Girl Behind the Scandalous Reputation (4 page)

He stopped breathing himself and felt the blood throb powerfully through his body. For a split second he forgot what they were doing here. Time stood still. But before he could wrap his hand around her slender neck and bring her mouth to his she blinked and lowered her eyes.

Tristan exhaled, his anger all the stronger because of the unwanted sexual tension that lay between them like a living thing.

‘Do you really think I care?’ he snapped. ‘When I first heard you were coming to Jo’s wedding I didn’t even intend to say hello. Now I find that hello is the least of my problems, and I can assure you I will
not
spend the next eight days arguing every single point with you. So if—’

‘Fine.’ She cupped her hand over her forehead and winced.

He knew what she meant, but he was insulted by her attitude and wanted to hear her say it.

‘Fine what? Fine, you want to come with me? Or fine, you want me to take you back to Customs?’

She raised her head and he waited. The smudges under her eyes looked darker, and her skin had lost even more colour.

‘Oh, to hell with it.’ He straightened and held his hand out to her. She took it, without argument, and he realised that the shock of the morning was finally starting to set in—or maybe she’d been in shock the whole time.

Her fingers were icy in his, and he shrugged out of his jacket once again and pulled it around her. She squirmed as if to push it off, and her eyes jerked to his when he grabbed her upper arms and dragged her close.

‘Co-operate,’ he growled, pleased when she stilled.

‘You never say please.’ She sniffed.

Hell, she was still trying to call the shots. He kept his eyes locked on hers, because if they dropped to her mouth he knew he’d taste her. He was hard and he was angry, and the adrenaline
pumping through his veins was pushing his self-control to its outer limits.

‘Please,’ he grated after a long, tense pause. ‘Now, can you walk?’

‘Of course.’ She gripped her bag and swayed when he released his hold on her.

He knew it would be a mistake on so many levels, but before he could think twice he scooped her into his arms and strode out of the bar.

She started against him, but he’d had enough. ‘Don’t say a goddamned word and don’t look around. The last thing I need is for someone else to recognise you.’

And just like that she relaxed and turned her head into his shoulder, her sweet scent filling his every breath.

The cool breeze was a welcome relief as he exited the terminal and headed down the rank of dark cars until he found Bert.

His chauffer nodded and held the rear door open, but just as Tristan was about to toss Lily inside she laid the flat of her hand against his chest and looked up through sleepy eyes.

‘My luggage…’ she murmured.

Tristan’s chest contracted against the hot brand of her touch.

‘Taken care of,’ he growled, wishing the unbearable physical attraction he still felt for this woman could be just as easily dealt with.

L
ILY
collapsed back against the luxuriant leather car seat and closed her eyes, trying to equalise her pounding heart rate. Her head hurt and she felt shivery all over. She didn’t know if it was remembering her previous attraction to Tristan that had brought it screaming to the fore, or the man himself, but she was unable to deny the sweet feeling of desire that had pooled low in her pelvis when he’d held her in his arms and looked at her as if he wanted to kiss her.

Kiss her?
Ha!
Shake her, more like it. Especially given how much he still disliked her.

As she did him.

Actually, now that she thought about it, her physical response was probably due to emotional tiredness and stress making her super-sensitive to her surroundings and nothing to do with Tristan at all. How could it be when he immediately assumed that she was guilty? When he clearly thought she was lower than dirt?

His cold arrogance fired her blood and made her want to fall back on all her juvenile responses to criticism. Responses that had seen her play up to the negative attention her celebrity lineage provoked by flipping the press the bird, wearing either provocative or grungy clothing, depending on her mood, and pretending she was drunk when she wasn’t.

Nowadays she preferred to ignore any bad press or unfair comparisons with her parents’ hedonistic lifestyles, and just live her life according to her own expectations rather than
other people’s. It worked better, to a certain extent, although she knew she’d never truly be able to outrun the shadow of who her parents had been.

Hanny Forsberg, her mother, had arrived in England poor and beautiful and on Page Three before she had found a place to live, and Johnny Wild, her father, had been a rough Norfolk lad with a raw musical talent and a hunger for success and women in equal measure.

Both had thrived on their fame and the attention it engendered, and after Lily was born they had just added her to their lifestyle—palming her off on whichever one wasn’t working and treating her like a fashion accessory long before it had become hip to do so.

The camera flashes and constant attention had scared her as a child, and even now Lily hated that she always felt as if she was living under the sullied banner of her parents’ combined notoriety. But none of that had been enough to put her off when her own creativity and natural talent had led her down the acting career path. Lily just tried as best she could to take roles that didn’t immediately provoke comparisons between herself and her parents—though as to that she could play a cross-dressing homosexual male and probably still be compared to her mother!

Sighing heavily, and wishing that one of her directors was going to call ‘cut’ on a day from hell, Lily turned to stare out at the passing landscape she hadn’t seen for so long.

Unfortunately the rows of shop fronts and Victorian terraces soon made her head throb, and she was forced to close her eyes and listen to the sound of Tristan texting on his smartphone instead. A thousand questions were winging through her mind—none of which, she knew, Tristan would feel inclined to answer.

For a moment she contemplated pulling the script she had promised to read from her bag, but that would no doubt make the headache worse so she left it there.

No great hardship, since she didn’t want to read it anyway.
She had no interest in starring in a theatrical production about her parents, no matter how talented the writer-director was.

She’d nearly scoffed out loud at the notion.

As if she’d feed the gossipmongers and provoke more annoying comparisons to her mother by actually
playing
her in a drama. Lord, she’d never hear the end of it. The only reason she was pretending to consider the idea was a favour to a friend.

Her mouth twisted as she imagined the look on Tristan’s face if he knew about the role. No doubt he’d think her perfect to play a lost, drug-addled model craving love and attention from a man who had probably put the word
playboy
in the dictionary.

In fact it was ironic, really, that the only man Lily had ever thought herself to be in love with was almost as big a playboy as her father! Not that she’d fully comprehended Tristan’s reputation as a seventeen-year-old. Back then she’d known only that women fell for him like pebbles tossed into a pond, but she hadn’t given it much thought.

Now she was almost glad that he’d rejected her gauche overtures, because if he hadn’t she’d surely have become just another notch on his bedpost. And if she
was
anything like her mother that would have meant she’d have fallen for him all the harder.

Lily removed her cap and rubbed her forehead, glancing briefly at Tristan, slashing his red pen through a document he was reading. If she tried to interrupt him now to discuss her house arrest he’d no doubt bite her head off. Still…

‘I take it you won’t be put out if I don’t feel up to making conversation right now?’ she queried innocuously, smiling brightly when he looked at her as if she had two heads. ‘Thought not,’ she mumbled.

Suddenly she was feeling drained, and not up to fighting with him anyway, so it was a good thing he’d ignored her taunt. A taunt she shouldn’t have made in the first place. Never prod a sleeping tiger…wasn’t that the adage? Especially when you were in the same cage as him!

Lily leaned back against the plush leather headrest and closed her eyes. The manly scent from Tristan’s jacket imbued her with a delicious and oddly peaceful lassitude, and she tried to pretend none of this was happening.

Cheeky minx! She knew he didn’t want to talk. He couldn’t have made it any plainer. He slashed another line through the report he was reading and realised he’d marked up the wrong section. Damn her.

She sighed, and he wondered if she knew the effect she was having on his concentration, but when he glanced up it was to find she’d fallen asleep.

She looked so fragile, swamped in his jacket, her blonde hair spilling over the dark fabric like a silvery web.

He knew when he got it back it would smell like something from his late mother’s garden, and made a mental note to have his housekeeper immediately launder it. Then he realised the direction of his thoughts and frowned.

He was supposed to be focused on work. Not contemplating Lily and her hurt expression when he’d cut off her attempts to explain her situation earlier.

He didn’t want to get caught up in her lies, and he had taken the view that the less she said the better for both of them. She had a way of getting under his skin, and for an insanely brief moment back in the bar, when her eyes had teared up, he’d wanted to reach out and tell her that everything would be all right. Which was ridiculous.

It wasn’t his job to fix her situation. His job—if you could call it that—was to keep her out of trouble until Jordana’s wedding and find out any relevant information that might lead to her—or someone else’s—arrest.

It was not to make friends with her, or to make empty promises. And it certainly wasn’t to kiss her as he had wanted to do. He shook his head. Maybe he really had taken leave of his senses getting involved with this. Stuart, the friend and colleague
who had helped him find the loophole in the law that had placed her into his custody, had seemed to think so.

‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Chief?’ he’d asked, after the deal had been sealed.

‘When have you ever needed to ask me that?’

His friend had raised an eyebrow at his surly tone and Tristan had known what was coming.

‘Never. But if she’s guilty and people question your involvement it could ruin your legal career. Not to mention drag your family name through the mud again.’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ he’d said. But he didn’t. Not really.

What he
did
know was that he was still as strongly attracted to her as he had been six years ago. Not that he was going to do anything about it. He would never get involved with a drug-user.

His mother had been one—although not a recreational user, like Lily and her ilk. His mother had taken a plethora of prescription meds for everything from dieting to depression, but the effect was the same: personality changes, mood swings, and eventually death when she had driven her car into a tree.

She had never been an easy woman to love. A shop girl with her eye on the big prize, she had married his father for his title and, from what Tristan could tell, had spent most of their life together complaining on the one hand that he worked too hard and on the other that the Abbey was too old for her tastes. His father had done his best, but in the end it hadn’t been enough, and she’d left after a blazing row Tristan still wished he hadn’t overheard. His father had been gutted, and for a while lost to his children, and Tristan had vowed then that he would never fall that deeply under a woman’s spell.

He expelled a harsh breath. He was thirty-two years old and in the prime of his life. He had an international law firm and a property portfolio that spanned four continents, good friends and enough money to last several lifetimes—even with the amount he gave away to charity. His personal life had become
a little mundane lately, it was true, but he didn’t really know what to do about that.

Jordana thought it was because he chose unsuitable women most of the time, and if he did date someone ‘worthy’ he ended the relationship before it began. Which was true enough. Experience had taught him that after a certain time a woman started expecting more from a man. Started wanting to talk about love and commitment. And after one particularly virulent model had sold her story to the tabloids he had made sure his affairs remained short and sweet. Very sweet and very short.

He knew he’d probably marry one day, because it was expected, but love wouldn’t play a part in his choice of a wife. When he was ready—if he ever was—he’d choose someone from his world, who understood the demands of his lifestyle. Someone logical and pragmatic like he was.

Lily made a noise in her sleep and Tristan flicked a glance at her, wincing as her head dropped sideways and butted up against the glass window. Someone the opposite of this woman.

She whimpered and jerked upright in her sleep, but didn’t waken, and Tristan watched the cycle start to repeat itself. That couldn’t be good for her headache.

Not that he cared. He didn’t. She was the reason memories from the past were crowding in and clouding his normally clear thinking, and he resented the hell out of her for it.

But just as her head was about to bump the window again he cursed and moved to her side, to move her along the seat. She flopped against his shoulder and snuggled into his arm, her silky hair brushing against his cheek, giving him pause. He felt the warmth of her breath through his shirt and went still when she made a soft, almost purring sound in the back of her throat; his traitorous body responded predictably.

If he were to move back to his side now she might wake up and, frankly, he could do without her peppering him with the questions he’d seen hovering on her lips while he’d been trying to work.

She made another pained whimper and he looked down to see a frown marring her pale forehead.

Oh, for the love of God.

He blew out a breath and lifted his free hand to her hairline, stroked her brow. The frown eased instantly from her forehead and transferred to his own. If he wasn’t careful this whole situation could get seriously out of hand. He could just feel it.

Five minutes. He’d give her five minutes and then he’d move. Get back to the waiting e-mails on his smartphone.

Twenty minutes later, just as he was about to ease his fingers from her tangled tresses, his chauffeur announced that the car had stopped. Well, of course he’d noticed.

‘Drive us to the rear entrance, Bert,’ he said, trying to rouse Lily. She rubbed her soft cheek against his palm in such a trusting gesture his chest tightened.

God, she really was a stunning woman.

How could someone born looking like she did throw it all away on drugs? He knew she must have struggled, losing both her parents at a young age, but still—they all had their crosses to bear. What made some people rise above the cards life dealt them while others sank into the mire?

According to Jordana, Lily was sensible, reserved and down to earth. Yeah, and he was the Wizard of Oz.

‘You okay, Boss?’ Bert asked, concern shadowing his voice.

Great. He hadn’t noticed the car had pulled up again. He had to stop thinking of Lily as a desirable woman before it was no longer important that he neither liked nor respected her.

‘Never better.’ He exhaled, manoeuvring himself out of the car and effortlessly lifting the comatose woman into his arms. She stirred, but instantly resettled against him. No doubt a combination of shock and jet lag was laying her out cold.

A security guard opened the glass-plated door to his building, looking for all the world as if there was nothing out of place in his boss carrying an unconscious woman towards the service lift.

‘Nice afternoon, sir.’

Tristan grunted in return, flexing his arms under Lily’s dead weight.

He exited the lift and strode towards his office throwing a ‘don’t ask’ look at his ever-efficient secretary as she hurried around her desk to push his door open for him.

‘Hold all my calls,’ he instructed Kate, before kicking the door closed with his heel.

He tumbled Lily gently down onto the white leather sofa in his office and she immediately curled into a fetal position, pulling his jacket more tightly around her body while she slept.

Scratch laundering it
, he thought. He’d just throw the bloody thing away.