A Perfect Husband
Lilah tore her gaze from the snug fit of his black T-shirt and the muscular swell of tanned biceps. She was certain that beyond an intoxicating whiff of sandalwood she could detect the scent of his skin.
Her blush deepened as she was momentarily flung back to the night of The Episode. Zane had suggested they go to an empty reception room so they could indulge their mutual passion for art by studying the oils displayed on the walls.
She couldn’t remember much about the garish abstracts. She would never forget the moment Zane had pulled her close. The clean, masculine scent of his skin and the exotic undernote of sandalwood had filled her nostrils, making her head spin. When he had kissed her, his taste had filled her mouth.
Somehow they had ended up on a wide, comfortable couch. At some point the bodice of her dress had drifted to her waist, a detail that should have alarmed her. Zane had taken one breast in his mouth and her whole body had coiled unbearably tight. She could remember clutching at his shoulders, a flash of dizzying, heated pleasure, the room shimmering out of focus.
If the door hadn’t popped open at that moment and Zane’s date, who was also his previous personal assistant, a gorgeous redhead called Gemma, hadn’t walked in, Lilah shuddered to think what would have happened next. She had dragged her bodice up and clambered off the couch. By the time she had found her clutch, which had ended up underneath the couch, Zane had shrugged into his jacket. After a clipped good-night, he had left with Gemma.
The echoing silence after the heady, intimate passion had stung. He had not suggested they meet again, which had put The Episode in its horrifying context.
Zane had not wanted a relationship; he had just wanted an interlude. Sex. He had probably thought they had been on the verge of a one night stand, that she was easy.
Embarrassingly, she had forgotten every relationship rule she had rigidly stuck to for the twelve years she had been dating.
Zane walking out so quickly then never bothering to follow up with a telephone call or text had been a blessing. It had confirmed what she had both read about him and discovered firsthand—that no matter how attractive, he could not be trusted in a relationship. If he couldn’t commit to a phone call, it was unlikely he would commit to marriage.
Another shuddering crash of thunder jerked her back to the present.
Aware that Zane was waiting for an answer, she busied herself fastening her seat belt. “I’ve been afraid of flying forever.”
Instead of sitting where he’d slung his jacket, Zane lowered himself into the seat next to hers.
She stiffened as he pried her hand off the armrest. “What are you doing?”
His fingers curled warmly through hers. “Holding your hand. Tried-and-true remedy.”
Nervous tension, along with the tingling heat of his touch, zinged through her at the skin-on-skin contact. There was something distinctly forbidden about holding hands with Zane Atraeus.
Illegitimate and wild, according to the tabloids, Zane had been the instant ruination of hundreds of women, and promised to be the ruination of even more in the future. She had the shattering firsthand knowledge of exactly how that ruination was achieved.
She flexed her fingers, but his hold didn’t loosen. “Shouldn’t you be in the cockpit?”
“Flight deck. There’s a copilot, Spiros. He doesn’t need me yet.”
Her stomach clenched as she was suddenly reminded that they were twenty-eight thousand feet above the ground. “How long is the flight?”
“Twenty hours, give or take. We land in Singapore to refuel. If you don’t like flying, why are you going to Medinos?”
Trying to arrange her future with a steady, reliable husband who would not leave her. Trying to avoid the Cole women’s regrettable tendency to fall victim to the coup de foudre.
Her head started to swim, and it was not just the dizzying effect of the sandalwood. She remembered that she had taken two sedatives. “Trying to get a life. I’m twenty-nine.”
She blinked. She was beginning to feel as if she was swimming in molasses. Had she actually told him her age?
“Twenty-nine doesn’t seem so old to me.”
She smothered a yawn and frowned at the defensive note in his voice.
“What did you take?”
Her lids slid closed. She gave him the name of the sedative.
“They’ll knock you out. I can remember having them as a kid. After my father found me in L.A., we flew to Medinos. I was a handful. I didn’t like flying, either.”
Curiosity kept her on the surface of sleep, caught in the net of his deep, cool voice and fascinated by the dichotomy of his character. She had read his story on the charity website. One of the things she admired about Zane was that he happily revealed his past in order to help homeless kids.
“Put your head on my shoulder if you want.”
The quiet offer sent a warning thrill through her. She considered leaning against the window, but the thought that the shutter might slide open and she would catch a view clear down to the ground was not pleasant. “No, thank you.” She struggled to stay upright. “You’re nicer than I thought.”
“Tell me,” he muttered, “I’m curious. You’ve known me for two years. How did you think I would be?”
Her lids flickered open. Exactly how he had been the night of the ball. Dangerous, sexy. Hot.
With an effort of will, she controlled her mind, which had shot off on a very wrong tangent. Zane had probably been in intimate situations with more women than he could count. She doubted he would even remember how close they had come to making love. Or that she had actually—
She cut short that disturbing thought and searched for something polite to say. As an Atraeus, Zane was one of her employers now. She would have to adjust to the new dynamic.
Her stomach tensed at a thought she had cheerfully glossed over before. If she and Lucas married, their relationship would be even closer; he would be her brother-in-law. “Uh—for a start, I didn’t think you even liked me.”
“Was that after what happened on the couch or before?”
The flashback to the sensations that had flooded her that night was electrifying. From the knowing gleam in Zane’s gaze, she was abruptly certain he knew exactly what had happened.
Embarrassed heat warmed her cheeks. He had been lying on top of her at the time. She would be naive to consider that he had not noticed that she had lost control and actually had an orgasm.
He had to know also that if Gemma hadn’t turned up dangling car keys and making them jump guiltily apart, that she had been on the verge of making an even bigger mistake. “I’m surprised you remember.”
“Lucas won’t marry you.”
The sudden change of topic jerked her lids open. The dark fire burning in Zane’s eyes almost made her forget what she was about to say. “Lucas isn’t the only one with a choice.”
“Choose someone else.”
Lilah’s heart slammed against the wall of her chest. For a split second, she’d had the crazy thought that Zane had been about to say, “Choose me.”
From an early age she had discovered that men liked the way she looked. Something in the slant of her eyes, the curve of her cheekbones, the shape of her mouth, spelled sexual allure. On occasion attraction had spilled over into an uncomfortable fascination, although she had never thought that Zane Atraeus would find her more than ordinarily attractive.
She dragged in a lungful of air and tried to deny the heart-pounding knowledge that behind the grim tone Zane Atraeus really did want her. “What gives you the right—?”
“This.”
Zane bent toward her, his head dipped. Her pulse rate rocketed.
For two years she had tortured herself about her loss of control. Now, finally, she was being offered the chance to examine what, exactly, had gone wrong.
She caught another enticing whiff of clean skin and exotic cologne. Dimly, she noted that the concept of her ruination had receded, a dangerous sign, although she was still in control. She had time to shift in her seat. If she wanted she could turn her head—
Warm fingers gripped her chin. The pressure of his mouth on hers almost stopped her heart.
Suddenly, the electrical hum every time he looked at her coalesced into stunning truth. The double whammy of her ticking biological clock combined with prolonged celibacy was the reason she was having such a difficult time controlling her responses to Zane.
Relief surged through her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought about that two years ago. It was the logical explanation. Zane had caught her at a vulnerable moment at the charity ball. She simply hadn’t had the resources to resist him.
Jerking back from the seductive softness of the kiss, Lilah gulped in air.
The experience had been so riveting that the harder she had tried to suppress the memories, the more aggressively they had surfaced—in her dreams, her painting.
She had to get a grip on herself. She could not afford to take him seriously. According to the tabloids, the youngest Atraeus brother was the dark side of the mega wealthy Atraeus family, wild and dangerous to know, the bad as opposed to the good.
Which only went to prove that her judgment when it came to men was no better than her mother’s or her grandmother’s before her.
A little wildly she decided that the attraction was no bigger a deal for Zane than it had been two years ago. But that didn’t change the disturbing knowledge that, if anything, she was in an even more vulnerable position now. The sensations already coursing through her body had the potential to destroy the future she had mapped out for herself.
She could not let that happen.
She was strong-willed. She had steered clear of intense emotions and casual flings all of her adult life. She was not going to mess up now.
With a younger man.
Zane was twenty-four, twenty-five at most, and with no sign of tempering his fast, edgy lifestyle with the encumbrances of a wife and family. He could say what he liked about his brother, but on paper, Lucas was perfect. He was older, more mature, ready to commit and without the wild reputation.
Those minutes on the couch with Zane and the experience of losing control and almost giving herself to a man who had demonstrated that he did not care for her had been salutary.
She knew the danger of her weakness now. On top of the healthy sex drive that came with her Cole genes, her biological clock was ticking loudly in both ears.
The thought that Zane could make her pregnant sent a hot flash through her that momentarily welded her to the seat before she managed to dismiss the notion.
Zane was not husband material. All she had to do was ignore the magnetic power of the attraction and her raging hormones, ignore the destructive impulse to throw her wedding plan away.
And throw herself beneath Zane’s naked body.
Three
After a formal family dinner at the Atraeus family’s Medinian castello the following evening, Lilah excused herself from the table while coffee was being served. Lucas had left some twenty minutes earlier, during dessert. His defection had been no great surprise because through the course of the evening she had become grimly certain that he was involved with another woman.
After obtaining directions from one of the kitchen staff, she paused by the door to Lucas’s private suite. Stiffening her shoulders against the chill of the Mediterranean fortress walls, she rapped on the imposing door.
Lean brown fingers manacled her wrist. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
Lilah spun, shocked by the deep, cool voice and the knowledge that Zane had left the dinner table and followed her.
Snatching her wrist back, she rubbed at the bare skin, which still tingled and burned from his grip.
She dragged her gaze from his overlong jet-black hair and the trio of studs glinting in one lobe. An unwanted surge of awareness added to the tension that had gripped her ever since she had arrived at the castello that evening and seen Lucas in the arms of Carla Ambrosi.
Lucas and Carla had a short but well-publicized past, which Lilah had mistakenly believed to be invented media hype. To further complicate things, Carla was Lilah’s immediate boss.
Zane indicated the closed door. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Lucas is … busy.”
The startling notion that, beneath the casual facade, Zane was quietly angry was shattered by the distant sound of laughter and the tap of high heels. More guests leaving the dining table, no doubt in search of one of the castello’s bathrooms.
Suddenly, the stunning risk Lilah had taken in traveling thousands of miles for a first date with an extremely wealthy man whose love life was of interest to the tabloids came back to haunt her. He had fulfilled all of the criteria of her system. Now things were going disastrously wrong.
Zane jerked his head in the direction of the approaching guests. “I take it you don’t want to be discovered knocking on Lucas’s bedroom door?”
A wave of embarrassed heat decimated the chill. “No.”
“Finally, some sense.” Zane’s fingers curled around her wrist again.
The startling intimacy of the hold sent another tingling jolt through her. A split second later, heart pounding with nerves, she found herself crushed against Zane’s side and flattened against the cold stone of an alcove. She inhaled, bracing herself against the effect of the sandalwood and the sudden, nervous desire to laugh.
As unpleasant as the evening had been she couldn’t suppress a small thrill that Zane had come to her rescue. Now they were hiding like a couple of kids.
Zane leaned out and peered around a corner. When he settled back into place she discovered that she had missed the warmth of his body.
His dark gaze touched on hers. “What I don’t get is why Lucas asked you.”
Lilah stiffened at the implication that she was the last person Lucas should have asked to partner him at a family wedding.
Determinedly, she stamped on the soft core of hurt that had haunted her since she was a kid—that her illegitimate birth and the poverty of her background made her less than respectable. “You certainly know how to make a girl feel special.”
He frowned. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Don’t worry.” She dragged her gaze free from the dangerous, too-knowing sympathy in his. “I have no problems with the reality check.”
She just wished she had thought things through before she had left home. Labeled “Catch of the Year” in a prominent women’s magazine, Lucas had been too good to be true.
Somewhere in the distance a door snapped shut, cutting off the sound of footsteps and laughter. The abrupt return to silence made Lilah doubly aware of the masculine heat emanating from Zane’s body and that the pale pearlized silk of her gown suddenly seemed too thin, the scooped neckline too revealing.
Hot color flooded her cheeks as the stressed uncertainty that had driven her to go in search of Lucas, and the truth, gave way to the searing memory of the kiss on the flight out.
The sedatives she had taken had kicked in shortly afterward. She had not seen Zane again until they had landed in Singapore, where two more passengers, clients of The Atraeus Group, had boarded the jet. Courtesy of the extra passengers, the rest of the flight had been uneventful. During the customs procedures, aware that Zane had been keeping tabs on her, she had managed to separate herself from him and had taken a taxi to her hotel.
Zane checked the corridor again. “All clear, and your reputation intact.”
“Unfortunately, my reputation is already shredded.”
That was the risk she had accepted in traveling thousands of miles on a first date with her billionaire boss. She hadn’t yet had time to formulate the full extent of the damage this would do to her marriage plan. Her only hope was that the other men on her list didn’t read the gutter press.
Jaw locked, she marched to the door of Lucas’s suite and rapped again.
Zane leaned one broad shoulder against the door frame, arms folded across his chest. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”
Lilah tried not to notice the way the dim light of an antique wall lamp flared across his taut, molded cheekbones, the tough line of his jaw. “I prefer the direct approach.”
“Just remember I tried to save you.”
The door eased open a few inches. Lucas Atraeus, tall and darkly handsome in evening clothes, was framed in the wash of lamplight.
The small flare of anger that had driven her back to his door leaped a little higher. She had expected Lucas to be somehow diminished in appearance. It didn’t help that he still looked heartbreakingly perfect.
The conversation was brief, punctuated by a glimpse of Carla Ambrosi, the woman Lilah realized Lucas truly wanted, hurriedly setting her clothing to rights. In that moment any idea that she could retrieve the situation and persevere with Lucas dissolved.
Gripping the door handle, Lilah wrenched the solid mahogany door closed, cutting Lucas off. In the process the strap of her evening bag flew off her shoulder. Beads scattered as the pretty purse hit the flagstones.
Silence reigned in the corridor for long, nervy seconds. Lilah tried to avoid Zane’s gaze. She was so not grieving for the relationship. Somehow she had never managed to get emotionally involved with Lucas. “You knew all along.”
He picked up the purse and a number of glittering beads and handed them to her. “They’ve got a history.”
Lilah slipped the little beads into the clutch. “I read the stories two years ago. I guess I should have included the information in my—”
“Wedding planner?”
Her gaze snapped to his. “Process. My woman’s intuition must have been taking a mini-break.”
He lifted a brow. “Don’t expect me to apologize for being in touch with my feminine side.”
The ridiculous concept of Zane Atraeus possessing any feminine trait broke the tension. “You don’t have a feminine side.”
A sudden thought blindsided her. Zane in his position as The Atraeus Group’s troubleshooter was used to handling difficult situations. And employees. “You’re running interference for Lucas.”
It made perfect sense. With Carla in the mix, Lucas had hedged his bets and asked Zane to fly her out. Now Zane had stepped in to stop her making a scene. It placed her in the realms of being “a problem.”
“No.”
The flatness of Zane’s denial was reassuring. His motives shouldn’t matter, but suddenly they very palpably did. She couldn’t bear the thought that she was just another embarrassing, or worse, scandalous, situation that Zane was “fixing.”
In the distance a door opened. The sharp tap of heels on flagstones, the clatter of dishes, broke the moment.
Zane straightened away from the wall. “You could do with a drink.” His hand cupped her elbow. “Somewhere quiet.”
The heat of his palm against her bare skin distracted Lilah enough that she allowed him to propel her down the corridor.
Seconds later, Zane opened a door and allowed her to precede him. Lilah stepped into a sitting room decorated in the spare Medinian way, with cream-washed walls, dark furniture and jewel-bright rugs scattered on a flagstone floor. A series of rich oils, no doubt depicting various Atraeus ancestors, decorated the walls. French doors opened out on to one of the many stone terraces that rimmed the castello, affording expansive views of a moonlit Mediterranean sea.
Zane splashed what looked like brandy into a glass. “When did you realize about Lucas and Carla?”
She loosened her death grip on her clutch. “When we arrived at the castello and Carla flung herself into Lucas’s arms.”
“Then why go to Lucas’s room when you had to know what you would find?”
The question, along with the piercing gaze that went with it, was unsettling. She was once again struck by the notion that beneath the urbane exterior Zane was quietly, coldly angry. “I’d had enough of feeling uncomfortable and out of place. Dinner was over and I was tired. I wanted to go back to the hotel.”
He pressed the glass into her hands. “With Lucas.”
The brush of his fingers sent another zing of awareness through her. “No. Alone.”
She sipped brandy and tensed as it burned her throat. She was not about to explain to Zane that she had not gotten as far as thinking about the physical realities of a relationship with his brother. She had assumed all of that would fall into place as they went along. “I put a higher price on myself than that.”
“Marriage.”
She almost choked on another swallow of brandy. “That’s the general idea.”
Fingers tightening on the glass, she strolled closer to the paintings, as always drawn by color and composition, the nuances of technique. Jewelry design was her trade, but painting had always been her first love.
She paused beneath an oil of a fierce, medieval warrior, an onyx seal ring on one finger, a scimitar strapped to his back. The straight blade of a nose, tough jaw and magnetic dark gaze were a mirror of Zane’s.
Seated beside the warrior was his lady, wearing a parchment silk gown, her exotic gaze square on to the viewer, giving the impression of quiet, steely strength. Lilah was guessing that being married to the brigand beside her, she would need it. An exquisite diamond and emerald ring graced one slim finger; around her neck was a matching pendant.
She felt the heat from Zane’s body all down one side as he came to stand beside her. The intangible electrical current that hummed through her whenever he was near grew perceptibly stronger.
Lilah swallowed another mouthful of brandy and tried to ignore the disruptive sensations. The warmth in the pit of her stomach extended to a faint dizziness in her head, reminding her that she had barely eaten at dinner and had already sipped too much wine. She stepped closer to study the jewelry the woman was wearing.
“The Illium jewels.”
Lilah frowned, frustrated by the lack of fine detail in the painting. “From Troy? I thought they were a myth.”
“They got sold off at the turn of last century when the family went broke. My father managed to buy them back from a private collector.”
Lilah noticed the detail of a ship in the background of the painting. “A pirate?”
“A privateer,” Zane corrected. “During the eighteen hundreds his seafaring exploits were a major source of wealth for the Atraeus family.”
Lilah ignored Zane’s smooth explanation. After a brief foray into Medinian history, she had gleaned enough information about the Atraeus family to know that the dark and dangerous ancestor had been a pirate by any other name.
She stepped back from the oil painting in order to appreciate its rich colors. The play of light over the warrior’s dark features suddenly made him seem breathtakingly familiar. Exchange the robes, soft boots and a scimitar for a suit and an expensive black shirt and it was Zane. “What was his name?”
“Zander Atraeus, my namesake, near enough. Although my mother didn’t have a clue about my father’s family history.” He turned away. “Finish your drink. I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
She followed Zane to the sideboard and set her empty brandy glass down. She noticed the glint of the seal ring on the middle finger of Zane’s left hand. “Your ring looks identical to the one in the painting.”
“It is.” His reply was clipped, and she wondered what she had said to cause the cool distance.
Suddenly she understood and busied herself extracting her cell from her clutch. She knew only too well what it was like to be an illegitimate child and excluded from her father’s family. As much as she had tried to dismiss that side of the family from her psyche, they still existed and the hurt remained.
“You don’t have to take me back to the hotel. I can call a cab.” Unfortunately, the screen of her cell was cracked and the phone no longer appeared to work. It must have happened when her purse had gone flying.