting of tongues, enough to do devastating things to her body, then he was pulling away, hand still caressing her neck. The epitome of a man in love.
He couldn’t have been more successful at killing her nerves because how could she be nervous about facing his mother when her thoughts were all over the place at that what that casual kiss had done to her body...?
ANTONIA ROMERO WAS an elegant, quietly spoken woman who immediately put Milly at ease. She ushered them in warmly, allowing Lucas to kiss her on the cheek and then fret at the fact that she had come to the door herself when she should be resting, when there was help in the house to do things like answer doors.
‘I just couldn’t wait to meet Milly...’ she protested, drawing Milly into the living room, where tea and pastries were waiting for them on a low glass table while a pretty, smiling maid hovered in the background, ready to leap to service. ‘And I know you must be tired after your trip but I’m dying to hear all about your romance. I knew it. I just knew that son of mine would end up finding true love with a real woman and not one of those plastic dolls he’s spent his life fooling around with.’
Milly sneaked a surreptitious look at Lucas to see how he was handling his mother’s criticism and he caught her eye and grinned, eyebrows raised.
‘Didn’t I tell you that my mother has no problem saying exactly what she thinks?’ He shooed Antonia back to the sofa as she automatically rose to pour them tea and hand round the pastries. On cue, the maid leaped into action and refreshments were served before the maid vanished out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
With Antonia on the low, damask pink sofa facing her, Milly had a chance really to look at her hostess. There were fine lines of strain around her eyes and mouth and she was borderline too thin, barely filling the black, shapeless dress that hung down to her calves, yet it wasn’t hard to see that she must have been a great beauty in her day. Not that she was exactly ancient now. At a guess, Milly would have put her in her mid to late sixties.
She tried to maintain the chirpy smile of a woman in love as Lucas helped himself to a few more pastries before subsiding right next to her on the sofa, a replica of the one on which Antonia was sitting, his thigh pressed against hers.
She had been leaning forward, perched on the edge of the sofa, her hand primly linked on her knees, and now he pulled her back so that she tumbled against him.
‘What would you like to know?’ Lucas’s voice was teasing as he fondly addressed his mother. ‘You have limited time for questions because you should be taking it easy.’
‘I’m sitting,’ Antonia retorted, smiling. ‘How much easier can I take things? Please don’t join the queue along with all my friends who have insisted on treating me with kid gloves ever since I got ill.’
‘Why don’t you explain...?’ Lucas brushed aside Milly’s hair and delivered a feathery kiss on the side of her cheek, just enough to send the heat spiralling through her.
Milly’s eyes glazed over. If she wasn’t under a microscope, she would have punched him, because he was the one who had propelled her into this awkward situation; how fair was it that she was now being dumped in the thick of it, having to concoct some vaguely realistic lie? Not very.
Antonia was watching her expectantly and Milly reluctantly stumbled into a suitable tale of sudden love and searing romance. She swept aside the minor detail of her broken engagement as just a bit of nonsense from which she had thankfully escaped because, had she not, how else would she have found herself with Lucas? Fate.
Good word. Antonia picked up the cue and reminisced over her own wonderful marriage. Fate had thrown her and her husband together from such a young age.
How could Milly resist confiding about her own parents, also childhood sweethearts? She couldn’t. They had died too young but desperately in love; she felt scared at the thought of being deserted by those she loved, but she still believed in love with all her heart, whatever the risks it brought. She was thinking of Lucas and the mystery gold-digger when she said that. Belatedly, as Antonia nodded approvingly, Milly remembered that this was not supposed to be a bonding experience. She cleared her throat and wondered whether she should shove the man at her side into picking up the baton and continuing their fictional tale of love.
‘Of course.’ She decided against that course of action because who knew what he would say? He hadn’t uttered a peep while she had been in confiding mode, although she had felt him edge a little closer to her, all the better to...what? Prolong his mother’s incorrect assumptions? ‘Wonderful though our sudden love is, I have to admit that your son can be a little...forceful.’
‘Too forceful?’ Antonia asked, and Milly ruefully inclined her head to one side, as though seriously giving the question house room, before erring on the side of tactful.
‘Borderline arrogant,’ she sighed, patting Lucas’s thigh without looking at him. ‘I guess it’s something to do with having grown up in the lap of luxury. I’m afraid I grew up in the lap of, well, rubbing pennies together and trying to make ends meet...’ She left Antonia to make the obvious deduction, which was that they were worlds apart and therefore incompatible in a fundamental area. The first of many, if only she knew.
Antonia seemed delighted with her admission. ‘So good,’ she murmured, tearing up, ‘that you’ve finally come to your senses...’ she smiled at her son and leaned forward ‘...and realised how much more fulfilling it is to have a real woman at your side. My dear, let me tell you about my dearest husband and myself. We rubbed many a penny together before Roberto’s career began to take off! I could tell you a hundred tales of having to choose between paying the bills and buying food, especially in the beginning when we owed the bank so much money...’
* * *
‘Thank you so much for helping me out there,’ was the first thing Milly said when, an hour and three pastries later, they were being ushered up to their bedrooms. ‘Why didn’t you...why didn’t you...?’
‘Launch into a speech about why our fast and furious romance is destined to crash and burn within the next fortnight?’
He hadn’t known about how she felt about her background. Orphaned as a kid and brought up by her grandmother, yet never looking back and blaming an unfortunate past. Still believing in the power of love even though abandonment issues should have made her wary and cynical, disinclined ever to trust anyone to get too close. Still ever-hopeful, the eternal optimist.
He had known women who had been blessed with the best life could offer and still managed to moan and complain about nothing in particular.
‘Bit soon for the cracks to be showing, wouldn’t you agree?’
At