The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит
but still, his words, and the contempt in them, had hurt. Had sullied her dream.
A few overheard words and suddenly she was questioning not just her plans, but her very nature. Scheming or naive? Was that how Rafe and perhaps Adam saw her? Could she be either of those things? She knew she was idealistic—but that didn’t make her naive, did it? And she was halfway in love with Adam, and wanted to fall the rest of the way and to have him fall in love with her—did that make her scheming?
She looked again in Rafe’s direction. He’d walked round the edge of the hedge. His brows were drawn together, as though in hearing her laughter he’d perhaps realized that he, too, could be heard. He turned away, and Lexie watched his departing back as, phone still pressed to his ear, he strode in the opposite direction.
With the sun beating down on him, Rafe waited by the limousine and flicked a glance at his watch. Ten minutes late. Her bags were already in the trunk of the car; it was just Precious herself who was missing. It was hot out here, and though he could wait in the relative comfort of either the house or the car, he had no desire to be cooped up any longer than he had to be. He looked again at the wide stairs to the house and finally, finally, the door opened and the butler walked out. The butler, but no Alexia. Rafe curbed his frustration. “Where is she?”
“Not in the house, sir.” The butler had been well trained; his voice revealed absolutely nothing.
“Then where?”
“Most likely out riding. I checked with the stables and one of her horses is gone, though no one actually saw her leave. I’m afraid she sometimes loses track of time when she’s riding.”
Rafe shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it into the limo. “Show me these stables.”
“You can go now.” Rafe dismissed the groom who’d accompanied him this far, then urged his mount toward the woman sitting, hands linked around her knees, on a log at the shore of the lake. Behind her, a tethered bay mare cropped the grass. With the sunlight catching on her hair, she made a picture as beautiful as any he’d seen at any of the hundreds of galleries he’d opened or visited. But something about the stillness with which she held herself and the droop to her shoulders filled him with foreboding. She looked alone and weighted with worry, or sorrow…or regret?
As he’d ridden he’d been prepared to tear strips off her when he found her. But at the sight of her his anger dissipated. He’d never been any good at holding on to that particular emotion anyway. Life was for living and was too short to waste being angry.
Leaving his horse tethered near hers, he sat beside her on the log, their shoulders almost touching. He looked at her booted feet, recalled their slender vulnerability as he’d touched them last night.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. Her fingers were so tightly interlaced they were white.
“Don’t worry. This isn’t the first time I’ve been kept waiting by a woman.” Though he knew that wasn’t what her heartfelt apology had been for. “The third, I think. Although both of the others were by my sister.” A curtain of auburn hair, lusher even than he’d realized last night, partially obscured her face, but he caught a rewarding glimmer of a smile before it vanished. “It doesn’t matter. Private jet. It’s hardly going to go without us.”
“I can’t go.”
His foreboding deepened and settled heavily in his stomach. He had to get her back to San Philippe. “Of course you can. Everything’s ready. Your cases are in the car. The pilot’s one of our best. Hardly ever crashes.” He tucked her hair behind her ear and searched for her smile, but found nothing.
“You were right. This whole situation is ludicrous. No normal person would have agreed to it. I’ve just been so caught up in the dream I never really stopped to think about it.”
Ahh. So she had heard that. “Alexia, I seldom take anything seriously, so you shouldn’t take anything I say seriously, either.” Certainly his family knew better than to do that. “You’ve had a crush on Adam for years, right?”
She nodded. “Since I was twelve.”
“Wow.” He hadn’t thought it had been that long. He’d realized the night four years ago when she’d kissed him with that odd combination of passion and melting innocence, thinking he was Adam, that she’d imagined she had feelings for his brother.
“Stupid, huh?”
Privately, he agreed with the sentiment. Adam had at the time been much taken by the ambassador’s daughter, a woman of sultry beauty with ten years on Alexia in age and a lifetime in sophistication. And even now, as far as Rafe could tell, his brother was agreeing to this “courtship” primarily out of a sense of duty. “You can’t help what you feel.”
“Although I think it might even have started when I was eight and you threw that frog in my lap, and Adam caught it and took it away.”
Rafe smiled. “Arthur.”
“Arthur?”
“The frog.”
She turned her face to him, curious. “He was a pet?”
Fourteen years later and he could probably still tell her a dozen facts about Arthur and his kind. She’d certainly be more receptive to them now than she was when she was eight, particularly given how eager she was not to have the discussion they should be having. “Let’s get back to Adam, your knight in shining armor. Saving the damsel in distress. Rescuing you from evil amphibians.”
“He doesn’t feel anything for me.”
“Now this is bothering you?” That earned him a small, sheepish smile. “Give him a chance. He doesn’t know you. I think he’ll like you.” He didn’t add that his father had practically ordered it.
“Do you really?” She turned toward him, all earnestness.
He looked at her pale, beautiful face, hair that begged a man to sink his hands into it, a figure he could still recall the imprint of against him.
Something of his thoughts must have shown. “I’m talking personalities here,” she added. A twinkle of mischief lit her eyes.
She had strength and humor to go with her beauty. “Yes, I do think he’ll like you. You might even still like him once you get to know him. But neither of you will know unless you give yourselves a chance. You’ll regret it if you don’t go. And if it doesn’t work, you haven’t lost anything.”
If he went back to San Philippe without her, the blame would be laid squarely at his feet. And the likely punishment would be fighting off his own wedding. Heaven only knew who his father had in mind for him, though he’d undoubtedly have someone. He hadn’t asked—that would only encourage the old man.
“Except maybe a little bit of pride.”
“Pride, schmide, there’s more than enough of that to go round.”
“I do always enjoy visiting San Philippe. It’s funny, but I feel at home there, I get a kind of déjà vu, like it’s where I belong. More so than here even.”
“That settles it then. Let’s go.” He was about to stand when she stilled him with her delicate hand on his forearm.
“Thank you. I’m not usually indecisive. It helped.
Talking to you.”
Unaccountably aware of her touch, wanting to take that hand in his own and lift it again to his lips, he instead stood. “Don’t thank me, Alexia. I’m looking out for my interests as much as yours. There’d be no end of drama if I went home without you.”
“Thank you anyway. It helped.”
Rafe shrugged off her gratitude. “Anytime.” Unlike with Adam, people didn’t often turn to him for advice.
And he didn’t often dispense it. Didn’t want that responsibility. But if he’d helped her he was