The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит
totally unaware of. It was her hair and those smiling, softly parted lips. And that was without even starting on her body. For the first time he could remember, Rafe almost envied Adam.
Oh, yeah. He definitely needed to get rid of her.
Experiencing his own sense of déjà vu, Rafe waited by the limousine. She’d said she needed just twenty minutes to change and be ready. Rafe knew a woman’s twenty minutes, and he was prepared to wait. He looked up at the double front doors just as Alexia—he wouldn’t let himself think of her as Lexie, because he couldn’t help but rhyme it with “sexy”—stepped out, the family’s butler at her side. Together they descended the stairs. She was doing the boring thing again, with her hair drawn back from her face, its auburn lushness fiercely constrained. She wore a cream suit with a beige top beneath the buttoned-up jacket and a single strand of pearls around her neck.
She stopped at his side. “Let’s go, then.”
“Your mother?” Who knew how long she’d be or what kind of production she’d make over her daughter’s leaving.
“She’s at a luncheon for the Historical Society.”
Who knew indeed? Apparently, no production at all, or none more than the touching speech at dinner last night. One he’d thought at the time seemed more for the benefit of the guests than Alexia herself. Rafe understood duty and commitments better than most, but he would have thought…. It didn’t matter. It was no business of his.
“We said goodbye earlier,” she explained, and he wasn’t sure if the explanation was for his benefit or her own.
Their driver held open the door of the dark Bentley. Rafe waited for her to get in. Instead, she turned and enveloped the butler in a fierce hug.
“Take care, miss,” the man murmured.
“I will, Stanley. You, too.”
“Of course.”
As Alexia was planting her neat behind in the car, Stanley turned to Rafe. “Look after her. Please.”
Never in his life had he been given a command by a butler, and despite the added “please” it most definitely had been a command. But the moisture in the older man’s eyes persuaded Rafe to let it pass. “Of course.” Given the absence of her mother, he was glad she at least had someone who seemed to care about her.
Rafe eased into the limo, picked up the newspaper that lay on the seat between them, and scanned the headlines. Alexia was silent as the car eased along the driveway, silent as they passed the wooded area he’d found her in last night, silent as the gates swung closed behind them.
Finally, he looked at her, expecting to see a resurgence of her regret, prepared, this time, to bury his nose in the paper. She was here now and couldn’t back out. Instead, the look of exhilaration on her face stole his breath away. She turned and caught him staring. If anything, her wide smile broadened.
“No more second thoughts, I take it.”
“If I’m going, then I’m going to enjoy it. No point doing something halfheartedly.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Besides, you have no idea of the sense of freedom those gates shutting behind me for the last time gives me.”
“Clearly.”
She was still smiling. “Okay, maybe you do. But still.”
“You were free to come and go, weren’t you?”
“Yes. More or less. It’s just different. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“It may not be my place to break it to you, but if you’re expecting freedom in signing up to join a royal family, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“But if…”
He waited.
“If it does work out with Adam, I’ll be with a wonderful man, I’ll be mistress of my own house, my own life.”
It didn’t escape him that she’d omitted to mention she’d also be married to the heir apparent to the San Philippe throne. How much did the cachet of that role weigh with her? “I guess,” he said. “But have you seen the schedule arranged for you? From memory there are banquets, state dinners, garden shows, the anniversary parade and fireworks, a christening. The list goes on and on.” She’d be on the go from the minute they touched down.
“Yes. I’ve seen it.” She shrugged. “I like to be busy.”
Which reminded him of the first amendment to that schedule. “By the way. You know we’re not heading straight to San Philippe?”
“Yes.”
“Adam spoke to you?”
“Just after he spoke to you, I believe.”
After he’d been so tactless and careless as to allow her to overhear him. “And you’re…okay with that?”
“Stopping in London, or—”
“I meant the jewelry thing.” Somehow, he was taking Adam’s prospective fiancée jewelry shopping for the earrings Adam wanted to give her, or that Adam’s advisers had suggested he give her.
“It’s sweet that Adam wants me to pick something out.”
Sweet. Right. “And you don’t mind that—”
“What?”
“Nothing.” It was none of his business.
“That he’s making you do it with me?”
If Rafe wanted to give a woman jewelry, especially a woman like Alexia, he’d pick something out himself, something with emeralds that sparkled like her eyes, or amber burnished with gold, like her hair, something a little unusual, unique even. A fire opal, lit from within. “It’s no skin off my nose.”
“I’m sure it is. And naturally I don’t want to be an imposition to you. I understand that…you’ve got a life to live, but other than that—” again the smile, unfettered, joyous “—I couldn’t be happier. Besides, I love London.”
“We won’t be there long. Just a few hours.”
“And then you can offload me onto Adam.” She said it with such a smile that he knew she wasn’t still upset by his words, though the faux pas still irked him. He was better than that. Usually. It was just this whole thing with Alexia. He wanted no part of it.
Her gaze stayed on him, innocent and curious. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
The question, coming out of the blue, caught him by surprise. “No.”
“What about—”
She was about to refer to the fiasco with his ex, Delilah. “That’s over. It was over from the moment I found out she was married. Unfortunately, that was the moment I read it in the papers.”
“You hadn’t known?”
“She and her husband were having a trial separation. She neglected to mention his existence.” Rafe was still angered by her deception, and even more annoyed at himself for being taken in by it. The media had had a field day with the story. Delilah had made a killing from selling her version of events to a prominent women’s magazine.
“Did you love her?”
Rafe smiled. “No. Of course not.”
“Oh.”
She sounded so disappointed he almost laughed. “I don’t do love. I don’t even do serious. In case anyone else gets to thinking it’s love.”
He could see disappointment in her eyes. Her kind of naivety was exactly why he preferred to date older women. Women who knew the score. She had so much to learn, and there was a good chance she was going to get hurt in the process.
And he’d been the one to talk her into it.